WEDDING MARCH Felix Mendelssohn MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Organ EDW SHIPPEN BARNES

1 Item Set or Lot of "Wedding March" from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Song Folio Sheet Music FOR ORGAN, by Felix Mendelssohn; Transcribed by Edward Shippen Barnes. Includes:

ITEM 1.) Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy; Edward Shppen Barnes, Arranger; WEDDING MARCH from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Song Folio Sheet Music; Organ; Complete Sheet Music; 1921; G. Schirmer #30409;

Part of G. Schirmer's "Ten Easy and Useful Transcriptions for Organ by Edward Shippen Barnes" Series;

From "A Midsummer's Night Dream";

English throughout;

Front Cover Artwork featuring text;

Preprinted Cover Price of $1.75;

Inside Front Cover is first page of music;

No Title Page or Table of Contents;

Wedding March; Felix Mendelssohn; Transcribed by Edward Shippen Barnes;

Treble and Bass Clef for Manuals; Bass Clef for Pedal;

1 Tunes Total;

8 Pages of Music; No Lyrics;

Inside Rear Cover is last page of music;

Rear Cover has ad for G. Schirmer's Compositions for Pipe Organ;

Folded Panel Format;

Published by G. Schirmer, Inc.; New York, New York; Copyright 1921;

Condition Very Good for age and the fact that it was "on display" for some time; Covers May Show Storage Wear; Pages Clean, Tight and Unmarked;

NOTE: Piano Editions Also Available;

The primary item was part of the collection of Henry J. Hauschild Jr., who billed himself as a “Physiognomist – Bibliopolist – Cognoscente di Eccellentissimo”, and was the very proud owner of the world famous "Nose Gallery” at “The Oldest House” in Victoria, Texas. Henry Senior founded the Hauschild Music Company which was later owned by his 8 children and eventually the four brothers before being closed in 1980; After the Opera House Restaurant failed, the space became the Bible Book Store and later Opera House Antiques; This item was mixed with the leftover inventory of the Music Store and at one time was on consignment at the Bible Book Store;

"Musicologist and historian, Delmer Rogers, longtime member of the staff of the Department of Music at the University of Texas, is of the opinion that the Hauschild Music Company, founded in Victoria, Texas in 1891, was the second oldest institution to commercially publish sheet music in Texas. (Thos. Goggan of Houston being the first.) Also, his extensive research indicates that Hauschild's was the first in Texas to issues music with Spanish titles. About thirty were published, many by talented writers, and sold in large numbers. In addition, probing seems to prove that Hauschilds was the first to publish the efforts of several of the music-loving Germans of the area. Most interesting, too, is that the spritely composition, the Cowboy Rag offered in 1904 possibly was the purcursor of this genre of popular music." taken from "The Cognoscenti Collections";

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HISTORICAL NOTE: "THIS PIECE IS OFTEN CONSIDERED TO BE WEDDING MUSIC !!!";

HISTORICAL NOTE: "Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March", written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ. At weddings in many English-speaking countries, this piece is commonly used as a recessional, though frequently stripped of its episodes in this context. It is frequently teamed with the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin, or with Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March", both of which are often played for the entry of the bride. The 1st time that Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church, Tiverton, England, on 2 June 1847. However, it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858. The bride was the daughter of Queen Victoria, who loved Mendelssohn's music & for whom Mendelssohn often played while on his visits to Britain. An organ on which Mendelssohn gave recitals of the "Wedding March", among other works, is housed in St Ann's Church in Tottenham. Vladimir Horowitz transcribed the Wedding March into a virtuoso piece for piano & played it as an encore at his concerts.";

