Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Kongress-Bericht Berlin 1994 (review)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Kongreß-Bericht Berlin 1994. Edited by Christian Martin Schmidt. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1997. [351 p. ISBN 3-7651-0304-7. DM 93.]

The year 1997 marked the sesquicentennial of the deaths of Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. The event was commemorated by a few important conferences and festivals, and the year also witnessed the publication of several important critical editions of Felix's sacred works by Carus-Verlag (Stuttgart) and the appearance of the tenth volume of Mendelssohn-Studien, a Berlin-based journal committed to scholarly explorations of all aspects of the illustrious family's history; yet scholars produced surprisingly few studies devoted to the two siblings. The most important individual contributions to the literature were Peter Ward Jones's extensively annotated and lavishly illustrated edition of Felix and Cécile Mendelssohn's honeymoon diaries (The Mendelssohns on Honeymoon: The 1837 Diary of Felix and Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy, together with Letters to Their Families [Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]), a new edition of the composer's celebrated Familienbriefe (Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Briefe, ed. Beatrix Borchard, 2 vols. [Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997]), an important compilation of contemporary memoirs (Roger Nichols, Mendelssohn Remembered [London: Faber and Faber, 1997]), and a useful study of the women in Felix's life (Brigitte Richter, Frauen um Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy [Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1997]).

By any standard, however, the most important compendium of scholarship published in 1997 concerning the life, works, and reception history of Felix Mendelssohn was a collection of papers originally presented at a symposium held in Berlin on 12-15 May 1994 (itself a sequel to the landmark 1972 conference whose proceedings were published as the seminal Das Problem Mendelssohn, ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 41 [Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1974]). Christian Martin Schmidt, who is perhaps best known for his extensive scholarship on Johannes Brahms and Arnold Schoenberg, is general editor of the Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1960-77; Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1997-), and his authority at the helm of that direly needed complete critical edition is confirmed by the vision he exerted in organizing and publishing these studies.

The bulk of the volume comprises papers devoted to specific problematic areas within Mendelssohn's oeuvre. Wolfgang Dinglinger and Rudolf Elvers focus on issues of biography, while four other authors discuss thorny problems raised by the sources, including the manuscripts for Die erste Walpurgisnacht (Christoph Hellmundt), various manuscripts in the library of the Royal Philharmonic Society of London (Peter Ward Jones), and the sources that resulted from Mendelssohn's lifelong search for a suitable opera libretto (R. Larry Todd), as well as Mendelssohn's innumerable Albumblätter (Ralf Wehner). Individual works are the focus of Peter Andraschke's thorough consideration of the incidental music to Sophocles's Antigone, Rainer Cadenbach's thoughtful examination of the F-Minor String Quartet, op. 80, in the history of its genre, and Ulrich Wüster's important study of Kirchen-Musik, op. 23. The studies by Douglass Seaton and Wolfram Steinbeck offer essential insights concerning aesthetic issues in the focused repertories of Mendelssohn's songs and concert overtures, and the essays by Rudolf Stephan, James Webster, and Friedhelm Krummacher provide vital examinations of the composer's complicated reception history. The final touch is a comprehensive classified bibliography of contributions to the literature concerning both Felix and Fanny between 1972 and 1994; it was prepared by Wehner, who is the head of the Mendelssohn-Forschungsstelle in Leipzig. The essays are presented in the respective languages of their contributors (German and English), and most are thoroughly annotated.

Clearly, the collection leaves but few stones unturned. To be sure, one wishes that there were some coverage of the other chamber works and the concertos (especially the Violin Concerto, op. 64, and the two mature piano concertos), and the organ works and oratorios seem curiously absent in such an otherwise...