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makhabane

Listed below are comments made by makhabane between Monday, 19th January 2009 and Thursday, 9th July 2009.

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Mendelssohn and Purcell in Scotland 6:53pm on 09 Jul 2009 Would young Felix and his fellow traveler Karl Klingemann have worn top hats in 1829? I thought they only became popular in Britain later in the 19th century.

As a matter of no particular relevance, JFK is supposedly the most recent US President to have worn a top hat to his inauguration (in 1961).
Mendelssohn hits prime-time 10:29pm on 15 Jun 2009 Yes, Handel, Hayden and Mendelssohn all came from German-speaking countries. But do not forget that from 1714 to 1837 Britain had a monarch who was also sovereign of a German-speaking state, namely Hanover. Indeed, Queen Victoria and her husband were both raised with German as their mother tongues, and they spoke it with Mendelssohn when he visited them. Royal culture in Britain from 1714 to late in the 19th century was German. (Victoria was not also Elector of Hanover, like her British predecessors, because she was female, and thus not eligible to inherit the Electorship.)

And this, too, was during a period when there was no single German nation, but a a multitude of large and small German- speaking states. To call Handel or Mendelssohn Germans is historically anomalous, since there was no such country as "Germany" during their lifetimes. Yet from 1707, ie, during most of Handel's adult lifetime and during all of Haydn's and Mendelssohn's lifetimes, however, there was a country known as Britain.
"The Prophet of Light" 9:57pm on 10 May 2009 Well, I hope you heard at least the opening of Elijah. That tremendous, fascinating, terrible, spine-chilling orchestral crescendo (after the initial recitative) which just goes on and on, repeatedly not resolving, shows what a superb composer Mendelssohn was. This number alone rebuts George Bernard Shaw's accusation that Mendelssohn exhibited "kid-glove gentility", since the emotional power of the music is intense and piercing. Either Shaw was not listening to the actual music or else had some other agenda he was pushing.
The Third Piano Concerto hits London 9:45pm on 06 Apr 2009 UK premiere? I think perhaps you mean London premiere.

I heard Roberto Prosseda perform this very concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Harry Bicket in Liverpool on 19 January 2008. Indeed, my programme says (page 5): "UK premiere of the reconstruction by Marcello Bufalini".

It may come as a surprise to many people, but music is sometimes performed outside London too.
Sing for joy? 6:36pm on 04 Mar 2009 The opening orchestral number of Elijah also presents another wonderful Mendelsohnian skill - an ability to write music which keeps the listener in suspense over an extended time. He shows the same ability in the storm scene of The Hebrides, with its crescendo, climax, and then calm, followed by the surprise return of the crescendo, this time reaching a real climax, a major-seventh chord.

I believe that no pre-contemporary composer manages a feeling of suspense or irresolution as well as or as long as Mendelssohn does. This is an aspect where comparison with Morton Feldman's music in instructive, since Feldman sometimes does something similar, with the suspense created in his case by very small, subtle differences in recurring patterns. One has to listen carefully to hear these differences, which usually play out over long time spans.

Neither composer writes music for people not paying full attention, despite Felix's music often being used as muzak.
Will you welcome, please.... 10:13pm on 04 Feb 2009 I'm not offended, but just for the record it were me who suggested inviting CDF, not kleines c.
Mendelssohn's big birthday party 11:41pm on 03 Feb 2009 I'm so pleased you've invited the Saxe-Coburg-and-Gotha's. It is easy for us to forget that when Felix met Victoria & Albert in London, all three of them would have spoken in their common mother tongue, German! How different from the home life of our own dear Queen!

One wonders if Victoria, who took seriously her later role as Empress of India (eating Indian food and learning Hindi, for example) would have appreciated Felix's "On Wings of Song", with its imaginary visit to the banks of the Ganges.

Other suggestions for invitations:

- Eduard Rietz, Felix's violin teacher and friend, who died tragically young.

- Juan Crisostomo Arriaga, a very talented composer who also died young: Do you think Felix and JCA could have met when Abraham Mendelssohn took his son to Paris to have his musical potential assessed?

- Caspar David Friedrich, once called the "greatest spiritual artist of the 19th century", whose paintings perhaps inspired Felix's use of ruckenfiguren.

- Karl Klingemann, Felix's friend and traveling companion.

- Lastly, I would propose an invitation for Morton Feldman, another deeply spiritual composer also influenced by the work of visual artists.
Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind: the untold story! 10:48pm on 26 Jan 2009 In your Independent article, you say of Mendelssohn's music: "Its emotional content is high-impact, driven, with deeply romantic sensibilities, but almost always within contained classical forms. But it packs such an intense punch in terms of nervous energy, something probably had to give."

You are correct about the punch and energy of his music. However, I respectfully disagree with your larger point. I think it mistaken to view Mendelssohn as a romantic artist constrained by his use of classical forms, as if he was some sort of hippy forced to wear a grey flannel suit, and thus only able to express his true nature in a psychodelic tie and odd-coloured socks. The classical composers, after all, were quite able to express extreme and quite profound emotions through classical forms, as in Haydn's "sturm und drang" symphonies, and Mozart's late works.

Rather, I think it better to understand Mendelssohn as using the forms he did willingly, and choosing forms that he and his audience would be familiar and comfortable with. And, like all the great composers, he bent and played with the classical forms, as in the 1st and 4th movements of the Octet (playing now on Radio 3).

That he used his chosen forms willingly is shown by those pieces where he is an innovator in form, such as the overtures and tone poems. For instance, the Hebrides Overture manages to reproduce in sound a foreground figure against a background landscape, something no one had done before and few since. A similar device is used in the 1st movement of the Italian Symphony, where the music describes the journey of a German person (himself) through Italy. The Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream manages to create the sonic equivalent of a portal to another world, through the opening woodwind chords, repeated in the middle and at the end of the piece. I think these are all highly innovative works and are not, at least not to me, evidence of someone fighting against the form of the music in order to express himself.
Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind: the untold story! 8:43pm on 19 Jan 2009 In his response to your article, Tom Service says: "Wagner started the rot with his tirades against him [FM] as he became the favourite composer of Victorian Britain, ... "

In the English-speaking world, the main anti-Felix culprit was George Bernard Shaw, who criticized Mendelsson for "oratorio-mongering", a criticism which seems to have influenced many people subsequently. If you actually read Shaw's music criticism, however, you will find that he nowhere expresses any dislike for FM's purely orchestral music, but only for his oratorios. And there, Shaw's main problem seems to be with what he considers to be mid-century Victorian hypocrisy about religion, rather than anything in the music itself.

Shaw certainly provides in his music criticm no justification on any musical grounds for his dislike of Mendelssohn's choral works. This attack on FM seems most unfair -- it is like blaming the designer of a stained glass window in a church for crimes committed by the priest.
The Prodigy 8:17pm on 19 Jan 2009 On the Octet: Larry Todd has a nice theory in his bio of Mendelssohn that the Octet evokes scenes from Goethe's "Faust", with the 1st violin part (written for Felix's teacher and friend Eduard Rietz) perhaps representing the devil. Certainly, the Octet quotes Handel's Messiah, which would seem to argue for a spiritual interpretation.

Also, in support of your argument, listening to the 12 string symphonies, ernables you to hear Felix trying out ideas and effects which he uses in his other, more well-known music. The great peaks of youth -- the Octet, the Overture to Midsummer Night's Dream, etc -- were no flukes, when you hear his other music of the time. We should also not under-estimate the benefit to both young composers (Felix and his sister Fanny) of having access to your own orchestral ensemble comprising some of Berlin's best performers happy to play your music each Sunday evening.

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