Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 : NPR Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 Embed Embed Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 Embed Embed Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream; Symphony No. 4 "Italian" Toggle more options Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream; Symphony No. 4 "Italian" Toggle more options Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Mendelssohn: Octet; Quartet No.

2 Toggle more options Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> More Mendelssohn Robert Greenhouse discusses Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony Toggle more options Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Felix Mendelssohn's famous "Wedding March" was first used for wedding music at the nuptials of princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise 150 years ago. Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Getty Images It's hard to imagine wedding music without the familiar strains of Mendelssohn's famous "Wedding March." The tune is so famous — opening with its regal blast of brass — that it seems like it's been around forever. But it was 150 years ago that the Wedding March was popularized for the first time. The March was first performed in Potsdam in 1842, as a part of Mendelssohn's incidental music for the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It wasn't until Jan.

25, 1858, that the march first appeared in a royal wedding — as a recessional used by princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, the oldest child of Queen Victoria, when she married Frederick William IV of Prussia. Classical-music historian Robert Greenberg says that the event was enough to set a standard for ages to come. "When a royal person does something royal-sounding, everyone wants a piece of the action. And from that moment on, Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream has become a staple in weddings in the German- and English-speaking worlds." But Greenberg says that Mendelssohn had Shakespeare in mind long before he penned the famous march. "At the age of 17, he got it in his head to write an orchestral work that would illustrate the characters of his favorite play," Greenberg says. This is the piece that's called the "Overture" to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it's one of the masterworks of 19th-century orchestral literature.

Article continues after sponsorship Going back even further, between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn composed 12 string symphonies, four operas, and many other works. Greenberg says that Mendelssohn's precociousness was due in large part to his privileged lifestyle. "He came from a wealthy banking family in Berlin, and his parents wanted only the best for their children," Greenberg says. "They were over-educated by any standards. Mendelssohn could speak multiple languages as a child, reading Homer in the original by the time he was 10. He was also an excellent water-colorist. Music was just another one of those things he mastered as a young man." It also didn't hurt that the young composer's father hired private orchestras so Mendelssohn could learn on the job, hearing his own music as he composed it. Mendelssohn wrote his first symphony for full orchestra at age 15. His first acknowledged masterwork came one year later, in the form of an octet for strings. Greenberg says much of its genius is to be found in the way the piece is built.

"The themes and how he manipulates them are brilliant," he says, "especially in the third movement 'scherzo,' which has a lightness, an effervescence that we now refer to as 'Mendelssonian.' It's a kind of music that no one had written before." Mendelssohn was also innovative as a conductor, particularly after he took over the prestigious Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. "He became the prototype for the modern conductor," Greenberg says. "He was the first to use a baton on a regular basis. He programmed music back to the 16th century, something new at the time. And he created an infrastructure that made the life for his musicians easier. He got them pensions and dental plans, creating a loyalty within an orchestral core that was used to being treated like cattle." Unfortunately, Mendelssohn was only 38 years old when he died in 1847. He suffered a series of strokes almost immediately upon hearing of the death of his beloved sister, Fanny.

Related NPR Stories Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 | WBUR News Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' at 150 Play closemore Felix Mendelssohn's famous "Wedding March" was first used for wedding music at the nuptials of princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise 150 years ago. (Getty Images) It's hard to imagine wedding music without the familiar strains of Mendelssohn's famous "Wedding March." The tune is so famous — opening with its regal blast of brass — that it seems like it's been around forever. But it was 150 years ago that the Wedding March was popularized for the first time. The March was first performed in Potsdam in 1842, as a part of Mendelssohn's incidental music for the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It wasn't until Jan. 25, 1858, that the march first appeared in a royal wedding — as a recessional used by princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, the oldest child of Queen Victoria, when she married Frederick William IV of Prussia.

Classical-music historian Robert Greenberg says that the event was enough to set a standard for ages to come. "When a royal person does something royal-sounding, everyone wants a piece of the action. And from that moment on, Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream has become a staple in weddings in the German- and English-speaking worlds." But Greenberg says that Mendelssohn had Shakespeare in mind long before he penned the famous march. "At the age of 17, he got it in his head to write an orchestral work that would illustrate the characters of his favorite play," Greenberg says. This is the piece that's called the "Overture" to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it's one of the masterworks of 19th-century orchestral literature. Going back even further, between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn composed 12 string symphonies, four operas, and many other works. Greenberg says that Mendelssohn's precociousness was due in large part to his privileged lifestyle.

"He came from a wealthy banking family in Berlin, and his parents wanted only the best for their children," Greenberg says. "They were over-educated by any standards. Mendelssohn could speak multiple languages as a child, reading Homer in the original by the time he was 10. He was also an excellent water-colorist. Music was just another one of those things he mastered as a young man." It also didn't hurt that the young composer's father hired private orchestras so Mendelssohn could learn on the job, hearing his own music as he composed it. Mendelssohn wrote his first symphony for full orchestra at age 15. His first acknowledged masterwork came one year later, in the form of an octet for strings. Greenberg says much of its genius is to be found in the way the piece is built.

"The themes and how he manipulates them are brilliant," he says, "especially in the third movement 'scherzo,' which has a lightness, an effervescence that we now refer to as 'Mendelssonian.' It's a kind of music that no one had written before." Mendelssohn was also innovative as a conductor, particularly after he took over the prestigious Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. "He became the prototype for the modern conductor," Greenberg says. "He was the first to use a baton on a regular basis. He programmed music back to the 16th century, something new at the time. And he created an infrastructure that made the life for his musicians easier. He got them pensions and dental plans, creating a loyalty within an orchestral core that was used to being treated like cattle." Unfortunately, Mendelssohn was only 38 years old when he died in 1847. He suffered a series of strokes almost immediately upon hearing of the death of his beloved sister, Fanny.

Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture - Classic FM Schedule Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture Felix Mendelssohn wrote his A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture when he was only 17, but he didn't finish the job until 16 years later… Almost unbelievably, Felix Mendelssohn wrote this zipping overture when he was just 17 years old. The wunderkind was sure to include all sorts of special effects too - ones that are completely in keeping with Shakespeare's original play. So, you'll hear the scuttling feet of fairies as they scamper about the stage, and even the braying of poor Bottom, who is turned into an ass. Legend has it that Mendelssohn had to battle through a ferocious snow storm to even attend the overture's premiere in 1827. It was his first public appearance, and surely marked the dawning of a major new musical talent in Europe. Even if he wasn't 17 years old when he wrote it, it's a remarkably sophisticated work - broadly romantic in sound, it actually adheres to a more old-fashioned, classical structure.

