R. Larry Todd Knihy

The concert overtures A Midsummer Night's Dream, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), conceived by Mendelssohn before the age of twenty, have ranked amongst the most enduring of the nineteenth-century orchestral repertoire. R. Larry Todd offers a historical, stylistic, and analytical guide to these three remarkable works which secured for Mendelssohn no small measure of his fame. After placing the overtures in the context of Mendelssohn's astonishing compositional development during the 1820s, the volume disentangles the complex history of their creation and considers in turn their style and formal structure, their contents as programme music, aspects of their orchestration and their reception and influence. All this is supported by a wealth of primary documents, including Mendelssohn's correspondence, memoirs of his friends, and nineteenth-century critical reviews.

During the 1830s and 1840s the remarkably versatile composer-pianist-organist-conductor Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy stood at the forefront of German and English musical life. Bringing together previously unpublished essays by historians and musicologists, reflections on Mendelssohn written by his contemporaries, the composer's own letters, and early critical reviews of his music, this volume explores various facets of Mendelssohn's music, his social and intellectual circles, and his career. The essays in Part I cover the nature of a Jewish identity in Mendelssohn's music (Leon Botstein); his relationship to the Berlin Singakademie (William A. Little); the role of his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and accomplished composer (Nancy Reich); Mendelssohn's compositional craft in the Italian Symphony and selected concert overtures (Claudio Spies); his oratorio Elijah (Martin Staehelin); his incidental music to Sophocles' Antigone (Michael P. Steinberg); his anthem "Why, O Lord, delay forever?" (David Brodbeck); and an unfinished piano sonata (R. Larry Todd). Part II presents little-known memoirs by such contemporaries as J. C. Lobe, A. B. Marx, Julius Schubring, C. E. Horsley, Max Mller, and Betty Pistor. Mendelssohn's letters are represented in Part III by his correspondence with Wilhelm von Boguslawski and Aloys Fuchs, here translated for the first time. Part IV contains late nineteenth-century critical reviews by Heinrich Heine, Franz Brendel, Friedrich Niecks, Otto Jahn, and Hans von Blow.

The life and works of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy are enjoying a considerable resurgence of interest. This volume presents the most recent trends in Mendelssohn research, covering three broad categories - reception history, historical and critical essays, and case studies of particular compositions. Much of the book depends on a wealth of primary nineteenth-century documents, including little-known autograph manuscripts, letters, and sketches of the composer. Four studies consider various facets of Mendelssohn reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Friedhelm Krummacher considers the abiding popularity of Mendelssohn's music in England, while Peter Ward Jones reviews Mendelssohn's business dealings with English publishers; Donald Mintz examines the composer's posthumous reputation from the perspective of the revolutionary agenda of mid-nineteenth-century Germany; and Lawrence Kramer considers dynamic multiple layers of meaning in the Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture and The First Walpurgisnacht. Four essays, by Judith Silber-Ballan, J. Rigbie Turner, Wm. A. Little, and David Brodbeck, treat Mendelssohn's relationships with A. B. Marx, E. Devrient, Franz Liszt, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Finally, two studies by R. Larry Todd and Christa Jost focus on two major piano works, the Preludes and Fugues op. 35 and the Variations serieuses op. 54.

„Lange beklagte die Forschung das Fehlen einer neueren, profunden Monographie zum Leben und Schaffen von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – nun ist sie da“, hieß es 2004 in der Zeitschrift Musikforschung. Basierend auf seiner lebenslangen Beschäftigung mit dem Komponisten und akribischen Studien von Autographen, Briefen, Tagebüchern und Zeichnungen vermittelt R. Larry Todd ein detailreiches, frisches Bild des Komponisten und seiner Zeit – von seiner Familie und Jugend als Wunderkind bis zum legendären Pianisten und weit gereisten Dirigenten, der aber auch als Zeichner und Altphilologe aktiv wurde und eine bemerkenswerte, vielsprachige Bekanntschaft mit den kulturellen Eliten seiner Zeit pflegte. Meisterhaft verwebt Todd Biografie und musikalische Analyse, wobei nicht nur die beliebten Standardwerke, sondern auch die vielen unbekannten und unveröffentlichten Werke erwähnt werden. Weitere Themen sind Mendelssohns wachsendes Bewusstsein seines religiösen Erbes, die Beziehung zu seiner Schwester und Komponistin Fanny Hensel und Wagners bösartige antisemitische Attacke. Ein kulturhistorisch interessantes Buch für Kenner und Liebhaber. Zahlreiche Notenbeispiele, Abbildungen, Quellenzitate und Anmerkungen runden das Werk ab, das von den Mendelssohn-Experten Helga Beste und Thomas Schmidt-Beste ins Deutsche übertragen wurde.