Mendelssohn and the Organ (review)

Mendelssohn's life famously overflowed with friends, family, travel, art, and music—a heady whirl of concerts, meetings, social engagements, and hard work that continued almost unabated until his early death in 1847. Extracting just one strand from this intricately woven tapestry is a formidable and delicate challenge; each part of his life overlapped with and informed the others—a challenge accepted here with élan by Wm. A. Little (emeritus professor of German and music at the University of Virginia). Although Mendelssohn was certainly celebrated as an organist in his lifetime, his compositional output for the instrument was not large, and Mendelssohn the organist now tends to be overshadowed by Mendelssohn the composer, conductor, and pianist. When the resulting product of focusing on one under-scrutinized aspect of a career is a volume of 502 pages, we realize that, until now, we have merely been seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Mendelssohn and the Organ offers the reader two separate but tightly integrated approaches to the study of his activities as an organist. Part 1 relates a biographical and historical narrative in ten chapters, each dealing with a specific facet of his career from his early lessons to his activities as a performer, composer, and editor. Much of the information Little collects here is sure to be of great use to scholars of the organ whether they have a particular interest in Mendelssohn or not. For example, as Little sets the stage with an investigation of the "Berlin Organ Scene" before Mendelssohn's first lessons, he includes a list of the organs that were available in venues around Berlin from parish churches to Schloß Charlottenburg, as well as a list of known organists associated with each instrument (pp. 8-14).

Much of the biographical information covered can already be found in many other publications, so it is debatable whether or not it was necessary to include it in an already hefty volume, although the narrative here is of course usefully focused on Mendelssohn's activities as an organist. Little's views on Mendelssohn's spirituality are likely to be contested by some scholars; he maintains that Mendelssohn was "simply not by nature religiously inclined in any traditional sense" (p. 22). As support for this view, Little claims that Mendelssohn did not directly invoke the name of the Divinity in his musical manuscripts. However, Mendelssohn routinely wrote the initials for the prayers "Lass es gelingen, Gott" ("Let it succeed, God") or "Hilf Du mir" ("Assist me," addressing the Divinity with the familiar "Du"), on the first drafts of his works. Little is clearly aware of and cites these prayers (p. 23), which undermine his argument, so it is unclear why he presents this viewpoint.

Particularly useful for both scholars and performers are the separate chapters detailing the genesis of Mendelssohn's organ works in part 2. Each work is listed chronologically, with an incipit, key, time signature, date, manuscript location, first editions, secondary literature, and its place in Little's edition of Mendelssohn's organ music (Complete Organ Works, 5 vols. [London: Novello, 1987-1990]), where applicable, as well as several paragraphs of commentary. This is immensely helpful for quick, targeted reference. The Six Organ Sonatas, op. 65 are allotted four separate chapters, from composition to reception. Little's experience as an editor is evident in the precision of information provided and attention to detail lavished on these chapters. The emphasis on organization and categorization renders the study less of a book to read cover-to-cover, however, and more of a German-style reference work. In addition, Little's use of special symbols to indicate the relationships between various sources and versions of works is somewhat off-putting and confusing to the uninitiated; the symbols are listed on page xv, but aren't really used until page 243.

The appendices are rich with fascinating data to pore over—essentially the heart of the prose narrative. The "Organ Atlas" (p. 344ff) collects...