Dr. Dick's "Mendelssohn's World"

About Those Essays

2009-09-18T08:26:00.003-04:00

There have been a lot of questions about the essays.

First of all, choosing your topic:

This should be something that interests you, relates to you, expresses something that you've learned about Mendelssohn or his music, the historical or biographical background or how something you've learned about something almost 200 years old relates to you today. It could be about listening to or watching the musicians perform the music last Wednesday. It could be about the experience of hearing this music.

You can choose a topic that might relate to you but you might also find something that someone in your parents' or grandparents' generation might be able to give you some perspective on your topic. Ask them some questions and tie that in with what you know first-hand and what you've learned about Mendelssohn, his music and his times through this project.

We're not looking for a biographical summary that just parrots back facts you've read. Incorporate those facts and your observations about the project into something about what YOU learned or experienced.

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You can use "Mendelssohn's World" as your resource. Use the "study question" posts on the blog to help you find a topic that "fits" you if you're having trouble thinking of one.

To find information by topic, see the upper right-hand column for links to specific topics (biography, music, issues &c) then use the "search" field within the blog to find reference to key words you're looking for.

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The essay's “format.”

Even though this isn't a “language arts” project, treat it as if it is, using all the skills you would if you were writing an essay for that class.

The individual teachers can set their own parameters and guide-lines about the technical format.

It should be 2 pages long, but if it goes a little over, that's okay (it depends on what you have to say).

Each essay will be labeled with the student's name and grade, the name of the class and the teacher's name.

The individual teachers set the schedule, whether they require “internal deadlines” for selection of topic, submission of rough-draft and so on.

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All the essays should be done and turned in to the individual teachers by or before Friday, October 2nd, 2009. Once the teachers have gone through the essays, then they submit the ones they feel are the best from each class by or before Friday, October 9th, 2009. Then Odin Rathnam and I (perhaps asking for input from some of the teachers) will select the best of those.

The winner will receive a $250 scholarship prize. And we'll submit the top essays to MOSAIC, the school's literary journal, for publication in the end-of-the-school-year edition.

Thanks, and good luck!

- Dick Strawser

Study Questions #7: Listening to Music

2009-09-15T09:59:00.005-04:00

Here are the "Study Questions" Ms. Robbins wrote up for Mendelssohn’s World.

Musical Qualities

In addition to the musical issues that Dr. Strawser has raised, I would like you to think about the following questions.

Please observe carefully at the concert.

Watch and listen to what the musicians do. (Use SHMRG or something like it - see this post)

Pay attention to the details that you see and hear. You may use this sheet and/or the listening guide organizer to take notes for your essay if you like. (two sides to this page)

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1. - What makes this a “fine art”? How do the performers and the music differ from pop music or other folk music forms? How do you think they might have similarities?

2. - How does the music express itself? Is it merely the notes and their loudness, or are there different ways to play them?

3. - What provides contrast? What is the same (unity)? What is different (variety)?

4. - Can you recognize the structure of the music? If we hear a tune, call that A, then hear A again, and then something new we call B. Many structures are AABA, ABA, ABACAD, etc. Can you analyze the structure of your favorite song?

5. - In what ways does the composer create? In other words, what tools are used to create a musical work of art? If a painter uses color, shading, texture, medium, etc. then what does a composer use?

6. - How do you think the composer communicates through two centuries how the performers today should play the music?

Fun with SHMRG

2009-09-15T09:41:00.002-04:00

When I was teaching in college, my students often asked what they were supposed to listen for and I said “anything you hear.”

How do you learn to hear something? Well, that sounds obvious – you listen – but sometimes there's so much to listen for, you don't know where to begin. And if you don't know that much about the technical aspects of music, you can easily be intimidated.

Here's a way you can “break this down” to get started. This is better to do when you're listening to a recording that sitting at the concert, but mentally you make notes too about certain things. What's great about this method is, the more you know about music the more you can write down or the more specific you can be; if you don't have that much experience listening to music – and I mean ANY kind of music – your observations will be more generic but you can still notice things.

It was really cool that while I was writing this up, Ms. Robbins, one of the school district's music teachers, sent out a diagram of things you can listen for and discuss when listening to a piece of music. It's very similar to what I was using with my students years ago.

So take a piece of paper and right these letters

S – H – M – R – G

in different parts of the page – leave yourself enough space in between to write several random observations.

What do these letters mean?

S = SOUND which means what kind of sounds do you hear? With 8 string players, talking about what instruments are playing is fairly easy, but at some points you might focus on the first violinist (Odin Rathnam) or another of the players: what are they doing that caught your attention?

Sound also means “how is this sound created?” What is the TEXTURE like – are all the instruments playing, just a few, maybe only one or two? Is the sound “thick” or “thin” sounding? That's texture.

H = HARMONY which basically means how notes are put together to make chords and how chords move from one to another to create different moods: are they moving slowly or rapidly? What kind of feeling do you get from that? Is it creating a relaxed atmosphere or is it very energetic or unstable? For musicians, you could notice if the chords are more vertically oriented – like chords you'd play on the piano – or are they the result of different parts moving horizontally in such a way that chords are created out of the different lines they're playing together (this is also called “counterpoint).

Of course, by the time you write something down, the music keeps going and you may look back later and have no idea where in the music was that thought you just wrote down! Don't worry. Music moves forward in time: it's not like a picture you can look at in your own time and stare at one item for a while before moving on to the next. Music moves at its own speed – fast or slow – but you have to go with the flow!

M = MELODY which is usually what people listen for. Not everything HAS a melody and not all melodies are “tunes” you can hum or sing along with. Sometimes “melody” is just the most prominent line which could be in the top part or in the bottom part.

Melody is also made up of fragments, like I'd said: you have a note, you take several notes and make a word out of them – these are MOTIVES and you can build melodies out of these. These might be “recognizable gestures” you'll notice when they come back. Sometimes they come back in places you might not expect, not always in the fore-ground. Maybe it's in the middle-ground or the back-ground.

You can also jot down ideas about the shape of these main motives – maybe a line that represents the shape of the music: in the opening of the Octet, the first violin plays a rising line that contains three fragments. You might draw a short rising line, separated by a small space, then a higher rising line, another 'breath' and the one more rising line that expands into a descending squiggle. How often does that “shape” come back as you continue listening?

R = RHYTHM. Everybody knows what “rhythm” is but you don't need drums to have rhythm (they do make it easier, though!). In the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Mendelssohn has several melodic ideas that are different from one another by their rhythms – if not the exact patterns of short and long notes, then a sense of how the notes are grouped together. Are all the notes bustling along really fast? Are there notes that sound slower (for musicians, the difference between eighth-notes and half-notes)? Do these set up patterns you can recognize when you hear them again?

G = GROWTH which means how things grow. If you look at a seed, you have no idea what it's going to look like when it's full grown. Even after a few sprouts, you can't always be sure what the flower or the leaves will look like later on. Music is the same way: when a piece starts, do you know what the whole thing is going to be like? No, unless you've heard it before and really know it well. Even then, there might be things – small details – you'll pick up on another hearing that you didn't notice before. Have you ever walked past a familiar place and suddenly something catches your eye? “Oh, I hadn't seen that before.” But it was probably there all along.

This is where you might notice these “small details” of how a melody is put together, taking a musical “word” and turning it into a musical motive that you hear again and again. Is it different from before? Is it the same or maybe only slightly different? How does the composer make it sound different? If it sounds REALLY different, is there something about it that kind of sounds like the earlier one did? Is this a complete contrast? What impact does this contrast have: does it change the mood, increase the drama, make it sound like another character in the scene has just walked into view?

One of the basic concepts of music is “UNITY” and “VARIETY.” How does a composer use either one? What does this do to the overall sense you're getting from the music?

A lot of these ideas will give you “small building blocks” which can be put together to make “larger building blocks.” What you have might be like starting with a single brick, but eventually you start seeing how these bricks can make a wall that, when you get a chance to see it, is actually the side of a house. How does a brick house look different than a wooden one? How does an apartment building look different than your school building or the State Capitol? How does something built 5 years ago look compared to something built over 100 years ago? These are elements of “growth” - how you develop a larger sense of “FORM” and how the surface differs from piece to piece. But just like those houses and buildings, no matter what they look like to you or how big they are or what they're used for, they all have similar things in common: they're built out of small things, they have walls, a roof, windows and doors. Different kinds of music can have the similar kinds of things in common but yet be completely different in how they sound to you.

There's another one I left out – I guess it would be T for TEXT (or W for WORDS). Since a lot of music, especially “pop culture music,” sets words – even though a lot of classical music is just instrumental – you can also jot down ideas about the words they're singing. More importantly, how does the rest of the music – what accompanies the words – get across what the words mean (or imply)?

Even if there isn't a text that's being sung, maybe it's part of a movie or TV show's scene that's telling a story or serving as background to a dialog. How does the music help the scene? What would the scene be like without the music? Are you even aware there WAS music in that scene?

So when you're done with your SHMRG, you'll have a mess of rambling observations but maybe, as you think about it, it begins to give you an idea of what you're listening to.

Try it with music you're familiar with – take your favorite song and really “listen” to it (don't just “hear” it). If there's something you really like, what is it that makes it like that? How do all these different details that make up a song help you enjoy it? Can you SHMRG a rap song or a country ballad? Sure – try it!

And the next time you find yourself listening to something you don't like at first, rather than sitting there being bored with it, try SHMRG-ing it and see what kind of things you discover in the music. It may help you realize, “hey, there's something here, after all.”

- Dr. Dick

Photos from the West Branch Music Festival

2009-09-15T08:05:00.013-04:00

This past Sunday, Odin Rathnam and the members of the West Branch Music Festival performed Mendelssohn's Octet at the West Branch Resort, located on the West Branch of the Delaware River in New York State. It's the "Gateway to the Catskills."

And they'll be playing for you on Wednesday at the John Harris High School in Harrisburg.

Here are some photos a friend of Odin's, Michele Conrad, took at a rehearsal and at the performance (posted w/her permission).

This is the complete Octet during the performance at the lodge.
But behind every performance is a lot of individual practice time and group rehearsal time. Here are some rehearsal moments. Notice how they look at each other to "communicate" and coordinate what they're playing.

Rehearsing can be serious - this is probably one of the hard parts.

But it can also be lots of fun. Even at its most serious, if it's not fun, they wouldn't be in this business.

In an earlier post, I said that Mendelssohn wrote this when he was 16 as a birthday present to his violin teacher and his teacher was playing the first violin part at that first performance in 1825. Odin said, "it very hard - it's like playing a concerto" which means he's in the spotlight a lot. But I told him he's playing the part of Mendelssohn's teacher and the student had wanted to give the teacher something to play that would make him work! Mendelssohn played the 2nd Viola part in that performance and it must have been fun for him to watch his teacher sweat.

Well, here's Odin breaking a sweat! It's hard work!

Here's a shot of all eight players in a rehearsal.

It's a beautiful spot along the West Branch - they'll be performing another concert there this weekend, too.

- Dr. Dick

Another Way of Listening to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

2009-09-11T08:37:00.002-04:00

There are several ways to listen to a piece of music: you can listen to it because you like it (or because you were told to...); you can listen to it to hear what you like about it (“oh, that's the hee-haw bit”) or you can listen to it critically as a performance (“they didn't play that very well, there” or “I like how they got a little more dramatic here”); you can listen for the enjoyment you get out of it (“this part makes me sad; that part makes me smile”) or you can listen to it recognizing which section of the music represents which characters in the story (“there's the 'fairy music' again”). Or you could make up your own story using it as a sound-track for your imagination (“I hear the space aliens scattering as the space-ship lands here and they're cautious about approaching it when the door suddenly opens – at 1:15 – and out come the astronauts...”).

You can also listen to it “technically.” A music student might listen more technically than a non-music student (I hate that term, like you're majoring in non-music...) so you might call the technical details different things, depending on your familiarity with the jargon (“sounds like it's getting ready for something new here at 2:06” as opposed to “yes, the transition between the closing idea as it modulates to the dominant key”).

Let's listen to it, now, with these pointers, thinking of it more abstractly (but using the “character references” as tags). Think also how Mendelssohn gives each of his musical ideas a kind of “personality profile” so you can recognize them when you hear them again.

0:00 Opening chords – sustained in woodwinds, suspended animation? The mood shifts between one chord (in winds at 0:20) and when the strings play it (at 0:27). For music students, this is a shift between an E Major chord (winds) and an E Minor chord (strings).

0:27 – First “Theme” - the fairy music - more a sound and texture than a melody – strings scurrying...
0:49 – again
0:56 – a chord interrupts (“looking around”?), a sound associated with the opening chords
1:06 – after pausing, the 1st Theme resumes, as if starting over but now expands...
1:15 – suddenly we hear a 2nd Idea (will it be the 2nd Theme?) - what contrast do you hear here – volume, rhythm, shape of the melody? Sounds like the two mortal couples have burst in on the fairy's scene...
1:29 – a new rhythmic idea (or “word”) that gives it new energy
1:46 – it's the fairy music from the 1st Theme but how is it different, now?
2:06 – it begins to fragment and sounds like it's going somewhere...
2:13 – and arrives here – it's a more lyrical theme, associated with the two mortal couples who are having relationship issues: perhaps the mood of the music represents their love? Technically, this is the “real” 2nd Theme (not the 2nd musical idea, though, we've had several of those, like “words” in a sentence; this is a new paragraph). But it's only the first part of it: the woodwinds ask a question which...
2:20 – is answered by the strings (remember this, we'll hear it often as an independent idea or “word”) So the 2nd Theme is made up of two distinct short “phrases”
2:34 – it begins again but instead of doing it the same way, things start to expand in length
2:44 – a fanfare figure is added that interrupts the original lyrical mood of 2nd Theme (from 2:13-2:34) – there is a variation on the “phrase” from 2:20 added here (a little variety out of a little unity)
3:02 – sounds like it's going to start going somewhere... then arrives here, suddenly:
3:09 – the thumping bass notes begin the theme associated with the comic actors who will try to put on a play of their own. While they're strutting about, rehearsing, they are “attacked” by Puck who gives their leader, Bottom by name, the head of a donkey (a play on the old expression, “making an ass out of him”) – embedded in this theme are musical gestures that reflect the hee-haws, the braying of donkey!
3:20 – this rowdy theme is countered by a rising gesture
3:32 – we hear the fanfares we'd heard back at 2:44 – do they sound different here?
3:40 – the 2nd Theme returns but with more of the fanfares – which increases the tension and arrives at...
3:57 – the return of 1st Theme or the Fairy Music – it starts off sounding very similar but then starts going off in different directions... where's it headed, after 4:03?
4:13 – it becomes more unstable: how is Mendelssohn making it less stable? What does something like the low sounds you hear at 4:18 do for the stability?
4:20 – more fanfares with the 1st Theme Fairy Music in the background – what do the isolated sustained tones in the horn do for the music's stability at 4:32... 4:39 and 4:45?
4:56 – sounds like something new: a pattern in the winds (rising up by one note, then falling back) with rumblings in the lower strings
5:06 to 5:25 – things have gotten kind of hushed – one voice is moving downward while another voice is moving gradually upwards... where's it going? Stable or unstable?
5:25 – it becomes a little smoother but still sounds questioning...
5:40 – the music is interrupted by a “pleading” line, as if one of the lovers is on his or her knees asking for understanding or forgiveness – where does it come from? It's actually a variation on the “answer” part of the 2nd Theme (check out the music at 2:20).

At this point, the first video ends before this resolves. Is it a satisfying ending if you stopped the piece right here?

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Well, that's a lot of stuff going on but it's how Mendelssohn builds six minutes of music out of a few different musical ideas – some are themes, others are just “gestures” like the little fanfares – and the most important (main) theme is really just a scurrying texture of strings representing the mysterious magical world of the fairy sprites who live in these woods.

So far we've had several musical ideas that can be grouped into those basic sections of a SONATA FORM – from the opening's introductory chords to 3:57 is the EXPOSITION... the reworking and fragmenting of some of the material, all mixed up, from 3:57 to the end of the first clip (actually the beginning of the second clip) is the DEVELOPMENT Section. So we'd expect, now, a RECAPITULATION, going back to the opening again to bring everything back together again.

So, let's listen to the 2nd half of the piece in this video clip which picks up just about where the first clip broke off.

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Here, the “pleading” music ends at 0:13 with the sustained chords from the very opening (that “once upon a time” sound) beginning at 0:14. This is what we'd expect: this is what will become the RECAPITULATION (the final “A” in the A-B-A-like form).

0:39 – the 1st theme's fairy music continues as expected but it begins to expand...
1:17 – the 2nd theme comes back – the mortals' love theme – but wait a minute, what happened to the lively “barging-in” music from the mortals we originally heard at 1:16 in the first video clip? It's not here!

There are some other subtle differences here, too: it's not just a run-through of everything we've heard before. But we do hear familiar music – the fanfares, the Comedians' music with hee-haws. And at that point, Mendelssohn could give it a lively ending at 3:40, probably what most composers would've done – it would make people applaud more, after all. Yay! But wait, there's more!

3:40 – instead of wrapping it up, here, he brings back the 1st theme's fairy music again
3:59 – the first time around, those hesitant “looking around” chords are now expanding into something more like the opening's “once-upon-a-time” chords
4:39 – but here's something that sounds familiar: what is it? It's actually the musical idea we heard at 1:16 in the first video which we associate with the mortals barging into the woods: remember how loud and energetic it sounded? How does it sound here?

Remember, the piece if called “A Midsummer Night's DREAM” – are they falling asleep here? Then at 5:24, those magical opening chords come back as if to say “and that's how it ends: was it really just a dream?”

Technically, this is like an added bonus track that composers often use to wrap things up a little more neatly. It's not what we expect so it adds to the enjoyment by being a little more unpredictable: maybe it puts a different “spin” on what we've heard. It's called a “CODA” which is the Italian word for tail, as in the “tail-end.”

When you were children, ever have somebody read you a bed-time story to send you off to sleep? And you fell asleep before it was over? Maybe that's what's happening here: Mendelssohn has finished the story and carefully closes the book so as not to wake you.

- Dr. Dick

Technical Difficulties beyond a Luddite's Control

2009-09-11T00:33:00.003-04:00

As it happens (so to speak), one can only count on so many bugs in any given system.

When we began setting this project up, the idea was to post things on a school-based network called (I think) cLc but it wasn't until a few days before school started that I discovered the cLc wasn't available at the high school. So we figured I'd just post anything I wanted to on my blog: material that can be used by both students and teachers.

I was told that students wouldn't have access to YouTube on their school computers because it can be so distracting (tell me about it). But if I posted them on my blog, that should make it easier. I wanted you to be able to see the music, in a way, that would help you familiarize yourself with what you'll be hearing live when these great musicians come in on the 16th to play for you. And also to give you some other things you can listen to just as examples.

Well, on Wednesday, I found out even the embedded videos from YouTube were caught in the security system and you couldn't view them. So I spent a few hours Thursday trying to figure out ways of getting those videos re-posted, downloading some software that refused to install and then discovering once I'd done what they'd told me to do (I think), it still wouldn't work.

Then some of the folks in the I.T. department figured out they could "unblock" some of the YouTube videos but not all (there are, like, 22 of them...). I suggested five that were really good for class viewing.

So check these out in the classroom:

The Octet's 3rd & 4th Movements (you'll hear it live)

The Magic World of Fingal's Cave (which has a video that takes on a tour of the cave and another that plays the piece Mendelssohn composed after he visited the cave 180 years ago)

The Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (the overture is broken into two videos: I point out where in the timing you can hear certain themes that describe different characters in the play)

My apologies for the unexpected problems (this has become a learning experience for the teachers and myself, as well) and for the irony that we lost some time because I thought my e-mails had gone through when in fact most of them got caught in the school system's spam-filter :-\

My thanks to Ms. Lehmer and Mr. Applegate in I.T. for their help in getting around the glitches (I was calling it SnaFi which is kind of like wi-fi technology but with snafus) and also to Ms. Robbins, Mr. Askey and Ms. Botel for their additional support in all this.

And my thanks also to all the teachers and the students who are bravely going into this project and hopefully discovering something about some music that's been around for a long time, long before this technology I've been having trouble with ever existed...

- Dick Strawser (a.k.a. Dr. Dick, Luddite)

Music as a Language: Putting it Together, Note by Note

2009-09-11T00:00:00.005-04:00

Music is often called “a universal language” even though it's not a language you would speak. Because it can communicate without words, it often connects with people around the world who might not be able to talk to one another but it could still be understood.

The only problem is, what the music “means” is another thing – it's not as direct as spoken language and so it doesn't translate into anything really specific. You can't come up with a musical equivalent of “What is the answer to Test Question #4” that will get you the answer you're looking for. But if you want to comfort someone, if you want to inspire someone, if you want to make some kind of emotional connection with someone who doesn't speak your language, chances are music may be a good way to start.

Of course, if you use words with music – and most popular music is vocal: songs that set words to music and then is sung – it may communicate better. But if someone who's living in Cairo doesn't speak English, they're still not going to know exactly what those words mean. And vice-versa.

If people know the story of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in whatever language they speak, I think they'll “get” the meaning behind Mendelssohn musical work inspired by it.

If people can appreciate the Octet for Strings, they can do it whether they speak German, English, Spanish or Vietnamese – and everybody can sit in the same room and enjoy the music together even if they're able to talk to each afterward.

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However, there's another way I like to think of music as a language.

A language is based on sounds that are written down. A writer uses letters, a composer uses notes. A writer strings letters together to create words; a composer strings notes together to create musical motives or ideas, like the opening of Beethoven's 5th. (They can also be bunched together to make chords, a dimension that spoken language or writing cannot achieve).

You can put words together. This is called a sentence.

You can do the same thing with notes. This could be a melody.

You can also just keep stringing words together to make longer and longer sentences but they can start getting out of hand not making a lot of sense especially if you don't use any punctuation so the voice never knows where one idea stops and another one begins because then I went and had lunch and slept through math class the sky is really cloudy today and now I'm rally in trouble because like don't you get the same kind of feeling I have no idea where this is going.

If you had a melody like that – one that doesn't go anywhere or has no shape to it – it would drive a listener up a wall. Writing a sentence like that won't earn you any points in English class, either.

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Sentences can also then be strung together to make paragraphs. There are many ways you can do this, and you can create a sense of style depending on how you use your words and sentences, how you choose your vocabulary, how you write so the reader's “inner voice” rises or falls with the line – these are similar to ways that composers would write a musical line and indicate how musicians would perform it.

So, if combining letters creates words which in combination creates phrases and sentences and paragraphs, you can think of notes creating musical ideas which combine to create melodies (or something comparable – it may not be a real whistleable “tune”) which has a kind of musical punctuation called a “cadence” which could either be a comma or a period – or maybe a colon, semi-colon or dash. Whatever.

In fact, in music a phrase that ends in a comma answered by a phrase that ends more conclusively with a period is actually called a “period.”

You can put some periods together to create the equivalent of a musical paragraph. This would be a “section.”

Sections combined to create larger sections which, the more they grow, can form a complete piece. A song might be fairly simple and be over in less than three minutes. A symphony, concerto or a string quartet could be more complex, have three or four separate movements and could take a half hour or more to perform. Some symphonies can be 45 minutes or longer – Gustav Mahler wrote one that's about 90 minutes long!

Just like in music, writers can keep stringing these “paragraphs” together, too, until they end up with an essay, a short story or book. Some books might be 45 pages long and have maybe 5 or 10 chapters. How long is Herman Melville's “Moby Dick” and how many chapters does it have? Marcel Proust wrote a novel that's published in separate volumes – seven, originally, though usually in three volumes that would make great doorstops – and in all consists of some 3,200 pages! (The man would never be happy on Twitter!)

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You can create forms in words or music that are like rules in a game: there are procedures you can use that create different results. That's what makes the difference in card games, whether you're playing solitaire, cribbage or poker. It's like figuring out the patterns and sequences of patterns you need to know in order to play certain video games: by mastering them, you attain a higher level.

Music can work the same way. So can poetry.

There are many ways of grouping words, phrases and sentences to create a poem. There are different kinds of poems: some are defined by mood, others by structure.

The simplest poetic structure would probably be the couplet with two lines that rhyme. Or you can have four lines called a quatrain with alternating lines that rhyme. You can combine quatrains into longer strings to create more free-flowing poems.

Or you can have a longer, more involved form like the sonnet which is generally considered a more intellectual form with an involved rhyme scheme. You can also have something a little less intellectual like... well, a limerick: regardless of its subject matter, it still follows a predictable pattern of rhythms and rhymes.

In music, there are all kinds of ways to combine these units that are comparable to words and sentences and paragraphs into larger and larger forms.

But sometimes it is more than just what you hear on the surface. There are underlying principles that move the music forward, at least in Western Music.

One underlying principle is “unity & variety.” You don't want everything sounding the same because pretty soon it gets boring with nothing to keep your attention. A little variety and you have something new and different to listen to. What's really interesting is creating variety but still keeping it unified with certain fingerprints that make it sound similar but not the same. Other times, you'll want outright contrast: you have one idea that's soft and lyrical but maybe your next idea will be louder and more dramatic sounding.

Another underlying principle is “statement & digression.” You state a theme and then digress from it – through variety or contrast. The thing is to be consistent enough to be building up a listeners expectations but then doing just enough to give the listener something a little unexpected to keep the interest from flagging.

You can expand this by turning the “digression” into something that becomes increasingly unstable. But to create a satisfying ending – not necessarily a happy ending but a logical conclusion – you might want to come back to that opening statement to give it a kind of closure, rounding it off to make it feel like it's come full circle. That would make it “Statement, Digression & Return.” This is what much Western Music has come to expect but lots of composers (especially 20th Century ones) decided it wasn't all that necessary.

One basic musical form is a three-part form described as A-B-A. The A-Section is one idea, the B-Section another, the return of the A-Section brings it to a close by bringing back the opening material. This would be “Statement - Digression - Return.”

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Now, a unit of measuring notes in the amount of space it takes to write them down is called a “measure” or a “bar” (a “bar” is a place where notes like to hang out). European music usually moves in groups of 4 measures and these would be balanced by another group of 4 measures. Not that it HAS to, but it usually does. In context, you get so used to that and that's what you expect: you might sense when the composer's bending or breaking the rules by doing something unexpected. You may not know it, but maybe you sense something is a little different.

If you have a three-part form – A-B-A – it could be (4+4) + (4+4) + (4+4) or a total of 24 measures.

There are all kinds of ways you can expand on these simple forms.

You could take that A-B-A piece and turn it into a just one 24-measure section of a larger A-B-A form where each section is now a complete A-B-A form itself. That would make it an expanded piece that's now 72 measures long.

The trick is to make it sound not quite so square, all this 4+4+4+4... It's not quite the same as saying you can only have 8 words in each sentence, but it can become pretty dull – or just predictable. If there isn't some way of varying the material inside those measures, the listener would soon tune out.

Now, if you're writing a larger piece, that 72 measure piece could be one of four movements. For contrast, each movement would probably use a different form. They might also be in contrasting tempos and moods.

If you have a melody and then repeat it with slight changes, you have a form that's called Variations. You can vary the theme in different ways so as it goes along, things get a little farther afield from the original. Again, the idea is not to be too boringly close to the theme itself but to bring in as much variety as you can and still have it be recognizable as the original (it's in there, somewhere).

Another form is kind of a variation on this A-B-A idea. It's called the “Sonata” Form and it's usually used for the bigger first movement of a piece.

In this case the opening A-Section is really a bunch of sub-groups that would include a couple of contrasting themes. Using lower-case letters for the sub-groups, it might be described as (a+b).

Then the Capitol B-Section is based on those two contrasting themes (in no particular order) where a composer might play one off against the other or take them apart bit by bit and mix them up so maybe you're not really sure what's developing here. The opening part seemed pretty stable: but now what's going on? It can become very dramatic, too, and feels unstable.

Then the return of the opening A-Section is like a resolution of this instability: you are now hearing something familiar and the tension that had been building up – this uncertainty – feels like it's been released. Both themes, the “a” and the “b,” will come back again in their proper order and then wrap things up very neatly.

So the opening A-Section with its two (or more) themes is called the “Exposition” because the composer is stating his basic material (in writing, passages that are “expository” state facts or material that you need to figure out a character or a plot detail – it may not be action in the plot but it may be important to understanding the plot).

The middle B-Section which develops this material more dramatically is called the “Development” (in a story, this is where "the plot thickens"). When it gets more dramatic and unstable in some way, the point where it resolves into what you've been expecting is sometimes called the “denouement” (day-noo-MAH(n)), a French term that basically means it's the Climax and after that point, things work themselves out into some kind of resolution.

This restatement of the themes from the opening section is called a “Recapitulation” and we often abbreviate that to “Recap,” just like something somebody does at the end of a presentation to remind you what the initial points of discussion were. So that would mean you're dealing with Exposition [A(a+b)] + Development [B(a/b)] + Recapitulation [A(a+b)]. (That would make that last sentence a “recap,” too.)

And that, in a nut-shell, is one of the major forms of classical music! The Sonata Form.

At least that's the idea – there are lots of variations on what a composer can do with this concept but that's basically it.

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No matter what the style is, though, most of Western Music follows similar concepts of
Unity and Variety – a theme is presented (creating a sense of unity getting started) and then you hear some contrast (different or entirely new but maybe with some aspects of unity). An idea or gesture in the music comes back and you sense that it belongs there (unity) but you also sense that it's a little different the way it's used this time (variety). Maybe what you expect isn't what actually happens – that might be more “variety” than “unity.” If you hear a variation on a melody, that would be “unity” but if it's not the same, there's some “variety” with that.

