Oh dear Felix....

[kea]

I always feel a certain obligation to defend Mendelssohn simply because his creative work is so similar to mine: plenty of technical skill, lots of references to composers of the past, a preference for formulas, and almost no originality. He is definitely one of those composers who wrote music because he wanted to create things similar to things he already knew and liked, rather than someone who wrote music in order to discover new things he didn't know he liked; and since I'm one of those composers as well and can say in my case it's basically just a lack of talent and imagination, I feel like I "understand" his frustration as it were, poring over late Beethoven and imitating it carefully only to end up with results that sound much less forward-looking and interesting. >.>

The truth is though, apart from the A minor quartet, A major quintet, some of the early string symphonies, the Midsummer Night's Dream overture & incidental music, and possibly a few other early works there's very little Mendelssohn I would consider essential to my continued survival. I can understand Schumann's great admiration for him but not feel it myself. Perhaps someday I'll appreciate his music more but at the moment a lot of it just feels like background music.

[cloughie]

Hiya EdgeleyRob,

This criticism of Mendelssohn is not new by any means. I love Mendelssohn's music. If others don't rate it, I accept it as they are entitled to their opinion. It's all about personal taste in my view.

Exactly, Stan. Most of it is uplifting, bright music. The ending of the Scottish Symphony -.who cannot listen to the last few bars and not feel good!

[Vox Humana]

And then there's that wretched "Hear my prayer". Blandness at its most professional. "The enemy shouteth" - but only with the most stiff of Victorian upper lips lest we appear vulgar. And what's with that cuddly dove? For goodness' sake, it's not a vicar's tea party; it's cry of despair.

[ahinton]

And then there's that wretched "Hear my prayer". Blandness at its most professional. "The enemy shouteth" - but only with the most stiff of Victorian upper lips lest we appear vulgar. And what's with that cuddly dove? For goodness' sake, it's not a vicar's tea party; it's cry of despair.

I take your points, neatly put as they are - and I have little time for the symphonies, Elijah, &c. - but the chamber works are all immensely accomplished and the best of them considerably more than just that. OK, there's nothing that approaches the revolutionary nature of Berlioz or the two great but greatly different piano sonatas dating from just a few years after his death that were composed by Liszt and Alkan, nor new developments in form such as are found in Chopin's four Ballades - but then I don't see that there's any obligation on a composer to be "radical" - still less ONLY radical - all the time and less again merely for the sake of so being...

[kea]

I don't think it's really about being radical, it's about an approach to composition and creative work. There are (broadly speaking) two different approaches to creative work—creation as imitation or homage, and creation as experiment or discovery—and one's affinity for one approach or the other will also dictate what kind of art one enjoys.

And obviously no artist or listener is completely 100% one or the other. But in general, over time artists will show a preference for one approach.

[rauschwerk]

And then there's that wretched "Hear my prayer". Blandness at its most professional. "The enemy shouteth" - but only with the most stiff of Victorian upper lips lest we appear vulgar. And what's with that cuddly dove? For goodness' sake, it's not a vicar's tea party; it's cry of despair.

I disagree profoundly. This piece can be quite ruined by the use of a boy soloists and all-male choirs. Try Matthew Best's recording and you might see what I mean. You might hate the soprano's wide vibrato but you can't dismiss the passion in her and the choir's singing!

[ahinton]

I don't think it's really about being radical, it's about an approach to composition and creative work. There are (broadly speaking) two different approaches to creative work—creation as imitation or homage, and creation as experiment or discovery—and one's affinity for one approach or the other will also dictate what kind of art one enjoys.

And obviously no artist or listener is completely 100% one or the other. But in general, over time artists will show a preference for one approach.

It isn't just about that, of course, but I do suspect that it might be a factor that some take into consideration in assessing FM's work and arriving at their views of it; furthermore, I believe that the notion of just "two different approaches to creative work", however "broadly speaking", constitutes an over-simplification, if you'll pardon my saying so, although I think that you already recognise that, even between those two alone, there is often cross-fertilisation.

[Vox Humana]

This piece can be quite ruined by the use of a boy soloists and all-male choirs.

I know. Do it with a soprano who can impart real drama, preferably an operatic one. I have done it with a soprano + mixed choir, but the piece still doesn't begin to approach what the beleaguered psalmist must have felt because, quite obviously, that's not what Mendelssohn intended to convey. Assuming you don't totally ruin the piece by over-egging it, the shouting enemy still won't sound terrifying and the best you can do with the dove is to lend it a sense of urgency by refusing to luxuriate. The mildly worried dove approach does work, although I don't think it's ultimately as satisfying as the traditional reading. I'm not saying that it's not lovely music - it is - but dear old Felix really didn't get inside the text properly.

[Braunschlag]

One problem organists have is that that there is little truly great organ music by first-stream composers after Bach. .

