Book Description

Contents: The Adieu - Agitation - Boat-Song - The Brook - Confidence - Consolation (Still, Still With Thee) - Contemplation - Delirium - The Departure - Duet, Op. 38, No. 6 - Elegy - The Evening Star - Faith - The Fleecy Clouds - The Flight - Folk-Song - Funeral March - Homeless - Hope - Hunting Song - The Joyous Peasant - Lost Happiness - Lost Illusions - Lullaby - May Breezes - Meditation - Morning Song - On the Seashore - Passion - The Poet's Harp - Regrets - Restlessness - Retrospection - The Return - Reverie - Sadness of Soul - The Shepherd's Complaint - The Sighing Wind - Song of the Pilgrim - Song of the Traveller - Spinning-Song - Spring Song - Sweet Remembrance - Tarantella - Unrest - Venetian Boat Song No. 1 - Venetian Boat-Song #2 - Venetian Boat-Song #3 - The Wanderer.

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Amazon.com
Classical music has its fashion cycles as does every human endeavor. One is the periodic rediscovery andsubsequent submersion of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). This sadly underrated composer is often denigrated for what some consider to be his tendency to write quasi-kitschy music without a firm stylistic basis. To make things worse, popular wisdom maintains that he did all of his best work as a teenager and then burned out. Elijah, first performedshortly before the composer's death,proves wrong the "burnout" theory, for it is a masterpiece that was composed at the very end of Mendelssohn's brief life. The work combines classical discipline and romantic sweep in a dramatic format that owes at least as much to opera as to previous oratorios. It gives us splendid choruses in the style of Bach and Handel and memorable arias, as well as a dandy leading role for the bass who sings the prophet.

Elijah's arrival led later composers to try to copy Mendelssohn's success with Biblical oratorios oftheir own, but their attempts stand out mostly as examples of the simpering excesses of Victorian slush. The saccharine efforts lacked the skill, power, and conviction of Elijah, and now languish in well-deserved obscurity. But Elijah holds the listener's ear with its music and its meaning.

Elijah tells the story of the stern prophet who called the misbehaving people of Israel to repentance, and who clung to his resolve through a world of troubles until he was carried by a whirlwind into heaven as a reward. The subject enabled Mendelssohn to write a work that combined his ancestral Judaism with his own Lutheranism and to attempt to build a bridge from the Old Covenant to the New. You can explore how Mendelssohn achieved hisinspiring goal in this complete orchestral score from Dover. The usual caveats for Dover's reprints of out-of-copyright editions prevail: the scores are not the most up-to-date, they usually lack English translations, and, because they're full scores, you will not be able to plunk them down on the music stand in front of the average organist and expect her to play it with any ease. That said, the scores are a tremendous bargainfor anyone--students, professional musicians, amateur music lovers--with the urge to study a complete score of a fascinating work.Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Elijah in Full Score
I had no idea it was in German, so it is useless to me and I wish I could return it, but I don't know how.

elijah
i would like to know if is the complete librety about the oratory

A quality score at a bargain price
This score is identical in every way to the Kalmus edition, which is considerably more expensive.The only caveat for conductors or students is that the Soprano and Alto staves use a C-clef and the Tenor staff uses a C4clef.So does the Kalmus edition!Bass line and instrument clefs arenormal.This is the one to purchase.A beatiful, easy-to-read score. ... Read more

Book Description
Unlike most 19th Century composers who had to struggle to make a living, Felix Mendelssohn came from a very wealthy family. He never had to work, but he worked harder to fulfill his family's expectations than many who suffer poverty. He was an extremely gifted musical genius who wrote some of his best works while he was still a teenager.

Mendelssohn gained fame as a conductor, and as the organizer of many music festivals in Germany and in England where he was always enthusiastically welcomed. Unlike some composers who only performed their own work, Mendelssohn had a passion for presenting the best music of all periods. He was also very generous in helping younger composers by playing their work.

