Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Guide to Research: With an Introduction to Research Concerning Fanny Hensel, and: The Mendelssohn Companion (review)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Guide to Research: With an Introduction to Research Concerning Fanny Hensel. By John Michael Cooper. (Composer Resource Manuals, 54.) New York: Routledge, 2001. [ix, 308 p. ISBN 0-8153-1513-9. $85.]

The Mendelssohn Companion. Edited by Douglass Seaton. New York: Greenwood Press, 2001. [xii, 799 p. ISBN 0-313-28455-8. $120.]

John Michael Cooper's volume in the Composer Resource Manuals series is an essential and much-needed tool for all Mendelssohn scholars. In his introduction, the author points out the uneven nature of Mendelssohn scholarship and its immense growth after World War II, demonstrating the necessity for an assessment of the available resources. This book is the first comprehensive resource guide for Mendelssohn, conveniently pulling together many separate bibliographical resources. The most important of these are the bibliography in the first edition of The New Grove by Eveline Bartlitz (The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie [London: Macmillan, 1980], 12:156-59) and revised by R. Larry Todd for The New Grove Early Romantic Masters 2 (London: Macmillan, 1985); and Ralf Wehner's bibliographical references found in the congress report of the Berlin Mendelssohn Symposium (Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Kongress-Bericht Berlin 1994, ed. Christian Martin Schmidt [Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1997]) and his Studien zum geistlichen Chorschaffen des jungen Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Sinzig: Studio, 1996). Despite the fact that the second edition of The New Grove was in preparation at the same time as this book, it seems odd that Cooper did not mention Todd's updated bibliography anywhere. Although Cooper's inclusion of materials in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish will be the starting point of many research projects for years to come, his laudable attempt to include some of the newest scholarship seems surprisingly inconsistent. Of the twelve chapters, for example, of Douglass Seaton's The Mendelssohn Companion, only four were listed in this book.

The annotated bibliography of 938 items is organized into six chapters: "Life-and-Works Studies," "Memoirs, Recollections, and Editions of Letters," "Sociological and Cultural Studies," "Documentary Studies," "Studies of Individual Works and Repertoires," and "General Studies of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy." While Cooper's categorization works well, he cannot escape the problem inherent in any thematic division: because "many items might fit equally well into two or more of these content-units, the reader is encouraged to consult the indexes closely" (p. 8). Since the three indexes for names, compositions, and subjects prove to be very helpful tools, it is disappointing to find mistakes in them. A better solution might have been the use of cross-listings and more use of cross-referencing.

Cooper's annotations are excellent and extremely helpful. Almost all of the comments aid the scholar in gaining an understanding of the focus of the study and placing that item in its proper context. The personal tone and opinions expressed in some of the annotations actually add to the user-friendliness of the book. The lack of annotations to other sources, however, is regrettable. Cooper's explanation, "in the interest of space, . . . items whose titles are sufficiently self-explanatory, are not annotated" (p. 8), is misleading. Many items without annotations, which include articles, dissertations, and books, bear titles that do not convey much about their content. The title of item 868, "Die Entwicklung des Romantischen in der Instrumentalmusik Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys," is no more helpful to the reader than that of item 867, "Formal Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto"; yet only the second entry is followed by a lengthy annotation.

Mendelssohn's worklist, found in appendix B, differs from previous worklists in its organization. Cooper decided to list works within each category chronologically according to their completion dates (or the latest surviving manuscript in the case of unpublished works). Cooper also makes an...