# Thank you, Felix!



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Apropos to nothing at all.

We all know that Mendelssohn was responsible for re-introducing Bach's religious choral works to Europe's audiences in 1829, at the age of twenty. He wryly commented, "To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!" But did you know...

Beethoven wrote two "twin" works, his Violin Concerto and 4th Piano Concerto, premiering four months apart in 1806 and 1807. Both were non-heroic major-key works, both of great depth, and both with highly original and moving slow movements. But both sank like stones, with few or no further performances in Beethoven's lifetime.

The piano concerto was revived in 1836 and the violin concerto in 1844 by -- who else -- Felix Mendelssohn. They quickly entered the repertoire and have remained at or near the tops of their genres ever since.

So...thank you, Felix!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Thank you indeed! The violin concerto might be my favorite piano concerto. The piano version, I mean.

Weirdly, even as big a Beethoven fanboy as I have become, I coudln't hum any themes from any of his concertos except the famous 5th, and the violin concerto. I know them when I hear them, but the themes don't come readily to mind for some reason. 

Mendelssohn was great gift to the music world, but he has even fewer themes that stay in my head -- maybe the Hebridean overture and some of the songs without words. The symphonies? Gone. Not that having themes sticking in one's head is any sign of greatness, I just think it's weird that they don't. Maybe I listen to way too much music.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Weston said:


> Maybe I listen to way too much music.


Impossible!


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Weston said:


> Mendelssohn was great gift to the music world, but he has even fewer themes that stay in my head -- maybe the Hebridean overture and some of the songs without words. The symphonies? Gone. Not that having themes sticking in one's head is any sign of greatness, I just think it's weird that they don't.


That's interesting. I would have thought the main themes of the Italian Symphony and the Violin Concerto to be quintessential earworms.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Hausmusik said:


> That's interesting. I would have thought the main themes of the Italian Symphony and the Violin Concerto to be quintessential earworms.


Not to mention that wedding ditty and the Xmas tune (Hark the Herald Angels Sing). Perhaps they are so ubiquitous that we forget they are Mendelssohn.

I knew about his Bach revival, but not about the Beethoven one. Thank you Felix indeed!


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Yes! Thank you, Felix, indeed!

I also didn't know of Mendelssohn's Beethoven Revival, and it is yet another of the many items we may add to the credit of Mendelssohn.

I never understood the pervasive diminution of Mendelssohn's greatness; I see the most common complaint is that he did not innovate, but I cannot accept that the only mark of a great composer is superseding the old forms. Cannot excelling in traditional forms--no small accomplishment, I might add--also be a trait of the great?

I get a little protective of my beloved Felix.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Possibly his life was not scandalous enough.

Can anyone tell me a good place to start exploring his chamber music? I have the octet, and it is amazing, but way too fast and too much going on for me to absorb in the first movement. I understand he tosses the motifs around the various combinations of instruments. Maybe I need to see a video to grasp what is going on rather than just listening. 

Anything else? Something more mature, maybe with piano?


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Weston:

String Quartet #6 in F Minor
String Quintet #2 in B Flat
Piano Trio #2 in C Minor

Those will suit you perfectly, I hope.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Weston, this is a great place to begin. Ideal, in fact!


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

I understood he had some Organ Works as well. Anything to look for?


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas #1 in F Minor and 6 in D Minor.

Also, especially the three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37: a great deal like Bach's organ works.

Mendelssohn was a master of counterpoint, and especially the fugal form.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Organ Sonata #6 in D Minor [Sorry that the sound is a little scratchy]






The Prelude and Fugue in C Minor is one of my favorite organ works of all. This video has a very clear sound, although I prefer other interpretations.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Weston said:


> Possibly his life was not scandalous enough.
> 
> Can anyone tell me a good place to start exploring his chamber music? I have the octet, and it is amazing, but way too fast and too much going on for me to absorb in the first movement. I understand he tosses the motifs around the various combinations of instruments. Maybe I need to see a video to grasp what is going on rather than just listening.
> 
> Anything else? Something more mature, maybe with piano?