So when you're listening to a piece of music, think of it as a text with words – not necessarily a story, because not every piece of music is “about” something – that's put together with words (musical ideas or gestures – like the rising idea that opens Mendelssohn's Octet) that creates phrases with punctuation – where do you feel the music takes a breath or comes to something of a pause (maybe not a stop); how does the composer keep going so the music continues to flow past these breathing places, this punctuation, these periods?

Listen to how this gesture – or the next one – comes back and unifies the musical line. What kind of contrast is there with the next line? Is it subtle or is it more obvious, like the three ideas from the opening of the overture Mendelssohn wrote to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” - how does he differentiate the music we associate with the fairies and sprites from the music associated with the mortal couples and then the comic “rustics” complete with a guy who hee-haws? If you can distinguish between these themes and pay attention to them when they keep recurring – like following the players in a sport game – you're doing exactly what the composer wants you to do: to be aware (consciously or subconsciously) of the form.

Because the Overture to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” is in Sonata Form. For all its telling a story, for all the different characters and dramatic relationships the music is describing, it's still a fairly strict “Sonata Form.”

Referring back to the post on "Right Brain / Left Brain," this sense of structure makes it an abstract or a “left brained” idea.

The music's ability to describe the events of a story is very subjective or a “right brained” idea.

And so in this case, the piece can be appreciated on both an abstract and a subjective level.

That's one of the hallmarks of music – at least Western Music (music from non-Western cultures may follow different underlying principles). No matter what the surface may sound like, however the individual composer's style is realized, underneath that sound is a basic foundation in these basic principles of “unity & variety,” “statement & digression” that helps to create a context for the grouping of these notes, phrases and sections that can be abstract (giving pleasure to the mind) or subjective (giving pleasure to the heart) and with any luck, both.

Now, with those thoughts, listen to that overture - reposted in this video - from a different perspective.

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn's Biography: A Condensed Version

2009-09-08T23:57:00.023-04:00

MENDELSSOHN the CHILD & TEEN-AGER

When Felix Mendelssohn was born in 1809, 200 years ago, in the German city of Hamburg, most of Europe was dominated by wars with the French Emperor, Napoleon. Mendelssohn's father was a banker who was involved in what we might call the Resistance against the French, so when they took over the city in 1811, he took his family and fled in the middle of the night, moving back to Berlin to joining the family bank's “home office.”

The Mendelssohn children would get up at 5am to begin their lessons for the day which included languages (German, French and English, Greek and Latin), literature, math, history and a number of other courses including music lessons. On Sundays, the children could sleep in until 6am. He was studying the piano when he was 6 and taking composition lessons when he was 10. When he was 11, he started composing several small symphonies for a string orchestra. He also took violin lessons.

The Mendelssohn home was a gathering place for the best minds in Berlin. They would come for Sunday's afternoon musicales – where the children would often perform with their teachers and friends – drink tea, eat great food and have discussions about the latest ideas in the arts as well as in science and philosophy.

For some of these musicales, Mendelssohn's father Abraham would hire musicians to come play works his son and daughter had composed. Felix Mendelssohn (see right) would conduct his little symphonies, standing on a chair so the musicians could see him over their music stands. His older sister, Fanny, was an excellent pianist and a composer, too. They often wrote works for each other to perform. Mendelssohn wrote two concertos for two pianos which they could play together with the orchestra. They were both child prodigies – children who exhibited a highly advanced level of talent many adults would envy.

When Mendelssohn was 13, his composition teacher took him to play for the greatest living German writer, Goethe (pronounced in German, GER-teh). When he was a boy, Goethe had heard the child Mozart play the piano and some of his compositions, too. Mozart was probably the most famous child prodigy in music. Goethe thought Mendelssohn was more advanced.

Mendelssohn composed a great deal. Suddenly, in the midst of all the music he was composing then, he wrote a piece for his violin teacher's birthday, the Octet for Strings, that most people would assume it's good enough to be by a mature genius. So they're very surprised when they're told Mendelssohn wrote it when he was 16.

(You can hear the second half of the piece in this music video post. Odin Rathnam and members of the West Branch Music Festival will be coming to John Harris High School to perform it on September 16th.)

The next year, Mendelssohn composed an overture inspired by reading Shakespeare's play “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” This is another one of those “I-can't-believe-he-wrote-it-when-he-was-a-teen-ager” pieces.

You can hear a 'video' of the music posted here, along with a time-line where you can hear the different themes and how they relate to the story.

It would become one of his most popular pieces. Some people think – with maybe a couple of exceptions – he never wrote anything better than these two pieces.

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MENDELSSOHN'S FAMILY: WEALTH & FAITH

After he attended some classes at the Berlin University, he was 20 when he conducted a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion. This is a very long work that had not been performed since before Bach's death in 1750, eighty years earlier. It was such a success, Mendelssohn is given credit for starting “The Bach Revival.” Bach is generally regarded as one of the Great Composers today – one of the 3 B's along with Beethoven and Brahms – but in Mendelssohn's time, not too many people knew his music.

Unlike most composers who were always dealing with financial worries, Mendelssohn was born into a wealthy family. His parents were both from two of the wealthiest families in Berlin – here is a post about his mother's family; in this post you can see some pictures like this one (right) of the Mendelssohn's house in Berlin where these Sunday musicales took place and where Mendelssohn composed all this music (this is a house, not a palace or a government building). The bank his father and uncles founded was also one of the biggest banks in Germany and it continued to be a major banking company up until World War II.

Mendelssohn was born into the Jewish faith. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn (see left), was a famous philosopher at a time when Jews were just beginning to be accepted into society though there were still anti-Semitic reactions in many areas. Mendelssohn's maternal grandfather had been a prominent merchant and banker working in the court of King Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Given the religious attitudes of the time, several members of the family – from Moses Mendelssohn and his sons to brothers of Mendelssohn's mother – favored either “assimilation” where Jews consciously become more like the society they live in or outright “conversion” to the Protestant faith. None of them were especially devout and Abraham Mendelssohn was convinced his children would get ahead in the world with greater ease if they were Protestants. So when Felix was 7, his father had the children baptized in the Lutheran faith.

Many people still considered Mendelssohn Jewish despite the conversion. It became more of a problem after his death when anti-Semitic campaigns were launched against his music. Eventually, when the Nazis took over Germany in the 1930s, Mendelssohn's music disappeared, statues of him were taken down, and museums dedicated to his life and music were closed. The family's banking company was taken over by a government sanctioned bank and all the Jewish employees were fired.

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MENDELSSOHN, the YOUNG MAN

After Mendelssohn turned 20, he spent some time traveling, going first to England and then to Italy for extended trips. He performed as a concert pianist, conducted and played his own music.

He writes several pieces, including an orchestral work inspired by his visit to a cave on a little island off the Scottish coast called Fingal's Cave. You can see a modern day trip to the cave in this post and then a performance of the music it inspired Mendelssohn to compose.

Another piece he composed around this time was based on an old legend about a water nymph who wants to become human so she can fall in love. This same story inspired Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, “The Little Mermaid” which in turn inspired the Disney film. Mendelssohn called his work “The Fair Melusine.” You can hear it here on one of the Music Video posts.

When he was 25, he writes a large choral work, an oratorio based on the story of St. Paul. In the New Testament, Paul was originally a Jew who persecuted Christians but “on the road to Damascus” was converted to Christianity in a blinding flash and would become one of the leading figures in the history of the early Christian church.

At 26, Mendelssohn settled in Leipzig where he became the conductor of an orchestra in Leipzig called “The Gewandhaus Orchestra.” Gewandhaus (geh-VONT-house) referred to the old Cloth Merchants' Guild building where the orchestra performed (see right). It was originally founded in 1743 and the orchestra still performs today. You can hear more current members of the orchestra play music Mendelssohn conducted with them over 170 years ago.

Mendelssohn composed five symphonies. The first – not counting those “string symphonies” he composed between the ages of 11 and 14 – was written when he was 15 but the two best known works were musical souvenirs of his trips to Scotland and to Italy. It took him 11 years to finish the “Scottish” Symphony. He never did publish the “Italian” Symphony which, for some reason, he felt needed to be revised. He just never got around to it.

(You can hear the opening of the Italian Symphony at the beginning of this post - while he was in Rome, he met Hector Berlioz whose music he thought sounded... well, "dirty." At the end of that post, you can hear the last minute of a piece by Hector Berlioz that he was writing in Rome the same time Mendelssohn was writing his Italian Symphony.)

An earlier symphony was written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of an important event in the Lutheran Church history. He quotes Martin Luther's hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” in the last movement. But it was rejected by the committee planning the anniversary festival – it was more than they were looking for, but word had it they didn't perform it because to them Mendelssohn was a Jewish composer: what right did he have to be quoting Martin Luther?

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MENDELSSOHN, the SLIGHTLY OLDER MAN

Much of Mendelssohn's biography reads like an appointment book: this year he wrote this, performed that, conducted here and there. He was very busy as a composer, conductor, pianist, organist, teacher and music festival organizer.

When he was 28, he married the daughter of a French Protestant minister and during his honeymoon wrote a string quartet, a setting of a Psalm for chorus and orchestra, and his 2nd Piano Concerto which he went off to perform in England a few months after the wedding.

In 1842, he met Queen Victoria of England. After a performance there of St. Paul, he spent 9 days of constant traveling to get back to his home in Leipzig in time to conduct a concert: after several carriages, boats and steamships and very little sleep, he arrived in Leipzig around 2:00 and walked on stage to conduct the concert at 6:00 that evening. He admitted to being “a little tired” after the concert (the 19th Century version of jet-lag).

The King of Prussia invites him back to Berlin to compose music for several plays and to direct concerts and found a music-school. Not much comes of these projects except he does finally write music for the complete play, “A Midsummer Nights Dream” by Shakespeare. He had written the Overture when he was 17, then wrote the rest of the music (including the famous Wedding March which you can hear in this music video post) when he was 34.

Since he couldn't get a music school started in Berlin, he started one in Leipzig instead, associated with his orchestra. As if he didn't have enough to do...

For a performance in England, he agrees to write another oratorio, this one based on the biblical story of Elijah. He conducts the premiere in England but returns to Leipzig exhausted. Shortly after he arrives home, he receives the news that his sister Fanny died suddenly, apparently of a stroke. She was 41.

They had been very close as children and remained close throughout their lives. Her death affected him so deeply, he had to go to Switzerland to recuperate from an illness he never really recovered from. Less than six months later, he died of a series of strokes himself. He was only 38 years old. (Read more in this post about his last year and especially the peoples' reactions to the news of his death.)

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LOOKING BACK ON MENDELSSOHN the MUSICIAN

Mendelssohn was a celebrity, one of the most popular composers of his day. His music, like the culture he grew up in, was “comfortable” and “polite,” not stormy and dramatic like many of the composers around him. His personality was reserved, not flamboyant. He didn't write music to “storm the heavens” like Beethoven did and he wasn't writing “Music for the Future” like his contemporary Richard Wagner would write. If these men had personalities that gave them “super-hero” personalities, Mendelssohn was very human.

His music often expresses a youthful exuberance and may at times be dramatic but never so “over-the-top” as some of his friends' music was. When it was sad, it was never tragic. He wrote not for intellectuals or people interested in adventure. He wrote to comfort people and to connect on a human level with amateur music-lovers and performers who sometimes got lost in the “modern” music of their day.

Today, we talk about people with “left brain” or “right brain” personality traits – some of these can be applied to musicians (composers and performers) and described basically as “classical” or “romantic” styles. Music of the “Classical” style was more abstract and tended to be concerned more with clearer forms and textures. Music of the “Romantic” style was more subjective and emotional and more concerned with spontaneity and the blurring of lines in music's forms and textures.

Mendelssohn was a little of each, perhaps “2 parts Classical to 1 part Romantic.”

One of his teachers, the German philosopher Hegel, is probably best remembered today for what is called the “Hegelian Dialectic.” Simply put, you take an idea (a thesis) and contrast it with its opposite idea (an antithesis) and then combine the best aspects of both to create something of a compromise (a synthesis).

In a sense, (2 Parts Classical) + (1 Part Romantic) = Felix Mendelssohn.

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn on the program with Market Square Concerts

2009-09-08T22:12:00.007-04:00

Performers at two of Market Square Concerts programs this fall will feature works by Felix Mendelssohn. Student passes for these concerts will be available through your music teacher upon request – just ask them for a pass. Both performances take place at Whitaker Center.

Next month, the Parker Quartet (see right) will be playing the first “mature” string quartet Mendelssohn composed, written when he was 18. (Just to confuse things, a quartet he wrote later ended up getting sent to the publisher sooner than he published this one, so even though he wrote it first, it's published as his String Quartet No. 2...)

He wrote it after studying one of Beethoven's last works, a string quartet written only a few years earlier. Mendelssohn began to compose this work only a few months after Beethoven died so in a sense it's a tribute from the younger generation to the older. In it, he puts aside the youthful joy you can hear in the Octet and the Midsummer Night's Dream overture for something more serious and dramatic.

Here's the Cavani Quartet in a performance of the first movement of his String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13.
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The Parker Quartet will be playing it Sunday, October 11th at Whitaker Center in downtown Harrisburg.

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In November, cellist Zuill Bailey will be playing Mendelssohn's 2nd Cello Sonata on Tuesday, Nov. 17th at Whitaker Center.

Mendelssohn composed it around the same time he had written the music for Shakespeare's play, “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” when he was 34 years old. It's in four movements but in this performance, I found a clip of the last movement with a Thai cellist named Ekachai Maskulrat; the pianist is Low Shao Ying.

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Mendelssohn's 1st Piano Concerto with the Harrisburg Symphony

2009-09-08T21:47:00.005-04:00

Mendelssohn's music is also on the program with other performances in Harrisburg this fall and winter.

In February, Stuart Malina (left), conductor of the Harrisburg Symphony, will be the piano soloist for Mendelssohn's 1st Piano Concerto – he'll also be conducting the orchestra from the piano (just to make it a little more challenging). These performances will take place at the Forum at the State Capitol Buildings on February 27th & 28th - Saturday at 8pm and Sunday afternoon at 3.

Here are three clips of the whole concerto – each clip is a different movement. The performance was recorded by a Polish TV station in 2003 (I think) and the soloist is a Vietnamese pianist named Dang Thai Son. He won 1st prize at the 10th Chopin Competition when he was 22, the first Asian pianist to win the competition which has been held every few years since the 1920s. Here, he was guest soloist in opening night of 15th Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

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(I had found a great clip of the great African-American pianist Andre Watts playing the first movement of the concerto several years ago with the Boston Pops Orchestra but unfortunately the "embedding function" was "disabled by request." If you can check it out from a home computer, this is the link.)

Mendelssohn's Life, Mendelssohn's Death

2009-09-08T13:08:00.020-04:00

MENDELSSOHN & ENGLAND

The Mendelssohns were Anglophiles. They loved English customs and spoke the language fluently. They consumed vast quantities of English tea unlike most of their Berlin neighbors. They read English writers mostly in English, including Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, often before their books were available in German. It wasn't surprising, when Felix had a chance to travel on his own, he chose to go to England.

During his first trip – in 1829 when he was 20 and this portrait of him was painted – George IV was king. Jane Austen, who had died 12 years earlier, was the famous writer of novels like “Pride & Prejudice” and “Emma.” Her books reflected life during “The Regency” with plots superimposed on the family's concerns for respectability and getting the daughters married to respectable husbands to ensure their fortune.

His next several visits were during the reign of William IV, younger brother of the previous king.

Following his honeymoon in 1837, Mendelssohn visited London to perform his new 2nd Piano Concerto, arriving a few months after the death of William IV when Victoria became Queen at the age of 18.

(You can read more about the British Royals of the Early 19th Century in this post.)

MENDELSSOHN AMONG THE ROYALS

Victoria enjoyed music and liked to sing. Her husband, Prince Albert, either accompanied her or sang duets with her after dinner ( he disliked the English custom where, once the meal is done, the men stayed in one room and smoke while the women went to a different room and talk). He was also a fine organist.

It wasn't until his visit in 1842 when Mendelssohn, already a musical idol to the London audiences, met the Royal Family. He first met Prince Albert who invited Mendelssohn to come to Buckingham Palace to play the organ there and when he arrived, he found the prince alone in the music room. While they were talking, the Queen walked in by herself, dressed in a regular house-dress, no state robes or any formal escorts – we always seem to think the Royals sit around in these outrageous court costumes – and flustered because they were getting ready to leave for a country estate for a holiday. Wind from an open window had scattered loose pages of sheet music from the organ all over the floor, so she hurried to pick them up and sort through them. Albert then played the organ for Mendelssohn while the Queen listened (see illustration, right). Then Mendelssohn sat down to play for them. When he started playing a chorus from his oratorio, St. Paul, the royal couple both started to sing along.

Later, Albert said to his wife she should sing for Mendelssohn but she couldn't find the sheet music she was looking for – it had already been packed for the holiday. Eventually, they found it and Queen Victoria sang for Mendelssohn one of her favorite of his songs. Accompanying her at the piano, he diplomatically had to correct her when she sang a wrong note. The only thing was, it was not by Felix Mendelssohn – it was by Fanny Mendelssohn! It was one of his sister's songs he'd published under his name just to get it published and before the public (it wasn't that he was trying to steal credit for it). He wrote all this down in a letter to his family back in Berlin, telling them he had to admit (joking that “pride goeth before a fall”) the composer's true identity. Victoria recorded this fact in her own diary but made no comment about her reaction to the deception.

By the end of the visit, Mendelssohn asked the Queen if he could dedicate his new symphony to her – this would be the “Scottish” Symphony – which he was soon to premiere. She accepted and gave him a beautiful ring engraved with her initials and the date, 1842.

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MENDELSSOHN, LONDON'S PIED PIPER of MUSIC

By now, Mendelssohn had become the most popular living composer in England: all the Royal Philharmonic had to do to make a financial surplus from ticket sales was program some of Mendelssohn's music. His sweet style – not too “heady” – resonated with the English audiences.

Unfortunately, the London musicians could make no sense out of Schubert's “Great” C Major Symphony which Mendelssohn had just premiered in Leipzig – they rebelled at its length (over 45 minutes) and found it tiring to play. So Mendelssohn withdrew it from the program and refused to premiere a new overture of his everybody had been waiting for.

He was the Pied-Piper to English music-lovers. When they asked him to take over the directorship of the Birmingham Choral Festival, he declined, but agreed to write them a new oratorio – based on Elijah – which he'd come back and conduct for them.

Here's something typical of Mendelssohn's traveling: in 1842, he left Birmingham as soon as the performance of St. Paul was over, about mid-afternoon, arriving by coach in London around midnight. He took the mail-coach to Dover, arriving around 9am to catch a boat without taking time for breakfast so he could get to the steamer that would take him to France – he was seasick, as usual – followed by an immediate coach-ride through Belgium to the Rhine. There, he immediately caught a steam-boat that got socked in by fog in the middle of the night, so he got off the steamer, was rowed to shore where he caught one coach before switching to another at 3am to arrive in Frankfort where he met his wife, Cècile, whom he'd left there visiting family and friends. Immediately into another carriage, it took 3 days to reach Leipzig where he arrived at 2pm. He walked out on stage at 6pm that evening to conduct the first concert of the season with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. After the concert, he admitted to being a little tired... following nine continuous days of travel, the 19th-Century equivalent of jet-lag.

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MENDELSSOHN: BACK in LEIPZIG

After he returned to Leipzig, he started work on founding a new music school there, comparable to one the Prussian king had proposed for Berlin but which several years later had still never gotten off the ground. The next spring, Leipzig's new conservatory (see left) opened to take in its first students with Mendelssohn as its director. He asked Robert Schumann to teach composition and Clara Schumann to teach piano. Later, he would conduct the premiere of Schumann's Piano Concerto with Clara Schumann at the piano.

There was also an old friend he brought in to teach the violin, Ferdinand David who was the Gewandhaus Orchestra's concertmaster or principal 1st Violinist. A year later, Mendelssohn would begin composing his Violin Concerto for him (you can hear two prodigies play the last movement of it in this music-video post).

During Mendelssohn's lifetime, the concert experience was primarily a hodge-podge of orchestral works (sometimes excerpts) interspersed with piano solos or chamber music or songs and short choral works. Most of the music was written by living composers or those – like Beethoven – who may have died only recently. Mendelssohn regularly began to program more “old music,” especially by Bach and Mozart, something unheard of then. He would mix old and new music with a soloist playing a concerto or singing a group of selections which became the formula still heard in most symphony concerts today.

Another fairly new idea was “the conductor.” Even in Beethoven's time, most orchestras were led by the concertmaster or the principal 1st Violinist (Odin Rathnam, who'll be performing on September 16th with friends of his from the West Branch Music Festival, is also the concertmaster of the Harrisburg Symphony). But as the music became more complicated and concerts became more varied, the concertmaster went from sitting at the front of the violin section to standing in front of the orchestra, conducting with his violin bow. In 1820, violinist Ludwig Spohr used a short wooden stick called a “baton” to beat time with so the musicians could follow him better. This is usually how conductors today still communicate visually to the musicians.

By the time Mendelssohn was conducting in London the idea of using a baton was barely 9 years old and still, for some reason, “controversial,” probably because that wasn't the way they used to do it...

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MENDELSSOHN'S HOME in LEIPZIG

As there was a “Mendelssohn House” in Berlin where Felix grew up, there was now a “Mendelssohn House” in Leipzig (see left) where the composer lived with his wife and children. They had five children over a period of seven years but none of the children exhibited any musical talent. Cècile was considered a “placid” temperament who might help keep her husband calm but she did not inspire him to compose or shift his music to any higher level of intensity, intellectually or emotionally. It seems he didn't really discuss his music with her – that, he still reserved for his sister as he had always done. If anything, as some friends noted, his music became stuck in a more comfortable rut. That might not hold true for some of the works he composed in those years – finishing the Scottish Symphony, the Violin Concerto and most of all, the music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It may be a criticism of the 2nd STRING QUINTET he composed in 1845, the year after he'd finished the Violin Concerto and two years after the Midsummer music: it's too comfortable, pleasant enough but perhaps too close to trying to recapture the spirit of the Octet he'd composed 20 years earlier.

This small corner study was where Mendelssohn composed, using a tiny spinet piano. On top of the desk's shelf is a portrait of his sister, Fanny, and on the wall (at least as its maintained now that it's a museum) are framed water-colors Mendelssohn had painted during his travels.

Mendelssohn frequently played for his wife and the children. Even though she was entirely devoted to him and his music, Cècile's favorite piano pieces were by Frederic Chopin. At one point, Mendelssohn writes a fan letter to Chopin asking him for a scrap of music written down with his autograph and a dedication to his wife.

The music room here was for his own music-making: friends would stop over to play music or famous guests when they were in town. He did not have time to organize anything as regular as the Sunday musicales of his childhood. After his mother's death in 1843, Mendelssohn inherited the Berlin family home which without a thought he gave to his sisters. Fanny was still holding the musicales there on her own.

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MENDELSSOHN'S FINAL YEAR

Much of Mendelssohn's biography reads like an appointment book – works he composed or conducted in Leipzig or London, responsibilities he took on or didn't. He wanted to write a new symphony and considered several possible subjects for an opera but rejected them all.

He heard the great soprano Jenny Lind (“The Swedish Nightingale” as she was called) and fell in love with her voice (there was an unsubstantiated rumor that he may have fallen in love with her, but there's no proof of that). He wrote the soprano solo in his new oratorio with her voice in mind. Unfortunately she chose not to sing the English premiere but agreed to sing the next performance in Vienna.

So Mendelssohn finished the oratorio Elijah in a single burst of creative energy during the summer of 1846. As soon as he was done with it, he went off to England to conduct its premiere. With a major work getting ready for its first performance, Mendelssohn still found time and energy to conduct a few orchestral concerts and play a Beethoven piano concerto along with several chamber music concerts, two appearances at Buckingham Palace and playing at a reception at the Prussian ambassador's home. Talk about “workaholic”!

Elijah was a great success, but Mendelssohn was exhausted by the time he returned to Leipzig. He had said when he said good-bye to Victoria and Albert – after she sang three of his songs and he played through several new pieces for them – he was so tired he could hardly raise his arms. Rather than travel straight through as he used to, he had to stop three times to rest.

He had only been home in Leipzig a few days when news arrived that his sister Fanny had died suddenly – she had been rehearsing a work of his for one of those Sunday musicales when she felt faint, her hands falling from the piano keyboard. She was carried to the next room but never regained consciousness: by 11:00 that night, she had died. She was only 41.

(see illustration, right, a portrait of Fanny & her husband, Wilhelm Hensel.)

When Felix received the news, he collapsed and remained “insensible for some time.” When he came to, he could not stop crying. Even though he seemed to recuperate, the shock changed him and so Cècile decided to take him away on a vacation to rest.

They met his brother Paul and Fanny's husband, Wilhelm Hensel, but the time together was uncomfortable, reminding him of who wasn't there. So Cècile took him to Switzerland. A friend visiting him there commented about how gray he looked, how he had aged. One day, he couldn't stand the idea of playing the piano; the next day, he thought he might write a new piano concerto. He sketched a good deal (like this water-color of Lucerne, see left) and eventually began to compose a string quartet. It is very dramatic and uncharacteristically emotional: he called it his “Requiem for Fanny.”

He went back to work, getting ready for the Berlin performance of Elijah but when he entered the family house and saw the room where Fanny had died – and his score still sitting on the piano's music-rack – he broke down again and decided he could not conduct, so the performance was canceled. He would probably cancel the Vienna performance, too.

He submitted his resignation to the Gewandhaus but returned to get ready for the Conservatory's new year but in early October, he was ill, though for no apparent reason. Later in the month, he had great spasms of pain – his symptoms that could have indicated a series of strokes except doctors then didn't understand them. A few days later, on November 4th, he died around 9:30 that night at the age of 38.

People in Leipzig had heard Mendelssohn was ill and they waited in a vigil outside the house by the hundreds. When they heard that he had died, they stormed the house. The children had been asleep but when Cècile went to bring them in to see their father, friends had to push the crowd out of the way so they could enter the room and forcibly bar the doors.

(The illustration, left, includes a sketch made of Mendelssohn's profile as he lay in repose after his death beside the actual death-mask made shortly afterward. It was a common habit to take death-masks - in later decades, people often took photographs of the body as it lay on the death-bed, something we may think gruesome or ghoulish today.)

After the funeral – where a chorus of 600 sang a Bach chorale and a chorus from Mendelssohn's St. Paul – a thousand people escorted the coffin by torchlight to the train-station. That night, all along the route, people had gathered to watch the train pass, many of them singing tributes. The train arrived in Berlin at 7am and Mendelssohn was buried in the cemetery next to Fanny.

Memorial concerts were performed all over Germany and in England. The Vienna performance of Elijah had not been canceled but now it was staged as a memorial to the composer. The music stands were all draped in black, the performers dressed entirely in mourning. The score rested on the raised podium that Mendelssohn would have used, a laurel wreath resting on top of it. The man who conducted the performance stood on a lower podium to lead the performance. Many in the audience wept throughout the performance.

Consolations arrived from Queen Victoria who had written in her diary that she was “horrified, astounded and distressed” by the news of his death. She reflected the attitude of many of his fans, both British and German.

One of the most popular musicians of the day had passed and the outpouring of grief and shock was felt across a continent.

- Dr. Dick

Life Among the Royals: England's Queen Victoria & How She Got There

2009-09-08T08:17:00.002-04:00

The English Monarchy, with its family tree gnarled and twisted by various marriages with foreign rulers, went to a German prince when Queen Anne died without an heir in 1714. The closest direct descendant of any previous monarch meant that a German duke of Hanover in what is now northern Germany, became King George I even though he spoke no English. Actually, there were closer blood relatives but they were all Catholics and the British Parliament had passed laws in 1701 that would permit only a Protestant ruler.

And so that is how England has been ruled by monarchs of German descent from 1714 to the present day.

KING GEORGE III

Shortly after King George I's great-grandson, George III (see left) became king in 1760, it was arranged that he should marry a German duchess whom he first met on their wedding day. It turned out to be a happy marriage after all and they had 15 children.

He is best known to us as the King who lost the American Colonies in 1776. Due to the slowness with which news traveled in those days, he had not yet heard about the Declaration of Independence and much fun was later made of his diary entry for July 4, 1776, when he wrote “Nothing of importance happened today.”

Before 1801, the king of England, Scotland & Wales was called “The King of Great Britain and the King of Ireland” but when Ireland was incorporated directly under one crown, he became king of “The United Kingdom.” George III also had a couple of German titles related to the Duchy of Hanover – in 1814, following a treaty after one of the many Napoleonic Wars, Hanover became a kingdom and George III its king, though he had never even visited there much less ruled the country directly.

THE REGENCY & GEORGE III's SONS

During the periods of temporary mental illness the king suffered from, his son became Prince Regent (see right), especially from 1811 on. From then on, George III lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death nine years later. There were no provisions to replace a monarch incapable of ruling so he was, at least in name, still King of the United Kingdom and of Hanover until he died in 1820.

This period before his son officially became King George IV was known as “The Regency” and by extension the term is associated with the first period of George III's illness in 1795 to the death of his second son to become king, William IV in 1837. It was an era of British history and culture marked by aristocratic excess on one hand and the fear that the British people, unhappy with such behavior, might do the same thing the French had done to their aristocrats in 1789: overthrow the king and establish a democracy. Despite the public sense of comfort and social elegance – best seen in the novels of Jane Austen – it was also a time of international insecurity with the incessant warfare against Napoleon.

Even though George III had 15 children, there was only one legitimate grandchild who could have succeeded to the throne. When she died in 1817 at the age of 21, it became a race to see which of the surviving children of the old king could produce a new heir.

