Mendelssohn: A Life in MusicOxford University Press, 2003 M10 23 - 736 páginas An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor, a legendary pianist and organist, and an accomplished painter and classicist. Lionized in his lifetime, he is best remembered today for several staples of the concert hall and for such popular music as "The Wedding March" and "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." Now, in the first major Mendelssohn biography to appear in decades, R. Larry Todd offers a remarkably fresh account of this musical giant, based upon painstaking research in autograph manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and paintings. Rejecting the view of the composer as a craftsman of felicitous but sentimental, saccharine works (termed by one critic "moonlight with sugar water"), Todd reexamines the composer's entire oeuvre, including many unpublished and little known works. Here are engaging analyses of Mendelssohn's distinctive masterpieces--the zestful Octet, puckish Midsummer Night's Dream, haunting Hebrides Overtures, and elegiac Violin Concerto in E minor. Todd describes how the composer excelled in understatement and nuance, in subtle, coloristic orchestrations that lent his scores an undeniable freshness and vividness. He also explores Mendelssohn's changing awareness of his religious heritage, Wagner's virulent anti-Semitic attack on Mendelssohn's music, the composer's complex relationship with his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and prolific composer, his avocation as a painter and draughtsman, and his remarkable, polylingual correspondence with the cultural elite of his time. Mendelssohn: A Life offers a masterful blend of biography and musical analysis. Readers will discover many new facets of the familiar but misunderstood composer and gain new perspectives on one of the most formidable musical geniuses of all time. |
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Página xxii
... letters by his nephew Sebastian Hensel, Die Familie Mendelssohn (1879)—still an indispensable basis of research—which remembered the Mendelssohns as an upstanding, fully assimilated, upper middle-class German family of the Vormärz, the ...
... letters by his nephew Sebastian Hensel, Die Familie Mendelssohn (1879)—still an indispensable basis of research—which remembered the Mendelssohns as an upstanding, fully assimilated, upper middle-class German family of the Vormärz, the ...
Página xxiv
... letters, and whose music alike, all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may well forego for once ”18 the depths of misery and sorrow. Nevertheless ...
... letters, and whose music alike, all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may well forego for once ”18 the depths of misery and sorrow. Nevertheless ...
Página 16
... letters bearing the signature Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy date from 1823.64 In short, Abraham's departure from the bank, conversion, and change in name thrice underscored his distinction “from the other Mendelssohns.” How did the ...
... letters bearing the signature Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy date from 1823.64 In short, Abraham's departure from the bank, conversion, and change in name thrice underscored his distinction “from the other Mendelssohns.” How did the ...
Página 17
... letters reveal that this polyglot was able to converse readily about Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, and the dramatist/diplomat August von Kotzebue. Marx reports that in her “resonances of Kirnberger lived on; she had made the acquaintance ...
... letters reveal that this polyglot was able to converse readily about Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, and the dramatist/diplomat August von Kotzebue. Marx reports that in her “resonances of Kirnberger lived on; she had made the acquaintance ...
Página 19
... letters to her Berlin relatives during the early years of the Empire, and reported in July 1815, as the allies advanced for the second time on Paris, “Europe is once more in France.”97 After Louis XVIII made an inglorious return to ...
... letters to her Berlin relatives during the early years of the Empire, and reported in July 1815, as the allies advanced for the second time on Paris, “Europe is once more in France.”97 After Louis XVIII made an inglorious return to ...
Contenido
The Road to Damascus | 199 |
Elijahs Chariot | 345 |
Abbreviations | 571 |
Notes | 573 |
Bibliography | 629 |
Index of Mendelssohns Works | 645 |
General Index | 653 |
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Términos y frases comunes
Abraham Andante appeared April aria August autograph Bach’s bass Beethoven’s Berlin cantata Cécile chorale chords chorus com composer composer’s composition con concert counterpoint December Devrient duet Düsseldorf Eduard Elijah English Fanny Fanny Hensel Fanny’s February Felix Mendelssohn Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Felix to Lea festival final Frankfurt French fugue German Gewandhaus Goethe Goethe’s Handel’s Henriette Hensel Hiller Ibid J. S. Bach January July June Klingemann Kraków later Leipzig Letters libretto Lied ohne Worte Lieder London major March Marx MDM GB melody Mendelssohn Bartholdy Midsummer Night’s Dream minor Moscheles Moses Moses Mendelssohn movement Mozart musicians November numbers NYPL October opera oratorio orchestra organ overture Paulus performed pianist Piano Concerto played premiere Prussian Psalm published Rebecka rehearsals Robert Schumann scherzo Schubring score September Singakademie solo soloists song soprano String Quartet Symphony theme tion Trio verses violin Ward Jones Weber Wilhelm Wilhelm Hensel Zelter