Mendelssohn vs. Schoenberg

[karlhenning]

Perhaps i need to correct myself then. Mendelssohn's art is not sterile in itself. He was indeed a consummate crafter and his music is far more complex then a lot give him credit for. I just find some facets of his expression to be artificial. His melodies can sometimes be extremely beautiful, but beyond that his music simply sounds flat to me, like he had no real personal involvement in the type of feeling he wanted to express in the first place. There are exceptions of course, but they are just that, exceptions. I realize that this is a subjective opinion, but at the same time i think i'm in a better position to those who claim disdain for the music of Mozart.

In all, a perfectly sensible and enjoyable post, thank you.

[Franco]

Haven't anything to contribute to the thread as such, but just want to say that when I read posts by Franco like this one, I quite often want to cheer.


Hear, hear.

That said . . . FWIW, I like both composers, but I like more of Schoenberg's work, and I rate him rather higher as an artist.

Franco's point entirely well taken, that each artist must be taken on his own terms. (It's no good 'dismissing' Mendelssohn for not being Schoenberg, or vice versa.)  As to whether composers aren't to be compared, I'm unsure that I should disallow the idea, even in light of Franco's point;  people have done it forever — what may be the truth (or a truth) beyond the reach of the objection?

Our "Josquin" called Mendelssohn's art sterile, and seems not to have accepted my invitation to explain that to those of us who find such an adjective only incompetently applied to the noun art.  It's a pathetic fallacy, of course . . . but in all events impossible to apply to a composer's work.  Coincidentally, I am reading The Gesualdo Hex, and the author mentions more than once some musicologist or other mourning Gesualdo's as "a stillborn art."  Now, that "evaluation" is nonsense, most obviously in view of the artistic stimulation which 20^th-c. composers found in Gesualdo's music.  There's no point at which any of us could call Mendelssohn's art "sterile," for that "evaluation" will evaporate whenever an artist arises who takes that work as one seed of inspiration.  And these seeds remain quick through long ages, as the example of Gesualdo attests.

All in all, though, and while I frequently pound the table for half a dozen underappreciated composers who have been (in my view) unfairly marginalized (and my objection may be a matter of degree more than any question of an "artistic democracy" in which all composers are created "equal") I don't believe we can rank Mendelssohn even among the foremost of 19^th-c. composers, let alone (as some here seek to claim) the superior to Schoenberg.

The story I have repeated before tells of an impatient sophomore in a Music History class who complains to the teacher that they are spending too much time on Mendelssohn.  The student believes he has pinned the professor with the rhetorical question, "Isn't he a Grade B composer?"

After a second's fermata, the professor earnestly replies, "Yes — but I'm not sure you understand how good that is."

It is purely a personal worldview that I find it distasteful to make judgments about composers, saying this one is greater than that one (I particularly do not like a hierarchical approach: 1st tier, 2nd, etc. or even worse, Grade B).  I try to experience music, all art really, with as uncluttered a mind as possible and allow a work to reach out to me on its own terms.  If I find one work more compelling than another my first thought is not that one artist is greater than the other, but merely that on that day, I was more receptive to what one artist was doing than the other. 

And I understand the drive towards a set of qualitative judgments to try to make some sense of the huge amount of music written throughout human history - it's just that I have no care to know who is considered great, greater or greatest.

My own little red wagon, I know. 

[cosmicj]

I just find some facets of his expression to be artificial. His melodies can sometimes be extremely beautiful, but beyond that his music simply sounds flat to me, like he had no real personal involvement in the type of feeling he wanted to express in the first place. There are exceptions of course, but they are just that, exceptions.

I think that's a better way of describing your feeling than the adjective "sterile."  It's something I sometimes feel about M's music, too, but I think it is often not true (too frequently to be labelled exceptions).  And Felix deserves to be judged by his best work.

That f minor Quartet Op. 80 that was being discussed before is actually a good case in point.  A very fine, accomplished late work from 1847.  Absolutely worth listening to.  I do feel like some of the emotion is not genuine, though.