His weakness was being unable to say no to the many requests he received for performances. He was a perfectionist who devoted his energy to presenting the highest possible level of musical perfection. As his fame spread, he had little time left for his own compositions. Mendelssohn died at the age of 38, essentially from ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Product Description
Edited by Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy andCarl Mendelssohn Bartholdy.This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1864 edition by Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, London. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume features 44 compositions by Felix Mendelssohn, including many selections from his famous Songs Without Words. Besides the many delicate character pieces, the book contains selections from the master composer's wealth of piano works, including Preludes, Capriccios, Fugues, Variations, and Etudes, along with many individual pieces. A wide variety of music! 44 selections on 184 pages. ... Read more

Book Description
Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. As a composer of sacred texts, he is chiefly remembered today for the oratorios "Paulus" (1836) and "Elijah" (1846). In this groundbreaking study, Siegwart Reichwald offers a meticulous analysis of Paulus, beginning with a general overview of the oratorio traditions of the early nineteenth century. He details the phases of the compositional process of "Paulus" as well as principles governing its development. Numerous musical examples, figures, and tables accompany the text. Reichwald's study will captivate anyone hungering for a thorough treatment of "Paulus", while shedding light on Mendelssohn's approach to the oratorio and to sacred music in general. ... Read more

Book Description
for 4 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Violoncellos. ... Read more

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Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Clarinets, paper, binding
This is generally a good edition.However, in the second movement of the Italian Symphony, there is a clarinet part written in the score doubling the violas and bassoons on the melody where there is none in the players' parts.
The paper is also very smooth making it difficult to turn pages in time. I have to crumple up each page to get enough traction to get them turned.Also the more I use it, some of the pages are beginning to come unbound.Coarser paper and sturdier binding would make this edition more practical for performance and not just as a study score.

Dissapointing
It's great to have this full score containing the very best of Mendelssohn's works, but this edition was terrible, (of course reprinted from the Breitkopf and Hartel editions). I really liked that there were all the play cues for the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, but this book wasn't bound with the immortal glue Dover books are bound with tody. My 406 paged book is in pieces with a bunch of errors in it. This was a waste of $20. I don't know the other editions of Mendelssohn's works, but I don't really like his music that much anyway. At the time I just wanted to have references to the flute solo from the Scherzo.

You can enjoy your "home concert"
@As same as another Doverfs scores, this gMAJOR ORCHESTRAL WORKSh is reprinted one. The original is THE BREITKOPF & HARTEL version, so you will never be anxiously to use this score. This includes some importantworks of Mendelssohn, ie gA Mid-summer Nightfs Dreamh and so on. It hasvery clear lines and you can look out one or some part easily. So if youhave this score, you can enjoy your ghome concerth. ... Read more

Book Description
An advanced duet for two pianos, four hands by Felix Mendelssohn. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor, a legendary pianist and organist, and an accomplished painter and classicist. Lionized in his lifetime, he is best remembered today for several staples of the concert hall and for such popular music as "The Wedding March" and "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."Now, in the first major Mendelssohn biography to appear in decades, R. Larry Todd offers a remarkably fresh account of this musical giant, based upon painstaking research in autograph manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and paintings. Rejecting the view of the composer as a craftsman of felicitous but sentimental, saccharine works (termed by one critic "moonlight with sugar water"), Todd reexamines the composer's entire oeuvre, including many unpublished and little known works. Here are engaging analyses of Mendelssohn's distinctive masterpieces--the zestful Octet, puckish Midsummer Night's Dream, haunting Hebrides Overtures, and elegiac Violin Concerto in E minor. Todd describes how the composer excelled in understatement and nuance, in subtle, coloristic orchestrations that lent his scores an undeniable freshness and vividness. He also explores Mendelssohn's changing awareness of his religious heritage, Wagner's virulent anti-Semitic attack on Mendelssohn's music, the composer's complex relationship with his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and prolific composer, his avocation as a painter and draughtsman, and his remarkable, polylingual correspondence with the cultural elite of his time. Mendelssohn: A Life offers a masterful blend of biography and musical analysis. Readers will discover many new facets of the familiar but misunderstood composer and gain new perspectives on one of the most formidable musical geniuses of all time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Totally absorbing.
I bought the hardback edition which is/was a lot more expensive - wish I had waited! Actually, it matters not a jot; this book is great value, regardless of cost.

