October 14, 1843—Perhaps the most famous incidental music ever composed, the score for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Felix Mendelssohn, premiered in Potsdam.
I’m afraid at least some of my readers—particularly younger ones or those who, like, totally dislike classical music, you know?—might not recognize this composition. But trust me—you know it, the way the words “William Tell Overture” might draw a blank but “The Theme From ‘The Lone Ranger’” makes you sit up.
So here’s a clue: the most memorable section of Mendelssohn’s masterpiece invariably produces more dread and sheer horror in males than even the unmasking of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, or the beady red eyes of Dracula sizing up a cut on poor clueless Renfield.
Yes, I’m talking about “The Wedding March”—which, if you must know, in the full work, constitutes an intermezzo between Acts IV and V, celebrating the triple wedding of Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and Hermia, and Theseus and Hippolyta.
As Leon Botstein noted earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, classical music has never really been the kind of favorite with audiences that myth would have it. It’s depended crucially on patronage. In earlier days, that did not derive from Wall Street fatcats or endless PBS fundraising pitches, but rather from rulers. If the ruler were a megalomaniac, for instance, like England’s King Henry VIII, he’d mistake being a man born in the Renaissance for being a Renaissance man, and he’d fancy himself a composer and musician and his subjects would have to bow and scrape and agree.
German composers and musicians of the 19th century were luckier. Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria, for example, when he wasn’t his castle Neuschwanstein (the one imitated by Disney), bankrolled Richard Wagner (he of the preposterously Brobdingnagian Ring cycle that spawned sopranos who were supposed to embody the hottest women this side of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and maybe even Angelina Jolie, but who instead looked like they could manhandle The New York Giants’ Lawrence Taylor in his prime).
Mendelssohn was a little luckier in having Frederick William IV of Prussia, who had his imperial, conservative bent, to be sure, but who had also had a fine aesthetic streak and kept his head (and life) for longer than Looney Ludwig. He played a key role in the career of Mendelssohn, not only by commissioning this piece in 1842 but also in inviting him to compose incidental music for Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Racine’s Athalie. (Incidentally, when Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, the oldest child of Britain’s Queen Victoria, decided to get married to Frederick’s nephew, also named Frederick, she used “Wedding March,” establishing the tune’s current popularity as a bridal recessional theme.)
Frederick’s wide-ranging aesthetic tastes were not unlike those of the composer himself. In an earlier post, I mentioned how Mozart came from an entire family of the musically gifted. The Mendelssohn family’s cultural tastes were probably even broader than the Mozart family’s:
* Moses Mendelssohn, Felix’s grandfather, was a great Enlightenment philosopher and scholar.
* Abraham Mendelssohn, a Berlin banker, wanted the best of everything for his family, even going so far as to hire a private orchestra so his young son could hear his own music as he composed it.
* Sister Fanny was also an adept musician, and another sister, Rebecca, read Homer in the original Greek—quite a feat for a 19th-century girl.
I’m afraid at least some of my readers—particularly younger ones or those who, like, totally dislike classical music, you know?—might not recognize this composition. But trust me—you know it, the way the words “William Tell Overture” might draw a blank but “The Theme From ‘The Lone Ranger’” makes you sit up.
So here’s a clue: the most memorable section of Mendelssohn’s masterpiece invariably produces more dread and sheer horror in males than even the unmasking of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, or the beady red eyes of Dracula sizing up a cut on poor clueless Renfield.
Yes, I’m talking about “The Wedding March”—which, if you must know, in the full work, constitutes an intermezzo between Acts IV and V, celebrating the triple wedding of Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and Hermia, and Theseus and Hippolyta.
As Leon Botstein noted earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, classical music has never really been the kind of favorite with audiences that myth would have it. It’s depended crucially on patronage. In earlier days, that did not derive from Wall Street fatcats or endless PBS fundraising pitches, but rather from rulers. If the ruler were a megalomaniac, for instance, like England’s King Henry VIII, he’d mistake being a man born in the Renaissance for being a Renaissance man, and he’d fancy himself a composer and musician and his subjects would have to bow and scrape and agree.
German composers and musicians of the 19th century were luckier. Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria, for example, when he wasn’t his castle Neuschwanstein (the one imitated by Disney), bankrolled Richard Wagner (he of the preposterously Brobdingnagian Ring cycle that spawned sopranos who were supposed to embody the hottest women this side of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and maybe even Angelina Jolie, but who instead looked like they could manhandle The New York Giants’ Lawrence Taylor in his prime).
Mendelssohn was a little luckier in having Frederick William IV of Prussia, who had his imperial, conservative bent, to be sure, but who had also had a fine aesthetic streak and kept his head (and life) for longer than Looney Ludwig. He played a key role in the career of Mendelssohn, not only by commissioning this piece in 1842 but also in inviting him to compose incidental music for Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Racine’s Athalie. (Incidentally, when Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, the oldest child of Britain’s Queen Victoria, decided to get married to Frederick’s nephew, also named Frederick, she used “Wedding March,” establishing the tune’s current popularity as a bridal recessional theme.)
Frederick’s wide-ranging aesthetic tastes were not unlike those of the composer himself. In an earlier post, I mentioned how Mozart came from an entire family of the musically gifted. The Mendelssohn family’s cultural tastes were probably even broader than the Mozart family’s:
* Moses Mendelssohn, Felix’s grandfather, was a great Enlightenment philosopher and scholar.
* Abraham Mendelssohn, a Berlin banker, wanted the best of everything for his family, even going so far as to hire a private orchestra so his young son could hear his own music as he composed it.
* Sister Fanny was also an adept musician, and another sister, Rebecca, read Homer in the original Greek—quite a feat for a 19th-century girl.
In short, think the Royal Tenenbaums, or J.D. Salinger's Glass Family (a lot more alike than you might suspect at first), with all the precocity but minus the epic neuroses.
It was natural that young Felix, with his love for reading and theater, would be drawn to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—especially when August Wilhelm Shlegel (whose brother married Felix’s aunt—boy, is this getting complicated!) translated the play with the help of Ludwig Tieck. Mendelssohn composed the overture at age 17, and its premiere marked his first public appearance.
Sixteen years later, Frederick William provided Mendelssohn with the opportunity to expand his work. The composer did so—and now brides the world over know the result.
It was natural that young Felix, with his love for reading and theater, would be drawn to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—especially when August Wilhelm Shlegel (whose brother married Felix’s aunt—boy, is this getting complicated!) translated the play with the help of Ludwig Tieck. Mendelssohn composed the overture at age 17, and its premiere marked his first public appearance.
Sixteen years later, Frederick William provided Mendelssohn with the opportunity to expand his work. The composer did so—and now brides the world over know the result.
No comments:
Post a Comment