Quote of the Day (Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, on How He Composed)

“Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.”—Felix Mendelssohn, in an 1843 letter

Felix Mendelssohn, born 200 years ago today in Hamburg, Germany, gave pleasure not just to himself but to music fans the world over before his tragically early death in 1847. Yet his reputation, so high in the years just before his death, fell into eclipse over the years.

Critics such as Eduard Hanslick, according to Sinead Dempsey of the University of Manchester, questioned how much his work resulted from zealous study versus pure genius. Far more virulent and vile was the unremitting hostility of Richard Wagner, who argued that the composer had not achieved greatness because of his Jewish ancestry. So unremitting was Wagner’s anti-Semitism that he overlooked the Mendelssohn family’s conversion to Lutheranism.

(Indefatigable critic/blogger Terry Teachout had a fine column in this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal on the informal ban against Wagner performances in Israel. Whatever initial qualms you might have had about that, you’re bound to be at least somewhat more sympathetic to Israeli musicians’ stance when you read that Wagner likened Jews to a “swarming colony of worms in the dead body of art” or that only one thing could rescue them from “the burden of curse—total annihilation.” No wonder the Nazis liked him—he had advocated the Final Solution three-quarters of a century before they got around to executing the idea.)

Recently, efforts have been made to rectify that. The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan recently presented world premieres of a number of the more than 200 of Mendelssohn’s works that had been scattered over the world after the Nazis seized power. Moreover, this past Sunday’s New York Times included an article, “Finding Her Mendelssohn Sweet Spot,” by Vivien Schweitzer, which relates the efforts by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and the conductor Kurt Masur to refocus attention on the composer (who, incidentally, sounds as cultured, warm—and non-neurotic—as a supremely talented man can get.)

So the next chance you have, put on the great man’s music. (I recommend the wondrous “Italian Symphony,” used as part of the background music for the excellent 1979 film Breaking Away.)