Bernstein says that Beethoven was the greatest composer

[Saul]

Luke, your posts are always value added to any discussion.

What was the name of the song....

"Im kissing up , Im kissing up...blah la la... "

[Mark]

I mean troll, but I cant say it here...

Saul, you're such a troll that if you ever holiday in a Norwegian forest, you'll have lots of big-nosed, spiky haired dwarves declaring you king.

[karlhenning]

Saul, you're so far really luxuriating in three misprisions:

1.  The fact that you admire Mendelssohn a great deal, does not confer upon him a status of exalted greatness.

2.  If a fellow participant on this forum disagrees with you, that fact does not mean that he is a "nerd" or "troll."

3.  If a fellow participant on this forum does not think highly of your composition, that fact does not mean that the other fellow never composed anything in his life.

[Saul]

Saul, you're such a troll that if you ever holiday in a Norwegian forest, you'll have lots of big-nosed, spiky haired dwarves declaring you king.

Here's a better one, get ready...

Youre such a troll that if Peter Jackson couldnt have created computer generated trolls for his film, you would have been called for the job....

There is nothing like, real life action...

[Saul]

Saul, you're so far really luxuriating in three misprisions:

1.  The fact that you admire Mendelssohn a great deal, does not confer upon him a status of exalted greatness.

2.  If a fellow participant on this forum disagrees with you, that fact does not mean that he is a "nerd" or "troll."

3.  If a fellow participant on this forum does not think highly of your composition, that fact does not mean that the other fellow never composed anything in his life.

Karl, please read what you say...

When did I say all of these things? before or after the personal insults at me?

Do your reading more carefuly...

[Mark]

Here a better one, get ready...

Youre such a troll that if Peter Jackson couldnt have created computer generated trolls for his film, you would have been called for the job....

There is nothing like, real life action...

At least I'm not in the next Harry Potter movie. How are you finding shooting on location?

[Saul]

At least I'm not in the next Harry Potter movie. How are you finding shooting on location?

Thats right at least your not.

You dont want to be found trolling around the set... one film is enough...

[(poco) Sforzando]

Karl, please read what you say...

When did I say all of these things? before or after the personal insults at me?

Do your reading more carefuly...

After.

[Saul]

After.

At least you got that one right.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Or just added verbosity......

Not at all. But your scholarly and thoughtful words are doubtless lost on the subject for whom they were intended.

[Saul]

Ah well, 20 new replies since I started writing this - never mind, I'll let it stand and then see what I've missed!

It's not exactly the musical analysis which was asked for, but it was an attempt, so let's look at it sentence by sentence

Unquantifiable but also, I suspect, not a statement which chimes with most people's experience. We need only take a single piece of Beethoven's - say the op 131 quartet - to find as much charm, beauty and colour as can be packed into a piece of music, certainly as much as in anything by Mendelssohn. The thing is, though, that the Beethoven piece goes so much further than just an attractive surface; Mendelssohn is capable of doing so, but it occurs much less frequently.

The same could be said of every great composer, I suspect, but funnily enough, of all the great composers, my own view is that Mendelssohn's personal voice is one of the least personal, except sometimes in a negative way (e.g. 'this piece sounds fairly bland, so it might be by Mendelssohn') - compare him with his contemporary and compatriot, Schumann. Actually, my earlier example of a prodigy, Saint Saens, is another great composer whose personal voice is a little more general than (say) Faure, his contemporary and compatriot. One could begin to wonder whether the fluency and ease enjoyed by such prodigies inhibits the formation of a really deeply personal style - perhaps they absorb the standard techniques so easily as youngsters that when the time comes at which most composers go through the fires of personal crisis in order to forge their own personal style, they are not able to. Berlioz said of Saint-Saens 'Il sait tout, mais il manque d'inexpérience' (He knows everything, but lacks inexperience), and it's not really a joke: the most interesting composers fight to gain musical insights which belong to them and which help them write music which is true to themselves. Berlioz did, but Saint-Saens didn't, IMO, and I'm not sure that Mendelssohn did either.

Of course, the example which springs to my mind is my own favourite, Janacek  - mind you, he's my own favourite, the composer who chimes with my own tastes closest, and who FWIW did not appreciate Beethoven a great deal, but who I am still happy to is state dwarfed by Beethoven in most ways. Janacek's personal style is one of the most easy to hear in all music - a couple of notes by him by him could be by no one else. But this style didn't arrive fully formed. Janacek was the very opposite of a prodigy, he developed extremely slowly, like a fine wine  . By the time he was about 40 his music began to sound recognisably 'Janacekian' but even then he subjected it to a continuous (30 more years) and very conscious process which he called integration, which stripped away everything extraneous until all that was left was pure Janacek. Janacek is an extreme example, but there are literally dozens of others who did similar things. Mendelssohn is an extremely fine composer, but I don't think he ever went through anything like this tortuous process which is necessary for a composer's music to become more than merely technically fluent and, in Mendelssohn's case, ocasionally powerful (as I say, perhaps his prodigy status meant that he didn't need to, but this is a loss IMO)

There are composers (many of them) for whom this is true, and I don't doubt that at times Mendelssohn is one of them. But it is less true for him than it is for so many others - Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Bach - the list is very long indeed, actually.