So when George IV died after officially ruling for 10 years without an heir, his younger brother William IV ruled for the next seven years. When he died in 1837 without a legitimate heir, the crown went to a young princess who was the daughter of the next oldest son of George III, one who had died before he could ascend the throne himself.

And that is how Victoria became Queen of England a month after her 18th birthday.

VICTORIA, QUEEN OF ENGLAND

This portrait (see right) was painted in 1843 when she was 24. She would rule for 63 years until her death in 1901, the longest reign of any British monarch, male or female, and of any woman in Western history.

Victoria is usually pictured as a frumpy matronly grandmother wearing black, an old woman with no sense of humor (her famous comment, “we are not amused,” the follow-up to many failed jokes) and very conservative attitudes. “The Victorian Age” is generally regarded as a more reserved era with high moral standards when people did not openly express their inner emotions (keeping a “stiff upper lip” and all that). It is, in many ways, an extension of those same attitudes typical of the German “Biedermeier” Age.

In 1840, she married Albert, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (yet another of the small German principalities). He was named Prince Consort with no official responsibilities beyond being the Queen's husband. They had nine children, all of whom survived to adulthood. The eldest child, also named Victoria, married the future King of Prussia who united the states of the former German Federations into the German Empire. A second daughter married a German prince and one of their daughters married the future Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia.

After Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria remained in mourning the last 40 years of her life.

But in the story of Felix Mendelssohn and his times, Queen Victoria is a young queen recently married.

- Dr. Dick

Study Questions #6: Biographical Topics

2009-09-07T11:00:00.001-04:00

Most of these basic questions can be answered by checking the "Condensed Biography" post. Not all of these questions can be answered by looking at one “topic” or “post” - you may need to check for more details, following the links to help amplify what you discover.

MENDELSSOHN AS A CHILD & TEENAGER

What were the circumstances around Mendelssohn's birth? What was going on in the city of Hamburg, Germany, the first few years after he was born? What impact might this have had on his family?

Going to school is one thing – but what are some advantages to being taught at home by private tutors? Any disadvantages, other than it'd be pretty hard to call in sick?

Getting up at 5am every day for your classes – SIX days a week! - is one thing, but how does this help a kid develop discipline? How would that be important – especially to someone who has to spend so much time learning and practicing and composing music?

It might be cool to be a prodigy but it has its drawbacks, too – What do you think some of the good points and bad points of “prodigy-life” might be?

Imagine you have an exceptional talent – doesn't matter what it's in – and you're taken to meet the one person in the world you idolize the most. What would that be like for you? That's probably what it was like for Mendelssohn when he met Goethe. What kind of impact do you think this would have on you – not just today, when you meet this person, but later on in your life? Would this be an inspiration to realize your own dreams?

It's pretty amazing that anyone could write music like this in his mid-teens. I always enjoy pointing this out to people who lump all teen-agers into one under-achieving stereotype (maybe that's because they were once under-achieving teen-agers?).

Listen to the first 4 minutes of the Octet clip here and then listen to the 12 minutes of the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream posted here. How does Mendelssohn create the “mood” in these two pieces? Both are inspired by the scurrying sounds you might associate with fairy sprites and elves: how does he do that?

In the Shakespeare piece, how does he musically differentiate the three types of characters that you can't see (even in this video) except in your imagination? What's the difference between the fairies' music, the mortal couples' love-music and the “rustics” music (complete with hee-haws)?

WEALTH

People usually say that Mendelssohn was born into a wealthy family rather than having to struggle with poverty like Beethoven or Schubert did (among other composers). How would this make it easier for Mendelssohn as he grew up? Are there any ways this could be a disadvantage to him?

They say “Money can't buy happiness” (in the long-term) but maybe it can buy ______ [fill in the blank]. Other than material things: what about “Opportunity”? Abraham Mendelssohn might not be able to buy his son some talent, but he could give him opportunities to nurture the talent he had.

What kind of opportunities do you think Mendelssohn might have had that a son from a poor family might not have had? Would this have guaranteed him success - or the poor son, failure?

Not every “rich kid” became a “star” like Mendelssohn did. What kind of things may have given Mendelssohn an advantage over other children from other wealthy families?

Sometimes, “wealth” is not measured in money. You can earn money, you can become famous. What do you think might help make you feel happy with your life, or shape your goals toward some dream? What kind of things might inspire you reach for some dream?

FAITH

These are tough questions: there are no single answers, in fact maybe no real answers at all.

Mendelssohn didn't live a particularly “faith-based” life – that didn't mean he didn't have a strong faith. But what about Mendelssohn's religion? He was born in the Jewish faith but was baptized when he was 7 as a Lutheran. As an adult, he wrote a lot of religious music, some of it based on the Old Testament, and some on the New.

Here's a question that's more about developing an attitude than finding an answer: if a person is born into one faith or another (whatever that is), is that person always a member of that faith, no matter what religion they may follow (or not) later in life?

What if you combine an ethnic heritage with that faith? Would that make a difference?

If you're Jewish and you live in an anti-Semitic community, what choices do you have in dealing with it? What are the advantages and disadvantages to segregating yourself to maintain your faith and your identity? ...assimilating yourself into the surrounding non-Jewish community? ...converting to the same basic religion as your surrounding community? What impact do you think this would have on your life? This is of course more likely a “conjectural exercise” for you, but try to imagine the impact it could have: would it have much impact on a 7-year-old? How do you think other people in your community (or communities – your past and your future societies) would view either decision? Complicated, isn't it?

Felix Mendelssohn was very proud of his famous grandfather, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (who died before the composer was born). Has there been anybody in your own family whom you look up to and learn from or who guides you even though that person isn't in your life any more?

He may have been very close to his sister Fanny – she was also an exceptional pianist and composer – but he felt that she should not publish the music she wrote or perform in public (at the Sunday musicales, fine). This echoed his father's attitude. Why was it okay for Felix to publish his music and perform all over Europe but it wasn't okay for his sister? (For more information about her and this topic in particular, read this post, Mendelssohn's Sister and Her World).

There are additional questions about the religious discrimination in Mendelssohn's life, gender discrimination in Fanny's life and about other aspects of discrimination in this post, Study Questions #4.

MENDELSSOHN THE TRAVELER

Mendelssohn loved traveling. Where did he go? What do you think he got out of going to “foreign countries”?

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why? What would you hope to get out of that experience? How do you think it might affect you?

What kind of souvenirs would you bring back to remind you of your trip? You can take photos and post them on your blog or MySpace or Facebook page for friends to enjoy. What if you could write a piece of music that would describe your trip?

Lots of composers have done this: Mendelssohn went to Scotland and wrote his “Scottish” Symphony based on some of the things he saw and felt there – and check out the Fingal's Cave post! He went to Italy and wrote his “Italian” Symphony. But George Gershwin came back from Paris and captured the lively time he had there in an orchestral work called “An American in Paris” (there's even a section where he must've had a little too much to drink, because it sounds like he's weaving down the street, unsteady on his feet). Aaron Copland captured a rowdy time in a famous Mexican bar he liked to visit there, capturing the sound of the popular music and the noise and excitement of the crowd: it's called “El Salon Mexico.”

What kind of musical souvenir do you think you would bring home from a vacation? How would you turn what you saw and heard into a piece of music?

Two of the pieces mentioned here are inspired by religion: Mendelssohn wrote an oratorio about St. Paul who used to persecute Christians before he was converted from his Jewish faith to become a major leader in the Early Christian Church. What significance do you think this subject may have had for Mendelssohn, whether he chose it for that reason or not?

He also wrote a symphony that quoted “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” one of the most famous Lutheran hymns. It's called his “Reformation” Symphony. He was 21 when he wrote it but he never published it during his lifetime and in fact it never even got performed. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a half-hour of music: since he was a conductor and played his own music a lot, why do you think he never tried to get this piece on a concert program?

MENDELSSOHN, THE SLIGHTLY OLDER MAN

His “dates” are (1809-1847). How old was Mendelssohn when he died? That's not exactly what we'd call “old” (at least, your parents wouldn't...)

He was a very busy man – conducting, performing, composing, also teaching and organizing music festivals. Even traveling took time: rather than flying home from England in a few hours and dealing with jet lag like he could today, it took him 9 days to get home that one trip, hardly got any sleep on the way, but that's the way it was in those days before trains, much less cars and planes. What impact do you think all this had on Mendelssohn's life, especially after he got married and started a family?

If that wasn't enough, he then went and started a music school – it wasn't just teaching in it: he organized it and ran it, hired the teachers and was, basically, its principal. It wasn't like he needed something to do: why do you think he did it?

And then he wrote another big choral work on a religious theme, about the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Though it's not covered in these posts, who was Elijah and what is his role in the observation of the Passover seder?

What are the circumstances surrounding Mendelssohn's death? (Follow the link to the full post about his last years to read about the peoples' reaction to the news of his death.)

LOOKING BACK ON THE MUSICIAN

There are many posts you can refer to here for more information:

What was it like being a celebrity in Mendelssohn's day? Use this link to find additional questions about this topic in Study Question #5.

If Beethoven was a “super-hero,” how does Mendelssohn's character compare? (follow the “super-hero” link). Do you think the type of personality you are would affect the music you write?

You know whether you're right handed or left handed, but what is meant by “right brain and left brain”? (Follow the link for more information). How do you think these characteristics would turn up in Mendelssohn's personality? While it's generalizing (and a kind of arm-chair psychoanalyzing), do any of these characteristics show up in your own personality? Do you think you might be more right than left brained or maybe a combination of the two?

Mendelssohn was born 200 years ago and died 162 years ago. And yet his music is still popular today with lovers of Classical Music. Why do you think that is?

As you've been reading about him and his music – and the times he lived in – and as you've been listening to some of his music, what do you think about him and his music?

Study Questions #5: Musical Issues

2009-09-07T10:53:00.004-04:00

To accompany the posts Celebrities in Music, Classical & Popular Culture and Child Prodigies

CELEBRITIES

Most of you have grown up after the early years of Michael Jackson's artistic career. But how has he, his music and his dancing affected the music and the musical performers you enjoy today?

What do you think it's like to be a celebrity – whether a musician, a movie star or a sports figure? Are there good-points and bad-points? What are some of these?

What responsibilities do people have when they become celebrities as well as role-models for younger fans?

Reading the post about Celebrities in Music in the 19th Century, how do certain facts and observations about Franz Liszt or Paganini or Mendelssohn or others mentioned relate to celebrities you see today?

Scrolling down toward the end of that post, you can read some unpleasant facts about the personal life and attitudes of the composer Richard Wagner. Even today – especially following his having been the favorite composer of Adolf Hitler and accused of writing the “sound track” to the 2nd World War & the Holocaust – people have serious issues regarding his music separately from his life.

What details of Michael Jackson's life have been brought out in the press after his sudden death this past summer that made people argue whether or not he should be regarded as a great artist?

Can you balance the difference between the private person he was and the public art he created?

How do the lives and career of other famous people reflect the conflicts between the public and the private person? What impact does it have on their careers or their legacy?

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NEW & OLD

The Younger Generation is usually reacting to the likes & dislikes of the Older Generation. Ask someone in your parents' generation how they reacted against their parents – then ask someone in your grandparents' generation how they felt about the music and fashion and lifestyle of their children (your parents).

How does society today react to popular art from five or ten years ago? Has anything you once liked become something you now think is old-fashioned and you no longer like it? Why do you think this changed?

What are some of the things people your parents age say about the music and movies and TV shows you like?

What are some of the things you say about the music, movies and TV shows people your parents' age like?

If you discover something that is unfamiliar to you, how do you react to it? Do you ignore it, make fun of it, try to figure out what it is? Do you make up your own decision or let other people make it for you?

If something takes a little work to figure out, are you willing to make the effort? How about something you enjoy doing – playing basketball, dancing, playing in a band or learning the rules for a complex new game? These don't just happen automatically: what do you have to do to learn these particular skills?

BEING DIFFERENT

What similarities do you think there might be between a kid who wants to play basketball and a kid who wants to play the violin?

You might react to someone who does something you can't do with a sense of wonder (“wow, how do they do that?”) or by feeling that they're different from you and maybe not like them for that.

How do you think they accomplish what they can do? How are they similar to you? What things can you do that maybe they can't? How is what they can do similar to what you can do?

How do things you can do define you who you are?

Study Questions #4: Religious & Social Attitudes

2009-09-07T10:39:00.006-04:00

To accompany posts about Religion in Germany in the 1800s, Mendelssohn's Grandfather, Mendelssohn's Jewish Heritage and Mendelssohn's Sister's World.

RELIGIOUS ISSUES

How do the conflicts between religions affect a society's life? I'm thinking about the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Germany in the 17th and 18th Centuries as well as more recent fighting in Ireland. What about other similar conflicts in different times or countries?

How does this become more a political conflict rather than just one based on religion?

What were the impacts of anti-Semitism on German society in the 18th & 19th Century during Mendelssohn's family's lives and how did this develop in the 20th Century?

Even though Mendelssohn was born into the Jewish faith and was converted by his father when he was 7 years old to the Protestant faith, he was regarded by many people in his time as “Jewish.” He may not have experienced it as an overbearing or life-threatening form of discrimination but was present throughout his lifetime in often subtle ways.

WOMEN'S ISSUES

Felix Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny, was not “allowed” to perform in public or have the music she composed published. It was considered “unacceptable.” Though some other women could and did do this, Fanny Mendelssohn could not because she was from a wealthy family. Yet the men of wealthy families – like Felix himself – could do this. In what ways does this amount to discrimination?

Though people in England argued for Women's Equality and the Right of Women to Vote & Hold Public Office in the 1770s, nothing was really accomplished in this area until more recently. How did discrimination against women continue into the 20th Century? How has it changed? What do you think caused these attitudes to change?

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CULTURAL & SOCIAL ISSUES

In other world cultures, attitudes toward certain things in life do not always agree with the way they are viewed in the United States or Europe.

For instance, I saw on the news earlier this summer how Afghanistan has a TV program similar to “American Idol.” Keep in mind, singing or even listening to non-religious music was forbidden under the Taliban, but here were men going on TV and singing in front of the whole country. It was a very popular show.

Then a couple of women entered the competition. People in the communities were shocked. When one actually began to move around as she was singing, this was considered “dancing.” Immediately, she was condemned by people in the cities and villages because a woman dancing in public is considered immoral: she received death-threats as a result. People said she should be stoned to death for that.

What other examples can you think of that you may have seen on TV or read about that reflect attitudes different from how we may think about them? If they're fictional - in books and movies - what kind of message might they be sending? How do we interpret these and how do we separate fact from fiction?

Talk with women in your family of your parents' and grandparents' generations and ask them about what attitudes toward women were like when they were growing up. How have things changed?

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DISCRIMINATION

In addition to religious & gender discrimination we've discussed regarding Mendelssohn's times, what other forms of discrimination are there? What about race, age, social class, sexual preference or physical disabilities and differences between ways people look or think?

How does discrimination affect an individual person? What impact does it have on the community? on society in general?

Is bullying a form of discrimination?

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BUILDING TOLERANCE

Some people say that Music is a Universal Language.

The Jewish conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim has formed an orchestra made up of young musicians from the Middle East - Arabs and Palestinians and Israelis. They work together to make music and perform around the world. The hope is that one day they will be able to work together in more ways than just making music.

During Mendelssohn's family's lives, aspects of tolerance had developed even if they weren't held universally. And things changed with later generations.

How do you think a culture develops tolerance and how do you think a culture can lose that tolerance?

Study Questions #3: Politics & National Culture

2009-09-07T10:32:00.005-04:00

To accompany the post, Being German in the Early 1800s.

THE STATE OF GERMANY

Germany as a nation did not exist in 1800. A series of small principalities since the days of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages – going back to Charlemagne around 800 AD – it consisted of around 300 more or less independent countries held together by the German language and its culture.

WHAT IF...?

These next questions are entirely conjectural and is based only on the model of the German states and confederations that existed during the 18th and 19th Centuries:

What might have happened if the United States had never become the “United” States but had remained a loose confederation of independent states as had originally been outlined in the “Articles of Confederation” (which has nothing to do with the Confederacy of the Civil War era)? This was drawn up following the Declaration of Independence and ratified by the 2nd Continental Congress which met in York PA in 1777. Its weaknesses led to the Constitution of the United States and George Washington's becoming President in 1789.

If some of the states had broken down into smaller units – for instance, if Philadelphia had become a “city-state” and Dauphin, York and Lancaster Counties were each independent from the rest of what is now Pennsylvania; and if each new settlement in the interior like Pittsburgh or cities along the Ohio River, had become independent countries instead of part of a growing single nation – how would this affect life in these former British colonies? After all, we spoke a common language but what if each sub-state had its own government, its own currency and stamps and road systems – how would this have affected commerce and the development of canals, railroads and eventually highways? How would it affect traveling?

Would it be the same nation it is today?

How did the Constitution of the United States overcome the weaknesses of this idea of a Confederation and set about maintaining the balance between individual states and the nation as a whole?

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CYCLES

Assuming the concept of action & reaction between one era or generation and the next, if the “Biedermeier” Age of the 1820s-1840s tried to find stability after the chaos of the Napoleonic Era, how might some eras in American history be comparable to this cycle?

Talk with family members from your parents' and grandparents' generations about what they remember – either experiencing it themselves or remembering what their parents and grandparents told them – what it was like during World War II and the Eisenhower Years in the 1950s; about the Civil Rights issues and Viet-Nam in the '60s and '70s followed by the Reagan Years of the '80s?

How do various aspects of our lives today – whether experienced or perceived (in life, in the news, in television and movies) – compare to the social attitudes of the “Biedermeier” Age? Is there any comparison?

Study Questions #2: War & Peace

2009-09-07T10:26:00.004-04:00

To accompany the post, The Impact of Napoleon.

Many historical eras have one person who dominates the world scene. In the early 1800s, that person was Napoleon Bonaparte who became Emperor Napoleon of France and who conquered most of Europe. This involved almost constant warfare between the end of the French Revolution in 1789-1792 and his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, about 25 years.

When Napoleon and the French sold their American colony “Louisiana” to the United States in 1803, what impact did it have on the development of our country? (See the map)

LIVING IN WAR-TIME

When the French were bombarding Vienna in 1809, the year Mendelssohn was born in northern Germany (far away from this particular battle), Franz Schubert was 12 years old. One day, when he was in school, a large bomb fell and exploded not far from his school. The composer Richard Wagner almost died as an infant because the city where he was born was the scene of a huge battle where 120,000 men lay dead on the fields outside the city, resulting in an epidemic that killed his father and almost killed him.

What impact do you think the constant warfare had on people who lived in Europe then, especially in the areas frequently affected by advancing and retreating armies?

Though most of the wars the United States has fought since the Civil War did not immediately affect our population – the fighting was physically elsewhere – we've lived through different kinds of wars in the past 50-60 years.

Does anyone in your family remember what it was like during 'The Cold War' between the United States and the Soviet Union (now, Russia), either from their own experiences or hearing about what other people remembered?

While the United States and its allies are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today, how do these and the “War on Terror” affect our lives both directly and indirectly?

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NATIONAL SECURITY

After Napoleon was defeated, the political situation may have stabilized, but many governments, in order to keep things stable, resorted to secret police and informants to maintain that sense of stability or security.

One of the side-effects of the French Revolution and all these wars was the desire by many people to have greater freedom. This was being suppressed by many of the governments of Europe. In times like this, not just during wars but eras following them, issues of freedom and security often conflict.

The post “Being German in the early 1800s” tells of a situation in Germany and Austria. Scroll down toward the bottom of the post to read about Schubert and his “book club.”

How might these issues be involved in human rights around the world in more recent history or in our own society following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?

What are the pros-and-cons for arguments on both sides of these issues?

Study Questions #1: for Some Historical Events

2009-09-07T10:20:00.004-04:00

In the post "Some Historical Events," there are several things that involved different technologies. Like

TRANSPORATATION

If travelers used a sailing ship – powered by wind-driven sails – since long before the days of Columbus in 1492 and the first steam ship crossed the Atlantic in 1818, how do you think this affected travel in the 19th Century? Why do you think people wanted advances in technology like this? What impact does this have on modern technology? When was the first airplane flight? When were the first space flights? How long has it been since humans landed on the Moon?

Robert Macadam invented a road-paving surface in 1815. What is it called? Do we still use it today? What impact did it have on transportation, then or now? That would make it almost 200 years old - pretty old technology! What do you think city streets would be like without it? What impact did his invention have on society in general?

People rode horses or drove in horse-drawn carriages and coaches. When did the car become a standard part of our society? What do you think a traffic jam in 1820 was like?

Railroads began developing in the early 1800s and during Mendelssohn's lifetime, trains began to connect many of the cities in Germany just as they already had in England and in the United States. What impact would the new technology of railroads have on things like travel, communication, produce and the economy? Compare how it might have been before with what changes may have happened afterward.

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COMMUNICATIONS

There were also technological advances in communication.

How do people communicate today? What technologies do we use?

Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1832, but his was not the first attempt at creating a way of communicating long-distance. Before, people used a system of flags or semaphores that required sight-lines to relay information from one location to the next. Morse's telegraph – along with the code he invented for sending that information – evolved over a period of time before it became standard. In 1838, he began to construct a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington but the first news transmitted on that line didn't happen until 1844, another six years.

What changes occurred since then in how we communicate?

Ask some older relatives in your family if they remember what telephones were like when they were kids. How have things changed since then? What changes in cell-phone technology have happened just in more recent years?

(Illustration: L = early cell phone from 1980s; R = cell phone from 1990s)

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WORKING CONDITIONS

We just observed the holiday called “Labor Day” which originally was intended to observe what?

In Mendelssohn's lifetime, laws were enacted in England to reduce the work day for children between the ages of 14-18 to a 12-hour day. In the United States, Massachusetts limited the work day for children under the age of 12 to a 10-hour day.

What impact do you think these changes had on family life then and how do you think your life would be today if those changes had never occurred?

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SLAVERY

When Mendelssohn was 25, England abolished slavery in the British Empire with the passing of laws in 1834. Even Russia freed its serfs (peasants owned by land-owners) by a governmental decree in 1861.

In the United States, it took a civil war to bring about the abolition of slavery with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 after the war had started and made official only with the passing of a constitutional amendment in 1865.

What circumstances might explain why the United States seemed to “lag behind” the British and Russian Empires?

Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1: 1st Movement

2009-09-06T13:40:00.003-04:00

Here is a classic performance of the opening movement of Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor which members of the West Branch Music Festival will perform.

In this video footage broadcast on television in the 1950s are three musicians who were considered some of the finest musicians of the century: violinist Jascha Heifetz, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and pianist Artur Rubinstein. Rather than being filmed in a concert hall, they taped this performance in someone's living room to give it a more intimate feel. Originally, chamber music (which means music to be performed in a room) was meant to be played in a smaller place than a big concert hall. Imagine Mendelssohn and his friends playing for you in his own music room at his home in Leipzig.

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- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn & Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Overture)

2009-09-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

One summer, when Mendelssohn was 17, he was reading Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

To explain what the play's about in 25-words-or-less is pretty difficult, but there are two couples who get lost in the woods on a summer night, trying to sort out their relationships. The forest is also the realm of sprites and fairies (see left) where the king (Oberon) is having trouble with his own relationship. Oberon tries to get one of his spirits (Puck, in picture with both arms raised) to help him but he gives him only some vague instructions. An unexpected encounter with the two mortal couples only makes things more complicated. Then you add a bunch of comedians who are trying to rehearse their play - part of the festivities for the Duke's wedding - and it just gets even stranger... But it all works out in the end as Puck manages to correct his mistakes.

It inspired Mendelssohn to turn this story into a piece of music.

It opens with a kind of "Once upon a time" sound, this series of almost still chords, before it breaks off (at 0:28) into the scurrying, whispered sounds of the sprites. There are some hesitant chords (as if someone's stopping to look around) at 0:56 & 1:10 before the Mortal Couples (see right) burst in at 1:16. The Fairies return at 1:46 and then we hear some tenderer music as the couples try to work things out (well, one of the girls is in love with a boy who doesn't love her) at 2:13. There are a couple of fanfares at 2:44 - echoes of the distant city? reality? the approach of the Royal Wedding? Then suddenly - bang! at 3:09, in come "the rustics," a troupe of "mechanicals" (the rough comedians) who've come to rehearse their play. This is the comic relief of the story - the leader of the comedians is a guy named Bottom who gets transformed into a man with a donkey's head later in the play (see left) with amusing consequences for Oberon's wife (that's the illustration that covers the 'video'). What's that sound at 3:14, 3:17 and again at 3:27? Hee-haws? Hmmm, you think...?

The fanfares return at 3:32, but this time seem to be more likely associated with the Duke and his impending wedding or perhaps the fairy court of King Oberon... then the fairies are scurrying about again at 3:57 and those hesitant chords mean they're probably on the look-out for... well, trouble, probably.

And so in 4 minutes of music, Mendelssohn introduces you to three sets of characters in Shakespeare's play: the fairies, the two mortal couples and the "rustics," each one turned into musical ideas you can keep separate by the way they differ from each other.

After that, things go off and get mixed up - there's some genuine pleading going on at 5:41 - before we hear everything (in Part 2) almost just like it was at the opening again.

Part 1
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This time (in the 2nd clip, posted below), the fairy music begins at 0:39 (no hesitant looking-around, though), the couples' love-music comes back at 1:17 (but not bursting in) with the distant fanfares at 1:46 before the Rustics come romping back for another appearance at 2:11 (the hee-haws at 2:16); more mortals' music at 3:17 with fanfares at 3:20 with another scurrying by from the fairies at 3:40. It sounds like we're working toward a quiet "happily ever after" ending by 4:36 and then we end with the same chords we heard, once upon a time, at the beginning of the piece (now at 5:24) and that's how it ends. Just like a dream.

Part 2
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Not bad for 17!

- Dr. Dick (who's not seen 17 for many years...)

Mendelssohn's Melusina: Not Exactly the Little Mermaid

2009-09-06T13:37:00.003-04:00

One of Mendelssohn's concert works in an overture inspired by an ancient legend of a young water sprite or mermaid-like nymph who longs to experience human love.

The legend of Melusina or Undine goes back to the 14th Century (in some forms to the 10th Century) and has appeared in many variations.

Water sprites were believed to inhabit the streams and lakes of central Europe and Russia since pagan times.

In this story, the fair Melusina, from her home under the water of a river, spies a handsome prince and falls in love with him. Normally, a water sprite is not allowed contact with humans but she manages to be allowed to appear like a mortal human. However, she must return to her original shape once a week if she is to survive.

She meets her handsome prince and he falls in love with her. They marry but she places one condition on him: she must be allowed one day a week of complete privacy. He agrees.

Naturally, his curiosity gets the best of him and he spies on her on her “day off.” When he discovers that she goes down to the river and returns to her water sprite form, he is angered by her deception. Having been found out, she now must return to her home in the river, her heart broken, never to take human shape again.

There are other versions of the tale but this is the one that inspired Mendelssohn's music in 1833 when he was 24 years old.

It is also the basis for the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen who added various details which in turn inspired the Walt Disney animated film. (The illustration (right) is of the famous Little Mermaid Statue in the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark, home of Hans Christian Andersen.)

In Mendelssohn's music, you can hear the watery accompaniment of Melusina's music at the opening. The fanfare-like music is associated with the Prince – or with her human form – and you can hear the constant contrast and growing conflict between these two themes. At the end, it is Melusina's music that trails off as she, apparently, swims away. It almost sounds like she's not all that sad about it, after all.

This video is not be much of a video since the audio is accompanied with slides of various illustrations of the legend dating back to the Medieval and Renaissance eras, not necessarily associated with Mendelssohn's version of the story, along with a portrait of Mendelssohn and a picture of conductor Claudio Abbado, who conducts this recording with the London Symphony.

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- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn's Greatest Hit: The Wedding March

2009-09-06T13:13:00.007-04:00

It's probably the best known tune Mendelssohn ever wrote - the Wedding March he composed for a scene in Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream. For generations, it was THE Wedding March, though in recent generations, it has become such a cliché, many people avoid it, now.

In this performance, Kurt Masur conducts Mendelssohn's own orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. (Check out the trumpets at the beginning!)

The first part of it (what we'd call the A-Section) - up to 1:24 - is what you'd hear in most weddings that might still use it today - but there are contrasting sections in between several returning statements of the famous march.

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This is usually reserved for the happy ending of the wedding ceremony.

It's ironic that the OTHER most popular wedding march, usually used for the quieter procession to start the ceremony, is by Mendelssohn's rival, Richard Wagner. Here's the bridal procession from Wagner's opera, Lohengrin, often sung to the words "Here comes the bride." This video is sung in German by a choir in Hong Kong! The basic part of the processional ends around 1:40.

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Have you heard them before?

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn in Leipzig

2009-09-06T12:37:00.015-04:00

After his father's unexpected death at the age of 59, Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig to begin the next phase of his career. He had been named director of the major orchestra in the city which was one of the major cultural centers in the German-speaking lands.

In the mid-1700s, Bach had been music director of the major churches in Leipzig and taught the music students at St. Thomas Church but he and his music were quickly forgotten by most people. While Bach wasn't actually famous in the 1820s, Mendelssohn had conducted Bach's monumental St. Matthew Passion six years earlier which many describe as the beginning of a new awareness of Bach and his music. So how appropriate it was that Mendelssohn now found himself in the same city with a similar musical position that Bach had.

THE ORCHESTRA & ITS CONCERT HALL IN LEIPZIG

The orchestra is called the 'Gewandhaus' Orchestra – (geh-VONT-house). It was formed by some free-lance musicians in 1743 when Bach was still alive and gave its concerts in private homes – not of the nobility but of the wealthier merchants in the city and soon to the larger space of the “Three Swans Tavern.”

