Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Concerto in E minor, op. 64, 1844/45, Urtext, edited by R. Larry Todd and Clive Brown (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005/2018). BA 9099. Full score xliv + 200 pp. € 60.00 - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Concerto in E minor, op. 64, Urtext, edited by R. Larry Todd and Clive Brown (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018). BA 9099-90. Piano reduction xviii + 45pp; violin solo part 16pp; violin solo performance part prepared by Clive Brown 16 pp. € 21.95 - Clive Brown, Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Performance Practices in the Violin Concerto op. 64 and Chamber Music for Strings (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018). BA 9060. 72 pp. € 15.50 - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Concerto in E minor, op. 64, 1844, Urtext, edited by R. Larry Todd (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005/2018). BA 9099-92. Piano reduction v + 45 pp; violin solo part 16 pp. € 24.95

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-328
Author(s):  
Siegwart Reichwald
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Solo Performance ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn

On Musical Journeys: William Sterndale Bennett’s Diaries, 1836–1842

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-232
Author(s):  
Bettina S. Mühlenbeck
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Robert Schumann ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Travel Diaries ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn ◽  
The City ◽  
Productive Time

The present article explores the travel diaries William Sterndale Bennett kept on his three extended journeys from London to Leipzig between 1836 and 1842. In the autumn of 1836 the young pianist and composer embarked on the first and longest of ultimately three residencies in Leipzig. Invited by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, he came to the burgeoning centre for instrumental music in order to spend productive time in the artistic circle surrounding Mendelssohn. Bennett began keeping a diary, in which he recorded his experiences – from mundane to musical – and which de facto evolved into a silent travel companion. He repeated this process on his subsequent two travels. The diaries offer valuable first-hand accounts of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts under Mendelssohn’s leadership (who served as its Kapellmeister from 1835 to 1847) as well as the semi-private soirées in the prestigious salons of the city. In the privacy of the personal journal, Bennett did not shy away from making bold statements concerning compositions, performance practices, the quality of musical instruments or socio-cultural idiosyncrasies. Especially intriguing is the congenial connection he made with Robert Schumann. The two artists shared an ad hoc, allusive affinity and community of solidarity that has been overlooked in the past. All of this is the more revealing in light of his otherwise soft-spoken and reserved personality, particularly since Bennett’s journaling also offers a view into his own compositional and creative process during this important phase of his career. Apart from tracing musical opinions expressed, aesthetic positions maintained and cultural differences observed, this article follows the artistic bond between William Sterndale and Robert Schumann.

Über die verschollenen geglaubte Schauspielmusik zu Shakespeare "Othello" von August Wilhelm Ambros

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Stefan Wolkenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Robert Schumann ◽  
National Library ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
The Common ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn

Der Musikwissenschaftler August Wilhelm Ambros (1816-1876) spielte als Feuilletonist und Komponist im Prager Musikleben der 1840er Jahre eine wichtige Rolle. Seine 1848 komponierte Schauspielmusik zu William Shakespeares "Othello" (die in Prag zahlreiche Aufführungen erlebte) wurde nie publiziert und galt als verschollen. Diese Ansicht muss revidiert werden. Das Autograph der Komposition befindet sich seit 1939 unbeachtet im Besitz der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Die erste Sichtung ergab folgenden Befund: Ambros hat sich an dem für eine Schauspielmusik üblichen Modell orientiert. Neben Ouvertüre und Finale besteht die Komposition aus mehreren Zwischenaktmusiken, die durch die Handlung des Dramas miteinander verknüpft sind. Stilistisch orientiert sich die Komposition an den Werken Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys und Robert Schumanns, die für den Prager Davidsbündler Ambros als wichtige Vorbilder fungierten. Durch die Entdeckung der Schauspielmusik zu "Othello" lässt sich diese immer wieder betonte Nähe nun an einem größeren Werk untersuchen.    The musicologist August Wilhelm Ambros (1816-1876) played an important role as feature writer and composer in the musical life of Prague during the 1840s. In 1848 he composed an incidental music for William Shakespeare's drama "Othello" which was performed in Prague for several times, but never was published. It has been considered to be lost, what has to be revised. The autograph of the composition is owned by the Austrian National Library since 1939, but has met with no response so far. The results of a first investigation are: the music to the drama "Othello" does not diverge from the common patterns of this genre. It consists an overture, a finale and some intermission music. Its style is affected, like most of Ambros' other compositions, by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The recovering of this composition now allows to research this influence on a larger opus. 