Strangely, it wasn't until 16 years later in 1842 that Mendelssohn wrote the incidental music for a production of the play, by which time you'd expect him to have evolved his compositional style somewhat. However, it's perfectly common to hear an orchestral suite of not only the Overture, but several highlights from the incidental music too.

Mendelssohn News A Midsummer Night's Dream (Overture and Incidental Music) | LA Phil A Midsummer Night's Dream (Overture and Incidental Music) Composed: 1826 (Overture), 1843 (Incidental Music) Length: 30 minutes Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, and strings First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: November 30, 1919 (Wedding March); January 16, 1920 (Scherzo); March 7, 1920 (Nocturne); February 17, 1922 (Overture), all with Walter Henry Rothwell conducting; January 21, 1934 (Intermezzo), Otto Klemperer conducting The Midsummer Night's Dream Overture is a startling work, and not because Mendelssohn was only 17 when he wrote it.

His Opus 20 Octet of the previous year established that Mendelssohn was a master capable of anything. But in the Overture, Mendelssohn created a musical genre, and a musical language and expression, unlike any that had come before. It was the first "concert overture," a work intended not to introduce a dramatic presentation, but to represent, complete in itself, a literary work, or story, or place. Music as literature became such a quintessentially Romantic concept, and the concert overture (such as Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet), and its offshoot, the tone poem, became so common in the 19th century that it is easy to forget that this one overture started it all. Typical for Mendelssohn, the overture's sounds and concept may be forward-looking, but in form it is very much a traditional sonata. He originally wrote it as a piano duet in 1826, but it is hard to believe that he didn't have much of the orchestration in mind from the beginning. The orchestral version, completed soon after the duet and premiered in 1827, did much to establish his reputation.

In 1833, Mendelssohn wrote to his publishers, who had apparently asked him if there was a specific program to the overture. "I believe it will suffice to remember how the rulers of the elves, Oberon and Titania, constantly appear throughout the play with all their train, now here and now there; then comes Prince Theseus of Athens and joins a hunting party in the forest…then the two pairs of tender lovers, who lose and find themselves; finally the troop of clumsy, coarse tradesmen, who ply their ponderous amusements; then again the elves, who entice all - and on this the piece is constructed. When at the end all is happily resolved… the elves return and bless the house, and disappear as morning arrives. So ends the play, and also my overture." Mendelssohn scored the overture for the same orchestra that had been standard since Mozart's day, with one startling exception. To the strings, timpani, and pairs of woodwinds, horns, and trumpets, he added an ophicleide, a bass brass instrument that works like a woodwind, changing pitch by covering and uncovering holes with keys.

Its sound is coarser than that of the tuba, which had not been invented in 1826. The ophicleide itself had been invented only in 1817, but quickly found a place in bands. Spontini and Berlioz had already used it in serious music, and it would have an illustrious career in the orchestra for a few decades before the even newer tuba supplanted it. But using it in a big orchestra with trombones was a far cry from writing for it in a small orchestra used as sparingly as Mendelssohn used his. The big, uncouth instrument sticks out of the shimmering orchestral texture like Bottom the weaver, with his jackass head, sticks out of the gossamer bower of the fairy queen Titania, which was Mendelssohn's point in using it. It even gets to bray like an ass in the recapitulation. There are no ophicleides in the modern orchestra, of course: the tuba, more elephantine and less asinine, takes it place. The overture is full of memorable touches.

After opening chords define the key of E major, violins in four parts abruptly change to E minor, letting us know that we're entering a different world, and then depict the fairy world in quick notes. Little woodwind fanfare figures that seem inconsequential in the exposition become very mysterious, like spirits popping up from behind mushrooms and then disappearing, in the development. The strings offer their own hee-haws. Loud horn calls evoke both the threatening darkness of the forest and Theseus' hunting party. Mendelssohn was making new sounds here. Many composers had conjured the fairy world before, but no one had been able to do it so convincingly and completely. Few were so willing to lay the orchestra so bare and transparent; the treble-only scampering of the fairies is particularly striking on a program with Beethoven, whose granite-solid textures speak of daylight and very human strength. In 1843, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia asked Mendelssohn to write music for the entire Shakespeare play. Mendelssohn supplied 13 new numbers; not only full-length pieces for scene changes and settings of the song texts in the play, but a few snippets to underlay stage action.

The Scherzo, Intermezzo, Nocturne, and Wedding March on this program all come between acts, showing what a glorious thing a scene change can be. They are presented in their dramatic order, but a reminder of the plot may still be helpful in listening to them, since, unlike the Overture, they each have a specific dramatic purpose. Hermia and Lysander elope into the woods outside Athens so Hermia won't have to marry Demetrius, her father's choice for her. Demetrius follows, as does Helena, who loves Demetrius, who used to love Helena. A band of tradesmen, including Bottom the weaver, go into the forest to rehearse a play they hope to perform at the imminent wedding of Theseus, duke of Athens. In the forest, Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, are bickering. Oberon casts a spell on Titania to make her fall in love with the first thing she sees, which turns out to be Bottom, given the head of an ass by Puck, Oberon's trickster.

Oberon and Puck also cast love-spells, inaccurately, on Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius, who spend the night falling in and out of love before everyone winds up loving the right person by morning, and the two couples get married in the same ceremony with Theseus and Hippolyta. The Scherzo is the first musical interlude in the play. It comes after Act I, which is set entirely in the human world of Athens and daylight, and sets the stage for the forest, night, and fairy world of Act II. The chiaroscuro sound of flutes, low clarinets, and middle bassoons that opens it is another Mendelssohn innovation; it may bring Tchaikovsky to mind. The Intermezzo begins at the end of Act II, when Hermia, suddenly abandoned by the bewitched Lysander, anxiously sets off into the woods alone to find "either death" or him. Woodwinds and first violins toss an unsettling little motif back and forth over nervous tremolos from the other strings, portraying the strangeness of the woods at night and reflecting Hermia's fear without taking it too seriously in what is, after all, a comedy.

