Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Research and Information Guide (2nd edition)

摘要

The Routledge Music Bibliographies series covers both genres and composers. From the latter this volume is an enlargement of a 2001 work dedicated to writing about Mendelssohn, described in the introduction as: "one of the most ambivalently represented composers in the world of musical scholarship" (p. xi). This is because his music remains known to the majority in just a few works, which have been dismissed by a number of scholars as lightweight. Equally, his reputation suffered in the nineteenth century and in the Third Reich from reaction to his being a Jew. He further suffered posthumously because his youthful unpublished works were rushed into publication after his death, giving a misleading indication of his "maturity" as a composer. All this is well and succinctly described in the introduction, which also covers the situation pertaining to his talented sister Fanny, herself a successful performer and composer. The guide itself is usefully divided into sections on writings about Mendelssohn's life, then on the works themselves, following different genres such as Music for Solo Piano or Oratorios. This takes some 120 pages.