HISTORICAL NOTE: "At separate times, Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1826, near the start of his career, Mendelssohn wrote a concert overture (Op. 21). In 1842, only a few years before his death, he wrote incidental music (Op. 61) for a production of the play, into which he incorporated the existing Overture. The incidental music includes the world-famous Wedding March. The German title reads Ein Sommernachtstraum. The Overture, Op. 21, was the product of a boy aged 17 years 6 months (it was finished on 6 August 1826), & George Grove called it "the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music". It was written as a concert overture, not associated with any performance of the play. The Overture was written after Mendelssohn had read a German translation of the play in 1826. The translation was by August Wilhelm Schlegel, with help from Ludwig Tieck. There was a family connection as well: Schlegel's brother Friedrich married Felix Mendelssohn's aunt Dorothea. While a romantic piece in atmosphere, the Overture incorporates many classical elements, being cast in sonata form & shaped by regular phrasings & harmonic transitions. The piece is also noted for its striking instrumental effects, such as the emulation of scampering 'fairy feet' at the beginning & the braying of Bottom as an ass (effects which were influenced by the aesthetic ideas & suggestions of Mendelssohn's friend at the time, Adolf Bernhard Marx). Heinrich Eduard Jacob, in his biography of the composer, said that Mendelssohn had scribbled the chords after hearing an evening breeze rustle the leaves in the garden of the family's home. Following the 1st theme representing the dancing fairies, a transition (the royal music of the court of Athens) leads to a 2nd theme, that of the lovers. A final group of themes, suggesting the craftsmen & hunting calls, closes the exposition. The fairies dominate most of the development section & ultimately have the final word in the coda, just as in Shakespeare's play. The Overture was premiered in Stettin (then in Prussia; now Szczecin, Poland) on 20 February 1827, at a concert conducted by Carl Loewe. Mendelssohn had turned 18 just over two weeks earlier. He had to travel 80 miles through a raging snowstorm to get to the concert, which was his 1st public appearance. Loewe & Mendelssohn also appeared as soloists in Mendelssohn's Concerto in A-flat major for 2 pianos & orchestra, & Mendelssohn alone was the soloist for Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor. After the intermission, he joined the 1st violins for a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The 1st British performance of the Overture was conducted by Mendelssohn himself, on 24 June 1829, at the Argyll Rooms in London, at a concert in benefit of the victims of the floods in Silesia, & played by an orchestra that had been assembled by Mendelssohn's friend Sir George Smart. Mendelssohn wrote the incidental music, Op. 61, for A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1842, 16 years after he wrote the Overture. It was written to a commission from King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Mendelssohn was by now the music director of the King's Academy of the Arts & of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. A successful presentation of Sophocles' Antigone on 28 October 1841 at the New Palace in Potsdam, with music by Mendelssohn (Op. 55) led to the King asking him for more such music, to plays he especially enjoyed. A Midsummer Night's Dream was produced on 14 October 1843, also at Potsdam. The producer was Ludwig Tieck. This was followed by incidental music for Sophocles' Oedipus (Potsdam, 1 November 1845; published posthumously as Op. 93) & Jean Racine's Athalie (Berlin, 1 December 