Much of the music would have sounded tonally obscure, and thus spooky, to an 1843 audience. After a few minutes, the music forgets Hermia and turns to Bottom and the other tradesmen, whose rehearsal will begin Act III. They are introduced with a simple peasant-like march, rustic drones and raucous horns. The Nocturne comes at the end of Act III, when Puck finally has each of the four lovers sleeping where he or she will wake up and fall in love with the right person. Mendelssohn gives the melody to the first horn, embraced by the two bassoons, while a clarinet and the second horn drone quietly to evoke the still of night. Later the flutes suggest the proverbial wings of night. In the play, the subtle but majestic beauty of the music is a sublime description of the scene of sleeping lovers, but also an incongruous setup for a visual gag: when it ends the curtain opens on the ridiculous sight of Titania, the fairy queen, in her bower with the ass-headed Bottom. The Wedding March comes at the close of Act IV and leads into the post-wedding party of Act V.

The trombones make their first appearance in the Midsummer Night's Dream music (and only appearance in today's concert), re-establishing the world of humans and daylight, and emphasizing that this a wedding not only of the enchanted lovers, but of the royal Theseus and Hippolyta. -- Lawyer and lutenist Howard Posner has also annotated programs for the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, the Coleman Chamber Concerts, and the Salzburg Festival. A Midsummer Night's Dream, incidental music, Op.61 (Mendelssohn, Felix) - IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library: Free Public Domain Sheet Music A Midsummer Night's Dream, incidental music, Op.61 (Mendelssohn, Felix) Movements/SectionsMov'ts/Sec's 1842 Genre Categories Javascript is required for this feature. Sheet Music Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel , 1874-82. Plate M.B. 117. Copyright Leipzig: C.F. Peters , n.d. Plate 6056. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Moscow: Muzgiz , 1960. Plate М.

27854 Г. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Scherzo (No.1) Moscow: Muzgiz , n.d.(ca.1940). Plate М. 12912 Г. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Intermezzo (No.5) Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel , n.d. (ca. 1880). Plate Part. B. 294. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. Notturno (No.7) Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel , No.4496, n.d. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. Wedding March (No.9) Detroit: Luck's Music Library, n.d. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Parts * #35490 - 2.27MB, 14, 11 pp.

- 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 18615x ⇩ * #35491 - 1.74MB, 10, 9 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 6248x ⇩ * #35492 - 2.50MB, 15, 12 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 20097x ⇩ * #35493 - 2.04MB, 12, 12 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 5723x ⇩ * #35494 - 1.61MB, 8, 8 pp.

- 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 11687x ⇩ * #35495 - 0.83MB, 4, 4, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 7297x ⇩ * #35496 - 0.56MB, 1, 1, 1, 4 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 7558x ⇩ * #35497 - 0.63MB, 6, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 4923x ⇩ New York: Edwin F. Kalmus , n.d.(1933-70). Copyright These files are part of the Orchestra Parts Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature.

Selections Javascript is required for this feature. Wedding March (No.9) * #86861 - 0.19MB, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 4304x ⇩ * #86862 - 0.18MB, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 2644x ⇩ * #86863 - 0.44MB, 2, 2, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 3553x ⇩ * #86864 - 0.17MB, 1, 1 pp.

- 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 2329x ⇩ * #86865 - 0.30MB, 1, 1, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 3161x ⇩ * #86866 - 0.39MB, 2, 2, 1 x 4 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 4739x ⇩ * #86867 - 0.37MB, 1 ea pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 3243x ⇩ * #86868 - 0.08MB, 1, 1 pp.

- 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 2588x ⇩ * #86869 - 0.26MB, 2, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 9243x ⇩ * #65030 - 0.26MB, 2, 1, 1 pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 7712x ⇩ Transposed parts reprinted from a copyist's manuscript (Luck's Music Library, n.d.) Reprinted Detroit: Luck's Music Library, n.d. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Vocal Scores Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel , n.d.(ca.1875). Plates 13199, V.A. 146 Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Arrangements and Transcriptions London: A.Hammond, n.d.

Plate 2680. Copyright This file is part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Rokahr Family Archive Mirroring Project. Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. Selections Braunschweig: Henry Litolff's Verlag , No.891, n.d.(ca.1870). Plate 10749. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Violin and Piano (Blumenthal) Boston: White and Goullard, 1870. Plate 44. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano 4 hands (Mendelssohn) Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel , n.d. (ca.1844). Plate 7040 Copyright [ tag / del ] Misc. Notes From the uploader's library. First of 4 separate excerpts. Score identified by former owner on cover : Emilie Faber Juillet 1875. Purchase Leipzig: C.F. Peters , n.d.(ca.1870). Plate 6040. 6055 Copyright Leipzig: C.F.

Peters , n.d. Plate 8313. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Bohlmann) Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel , n.d. Plate 2349. Copyright This item is from the Collezione "Daini Bixio". Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Frederiksen) Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Rachmaninoff) * #09339 - 0.84MB, 16 (#3-18) pp. - 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/29/14 - 7521x ⇩ Moscow: Muzyka , (1966). Plate 3058. First published - New York: Charles Foley, 1933. Plate 26476. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Ritter) Paris: Brandus et Cie. , n.d.[1878]. Plate B.

et Cie. 12,365. Copyright Publication noted in the Bibliographie de la France : 2e série, 67e année, Nº 29, 20 Juillet 1878, p.403, reg.2532. Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Thalberg) Milano: R. Stabilimento Ricordi , n.d.(ca.1873). Plate 43316. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. Nocturne (No.5) Leipzig: Fr. Kistner ]], n.d. [1885] , Plate 6619. Copyright Contained in the Nitschmann Collection of Elblag Library Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Frederiksen) Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Moszkowski) * #98899 - 0.68MB, 2 (#328–329) pp.

