Examines Mendelssohn's relationship to the past, shedding light on
the construction of historical legacies that, in some cases, served to
assert German cultural supremacy only two decades after the composer's
death.
By upbringing, family connections, and education, Felix
Mendelssohn was ideally positioned to contribute to the historical
legacies of the German people, who in the aftermath of the Napoleonic
Wars discovered that they were a nation with a distinct culture. The
number of cultural icons of German nationalism that Mendelssohn
"discovered," promoted, or was asked to promote (by way of commissions)
in his compositions is striking: Gutenberg and the invention of the
printing press, Dürer and Nuremberg, Luther and the Augsburg Confession
as the manifesto of Protestantism, Bach and the St. Matthew Passion,
Beethoven and his claims to universal brotherhood.
The essays in
thisvolume investigate from a variety of perspectives Mendelssohn's
relationship to the music of the past, including the significance of
Bach's music for the Mendelssohn family, the homages to Bach in
Mendelssohn's organ compositions,the influence of Beethoven in the
Reformation Symphony, and Mendelssohn's reception and use of Handel's
oratorios. Together, the essays shed light on the construction of
legacies that, in some cases, served to assert German cultural supremacy
only two decades after the composer's death in 1847.
Contributors: Celia Applegate, John Michael Cooper, Hans Davidsson, Wm.
A. Little, Peter Mercer-Taylor, Siegwart Reichwald, Glenn Stanley,
Russell Stinson, Benedict Taylor, Nicholas Thistlethwaite, Jürgen Thym,
R. Larry Todd, Christoph Wolff
Jürgen Thym is professor emeritus
of musicology at the Eastman School of Music and editor of Of Poetry
and Song: Approaches tothe Nineteenth-Century Lied (University of
Rochester Press, 2010).
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