It took me three readings to absorb most of the contents; for this biography is densely written, full of fact and detail and without much prose for its own sake. Nevertheless, it is eminently readable with a flowing narrative style and in no sense is it heavy going. That it took me three readings is a (non)function of my failing intellect rather than a comment upon the authorship. Regardless of the serious nature of the subject, this book really is a "good read" in its own right.

One of this work's many strengths is that Todd paints with a very broad brush. His view encompasses the social history necessary to see the Mendelssohns against the background of their particular time and the author does a superlative job in portraying their circumstances in a largely anti-Semitic Germany. However, the focus always remains on this extraordinary musician with a creative life lived on so many levels and embracing so many artistic and intellectual pursuits. Felix Mendelssohn emerges as a rounded, developed figure and not the effeminate aesthete which history often has chosen to portray him.

This is a scholarly, well-edited and proof-read volume; the only mistake I noticed was Wellington at Blenheim. (I might just as easily put Washington at Bull Run . !) However, from a purely personal standpoint, I should like to have had a little more information on the organ recitals given in England. Several references are made to his having performed Bach works which he so enthusiastically championed but very few English instruments (C or G compass) of the period had a pedal division enabling them to accomplish this.

In short, a totally absorbing account of the life of a fascinating member of a particularly gifted family. I thoroughly recommend it.

Excellent biography of a great musician we do not pay enough attention to nowadays
Felix Mendelssohn lived only thirty-eight years (Feb 1809- Nov 1847) and yet he had a profound impact on the way Art Music continues to be enjoyed in our time even if he is himself unjustly too far from the public consciousness and his musical works not, while not unperformed, are not performed nearly enough considering their musical quality and artistic merit.He was a man of prodigious genius, manifold talents, and a genuinely gracious and generous man.All rare gifts in this world.

This excellent and much needed modern biography of this most important musician was written by R. Larry Todd.The author gave the book a perfect subtitle - "A Life in Music" because Mendelssohn's whole life, since his early accomplishments as a prodigy, was devoted to composing, performing, conducting, and championing past composers such as Bach and newer young composers and performers who shared his views on the musical arts.The book makes very enjoyable reading because of the way Todd intertwines the life and the music that came out of it.Mendelssohn, like some but more than many composers, wrote and modified pieces for specific occasions and for certain performers.I found the numerous musical examples to be well chosen and illuminating.However, if you cannot read music, you can still understand what they author is saying form his clear and to the point prose.

Felix's grandfather was the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and his father, Abraham, was a prominent banker so Felix and extremely talented sister Fanny did not have to struggle to develop their talents.Abraham converted to Christianity and his children were raised with a Christian faith.Felix's Protestant faith was clear in his music to the day he died even though that aspect of his life is downplayed too much nowadays.Both Fanny and Felix were brilliant piano virtuosos and Felix was also a virtuoso on the organ and violin.They both composed well, but more emphasis was placed on Felix because he was the male and, from available evidence, the greater genius.

It was natural to compare Felix to Mozart, as young prodigies are too this day.In Felix's case it was a warranted comparison, even if his art was not as transcendent as Mozart's.Felix was a brilliant improviser.While every well trained keyboardist (especially organists) were expected to be able to improvise any number of pieces and styles upon provided material, or on material they made up, the kind of ability that Mendelssohn had in this area was beyond brilliant.He was not only capable of solving canons on the fly or harmonizing and making variations on a chorale, he could also turn the subject into a fugue, a double fugue, and more.