- 0.0/10 2 4 6 8 10 (-) - V/V/V - 4634x ⇩ [ tag / del ] Misc. Notes “Mendelssohn’s music to Midsummernight’s Dream, written in his eighteenth year, still remains the exemplar for all fairy music. The lovely nocturne, as arranged by Moszkowski, makes a beautiful piano number, retaining all the charm of the original. Grade 5.” Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. Wedding March (No.9) Javascript is required for this feature. For String Quartet (Kowalewski) Javascript is required for this feature. For String Quartet (Partridge) Javascript is required for this feature. For Violin, Cello and Piano (Sitt) Leipzig: Peters , n.d.[1893]. Plate 7885. Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For 1 or 2 Violins and Piano (Brunner) Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano and Harmonium (Vilbac) Braunschweig: Collection Litolff , n.d. (ca.1879).

Plate 10700 A, 10700 Copyright Monochrome 600 dpi, compr. CCITT group 4 (via GIMP). Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano 4 hands (Mendelssohn) Leipzig: Verlag der Musik-Woche, n.d.(ca.1910). Plate 217 Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For 2 Violins (David) Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Dubois) Paris: Durand & Cie. , n.d.(ca.1909). Plate D.& F. 9516 Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Frederiksen) Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ or Piano (Gouin) Montréal: Les Éditions Outremontaises, 2010 Copyright These file(s) are part of the Werner Icking Music Collection . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Jackson) New York: G. Schirmer , n.d.(ca.1865). Plate 231. Copyright This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project .

Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Organ (Willing) This file is part of the Sibley Mirroring Project . Purchase Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Jaëll) Leipzig: C.F. Peters , n.d.(ca.1890). Plate 8076 Copyright Javascript is required for this feature. For Piano solo (Lenschow) Baltimore: George Willig, Jun. , n.d.(1850). Plate 2286. Copyright [ tag / del ] Misc. Notes Date 1850 estimated from Willig plate table. May be possible to obtain a better estimate from contemporary periodicals or otherwise.

(Category created in 2012 -after- this was uploaded, and "Charles" Lenschow chosen- should have checked to see if a link already existed, sorry!) Purchase San Francisco Symphony - MENDELSSOHN: Suite from A Midsummer Night’s Dream │ Die erste Walpurgisnacht San Francisco Symphony Music Then and Now: Twentieth Century and Contemporary Mendelssohn: Suite from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opus 61 │ Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Opus 60 Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, on February 3, 1809, and died in Leipzig on November 4, 1847. Following the Mendelssohn family’s conversion from Judaism to Lutheranism—the children in 1816, the father in 1822—the members of the family appended the second name of Bartholdy to their surname; accordingly, the composer often identified himself as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (with no hyphen). He composed his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the midsummer of 1826, completing it on August 6.

The piece is dedicated to the Prince of Prussia. The Overture was premiered shortly after it was written, at a private concert at the Mendelssohns’ home in Berlin; the first public performance was in February 1827, in Stettin, Germany. Mendelssohn himself played the timpani when the piece received its Paris premiere, at a concert of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, on February 19, 1832. It was first heard in the US at a concert of the New York Philharmonic Society, with George Loder conducting, in April 1843. Henry Hadley led the first San Francisco Symphony performances of the Overture, in January 1913; Herbert Blomstedt led the most recent performances, in April 2003. The score calls for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, ophicleide (a low-pitched, keyed brass instrument, a sort of bass bugle, now essentially obsolete and usually replaced by a tuba or a contrabassoon), timpani, and strings.

Mendelssohn returned to Shakespeare’s play in 1843, expanding his existing pieces to create an eleven-movement score that could be interpolated into theatrical presentations of the play. In that version, the music was first heard in a private performance of the play on October 18, 1843, at the Neuer Palais in Potsdam; the first public performance came four days later, at the Berlin Schauspielhaus. Mendelssohn himself led the first standalone concert of the incidental music on May 27, 1844, in London. The incidental music was first played in this country as part of a performance of the play at the Astor Place Opera House, New York, with Theodor Eisfeld conducting, in December 1849. This concert includes three of the most popular items from Mendelssohn’s “later” Midsummer Night’s Dream music: the Intermezzo, Notturno, Scherzo, and the Wedding March.

The orchestration of these movements differs from that of the Overture in that the ophicleide (or substitute) is done without in the Scherzo; the Notturno dispenses with trumpets and timpani as well as the ophicleide. Mendelssohn himself led the first standalone concert of the Complete Incidental Music for A Midsummer’s Night Dream (without the play), on May 27, 1844, in London. The San Francisco Symphony has played music from A Midsummer’s Night Dream on many occasions, with selections performed in February 1913 under the baton of Henry Hadley; the most recent SFS performances of music from A Midsummer’s Night Dream, in March 2011, were led by Kurt Masur Performance time: about thirty-one minutes. Mendelssohn composed Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) from 1830 to 1832, to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and revised it through 1843.

He conducted the work’s premiere at the Berlin Singakademie on January 10, 1833, and also led the first performance of its revised version, on February 2, 1843, with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. These are the first San Francisco Symphony subscription performances. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and strings, in addition to solo voices (mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone or bass) and a mixed chorus. Performance time: about forty-five minutes. “Talent,” a wit once observed, “is nature’s way of being unfair,” and if this is so, it was at its unfairest when it created Felix Mendelssohn, probably the most astonishing prodigy in the history of music. At a young age he achieved absolute musical fluency as both a composer and a pianist.

Robert Schumann, one of the most perspicacious music critics of Mendelssohn’s time, called him the “Mozart of the nineteenth century; the most brilliant among musicians.” But even in such a lofty comparison Mendelssohn fares well: if we lost everything Mozart wrote before he turned eighteen, we would hardly feel the impact, whereas a similar deletion in Mendelssohn’s catalogue would deprive the world of such irreplaceable masterpieces as his delightful Octet and his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Half his life earlier, when he was nine, Mendelssohn gave his debut solo-piano concert (in which he played Jan Ladislav Dussek’s virtuosic Concert militaire), and before long he plunged into the detailed study of counterpoint, fugue, figured bass, and other skills deemed indispensable to a composer’s arsenal. While still a teenager he produced an impressive catalogue of works in various genres: operas, chamber music, keyboard solos and duets, sacred and secular choral works, songs.