According to some, Mendelssohn's Octet was his best work. I don't have a clear enough picture of his entire oeuvre to make that judgment, but it's my favorite of the ones I'm familiar with.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Mahlerian, the second movement (andante) strikes me as the best of the entire Octet, but that's y personal taste; Mendelssohn has an incredible way with slow movements.

Slow movements are commonly my favorites.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Novelette said:


> Weston, this is a great place to begin. Ideal, in fact!


Very nice! I have made a connection to Mendelssohn's melodic style now so that I stand a better chance of recognizing him on first hearing a piece or when one comes up on my iPod during shuffle play. There is a siren outside at 5:50 that puzzled me for a moment. I thought he had thrown in some kind of bizarre cello glissando, way ahead of his time.

I don't know if you would call this early romantic, but I love this time period. It still seems very close to Beethoven formally and avoids a lot of the romantic excesses that were to come later with huge orchestras and raging self proclaimed geniuses.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Weston said:


> I don't know if you would call this early romantic, but I love this time period. It still seems very close to Beethoven formally and avoids a lot of the romantic excesses that were to come later with huge orchestras and raging self proclaimed geniuses.


You mean Berlioz (whose Requiem is scored for an absurdly large ensemble including four offstage brass bands) and Schumann (who proclaimed himself leader of the Davidsbundler fighting against the Philistines)? He was contemporaneous with them. Mendelssohn is definitely Romantic in style, but more reserved than some of his peers.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

But of course, Berlioz was ahead of his time. ;-)


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

What on earth is wrong with "raging, self-proclaimed geniuses"? 

The main thing that turns me off to high/late Romanticism is the tendency towards an overbearing and bathetic nationalism. I just can never bring myself to be in the mood to listen to Sibelius's, "Finlandia", Smetana's "Ma Vlast," Dvorak's "Slavonic Dances," certain works by Tchaikovsky, etc. etc., as well as to nationalistic works by modernists such as Copland, etc. (I don't object to the use of folk tunes, only to emphatic musical expressions of nationalistic pride, or musical efforts to "capture" an imaginary national "essence.")

Fortunately, there are plenty of Romantic works that are unafflicted by this nationalist streak. I think one reason I particularly gravitate to Mendelssohn (as well as to Mahler) among the post-Schubertian/post-Beethovenian Romantics is that his music is the music of a composer who is at once a cultural insider and a cultural outsider, and therefore not inclined to musical expressions of patriotic nationalism.

(Mendelssohn's Scottish and Italian symphonies and "Hebrides" overture are to me precisely not nationalistic in the sense I have been describing: they attempt to convey the touristic experience of "exotic" places by an outsider, not some kind of authentic cultural essence from the inside out.)


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Novelette said:


> I never understood the pervasive diminution of Mendelssohn's greatness; I see the most common complaint is that he did not innovate, but I cannot accept that the only mark of a great composer is superseding the old forms. Cannot excelling in traditional forms--no small accomplishment, I might add--also be a trait of the great?


I absolutely agree with this sentiment. I'd also venture as far as saying that Mendelssohn indeed _was_ an innovator. Namely, the Violin Concerto is perhaps the most original of all concerti, and one of the most groundbreaking pieces of music ever written. With simply the 1st movement, he shattered the "accepted" framework of a concerto and its sonata form - the first theme being introduced by the soloist, writing the cadenza out in full and placing it before the recapitulation. Of course all three movements were linked too.

Re: the OP, great thread  (felt it deserved a bump!) I believe Felix also helped to revive Handel's Israel In Egypt oratorio, and thus a lot of his other works, by conducting a performance of it in 1833. Handel had been neglected to a degree in Germany after his death. Also, Schubert's 9th had a revival, thanks again to Felix with the help of Schumann.

Indeed, a big thank you to the great man!


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