Bach was also responsible for public concerts when he was director of a society that gave concerts of non-church music in Zimmerman's Coffee House. Here, he and his sons performed keyboard concertos and secular works like his Orchestral Suites with a small orchestra. It may well be Bach's “Collegium musicum” as it was called (basically a “collection of musicians”) that turned into the orchestra Mendelssohn would conduct almost a hundred years later.

At any rate, the audiences outgrew the coffee-houses and the homes and the taverns. Eventually it was given one floor of the Cloth Merchants' Guild building (see above) – known as “the Gewandhaus” – which then served as Leipzig's main concert hall until the orchestra moved into a lavish new hall in 1885 (see left). The statue in front of the building is a monument to Mendelssohn that was added in 1892 but removed by the Nazis. The statue was reconstructed and placed in front of Bach's St. Thomas Church only recently.

This building was destroyed during the Allied Bombing Raids near the end of World War II in 1944. The current, more modern hall wasn't opened until 1981. The orchestra still performs there and continues to record and tour around the world.

It is one of the oldest public orchestras in Europe.

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MENDELSSOHN GETS MARRIED

As Jane Austen opens her "Pride & Prejudice" (1811) with Mrs. Bennett's line about a single man with fortune automatically being in need of a wife, Mendelssohn may not have been as aware of this as his mother might have been.

Though Mendelssohn was busy in Leipzig, he still continued conducting and performing around Germany. He was on his way to Düsseldorf for the premiere of his new oratorio, St. Paul, when he stopped at Frankfurt to conduct an amateur choral society there. He was staying with the family of a local minister where he met Cècile Jeanrenaud (right), the daughter of a French Protestant preacher who was staying there. She had assumed he was some old organist and was surprised to find out he was so young... and handsome. He was 27, she was 19.

A few days later, he left for Düsseldorf but returned to Frankfurt on his way home. He had fallen in love with Cècile and on another visit that fall, proposed to her while they were out on a carriage ride. They were married in March of the following year.

While they were on their honeymoon, Mendelssohn composed a string quartet, a setting of Psalm 42 (for soloists, chorus & orchestra, about 25 minutes long) and his second piano concerto which he finished on August 5th and performed for the first time sixteen days later in England along with other performances of the oratorio, St. Paul. (Some honeymoon! But then you've probably figured out he was a workaholic.)

They settled into their new home in Leipzig. Out of this very happy marriage, they had three sons and two daughters.

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THE SCHUMANNS, LEIPZIG FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS

With the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Mendelssohn was busy conducting and performing, especially with two new friends of his, the composer Robert Schumann and his girlfriend, Clara Wieck, who would become one of the finest pianists of the century. The two were very much in love but Clara's father was taking Schumann to the law-courts to keep him from marrying his daughter.

Mendelssohn had a little trouble relating to Schumann (see left) who was better known as a music critic than a composer. He had two “imaginary personalities” which he used in both his writing and his music – a passionate, extroverted Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius (you-SEE-b'yus). Often he would write reviews under one name or the other, depending on the mood he wanted to get across. They also appear in some of his pieces both as characters and, less directly, as 'moods.' This may also be part of the Right Brain / Left Brain attitudes mentioned in an earlier post – but for Mendelssohn, these personalities made no sense. Schumann seemed very undirected and Mendelssohn thought an artist needed to control himself more than that.

Around this time, Mendelssohn received a letter from Richard Wagner, then 23. He had not yet written any of the operas he'd later become famous for. Wagner had a symphony he wanted Mendelssohn to conduct – Leipzig was his home town, after all – but Mendelssohn had already conducted it once, didn't like it and couldn't see performing it again, so he politely refused.

At that time, who would know Wagner would later become Mendelssohn's worst nightmare?

Meanwhile, Robert Schumann had gone to Vienna, visited with Franz Schubert's brother who gave him a box of old manuscripts left behind when Schubert died in 1828. In the box, Schumann found a manuscript for a huge symphony that had never been performed. He gave it Mendelssohn on New Year's Eve and it was given its first performance, ten years after the composer's death.

In a biography that begins to read more like an appointment book – composing this here, performing that there – Mendelssohn was 30 when he wrote his PIANO TRIO NO. 1 – we'll hear some excerpts from it with Odin Rathnam and members of the West Branch Music Festival on September 16th. (You can hear a classic performance of the 1st movement in this music-video post.)

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BERLIN CALLING

Meanwhile, Prussia had a new king. Friedrich Wilhelm IV (see left) had a more refined interest in music than his father had and he tried to lure Mendelssohn back to Berlin, the Prussian capital. His grand plan included a Royal Academy of the Arts with Mendelssohn as its director, far better than the old Sing-Academy could ever have been. He would be resident composer for the Royal Theater, writing “incidental music” for staged plays (the 19th Century equivalent of film scores). He would also conduct the music for the Royal Chapel and be busily engaged as a composer. In fact, he would basically become the Musical Director of the City of Berlin, a very powerful position.

Dubious, Mendelssohn cautiously agreed to a one-year trial run. (Keep in mind, Karl Marx, the philosopher and future writer of the Communist Manifesto, described the king as “being able to talk as persuasively as a traveling salesman.”)

Mendelssohn wrote music for Sophocles' Antigone, an ancient Greek tragedy that the audience, having no familiarity with ancient Greek tragedy, found boring, all this talk about honor and noble character. People didn't want to “see ideas,” they wanted to watch action that told a story.

A performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio St. Paul was coolly received as well. He began work on another oratorio – this one, inspired by the story of Elijah.

But nothing came of the king's ideas for a school. Everyone agreed and talked about it but even a few years later, it was no closer to becoming reality.

Though Mendelssohn agreed to write music for a few more plays for the king, he returned to Leipzig convinced Berlin would never amount to anything. If the king's school couldn't get started there, he'd start one himself in Leipzig.

And so in 1842 he started working on what would become the Leipzig Conservatory, associated with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. It opened the next year.

(Several years after Mendelssohn's death, Richard Wagner brought up the idea of a major music school in Berlin to the king's attention and the king nodded and agreed whole-heartedly. But still nothing ever came of the idea.)

One of the king's projects Mendelssohn couldn't resist, though, was writing music for a performance of Shakespeare's play, “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” He had written the overture for it when he was 17 and now that he was 33, he had the chance to write music for the whole play. He added scene-setting music that would accompany the dances of the fairy sprites or set the mood for a night in the woods. There would be music to introduce different scenes, including the most famous piece Mendelssohn ever composed, the Wedding March.

The performance of the play and his music was a disaster. Intermissions were too long, people lost interest and became impatient with Shakespeare's play. But when the Wedding March started to play, everyone started paying attention. One nobleman told him “wonderful music you wrote – too bad you wasted it on such a silly play...” Mendelssohn just turned around and walked away.

The music he wrote for the wedding scene in Shakespeare's play is still one of the most frequently heard pieces at weddings ever since, though today it's heard less often. Still, people who know nothing about classical music will usually recognize its tune even they've only heard it on TV in movies - or in cartoons.

You can hear it here in this music-video post.

- Dr. Dick

The Mendelssohn Houses in Berlin

2009-09-06T09:09:00.016-04:00

It took me forever to find this illustration of what seems to be the house where Felix Mendelssohn and his family lived when he was growing up in Berlin. Huge, isn't it?? This is a house, not a royal palace or government building or a university or a posh apartment complex!

But the German caption translates this as "The Mendelssohn House on Leipzig Street, Berlin." The official address of the house Abraham Mendelssohn purchased in 1825 was 3 Leipziger Strasse, Berlin. This is where the Sunday musicales took place and where the great minds of Berlin came to be entertained by music and conversation.

Behind the house were "several guest houses," as one source described it, plus a large park with sub-gardens where the family could walk and where Felix rode his horse.

This sketch (right) is labeled "Garden House in Leipzig Street where Mendelssohn's youthful works were [written]." It is officially undated and the artist is uncredited.

The caption's words aufgeführt wurden translate literally as "rose up" which doesn't sound good in English. However, it reminded me that Felix wrote to his sister Fanny that he was sitting in the garden reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream when he decided he would write a piece of music inspired by it. Maybe that's how this one "youthful work" rose up and became reality?

It gets very confusing because the house Mendelssohn lived in in the city of Leipzig is also called "The Mendelssohn House." The fact the Berlin house was located on Leipzig Street makes it even more confusing.

WARY OF WIKIPEDIA: A WARNING

I'm no fan of recommending Wikipedia as an on-line resource because it can be so inaccurate, but that's where I found this picture. Unfortunately, the person entering the data couldn't even translate a simple German caption correctly: he labeled it "The Mendelssohn House in Leipzig" when the German clearly says "in der Leipziger Strasse in Berlin" or "on Leipzig Street in Berlin." Well...

My question is - is the date 1900 correct? And why can't I find any information about when the house was demolished?

I knew, from several biographical sources, that his father Abraham bought a new, larger house on Leipzig Street in Berlin away from the busier part of the city and I knew that it no longer exists. But I've read nothing about when and why - was it torn down by the Nazis in the 1930s or was it bombed out during the Fall of Berlin in 1945? Was it demolished earlier in the century to make way for some other building? That often happens, too - ask anyone who's gone back to their old neighborhood and seen a familiar house or store replaced by a parking lot...

THE MENDELSSOHNS' HOUSE IN BERLIN

Anyway, today I was tooling around Google looking for any illustrations about Leipzig associated with Mendelssohn.

I had seen several photos of the house he lived in after he moved to Leipzig in 1835. But then I found this photograph (above) taken of the Berlin Mendelssohn House in 1900. If this is true, then this is the house Abraham Mendelssohn moved into in 1825, the year Felix Mendelssohn composed his Octet for Strings!

The family had continued living in the house and they continued to work in the family banking business until the 1930s. These were descendants of the youngest child, Paul Mendelssohn who went into their father's banking business. There were also descendants of Felix Mendelssohn's uncles who managed the company until 1938.

In 1888, a 2nd cousin of the composer (grandson of his Uncle Joseph) was "elevated" to the nobility, meaning they could add the 'von' to their name. And so a grandson of the composer became Otto von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the oldest son of Felix's brother Paul became Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1896.

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THERE ARE TWO MENDELSSOHN HOUSES IN BERLIN

Here is a tourist travelogue video posted on YouTube - in German - about the Mendelssohn House - this one is the Bank Building and the house where other members of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family lived and worked. It was built by one of Felix's uncles. It is located at 51 Jäger Strasse about two blocks from Leipzig Street but perhaps in a different neighborhood from where Abraham Mendelssohn's house was located on 3 Leipzig Strasse.

At 0:14-0:27 you can see images of the Mendelssohn & Co. Bank with a sequence of the interior
of the house - a staircase - beginning at 0:40 with a shot of the building's main entrance (see photo). Felix Mendelssohn is mentioned but I think as a visitor to the house of his uncle and cousins. At 1:53-1:58, during an aerial view of this section of "the heart of" Berlin, they highlight The Mendelssohn House - in this case, this is where the bank building still stands.

This is a recent photograph of the doorway of the building that used to house the Mendelssohn Bank which was built in 1820 which can be seen at 0:41 for a couple of seconds before you go through the front door into the staircase leading up to the family's living quarters.
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This is a photograph that had been labeled "Mendelssohn House Berlin" but must refer to the banking house: it looks like a modern boardroom.

More photographs about the Leipzig House will be posted in a separate post.

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn the Traveler

2009-09-05T19:28:00.016-04:00

By the time he was 20, Mendelssohn had finished studying at the university in Berlin and conducted the first public performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion in probably a hundred years. From there, he decided to start traveling – what college grads in those days called “The Grand Tour.” When he was a child, Mendelssohn traveled with his family to Paris, to Switzerland and various places around Germany, but now – on his own – he decided to go to England.

MENDELSSOHN IN ENGLAND

It took 11 days to cross the North Sea from Hamburg to London and he practically crawled down the gang-plank when he arrived, he was so sick. Between the frequent storms and the stretches of calm weather, a ship powered only by sails wasn't going to go very fast: a steam-ship may have crossed the Atlantic in 1818 but that doesn't mean they replaced sailing ships immediately.

Mendelssohn conducted concerts with great success, including his Overture to Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and the first symphony he'd composed for full orchestra. It's not the first symphony he wrote since he'd composed 13 smaller symphonies for string orchestra by the time he was 14; and it can't be called his first “mature” symphony because he was 15 when he wrote it. There was one slight change: he made an orchestral version of the Scherzo of the String Octet and replaced the original third movement of this symphony with it. He also played Beethoven's last piano concerto, the “Emperor” Concerto, written the year Mendelssohn was born.

There was a benefit concert where Mendelssohn was the star attraction and he brought together many great singers and pianists who were in London to perform on the program. The audience was enthusiastic throughout the concert which lasted a total of four hours.

After this, he traveled north and visited business associates of his father's who had a country estate in Scotland. He walked through Edinburgh and made notes about places associated with Mary Queen of Scots. It was a stormy day when he saw Fingal's Cave on an island off Scotland's rugged Atlantic Coast – he wrote home about seeing it, scribbling down a few measures of music which next year became the opening of an orchestral work he first called “The Lonely Island.”
By the time he had completed it, he called it “The Hebrides Overture” or “Fingal's Cave” (even today, it's still known by either of these names). You can see a video of a visit to Fingal's Cave and hear the music Mendelssohn composed inspired by his visit there.

He also jotted down some ideas that would eventually become a symphony inspired by his Scottish trip. He started working on it the following year, but for some reason it took him 11 years before he was satisfied with it.

While there, he also met the great author, Sir Walter Scott (see left), whose novels Mendelssohn and his sister had read (in English). By this time, Scott was old and in the midst of moving into a new house, too impatient to be bothered by a young fan – it had taken days to find him and in the end, Mendelssohn had only a half hour of superficial conversation with him, nothing like his visits to Goethe had been.

Sir Walter Scott was the first British writer to achieve an international reputation during his lifetime. He's most famous for his novels Ivanhoe and The Lady of the Lake. Beethoven and Schubert read his books – Schubert set some of his words (his famous song “Ave Maria” is originally written to a poem of Scott's) – and both wanted to meet him but never had the chance.

When Mendelssohn returned to London, in a hurry to leave for home, he was involved in a carriage accident. The carriage tipped over, he fell to the street and his knee was badly injured. As a result he had to spend several weeks in bed and missed getting home in time for his sister Fanny's wedding. He was supposed to compose some music for it so in addition to getting everything else ready for the wedding, the bride-to-be ended up composing her own music and playing it herself!

Mendelssohn at least made it home in time for his parents' 25th Wedding Anniversary and gave them a little operetta as a present: “The Return from Foreign Lands” was performed at a Sunday musicale and was well received by the family, but Mendelssohn wasn't satisfied and never did anything with it after that one performance.

OFF TO ITALY

In the meantime, he was offered a teaching job at the University of Berlin which he turned down. Tired of Berlin, Mendelssohn decided to continue traveling and left home in May for Italy. On the way, he stopped to visit Goethe – it turned out to be the last time (you can read more about his visits to Goethe when he was a child in this earlier post).

He stayed in Munich for a while and met a young pianist. He fell in love with her playing if not with her – even the king was joking they should get married – and this inspired him to write a piano concerto of his own.

From Munich, he went to Salzburg (the City of Mozart) and Vienna before arriving in Venice in October. When he stopped in Florence, Italy, he painted this water-color (see, right) of the cathedral which he sent home with a letter.

While he was in Rome, the Pope died and Mendelssohn witnessed the papal funeral and conclave of cardinals gathering to elect the Pope's successor.

This was were he met Hector Berlioz, the composer of the Symphonie fantastique among other works. In other posts, I've described him as the wildest of the wild new generation of composers, almost the exact opposite of Mendelssohn. Where Mendelssohn was neatly dressed and elegant and enjoyed conversation at cocktail parties in peoples' homes, Berlioz was wild and casually (often sloppily) dressed, preferred sitting in dives with rowdy friends drinking wine and smoking cigars.

Berlioz (seen here in a caricature drawn while he was in Rome) wrote that Mendelssohn was an admirable fellow, a genius, “a confirmed Lutheran” who played Beethoven piano sonatas splendidly but who did not understand Berlioz' music at all.

Mendelssohn wrote to his father that the instrumentation of Berlioz' new symphony was “so terribly dirty” you felt like “washing your hands after handling one of his scores.” He described the Symphonie fantastique: “An artist goes to a ball” – he left out the bit about the opium overdose – “then goes to the devil when all the instruments have a hang-over and vomit music. And yet he is a very pleasant man and speaks well and has fine ideas and you can't help liking him.”

In the late Spring of 1830, he went to Milan where he met Karl Mozart, one of Mozart's sons who was an Austrian diplomat there. Mendelssohn played Mozart's music for him. Friends of Karl's began a conversation about Shakespeare plays – the tragedies were okay but the comedies were stupid, especially that fairy play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and they all agreed that Mendelssohn shouldn't waste his time reading it. He wrote home that he “kept quiet like a coward,” unable to tell them when he was 17 he'd written an overture to the play – ironically, ten years later, he would write more music for a production of the play, too, including the famous “Wedding March.”

WORKING HIS WAY HOME BY WAY OF SWITZERLAND, PARIS & ENGLAND (again)

In Switzerland, he took long walks in the valleys and climbed some mountains. In his letters home, he described how some English tourists complained about the lack of fireplaces where they were staying and that their travel-agent “never mentioned they have mountains here!” There was a German tourist who looked at the surrounding landscape as if he were going to buy it, then shook his head and walked away as if he'd decided it was too expensive.

Back in Munich in September, he gave the premiere of his newly finished piano concerto. This piece would become so popular, everybody wanted to play it. A few years later, in Paris, his friend Berlioz joked that so many people had played that concerto on this one piano, the piano could now play it by itself.

(Incidentally, Stuart Malina, conductor of the Harrisburg Symphony, will be playing this concerto with the orchestra in February's concert.)

On the coach-ride from Munich to Paris, he thought about writing an opera for the King of Bavaria: maybe Shakespeare's “The Tempest.” He never did.

Meanwhile, early in 1830, there had just been another revolution in Paris, not as far-reaching or as tragic as the old one in 1789. Life was very different now than it had been when Mendelssohn had visited there only six years earlier. Among the great names who dominated the cultural scene – like the German composer Meyerbeer and the Italian violinist Paganini – were two young pianists: Franz Liszt (then 19 - see left) ) and Frederic Chopin (then 21). As a result of Paganini's influence, Liszt had closed himself off from the world and practiced the piano sometimes 14 hours a day. Mendelssohn had heard him play six years before and thought he had “more fingers than brains,” but now thought he was developing into a great talent. Like Berlioz, Liszt wrote music that was beyond Mendelssohn's appreciation – too wild, too modern – but Liszt sat down and played through Mendelssohn's new concerto at sight, never having seen it before, and played it so beautifully, Mendelssohn thought it was a miracle, one of the best performances it ever received.

Paris was not so crazy about Mendelssohn's music. A lot of the great musicians and poets he met rubbed him the wrong way. He also heard the news that Goethe had just died at the age of 82.

He was glad to be back in London in time for his 23rd birthday. But he received news that his friend Eduard Rietz had died at the age of 29. Rietz was his violin teacher and the violinist he'd written the Octet for as a birthday present. In memory of his friend, he wrote a nostalgic and gentle slow movement which he added to the String Quintet he'd written with his teacher in mind back when he was 17.

Otherwise, he had great success conducting several concerts in London and played his own new concerto and one by Beethoven to rave reviews. He even gave an organ recital at St. Paul's cathedral and the huge church was filled with listeners.

While he was there, he also got the news that his old teacher Zelter had died, too. Three close friends had died while he was away – it was June before he left to return to Berlin. It had been two years since he left home.

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RETURNING HOME (FOR A WHILE)

With all the success he'd experienced in his life so far and already famous at 23, he was surprised when he was turned down as Music Director of the old Singing Academy which Zelter had run for the last 33 years. It may have been because the Academy's board figured he would not stay put in Berlin for very long; his friends and family suspected it may have been because he had been born a Jew. Things in Berlin had not improved much since the days of his grandfather. The school hired the old director's assistant – a case of loyalty – but he turned out to be such a mediocre director, the school declined rapidly over the next 18 years.

London had asked him for a new symphony, so he completed the one he'd started in Rome, inspired by his travels in Italy. He stopped on the way to London and conducted some concerts in Düsseldorf where they asked him to come back and direct the Choral Festival there.

In England, his “Italian” Symphony was a huge success - you can hear the opening of the 1st movement here - but Mendelssohn was unhappy with it and decided to revise it. Even though he performed it many times during his life, it was still unpublished when he died.

During his trips to England, he'd heard several oratorios by George Frederic Handel. When he went back to Düsseldorf, he conducted the first Handel performances Germany ever heard of the “Messiah” with its famous Hallelujah Chorus. Over the next few years there, he conducted several other oratorios and operas and orchestral concerts, all of which were well received, though some students demonstrated in front of the concert hall, carrying signs that said “Christian Music for Christian Musicians,” a reference again to Mendelssohn's Jewish heritage. They had to be escorted away by the police.

(See illustration, left, of the concert hall in Düsseldorf between 1830 and 1864. Robert Schumann would conduct concerts in this same hall about a decade later with much less success.)

It was there Mendelssohn first performed his new oratorio – inspired by the music of Handel and Bach – based on the biblical story of St. Paul. Perhaps he was thinking about this anti-Semitic attitude when he chose a story about a man, a Jew persecuting the early Christians, who was converted in a blinding flash from Heaven “on the road to Damascus” and who later became one of the great figures of the early Christian church.

SETTLING IN LEIPZIG: A NEW HOME

He was then offered a job conducting the orchestra in Leipzig, one of the great German cities in what was then the Kingdom of Saxony. It had been the home of Bach for most of his career. Mendelssohn would conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (geh-VONT-house) - there's more information about the hall & the orchestra in another post (see illustration, right, which includes the Mendelssohn Monument, placed in front of the building in 1892).

Shortly after Mendelssohn settled there, his father died suddenly, apparently of a stroke. His sister Fanny was worried about Felix because “you know how he worshiped Father.” They had become much closer in the last couple of years after they'd had a big argument: his father wanted him to drop the name Mendelssohn completely and just be Felix Bartholdy, not Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as the name had been changed to after his conversion, back when he was 7 years old. But the composer was proud of his grandfather's name and wouldn't drop it. He always signed his name (see signature, left) Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Back in Leipzig after his father's funeral, Mendelssohn began a new part of his career. He was no longer the traveler: Leipzig became his new home.

- Dr. Dick

The Octet: 3rd & 4th Movements

2009-09-05T12:51:00.001-04:00

Here is the second half of Mendelssohn's Octet which he wrote in 1825 when he was 16 years old.
This is the scherzo (SKAIR-tsoh) and the Finale.
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Beethoven & Mendelssohn: Super-Hero & Human

2009-09-05T11:56:00.018-04:00

If there were a group of super-heroes made up entirely of great composers of classical music, who would they be?

The most daring composers, probably, the ones who took the biggest risks and the ones who challenged their listeners with music that demanded their attention. These would be composers whose personalities were strong, “larger than life.” Who would be the Super-Heroes of Classical Music?

Beethoven would certainly be one of them. Mendelssohn probably wouldn't.

BEETHOVEN

Beethoven was often shabbily dressed (he was once arrested for being a bum and the police couldn't believe he was the Great Beethoven) but many people thought he was a colossus, like a giant striding across the musical horizon of Europe. But that was the kind of age it was, full of strong emotions and powerful convictions during all those years of Napoleonic Wars.

There were political struggles with the aftermath of the French Revolution but also many huge changes in the way people lived. The Industrial Age was creating a new class of wealthy middle class people but it was an age when poor people might become poorer. Many of the aristocrats were losing their power and wealth. Ideas had been “large” and focused on great issues. People took risks. The way to realize a great adventurous life was to be in the military and fight the enemy.

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MENDELSSOHN

No one would have considered the neatly dressed, mild-mannered Mendelssohn a colossus. (Maybe more like Dr. Who, left.)

His music was not “colossal.” The time he lived in was not good for such colossal ideas. People wanted to maintain the status-quo. After years of warfare and financial instability, people became more conservative in their politics, their ideas, their issues. Rather than debate the humanitarian issues of the Napoleonic Era, they were more concerned about, say, fashion or how to make a good enough living to leave money and property to their sons, about having their daughters married to good men who could provide for them.

Rather than deeper, intensely personal issues like “the meaning of life,” people discussed what material things could give their life meaning. Rather than looking for adventure, men sought lives in business rather than the military. People didn't want that kind of excitement in their lives.

So, this may explain why Mendelssohn's music sounds “pleasant,” has “nice” tunes, doesn't challenge our ideas very much, is more likely to be happy than sad and why, when it IS sad, it doesn't sound really really sad or tragic (so it's called “sentimental”). His music never seems very “dark” though it can be cloudy or even stormy.

This doesn't mean his music isn't as good as Beethoven's. It's different. He felt that life and art were not two different, separate things. And for people who think Beethoven is too big, too “over-the-top,” too “overblown” for their emotional needs - perhaps too much art, not enough life - Mendelssohn may be just the right balance: something comfortable, more down-to-earth – a human rather than a giant.

He is most famous for bright sunny sounds – like the opening of his Italian Symphony (you can hear it here, in this video from an earlier post) or his “elfin music,” a quick wispy sound like elves and fairy-sprites scurrying just outside our awareness of such supernatural things. His most famous example of that is the scherzo from his Octet (you can hear it here in this music video from another post).

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In an earlier post – The Ages of Music: How Composers Make a Living – I mentioned that Mendelssohn earned his income from performing and from selling printed music.

He was from a very wealthy family – you can get an idea about his mother's family from this earlier post, but his father was already pretty wealthy, too, by the time Mendelssohn was born.

That just means Felix Mendelssohn didn't need to worry about “earning an income” to survive.

He's one of the few great composers who was born to wealth. Other composers may have become famous and at least financially secure if not actually “rich” in that sense, but many composers in the 19th Century dealt with poverty throughout their lives.

MOZART & REALITY 101

Mozart's father was employed as a violinist at the court of Salzburg's ruler, the Archbishop of Salzburg. If Mozart had found a similar job, he might have been better off, but when he couldn't find a count or prince who would hire him as a court musician, he went to Vienna “to seek his fortune.” He was 25 and not yet married. Vienna was the musical center of Europe – like New York City is the musical center of the United States – and so he figured if he couldn't get hired by the Emperor, the Emperor might hear his music, hear him perform and hire him after all. Meanwhile, he would give concerts, he would get performances, he would teach piano lessons and hopefully earn enough money, especially after he married and he and his wife had a family to raise.

The Mozarts were not very good with their finances. They both loved nice things and money that came in often quickly went out. So when the money wasn't coming in as much as it had, Mozart would write to his friends asking for loans. When he died at the age of 35, things were beginning to look a little better and of course he thought he had his whole life ahead of him.

SCHUBERT & POVERTY

Franz Schubert was born into a poor family. His father was a school teacher who ran a neighborhood school in his house. It was expected the sons would go into the profession, too. Schubert hated teaching and dreamed of becoming a famous musician.

He never really got the recognition he had hoped for. Today, he is one of the most popular composers of classical music. Even though he was often on the verge of bankruptcy, he enjoyed life with his friends and wrote an amazing amount of music, most of it never heard. His friends said he wrote music as naturally as an apple tree produces fruit. But beyond a circle of friends and some fans who heard his music along the way, most people in Vienna never really knew who he was.

Schubert's health was not good, either. He was only 31 when he died, but he had written some incredible music. A lot of this started to become better known after his death, sometimes 10, 20 or even 40 years later. Only then did people start to realize what a musical talent he had been. Only it was too late to help him.

Schubert was not the only one to suffer bad health and a precarious existence.

BEETHOVEN & MENDELSSOHN: THEIR FINANCIAL STABILITY

Beethoven's life lacked financial stability, too. He might get an income from some noblemen who supported him, but it wasn't really enough. He wasn't a spend-thrift like Mozart had been. But he started to go deaf when he was still a young man – in his early 30s, he wondered how it was possible to be a musician and be deaf. Even though he was emotionally distressed about his health, he wrote music that never showed his anxieties, that rose above his situation. He wrote music on a large emotional scale: it wasn't just dramatic, it was VERY dramatic. It wasn't just heroic, it was VERY heroic. Even when he was happy, his music sounds VERY happy – like his 7th Symphony. And when it was tragic, it was VERY tragic. His music is often marked by these kinds of extremes.

Mendelssohn lived a comfortable life. His music sounds comfortable. Even when he's writing sad music, it never rises to the level of tragic. Some people call it “sentimental” which is a negative term for “superficially emotional.” Nostalgia is a kind of “sentiment.” Pity is, too, and while it's nice when people can pity someone in a less good situation - “there but for the grace of God, go I” - it's usually not a constructive or helpful emotion: rather than helping the person in trouble, pity merely compares your better situation to theirs.

People assumed that because Mendelssohn had such an easy life, financially, and never suffered illness to the extent it seriously impacted his life or his career, he couldn't really FEEL these emotions as deeply as Schubert or Beethoven or Mozart had done.

But it's also as much a part of the age Mendelssohn lived in. The “Biedermeir” Age in Germany – very similar to the Victorian Age in England later in the century – was an era when people didn't express their emotions in public. It was a “comfortable” age when you wanted stability, not adventure. People didn't want to take risks because you might lose what you had. Rather than being emotional, they were sentimental. (You can read more about this in an earlier post, Being German in the 1800s.)

- Dr. Dick

The Ages of Music: How Composers Make a Living

2009-09-05T08:16:00.017-04:00

It seems every century, things change – not that certain things don't change more often than that like decades and generations or even the seasons of a year.

