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Few nineteenth-century composers were more linguistically proficient than Mendelssohn.Together with his younger sister, Rebecka, he studied classical Greek from the age of nine. At eleven he was studying Latin six hours a week, and some time late in 1820 or 1821 he was sufficiently versed in Ovid’s dactylic hexameter that he penned Paphlëis, an extended mock-epic poem in German (modeled in part on Goethe’s Achillëis and Hermann und Dorothea) running to more than 460 lines in that meter.1 In 1825, at the age of sixteen,he prepared translations of Terence’s first comedy,Andria (again in German but in the meter of the Latin original), and Horace’s celebrated Ars poetica. Throughout his life he conversed and corresponded fluently in English , French, and Italian, as well as his native German. Privately, he was remarkably gifted at translating poetry and prose into German.2 Given the lifelong breadth and depth of this linguistic, cultural, and intellectual background, the issues of performing Mendelssohn’s vocal works in languages other than German are naturally more plentiful and complex than is the case with the music of most of his contemporaries. Latter-day performers and scholars alike generally take it for granted that the translated versions were commercially necessary evils, unauthorized degradations of the poetry and the text/music relationships as the composer conceived them.This rule rests on two assumptions: (1) that the composer possessed only basic proficiency in the target language, and (2) that the composer was consequently on an unequal footing with the translator, who conversely was not sufficiently musical to interpret the musical language fully in words. The peculiarities of Mendelssohn’s case make clear that these assumptions should not be applied unquestioningly to his output; indeed, 11 “For You See I Am the Eternal Objector”: On Performing Mendelssohn’s Music in Translation john michael cooper they necessarily raise other, more complicated questions whose answers effectively negate the modern rule of thumb regarding translated versions of his music:What were the composer’s thoughts on the communicative tensions that inevitably seem to arise between linguistic and sonorous modes of communication—most notably, when verbal and musical accentuations, phrases, and structures come into conflict?What factors determined whether a given composition was suitable or unsuitable for translation in his view? What role did genre play in his thinking on these issues, specifically as regards solo, chamber, and large-ensemble works? Most pressingly, what are the criteria by which latter-day performers and other interpreters can reliably differentiate between translations of his music that are artistically viable and those that are not? Since the heart of the matter is the relationship between textual and musical meaning in Mendelssohn’s vocal works, I begin this essay by reviewing some of his salient views on this issue. I then address the first three of the questions proposed above by examining Mendelssohn’s interactions with English translators in some detail, followed by some more general remarks on the issues involved in French and Italian translations of his music. A third section deals with works that were conceived and composed in other languages (and in some instances translated back into German).The evidence offered in those three discussions then suggests some viable—if also inevitably conjectural—responses to the question of the authority and artistic viability of various translations of his music. Red Roofs: Words and Music in Solo Works and Ensemble Works Latter-day assumptions about the relationships between words and music tend to differ from Mendelssohn’s views. Many, perhaps even most, contemporary musicians tend to consider words (and language generally) as reasonably precise conveyors of meaning, and consequently to assume that the proper domain of music in texted compositions is to depict “the meaning” of the text in tones.In this view,the ideas behind well-chosen words can be understood objectively, and well-written music interprets the composer’s understanding subjectively. But Mendelssohn held that language is inherently incapable of objectively conveying ideas, while music could convey ideas to every individual precisely. Music, in his view, is the language of the ideal, a language that each individual can understand in terms of his or her individual experience. And since the number of individuals’ experiences through which a given musical expression of an idea will inevitably be filtered is potentially as great as the number of auditors, no two individuals 208 John Michael Cooper [3.141.198.146] Project...

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