[Saul]

By a wide margin, my favorite of all your posts on the forum.

Yes, but he was replied properly. Karl, if you read the book, you would have came across the same statement. Professor Todd, is a noted Mendelssohn Scholar. His bio of Mendelssohn is the most researched and the most elaborate one ever written. Its over 700 pages, and the book costs $50, small amount to pay to get the facts straight on one of the greatest if not greatest composer that ever walked the earth, I know I paid it and it was worth every penny.

But if you wanna hold on to that 50 bucks, you can still read it on the web free of charge here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=j2Pf2yQipyUC&dq=larry+todd+mendelssohn&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=nuUtTOfzKsOqlAe4lp3hCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false


Cheers,

[cosmicj]

I don't at all agree with much of what Saul has written on this thread, but I think his assertion - complete with a source reference -- that contemporaries believed M the true successor to LvB shouldn't be dismissed lightly.  Some of the contemporaries who believed that were highly sophisticated and technically well trained and we should assume they had put thought behind the opinion.   

[Josquin des Prez]

The problem is that a lot of 19th composers were referred to as the "heir of Beethoven" at one point or another. Its a meaningless adjective. Much more interesting to me is to know where in Todd's biography (which i own btw) does it say that Mendelsshon was the "crowing King of European music in the 19th century".

[karlhenning]

I don't at all agree with much of what Saul has written on this thread, but I think his assertion - complete with a source reference -- that contemporaries believed M the true successor to LvB shouldn't be dismissed lightly.  Some of the contemporaries who believed that were highly sophisticated and technically well trained and we should assume they had put thought behind the opinion.

Sure.  But (and a little inconvenient to the generalization) it doesn't aid Saul's cause that I am fairly well read in Berlioz, and that Berlioz (while of a friendly disposition to Mendelssohn — in contrast to M. being something of a snot in private viz. Berlioz) had a more nuanced esteem for Mendelssohn.

In all, it was not simply a matter of contemporary consensus putting laurel wreaths on the Mendelssohn brow.  OTOH, his contemporary esteem was of far more substance than 4,000 hits on youtube ; )

The problem is that a lot of 19th composers were referred to as the "heir of Beethoven" at one point or another. Its a meaningless adjective. Much more interesting to me is to know where in Todd's biography (which i own btw) does it say that Mendelsshon was the "crowing King of European music in the 19th century".

An apt point.

[Saul]

The point is that its not us to determine who was the greatest composer between the two. But to look onto the greats and see what they would have said:


1. Schumann adored Mendelssohn, and considered him a first rate composer, A class, and he wrote many enthusiastic articles about Mendelssohn and even was influenced in some degree with Mendelssohn' music.

2. His wife considered Mendelssohn to be one of the greatest pianists, musicians and composers of the day.

3. Chopin admired Mendelssohn's Genius and sought his assistance in getting his music known in Europe.

4. Liszt did the same as Chopin.

5. Wagner held that Mendelssohn was the greatest musical genius the world has ever had since Mozart.

6. Goethe, the famous German poet considered Mendelssohn to be the greatest child prodigy composer that music has ever seen, even compared to Mozart.

And the list of prominent contemporary musicians and intellectuals who said similar things goes on and on.

As to Karl statement that Berlioz 'had a more nuanced esteem for Mendelssohn'...if you flipped the coin you should see what Mendelssohn said of Berlioz's music:

'One needs to wash his hands after performing his music'.. I couldn't believe that Mendelssohn would use this language, but he did, he had a strong disdain for the extravaganza modern composers of his day, especially Berlioz and Liszt.

So the feeling goes both ways.

And while Berlioz was in a dilemma whether to continue his law studies or to enter a conservatory, Mendelssohn had the Midsummer's night dream  overture wrapped around his waist, besides the hundreds of other works that he completed before he was 20 years old. Berlioz was no composer, was almost nothing before the age of 20, Mendelssohn was already a Giant by that time.

So this is what matters, what the great composers and the great intellectuals and musicians and music lovers all around the world had said of Mendelssohn, not what today some composers who had never seen the greatness of Mendelssohn say about him.