But in music – and in many of the other arts – there are changes in the sound or style of music almost every one hundred years which we divide into “periods” since 1600 called Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern, though no one's come up with a name for the “most modern” music that's being written today in a New Century.

(In this time-line - above - the dark vertical lines represent centuries: composers' names in blue belong to the Renaissance Age (before 1600); the green ones to the Barqoue Age (1600-1750); yellow represents the 50 years of the Classical Age (1750-1800); the pink ones, the Romantic Age (1800-1900).)

The only one that doesn't happen in a '00 year is the change between the Baroque Period of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel and the Classical Period of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn. That happened around 1750, the year J.S. Bach died. It should've happened in 1700, you'd think, but maybe it's because things moved more slowly in those days... things certainly move faster, now!

These changes do not necessarily mean the new one is an improvement or better than the older one, just different. Things also tend to move in cycles or waves, returning to something that's comparable or similar in basics – not the same, but with similar basic traits.

These changes don't happen somewhere between December 31st, '99 and January 1st, '00. It may take a few years before any significant shift happens or, once it's started before it finishes.

For a period of several decades, things seem basically the same. Sure, every generation changes a little but then it begins reaching a time where these changes become more pronounced, developing toward something else. Then a bigger change occurs when people begin thinking “that's going too far” and something new happens, usually as a reaction. In many ways, you could say this is going back to “earlier values” and then the process starts over again.

THE CYCLES OF THE YEAR

In one sense, a year is a cycle of seasons – out of winter, it begins to get warm; once it's gotten too hot, then it starts cooling off and we're back to winter again. The major changes are between Winter and Summer. The transitions in between are Spring and Fall (or Autumn). The “starting points” are the Summer and Winter Solstices which occur around June 21st and December 21st. The changes start happening around the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes around March 21st and September 21st. (A solstice means the highest or lowest point the sun reaches in the sky; an equinox means when the length of day and night are the same or equal.)

That doesn't mean you go to bed on March 20th when it's winter and you wake up on March 21st and it's spring. Sometimes it takes weeks to notice it's really “warmer.” Sometimes you get weather that “feels like” spring in January. This year we had cooler weather when it was supposed to be summer. Just the other week, it suddenly started feeling like it was already Fall. But who knows, we may still have a few hot days left before the leaves change color and fall.

So a similar kind of cycle can be seen on a longer span – over decades and generations. Ask older members of your family like your parents and grandparents what it was like when they were growing up and if they remember the differences between the '50s and the '60s, the '70s and the '80s, and how the '90s differ from the first decade if a new century.

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COMPOSERS & SOCIETY

One thing that also changed with the centuries is the attitude toward composers in our societies.

In Mendelssohn's time, composers made a living from their music in what could be called a “capitalist” approach: in other words, they made their money from performances of the music and from people buying the printed music. The more popular a composer, the more performances his music got and the more printed music was sold. Now, he didn't always get money every time a piece was played but if he was involved in the performance as the conductor or the soloist, he would be paid a fee.

This is how most composers “work” today – not in a 9-to-5 job like someone going to an office but they earn money from someone paying them to write a piece for them. This is called “a commission.” They get paid for the performances and also when their music is performed even when they're not involved in it because their publishers have a system of royalties which means a certain amount of money goes back into the composers' pockets (and the publishers, too). The more popular a composer is, the higher the commission fee; and more performances brings in more royalties.

THE AGE OF THE COURT MUSICIAN

The century before Mendelssohn and Beethoven (whose first significant mature works were starting to be published around 1800), most composers were employees. They were part of a staff employed by aristocrats. A powerful nobleman (like a king) had a “court” or body of lesser noblemen around him. In order to entertain these people, this powerful nobleman employed an orchestra, maybe also an opera theater. (See illustration, left, of an 18th Century Court concert.) Less wealthy aristocrats maybe employed only a few musicians like a string quartet.

After this Age of Aristocracy had begun to diminish, some aristocrats were not as wealthy as before and maybe only had one musician they employed. Even in the 1820s, a Count Esterhazy hired a pianist named Franz Schubert to play the piano for them and their guests during a couple summers, teach their daughters how to sing and play music, and write music for them to perform and listen to.

Fifty years earlier, a wealthier cousin of this Esterhazy family who was a Prince, not a Count - (see photo of his estate, left) - maintained a full orchestra as well as a whole opera company and his resident composer and conductor was Franz Josef Haydn who wrote symphonies and operas for his employer. Haydn had one of the greatest music jobs in Europe then, writing for a music loving prince who spared no expense to have one of the finest orchestras around.

It wasn't always like that. Mozart never could find a good job. In fact, he couldn't even find a bad one, so he went to the most musical city in Europe – Vienna – and tried making a living as a “free-lance” musician, composing and performing for concerts and trying to get his operas performed by the Emperor's court. Most of his money came from the concerts but if it was a bad year, he worried about his finances and often wrote letters to friends begging them to loan him money. Near the end of his life, he got a small job with the Emperor, writing music for the dances at the court. It wasn't much money but it was steady and the pieces he wrote were just short dances that had to have popular appeal: it wasn't like writing symphonies, concertos or operas. He was technically “under-employed” and definitely needed a second job to keep things solvent.

THE CAPITALIST COMPOSER

Beethoven was the first major composer who earned his living as a “free-lance” composer like Mozart. Most composers in his time were still employed by the nobility. But as the Industrial Revolution changed the European economic system, a new class began to emerge: the Middle Class. And some of these became wealthy merchants – the Upper Middle Class. Some of them could even be wealthier than someone with an aristocratic title. Even people of the Middle Class could have enough money to want to live well and imitate the “Lifestyles of the Rich if not Famous.” They too could employ a musician or three or four and pay a composer to write music for them which would be performed at their homes to entertain and impress their guests.

More often, Middle Class homes might have the members of the family performing for each other and their friends. A daughter who could sing and play the piano was a daughter who could make someone a better wife. Very often, every one in the family could make music in some way: but many people enjoyed performing for their friends or sitting with them and listening to the music. It was amateurs like this who would buy the sheet music that would add to the composer's income.

The difference between professional and amateur today usually implies "amateur" is not as good as a professional musician's level of playing. That's not always true. The German words were better - a professional was a "Kenner" (someone who "knew" music) and an amateur was a "Liebhaber" (literally "love-haver," someone who "loved" music but didn't make a living by it). Even the word "amateur" comes from the Latin word for love, "amo, amat."

Instead of an orchestra being paid for by a prince, professional orchestra musicians now formed orchestras that sold tickets so people of the Middle Class could attend public concerts without needing to be invited to a nobleman's palace to hear it. Musicians earned money paid for by ticket sales.

The public concert was a new idea in the 1770s in England where the Industrial Age had started earlier than it had in Germany. By 1800, it was a very important part of Beethoven's life. And with Mendelssohn, a member of the next generation, it was his primary way of earning a living.

COMPOSERS IN THE 20th CENTURY

This cycle of employment also came around again. In the 20th Century – at least by the end of World War II – most composers in the United States were employed by Universities. Instead of court orchestras, it was a University Orchestra. Some of them had “resident string quartets” which meant the four players taught students and performed as the official representative of the college or university. Even in the 1970s when I was teaching at the University of Connecticut, there were two composers on the faculty (not including a few others like me who also composed) and we had a resident string quartet. Teaching was their “day job” which allowed them to compose or perform as well.

Many creative artists still need this "day job" to support their having the time to be able to create, whether it's write a book, paint a picture, compose or perform.

While much of that university situation hasn't changed a lot, some composers starting in the 1980s didn't NEED to teach at a university to earn a living. So today, a composer like Jennifer Higdon who used to teach at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, can now live entirely on her income as a composer. She receives lots of commissions for new works, her music is performed frequently around the world and she has a number of works that have been recorded.

(In this post, over at my blog Thoughts on a Train, I write about her violin concerto, premiered earlier this year: it includes a video chat between her and the violinist she wrote it for and she also talks about what it's like being a creative artist living in Philadelphia.)

Two years ago, the Harrisburg Symphony played a big new Percussion Concerto of hers. You can hear some of her music in a few months, here in Harrisburg. The Cypress String Quartet will play a piece she wrote for them at Market Square Concerts on January 24th and a week later, the Harrisburg Symphony will play a shorter orchestral work of hers. Every piece of music she writes now is paid for – these are called “commissions” – and though she still maintains a teaching relationship at Curtis, she doesn't have time to teach as much as she used to: she doesn't need to keep her “day job” to earn a living.

Still, it's interesting to note that though composers today may not be employed by wealthy noblemen, they often depend on wealthy individuals and companies and foundations to "underwrite" their creativity. A corporation donates money to a baseball team to build their stadium earns them "naming rights" so that stadium is now called "The [Insert Corporation Here] Stadium."

BACK TO THE OLD DAYS: THE CHURCH AS PROVIDER

Today, many churches employ musicians - most often, the choirs are made up of volunteers but the organists and choir directors are paid positions. Going back even more centuries in the past, though, before Bach and Mozart, composers were employed not by universities or aristocrats but by churches. Even Bach, who died in 1750, spent the last decades of his life as the music director of the major church in Leipzig. But he had also worked for various counts and smaller noblemen earlier in his career.

But since music began to be written down over a thousand years ago, the primary employer of the musicians then was the Church. They wrote music for church services (the choir was the resident ensemble) for the congregation to hear (the audience who in another century would be “the court”).

So composers go from being employed by someone (or something) to being self-employed. Right now, we're in a free-lance system. Who knows where it will go by the year 2100?

- Dr. Dick

Into the Magic World of Fingal's Cave

2009-09-04T14:36:00.007-04:00

I'd used these two videos in an earlier post, but I want to post them here again in a slightly different context.

We can't really take a field trip to a little island off the coast of Scotland to see what Felix Mendelssohn saw when he was 20, sailing up to the mouth of this big cave in the Hebrides Islands.

The place is called “Fingal's Cave,” facing out to the stark northern sea of the Atlantic Ocean.

But second hand, you can – courtesy of a tourist who posted this YouTube video. It probably hasn't changed much in the 180 years since Mendelssohn saw it and wrote down a musical idea that became an overture known as “The Hebrides” or “Fingal's Cave.”

It's a weird place – in the photograph above, see the strange column-like rocks? It looks like the carved columns you might see in a cathedral (see photograph, left, of the inside of Salisbury Cathedral in England). This is the way ancient lava cooled: it's not carved by man.

Inside the cave, it's like a cathedral where the waves from the sea echo and roar.

The original Gaelic name for the Cave means “Cave of Melody.”

Listen to the sound of the waves. When the tour-boat arrives and the walk into the cave, somebody's playing bagpipes inside. Around 3:00 into the video, the high tide starts coming in and the waves begin to rise. See how they rise and swirl? What kind of sound do they make?

At 5:07, the cameraman is inside the cave, looking out to the sea. Listen to the waves.

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How would you translate that sound into music?

This is how Mendelssohn turned his experience, visiting that strange and magical place, into a piece of music.

This is the musical version of “Fingal's Cave” played by a student orchestra in Belgium and in this video what you see is the orchestra and the conductor from a fixed point in the back. But listen to how the music in the lowest sounds you hear reflects the sounds of the waves you saw in the first video.

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Now, turn off the volume on the first video, the one taken at the cave, and skip ahead to about 3:00 into it. Let the first video play silently and watch it while you listen to the audio from the orchestra playing the piece of music that was inspired by standing in that very same cave and listening to those waves roll in and out almost 200 years ago.

- Dr. Dick

What's It All About, Art?

2009-09-04T08:23:00.007-04:00

Have you ever had something happen in your life that was so important to you, you couldn't figure out how you lived without it before?

Perhaps it's meeting that Special Someone or discovering the exhilaration of accomplishing a physical challenge. Maybe it's seeing a movie or reading a book that affected you so much, you were convinced your life would be forever changed.

Sometimes they're little things you don't even realize, but you understand that something has been added to your life that seems to improve it or make you feel better.

Maybe it's just listening to the radio and you hear a new song you hadn't heard before and – wow – it really reaches you. Maybe the words put something in perspective for you, helps you understand something.

Maybe you've been having a rough time but here was something that took you outside yourself to show you there's another side to dealing with life.

These can happen almost any way at any time – and come from places you might never have expected it.

Maybe you were reading the Harry Potter books and thought, "that must be cool - I'd like to be a writer." Or maybe you thought "that was cool - maybe I should read something else."

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DISCOVERING SOMETHING NEW & DIFFERENT

A few years ago, I was at a library where some musicians were performing an informal concert in the middle of a beautiful fall weekend. I think some of the library patrons were annoyed – the music was a noisy intrusion on their wanting to read quietly. But a lot of people came over and sat down to listen.

Near the back of this space was a pathway between the wall and the library stacks. A young woman tried to sneak past with her son – he was maybe four or five – looking self-conscious about being seen by the audience and not wanting to disturb the players. But her son just stopped and stood there, completely still. When she motioned for him to come on, follow her, he just shook his head and kept looking at the backs of the musicians as they played. She came over, put the books down she'd been carrying, picked him up and set him on her lap. They sat there for the rest of the half-hour or so and the boy seemed really attentive.

When the audience would applaud, the boy banged his hands together, too. He had a big smile on his face. Then they got up and left.

I don't care if the boy started taking violin lessons the next year or not. I don't even really care if he's been taken to a symphony concert since then. What I care about is he had an experience that apparently deeply affected him and I'm glad his mother gave in to it and stayed so he could hear it rather than pull him away with a “you won't like that stuff” kind of attitude.

Maybe, later on, he'll hear some classical music and remember that experience and like it when most kids his age are listening to the latest pop music on their ipods or whatever technology they'd have, then.

There are so many things in life for us to experience and so little time to experience them in. Any occasion that brings in something a little different from outside the every-day experiences helps make the world a bigger and hopefully more friendly place. It's unfortunate that so much of city life is dirty and violent. The chance to look at a picture or see a full moon on a clear night can sometime remind us there's more to what we can know.

There was someone telling a group of people about a summer theater camp for middle-school kids, most of them from the city. They had been talking about Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” and why that meant something special. Most of the play's action takes place in the woods at night around the magical time of the summer equinox (what used to be called “Midsummer”).

So the teacher took the students into the woods to hang out one night – it happened to be around a full moon – and listen to the sounds and get the feel of what that special time was like. The sound of the crickets and tree-frogs, the coolness of the night air, the silvery gleam of the moon through the trees was more magical than scary and for inner-city kids something totally outside their own experiences. But they could bring that first-hand experience back to the camp when they'd talk about how the characters got confused when they ran into the forest and how, eventually, everything turned out right.

Music is something that we can think about even when it has no words to tell us what it means. It doesn't matter that the composer may not have intended you to have that reaction. But music can spark your imagination a thousand different ways, if you let it.

Check out these videos about Fingal's Cave - a real place that inspired Mendelssohn to write a piece of music.

- Dr. Dick

Music Videos: Mostly Mendelssohn

2009-09-03T23:48:00.006-04:00

Just to give you an idea of some of the “sounds” of Mendelssohn's music – here are a few videos of some of the pieces I'd mentioned in earlier posts: from his Italian Symphony and his Violin Concerto, a movement from his Octet (well, most of it) and a bit of a symphony by a friend of his, his complete antithesis, Hector Berlioz.

Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony was inspired by his trip to Italy when he was 22. It's one of the sunniest pieces of music I've ever heard. Here's the opening played by an orchestra that Mendelssohn had conducted in the 1840s – this time, it's Kurt Masur conducting.
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In the post about prodigies, I'd mentioned former child prodigy Sarah Chang. There's a photo of her there, taken when she was 6. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic when she was 8. In this video, she is still a teen-ager, playing the final movement of the Violin Concerto by Felix Mendelssohn. It's a live TV broadcast with Kurt Masur conducting, again: this time it's the New York Philharmonic. The performance has a few minor rough spots - it's live, after all; you could go back and try it again in the recording studio - but I think the person who made her wear that green dress should be shot...
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This photo (see above, right) is a more recent picture of Sarah Chang.

Prodigies have to start somewhere. Here's a 10-year-old violinist (I don't know her name) who plays the same finale of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto with a pianist. It may not be the greatest performance in the world or the most ideal conditions but the important thing here is her enthusiasm – not to mention, at 10 years old, the technical talent she already has. (Isn't her smile great?)
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Speaking of prodigies, here's the opening movement of the Octet that Mendelssohn composed when he was 16. It's practically a violin concerto in itself. He wrote it for his violin teacher's birthday so I guess he wanted to give him something hard so he'd have to work (the student's best revenge). Just think of the fun it must have been, writing something for a friend's birthday present – not to mention watching him sweat during the performance! You can hear that happiness in the music.

You'll hear it with Odin Rathnam and the West Branch Music Festival Players on September 16th, but here's a performance with members of the São Paolo Symphony in Brazil.
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In the post about “Mendelssohn, the Person,” I mentioned how different his music is from the music his friend Hector Berlioz wrote.

Berlioz was a French composer and among the wildest of the wild new generation in the 1830s. They met in Rome when Berlioz was finishing his Symphonie fantastique and Mendelssohn had begun his Italian Symphony (the first video on this post). Mendelssohn said he felt like he needed to wash his hands after handling the score, the music was so “dirty.” A man careful about his appearance, Mendelssohn didn't care for Berlioz' unruly hair and his unruly manner – sitting in a grungy bar smoking awful cigars – but he also had trouble understanding Berlioz' unruly music. As Berlioz himself wrote about Mendelssohn: “he has an enormous, extraordinary, superb and prodigious talent. I cannot be accused of flattering him in telling you this because he told me frankly that he did not understand my music at all.”

Here is the very end, the last minute of Berlioz' very unruly Symphonie fantastique which describes the hero's persecution in Hell, ending with a rousing Witches' Dance. Mendelssohn could never have written this music!

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It's played by a Brazilian orchestra from Minas Gerais, one of the larger Brazilian states. It's recorded by cell-phone, I assume, from someone sitting in the front row. The musicians are certainly throwing themselves into it! It's the only way you can really play “over-the-top” Romantic Music like this!

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn, the Person

2009-09-03T23:13:00.007-04:00

People might assume, because their parents were wealthy, the Mendelssohn children had it easy.

THE FAMILY SCHEDULE: HOME SCHOOLING in the EARLY 1800s

They were awakened at 5am.

They were taught at home with private tutors but music was just a fraction of the curriculum. In addition to German (their own language) they also were taught Latin, Greek, mathematics, a lot of European history, geography, aesthetics (Felix's teacher was the great philosopher Hegel), political philosophy, German and foreign literature and also drawing and water-coloring. They also learned to speak fluent French and English. Later, Felix also learned Italian.

On Sundays, they could sleep in till 6.

They would go for long hikes and ice-skated or rowed on the near-by river. They were excellent swimmers. As a child, Felix loved to ride a horse. Even when he was 24 and living away from home, he wrote to his father asking for permission to buy a horse (permission granted).

The garden was often the scene of out-door parties, the trees hung with paper-lanterns the children had made. The children even published their own in-house newspaper.

In addition, there were many music lessons. The younger daughter Rebecka sang and the younger son Paul played the cello. For both Felix and his older sister Fanny, there were piano lessons and composition lessons. Felix also studied the violin and the viola.

Very frequently they were among the performers for the family's Sunday afternoon musicales. So they had to rehearse, as well.

Around this schedule, Felix somehow found time to compose a great deal of music.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FAMILY

The house became an intellectual center in Berlin: many of the greatest minds in the city or visiting artists and professors would come to their musicales which included more than just music-making. Lea Mendelssohn was a very fine hostess and the food was first-rate. The Mendelssohns loved English customs, so great amounts of tea were consumed. And of course, with all these eloquent guests and great minds the conversation was especially lively.

Like the Kennedy Family, the children of the Mendelssohn Family knew they represented a leading Berlin family and therefore German culture. They were taught to speak well and to listen well. The girls were supposed to combine charm with knowledge. The boys were supposed to be able to do more than 'hold' a conversation.

Mendelssohn read a lot – for instance, Homer (in German) and Plato (in Greek). He read most of the novels of Sir Walter Scott, then all the rage, and Shakespeare (who was not all the rage) in both English and German. He also owned a copy of The Decameron, a 14th-Century collection of often bawdy love-stories (it was a gift from his mother-in-law). He read the novels of Charles Dickens and his library included large collections of the works by his mentor Goethe and his grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn.

Like many people in Berlin in the 1820s, the family was not outwardly religious – they did not attend temple before the children were converted to Christianity and they didn't really attend church on a regular basis afterward. That doesn't mean they didn't have a sense of faith. In fact, in one letter, Felix complained about people who were overly pious: he couldn't see himself that way.

TIME & MANNERS SHAPE THE PERSONALITY

He found England much to his liking. The British attitude of the “stiff upper lip” suited him as well as its manners and sense of reserve. Mendelssohn could be described as gentle, happy, charming, polite – above all, polite. One biographer described him as “a polite man who wrote polite music.”

Beethoven may have raged against the inhumanity of the Napoleonic Wars or the old-fashioned nobility or having his breakfast served late. Beethoven may have written music that “stormed the heavens” and opened new worlds to mortal men. None of this was Mendelssohn's style.

Many people think classical composers are a rather serious bunch, writing all this serious music. Mendelssohn had a sense of humor and loved lively conversation. He loved listening to and telling jokes, though compared to the off-beat and often dirty humor of Mozart or Beethoven, Mendelssohn's jokes would all be G-rated.

Unlike Franz Liszt and many other musicians of the era, Mendelssohn was not a ladies' man. He loved his wife and was very much at home in a domestic setting.

He was also a workaholic which no doubt contributed to his early death. He worked hard as a composer, a conductor, a pianist, even an organist as well as music director and music teacher who in his spare time organized music festivals and founded music schools.

He loved to travel. He made ten trips to England, mostly concert tours but they all included time to see the country, not just perform. He climbed Swiss mountains and took long hikes in the German countryside.

Luckily for him, he could fall asleep quickly and take a cat-nap on a couch in the middle of a party if he needed to.

Everything he did seemed effortless.

ALL THIS BUT STILL FULL OF DOUBT

But for some reason, he was often full of doubt about his own talent. He frequently revised his music. Sometimes it was written quickly, other times it took a long time to take shape. He worked hard and was suspicious of composers (or any creative artist) who “waited for the Divine Spark” of trance-like inspiration. He also was suspicious of a lot of technical talk about music: the important thing was not how it was composed but that it was composed well.

Not surprisingly, his manuscripts are very clean, usually free of corrections. But still, when he “finished” his Italian Symphony in 1833, he set it aside to revise it. That didn't keep him from playing it – it was a very popular work in his lifetime – but when he died 15 years later, he still hadn't published it.

He'd begun working on the “Scottish” Symphony when he was 22, not long after his trip to Scotland – he already had ideas for it written down while he was there – but he didn't actually “finish” it until he was 33.

The numbering of his works is very confusing. He never published the Reformation Symphony either, though it actually was the second of the mature symphonies he composed. It ended up becoming No. 5, making it look like it should be a late work. The second string quartet he composed was sent to the publisher before the first one.

Music publishers used a catalog system of “Opus Numbers” - opus is the Latin word for “work” - and we usually think of it as a chronological list: a composer finishes a piece, sends it to the publishers and then writes the next piece. That isn't always the case. A string quintet Mendelssohn published as his Op. 18 looks like it should've been written before the Octet, Op. 20 – but it was really written a year after the Octet.

Many people have different opinions about Mendelssohn's music. Just the other day, a friend on Facebook told me “If you can't recognize who wrote it, it must be Mendelssohn.” Meaning, I guess, that if it didn't sound like anybody else, it must be him!

Another friend told me recently that he didn't think much of his first two symphonies but figured that's because they were early works “and he hadn't found his voice yet.” I pointed out that that 2nd Symphony was written when he was 31 but two of his most famous pieces which my friend agreed definitely sounded like “mature Mendelssohn” were written when he was still in his mid-teens!

A LITTLE OF THIS, A LITTLE OF THAT

In a post about “classical vs. romantic,” I mentioned that Mendelssohn was a little of each, not one or the other. He preferred “classical” clarity and design but enjoyed “romantic” story-telling and pleasure (not so much the over-the-top emotionalism of someone like his friend Hector Berlioz whose “Symphonie fantastique” tells the story of a man having a bad experience on opium, imagining he's killed his girl-friend and then goes to Hell for her murder - oh, and he wrote this work to impress the woman he loved...).

Mendelssohn's music is primarily happy music – the finale of his Violin Concerto (written when he was 35) is just as exuberant as the opening of his Italian Symphony (begun when he was 22) or the whole Octet (composed when he was 16). (Check out the music videos, here.) When he wrote more emotional, sad or tender music, some people called it “sentimental” or “maudlin” - never tragic.

In another post - about Math, Science & Philosophy - I wrote about one of his teachers, the philosopher Hegel who is remembered today primarily for his “Hegelian Dialectic.” You take a statement or idea – call it a thesis – and then you take the opposite of that statement or idea – call it an antithesis (anti-thesis) – then take the best parts of both of them to create a kind of compromise – call it a synthesis.

Perhaps Mendelssohn himself was a living example of this: two parts classical (thesis) + one part romantic (antithesis) = Felix Mendelssohn (synthesis).

Dr. Dick

Something of a Syllabus

2009-09-02T13:17:00.015-04:00

The Mendelssohn Educational Outreach Project for the Harrisburg School District's John Harris High School, in September 2009, consists of two components.

(1) With the performance of three compositions by Felix Mendelssohn on September 16th, the students have the opportunity to experience music by one of the great composers of the 19th Century.

(2) The written material posted on the website “Mendelssohn's World” is intended as a cross-curricular guide to teachers and students to the background of the composer and his music. It is the on-line text for information that can be used in the classroom or for additional reading. It is not intended to be a book to be read chapter-by-chapter but perused at will. It is not intended to be a collection of facts to memorize.

This background information is divided into several categories: Mendelssohn's Life (Biography, Family &c), Mendelssohn's Time (Historical Background &c) and Music (some in general, some specifically about Mendelssohn's compositions) some of which have been divided into more specific topics (see below). It is loosely structured and intended to be used flexibly.

Information can be added to enrich a course's existing units or as modules within a class-meeting.

Like individual blog-posts which touch on one specific topic or several more general ones, information can be tied into what ever topic might be discussed at a particular time. Each post will have a “topic tag” (see bottom of post) which you can click on to follow related posts as a separate thread. It is not meant to be pursued as a traditional “learning unit” which begins with chapter one and ends when you get to the last chapter.

“Study Questions” or “Topics for Discussion” will be included in a separate post with links going back to the individual posts' related information

FOR TEACHERS & STUDENTS in the SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSES: you can approach “Mendelssohn's World” from several topics.

For basic background of Mendelssohn's Life: A Mendelssohn Chronology.

STUDY QUESTIONS for Social Studies classes are grouped according to topic: most of these questions try to tie events or issues from Mendelssohn's Time into modern-day technology, events and issues. You can approach the chapters you want to cover according to these possible questions for discussion - links to individual posts are embedded in each group of questions.

#1 - For some Historical Events & Inventions during Mendelssohn's Lifetime
#2 - War & Peace (the Impact of Napoleon)
#3 - Politics and National Culture
#4 - Religious & Social Attitudes
#5 - About Musical Issues (like celebrities, prodigies, popular & classicsal)
#6 - Biographical Topics

You can divide the students into groups, assign them different background issues, have them go to the chapter-post and research the information themselves then have them report back to the class, then and follow up with a general discussion.

You could do the same for the biographical posts about Mendelssohn specifically. One group looks at the post about his being a teen-aged composer, another about personal influences and the family, or about his being born a Jew or his sister being a "woman-composer" - and then report back to the class.

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Events that occurred during his lifetime: these posts may have information useful in making a transition between world events, specific but non-musical topics and events or ideas from Mendelssohn's life:

Some Historical Events (inventions and events)
The Impact of Napoleon
Being German in the Early 1800s (cultural traits & ideas)
The Economy in Mendelssohn's World (in Germany, 1800-1850)
Math, Science & Philosophy in Mendelssohn's World
An American Chronology Parallel to Mendelssohn's World (not directly related to Mendelssohn's Life but would tie in w/events in our own history that occurred at the time Mendelssohn was alive and composing music in Germany.)
Life Among the Royals: England's Queen Victoria & How She Got There

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BIOGRAPHY: Details of the composer's life.
This post is the "official summarized" biographical post: Mendelssohn's Biography: A Condensed Version

More detail can be found in the following individual posts, chronological chapters from a life:
A Mendelssohn Chronology
A Musical Glossary for Mendelssohn's World (as reference for any musical terms encountered in the biography posts)
Moses Mendelssohn, the Composer's Grandfather
Mendelssohn's Family on his Mother's Side
A Prodigy; Goethe; A Talented Teen-Ager
Mendelssohn & Bach
Mendelssohn's Family on His Mother's Side
Mendelssohn, the Person
Mendelssohn, the Traveler
The Mendelssohn Houses in Berlin
Mendelssohn in Leipzig
Mendelssohn's Life, Mendelssohn's Death (a final chapter)

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RELIGION: Students can compare different aspects of Mendelssohn's Life regarding the religion of his heritage as opposed to the religion he was baptized in when he was 7 years old and compare that to other eras in history: discrimination against the Jews in the 18th and early 19th Century with their recent studies of The Holocaust in the 20th Century. Aspects of Discrimination can be applied to other areas – who has experienced, one way or another, some form of discrimination: Race? Religion? Gender? Age? Lifestyle? Beyond the individual, personal experience, how can this be placed in a wider context?
A Little Bit about Religion in Germany
Moses Mendelssohn, the Composer's Grandfather
Mendelssohn & His Jewish Heritage

WOMEN'S STUDIES: Women in the early-1800s. Mendelssohn's sister was also a composer & pianist but she was not “allowed” to perform in public or publish her music. Students can relate aspects to more recent developments in attitudes toward women in our own society and in other societies around the world. Students can explore these issues by talking with their mothers, aunts, grandmothers to get their own perspectives on what their experiences had been.
Mendelssohn's Sister and Her World
Mendelssohn's Family on His Mother's Side

MUSIC ISSUES:
Celebrities in Music – who are the great men of history? Who are the celebrated icons of pop culture? What was “being a celebrity” like in the 19th Century?
A Prodigy; Goethe; A Talented Teen-Ager - exploring the fascination with very young performers who exhibit adult-level talent (while this post is about musical prodigies, the idea of any gifted students can be discussed for comparison)
Classical, Romantic; Left Brain, Right Brain
Background: Classical & Popular Music - While both of these ideas are difficult to define, they can lead to a varied (but easily distracted) discussion: how do “classical music” and “pop music” (please, use “and,” not “vs.”) relate to other aspects of American culture today and what students experience in their daily lives? In terms of TV, reading, seeing art and architecture, of their own hobbies and interests? What benefits might there be from being “more well-rounded”?