He had just passed his twentieth birthday when he directed the “modern premiere” of Johann Sebastian Bach’s by-then-forgotten Saint Matthew Passion, a historic event that launched the Bach revival of the nineteenth century. His talent was supported by privilege. He was born into a family that was both cultured and wealthy; his grandfather was the noted philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and his father, Abraham, was a supremely successful banker remembered at least for his remark that he was destined to go down in history “as his father’s son and his son’s father.” Young Felix, his gifted sister Fanny, and their younger siblings Rebekka and Paul enjoyed certain perks as they moved through their childhood. Felix had a private orchestra at his disposal to try out his new compositions at every-other-Sunday musicales in the family home, at which the Mendelssohn children regularly hobnobbed with the rich and famous. The siblings profited from the finest music instruction that money could buy. Felix’s musical education included private lessons in piano and violin, as well as composition lessons from Carl Friedrich Zelter, who served as musical adviser to the literary lion Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

When Mendelssohn composed his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in July and August of 1826, he was just midway between his seventeenth and his eighteenth birthdays. It’s not surprising that an adolescent would be enamored of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play about love, magic, and how supernatural powers can bend the annoying rules of powerful adults. That such an adolescent might express his enthusiasm by writing one of the most enduring masterpieces in the repertory is, however, not something that could have been anticipated. Shakespeare’s comedy was first printed in 1600, but it was probably written several years earlier. Samuel Pepys may have found it to be “the most insipid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life,” but his was the voice of the minority. In Pepys’s own day A Midsummer Night’s Dream would enjoy an important musical adaptation as Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, and it would go on to achieve a place in the hearts of theatergoers, mostly through adaptations, both in England and abroad.

Though the name of Shakespeare was known in German literary circles as early as 1682, his works found their first serious apologist in that country in Johann Elias Schlegel, whose eighteenth-century translations and critical writings served as the catalyst for what would become a German infatuation with Shakespeare. Between 1762 and 1766 the author Christoph Martin Wieland published eight volumes of Shakespeare’s works in German—all translated into prose with the sole exception of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he rendered in verse. This was the version that introduced Goethe and Heine to Shakespeare. Such dominant figures as Lessing, Herder, and other literary lions got on the Shakespeare bandwagon, and a spate of new translations began to appear. It seems that the Mendelssohn children learned their Shakespeare through the 1801 translation of Ludwig Tieck and August Wilhelm von Schlegel (a nephew of Johann Elias), who viewed Shakespeare as a fellow Romantic. They also read the bard selectively in the original English.

At the beginning of July 1826, Felix jotted a note to Fanny: “I have grown accustomed to composing in our garden; there I’ve completed two piano pieces in A major and E minor. Today or tomorrow I am going to dream there the Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is, however, an enormous audacity.” The music critic Adolf Bernhard Marx, a regular at the Mendelssohn family’s musicales and a friend of the young composer (who was fourteen years his junior), provided in his memoirs an inside account of what ensued: At that time, too, Felix struggled for veracity and truthfulness in his own works. I can still see him [in 1826] entering my room with a heated expression, pacing up and down a few times, and saying: “I have a terrific idea! What do you think of it? I want to write an overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I expressed warm support for the idea. A few days later he, the happy, free one, was back again with the score, complete up to the second part. The dance of the elves with its introductory chords was as one would later know it.

Then—well, then there followed an overture, cheerful, pleasantly agitated, perfectly delightful, perfectly praiseworthy—only I could perceive no Midsummer Night’s Dream in it. Sincerely feeling that it was my duty as a friend, I told him this in candor. He was taken aback, irritated, even hurt, and ran out without taking his leave. I let that pass and avoided his house for several days, for since my last visit, following that exchange, his mother and Fanny had also received me coldly, with something approaching hostility. A few days later, the Mendelssohns’ slim manservant appeared at my door and handed me an envelope with the words “A compliment from Mr. Felix.” When I opened it great pieces of torn-up manuscript paper fell to the ground, along with a note from Felix reading: “You are always right! But now come and help.” Perhaps the very understanding, thoughtful father had made the difference; or perhaps the hotheaded young man had come to himself. I did not fail to respond; I hurried over and explained that, as I saw it, such a score, since it serves as a prologue, must give a true and complete reflection of the drama.

He went to work with fire and absolute dedication. . . . [T]he overture became the one we now know. Mother and sister were reconciled when they saw the composer rushing around in high excitement and pleasure. But during the first performance at his house, the father declared in front of the numerous assembly that it was actually more my work than Felix’s. This was naturally quite unjustified, whether it was merely to express his gratification at my behavior, or perhaps to give me satisfaction for the earlier defection of the womenfolk. The original idea and the execution belonged to Felix; the advice I had given was my duty and my only part in it. Mendelssohn did not imagine his overture as a prelude to any performance of Shakespeare’s play, at least not when he wrote it. Unlike his Ruy Blas Overture, which was written for a stage production of Victor Hugo’s play, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was conceived as a concert overture, along the lines of the vaguely programmatic Fingal’s Cave or Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

It might be best viewed as a sort of parallel depiction of certain of the play’s aspects: the magical aura suggested by the opening woodwind chords, the violins’ lighter-than-air scurrying of the fairies’ dance, the intrusion of moments of doubt and melancholy, the tender nostalgia of the strings’ theme that closes the piece. All of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries seemed to have fallen instantly in love with this work. “The bloom of youth lies over it,” wrote Robert Schumann, “as it does over hardly any other of the composer’s works: it is an inspired moment the mature master made his first and highest flight.” Hector Berlioz, who was such an ardent Shakespeare fan that he married a Shakespearean actress with whom he did not share a common language, exclaimed in a letter to Mendelssohn, “I have never heard anything more deeply Shakespearean than your music.” Even Richard Wagner, whose roiling anti-Semitism usually prevented him from discovering an iota of value in Mendelssohn’s music, held his tongue when it came to this piece.

In the years that followed, Mendelssohn composed quite a few stage pieces, including operas (which are today obscure) and incidental music for such plays as Racine’s Athalie and Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. In 1843, King Friedrich Wilhelm asked Mendelssohn to revisit Shakespeare’s play with an eye toward setting the playwright’s songs and providing other bits of incidental music that might enliven a stage production. He found the composer at a busy moment. That year, Mendelssohn had assumed the direction of the newly formed all-male cathedral choir in Berlin, and he was also overseeing the symphonic concerts presented by the Berlin opera orchestra. In addition, he was Capellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and was intensely devoted to developing the curriculum and faculty of the newly established conservatory attached to that institution. But the thought of again immersing himself in Shakespeare’s play—and perhaps recapturing something of the carefree spirit of his charmed childhood—was impossible to turn down.