1845; Op. 74). The A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, Op. 21, originally written as an independent piece 16 years earlier, was incorporated into the Op. 61 incidental music as its overture, & the 1st of its 14 numbers. There are also vocal sections & other purely instrumental movements, including the Scherzo, Nocturne & Wedding March. The vocal numbers include the song "Ye spotted snakes" & the melodramas "Over hill, over dale", "The Spells", "What hempen homespuns", & "The Removal of the Spells". The melodramas served to enhance Shakespeare's text. Act I was played without music. The Scherzo, with its sprightly scoring, dominated by chattering winds & dancing strings, acts as an intermezzo between Acts I & II. The Scherzo leads directly into the 1st melodrama, a passage of text spoken over music. Oberon's arrival is accompanied by a fairy march, scored with triangle & cymbals. The vocal piece "Ye spotted snakes" opens Act II's 2nd scene. The 2nd Intermezzo comes at the end of the 2nd act. Act III includes a quaint march for the entrance of the Mechanicals. We soon hear music quoted from the Overture to accompany the action. The Nocturne includes a solo horn doubled by bassoons, & accompanies the sleeping lovers between Acts III & IV. There is only one melodrama in Act IV. This closes with a reprise of the Nocturne to accompany the mortal lovers' sleep. The intermezzo between Acts IV & V is the famous Wedding March, probably the most popular single piece of music composed by Mendelssohn, & one of the most ubiquitous pieces of music ever written. Act V contains more music than any other, to accompany the wedding feast. There is a brief fanfare for trumpets & timpani, a parody of a funeral march, & a Bergomask dance. The dance uses Bottom's braying from the Overture as its main thematic material. The play has three brief epilogues. The 1st is introduced with a reprise of the theme of the Wedding March & the fairy music of the Overture. After Puck's speech, the final musical number is heard - "Through this house give glimmering light", scored for soprano, mezzo-soprano & chorus. Puck's famous valedictory speech "If we shadows have offended" is accompanied, as day breaks, by the four chords 1st heard at the very beginning of the Overture, bringing the work full circle & to a fitting close. The purely instrumental movements (Overture, Scherzo, Intermezzo, Nocturne & Wedding March) are often played as independent pieces at concert performance or on recording. Like many others, Eugene Ormandy & the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded selections for RCA Victor; Ormandy broke with tradition by using the German translation of Shakespeare's text. In the 1970s Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos recorded a Decca Records LP of the complete incidental music with the New Philharmonia Orchestra & soloists Hanneke van Bork & Alfreda Hodgson; it later was issued on CD. In October 1992, Seiji Ozawa & the Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded another album of the full score for Deutsche Grammophon; they were joined by soloists Frederica von Stade & Kathleen Battle as well as the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Actress Judi Dench was heard reciting those excerpts from the play that were acted against the music. In 1996, Claudio Abbado recorded an album for Sony Masterworks of extended excerpts with Kenneth Branagh acting several roles from the play, performed live. Leonard Bernstein is one of the few major conductors who never recorded any music from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Parts of the score are used, re-orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, in Max Reinhardt's 1935 movie A Midsummer Night's Dream.";