PERSONAL INFLUENCES (see also FAMILY): What shapes a person? These posts explore different circumstances in Mendelssohn's life – his economic background (for example, the family's wealth) as well as some already discussed: his ethnic and religious heritage; the age in which he lived. This does not answer the question “Why did Mendelssohn succeed when others did not.” (I plan another post on more typical life-situations with composers who grew up in poverty or dealt with difficulties during their lives.) How might this lead to a discussion of the impact of our society and lifestyles, family and ethnic heritage and ways, perhaps, of building on or escaping from them?
Moses Mendelssohn, the Composer's Grandfather
Mendelssohn's Family on his Mother's Side
Mendelssohn & His Jewish Heritage
A Little Bit about Religion in Germany
Being German in the Early 1800s
Mendelssohn's Sister & Her World
The Mendelssohn Houses in Berlin

MUSICAL TERMS: for those teachers and students not acquainted with the terminology of classical music, many of them are defined here:
A Musical Glossary for Mendelssohn's World

MUSIC for the “NON-MUSIC” TEACHERS & STUDENTS (Tag is abbreviated Music4NonMusicians): what aspects of music are so basic, they can be heard in any kind of music no matter what style it is? How does classical music and how it's put together relate to music the students would come in contact with every day? [POST PENDING]
Background: Classical Music & Popular Music
Celebrities in Music

MENDELSSOHN-RELATED MUSIC VIDEOS will be posts that include video-clips (mostly culled from YouTube) of music composed by Mendelssohn or related to his life.

These two are recordings of works to be performed on September 16th:
The Octet: second half of the work that Mendelssohn composed when he was 16
The Piano Trio #1 - 1st Movement
Additional Musical Examples
Into the Magic World of Fingal's Cave: a video visit to the cave itself & a performance of the music Mendelssohn's visit inspired
Mostly Mendelssohn: Italian Symphony (1st Movement), Violin Concerto (3rd Movement performed by two different child prodigies)
Mendelssohn's Greatest Hit: The Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Mendelssohn's Melusina: Not Exactly 'The Little Mermaid'

Other works by Mendelssohn to be performed in Harrisburg this year"
Market Square Concerts offers two programs with Mendelssohn's Music at Whitaker Center this fall (and offers student passes to each concert if requested: passes will be given to the music teachers to distribute)
The Harrisburg Symphony plays Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto #1

MUSIC STUDENTS & TEACHERS can also benefit from exploring any of these same topics, perhaps within a more musical rather than generic context. (See especially BIOGRAPHY, MUSIC ISSUES, above)

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Exposure to art is important in a context where it might not readily occur. Experiencing art is not the same thing as just sitting there listening to it or looking at it.

With popular culture, we assimilate it more easily because we understand the context or can at least relate to it on a more immediate level. It does not require being “learned” because it is already part of our experience.

Anything that is unfamiliar takes time to gain acquaintance. Understanding is not always immediate. Building bridges takes a foundation and several steps before you can walk across to the other side.

Dick Strawser
a.k.a. Dr. Richard Alan Strawser
a.k.a. Dr. Dick

An American Chronology Parallel to Mendelssohn's World

2009-09-01T23:28:00.004-04:00

Meanwhile, what was going on on THIS side of the Atlantic Ocean around the time Felix Mendelssohn was alive in Europe? He was born in 1809 and died in 1847 but I fudged a little on what dates to start and end with, here.

1800 – Nation's Capital moved from Philadelphia to the new city of Washington D.C.
1801-1809 – Thomas Jefferson, President (Republican from Virginia)
1803 – Louisiana Purchase; Ohio admitted to the Union
1803-1806 – Lewis & Clark Expedition, exploring the new territories of the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean
1806 – Noah Webster publishes “Dictionary of the English Language”
1808 – Congress prohibits importing of African Slaves
1809-1817 – James Madison, President (Republican from Virginia)
1811 – First steamboat sails down the Mississippi & reaches New Orleans
1811 – William Henry Harrison defeats Native Americans at Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana Territory
1811 – construction begun on the National Road (The Cumberland Road) which would end in 1839 in Illinois, the first major “highway” that helped increase settlements in the territories of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois
1811 – Lorenzo da Ponte, poet who wrote the words for Mozart's operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte, had relocated to New York City but left to set up a grocery store on the square of Sunbury PA where he remained until 1818
1812 – Louisiana admitted to the Union; remainder of Louisiana Territory reorganized as Missouri Territory
1812 – USA declares war on Great Britain: War of 1812 begins
1814 – British army burns Washington D.C.
1814 – Andrew Jackson crushes Creek Resistance in South
1814 – December: Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812
1815 – January: Andrew Jackson, not receiving the news, defeats the British at the Battle of New Orleans
1816 – Indiana admitted to the Union
1817 – Mississippi admitted to the Union
1817-1818 - 1st Seminole War in Florida
1817-1825 – James Monroe, President (Republican from Virginia)
1818 – Illinois admitted to the Union
1818 – Treaty w/Britain sets Canadian Border at 49th Parallel
1819 – USA annexes Florida from Spain
1819 – Alabama admitted to the Union
1820 – Minstrel Shows start to become popular entertainment
1820 – Maine (once part of Massachusetts) is admitted to the Union
1820 – Washington Irving publishes The Sketch Book
1821 – Missouri Compromise: Missouri admitted as a Slave State to balance Maine's having been admitted as a Free State
1821 – Mexico gains independence from Spain
1822 – Florida Territory established
1822 – Stephen Austin founds colony in Texas
1825 – Completion of the Erie Canal
1825 – Rossini's opera “Barber of Seville” performed in Italian in NYC; it had been performed in English & adapted from the original in NYC in 1819, just 3 years after its premiere in Rome
1825-1829 – John Quincy Adams, President (Republican of Massachusetts)
1826 – James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Last of the Mohicans
1826 – July 4th, Stephen Foster born near Pittsburgh PA
1829-1837 – Andrew Jackson, President (Democrat of Tennessee)
1830 – Indian Removal Act forces eastern Native Americans west of Mississippi
1830 – Joseph Smith founds Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon)
1831 – First locomotive runs from Albany to Schenectedy, NY
1831 – Words composed for “My Country, 'Tis of Thee” sung to “God Save the King” becomes the song “America”
1832 – Cholera pandemic
1834 – Indian Territory founded
1835 - 2nd Seminole War in Florida
1836 – Arkansas admitted to the Union as the 25th State
1836 – Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas – Death of Davy Crockett
1836 – Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes essay, Nature – considered the beginning of the Transcendentalist Movement
1837 – The Panic of 1837 – led to a five-year Depression w/bank failures and record high unemployment
1837-1841 – Martin van Buren, President (Democrat from New York)
1838 – Cherokee Trail of Tears – forced migration to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
1838 – first performance of Mendelssohn's St. Paul in NY (received poor reviews)
1839 – Edgar Allan Poe publishes The Fall of the House of Usher
1840-1841 – James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer
1841 – William Henry Harrison, President (Whig from Indiana) – dies after 1 month in office
1841-1845 – succeeded by Vice-President John Tyler as President (Whig from Virginia)
1842 – Work day limited to a 10-hour day for children under the age of 12 in Massachusetts
1842 – Dec. 7th, first concert by the orchestra that would become the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, performed Beethoven's 5th
1845 – Edgar Allan Poe publishes his poem, The Raven
1845 – President John Tyler annexes Texas and it is admitted to the Union (following 10 years of independence)
1845-1848 – Mexican-American War
1845-1849 – James Knox Polk, President (Democrat from Tennessee)
1846 – Areas of Arizona and New Mexico annexed by the USA
1846 – Iowa admitted to the Union
1846 – Stephen Foster publishes “Oh, Susanna”
1846-1847 – Mormon Trek from Nauvoo (in Illinois) to Salt Lake City, Utah
1847 – American troops take Mexico City
1847 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow publishes Evangeline, a Tale of Acadia
1848 – Treaty Gaudalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican War: Mexico cedes California and areas that became several Western States
1848 – Wisconsin admitted to the Union
1848 – Gold discovered in California
1848 – USA annexes Oregon Territory (including Washington, parts of Idaho, Montana & Wyoming)
1848 – following several revolutions across Europe, newly arrived European immigrants begin settling in the West
1849 – Zachary Taylor, President (Whig from Virginia)
1849 – Death of Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore
1849 – Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery on the Underground Railroad
1850 – Millard Fillmore (Whig from New York) becomes President following the death of Zachary Taylor
1850 – California admitted to the Union
1850 – Stephen Foster publishes “Old Folks at Home” (“Swanee River”)
1850 – Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act requiring the return of escaped slaves
1850 – Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter
1851 – Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick
1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin

Mendelssohn's Family on his Mother's Side

2009-09-01T12:04:00.005-04:00

This post is about the family of Felix Mendelssohn's mother, Lea Salomon Mendelssohn (see left).

In earlier posts, I wrote about Felix Mendelssohn's paternal grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, a famous philosopher in the 2nd half of the 18th Century. I've written about the banking company his sons built and how Abraham became a member of the upper-class society. I've mentioned the house they lived in with its large music salon where they could hold private concerts where the children Felix and his sister Fanny performed.

THE MENDELSSOHN HOUSE

The Mendelssohn House in Berlin has long since disappeared – at first, I couldn't find any images or descriptions of the house, beyond this:

Abraham Mendelssohn bought a mansion in 1825 in a quiet section of Berlin. The property “included not only the main house of many rooms, but several guest houses” and a spacious park complete with large gardens where Felix enjoyed taking walks and riding his horse. “The main house contained large salons in which Sunday musicales were given to invited audiences as well as amateur theatricals.”

All of this would imply it was a pretty large house on a pretty large property (and Felix had a horse). After his sister Fanny married Wilhelm Hensel, they moved into one of the guest houses which then became their family home (so clearly, this one, at least, was not like a cottage in the park).

Later, I found a few images posted on-line that appear to be the house Mendelssohn grew up in. You can see them and read more about the house in this post. Somewhere I'd read (but cannot verify, now) that the house was demolished by the Nazis in the 1930s but it may have been torn down earlier. The photograph I found was apparently taken in 1900.

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MENDELSSOHN'S MOTHER, LEA

I had not read much about Felix's mother's family before. I knew she was descended from a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin. But here's what I found today while researching information about Mendelssohn's love of Bach's music.

Abraham's wife, Lea Salomon, was the granddaughter of Daniel Itzig (see left) whom I had seen described somewhere as “an important merchant.” That left out two important details in his life. One was his being appointed to be the Director of the Prussian Mint by King Frederick the Great; under his successor, Itzig was appointed the court banker. Considering neither king was especially tolerant of the Jews – they were not consistently anti-Semitic, either - it was an unusual situation. Daniel Itzig died in 1799, one of the wealthiest men in Berlin.

He had 13 children, most of whom lived to adulthood (unusual in those days of high infant and childhood mortality rates).

His daughter Bella (a.k.a. Babette) Itzig married Levin Salomon. Their son Jakob Salomon (see right) converted to Christianity during the Napoleonic Wars. He had recently purchased a garden estate from a man named Bartholdy, so he adopted that as his Christian family name. He advised his brother-in-law, Abraham Mendelssohn, to convert and take the name Bartholdy, too.

During the last years of Napoleon's wars, Bartholdy became a Prussian consul-general in Rome. He was a great patron of the arts, especially interested in the old art of fresco painting which still survived in Italy. He commissioned several German painters to learn this skill which had long been forgotten in Northern Europe.

Bella and Levin Salomon's daughter Lea married Abraham Mendelssohn. It was Bella (Babette) who gave her grandson Felix a score of Bach's “St. Matthew Passion.”

Daniel Itzig's son, Isaac Daniel Itzig, founded the “Jewish Free School” in Berlin in 1778, the first of its kind.

Susanna Itzig Friedlander's husband helped Moses Mendelssohn's sons found the Mendelssohn & Friedlander Bank which later became Mendelssohn & Co. In 1812, it was “one of the 20 most important banks in Berlin;” by 1823, one of the top 3.

Another son was the father of an architect who built many important buildings in Berlin, including the Stock Exchange (see illustration, right), built in 1859 on the site of the Itzig Family's house (see end of post). The Stock Exchange was a target of the Allied bombing raids and destroyed in 1945.

Sarah Itzig (see left) married Solomon Levy. She studied piano with W.F. Bach, the oldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. She was a well-known musician in Berlin, performing at the Sing-Academy. She was Lea Salomon Mendelssohn's aunt and a strong musical presence in Felix Mendelssohn's early years.

Nowhere could I find any explanation why it was okay for Sarah Levy to perform in public (whether she was paid or not) but it wasn't for her great-niece, Fanny Mendelssohn. Perhaps it was a generational thing...

Two other daughters married Viennese bankers and were friends and patrons of Mozart's.

Here is a photograph of the Itzig House (right) taken in 1857 (making this also a fairly early photograph)/ Two years later, it was demolished and replaced by the Stock Exchange (see above), designed and built by Daniel Itzig's grandson.

How does it compare to the Mendelssohn Family House? You certainly do get the idea that it's a big house and this is a very wealthy family. No wonder Felix Mendelssohn never had to worry about personal finances...

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn & Bach

2009-09-01T10:57:00.014-04:00

THE "SINGING-ACADEMY"

The musical life in Berlin centered around a school that had originally been founded to train young musicians through choral singing. It was begun in 1791 by a keyboard player named Fasch who had been a court musician for King Frederick the Great. In 1800, his assistant took over as director, Carl Zelter, best known today for having been Mendelssohn's teacher. In 1808, he added an orchestral school, teaching instruments and composition. The school's new building was built in 1827 and was Berlin's first real concert hall. The school and the hall are still in operation today.

(Photo, right, of a modern day choir before a recent performance of a Bach cantata posing on the steps of the Singing-Academy.)

Most of the students came from the upper- and middle-class families of Berlin and was supported by a number of patrons including several prominent Jewish families like the Mendelssohns and the Itzigs. Abraham Mendelssohn joined in 1793 and Lea Salomon, a granddaughter of the Itzig family, joined in 1796. Whether they met there or not, I don't know: coincidentally, both had moved to Paris in 1797 where they did meet, fell in love and were married in 1804, leaving Paris first for Hamburg, then (in 1811) going back to Berlin. All four of their children were musical and took lessons from teachers from the Sing-Academy. Both Fanny and Felix studied composition with the school's director, Carl Zelter.

THE BACH FAMILY

The Academy's choral concerts frequently involved music by J.S. Bach – mostly the chorales and motets. Bach's cantatas, concertos and large-scale choral works were unknown even to many educated musicians.

The school owned many manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach, partly because his second son, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, had been a court composer for Frederick the Great. Much of this was kept in the school's library and had not been published or performed. Zelter felt the modern-day (that is, 1800-era) performance skills would not do proper justice to Bach's style of writing.

(See illustration, a portrait of Bach and three of his sons - C.P.E. in a red jacket; Wilhelm Friedemann on the right.)

At this time, Bach was primarily known for his keyboard works like the Well-Tempered Clavier, two volumes of 48 preludes & fugues which were primarily used as advanced teaching pieces. These pieces were admired by musicians who knew them (like Mozart and Beethoven) but they were considered too academic and boring by others, so they were not usually performed in concert as they are, today.

The Academy was located in what became the Soviet-occupied East Berlin. At the end of World War II, the school's collection of Bach manuscripts was looted by the Soviet Army and taken back to the Soviet Union where it was hidden in a Kiev music school. This was rediscovered only in 2000 and returned to Berlin. Today, it is housed at the Berlin State Library. The Academy's building and concert hall was renamed “Maxim Gorky Hall” after the Soviet author.

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HOW MANY DEGREES of SEPARATION?

Bach's oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, sold many of his father's manuscripts (some to pay off debts). Others were inherited by his daughter who took them with her when she went to America. Rather than becoming the foundation of any music school or performances there, they were distributed to friends and family. Many of the manuscripts were lost or inadvertently destroyed.

One of W.F. Bach's students, Sarah Itzig Levy (see right), lived in Berlin and was an aunt of Mendelssohn's mother, Lea Salomon.

That's four degrees of separation: Old J.S. Bach --> Bach's son, W.F. Bach --> Sarah Itzig Levy (aunt of Mendelssohn's Mother) --> Felix Mendelssohn.

Aunt Sarah performed concertos by C.P.E. Bach at Academy concerts and owned a large collection of manuscripts by J.S. Bach. It's very likely she played the Well-Tempered Clavier for her niece. When Lea's first child was born, she remarked her daughter had “fugue fingers” – meaning long, thin fingers good for a pianist to play Bach's fugues. And she was right: Fanny grew up to be an excellent pianist who often played Bach's music. So did her little brother, Felix.

Since Aunt Sarah also performed concertos and keyboard works by C.P.E. Bach, it's no coincidence one of the major musical influences on Mendelssohn's early works was the music of C.P.E. Bach.

Another collector of Bach manuscripts was Abraham Mendelssohn who purchased a number of works from the widow of C.P.E. Bach, J.S. Bach's 2nd son who left Berlin to become the “resident composer” for the city of Hamburg. Abraham purchased these works at an auction in Hamburg in 1805, then gave this collection to the Academy when he returned to Berlin.

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GRANDMOTHER & the SCORE to the ST. MATTHEW PASSION

It was Felix's grandmother, Bella Salomon (also known as Babette), who gave him a copy of Bach's largest work, “The St. Matthew Passion,” as a Christmas present when he was 14 or 15.

The story is that she had to talk a reluctant Zelter into loaning her his original manuscript so she could have it hand-copied (presumably by Mendelssohn's violin teacher, Eduard Rietz) since the work was never printed. But Zelter guarded his treasures so closely, keeping them locked up in a cabinet where few ever got to look at them. So it's unlikely he would have parted with the prize of his collection even for a short time. If it wasn't a copy already owned by her sister, Sarah, Grandmother Salomon may have borrowed a copy owned by another musician she knew.

It's not that this huge work was unknown. The Mendelssohn children sang in the Academy's choir when some choruses from it were performed, just as they had sung some of the smaller cantatas that Bach had written for regular church services. But the complete work had never been performed in public since it's last known performance in 1736 at the St. Thomas Church where Bach was the music director. (See picture, a sketch of Leipzig skyline with St. Thomas Church, drawn by Felix Mendelssohn.)

Mendelssohn studied the score and considered it one of his most valuable possessions. He dreamed some day of performing it so he kept working on it. During the winter of 1827-28, several singers were invited to the Mendelssohn home to read through parts of the work. His sisters helped copy out the parts and Mendelssohn (then 18 or 19) led them from the piano. The following winter, they performed the first of the Passion's three parts at a Sunday musicale. With an actor-friend who'd been one of the singers urging him on – it was Mendelssohn's duty to perform this work, he insisted – they went to Zelter with their plan.

Their old teacher advised them it wouldn't work: the skills the choir would need for some of the more involved choruses was more than any choir in the 1820s could handle it. And as for the orchestra, it was a style of playing that had been lost over the decades, especially for the trumpet players.

But they agreed to try and so Mendelssohn, his actor friend and his violin teacher organized a choir and orchestra made up of singers and players from the Academy and other orchestras, both professional and amateur, in Berlin.

PERFORMING BACH WHEN BACH HAD BEEN FORGOTTEN

They performed the St. Matthew Passion at the Academy on March 11, 1829.

It was a huge success and had to be repeated ten days later, which happened to be Bach's birthday. Again it was sold out, with additional chairs set up in the lobby for the overflow crowd.

The work was published the following year and other performances soon followed. Not all were as ecstatic as the Berlin audience. At one performance in a provincial Prussian city, part of the audience fled before the first part had ended; others called it “outdated rubbish.”

Today, Bach is one of the most frequently performed classical composers and one of the most highly regarded. The St. Matthew Passion is generally considered one of the greatest works of Western Art.

Here is the final chorus from Bach's St. Matthew Passion: after over two hours of music, the chorus sings the final lines after Christ's body has been taken down from the cross. "We sit down in tears and call to You in the tomb. Rest softly - softly rest."
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This performance is with the Munich Bach Choir & Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter.

Basically, Mendelssohn, who had just turned 20, was given credit for beginning The Bach Revival. It might have happened eventually – other people had talked about it but didn't have the courage to try (perhaps a 40-year old would have felt more afraid of it than a 20-year-old). It may have taken longer till this music became heard again: it's possible Mendelssohn's passion for the music (no pun intended) was contagious and helped convince an audience that might have been skeptical in a more scholarly performance.

The important thing is, as a result of this one performance, Bach's music was being heard again and Mendelssohn had “his big break.” After the success of this performance, people around Germany began taking more of an interest in him. As they say about movie stars today, “he had arrived.”

- Dr. Dick

Math, Science & Philosophy in Mendelssohn's World

2009-09-01T00:30:00.010-04:00

Science had long been connected to the study of philosophy that it took a while to become a separate field of study. Philosophy was an exercise in theoretical logic that had little to do with research or experimentation. Math had a more practical rather than speculative or theoretical application.

A MATHEMATICIAN

Karl Friedrich Gauss had been born a peasant in 1777 whose father thought education was “a passport to Hell.” His mother scrimped to send him to school where he began to excel in math. Not yet 20, a teacher told his mother “he will be the greatest mathematician in Europe.” His work with number theory, imaginary numbers, and infinitesimal calculus transformed mathematics from what it had been in Newton's generation in the late-17th Century. In 1801 he discovered the first asteroid (or planetoid) and mapped its orbit and researched theories of magnetism and electricity, declaring that nothing is science until in can be stated in mathematical terms.

A SCIENTIST

Alexander von Humboldt (see left) was a director of mines who discovered the effects of magnetism on rock deposits, founded a school of mines and improved labor conditions for miners. In 1799, he journeyed to South America studying, among other things, plant and animal life in Venezuela and reached the source of the Amazon River. In Peru, he discovered a current in the Pacific Ocean that is now known as the Humboldt Current, comparable to the Atlantic's Gulf Stream. He discovered that bird-droppings (from all the sea birds along the Peruvian coast) had potential as fertilizer which developed into one of South America's richest exports.

(Charles Darwin's more famous five-year 'round-the-world voyage on the ship, The Beagle, was in 1831. His observations led to the development of his theories on Natural Selection and later on Evolution. Curiously, 2009 is also the observation of Darwin's Bicentennial.)

Back in Europe in 1804, Humboldt's further studies and experiments improved our knowledge of the formation of mountains and how tropical storms develop. On an expedition to the Ural Mountains in Russia, he discovered diamond mines. As a court chamberlain in Berlin, he worked to improve the education system and helped artists and scientists. When he died, he was working on Volume 5 of a compilation of his knowledge which, in an English translation, was almost 2,000 pages long.

When he was in Berlin, Alexander von Humboldt – along with his brother, Wilhelm, a reformer of education who influenced the development of universities in both Germany and the United States – was a regular visitor at the Mendelssohn's Sunday afternoon musicales.

A PHILOSOPHER

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (pronounced HAY-g'l) was just one of many German philosophers in this era. He developed many theories but he is most remembered today for developing the “Hegelian Dialectic,” a process of conversation (as it was originally considered) where an idea (called a thesis) is balanced by its opposite argument (called an antithesis or anti-thesis) to produce a combination of both positive and negative aspects of these ideas (called a synthesis) which might be considered a compromise but becomes a new idea (or thesis) to which one can apply a new antithesis to create a new synthesis and so on.

It is only one of Hegel's many theories, a very small one, at that - and based on several other philosophers, going back to the Greeks. This approach to “dialectics” is a simplification of his ideas.

One of Hegel's followers, Karl Marx, argued that capitalism (thesis) contained the seeds of socialism (antithesis) but he argued that these rival forms of economics must clash with socialism winning out. This however is not a true dialectic – the synthesis would have elements of both capitalism AND socialism which is, basically, the form of economic organization that prevails in much of Western Europe today.

In 1818, Hegel (see illustration above: Hegel lectures to some students) began teaching at the University of Berlin. In 1828, one student who attended his lectures was Felix Mendelssohn. Hegel, too, had been a frequent visitor to the Mendelssohn house, just one of many guests who discussed various issues with fellow guests and their hosts and then listened to the music made by the family's children.

There is a famous story that, at the dinner after the performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the wife of one of Mendelssohn's best friends sat between him and an old man who kept flirting with her. Tired of his boring chatter, she turned to Mendelssohn and asked "Who is this idiot beside me?" "That idiot, " he whispered back to her, "is the great philosopher Hegel."

Hegel's philosophical students curiously formed two opposing schools of thought about their teacher's theories (no synthesis, there). His fame rose and fell with successive generations. When his influence fell in Germany, it rose in England and later in the United States. In early 20th Century France, Hegel became the god-father of Existentialism.

Will Durant concludes his chapter on “The German People” in The Age of Napoleon (Volume 11 of his “History of Civilization”) with this:

“Civilization is a collaboration as well as a rivalry; therefore it is good that each nation has its own culture, government, economy, dress and songs. It has taken many diverse forms of organization and expression to make the European spirit so subtle and diverse, and to make the Euopre of today and endless fascination and an inexhaustible heritage.”

Considering how many people from that Europe of Mendelssohn's age would find their way to a new home in the United States of America, you could say – with or without Hegel's dialectic – basically the same for us.

- Dr. Dick

The Economy & Social Standing in Mendelssohn's World

2009-08-31T23:21:00.010-04:00

ATTITUDES ABOUT CLASS

Germans in 1800 regarded class as a system of social order and economic organization. Nobility was something that was inherited (only on occasion granted to someone for an accomplishment or distinguished service). Businessmen might earn more wealth but a nobleman had more status.

This may explain why, once he settled in Vienna, Beethoven (see left) liked to give the impression he was descended from a noble family. In Germany, the “von” in someone's name meant noble birth: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, for instance, meant the great German poet was descended from a noble family even if he wasn't a prince or a count. But the “van” in Ludwig van Beethoven's name came from his distant Dutch heritage and has no special significance. Most of Vienna's nobility would have been aware Beethoven wasn't “one of them” from his manners and attitudes. But a man could lose his fortune and descend into lower-class society even though his ancestors had been aristocrats.

When he had taken his sister-in-law to court over custody of her son Karl, his claim to nobility moved the law-suit to a court that handled cases for noble families and he was granted custody of the boy. A few years later, when the sister-in-law was able to challenge Beethoven's claim to noble status and he was unable to produce the proper credentials, the case was thrown out of that court back into the court system that handled commoner's law-suits where the custody was reversed.

A French observer, herself of the nobility (in France, they used “de” instead of “von”) wrote that “In Germany, everybody keeps his rank, his place in society as if it were his established post,” like a job without chance of advancement or demotion.

The ideas sparked by the French Revolution of 1789 did not affect Germany's nobility. While some – like Beethoven – supported democratic ideals about the equality of men (odd for a man who claimed to be of noble birth, though), Germany as a culture was content to let the same ideas that affected France to simmer until a series of revolutions across Central Europe broke out in 1848.

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LIFE AMONG THE UPPER MIDDLE CLASS

Even though Mendelssohn's family was wealthy and might have a more lavish life-style than many a “reduced” nobleman, they were still lower on the social scale regardless of their Jewish heritage (see the earlier post, Mendelssohn & His Jewish Heritage; undated portrait, right, of Felix Mendelssohn). Curiously, in the 1880s, the Mendelssohns running the bank Abraham and his brothers had founded in the 1790s were elevated to the nobility: the family name had now become “von Mendelssohn.”

It didn't help in the 1930s when the Nazis tightened their control and forced Mendelssohn & Co., once one of the most important private banks in Germany, to transfer its assets to Deutsche Bank in 1938, firing all the Jewish employees of the firm. Members of the family had hoped to reorganize the bank after the war but this never happened.

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THE STATE OF GERMANY

Because of this class-oriented attitude and the fragmented nature of the German states, the Industrial Revolution which had changed England in the 18th Century was slow to have the same impact on German society. The great rivers of Germany stimulated commerce but when you had customs tolls at the borders with some 300 states and roads varied from state to state – don't forget, railroads didn't connect major cities until the 1840s – trade was very slow. Add to this the diversity of measures, weights, coinage and laws from state to state, it's amazing Germany became industrialized at all.

Imagine what it might be like if the United States had become a loose confederation (like Germany in the 18th and 19th Centuries) where the more powerful states – perhaps New York, Massachusetts and Virginia – had become independent countries but the other states' counties were each independent states as well with, perhaps, city-states like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh also independent. Laws might differ from county to county, you would have to pass through border customs at each boundary and so forth. Even as it was, the roads from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and towns further north in the Susquehanna Valley were difficult enough, moving produce and manufactured items on stage-coaches and wagons. Things would have been very different in the development of our country. Even though this is only conjecture, this is similar to what actually WAS happening in what eventually became Germany during the time the United States was becoming a nation.