I've already gone into this - prodigy and fluency is not a way to measure a composer's greatness, and what is more, as I said a couple of paragraphs back, being too good too soon can inhibit further growth because to be a truly human artist one must go through the normal human process of learning (the Berlioz quotation again - 'He knows everything, but lacks inexperience'). There used to be another group of musicians who were so skilled in their childhoods that they were not allowed to go through the usual processes to develop naturally, and instead were kept, artificially, as boy-men - they were called castrati  In a certain respect, compositional prodigies run the danger of this same artificiality too, because although they are not literally denied the ability to develop naturally, they don't have a technical need for it, and so risk passing by the personal development it can entail.

I would suggest that this is an accomplishment shared by more than one other composer......

Luke,

The point is not when you write the work, but the greatness of the work you write at that age.

Clearly Mendelssohn composed Great works as a boy.

[Cato]

I Recall
That Mr. Saul
Has done it all!

As an autodidact
He can contradict
And reduct and redact
Which makes him
An autocontradict
And maybe an autocontraquack!

QED

Saul, take that road to Oberlin and convert to being like your hero Mendelssohn!  Find qualified professors who can tell you that they can teach you nothing more!

[(poco) Sforzando]

Saul, take that road to Oberlin and convert to being like your hero Mendelssohn!  Find qualified professors who can tell you that they can teach you nothing more!

He who is incapable of learning from others, clearly cannot be taught anything more.

[PSmith08]

Luke,

The point is not when you write the work, but the greatness of the work you write at that age.

Clearly Mendelssohn composed Great works as a boy.

Mendelssohn
Or, Saul's Argument, Wherein Our Noble Correspondent Proves, Once and For All Time, That Mendelssohn Is The Greatest.

Prefatory Hymn:

And did those feet in Nineteenth-Century time,
Walk upon Greatness' mountains green:
And was the holy Mendelssohn,
On Greatness' pleasant pastures seen!

I will not cease from Mental Mixture,
Nor shall my Keyboard sleep in my hand:
Till we have proved Mendelssohn,
The greatest in greatness' green & pleasant Land.

Argument, as Promised Above:

I like Mendelssohn quite a bit.
I decide what the standards for 'objective' greatness are.
I decide that Mendelssohn meets my standards.
I find, in fact, that Mendelssohn meets all my standards perfectly.
I conclude, then, that Mendelssohn is the greatest composer.
I end by realizing that I am justified in my Mendelssohn-love, as he is the greatest.
I like Mendelssohn quite a bit.

It's like Harry Kupfer or August Everding designed this argument.

[lukeottevanger]

Luke,

The point is not when you write the work, but the greatness of the work you write at that age.

Not quite. The point is the greatness, never mind the age. But at least that's a bit closer. However, the next bit:

Clearly Mendelssohn composed Great works as a boy.

doesn't follow on from the first, necessarily. The works Mendelssohn composed as a boy are extraordinary things for a youngster to produce, as are those composed by the young Mozart, Britten, Saint-Saens, Thomas Linley Jr, Julian Scriabin etc. Viewing them in this context, they appear to us interesting, fascinating, potentially even awe-inspiring. But we need to divorce them from this context and simply assess them as music, side by side with other composers' music if we are going if we really want to play the 'greatness' game. I have no doubt that prodigies can compose 'Great works' - I think one or two of Britten's youthful pieces are as good as any of his mature pieces, for instance - but generally speaking the interest in this music lies in the age of the composer rather than in the music itself.

A personal example - my daughter is 6 but has a reading age of at least 14 (can't be precise because she's off her school's scale for measuring such things); so let's pretend that she is, in a verysmall way, a 'prodigy'. The point is, though, that she is advanced for her age - she's still only reached a level attained by almost everyone who's reached the age of 14. It doesn't mean she is 'the greatest'*. Similarly, Mendelssohn's early works are extraordinary for someone of that age - but they only reach a level far surpassed by every other 'great composer' before or after.

*(although she is, of course)

[(poco) Sforzando]

At least you got that one right.

Bubby,

The point is not when you write a foolish comment, but the foolishness of the comment you write at whatever point in the debate.

Clearly Saul wrote some Foolish comments in this thread.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Not quite. The point is the greatness, never mind the age. But at least that's a bit closer. However, the next bit:


doesn't follow on from the first, necessarily. The works Mendelssohn composed as a boy are extraordinary things for a youngster to produce, as are those composed by the young Mozart, Britten, Saint-Saens, Thomas Linley Jr, Julian Scriabin etc. Viewing them in this context, they appear to us interesting, fascinating, potentially even awe-inspiring. But we need to divorce them from this context and simply assess them as music, side by side with other composers' music if we are going if we really want to play the 'greatness' game. I have no doubt that prodigies can compose 'Great works' - I think one or two of Britten's youthful pieces are as good as any of his mature pieces, for instance - but generally speaking the interest in this music lies in the age of the composer rather than in the music itself.