Then there is also his memory.There was a concert series where he was repeating a Schubert trio that he had performed a month earlier.However, the music for the piece was only on the stands for the string players.No problem, Mendelssohn played the piano part from memory.However, in order to not draw attention to himself and make his memory the point of the performance, he had the page turner just reach up and turn the pages of whatever was on the music rack to make it look like he was reading from the score!

He could also draw and paint beautifully.Professor Todd provides us with many beautiful samples of Mendelssohn's work and it is very beautiful.Fanny also married an artist and it was he who drew Fanny shortly before her premature death and Felix upon his death bed a few months later.Mendelssohn traveled widely.Like many other young men from wealthy families, he went on a grand tour of Europe and met many of the important people of his day, both artists and men of position in government and business.He always impressed people favorably because of his personal grace, great talents, and, well, charisma.It was a different kind of magnetism than, say, a Liszt.But Mendelssohn had it nonetheless.People were excited when he walked into a room.Musicians played better under his leadership.

And though I believe Mendelssohn is no less a victim of a change in taste than was J. S. Bach was in Felix's day, I know he is a great composer who deserves more attention than he gets in the current repertoire.His symphonies are of high quality, his piano and organ music has much merit, and his oratorios were highly acclaimed and widely performed even in the mid-twentieth century.His songs were often sung, and his chamber music delighted both performers and listeners.So, what changed?Personally, I believe it is our present addiction to irony and a kind of narcissistic attachment to extremes.Mendelssohn does not offer this and so doesn't speak to many people.His music is full of great craft in counterpoint and harmony; his texts are full of health, love, devotion, pride, and faith.To some nowadays he sounds a bit corny.Like all great artists, he is a mirror in which we see ourselves clearly, but think we judge the artist who is actually above our judgment.And we come off poorly if we do not appreciate his genius.

So, if Mendelssohn is "forgotten" how does he affect our approach to Art Music (Classical Music) today?Simple.He was one of the first to lead the orchestra with a baton from the front, to great positive effect.He helped in the revival of J.S. Bach including the b-minor mass and the St. Matthew Passion.His approach to editing texts for publication looked toward our current standard of printing only what the composer wrote as an "Urtext" with editorial emendations clearly marked and separate if possible.He also helped form several great orchestras and when he traveled he helped raise the level of performers all over the world.These traditions live on.Would that we honor the man who authored them.

It is true that his own tendencies toward perfectionism prevented him from ever settling on a libretto for an opera, something he had always wanted to write.However, he left us much to appreciate and it is our fault if we don't explore his works and perform it in our homes, amateur ensembles, and professional musical organizations.

There is more that I could write, but most importantly go read this excellent book and listen to the music of this great man and genius of music.

A landmark in Mendelssohn scholarship
As a Mendelssohn specialist I pre-ordered this book, and have been working my way through it for the past few weeks. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who is interested in this remarkable composer and his music. It has many points to commend it for scholars(extensive recourse to important but obscure archival documents, correction of major and minor factual errors that have persisted in all the previous Mendelssohn biographies, etc.), and just as much to commend it to general readerships: it's elegantly written, well balanced, informative on contextual, musical, and biographical fronts, etc. Fanny is arguably as present in the pages of this book as she was in Mendelssohn's life. And, not least of all, it's remarkably affordable. I am a former student of Professor Todd (having gotten my Ph.D. from Duke University in 1994), but can also say that I offer these remarks without any bias other than that of being one who admires the music and life of Mendelssohn.

If this reads like an endorsement, it is. I highly recommend the
volume to all who want to know more about Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. ... Read more

Book Description
English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Elijah-Vocal Score
The score arrived in perfect condition and securely wrapped.I am extremely appreciative for finding such a great deal on a stellar product. ... Read more

Book Description
An advanced piano duet by Felix Mendelssohn. ... Read more