HISTORICAL NOTE: "Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, & generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist & conductor of the early Romantic period. The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born into a notable Jewish family, although he himself was brought up initially without religion, & later as a Lutheran Christian. He was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious & did not seek to capitalise on his abilities. Indeed his father was disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he intended seriously to dedicate himself to it. Early success in Germany was followed by travel throughout Europe; Mendelssohn was particularly well received in Britain as a composer, conductor & soloist, & his ten visits there, during which many of his major works were premiered, form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes however set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Liszt, Wagner & Berlioz. The Conservatory he founded at Leipzig became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano & chamber music. He also had an important role in the revival of interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes & antisemitism in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized & re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era. Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, the son of a banker, Abraham Mendelssohn (who later changed his surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy, & who was himself the son of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), & of Lea Salomon, a member of the Itzig family & the sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy. He was the family's 2nd child: his older sister Fanny Mendelssohn was also to display, like him, exceptional & precocious musical talent. Felix grew up in an environment of intense intellectual ferment. The greatest minds of Germany were frequent visitors to his family's home in Berlin, including Wilhelm von Humboldt & Alexander von Humboldt. His sister Rebecca married the Belgian mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet. Abraham renounced the Jewish religion; his children were 1st brought up without religious education, & were baptised as Christians in 1816 (at which time Felix took the additional names Jakob Ludwig – Abraham & his wife were not themselves baptised until 1822.) The name Bartholdy was assumed at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob, who had purchased a property of this name & adopted it as his own surname. Abraham was later to explain this decision in a letter to Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his father Moses: "There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius". Felix did not entirely drop the name Mendelssohn as requested but in deference to his father signed his letters & had his visiting cards printed using the form "Mendelssohn Bartholdy". The family moved to Berlin in 1811. Abraham & Lea Mendelssohn sought to give Felix, his brother Paul, & sisters Fanny & Rebecca, the best education possible. His sister Fanny (later Fanny Hensel), became a well-known pianist & amateur composer; originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than her brother, might be the more musical. However, at that time, it was not considered proper (by either Abraham or Felix) for a woman to have a career in music, so Fanny remained an amateur musician. Six of her early songs were later published (with her consent) under Felix's name. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart before him, Mendelssohn was regarded as a child prodigy. He began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, & at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. This was an important influence on his future career. Zelter had almost certainly been recommended as Felix's teacher by his aunt Sarah Levy, who had been a pupil of W. F. Bach & a patron of C. P. E. Bach & was a talented keyboard player in her own right, often playing with Zelter's orchestra at the Berlin Singakademie (of which she & the Mendelssohn family were leading patrons). Sarah had formed an important collection of Bach family manuscripts which she bequeathed to the Singakademie; Zelter, whose tastes in music were conservative, was also an admirer of the Bach tradition. This undoubtedly played a significant part in forming Felix Mendelssohn's conservative musical tastes. Mendelssohn's own works show his study of Baroque & early classical music. His fugues & chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity & use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, by whose music he was deeply influenced. Felix probably made his 1st public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert accompanying a horn duo. He was also a prolific composer from an early age. As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the intellectual elite of Berlin. Between the ages of 12 & 14, Mendelssohn wrote twelve string symphonies. These works were ignored for over a century, but are now recorded & occasionally played in concerts. He wrote his 1st published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. (It was probably Abraham Mendelssohn who procured the publication of this work by the house of Schlesinger). In 1824, at age 15, he wrote his 1st symphony for full orchestra (in C minor, Op. 11). At the age of 16 he wrote his String Octet in E-flat major, the 1st work which showed the full power of his genius. This Octet & his Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later, are the best known of his early works. (He wrote incidental music for the play 16 years later in 1842, including the famous Wedding March.) The Overture is perhaps the earliest example of a 'concert overture', (i.e. a piece not written deliberately to accompany a staged performance, but to evoke a literary theme in performance on a concert platform), a genre which was to become a popular form in musical Romanticism. In 1824 Felix took lessons from the composer & piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles who however confessed in his diaries that he had little to teach him. Moscheles became a close colleague & lifelong friend. 