Some of Mendelssohn’s contributions were strictly instrumental, some were vocal, some were self-standing, some were meant to be interwoven with the play’s ongoing dialogue. Many of these pieces have become justifiably famous, including the bustling Scherzo with a prominent turn for solo flute, composed to accompany Puck’s encounter with an elf; the elegiac Nocturne, with its gorgeous horn solo, serving as an entr’acte following Act III of the play; or the Wedding March, written to serve as the Act V nuptial music for Theseus and Hippolyta, and without which millions of couples in the ensuing years would have been left standing at the altar wondering how to get on with their lives. In returning to the Midsummer Night’s Dream project, Mendelssohn brought to bear more than a decade of further experience as an orchestrator. It’s remarkable how all the music fits together as if it were the conception of a single happy moment.

In 1821, Zelter took Mendelssohn (then aged twelve) to meet the seventy-two-year-old Goethe, who was by then revered as the “sage of Weimar.” The eminent author and the fledgling composer struck up a deep-seated friendship during this fourteen-day visit, notwithstanding the degree to which the two were chronologically mismatched. They only spent time together on three occasions, in each case at Goethe’s home in Weimar: their initial visit in 1821, a very brief stay in 1825, and then a visit of perhaps a week in late May and early June of 1830. Nonetheless, they remained close friends and mutual admirers up until the poet’s death, in 1832, keeping in touch through correspondence either directly or through the intermediary of Zelter. Mendelssohn composed several lieder, choral songs, and a concert aria to texts by Goethe, and he based his orchestral overture Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) on two of that author’s poems.

But the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht is the most extensive and impressive of his Goethe settings. Walpurgisnacht is a sort of Halloween of German folk tradition: on the night of April 30, witches are supposed to hold their festivities on the Brocken (or Blocksberg), the tallest of the Harz Mountains. Goethe, who had written his Walpurgisnacht ballad in 1799 and published it the following year, claimed that his work was based more on historical reality than on mere folk whimsy. He explained the gist of the poem to Zelter, who struggled with three musical settings of it before giving up: It seems that the German heathen priests and elders, after they had been driven out of their holy groves and Christianity had been forced on the people, went with their faithful followers to the wild, inaccessible peaks of the Harz Mountains in the beginning of the spring, there (in the old way) to direct prayer and flame to the formless God of heaven and earth.

Now, in order to secure against the armed missionaries who were tracking them, they found it good to disguise a number of themselves and thereby to hold their superstitious enemies at bay, and protected by devils’ masks, to fulfill the purest service of God. Though Zelter failed to turn Goethe’s poem into a cantata, his star pupil would take on the project and achieve it with stunning success. In the spring of 1830, on Goethe’s suggestion, Mendelssohn embarked on a trip to Italy, and at the outset of his journey he stopped in Weimar for what would be their final visit. When he reached Rome (perhaps even a bit before then), he began working on Die erste Walpurgisnacht, which he would complete provisionally two years later in Paris. Goethe was delighted to learn that Mendelssohn was setting this text and sent the composer a further observation to clarify his philosophical intent: The principles on which this poem is based are symbolic in the highest sense of the word.

For in the history of the world, it must continually recur that an ancient, tried, established, and tranquilizing order of things will be forced aside, displaced, thwarted, and, if not annihilated, at least pent up within the narrowest possible limits by rising innovations. The intermediate period, when the opposition of hatred is still possible and practicable, is forcibly represented in this poem, and the flames of a joyful and undisturbed enthusiasm once more blaze high in brilliant light. While in Rome, Mendelssohn made the acquaintance of Hector Berlioz, who was living there as laureate of the Prix de Rome, and the two were inseparable for a couple of weeks. Much though he liked Berlioz personally, Mendelssohn was not much smitten by his music, and in a letter home he particularly excoriated the “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” the finale of Berlioz’s brand-new Symphonie fantastique. Even though Mendelssohn found Berlioz’s piece outré, it must have proved stimulating given that Goethe’s text touched on similar territory, being about festivities of Druids and pagans who disguise themselves as supernatural beings.

Indeed, at several points in the middle of this cantata we glimpse Mendelssohn at his most Berliozian. The work enjoyed several private performances before its premiere, including one when Mendelssohn stopped in Milan to play it as a work-in-progress for Mozart’s son Carl. After the public premiere, in January 1833 (ten months after Goethe’s death), Mendelssohn withdrew the score, voicing misgivings about the piece. He repeatedly mentioned his desire to expand into a “symphony-cantata” along the lines of his Lobgesang Symphony, replacing the work’s overture with a suite of shorter pieces. In the end, the work’s structure remained essentially as it had been, and the overture remained untouched. By 1843 he completed revisions on the vocal movements, and the final version was prepared for its publication the following year. Berlioz attended the premiere of the revised version and provided a characteristically insightful commentary.

Though complaining that he found Mendelssohn to be “rather too fond of the dead,” Berlioz offered an overwhelmingly positive assessment: One must hear Mendelssohn’s music in order to form an idea of the diversity of opportunities the poem offers to a skillful composer. He has made admirable use of these opportunities. The score is of impeccable clarity, notwithstanding its complexity. Voices and instruments are completely integrated, running in opposite directions, even colliding, with an apparent disorder that is the perfection of art. I shall single out (as things of great beauty in two opposing genres) the mysterious section of the posting of the sentinels, and the final chorus, in which one hears the voice of the priest rising from time to time quiet and reverential above the infernal din of the false devils and witches. One scarcely knows what to admire most in this finale—the orchestral or the choral writing, or the whirlwind movement of the whole! The Overture begins with the swirling storms of winter (Das schlechte Wetter—Bad Weather); the cascading descent of a string motif may bring to mind the storm scene of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.

