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A Life in Music

A Life in Music REVIEW Review A Life in Music JOHN MICHAEL COOPER R. Larry Todd. Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xxix, 683pp. Not long ago the posthumous reception of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–47) was approaching a state of exigency. Public interest in his music (as evidenced in performances and recordings of unfamiliar works as well as the standard repertoire) was on the upswing. New, source-critical editions of the works were steadily appearing, superseding the unreliable editions issued in the Mendelssohn’s Werke series of the 1870s and the many subsequent editions derived from them. And, in a remarkable extension of the scholarly reassessment signified by Carl Dahlhaus’s 1972 symposium on “Das Problem Mendelssohn,” the quantity and quality of specialized scholarly publications was increasing more rapidly than anyone would have expected even a decade ago. Lacking, however, was an authoritative book-length life-and-works study—a resource that would synthesize the accomplishments of post-1970s Mendelssohn scholarship and address the needs of the broader musical public as well as scholars. The strongest contenders for that position— Eric Werner’s 1963 biography and its 1980 revision1—were dated and fraught with misinformation. A sizeable gap had thus arisen: the musical public’s interest in Mendelssohn’s music http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png 19th-Century Music University of California Press

A Life in Music

Cooper, John Michael
19th-Century Music , Volume 28 (1) – Jul 1, 2004
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References (8)

Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
Copyright © by the University of California Press
Subject
Book Review
ISSN
0148-2076
eISSN
1533-8606
DOI
10.1525/ncm.2004.28.1.77
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

REVIEW Review A Life in Music JOHN MICHAEL COOPER R. Larry Todd. Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xxix, 683pp. Not long ago the posthumous reception of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–47) was approaching a state of exigency. Public interest in his music (as evidenced in performances and recordings of unfamiliar works as well as the standard repertoire) was on the upswing. New, source-critical editions of the works were steadily appearing, superseding the unreliable editions issued in the Mendelssohn’s Werke series of the 1870s and the many subsequent editions derived from them. And, in a remarkable extension of the scholarly reassessment signified by Carl Dahlhaus’s 1972 symposium on “Das Problem Mendelssohn,” the quantity and quality of specialized scholarly publications was increasing more rapidly than anyone would have expected even a decade ago. Lacking, however, was an authoritative book-length life-and-works study—a resource that would synthesize the accomplishments of post-1970s Mendelssohn scholarship and address the needs of the broader musical public as well as scholars. The strongest contenders for that position— Eric Werner’s 1963 biography and its 1980 revision1—were dated and fraught with misinformation. A sizeable gap had thus arisen: the musical public’s interest in Mendelssohn’s music

Journal

19th-Century Music – University of California Press

Published: Jul 1, 2004

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