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Mendelssohn: A Life in Music
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 780.92
EAN: 9780195179880
ISBN: 0195179889
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 736
Publication Date: March 24, 2005
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor, a legendary pianist and organist, and an accomplished painter and classicist. Lionized in his lifetime, he is best remembered today for several staples of the concert hall and for such popular music as "The Wedding March" and "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."
Now, in the first major Mendelssohn biography to appear in decades, R. Larry Todd offers a remarkably fresh account of this musical giant, based upon painstaking research in autograph manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and paintings. Rejecting the view of the composer as a craftsman of felicitous but sentimental, saccharine works (termed by one critic "moonlight with sugar water"), Todd reexamines the composer's entire oeuvre, including many unpublished and little known works. Here are engaging analyses of Mendelssohn's distinctive masterpieces--the zestful Octet, puckish Midsummer Night's Dream, haunting Hebrides Overtures, and elegiac Violin Concerto in E minor. Todd describes how the composer excelled in understatement and nuance, in subtle, coloristic orchestrations that lent his scores an undeniable freshness and vividness. He also explores Mendelssohn's changing awareness of his religious heritage, Wagner's virulent anti-Semitic attack on Mendelssohn's music, the composer's complex relationship with his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and prolific composer, his avocation as a painter and draughtsman, and his remarkable, polylingual correspondence with the cultural elite of his time.
Mendelssohn: A Life offers a masterful blend of biography and musical analysis. Readers will discover many new facets of the familiar but misunderstood composer and gain new perspectives on one of the most formidable musical geniuses of all time.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Totally absorbing.
I bought the hardback edition which is/was a lot more expensive - wish I had waited! Actually, it matters not a jot; this book is great value, regardless of cost.
It took me three readings to absorb most of the contents; for this biography is densely written, full of fact and detail and without much prose for its own sake. Nevertheless, it is eminently readable with a flowing narrative style and in no sense is it heavy going. That it took me three readings is a (non)function of my failing ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent biography of a great musician we do not pay enough attention to nowadays
Felix Mendelssohn lived only thirty-eight years (Feb 1809- Nov 1847) and yet he had a profound impact on the way Art Music continues to be enjoyed in our time even if he is himself unjustly too far from the public consciousness and his musical works not, while not unperformed, are not performed nearly enough considering their musical quality and artistic merit. He was a man of prodigious genius, manifold talents, and a genuinely gracious and generous man. All rare gifts in this world.
This ... Read More
Rating: - A landmark in Mendelssohn scholarship
As a Mendelssohn specialist I pre-ordered this book, and have been working my way through it for the past few weeks. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who is interested in this remarkable composer and his music. It has many points to commend it for scholars(extensive recourse to important but obscure archival documents, correction of major and minor factual errors that have persisted in all the previous Mendelssohn biographies, etc.), and just as much to commend it to general readerships: it's ... Read More
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