I am starting to get just a little bit tired of hearing that if Felix Mendelssohn had never lived, music history would not have turned out any differently. He’s second-rate, he’s sentimental, he’s an academician, blah blah blah. When are these pompous idiots going to open their ears and acknowledge the fact that he was only one of the most influential composers of the 19th century? Especially in Germany, England and America, did any serious musician escape his sway?
Mendelssohn was essentially adopted as England’s national composer. Figures from William Sterndale Bennett through Sir Arthur Sullivan gleefully played in his shadow. In fact, Mendelssohn was the hottest composer in England since Handel. Such a stranglehold did Handel and Mendelssohn have on English concertgoers’ affections that, in Germany, England was mocked as “Das Land ohne Musik” – The Land without Music. The best English composers were all German.
But if the Germans were to be at all honest with themselves, they would have realized that all the best German composers were also followers of Mendelssohn. What about Wagner, you say, surely one of the most progressive composers who ever lived? There’s plenty of Mendelssohn in early Wagner. Ditto for Richard Strauss. As for the “second rank,” the more conservative school, just about everyone emulated Mendelssohn.
Of himself, of course, Mendelssohn was one of the most astonishing of musical prodigies. He composed two of the most enduring masterpieces in the repertoire, the overture to a “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the Octet for Strings, at 16 and 17 respectively. In terms of maturity and polish, these were certainly on a par with anything written by the teenaged Mozart.
Yes, Mendelssohn was a traditionalist. He structured his music on foundations laid in the past. Even so, he cautiously ventured into the mists of Romanticism. Occasionally, he even subverted expectations, in works like his famous Violin Concerto. Furthermore, he was respectful, if not kind, to everyone, even those of whose music he disapproved.
As a conductor, there’s no question he was one of the most influential musicians in Europe, if not the world. For twelve years, he led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, an ensemble full of players who went on to distinction in their own right. He was admired for the precision of his performances. He was also the one who essentially drew up the blueprint for modern orchestras in developing a musical “canon.” He gave important premieres of music by his contemporaries, while also reviving works of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.
In particular, he is credited with resuscitating the reputation of Johann Sebastian Bach, not only through his resurrection of the “St. Matthew Passion,” but in overseeing an edition of Bach’s organ works, along with an edition of Handel’s oratorios, both of which were published in England.
So music history would have been quite different if not for Mendelssohn, thank you very much. He may not have been the most seismic of innovators, but there’s something to be said for being a master of one’s craft.
Mendelssohn died in Leipzig, after a series of strokes, at the age of 38. Did he live up to his potential? Who among us is really qualified to judge? How much is one man expected to accomplish, anyway?
No radio station in the world is going to devote a full day to Mendelssohn’s music. Since the death of Victoria, I don’t think Mendelssohn has ever really been fashionable, except perhaps at weddings. But who doesn’t love the overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the Octet for Strings, the “Hebrides Overture,” the “Italian” Symphony, or the Violin Concerto in E minor?
Morton Feldman once said, “The people you think are radicals might really be conservative. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical.”
I don’t know that I would ever go so far as to label Mendelssohn a radical, but he most certainly did change the world, and those of us who love music would have been a lot poorer without him.
Happy birthday, Felix Mendelssohn!
IMAGE: Another view of Mendelssohn