Individual and Communal Freedom and the Performance History of the St. Matthew Passion by Bach and Mendelssohn

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-179
Author(s):  
Markus Rathey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Liturgical Music ◽  
Original Performance ◽  
Performance History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn ◽  
Performance Conditions

When Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the concert hall of the Berlin Singakademie in 1829, he not only transferred a piece of liturgical music into a secular space, but he also made numerous cuts that changed the theological profile of Bach’s composition. The essay explores the theology of the St. Matthew Passion in the context of early eighteenth-century theology and gives an overview of the original performance conditions and the audiences at the performances in Bach’s time. The second half of the essay analyses how these parameters changed when Mendelssohn conducted the Passion in 1829. It becomes clear that the sociological profile of the audience (educated middle and upper class who had to pay money to attend the performance) remained essentially the same, while the theology shifted from a focus on the freedom of the individual in Bach’s time to an emphasis on the community (congregation, Volk, nation) in the adapted version the Singakademie presented to its listeners in 1829.

Leipzig After Bach

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Sposato
Keyword(s):  
Church Music ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Public Consumption ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn ◽  
Secular Institutions

This book examines church music and public concert music in Leipzig, Germany, a city in Saxony, in the period between 1750 (the year Thomaskantor Johann Sebastian Bach died) and 1847 (the year that Gewandhaus orchestra conductor Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy died). The century in between these events was critically important for sacred music and public concert music. During this period, Leipzig’s church music enterprise, a bulwark of orthodox Lutheranism, was convulsed by repeated external threats—a growing middle class that viewed music as an object of public consumption, religious and political tumult, and the chaos of the Seven Years' War and the invasion of Napoleon. How church and concert life in Leipzig changed because of these forces is the focus of this book. Whereas most European cities saw their public concerts grow out of secular institutions such as a royal court or an opera theater, neither of these existed when Leipzig’s first subscription concert series, the Grosse Concert, was started in 1743. Instead, the city had a thriving church music enterprise that had been brought to its zenith by Bach. Paid subscription concerts therefore found their roots in Leipzig’s church music tradition, with important and unique results.

Performance practice and philology in Bartók’s Violin Concerto (1938)

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Péter Laki
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Final Version ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
World Premiere ◽  
Conservatory Students ◽  
Comparative Examination

The world premiere recording of Bartók’s Violin Concerto, played by Zoltán Székely has been a classic for seventy-two years now. Since that time, dozens of artists have committed the work to disc and hundreds more—from concert artists to conservatory students—have played the Concerto. Székely’s extremely subtle, almost chamber-music-like interpretation has been widely admired but many violinists in past decades have favored, by and large, a more robust approach, one that stresses the work’s connections to the Romantic concerto tradition. The question is: can a careful reading of the musical text—the final version as well as the various manuscript sources—help a player make practical stylistic decisions? A comparative examination of the performance of the first 16 measures from a number of older and more recent recordings will be set against what textual analysis can tell us, as a test case for a productive dialog between scholarship and performance.

Bearbeitung oder Einrichtung? Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Fassung der Bachschen Matthäus-Passion und deren Aufführung in Berlin 1829

Bach-Jahrbuch ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Ahrens
Keyword(s):  
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn

Gefragt wird, wer außer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy noch maßgeblichen Anteil an der Vorbereitung der Wiederaufführung von Johann Sebastian Bachs Matthäuspassion 1829 hatte. Die These Martin Gecks, Mendelssohn habe nur geringfügig in die Faktur des Werkes eingegriffen und es könne daher von einer Bearbeitung keine Rede sein, allenfalls von einer Einrichtung, wird kritisch hinterfragt. (Oliver Schöner, Quelle: Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums online)

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document