Their opinion stays just that, an opinion, but its as far from the truth and from reality as the sun is from the moon.

Cheers,

Saul

[Josquin des Prez]

Wagner held that Mendelssohn was the greatest musical genius the world has ever had since Mozart.

Erm, what?

And while Berlioz was in a dilemma whether to continue his law studies or to enter a conservatory, Mendelssohn had the Midsummer's night dream  overture wrapped around his waist, besides the hundreds of other works that he completed before he was 20 years old. Berlioz was no composer, was almost nothing before the age of 20, Mendelssohn was already a Giant by that time.

Yes but Mendelssohn had the best musical education any composer has enjoyed, like, ever. He had his own personal orchestra with which to experiment with for Christ sake. If Beethoven's father had been a rich banker rather then a peasant and a drunk (and vice-versa) history might have played out differently. Context people, context.

[Saul]

Erm, what?

Yes, what you didn't know that?

Very famous, this statement is attributed to Hans Von Bulow, who was a German conductor and a contemporary of Wagner.
He wrote down that Wagner said this, as I explained to Teresa and even provided the source for her.

[knight66]

I imagine that part of this was to do with Mendelssohn being, like Mozart, a child prodigy. I am not really into beauty competitions of composers. I don't think the two here can be compared. I listen to more Mendelssohn, but although it does not give me as much pleasure, I can grasp that Schoenberg was an extraordinary musical innovator and highly influential.

Mike

[Josquin des Prez]

Yes, what you didn't know that?

Very famous, this statement is attributed to Hans Von Bulow, who was a German conductor and a contemporary of Wager.
He wrote down that Wagner said this, as I explained to Teresa and even provided the source for her.

Are we talking about the same Hans Von Bulow who hated Wagner's guts? Wagner believed that Mendelssohn was not genuine. A composer of immense gifts who couldn't understand let alone adopt the idiom of a nation he felt no affinity for (being Jewish and all), no matter how he tried (he then concedes that Mandelsshon was at least sincere in his efforts, unlike other Jewish composers, like, say, Meyerbeer, who just did it for the money, their success being egged on by the Jewish dominated press!).

Here's the relevant passage:

By what example will this all grow clearer to us—ay, wellnigh what other single case could make us so alive to it, as the works of a musician of Jewish birth whom Nature had endowed with specific musical gifts as very few before him? All that offered itself to our gaze, in the inquiry into our antipathy against the Jewish nature; all the contradictoriness of this nature, both in itself and as touching us; all its inability, while outside our footing, to have intercourse with us upon that footing, nay, even to form a wish to further develop the things which had sprung from out our soil: all these are intensified to a positively tragic conflict in the nature, life, and art-career of the early-taken FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY. He has shewn us that a Jew may have the amplest store of specific talents, may own the finest and most varied culture, the highest and the tenderest sense of honour—yet without all these pre-eminences helping him, were it but one single time, to call [94] forth in us that deep, that heart-searching effect which we await from Art (24) because we know her capable thereof, because we have felt it many a time and oft, so soon as once a hero of our art has, so to say, but opened his mouth to speak to us. To professional critics, who haply have reached a like consciousness with ourselves hereon, it may be left to prove by specimens of Mendelssohn's art-products our statement of this indubitably certain thing; by way of illustrating our general impression, let us here be content with the fact that, in hearing a tone-piece of this composer's, we have only been able to feel engrossed where nothing beyond our more or less amusement-craving Phantasy was roused through the presentment, stringing-together and entanglement of the most elegant, the smoothest and most polished figures—as in the kaleidoscope's changeful play of form and colour (25) —but never where those figures were meant to take the shape of deep and stalwart feelings of the human heart. (26) In this latter event Mendelssohn lost even all formal productive-faculty; wherefore in particular where he made for Drama, as in the Oratorio, he was obliged quite openly to snatch at every formal detail that had served as characteristic token of the individuality of this or that forerunner whom he chose out for his model. It is further significant of this procedure, that he gave the preference to our old master BACH, as special pattern for his inexpressive modern tongue to copy. Bach's musical speech was formed at a period of our history when Music s universal tongue was still striving for the faculty of more individual, more unequivocal Expression: pure formalism and pedantry still clung so strongly to her, that it was first through the [95] gigantic force of Bach's own genius that her purely human accents (Ausdruck) broke themselves a vent. The speech of Bach stands toward that of Mozart, and finally of Beethoven, in the relation of the Egyptian Sphinx to the Greek statue of a Man: as the human visage of the Sphinx is in the act of striving outward from the animal body, so strives Bach's noble human head from out the periwig. It is only another evidence of the inconceivably witless confusion of our luxurious music-taste of nowadays, that we can let Bach's language be spoken to us at the selfsame time as that of Beethoven, and flatter ourselves that there is merely an individual difference of form between them, but nowise a real historic distinction, marking off a period in our culture. The reason, however, is not so far to seek: the speech of Beethoven can be spoken only by a whole, entire, warm-breathed human being; since it was just the speech of a music-man so perfect, that with the force of Necessity he thrust beyond Absolute Music—whose dominion he had measured and fulfilled unto its utmost frontiers—and shewed to us the pathway to the fecundation of every art through Music, as her only salutary broadening. (27) On the other hand, Bach's language can be mimicked, at a pinch, by any musician who thoroughly understands his business, though scarcely in the sense of Bach; because the Formal has still therein the upper hand, and the purely human Expression is not as yet a factor so definitely preponderant that its What either can, or must be uttered without conditions, for it still is fully occupied with shaping out the How. The washiness and whimsicality of our present musical style has been, if not exactly brought about, yet pushed to its utmost pitch by Mendelssohn's endeavour to speak out a vague, an almost nugatory Content as interestingly and spiritedly as possible. Whereas Beethoven, the last in the chain of our true music-heroes, [96] strove with highest longing, and wonder-working faculty, (28) for the clearest, certainest Expression of an unsayable Content through a sharp-cut, plastic shaping of his tone-pictures: Mendelssohn, on the contrary, reduces these achievements to vague, fantastic shadow-forms, midst whose indefinite shimmer our freakish fancy is indeed aroused, but our inner, purely-human yearning for distinct artistic sight is hardly touched with even the merest hope of a fulfilment. Only where an oppressive feeling of this incapacity seems to master the composer's mood, and drive him to express a soft and mournful resignation, has Mendelssohn the power to shew himself characteristic—characteristic in the subjective sense of a gentle (29) individuality that confesses an impossibility in view of its own powerlessness. This, as we have said, is the tragic trait in Mendelssohn's life-history; and if in the domain of Art we are to give our sympathy to the sheer personality, we can scarcely deny a large measure thereof to Mendelssohn, even though the force of that sympathy be weakened by the reflection that the Tragic, in Mendelssohn's situation, hung rather over him than came to actual, sore and cleansing consciousness.

He then concludes that "A like sympathy, however, can no other Jew composer rouse in us".

[knight66]

Interesting article here.

Mike

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/05/felix-mendelssohn-richard-wagner-classical-music

Extract
'The reason for Wagner's vitriol was simple: he felt threatened. In the years after his death, Mendelssohn's influence made him the most important figure in German musical culture. Before Wagner could launch his musical and social revolutions, he needed to destroy Mendelssohn.'

[Saul]

Are we talking about the same Hans Von Bulow who hated Wagner's guts? Wagner believed that Mendelssohn was a fake. A composers of immense gifts who couldn't understand let alone adopt the idiom of a nation he felt no affinity with (being Jewish and all).

Wagner was an anti Semite, I know this. But Huns Von Bulow, was a noted German conductor who knew what he was talking about, and he said what he had heard from Wagner about Mendelssohn. Wagner had a public anti  Semitic opinion of Mendelssohn, and yet he had a private opinion of Mendelssohn who he spoke of in private conversations.

About been German and all...

It is entirely possible that Mendelssohn was more German then Wagner, because there is a Jewish presence in Germany for 2000 years un interrupted. Jews had lived there for two millennia. But Wagner?