The blizzards finally yield to Maytime (Der Übergang zum Frühling—The Transition to Spring) in a passage that seems to prefigure Brahms’s Second Symphony. The Overture melds seamlessly into the next movement; in fact, all the work’s sections succeed one another attacca, without pauses between. A rising call from horns and bassoon foreshadows the melody that bursts forth fully in the opening Druidic hymn “Es lacht der Mai!” (“May is laughing”), an effective musical suggestion of the metamorphosis of spring and, indeed, of Goethe’s idea of continual innovation. The listener will have no trouble keeping up with the action. In the first four numbers (following the Overture), the Druids lament their suffering under Christian oppressors, stoke their sacrificial fires (the violas’ arpeggiated figure spreading to other instruments and shifting to a dotted rhythm as the kindling ignites), and prepare their guards to protect them. In the second half—numbers 5 through 9—the Druids and pagans disguise themselves as diabolical creatures to frighten away the Christians who they will try to disrupt their festivities.

The frenzy peaks in section 6, which would qualify as a vaguely Berliozian span. The Christians flee at the opening of section 9, leaving the Druids to resume their rites with hymnic exaltation. The finale occasioned some amusement for Mendelssohn’s nephew, Sebastian Hensel (whose mother, Felix’s beloved sister Fanny, had suffered a fatal stroke while conducting Die erste Walpurgisnacht in a rehearsal). In a memoir about his family, he recalled that after one performance a pious member of the audience complimented the composer on the “beautiful, redeeming, and elevating Christian chorus at the end”—which, of course, it is not, despite its ecclesiastical, chorale-like flavor.

Instead, it’s the statement of a Druid priest and a group of his decidedly un-Christian followers—and this concluding a work in which the Christians are cast unequivocally as the “bad guys.” In the course of the piece, listeners have heard not only the Druid Priest (baritone) but also a procession of other nearly operatic characters: a Druid (solo tenor), an Old Woman of the Heathen (mezzo-soprano), a Druid Guard (baritone or bass-baritone), a Christian Guard (tenor), and a chorus variously deployed as a full mixed double chorus, as men’s and women’s choruses, and as a small ensemble of Christian Guards. Mendelssohn leaves his fingerprints everywhere, and listeners who have fallen into the habit of thinking of the composer only in terms of deft buoyancy will find their conception of him expanded by this work, filled as it is with wild swings of mood, bold strokes of orchestration, and powerful dramatic contrasts. Spurred on by Goethe’s forceful text, Mendelssohn created a work of impressive power whose music is as masterly as one would expect of a piece written at about the same time as The Hebrides overture and the Italian Symphony.

—James M.

Keller More About the Music Recordings: For A Midsummer Night’s Dream—These recordings present Mendelssohn’s incidental music complete or very close to complete: Kurt Masur conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Radio Chorus, with soloists Edith Wiens and Christiane Oertel, and with Friedhelm Eberle delivering a narration in German (Atlantic; also on Warner Classics) | André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Finchley Children’s Music Group, with soloists Lillian Watson and Delia Wallace (EMI Classics Encore) | Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, with soloists Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade, with a narrative from Judi Dench (Deutsche Grammophon) | Claus Peter Flor conducting the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with soloists Lucia Popp and Mariana Lipovček (RCA) | Philippe Herreweghe conducting the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées (Harmonia Mundi) | Neville Marriner conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (Philips) For Die erste Walpurgisnacht—Christoph von Dohnányi conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and

 Vienna State Opera Chorus and Vienna Singverein (Decca) | Kurt Masur conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Radio Chorus (Berlin Classics) | Kent Nagano conducting the Bavarian State Orchestra and Audi Academy Youth Choir (Farao) Reading Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night: The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850 (Eastman Studies in Music), by John Michael Cooper (University of Rochester Press) | Goethe and Mendelssohn (1821-1831), by Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, edited by W.E.

von Glehn (MacMillan) | Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, by R. Larry Todd (Oxford) | A Portrait of Mendelssohn, by Clive Brown (Yale University Press) | The Mendelssohn Companion, edited by Douglas Seaton (Greenwood Press) | The Mendelssohn Family, 1729-1847, by Sebastian Hensel (Harper & Brothers) San Francisco Symphony IMPOSSIBLE REMIX - Wedding March - YouTube IMPOSSIBLE REMIX - Wedding March Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Dec 13, 2016 🌟Learn piano songs the easy way with guide! ► 🌟I'm giving away free sheet music in my videos, but transcribing sheets takes lots of time. If you want to support me so I can make more quality sheet music this is the way► 🌟Subscribe for more cool piano covers, sheet music and tutorials!

:) ► 🌟Help me by donating :) ► 🌟First of all - sorry if you count that as clickbait!!🌟 🌟Secondly - it's just for fun purposes🌟 🌟Thirdly - sound comes only from Yamaha DGX-650🌟 🌟Fourthly - Enjoy!🌟 🌟Comment: This is my first IMPOSSIBLE REMIX type of videos, did some crazy editing! :D Although it's just an orchestra performing from my digital piano(imagine? a digital piano playing like an orchestra??? So I count that kinda impossible, no?), but on serious note - one person couldn't play it so technically it's impossible. :P 🌟Fun fact: Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ. At weddings in many Western countries, this piece is commonly used as a recessional, though frequently stripped of its episodes in this context.

It is frequently teamed with the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin, or with Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March", both of which are often played for the entry of the bride. The first time that Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter's Church, Tiverton, England, on 2 June 1847 when it was performed by organist Samuel Reay. However, it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858. The bride was the daughter of Queen Victoria, who loved Mendelssohn's music and for whom Mendelssohn often played while on his visits to Britain. An organ on which Mendelssohn gave recitals of the "Wedding March", among other works, is housed in St Ann's Church in Tottenham. Franz Liszt wrote a virtuoso transcription of the "Wedding March and Dance of the Elves" (S. 410) in 1849-50.

Vladimir Horowitz transcribed the Wedding March into a virtuoso showpiece for piano and played it as an encore at his concerts. 🌟Gear: A Guide to Traditional Wedding Music: Mendelssohns ‘Wedding March’ | Sternberg Clarke A Guide to Traditional Wedding Music: Mendelssohn's ‘Wedding March’ February 08, 2013 As suppliers of entertainment for weddings , we’ve heard it all when it comes to wedding music. From Steel Bands to acoustic covers of Wild Thing, but by far the most popular options for wedding ceremony music remain the old favourites and that’s what we’ve been covering in this series of blogs. Last time we looked at Pachelbel’s Canon and saw how an almost forgotten piece of music became one of the most popular accompaniments to wedding ceremonies of all time. This week, we’re looking at another perennial wedding favourite; Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’. Born to a wealthy banking family in Berlin, Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – or Felix Mendelssohn as he’s better known – wasn’t just a talented composer. Mendelssohn spoke a number of languages as a child and was even a talented painter.