A personal example - my daughter is 6 but has a reading age of at least 14 (can't be precise because she's off her school's scale for measuring such things); so let's pretend that she is, in a verysmall way, a 'prodigy'. The point is, though, that she is advanced for her age - she's still only reached a level attained by almost everyone who's reached the age of 14. It doesn't mean she is 'the greatest'*. Similarly, Mendelssohn's early works are extraordinary for someone of that age - but they only reach a level far surpassed by every other 'great composer' before or after.

*(although she is, of course)

I would however argue that in Mendelssohn's case, some of the earlier works are unusually valuable in themselves - and that unlike (say) Beethoven, Janacek, or Verdi he "peaked early" in works like the Octet, MND Overture, and the first two quartets, the first two of these written by age 17-18 and all completed by about age 20. In the third movement of the Octet, Mendelssohn had already arrived at one of his most individual musical fingerprints - the "fairy scherzo" type of music whose nearest antecedent could have been the third movement of Beethoven's Op. 130, and which preceded the Queen Mab scherzo by Berlioz written around 1840.

The Mendelssohn idolaters (or idolater) here will of course not agree, but I feel there is often a falling off in Mendelssohn's imagination in some of the later work. Of course there are triumphs like the Hebrides Overture, Violin Concerto, and Italian Symphony. But for a composer who died relatively young (38, 1809-47), a lot of the spark seems to have been extinguished early. Many of the Songs without Words are to my mind really dreary, and with Elijah one finds an example of religious Kitsch far removed from the efferverscent champagne of the Octet. Still, I value enormously the works I consider his best, more than enough to include Mendelssohn as one of the finest of 19th-century composers.

[lukeottevanger]

I would however argue that in Mendelssohn's case, some of the earlier works are unusually valuable in themselves - and that unlike (say) Beethoven, Janacek, or Verdi he "peaked early" in works like the Octet, MND Overture, and the first two quartets, the first two of these written by age 17-18 and all completed by about age 20. In the third movement of the Octet, Mendelssohn had already arrived at one of his most individual musical fingerprints - the "fairy scherzo" type of music whose nearest antecedent could have been the third movement of Beethoven's Op. 130, and which preceded the Queen Mab scherzo by Berlioz written around 1840.

The Mendelssohn idolaters (or idolater) here will of course not agree, but I feel there is often a falling off in Mendelssohn's imagination in some of the later work. Of course there are triumphs like the Hebrides Overture, Violin Concerto, and Italian Symphony. But for a composer who died relatively young (38, 1809-47), a lot of the spark seems to have been extinguished early. Many of the Songs without Words are to my mind really dreary, and with Elijah one finds an example of religious Kitsch far removed from the efferverscent champagne of the Octet. Still, I value enormously the works I consider his best, more than enough to include Mendelssohn as one of the finest of 19th-century composers.

I think that's an answer full of valid points, and I don't really disagree. I think that I have been making a distinction between the works of 'extreme young age' - which to me are incredible mostly because of this alone - and those of the Mendelssohn in his later teens, such as those which you mention, which are without doubt wonderful no matter Mendelssohn's age*. As you imply, though, this is really (and necessarily) a very small group of works, and I agree with you in finding it hard not to discern a falling-off, a few great chamber pieces, the Violin Concerto and the Italian Symph notwithstanding.

*The thing with prodigies who die young - like Mendelssohn and Mozart - is that it is hard with hindsight not to see the works of the 16 or 17 year old as relatively mature!

[(poco) Sforzando]

I think that's an answer full of valid points, and I don't really disagree. I think that I have been making a distinction between the works of 'extreme young age' - which to me are incredible mostly because of this alone - and those of the Mendelssohn in his later teens, such as those which you mention, which are without doubt wonderful no matter Mendelssohn's age*. As you imply, though, this is really (and necessarily) a very small group of works, and I agree with you in finding it hard not to discern a falling-off, a few great chamber pieces, the Violin Concerto and the Italian Symph notwithstanding.

*The thing with prodigies who die young - like Mendelssohn and Mozart - is that it is hard with hindsight not to see the works of the 16 or 17 year old as relatively mature!

We might agree too that the 12 string symphonies, enjoyable as they are, can be classified as juvenalia. (Mendelssohn of course suppressed them, and they were only rediscovered around 1955. I can't even find reasonably priced scores.) He probably started hitting his stride around age 16-17.

[lukeottevanger]

We might agree too that the 12 string symphonies, enjoyable as they are, can be classified as juvenalia. (Mendelssohn of course suppressed them, and they were only rediscovered around 1955. I can't even find reasonably priced scores.) He probably started hitting his stride around age 16-17.

As I said, a sluggard.