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works (termed by one critic "moonlight with sugar water"), Todd reexamines the composer's entire oeuvre, including many unpublished and little known works.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 xxi
... score that spared his listeners Mendelssohn's “moonlight with sugar water” ultimately failed; in 1944, an Allied bombing raid destroyed the opera house in Frankfurt where it was to have had its premiere. Meanwhile, the emigré Austrian ...
... score that spared his listeners Mendelssohn's “moonlight with sugar water” ultimately failed; in 1944, an Allied bombing raid destroyed the opera house in Frankfurt where it was to have had its premiere. Meanwhile, the emigré Austrian ...
Página xxvii
... scores, also requires reassessment. We may yet realize that imposing a Beethovenian or Wagnerian yardstick on Mendelssohn does an injustice to his music. The essentially dramatic model of the Fifth Symphony and Wagner's revolutionary ...
... scores, also requires reassessment. We may yet realize that imposing a Beethovenian or Wagnerian yardstick on Mendelssohn does an injustice to his music. The essentially dramatic model of the Fifth Symphony and Wagner's revolutionary ...
Página 36
... score at the keyboard. But in 1818 Felix did make his public piano debut, accompanying on October 28 the horn virtuoso Heinrich Gugel and eleven-year-old son Rudolf in a Trio for two horns and piano by Joseph Wölfl.67 During his ninth ...
... score at the keyboard. But in 1818 Felix did make his public piano debut, accompanying on October 28 the horn virtuoso Heinrich Gugel and eleven-year-old son Rudolf in a Trio for two horns and piano by Joseph Wölfl.67 During his ninth ...
Página 46
... score of a magnificent concerto by Sebastian Bach the hawkeyes of my Felix, when he was ten years old, became aware of a succession of six pure fifths, which I perhaps never would have found, since I did not pay attention to them in ...
... score of a magnificent concerto by Sebastian Bach the hawkeyes of my Felix, when he was ten years old, became aware of a succession of six pure fifths, which I perhaps never would have found, since I did not pay attention to them in ...
Página 60
... score contains several Tutti and Solo cues, and the hint of a piano cadenza, as if Felix had in mind a miniature piano concerto, and the string parts are identified in the plural as Violini, Viole, and Bassi, as if the accompaniment was ...
... score contains several Tutti and Solo cues, and the hint of a piano cadenza, as if Felix had in mind a miniature piano concerto, and the string parts are identified in the plural as Violini, Viole, and Bassi, as if the accompaniment was ...
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