Who knows if one of his forefathers some 600 years ago didn't immigrate to Germany from Holland, or France or any other European country?

Also remember that Jewish contributions to Germany considering their community size compared to others there, was unrivaled to anyone. German art, music, philosophy, religion, science, medicine, law and politics were enriched enormously, by the Jewish population who was and still remain until this very day, the most harmonious and peaceful law abiding community in Germany.

Jews don't have skin heads, and other negative streams in their community that places enormous strains on the German government today. Just look at the community now, how beautiful it is today, and you can translate it to how it was back then.

[Elgarian]

As to whether composers aren't to be compared, I'm unsure that I should disallow the idea, even in light of Franco's point;  people have done it forever — what may be the truth (or a truth) beyond the reach of the objection?

Wisely said, of course. People have done it and will continue to do it and so will I. If you give me a list of apples, bananas, plums and oranges, I'll happily rank them in order and even award them points, if you like.

But to elaborate: I see these posts of Franco's (I mean the ones of this particular type) not as arguments, but as reminders that a valuable alternative approach exists, and as an invitation to try it: an invitation, that is, not to place in ranking order, or attempt to quantify something that is essentially unquantifiable, but to engage with it for the sake of its quiddity: rejoicing in it for what it is, and not becoming preoccupied with what it might be; and certainly not castigating it for not being what it isn't. I don't grow to love plums by virtue of them not being oranges, but by revelling in their plumness.

[Josquin des Prez]

Interesting article here.

Mike

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/05/felix-mendelssohn-richard-wagner-classical-music

Extract
'The reason for Wagner's vitriol was simple: he felt threatened. In the years after his death, Mendelssohn's influence made him the most important figure in German musical culture. Before Wagner could launch his musical and social revolutions, he needed to destroy Mendelssohn.'

This interpretation really shows how much the intellectual sophistication of our society has plummeted into the lowest regions of banality and mediocrity.

[karlhenning]

Wisely said, of course. People have done it and will continue to do it and so will I. If you give me a list of apples, bananas, plums and oranges, I'll happily rank them in order and even award them points, if you like.

But to elaborate: I see these posts of Franco's (I mean the ones of this particular type) not as arguments, but as reminders that a valuable alternative approach exists, and as an invitation to try it: an invitation, that is, not to place in ranking order, or attempt to quantify something that is essentially unquantifiable, but to engage with it for the sake of its quiddity: rejoicing in it for what it is, and not becoming preoccupied with what it might be; and certainly not castigating it for not being what it isn't. I don't grow to love plums by virtue of them not being oranges, but by revelling in their plumness.

Always a pleasure to read your posts, Alan!

[Josquin des Prez]

Wagner was an anti Semite, I know this. But Huns Von Bulow, was a noted German conductor who knew what he was talking about, and he said what he had heard from Wagner about Mendelssohn. Wagner had a public anti  Semitic opinion of Mendelssohn, and yet he had a private opinion of Mendelssohn who he spoke of in private conversations.

This really shows the danger of your constant need to appeal to authority. Van Bulow was a respected critic. Wagner was a genius. Whom would you rather trust, according to your own logic? Wagner had a very high of opinion of Mendelssohn from an individual point of view. His views on the music of the latter however have been made more then plain.

[knight66]

I don't really know where this is getting us. It was agreed some while back that lots of highly thought of composers detested the music of other equally fine composers.

Writers, poets, painters, a few were generous, a lot will stick the boot in at any opportunity. You have to sift genuine critique from jealousy, insecurity, dislike etc. Even when you have done that sifting, it would still be a matter of treating with caution the remaining comment.

Mike

[karlhenning]

I don't really know where this is getting us. It was agreed some while back that lots of highly thought of composers detested the music of other equally fine composers.

Writers, poets, painters, a few were generous, a lot will stick the boot in at any opportunity. You have to sift genuine critique from jealousy, insecurity, dislike etc. Even when you have done that sifting, it would still be a matter of treating with caution the remaining comment.

QFT