1827 saw the premiere—& sole performance in his lifetime—of Mendelssohn's opera, Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture into the genre again. Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, & philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil & watercolour, he could speak (besides his native German) English, Italian, & Latin, & he had an interest in classical literature; Felix translated Terence's Andria for his tutor Heyse in 1825 — Heyse was impressed & had it published in 1826 as a work of 'his pupil, F****'. This translation also qualified Mendelssohn to study at the University of Berlin, where he attended from 1826 to 1829 lectures on aesthetics by Hegel, on history by Eduard Gans & on geography by Carl Ritter. In 1821 Zelter introduced Mendelssohn to his friend & correspondent, the elderly Goethe, who was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart in the following conversation with Zelter: "Musical prodigies […] are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing & playing at sight borders the miraculous. & I could not have believed it possible at so early an age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his 7th year at Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Goethe, "[…] but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time, that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child" Felix was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions & set a number of his poems to music; other of his compositions inspired by Goethe include the overtures Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea & a Prosperous Voyage, Op. 27, 1828) & the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832). In 1829, with the backing of Zelter & the assistance of a friend, the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged & conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. The orchestra & choir were provided by the Berlin Singakademie. The success of this performance (the 1st since Bach's death in 1750) was an important element in the revival of Johann Sebastian Bach's music in Germany &, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of twenty. It also led to one of the very few references which Mendelssohn ever made to his origins: 'To think that it took an actor & a Jew's son (Judensohn) to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!' (cited by Devrient in his memoirs of the composer). On the death of Zelter in 1832, Mendelssohn had some hopes of becoming the conductor of the Berlin Singakademie. However, at a vote in January 1833 he was defeated for the post by the less distinguished Karl Rungenhagen. This may have been because of Mendelssohn's youth, & fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected by some to be on account of his Jewish ancestry. Following this rebuff, Mendelssohn divided most of his professional time over the next few years between England & Düsseldorf, where he was appointed musical director in 1833. In the spring of that year he directed the Lower Rhenish Music Festival, commencing it with a performance of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt prepared from the original score which he had found in London. This may be regarded as the start of a Handel revival in Germany begun by Mendelssohn, much as he had reawakened interest in JS Bach. Mendelssohn worked with the dramatist Karl Immermann to improve local theatre standards, & made his 1st appearance as an opera conductor in Immermann's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of 1833, when he took umbrage at the audience's protests about the cost of tickets. His frustration at his quotidian duties in Düsseldorf, & its provincialism, led him to resign his position at the end of 1834. In 1829 Mendelssohn paid his 1st visit to Britain, where Moscheles, already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles. In the summer he visited Edinburgh where he met the composer John Thomson. One of the most significant in terms of his success in Britain was his 8th visit in the Summer of 1844. He conducted five of the Philharmonic concerts in London, & wrote of it "Never before was anything like this season-we never went to bed before half-past one, every hour of every day was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, & through more music in two months than in all the rest of the year". On subsequent visits he met with Queen Victoria & her musical husband Prince Albert, both of whom were great admirers of his music. In the course of ten visits to Britain during his life, totalling about 20 months Mendelssohn won a strong following, sufficient for him to make a deep impression on British musical life. Not only did he compose & perform, but he also edited for British publishers the 1st critical editions of oratorios of Handel & of the organ music of JS Bach. Scotland inspired two of his most famous works, the overture Fingal's Cave (also known as the Hebrides Overture) & the Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3). His oratorio Elijah was premiered in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival on August 26, 1846. On his last visit to England in 1847 he was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 & conducted his own Scottish Symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra before the Royal couple. He also worked closely with his protege & friend the English composer William Sterndale Bennett both in London & Leipzig. In 1835, Mendelssohn was appointed as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This appointment was extremely important for him; he felt himself to be a German & wished to play a leading part in his country's musical life. In its way it was a redress for his disappointment over the Singakademie appointment. Despite efforts by the king of Prussia to lure him to Berlin, Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the musical life of Leipzig, working not only with the orchestra but with the opera house, the Choir of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig & the city’s other choral & musical institutions. Concerts given by Mendelssohn included, apart from many of his own works, three series of ‘historical concerts’ & a number of works by his contemporaries. Mendelssohn was deluged by offers of music from rising composers & would-be composers; amongst these was Richard Wagner who submitted his early Symphony, which (to Wagner’s disgust) Mendelssohn lost or mislaid. Mendelssohn was also able to revive interest in the work of Franz Schubert. Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's 9th Symphony & sent it to Mendelssohn who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on March 21, 1839, more than a decade after the composer's death. A landmark event during Mendelssohn’s Leipzig years was the premier of his oratorio St. Paul which was given at the Lower Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf in 1836, shortly after the death of the composer’s father, which much affected him. St. Paul seemed to many of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries to be his finest work, & set the seal on his European reputation. The sceptics included Heinrich Heine who wrote of the work’s ‘finest, cleverest calculation, sharp intelligence &, finally, complete lack of naïveté. But is there in art any originality of genius without naïveté?’ — anticipating Wagner & many of Mendelssohn’s later critics who attacked the composer’s supposed glibness. Friedrich Wilhelm IV came to the Prussian throne in 1840 with ambitions to develop Berlin as a cultural centre. This included the establishment of a music school & reform of music for the church. The obvious choice to head these reforms was Mendelssohn, who was however reluctant to undertake the task, a reluctance perhaps associated with earlier disappointments in the city, especially in the light of his existing strong position in Leipzig. Although Mendelssohn did spend some time in Berlin, writing some church music & also, at the King’s request, music for a production of Sophocles’s Antigone, the funds for the school never materialised & various of the promises (in terms of finance, title & concert programming) made to Mendelssohn by the court were broken. He was therefore not displeased to have the excuse to return to Leipzig. In 1843, however Mendelssohn did found a major music school, the Leipzig Conservatory, where he persuaded Ignaz Moscheles & Robert Schumann to join him; other prominent musicians, including the string players Ferdinand David & Joseph Joachim, & the music theorist Moritz Hauptmann also became staff members. After Mendelssohn's death in 1847, his conservative tradition was carried on when Moscheles succeeded him as head of the Conservatory. Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic amateur artist, including drawing, watercolors, & oil painting. His enormous correspondence shows that he could also be a witty writer in German & English — sometimes accompanied by humorous sketches & cartoons in the text. Although the image was cultivated, especially after his death, of a man always equable, happy & placid in temperament, he was however often given to alarming fits of temper which occasionally led to collapse. On one occasion in the 1830s for example, when his wishes had been crossed "his excitement was increased so fearfully […] that when the family was assembled […] he began to talk incoherently, & in English, to the great terror of them all. The stern voice of his father at last checked the wild torrent of words; they took him to bed, & a profound sleep of twelve hours restored him to his normal state". Such fits may be related to his early death. Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a French Protestant clergyman, on March 28, 1837. The couple had five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Lilli & Felix. The youngest child, Felix, contracted measles in 1844 & was left with his health impaired; he died young, in 1851. The eldest, Carl, became a distinguished historian, & professor of history at Heidelberg & Freiburg universities, dying in 1897. Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1841–1880) was a noted chemist & pioneered the manufacture of aniline dye. Marie married Victor Benecke & lived in London. Lili married Adolphe Wach, later Professor of Law at Leipzig University. Cécile died less than six years after her husband, on 25 September 1853. In general Mendelssohn's personal life seems to have been fairly conventional compared to his contemporaries Wagner, Berlioz, & Schumann — save as regards his ambiguous relationship with the famed Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he met in October 1844. An affidavit from Lind's husband, Otto Goldschmidt, which is currently held in the archive of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation at the Royal Academy of Music in London, reportedly describes Mendelssohn's 1847 request for Lind (who was then not married) to elope with him to America. The affidavit, though unsealed, is currently unreleased by the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation, despite requests to make it public. Mendelssohn met & worked with Lind many times, & wrote the beginnings of an opera, Lorelei, for her, based on the legend of the Lorelei Rhine maidens; the opera was unfinished at his death. He is said to have included a high F-sharp in his oratorio Elijah ("Hear Ye Israel") with Lind's voice in mind, although she did not in fact sing this part until after his death, at a concert in December 1848. In 1847 Mendelssohn attended a London performance of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable —an opera which musically he despised— in order to hear Lind's British debut, in the role of Alice. His friend the critic Chorley, who was with him, wrote "I see as I write the smile with which Mendelssohn, whose enjoyment of Mdlle. Lind's talent was unlimited, turned round & looked at me, as if a load of anxiety had been taken off his mind. His attachment to Mlle. Lind's genius as a singer was