His privileged background gave him plenty of advantages when it came to composing music, with his father hiring private orchestras so that young Felix could hear his music as he composed it. By the age of 15, Mendelssohn had composed his first symphony – whereas most of us were probably struggling with acne and deciphering Shakespeare in GCSE English. Turns out young Mendelssohn had no problem with that either. It’s well known that The Wedding March appears in Mendelssohn’s most famous work A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but perhaps less well known is the fact that Mendelssohn had two cracks at composing music for his favourite Shakespeare play; the first, a concerto when he was 17 years old and the second as incidental music for a production of the play in 1842, years before his death. The Wedding March made its first appearance in the latter composition as the ‘intermezzo’ between acts IV and V (which, as you’d have guessed even if you didn’t study it at GCSE, features a wedding feast) and is reprised in the epilogue.

In Western weddings the piece is often used as a ‘recessional’ to close the church service, the fanfare that begins the piece effectively introducing the married couple to the guests. Though the marriage of Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, oldest daughter of Queen Victoria, to Prince Frederick William Prince of Prussia is often cited as the point at which the march became popular, the piece was first performed at a wedding over a decade earlier in Tiverton where Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church. Sadly, Mr and Mrs Daniel couldn’t quite match the royals in terms of influence and following the royal wedding in 1858, the piece became a fixture at weddings. Keep an eye on the blog for more posts on wedding music, and if you’re looking to hire musicians for a wedding – head over to our contact page and get in touch. By Alice Chorley Felix Mendelssohn Felix Mendelssohn Related Links Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, always known simply as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer of the early Romantic period. He was perhaps the greatest child prodigy after Mozart .

About Mendelssohn Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the son of a banker, Abraham, who was himself the son of the famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn. Felix's family, however, converted to Lutheranism, and moved to Berlin in 1812. His sister was Fanny Mendelssohn (later Fanny Hensel), who was a well known pianist and amateur composer herself. Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. He probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert. He was also a prolific composer as a child, writing his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. The elderly Goethe met the young Mendelssohn and took quite a shine to him, saying to him "When I am sad, come and cheer me with your playing." As a teenager, his works were performed at home with a private orchestra for the elites and intellectuals of Berlin.

Mendelssohn wrote his first twelve symphonies in his early teens (more specifically, from ages twelve to fourteen; these works were then lost for over a century, but are now played with regularity), growing with confidence until he wrote his first symphony for full orchestra (and first acknowledged), his opus 11 in C minor the year after; and at seventeen he wrote an overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is probably the earliest well known work by him (he later wrote more incidental music for the play). In 1827 he saw the first production of one of his operas, Die Hochzeit des Camacho, having written several others before then. Mendelssohn brought the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to the public's notice, from its position of relative obscurity at that time. In particular, a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829 under Mendelssohn's direction was a great success. This was the first performance of the work since Bach's death and earned Mendelssohn an international reputation at age twenty. Mendelssohn knew Hector Berlioz from their stay at the French arts academy in Rome, Italy.

They also met later in life in Germany. These meetings are described in Berlioz's memoirs. Mendelssohn's personal life was fairly conventional compared to many composers of note. He was happily married and had four children. He performed as a pianist, organist and conductor in Germany as well as in England where his music was especially popular. In 1835, he was appointed as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1846, the oratorio Elijiah premiered in Birmingham. At age thirty-eight, he founded the Leipzig Conservatory. Mendelssohn suffered from bad health in the final years of his life, and it is said he was greatly depressed by the death of his sister Fanny in May 1847. Felix Mendelssohn died later that same year after a series of strokes, on November 4, 1847, in Leipzig. Mendelssohn's Musical Influence As well as orchestral music, Mendelssohn wrote chamber music, including the string octet in 1825, organ sonatas, solo piano music, including the Songs Without Words, and two large oratorios, St.

Paul in 1836 and Elijah (or Elias) in 1846. These works, in particular, were greatly influenced by Bach. As well as reviving interest in Bach, Mendelssohn also kept the work of Franz Schubert before the public. It was he who conducted the premiere of Schubert's Ninth Symphony, more than a decade after the composer's death. In all, Mendelssohn wrote five symphonies. He also wrote two piano concertos and one famous violin concerto which is often seen as an essential piece for young prodigies to play. Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides in 1830, otherwise known as Fingal's Cave, a piece which remains popular today. The work was inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the 1820s, though its main theme is now known to have been sketched before this. These visits also inspired his Symphony No 3, The Scottish, which was written intermittently between around 1830 and 1842.

Unlike most pieces about nations written in that day, Mendelssohn did not base his Scottish Symphony on Scottish folk tunes, but rather how visiting Scotland made him feel. Mendelssohn travelled widely in Europe throughout his life, and a visit to Italy inspired one of his best known works, the Symphony No 4 in A major, known as the Italian, the final version of which was completed in 1834. Mendelssohn's renowned Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 was written in 1844. This is a piece played too many times to be counted. Many of the great violinists of our time have performed it with respectable orchestras. This is not to say that only the best can play the concerto. All students who wish to become an accomplished violinist must play this piece at one point in their life. Jascha Heifetz , one of the greatest violinists of the twentieth century, played the concerto before the age of ten. Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, op. 25 and Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, op.

40 are two more of Mendelssohn's compositions that have accrued great fame over the years. For the first piano concerto, the mighty, thunderous tones of the piano that ring out with the vibrant, powerful sounding orchestra brings a song meant to evoke excitement and thrill within all who listen. The second, more delicate piano concerto, is also very moving and, like its predecessor, brings out strong feelings of exhilaration. Also, this piano concerto, just like its counterpart, sends forth the feeling of a touch of sadness, mingled with relaxing tones, merging into a great work of music. In 1842, Mendelssohn wrote incidental music for the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, including the famous Wedding March that is played as the recessional at many weddings. The first time it was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church, Tiverton, UK, on 2 June 1847. However it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to the Crown Prince of Prussia on January 25, 1858. [edit]

Question: Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' was. originally written as incidental music for which Shakespeare play in 1842?
Answer: NIGHT'S DREAM