(Illustration is of a list of 19th Century Turnpike Tolls in Pennsylvania)

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

England had a generation's advance on the growth of industry in Germany and forbid the export of its technology to the continent (especially trying to keep it out of Napoleon's hands).

But the constant warfare with France forced Germany to develop industry whose primary function was either to clothe people or kill them. When Napoleon blockaded the continent to keep England from trading with other countries, Germany was forced to provide for itself. Mining and metal industries began developing along the Rhine and in 1811 Friedrich Krupp established a steel factory that under the leadership of his son Alfred (1812-1887; see photo, right) would become the main supplier of military weapons for Germany from the 1840s till the 1940s. Reorganized after the war, the company still exists today as one of the world's largest producers of steel.

(Incidentally, Krupp also instituted subsidized housing and health care as well as retirement benefits for his workers, very unusual for the early 19th Century and something that was first initiated in the United States in 1910, when workers at a Washington State lumber mill were offered a wide range of medical services for a premium of $0.50/month.)

- Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn's Sister and Her World

2009-08-31T16:39:00.010-04:00

Felix Mendelssohn's older sister, Fanny, was also a pianist and compoer. She had begun piano lessons as a child and was taking composition lessons with Carl Friedrich Zelter before Felix did. She quickly exhibited admirable talent in both areas.

However, the prevailing prejudice toward women in the public eye at this time in history meant that while it was fine for Felix to pursue a career in music as a performer and a composer, it was not for his sister.

When she was 15, her father Abraham told her that music might be a career for Felix – he was only 11 years old at the time – “but for you, it will be only an ornament.” In other words, she could play and compose as much as she wanted to but she couldn't make a living at it. Her primary role in life was to be a wife and mother. The men earned the money.

In fact, it wasn't so much as “making a living at it” as that she would not be able to earn money by it. She could perform privately as often as she wished – as in their Sunday musicales – but not in public where people would pay to hear her and she would be paid or that critics would criticize her playing in public newspapers.

Two years after his father Abraham died and Felix was now 28 and recently married, his mother Lea asked Felix to help Fanny get her music published. He declined but explained that publishing meant a commitment to continuously be supplying new works to be published. Fanny was not in the habit of writing a great deal (though one wonders if she could have been, given the opportunity). He would assist her if she really felt it necessary (or to please her husband) but he wrote “I cannot encourage her to do what I do not deem right myself.”

People point out that Clara Wieck Schumann had long been one of the major pianists of the day. While she no longer wrote very much music as the wife of Robert Schumann and the mother of eight children, still, she was busy concertizing all across Europe, especially following the final illness and eventual death of her husband.

The difference is primarily one of class. While Berlin was more conservative (and conventional) than Leipzig, Clara was also not from a wealthy upper-middle-class family. Her father, Friedrich Wieck (pronounced VEEK) had planned a musical career for her when she was a child (in fact, he had plans to turn her into a concert pianist even before she was born, but that's a long story and doesn't concern us, here). He even took Schumann to court to keep them from getting married because he did not want him interfering with Clara's career (or the money he would've made from it). But Robert was the composer in the family and when he was busy writing, she couldn't even practice because it would disturb him. And of course there were the children...

In Fanny Mendelssohn's case, being from a wealthy family, it was just unseemly that a woman should earn money, especially upon the concert stage.

It's not the she chafed under this, though at times it irritated her.

There are a series of letters between her and Felix while he was in Paris, complaining about all the music he had to hear and all the composers he had to meet. She practically exploded, being cooped up in the house back in Berlin. What she wouldn't have given to be there with him!

She continued to compose as well as perform at the family musicales. When she married her husband, Wilhelm Hensel – technically, we should refer to her as Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, by the way – they lived in one of the former “guest-houses” on the Mendelssohn House's property in Berlin. Though given privacy, she was essentially her parents' neighbor and could easily take over managing the Sunday musicales. That was to be her outlet.

Even though she had known Hensel for at least five years - an artist, he had sketched portraits of everybody in the family but tone-deaf (they used to joke, in this musical family, that Hensel couldn't even hum a popular old Christmas carol) - she wasn't sure how her new married life would affect her musical life. Would her husband forbid her to compose music?

The story is told that the day after their wedding, Hensel asked her to sit down at the piano. He placed a blank piece of manuscript paper in front of her, implying she could write whatever she wanted.

In 1847, when she was 41, she was in the midst of rehearsing an up-coming performance of one her brother's choral works when she had a stroke and died later that day. Felix himself was so distraught at this early and sudden death, it affected his own health in such away that he never recovered, and he deteriorated until, six months later, he had a series of strokes and died as well.

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BROTHER & SISTER

They had been very close all their lives. They used to joke about being twins, they were so much alike. He was proud of her musicianship and specifically showed some of her songs to Goethe's wife who then sang them for the great poet during one of his visits.

In order for some of her music to reach a wider public, he even published some of her songs and piano pieces as his own. This wasn't meant that he was trying to steal it or gain anything by not telling the truth about who wrote it: it was just “unseemly” or “unlady-like” for it to have been published under her own name. In fact, Fanny was quite flattered by it. Only a few people knew the true identity of these songs.

(This portrait, right, of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was made in 1842).

He wrote to her to tell her an amusing story. When he was in London in 1842, he met Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, for a social afternoon of talk and music-making. When the Prince mentioned that she loved to sing his songs, Mendelssohn asked her to choose her favorite and sing it for him. The song she chose was actually one that Fanny had written. He told his sister how it delighted him to know this but he was unable to confess the truth to the Queen of England!

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PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE

Fanny Mendelssohn performed once in public, playing her brother's 1st Piano Concerto (the work Stuart Malina will be performing with the Harrisburg Symphony in February 2010).

There is another story I had read in program notes for her one substantial orchestral work, a 10-minute overture called, simply, “Overture.” I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else so I'm not sure if it's true but it would be possible.

It was the only time she conducted any of her music in public, at a concert in a city in East Prussia where she was visiting friends. In her honor, the orchestra had programmed an Overture she had composed around 1830 (in fact, it is only known as “Overture”) and at the concert, the conductor asked her to lead the orchestra for it. Whether it was because she was far from Berlin and her social circle, a few years after her father had died and was no longer around to disapprove.

Despite all this, she composed about 250 songs, 125 piano pieces, an occasionally heard piano trio, a string quartet I've never heard, four cantatas and an oratorio called simply “Oratorio on Biblical Themes.” All these were written for and performed in the family's Sunday afternoon musicales.

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SOME OTHER COMPOSERS WHO HAPPEN ALSO TO BE WOMEN

If the Mendelssohns had lived in Paris or London, it's possible Fanny's life could have been different. But the class role of a woman in society might not have been very different in a different country.

In the United States, there was a young woman who had been a child prodigy, able to sing counter-melodies to the songs her mother sang to her when she was 2 and composing waltzes at the piano when she was 4. Amy Marcy Cheney only had one year of training in composition, but made her debut as a concert pianist when she was either 16 in Boston. One of the works she performed was a piano concerto by a friend of Felix Mendelssohn's, a German composer named Ignaz Moscheles (pronounced MOH-sheh-less).

Her plans for a career, however, came to a halt when she was married to a Boston physician named Dr. Henry Beach who was 24 years older than she was. She agreed to limit her concertizing to one performance a year, donating the money she'd earn to charity. But he didn't say she couldn't compose.

So that is how she realized her musical needs. She wrote lots of piano music and a large number of songs which could be played at home for her own musicales. But she also composed a large Mass for chorus and orchestra was had quite a public success in 1892 and four years later she composed the first symphony ever written by an American Woman (it's called the “Gaelic” Symphony because it uses Irish and Scottish tunes as the basis for its themes). She signed herself Mrs. H. H. A. Beach.

But soon after her husband died in 1910, she was back on the road, concertizing across the USA and Europe, continuing to perform and compose until she died in 1944.

It is only recently that composers who are women have begun being treated on more equal footings with those who are men. One of the busiest composer today is Jennifer Higdon. A string quartet of hers will be performed this season at the January 23rd concert of Harrisburg's Market Square Concerts. She has an orchestral work on the program with the Harrisburg Symphony the following weekend.

She has many new works being commissioned, including an opera to be written for the San Francisco Opera. Women of the previous generation were breaking through the “glass ceiling,” sometimes having their music performed or getting commissions for new ones because they were women. Composers of this generation are getting performances and commissions because they're composers: the fact they also happen to be women is less of an issue.

Dr. Dick

Mendelssohn & His Jewish Heritage

2009-08-31T12:37:00.006-04:00

Felix Mendelssohn was born in the Jewish faith two hundred years ago. His grandfather was the famous philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn. His great-grandfather had been born in a Jewish ghetto in the German city of Dessau.

As you've read in previous posts, the attitude in much of Europe was anti-Semitic. During the course of the 19th Century this may have lessened somewhat but it was never far from the surface.

Even when laws and social attitudes were more tolerant of Jews, still the Prussian government could declare than any Berlin Jew, when he married or bought a house, had to purchase a certain amount of porcelain from the Royal Porcelain Factory. They couldn't even choose what they might have preferred: they were just handed something and told to pay for it. That's how Moses Mendelssohn became the owner of a set of 20 porcelain monkeys. These monkeys became a symbol to future generations of the family until they disappeared in the years before World War II.

TOLERATION, ASSIMILATION & CONVERSION

During Mendelssohn's life, there was some toleration of the Jews but it did not mean there was an end to discrimination. He saw that if his children were to “get ahead” in the world, they would have to do it as a member of the state-supported religion which, in Berlin, was Protestant Lutheranism.

And so Felix's father, Abraham decided his children should be converted to the Lutheran faith. After all, Moses Mendelssohn had supported the idea of “assimilation,” which meant that Jews would leave the ghettos, blend into the society around them. It didn't mean they should necessarily convert but by placing less emphasis on certain aspects of their heritage and adopting those of the culture they lived in, they would become another faith living among many rather than something more easily scorned.

When Felix was 7 years old, he and his brother and sisters were baptized. It was actually several more years before Abraham and his wife converted.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY

An maternal uncle who had already converted suggested they adopt the name “Bartholdy,” after a property he had purchased from an important Protestant merchant of that name. And so, Felix became “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” (with or without a hyphen).

As an adult on the verge of international fame, Felix was advised by his father to drop the Mendelssohn altogether and just be Felix Bartholdy, but Felix refused, using both names officially (see his signature, left). I'm not sure when it happened that people began to drop the Bartholdy instead, but it was relatively recent and not a decision on Mendelssohn's part, himself.

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MENDELSSOHN as a MAN OF FAITH

They had never been exactly “religious Jews.” Mendelssohn never had firm roots in the faith he was born into. He grew up, basically, as a Lutheran but not a profoundly religious one. Today, the world is full of people who profess a faith but may not go to church. How many people today go to church twice a year, only at Christmas & Easter? In Germany in the 1800s, it was very similar.

MENDELSSOHN & ANTI-SEMITISM

But that didn't change the fact that Mendelssohn was born a Jew or “looked Jewish.” His parents were both Jewish and their families had long traditions in the faith, culture and ethnic heritage.

In 1830, Mendelssohn wrote a symphony (later called his “Reformation” Symphony) to celebrate the 300th Anniversary of Martin Luther's Augsburg Confession, an important event in the history of the Lutheran Church. It was not performed even though it included in its last movement one of Martin Luther's most famous hymns, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” It was rejected from the festival celebrating the event probably because the composer was considered a Jew but it may also have been because it was a little too over-the-top for what the people organizing the festival were looking for. Most likely, it was a little of both. (Anyway, Mendelssohn only performed the symphony once. No one else heard it until it was published and performed again in 1868, over 20 years after his death.)

There is a belief among musicians and scholars that Mendelssohn felt “unanchored” because he had converted to Christianity. Two of his oratorios were inspired by Biblical characters – his most famous was Elijah, one of the greatest of all Jewish prophets; the second was a New Testament figure, St. Paul, who had originally been a Jew persecuting the early Christians until he was converted in a blinding flash "on the Road to Damascus." At the time of his death, Mendelssohn was also working on a new oratorio called Christus.

Mendelssohn was brought up in the Protestant tradition and loved the music of Bach, one of the greatest Lutheran musicians of the 18th Century. He brought Bach's music back into public awareness with a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion when he was 20 years old. This was a dramatic work telling the story of Christ's crucifixion, using the Gospel of Matthew as the basis for its text.

When he was 28, he fell in love with the daughter of a French Protestant minister. In fact, it was many months after the wedding until he took his wife home to meet the family.

Throughout his life, Mendelssohn was neither dogmatic nor pious about his religion, new or old. Just as they never attended temple when he was a child, he rarely attended church as a Christian. He might chose a church to attend more on the basis of what music was being performed, how well it was being performed or if they had a good pipe organ he wanted to hear or play, rather than how the faith was interpreted to the congregation by its preacher.

When a German critic complained about the “Hebraic elements” and music from the synagogue he heard in Mendelssohn's music, the French composer Hector Berlioz wrote in one of his newspaper articles if the critic would have made “such a foolish statement” is he hadn't known the composer of St. Paul and Elijah was a grandson of a man named Moses? “It is hard to see,” he continued, “how these [Jewish musical traditions] could have influenced the musical style of Felix Mendelssohn since he never professed the Jewish religion. Everyone knows he was a Lutheran and an earnest Lutheran at that.”

When he conducted at a German music festival in a city on the Rhine, there were demonstrators, students, who paraded in front of the concert hall with a placard reading “Christian Music for Christian Musicians.” They were dispersed by the police and probably Mendelssohn never even knew about it. Such public attitudes may not have been rare but they weren't the standard reaction to Mendelssohn or his music.

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WAGNER & MENDELSSOHN

Richard Wagner, who was openly anti-Semitic, was no great friend or supporter of Mendelssohn during his lifetime (by then Wagner had completed his opera, Lohengrin). A few years after Mendelssohn's death, Wagner published a newspaper article under a pseudonym entitled “Judenthum in Musik” which is best translated as “Jewishness in Music” though to be less offensive it's often called by the less pejorative word, “Judaism in Music.”

He attacked two composers in particular – Mendelssohn (who was already dead) as well as Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Jewish composer of German birth who preferred the Italian form of his first name, Jakob, and had added his maternal great-grandfather's name Meyer to his original last name, Beer (his father was also a banker; in fact, Meyerbeer also studied for a time with Zelter who had been Mendelssohn's principal teacher).

Wagner expanded and republished it as a book in 1869, about five years after Meyerbeer's death. The original article, published in a magazine with a circulation of about 1,200 readers, was mostly an embarrassment to Wagner's friends (like Franz Liszt who thought it was a passing phase) and an annoyance to Mendelssohn's fans. Wagner had hoped it would create a sensation and advance his career as a writer and make him lots of money. In this sense, it failed completely.

Wagner felt that Mendelssohn's conservative musical style was “in the way” of his own more advanced style which some were already calling “Music of the Future.” Meyerbeer was one of the most powerful men in the European musical world and had a great deal to do with the failure of Wagner's earlier operas to get produced, especially in Paris where he ruled the opera house. With many of his other essays and articles discriminating against Jewish musicians and their supporters, this book became an embarrassment to people who supported him or liked his music, several of whom were Jewish. Many people dismissed Wagner's prose writings (and with it, these political manifestos) with the expression, “He was a great composer but a terrible writer.” Most people dismissed it as “sour grapes” and musically political, trying to destroy the music of his detractors, than anything socially viable.

It also isn't likely these writings, not well known to later generations, were ever part of Hitler's readings or those of anyone formulating the politics of the growing Nazi party. Though it had been reprinted in the 1930s in Germany, there was little interest in it until after World War II.

But still, looking back on the history of the 19th Century, the attitude of Wagner remains. It was also a symptom of the society he lived in. Not to be too light about it, it is another form of discrimination and one that had tragic consequences difficult to analyze rationally.

Dr. Dick

Celebrities in Music

2009-08-31T10:10:00.023-04:00

Today, popular music is full of celebrities who are idolized by cheering fans.

It may seem hard to believe that in the 19th Century, the concert virtuoso – a musician who played at an extremely high level, called “virtuosity” – was regarded as a cultural icon much like rock stars are today. People clamored to buy tickets for their performances. After the performance, the musician could be met by a cheering crowd who would lead him back to his hotel through the city streets.

PAGANINI

Vienna went crazy for the violinist Paganini when he performed there in the 1820s. He was tall, pencil-thin, had long hair and could do things on the violin that no one else ever imagined doing. Some said he had sold his soul to the devil in order to play like that. He dressed in black to accentuate his thinness. He often showed up in a black carriage drawn by black horses. It helped that he was a phenomenal violinist but the rest sold tickets and brought him fame.

(Just a side note: this fame or notoriousness backfired on him. The story about selling his soul to the devil? When he died, he refused last rights not because he didn't believe in God but because he didn't believe he was going to die just then. Unfortunately word got around it must have been because he'd sold his soul to the devil. The priest would not allow his body to buried in 'consecrated ground' which was about the only place you could be buried. His coffin remained in the basement of his house for five years while the landlord rented out his old rooms. Then they put it in the basement of a nearby hospital. His son finally took the coffin back to his home town but they were not allowed to enter the city, so they stored it in the tower of a friend's country estate. The gardener charged tourists money to view the corpse. ” People claimed to hear a violin playing in the middle of the night. His body was moved around a few more times, sometimes being buried in a garden but not a real cemetery. It took 36 years and a decree from the Pope to allow him to buried properly in a cemetery! So much for “Rest in Peace”...)

People often describe other great artists performing on other instruments as “The Paganini of the Double Bass” or something like that. In fact, today, you could call Paganini the “Michael Jackson of the Violin.” He did things that no other artist could do. While Michael Jackson would “moon-walk,” Paganini might play an especially difficult passage using a certain technique that only he could play, and the audience would break into applause or cheers.

LISZT

Franz Liszt as a young concert pianist was the first pianist to perform with his profile to the audience. Before that, the sat with their backs to the audience. Why did Liszt make this change? Well, for one, he was a very handsome man and young ladies in the audience would want to see this. He also felt that, as he played emotional music, audiences wanted to see the expression on his face when he played it.
In fact, Liszt would come out to the piano wearing gloves. After he'd sit down, he'd take these gloves off in such a way, young ladies would “swoon.” In those days, a woman showing her ankle in public was considered “erotic,” so perhaps the idea of peeling off gloves like this implied something erotic.

Think of Michael Jackson and his habit of wearing just one glove. Or the different kinds of physical moves that singers and dancers would make that might be considered “sexy.” It may seem pretty tame compared to some guy coming out and peeling off a pair of gloves, but lots of other things have changed between the middle of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 21st!

OTHER CELEBRITIES

Johann Strauss Jr., known as "The Waltz King" in Vienna, had so many fans not just asking for his autograph but for a lock of his hair, a very common celebrity souvenir in the 19th Century. It was said he joked about going bald to satisfy his fans, so he got a black Newfoundland dog whose hair was similar in color and texture to his own. Whether the dog went bald or not, I have no idea.

Composers were celebrities, too. Fans of Beethoven had gathered to hear his concerts. When he wrote “Wellington's Victory” to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon's troops in Spain in 1813, everybody wanted to hear it, everybody talked about it. Beethoven was a “popular” composer in a way a composer of symphonies and quartets could NOT be. But people went out and bought his music so they could play his sonatas in their own homes or they'd buy tickets to go hear an orchestra play his latest symphony. And in that sense, Beethoven was able to use this popularity to earn more money.

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MENDELSSOHN as a MUSICAL IDOL

Mendelssohn, though not the virtuosic showman that Liszt and Paganini were, also had his fans. One of them was Queen Victoria of England. When he first met the young Queen and her husband, Prince Albert, in 1842, she sang some of his own songs for him to show how much she enjoyed his music. People flocked to hear Mendelssohn's concerts when he would perform a piano concerto or conduct the orchestra whether he was in England or in Germany. Works like the “Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream” on a program would guarantee more tickets would be sold.

When Mendelssohn was in Leipzig, ill and dying, the news that he was close to death brought large crowds of people out into the streets around his house, a vigil as people waited for the inevitable. When they heard that he had just died, hundreds of people stormed the house and tried to get into the room where he was lying. Friends had to push people out of the room so that Mendelssohn's own family could get into the room themselves (the children had been asleep at the time) so they could have a private last moment with him.

At the funeral service, a chorus of 600 sang a chorale by Bach and a chorus from his oratorio, St. Paul. That night, a thousand people, many carrying torches, accompanied the casket to the train station. Wherever the train stopped on its way back to Berlin, in the middle of the night, the train was greeted by hundreds of people singing tributes to Mendelssohn. (Just writing this now, I'm thinking of having watched news coverage of the funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy).

(At left is the statue of Mendelssohn standing in front of the Leipzig concert hall where he conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Erected in 1892, it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1936. It was not replaced until October, 2008, but relocated to the front of the St. Thomas Church which had once been Bach's church.)

A performance of one of Mendelssohn's recent works, the oratorio Elijah, had been long been scheduled in Vienna, to take place ten days after his death. But instead of being a joyous musical occasion, their first chance to hear a new work by “the master” that had been highly acclaimed after other performances, it became a memorial tribute. The musicians' stands were all draped in black, the singers were dressed in black, the conductor's podium where Mendelssohn would have stood was draped in black with a laurel wreath resting on the score. The man who conducted the performance stood on a podium lower than that in deference to Mendelssohn's memory. It was a solemn occasion and people wept openly.

Queen Victoria, after writing a personal letter to Mendelssohn's widow, wrote in her journal:

“We were horrified, astounded and distressed to read in the papers of the death of Mendelssohn, the greatest musical genius since Mozart & a most amiable man. He was quite worshipped by those who knew him intimately & we have so much appreciated & admired his wonderfully beautiful compositions. We liked & esteemed the excellent man & looked up to & revered the wonderful genius & the great mind, which I fear were too much for the frail delicate body. With it all, he was so modest & simple...”

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RICHARD WAGNER: DEALING with the GOOD & the BAD

One of the great composer-celebrities of his time was the composer Richard Wagner (pronounced in German, VOG-n'r). He was far from being “modest & simple.” He was controversial because he wrote difficult “new” music that not everybody liked. There were fans who loved his music and felt it was definitely the direction music should be going in (more modern) and those who hated what he composed and felt he was destroying music completely.

He was extremely egotistic and a very unpleasant person to deal with. He had an affair with a woman who was the daughter of Franz Liszt and the wife of a conductor who championed Wagner's music. She had two children by Wagner even before she left her husband. They lived together for years and had another child before the divorce became final and they could legally marry.

He had been charged with treason during the 1848 revolution in the Kingdom of Saxony where he lived and had to flee for his life to avoid arrest. If he ever returned to Saxony, he would have been arrested and possibly executed.

He was outspokenly anti-Semitic and wrote many articles full of nasty accusations against Mendelssohn because he had been born a Jew. In fact, after he died, Mendelssohn's fame began to diminish as Wagner continued to campaign against what he called “Jewishness in Music.” Many of the heroic characters in his cycle of four operas called “The Ring of the Niebelung” - based on ancient German legends similar to those in Tolkein's “Lord of the Ring” (different ring, though, but same idea) – are represented by stereotypes of German culture: the villains are characterized with stereotypes of Jewish culture.

(You can read more about Wagner's anti-semitism and the impact of anti-Semitism on Mendelssohn life in this post.)

Years after Wagner's death in 1883, Hitler was one of those fans who loved Wagner's music and believed in the same political and anti-Semitic attitudes. When he came to control the political party known as the Nazis, he imposed Wagner on them as a cultural ideal (even though many of his government's leaders slept through the operas he forced them to attend). And so Wagner has long been associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Until recently, it was forbidden to perform Wagner's music in Israel. In 2001, Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim added a piece by Wagner to a program when he was conducting a Berlin orchestra during an Israeli tour. It created an international furor. Anyone programming Wagner's music in Israel today would still face considerable controversy.

People who love the music usually have difficulties separating the man and his personal philosophies from the music.

When Michael Jackson died recently, much of the media attention focused on negative aspects of his life – the child molestation accusations and trials, the strangeness of his behavior and all the little details and flaws of a person that might get in the way of saying “this was a great artist.” And yet he was a great singer and dancer and one of the most celebrated popular musicians during his lifetime. How much should this personal life determine how history views him? It's not an easy question.

It's not that Wagner's “negative issues” are comparable to Michael Jackson's. But it raises a question about how you separate Life from Art.

Something to think about.

- Dr. Dick

Background: Classical & Popular Music

2009-08-31T09:33:00.015-04:00

It's difficult to say when “Music” divided into “Classical Music” and “Popular Music.” There was always some music that was more popular than others but there was never the distinction made between one or the other until the 20th Century.

A TEDIOUSLY BRIEF SUMMARY of the HISTORY of MUSIC

The history of music deals primarily with music that has been written down. The process of notation that we know of today, though, looking at a piece of music you can play on a piano, did not really develop until into the 14th Century, changing gradually over the next several centuries before it became standardized in the 17th Century.

By the 9th Century, musicians in the Christian churches of Europe began using symbols adapted from the old Jewish system of marks and symbols that, like letters, had to be learned – one symbol meant a particular pattern of notes; another symbol a different pattern of notes. It was a kind of musical short-hand placed underneath the text in smaller characters. The cantor would memorize these so he could reproduce the musical declamation of a line of sacred text. Otherwise, it was handed down from generation to generation and learned by rote.

Today, we can only assume (or guess) what these symbols might have meant so long ago and how they changed over the centuries.

But there was always music.

People sang when they worked in the fields. People danced when they celebrated a successful harvest. This music, though, was never written down. It was also passed on from generation to generation by rote. Parents would sing it, their children would hear it and then sing it so their children would hear it. This is called “the oral tradition.” It is the same way legends and poems, the rituals of daily life and the beliefs of the early religions survived from one generation to the next before there was a system for writing it down.

When the music for the Roman Catholic church service – especially for the sacred texts of the liturgy (the texts and music used during the service) – was being written down, they probably adapted songs that people knew from their daily lives. A melody associated with the harvest might become the basis for a chant sung to words of the liturgy (perhaps the Sanctus or the Lord's Prayer). Musicians in the 12th Century playing for a celebration of the harvest might take a fragment of something everybody knew from church and turn it into a dance. The priests might think that was inappropriate (or scandalous or downright heretical) but there probably was some kind of back-and-forth between music used in the sacred part of ones life and in the secular or everyday part of ones life.

The music for the church was completely vocal – religious texts that were sung. Instruments were rarely allowed. The music of the people – therefore called “popular” - was both sung and played on instruments.

THE FUNCTION OF MUSIC

Music had two basic functions – the sacred music of the religious service and the secular music that was associated with every-day life. This secular music was usually “practical.” It accompanied a function – whether it was celebrating the hunt or helping women pounded grain into flour. A song for one thing would not have been sung for a different function.

It wasn't mean to be sung for entertainment: it was sung to help make the work go more easily. In travel films today, you can see women in an African village pounding grain singing something rhythmic to help coordinate the continuous flow of their actions. People might add new text – advice women might want to pass on to their daughters, for instance, or maybe village gossip – in between a refrain about making bread. It helped pass the time.

Later, as people in Europe wanted to be entertained, music was sung or played after dinner. Dances now had no particular practical use beyond enjoying the movement of dance – not just about celebrating the harvest. Some of these were folk-dances from the country-side; others may have been specifically urban dances: they all had specific patterns, rhythmic sounds and national identities. Considering all the kinds of popular dances we have today, they had many different kinds of dances that became popular thousands of years ago.

Eventually, many of these in the 13th or 18th centuries, for example, became more stylized dances, like the 18th Century Minuet (right). This eventually became “art music” that eventually could be played in a concert that no one would have actually danced to. Music was now no longer “functional” but became “entertaining,” what is often called “decorative art.”

The music that survived from these very old times was the music that was written down. This was music to be played for feudal lords of the Middle Ages and their society of aristocrats. Rather than being as earthy as the music the townspeople might have danced to, drinking in a tavern, they became more representative of their economic class, more 'refined,' along with what was more acceptable social and moral behavior.

POPULAR & CLASSICAL

And so “popular” music – music of the people – developed more freely. “Art” music developed along similar lines but for a different demographic, as people in marketing would say today.

Popular Music is something we can listen to easily because we understand its context - we ARE its context.

Art Music usually requires an "introduction" because we're not part of its immediate or original context. Art Music usually demands more concentration to understand it.

Until the Industrial Revolution, there were basically two classes of people: those who ruled and the people they ruled. There wasn't much chance for people from the lower level to move into the upper one. Wealth and power were handed down through the family: a child would inherit the money and attitudes of his family. These became the noblemen of Europe, the aristocrats.

Even before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism started creating a Middle Class, people who worked in as merchants or later in factories could rise to a higher economic status by hard work and become managers or owners of new factories. People in the town who sold the material the factories made became merchants who could make their money when other people bought their merchandise. Some made more than others. This money, too, and the ownership of factories and stores might be passed from generation to generation but it was more fragile and less restricted than the inheritance of the aristocracy.

And once people had money and became wealthy, they wanted to “show off” this wealth by building nicer houses, wearing better clothes and, imitating the aristocrats, developed a liking for art and music. A merchant of the “upper middle class” could have his portrait painted or employ a string quartet or maybe a small orchestra just like a prince could.

