Mendelssohn: The Hebrides and Other Overtures

by R. Larry Todd

Overview

The concert overtures A Midsummer Night's Dream, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), conceived by Mendelssohn before the age of twenty, have ranked among the most enduring of the nineteenth-century orchestral repertoire. R. Larry Todd offers a historical, stylistic, and analytical guide to these three remarkable works. His clearly structured and accessible text is supported by a wealth of primary documents, including Mendelssohn's correspondence, memoirs of his friends, and nineteenth-century critical reviews.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521407649
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/24/1993
Series:	Cambridge Music Handbooks
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.31(d)

Table of Contents

1. Background; 2. Genesis; 3. Musical influences; 4. Formal considerations: a synoptic overview; 5. The Overture as programmatic music; 6. Some thoughts on Mendelssohn's orchestration; 7. Influence and reception of the overtures.

Editorial Reviews

"...Todd certainly does deal eloquently with the intertext between Mendelssohn's stance and that of the aethetician Adolph B. Marx, particularly in relation to their respective work around Goethe and Shakespeare." Steve Sweeney-Turner, The Musical Times

From the Publisher