I'm in total agreement here, so much is pretty second-rate stuff and I myself used to despair at the amount of groundwork one had to do to make up a half-decent recital programme. Many organist-composers did produce genuinely good work but the real challenge then was to get to grips with the technical challenges (I'm thinking here of Dupré in particular, truly idiomatic music of depth).
I don't play nowadays, an argument with a paint stripping tool saw to that, but I tend also not to go to organ recitals these days. I think the last one I endured (and it was a real feat of endurance) consisted of the complete Elgar Vesper Voluntaries, and weren't they a real bore, something trite by Lloyd Webber (WS), that dreadful Britten piece, Mendelssohn 3 (blasted to oblivion with high pressure Edwardian reeds) and something else I can't remember. Played by an ex cathedral organist. It put me off going ever again.

[Richard Barrett]

creation as imitation or homage, and creation as experiment or discovery

There's also the possibility that in trying to do one of those, one ends up doing the other!

[jayne lee wilson]

The idea of Mendelssohn lacking formal innovations can be a little overstated. The supposedly hackneyed Violin Concerto plunges straight into the first big solo without orchestral introduction, and the 1st movement cadenza (Mendelssohn’s own) is unusually searching, far more than some soloistic display. And the whole work is of course played continuously - like Schumann, Mendelssohn was fond of the idea of linked, through-composed movements (3rd Symphony and both Piano Concertos - though the latter vary this again in that the first two movements flow continuously, the finale starts abruptly, as if separate), a device that hasn’t too many earlier classical precedents. (Beethoven’s slow movement-as-finale prelude is one (Waldstein, Triple Concerto, Emperor), which again Mendelssohn took up in the 5th Symphony).

He also integrated his slow introductions into the whole symphonic structure (Symphonies 2&5, Op.13 Quartet) again going beyond classical precedents (e.g. Beethoven Op.130). In the 3rd Symphony, the finale coda seems a wonderful surprise (so much so that Klemperer didn’t want to play it), but it is a variant of the very opening of the piece, transforming a mysterious quest into a hymn of joy; it is of course the apotheosis of a motto theme running, in varying degrees of disguise or explicitness, through the work. I can’t think of many earlier symphonies which do this either (Symphonies 1 & 5, really 1 & 2, were composed 1824/30, before or contemporaneous with the Berlioz Fantastique).
Both composers took transformative thematic recurrence (ie cyclical form) much further than before as well.

But beyond that, in concentrating on structural or harmonic innovation (or perceived lack of it) it’s easy to overlook the obsessive rhythmic drive and inventiveness which Mendelssohn and Schumann brought to symphonic and concertante works. This always feels excitingly new to me (even as a devoted Haydneer), both in the moods and emotions it creates and the sheer physical exhilaration it sends pulsing through the empathetic listener. It is probably the rhythmic aspect that makes these composers absolutely essential to me (just think of the Op. 12 and 13 Canzonetta and Intermezzo - nothing else quite like those, so distinctive & so early too - the Mendelssohn scherzo, whether relaxed or intense, is a mini-genre in itself, as is the more febrile Schumann variety).

So much to say so little time, but the sweeping, contrapuntal finale of the 5th Symphony, the wild tarantella of the 4th, the choral entry in the 2nd - that uniquely Mendelssohnian exhilaration is hard to live without.
(Incidentally, the superb new COE/Nézet-Séguin Mendelssohn Symphony set (DG) has the new Hogwood edition of No.5, which restores a much longer flute/orchestra recitative before Ein Feste Burg evolves in the flute/finale intro. Since the andante-recitative-finale are all attacca, it creates a very striking effect, more like a 5-movement symphony!)

[Serial_Apologist]

I know. Do it with a soprano who can impart real drama, preferably an operatic one. I have done it with a soprano + mixed choir, but the piece still doesn't begin to approach what the beleaguered psalmist must have felt because, quite obviously, that's not what Mendelssohn intended to convey. Assuming you don't totally ruin the piece by over-egging it, the shouting enemy still won't sound terrifying and the best you can do with the dove is to lend it a sense of urgency by refusing to luxuriate. The mildly worried dove approach does work, although I don't think it's ultimately as satisfying as the traditional reading. I'm not saying that it's not lovely music - it is - but dear old Felix really didn't get inside the text properly.

As one who was made to sing both these pieces as a boy soprano, may I thank you for what you have written in this and your previous post.

[Braunschlag]

I only asked about the organ Sonatas and look what happened!
Thanks for your erudite and interesting comments. I still can't really abide the things but, rest assured, there's much of Mendelssohn I do admire and enjoy, not least the chamber music (particularly the piano trios) and some of the symphonies.
If only I had an atom of his early promise.

[cloughie]

I only asked about the organ Sonatas and look what happened!
Thanks for your erudite and interesting comments. I still can't really abide the things but, rest assured, there's much of Mendelssohn I do admire and enjoy, not least the chamber music (particularly the piano trios) and some of the symphonies.
If only I had an atom of his early promise.

Yes his Octet and MND Ov were quite outstanding for a young composer!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes his Octet and MND Ov were quite outstanding for a young composer!

Damn fine for a middle-aged or elderly one for that matter!

For all that the Op 80 is impressive, I still much prefer the Octet, which he wrote when he was knocking on Life's door: it never fails to astonish me - something that that Quartet just doesn't, alas.