Felix Mendelssohn's father Abraham was a wealthy banker. They had a large home with a salon or music room that could seat a large number of people where they gave concerts for their friends on Sunday afternoons. Many of these performers were the Mendelssohn children: both Fanny and Felix played the piano and composed music (Felix also played the violin and the viola); Rebekkah sang and Paul played the cello. But they also had other friends who would come and play with them and, for several performances, Abraham might hire an orchestra or singers. Keep in mind that Felix's grandfather had been a philosopher and his great-grandfather had been a simple peddler.

Most people couldn't afford to do that, so instead orchestras went “public” and people would buy tickets to go hear them in concerts. Musicians now could make a living playing in an orchestra that made its money by selling tickets.

DIY MUSIC

Lots of people enjoyed music and enjoyed making the music themselves. It was considered standard for young ladies to be able to play the piano and sing to provide their husbands and families with "live entertainment" in the days before radio, television or sound-systems. In a novel like Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," many scenes describe the daughters of the Bennett family entertaining their friends after dinner.

As the 19th Century progressed into the more democratic 20th Century, it was not necessarily an either/or class-oriented system, which type of music people could enjoy. Factory workers might have been accused of "putting on airs" if they went to concerts to hear Beethoven just as wealthy people would have been accused of "going beneath their station" if they were caught in the taverns and cabarets to listen to gypsy music or what became jazz.

Today, there is no reason anyone can't like any kind of music they want to.

In the 19th Century, composers probably made more money from the sale of their sheet music to amateur players who would gather in their homes to play the music for themselves and each other. They weren't thinking of the concert hall: just their own enjoyment of the music they played.

Musicians who were better than the average orchestra musician might become soloists and play a “concerto,” standing in front of the orchestra. The best became famous and people would buy tickets to hear their favorite performers. Some became so famous, they became “celebrities.”

You can read more about them in this post.

- Dr. Dick

Child Prodigy Meets Great Master: Mendelssohn & Goethe

2009-08-30T22:22:00.001-04:00

In November, when Mendelssohn was 12, Zelter his composition teacher took him to meet the poet, Goethe (pronounced GER-teh), who was a friend of his.

It's difficult to describe how significant this would have been for a German child. There is no equivalent in today's world to explain what it would be like to meet Goethe. He wasn't just a poet: he was THE Poet, the greatest living German writer who is still regarded as one of the most important writers in the world - of all time. That sounds like over-the-top marketing in today's world, but what Shakespeare is to people who speak English, Goethe is to people who speak German. His drama, Faust – the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil – is regarded as one of the greatest works of the 19th Century. There was probably no more highly regarded man in Germany – and he had agreed to meet a 12-year-old composer.

In addition to being a poet, dramatist and novelist, Goethe was also a philosopher and scientist, and also wrote about theology and humanism. His interest in music was primarily scientific – the science of sounds – though he enjoyed music. He had played the cello and the piano in his younger days but was puzzled by Beethoven and not at all interested in Schubert. In fact, in 1816 Schubert had sent Goethe a package that included 16 songs he'd written setting some of Goethe's best-loved poems to music but Goethe didn't even bother opening it.

THE FIRST VISIT

Mendelssohn's teacher had no sooner gotten past the introductions when Goethe opened the lid over the piano keys and asked him to play something.

His composition teacher, Zelter, hummed a tune he had suggested but the boy said he didn't know that one. So the teacher played it for him. Mendelssohn then played it back to him note perfect, then improvised a fantasy on it – as another person there described it, a wild, surging, torrential fantasia “that poured out like liquid fire.”

Everyone was amazed. Then he played some Mozart, played at sight something by Beethoven that was in manuscript (“looking like it had been written with a broomstick [not a pen] and then he smeared his sleeve over the ink”) but Felix figured it out without too many problems.

Some musicians from town were brought to Goethe's house. They didn't know the name Mendelssohn which they saw on the music in front of them. Zelter told them they would meet a boy who so far hasn't heard much praise or criticism so he hoped they would not go over-board one way or the other and just accept him as a young child beginning his career. “Up to now, I have been able to protect him against vanity and conceit, these two enemies of artistic progress.”

The boy came in, sat at the piano and played a new Piano Quartet with the string players. This is the scene represented in the drawing (see right): Felix Mendelssohn sits at the piano, Goethe stands facing him with his hands clasped behind his back.

Goethe complimented him, told him the expressions of the other musicians must let him know how pleased they were – then he sent him out into the garden to cool off (“you're perspiring”) and without a word, the boy ran outside.

Goethe told the others – in words of much higher praise – what he thought of young Mendelssohn when Zelter said “And yet you heard Mozart when he was 7 years old.”

Goethe was only 12 years old himself at that time, but comparing what Mozart was playing at 7 to what Mendelssohn was playing at 12, he said, was the difference between baby-talk and adult speech.

Of course, Mozart improved by the time he was 12 and also greew up to become one of the great composers, so Zelter said “Yes, many began like Mozart but no one ever reached him.”

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OTHER VISITS

There would be several friendly visits between young Mendelssohn and the great poet. The last one was ten years later but Goethe was by then old and ill. Mendelssohn was now 22 and on his way to Italy for an extended holiday. He described the poet as “an old lion who wants to go to sleep.”

The young man played him the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony at the piano. Goethe had never heard the work before (it was premiered in 1806 and Beethoven had only recently died). The old man still found it quite unnerving: “It is tremendous but quite mad. The whole house might collapse – imagine a whole orchestra playing it!”

Goethe wanted him to expand his interests to science and natural history “to avoid a one-sided mentality.” He angrily left the room when Mendelssohn expressed no real interest in these subjects. Felix then began to improvise quietly at the piano. Goethe came back into the room to listen and told him, “You have enough. Hold on to what you have.”

They continued to correspond while Mendelssohn was in Italy, but Goethe died the next year at the age of 82.

- Dr. Dick

The Child Prodigy

2009-08-30T22:16:00.016-04:00

When Felix Mendelssohn was 9, he performed a piano concerto at a public concert to considerable acclaim.

His mother had started him with piano lessons when he was 4. When he was 6, he started studying the piano with a man who was one of the most respected pianists and teachers in Berlin at the time. When he was 10, he also began studying composition with a man named Zelter who was the principal of the best music-school in Berlin, called the “Sing-Academy.”

The oldest of the four Mendelssohn children, Fanny, was four years older than her little brother Felix. She had been studying there with the same teachers already and its quite possible whatever his big sister was doing, he wanted to do, too.

SOME OTHER PRODIGIES

It's not uncommon for a child to begin lessons that young – I know I took my first piano lessons shortly after I started first grade – but it is unusual for them to become so good they can be performing in concerts at such an early age (I never did...).

When children exhibit talent you'd expect from an accomplished adult, they're called “prodigies.” There are prodigies in math, chess, science, as well as the arts.

One example: Lorin Maazel, who at 79 has just retired as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, started taking conducting lessons when he was 7, conducted the NBC Orchestra on a radio broadcast concert when he was 11 and the following year, toured the country conducting everal major orchestras. The two pictures included here are a Life Magazine photo taken of him when he was 13 and a publicity photo taken of him during his final season at the New York Philharmonic.

Another prodigy is the well-known violinist Sarah Chang. She made her debut recording when she was 10 (this publicity photo, right, was taken when she was 6) and has gone on to become one of the best violinists in America today. Her hometown is Philadelphia and this December, she turns 29. This more recent photo (see left) was taken when she was 25.

She had recently played with the York Symphony to help celebrate the orchestra's 75th Anniversary season.

Other violin prodigies would include Hilary Hahn from Baltimore who recorded works by Johann Sebastian Bach, some of the most challenging repertoire for solo violin (no piano or orchestra, just the violin) when she was 15. She's also 29 this season and won a Grammy Award last year for one of her most recent concerto recordings.

But not all prodigies become great adult performers. Some times, they “burn out” or fail to realize their potential, not growing beyond the talent they had as children. After a child-prodigy turns 18, it seems people tend to judge them as adults and if they can't compete on that level, careers often just “fold.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who started composing when he was 5 or 6. There's some argument whether he actually wrote those pieces, since his father actually wrote them down for him (did he 'edit' them to improve them?). But still, he wrote his first symphony for orchestra when he was 8 and wrote his 25th Symphony – which many people heard for the first time when they saw the movie based on a fictional account of his death, “Amadeus” – when he was 17.

Like Mendelssohn, Mozart had an older sister, too. Five years older than her famous little brother, she's known as “Nannerl,” her family nickname though her real name was Anna Maria. She was also a talented pianist and the story goes that when she would be practicing the piano, little Wolfgang started imitating what she was playing: he could play some of the pieces she'd been working on when he was 4 and hadn't had any lessons himself, yet. He made his first public appearance at the age of 5 and shortly after that, his father Leopold took the two children on a tour across Europe where they played before royalty and before public audiences who were amazed at what these children could both play and compose.

This tour makes us think of a trained circus acts – the children trotted out to perform their tricks – but their father was hoping to get his son's career started (as well as earn some money and show off his own ego as the father of these two brilliant children).

Ever since Mozart's tours in the 1760s, any father who saw a son exhibit that kind of talent hoped to make money on “the Next Mozart.” Beethoven's father had tried it, pushing his son Ludwig to practice hours and hours, sometimes after midnight, to perfect a talent which refused to develop into something as awesome as Mozart's.

Mendelssohn never had to go through this “circus act” phase. He performed at home and people came to him to hear him play or listen to the music he composed.

MENDELSSOHN the PRODIGY

Shortly after his 9th birthday, he composed a piano piece that seems to have been inspired by Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, the second oldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. C.P.E. Bach had been an important composer when he worked for King Frederick the Great in Berlin back in the 1740s.

Later that year, Mendelssohn composed 19 more piano pieces (including two sonatas), a violin sonata, a piano trio, a wedding cantata and several songs.

The following year, he started writing a series of short symphonies for string orchestra. His father had agreed to hire an orchestra so they could perform these works on their Sunday afternoon musicales. By the end of the year (1821), the 12-year old composer (see portrait, right) had completed seven of these little symphonies – he had to conduct standing on a chair so the musicians could see him over their music stands. These works all showed his development as he learned the intricacies of form, harmony and other compositional techniques.

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MUSIC BY a TEENAGE COMPOSER

Mendelssohn wrote a sextet for piano and strings in May of 1824, not long after his 15th birthday. It's an impressive work for a 15-year-old but if you compare it to his mature works, it's not as good – a modern critic describes it with words like pleasant and conventional but complains the last movement is “still more vapid.”

His next pieces included a concerto for two pianos, a few sonatas and another piano quartet (dedicated to Goethe). None of these are especially distinguished beyond being “okay for a teen-ager.” No one can explain, then, how the next work he wrote – his Octet for Strings which we'll hear the members of the West Branch Music Festival play on September 16th (I'll write more about the music itself, later) – was so much better, it's considered a masterpiece for a composer of any age!

It's one of the great works in classical music and one of the most popular works in the chamber music repertoire. It is finely crafted and assured as a work by any adult master. It has the vitality of youth, but the accomplishment of maturity.

The 3rd Movement, the Scherzo, became one of his most successful “excerpts” - inspired by the “fairy scene” in Goethe's Faust – the Walpurgis Night Dream sequence (vaal-PURR-ghiss, the German equivalent of Halloween though it occurs at the end of April) – you can hear the Scherzo in this video clip.

What were the next compositions like? He wrote another comic opera, “The Wedding of Camacho,” taking its story from a chapter of Don Quixote (see below for an up-date on its belated public premiere). Then the next year, he added a piano quintet, a piano sonata, a brief work for piano and orchestra and an orchestral concert overture (called the “Trumpet” Overture) to his catalogue.

In July, he wrote to his sister that he was sitting in the garden reading Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (in English) and “today or tomorrow” would begin composing an overture based on it (as he added, “I have a lot of nerve!”). By August 6th, he had finished it, complete with more sprite-music like the Octet's Scherzo (this kind of “elfin” texture – all lightness and air – became a signature sound of Mendelssohn's), and ideas that sound suitable for the different types of characters in the play. The score is remarkably free of corrections and rewrites which is astonishing for a composer of any age with a work like this.

Again, like the Octet, the inspiration is spontaneous, the craftsmanship assured. Though it doesn't intend to be a scene-by-scene retelling of the story, it fits all the elements of the play into its fairly strict classical structure. It would become one of Mendelssohn's most highly regarded and frequently performed works.

Seventeen years later, the King of Prussia would ask him to write incidental music for the play itself – since he'd already written the overture to it. So at the age of 34 he set about writing new music – including the famous Wedding March, a standard war-horse for weddings ever since – which sounds just as fresh and vibrant as the music he'd composed when he was a teen-ager.

After these two masterpieces it must have come as a surprise when the first public performance of an opera of his, “The Wedding of Camacho,” took place in a Berlin opera-house the next year. Now 18, Mendelssohn had his first major public appearance as a composer among the wider public but the work was a failure. When one of the lead singers became ill and a second performance was canceled, he never bothered to have it performed again – ever.

Perhaps it took some wind out of his sails, but he wrote less that year. One of these pieces was his first mature string quartet (it would end up being published as No. 2, though), patterned after one of Beethoven's last quartets. Beethoven had just died in March and Mendelssohn completed this striking quartet by late October. While it might seem derivative in spots and less self-assured in others, it is a considerably more serious work than either the Octet or the “Midsummer Night's Dream” Overture and shows considerable skill for someone only 18 years old.

By now, he was less of a prodigy and more of an adult. He finished his studies at the Berlin University. The only major work he completed in 1829 was an orchestral overture that combined two favorite poems by Goethe – “Calm Sea” and “Prosperous Voyage.”

He was also planning a performance of something unusual. In an age when most concerts focused on new music or at least music by still-living composers, the Berlin Sing-Academy performed music often heard no where else: old music by long-dead composers like Bach and his sons and their contemporaries.

Mendelssohn had in mind the first public performance of a nearly-forgotten piece by Johann Sebastian Bach which had not been heard since his death in 1750. Mendelssohn would conduct Bach's “St. Matthew Passion” in 1829, the year he turned 20. While Bach was not exactly forgotten, just not as widely performed or as highly regarded as his is now, Mendelssohn is still credited with starting the revival of interest in Bach's music.

By now, he was no longer a prodigy.

- Dr. Dick

Classical, Romantic; Left Brain, Right Brain

2009-08-29T23:07:00.009-04:00

It's a little confusing, but when we talk about “Classical Music,” we're usually referring to art music as opposed to popular music. Few people like the term because it means that popular music can't be 'art' and classical music can't be 'popular.' People tried calling it “Serious Music” but aren't most musicians serious about what they do, no matter what kind of music they write or play? So we're stuck with “Classical.”

But there are different historical periods of “Classical Music” - one of which is called “Classical.” So it just makes it more confusing. When we're talking about the major historical periods, the basic ones are

Baroque (1600-1750)
Classical (1750-1800)
Romantic (1800-1900)
Modern (1900- )

The dates are only approximate but the important thing is to realize the stylistic differences between what we call these “Classical” and “Romantic” periods. Just to make it more confusing, they can also co-exist at the same time in almost any period, no matter what the period's called.

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LEFT BRAIN, RIGHT BRAIN / CLASSICAL, ROMANTIC

The two different halves of the brain control different aspects of the way we think. It turns out that some peoples' personalities are dominated by one over the other; and other people can be a little of both, like a compromise.

The Left Brain examines things in a logical, rational, sequential nature. A Left-brained person is usually more analytical and objective, looking at the parts to understand the whole.

The Right Brain examines things in a more random, intuitive way and rather than analyzing everything, tends to be more subjective, looking at the whole thing first before understanding the component parts.

In the past, scientists described these Left Brain characteristics as being either Apollonian after the Greek god Apollo who was the god of the sun and also of things like logic. The Right Brain characteristics were called Dionysian, after Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek god of wine. And since drinking wine led to irrational acting and thinking, it seemed appropriate.

So essentially, we could say that “Classical Music” is more Apollonian or Left-Brained – logical, sequential, very structured, leaner textures in the sound of the music, clearer in its form and content. The form is more obvious - you can usually tell where you are in the structure of the piece. Harmony and Form are more important than Melody and Rhythm.

It's also usually abstract - music about music. You might think it suggests something, some other kind of image in your mind, but that's you interpreting it, not necessarily what the composer is implying.

What we call “Romantic Music” is more Dionysian or Right-Brained, tending to be more emotional, not really concerned with following the rules, moving forward intuitively rather than pre-planned (if something unexpected happens, maybe the composer might be thinking "oh, that's cool - wonder where this is going? Let's find out"). The texture of the music might be denser, maybe even “messy” without clear lines where the harmony is going or what is actually the melody. The music can be more dramatic with more contrast or conflict in the over-all sound. Melody may be more important and rhythm is used to propel the music and to create an emotional response. Harmony and Form, two very “structured” elements of music are less rigid. A “Romantic” composer is less concerned about breaking the rules.

It's more subjective and may be inspired by something else - a literary idea or an image of some kind. Basically, we think it might “tell a story” or paint a picture.

Schools generally want you to think “Left Brained” when you're a student because it helps to understand the rules before you break them. Unfortunately, sometimes students don't really learn they CAN be “Right Brained.” Part of that becomes a mature personality, whether it's in music or how you approach your life in general.

People who dress neatly and follow a schedule, who are good at math or science might be Left-Brained people. People who are sloppy in their dress or are usually late might be more creative and good at story-telling (it comes in handy when making excuses) - they are more likely to be Right-Brained.

But it's not unusual for people to be a little of both. After all, if we were supposed to be only one or the other, we'd only need half a brain, right? Wait... let me rephrase that...

MENDELSSOHN'S "BRAIN"

Everybody's "wired differently," as they say today.

Mendelssohn was primarily a “classical” person who lived in a “romantic” age. His music sounds different than many of his contemporaries (which I'll get to, later), not as emotional with cleaner textures and simpler sense of harmony and structure. But there was still a sense of emotion, just not as “out there” as some of his contemporaries.

Even though he was writing string quartets while Beethoven was still alive, Mendelssohn's earliest works were influenced by composers of the past – Carl Philip Emanuel Bach who died in 1788 and Mozart who'd died in Vienna in 1791. They were "Classical" composers. Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach was almost forgotten not long after he died in 1750, but Mendelssohn played several of his keyboard pieces like the Preludes and Fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier and liked them very much. There were certain old-fashioned compositional techniques that he found very helpful and he incorporated them in his own music. Other composers writing at the same time didn't find these techniques very important. Today, we don't really think much about it when we listen to all this music from the past – whether it's Mendelssohn's music or Mozart's or Bach's or any of the other composers writing in the 1820s and '30s. But at the time, it sounded different to those listeners.

Not necessarily better. Not worse, either (though some people may have thought that). Just different. It sounded old-fashioned to a lot of people but it was well written and fit in with the whole “comfortable” idea that people in this Biedermeier Age liked. It had elegance and beauty, was based on the old-fashioned traditional forms (none of this new-fangled stuff people couldn't understand on first hearing) and he knew how to add some brilliance to it to make it exciting. That's all part of the “Left-Brain” side.

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MUSIC & IMAGES: TELLING STORIES, PAINTING PICTURES IN SOUND

But it was also an age of great literature and of pleasant paintings, so he often found himself inspired by literary ideas and with creating musical images of things he'd seen. When he went to Scotland when he was 20, he saw this great cave on one of the Hebrides Islands just off the coast called “Fingal's Cave.” Watching the tide come in, he watched the water flowing into the cave and wrote down a musical figure that represented the waves. Later on, he turned those visual images and that musical depiction of waves into a piece of music he called “Fingal's Cave” or “The Hebrides.”

This, however, is something more “Right-Brained” – more of a “Romantic” idea. And it's something that Mendelssohn did quite a lot: his trip to Scotland gave us this orchestral work called “Fingal's Cave” but also a whole symphony inspired by the landscapes and atmosphere of Scotland which he called (logically) his “Scottish” Symphony. Most people take pictures or buy post-cards: Mendelssohn wrote two musical compositions as souvenirs!

Here are two videos for you – this first one was filmed by someone visiting the Island of Staffa and seeing the cave. It's a cloudy, rainy day (making it more mysterious) and he sweeps the camera around a bit. It's also a little dark looking into the cave but you get to hear someone playing real Scottish bag-pipes inside the cave. Then around 3:00 into the clip, the tide starts to come in: watch the waves but listen to them, too. You only need to watch about a minute of it here, just to get the idea. It's really cool at 5:07, though, where the cameraman is inside the cave, looking out at the sea. Listen to the waves!
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The cave probably hasn't changed much in the 180 years since Mendelssohn saw it and jotted down the thematic idea that eventually became this piece of music. Listen how the music swells, rising and falling like waves.

This video is just the opening 4 minutes, not the whole piece, and it's played by a student orchestra in Belgium. Maybe you can run both of the videos at the same time (starting the first clip around 2:00 in and then starting Mendelssohn's music - you might need to turn the volume down or off on the Cave Video, though)?
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It may not accompany the first video like a film-score, but once you've seen the actual cave and heard the sound of the waves, listen just to the music in the 2nd video and imagine what it is you're hearing the music describe.

This is what we call “program music” - music that tells a story or paints a scene. And this is something that is a “Romantic” (as opposed to a “Classical”) idea.

Now, when Mendelssohn writes an octet for strings – one of the works we'll hear on September 16th – we'll hear an “abstract” work – music that's only about music, not really telling a story. That's a very “Classical” idea.

But when we get to the 3rd movement, the “scherzo” (SKAIR-tzoh), there's a slight change. Scherzo is the Italian word for “joke” - in music, it's something fast, lively, sometimes funny but at least not always so serious.

Mendelssohn told his older sister that this section of the music was inspired by the fairy spirits associated with the old German equivalent of Halloween. It was these lines by the great German poet Goethe (GER-teh) who was also a personal friend of Mendelssohn's: they describe the shadows of elves (or some kind of sprites) barely visible, who then suddenly disappear, as if blown away like leaves in a breeze.

Floating cloud and trailing mist
Are illuminated from above.
Breeze in the foliage and wind in the reeds –
And all is turned to dust.

This music goes up to 4:22 - the rest of the clip is the last movement of the octet.
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The fact it's inspired by a visual or literary image makes this “Romantic” (a typical Classical composer from the 18th Century wouldn't have done that) but the fact the sound and texture is so clean and the harmony so clear makes it very “Classical.”

You could say this is Mendelssohn using BOTH sides of his brain.

Oh, and did I mention Mendelssohn was 16 when he composed the Octet?

- Dr. Dick

Moses Mendelssohn, the Composer's Grandfather

2009-08-29T10:35:00.011-04:00

Into our story, now, comes Moses Mendelssohn, born in 1729 to a poor Jewish peddler known locally as Mendel. German Jews had no right, at that time, to “formal names” and so when the boy was given the name Moses (perhaps the most common boys' name among the Jews of his town), neighbors called him “Moses, Mendel's son.”

Regardless of the family's poverty, the father was determined the boy would have as much education as possible. Eventually Moses studied law – which is what most students studied if they wanted to achieve the most well-rounded education available.

Trained in the art of speculation in the Talmud, Moses found the Enlightenment – where you examined a question “like an insect imbedded in amber, put under the microscope, turned this way and that, disassembled and reassembled before you could be sure of the answer” – a natural fit for him.

(In this drawing, Mendelssohn, seated on the left, discusses an idea with two fellow philosophers.)

While treating religion this way may affect a person's faith, philosophers found the Enlightenment gave them nothing to believe in instead, having taken away the comfort of even a mild faith where religion – if not its dogma – gave comfort and meaning to the “big questions” of our existence and our direction.

But in his Phaedo (written in 1767), “three dialogues [after Plato] on the Immortality of the Soul” – essentially a translation of Plato into German but with up-dates – Moses Mendelssohn argued that Reason in fact led to Religion, that God did exist (when others argued, because He could not be seen, He did not exist) but that “the religious instinct may not serve as a reason to enforce acceptance of any one specific religious doctrine.” He believed in Judaism because, to him, no other religion contained as many admonitions to lead believers toward “justice, piety, obedience to law and state, human warmth (humanity).” In reality, he wrote, it made no real difference what religion one chose:

“All religions are partly theoretical and partly practical. Their theoretical side has no influence on morality. Men often have constructed false moralities from true theories and true morality from false theories... Religion makes it easier to do good because it cites motives for doing so. Any religion does that if it holds out the promise to man that doing good will please God and the evil will displease Him. Yet the definition of what is 'good' is impeded by the prejudices of various religions. You ask me which religion is least impeded? I answer, the religion which permits the greatest freedom to Reason.”

Later, he also wrote that he believed the Jews had helped separate themselves from the society they lived in by holding their services in Hebrew. He felt they should adopt the language of the country they lived in rather than the language of their heritage. Keep in mind Catholicism still maintained its religious services in Latin – the use of the “vernacular” or language of the location was still controversial when it became a reality following the 2nd Vatican Council (Vatican II) which met in the 1960s.

Moses Mendelssohn also opposed the idea of a Homeland – the Zionist dream of returning to what is now Israel was already gaining popularity in the 18th Century – believing that “Home lies where your home is.” “The wall of the ghetto must be torn down by men working from inside as well as from outside.”

He began translating the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) into German. But rabbis declared this translation an act of heresy (it should be read only in Hebrew), proposing a series of punishments for Jews caught reading it. The Danish king, Christian VII, for one, came out in favor of Mendelssohn's work and made it illegal to carry out the rabbis' plan.

(By the way, in 1820, Franz Schubert set Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the 23rd Psalm to music for women's voices and piano.)

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THE MONKEYS

Though these ideas were controversial, Moses Mendelssohn's works were popular with the general German public and he was highly regarded. That didn't mean people like Frederick the Great or members of his government couldn't still get away with anti-Semitic statements and acts.

For one, it had been decided early in 1761, that when Jews married or bought a house, they were required – by royal edict – to buy certain amounts of porcelain from the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin. The Jewish buyer could not even choose what they might want: it was just handed to them.

When Moses Mendelssohn married, he had to buy twenty porcelain monkeys which became a symbol in the Mendelssohn family, passed on from father to son as a reminder, until the 1930s and the rise of Hitler. After that, the monkeys disappeared.

(I don't know if these are similar to the Mendelssohn Monkeys or not - they were also made at a different porcelain factory - but they date from around the period. I saw a trumpet-playing monkey from this set listed on-line for sale at $1,862. I also doubt it was the Mendelssohn Monkeys that were the inspiration for Warren Zevon's 2000 song, 'Porcelain Monkeys' from his album "Life'll Kill Ya".)

This edict was repealed in 1787 and in 1808, “deserving Jews” in Berlin were awarded citizen's privileges, including the right to be elected to honorary posts. In 1812, shortly after Abraham Mendelssohn brought his family to Berlin, Prussia issued the “Emancipation Edict” declaring all Jews full-scale citizens.

Moses Mendelssohn, who had earned the king's favor as a “Protected Jew,” had died in 1786.

In 1813, his son, Abraham (see drawing, right), was honored as a public benefactor for helping to finance the army that defeated Napoleon in that year's war. He was then appointed to Berlin's Municipal Council. Imagine what his own grandfather, Mendel the Peddler, would have thought of that!

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MOSES MENDELSSOHN MEETS HIS WIFE

The story passed down in the Mendelssohn family about how Moses met his future wife may or may not be true, but it's a wonderful story.

In 1762, when Moses was 33 years old and already well-known, he visited Hamburg where he met a 24-year old blonde, blue-eyed Jewish girl named Fromet Gugenheim, the daughter of a merchant. She knew him by reputation and had read some of his books but was surprised when she first saw him. He was short, frail-looking and humpbacked. She burst into tears.

Mendelssohn asked her, “Is it my hump?” he asked. She nodded. Then he continued, “Let me tell you a story, then.”

“When a Jewish child is born,” he began, “proclamation is made in heaven of the name of the person that he or she is to marry. When I was born, my future wife was also named, but at the same time it was said that she herself would be humpbacked. ‘O God,’ I said, ‘a deformed girl will become embittered and unhappy. Dear Lord, let me have the hump, and make her fair and beautiful.’”

Fromet (see drawing, left) was touched by the story, and in June 1762, they were married. They had nine children, six of whom grew to adulthood (considering the mortality of children in the 18th Century, this was a luckier family than many).

Another story was told, that when Moses was out walking with two of his young sons, they were attacked by some men who called them names and threw stones at them. One of his sons asked his father, “Papa, is it such a disgrace to be a Jew?” He wrote to a friend that he lowered his eyes, sighed and thought to himself, “Men, men – where have you led yourselves?” On the other hand, he was able to rent a large private garden where he and his family could walk without being molested.

The eldest child, a daughter named Brendel (later changed to Dorothea), married a merchant chosen for her by her father (typical of the day but rather old-fashioned for a modern thinker like Moses Mendelssohn). After bearing four children to her husband, she met the young philosopher and writer Friedrich Schlegel, son of a Protestant clergyman. They fell in love and she ran away with him, living together until they got married four years later. They both converted to Catholicism a couple of years after that. Dorothea also became a writer and novelist.

The family's three sons founded a banking corporation in Hamburg, the main German port. This became one of the major banks in Germany. The second youngest son, Abraham, established himself with the firm in Paris in 1797 before moving back to Hamburg in 1804, then moving back to the family's home in Berlin in 1811 (see A Mendelssohn Chronology). It was in 1809, during their years in Hamburg, that Abraham's son Felix, the composer, was born. (The photograph at left shows the entrance to the Mendelssohn Bank, in a building opened in 1820.)

Once Felix had become one of the most internationally famous composers and a busy conductor, Abraham Mendelssohn (whose own success in the field of commerce was considerable) quipped “I am the son of my father and the father of my son.”

A biographer later wrote of the three generations of Mendelssohn men: “One wrote books, one wrote loans, the other wrote music.”

- Dr. Dick