unbounded, as was his desire for her success." Mercer-Taylor writes that although there is no currently available hard evidence of a physical affair between the two, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Clive Brown writes that "it has been rumoured that the [affidavit] papers tend to substantiate the notion of an affair between Mendelssohn & Lind, though with what degree of reliability must remain highly questionable." The evidence for such an affair is contested by Cecile & Jens Jorgensen, but also without any hard evidence. Upon Mendelssohn's death Lind wrote, "[He was] the only person who brought fulfillment to my spirit, & almost as soon as I found him I lost him again." In 1869 Lind erected a plaque in Mendelssohn's memory at his birthplace in Hamburg; in 1849 she had set up the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation, which makes an award to a British resident young composer every two years in Mendelssohn's memory. The 1st winner of the scholarship (in 1856), was Arthur Sullivan, then aged 14. Mendelssohn suffered from bad health in the final years of his life, probably aggravated by nervous problems & overwork. The death of his sister Fanny on May 14, 1847 caused him great distress. Less than six months later, on November 4, Felix himself died in Leipzig after a series of strokes. He was 38. His grandfather Moses, his sister Fanny & both his parents had died from similar apoplexies. His funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche & he is buried in the Trinity Cemetery in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if somewhat cool, terms with the likes of Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, & Giacomo Meyerbeer, but in his letters expresses his frank disapproval of their works. In particular, he seems to have regarded Paris & its music with the greatest of suspicion & an almost Puritanical distaste. Attempts made during his visit there to interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended in embarrassing scenes. He thought the Paris style of opera vulgar, & the works of Meyerbeer insincere. When Ferdinand Hiller suggested in conversation to Felix that he looked rather like Meyerbeer (they were distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserlis), Mendelssohn was so upset that he immediately went to get a haircut to differentiate himself. It is significant that the only musician with whom he was a close personal friend, Moscheles, was of an older generation & equally conservative in outlook. Moscheles preserved this outlook at the Leipzig Conservatory until his own death in 1870. In the immediate wake of Mendelssohn's death, he was mourned both in Germany & England. Eduard Devrient writes in his diary in Dresden on February 3rd 1848 'I met Kapellmeister [i.e. Richard] Wagner; went with him to the theatre, where Mendelssohn's birthday was being celebrated with a prologue, in which Fr. Bayer crowned his recently completed bust. I was in a daze - that I should live to see [him] so sadly honoured'. However the conservative strain in Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a corollary condescension amongst some of them toward his music. His success, his popularity & his Jewish origins irked Richard Wagner sufficiently to damn Mendelssohn with faint praise, three years after his death, in an anti-Jewish pamphlet Das Judenthum in der Musik. This was the start of a movement to denigrate Mendelssohn's achievements which lasted almost a century, the remnants of which can still be discerned today amongst some writers. The Nazi regime was to cite Mendelssohn's Jewish origin in banning performance & publication of his works. The 1892 century monument to Mendelssohn in Leipzig was removed by the regime in 1936 - its fate is unknown. A new statue of the composer was erected to replace it in 2008. In England, Mendelssohn's reputation remained high for a long time, as evidenced by Prince Albert's note of appreciation (in German) in his programme for the choral work Elijah in 1847, "To the noble artist who, surrounded by the Baal-worship of debased art, has been able by his genius & science to preserve faithfully, like another Elijah, the worship of true art." The adulatory (& today scarcely readable) novel Charles Auchester by the teenaged Sarah Sheppard, published in 1851, which features Mendelssohn as the "Chevalier Seraphael", remained in print for nearly eighty years. Queen Victoria demonstrated her enthusiasm by requesting, when The Crystal Palace was being re-built in 1854, that it include a statue of Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn's Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream was played as a piece of ceremonial music at the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Victoria, The Princess Royal, to Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1858 & it is still popular today at marriage ceremonies. His sacred choral music, particularly the smaller-scale works, remains popular in the choral tradition of the Church of England. However many critics, including Bernard Shaw, began to condemn Mendelssohn's music for its association with Victorian cultural insularity; Shaw in particular complained of the composer's "kid-glove gentility, his conventional sentimentality, and his despicable oratorio-mongering". According to Andrew Porter, Ferruccio Busoni considered Mendelssohn "a master of undisputed greatness" & "an heir of Mozart", which can be contrasted with his views on composers such as Schubert ("a gifted amateur") & Beethoven ("he lacked the technique to express his emotions"). A more nuanced appreciation of Mendelssohn's work has developed over the last fifty years, which takes into account not only the popular 'war horses', such as the E minor Violin Concerto & the Italian Symphony, but has been able to remove the Victorian varnish from the oratorio Elijah, & has explored the frequently intense & dramatic world of the chamber works. Virtually all of Mendelssohn's published works are now available on CD. Charles Rosen both praises & criticizes Mendelssohn in his 1998 book The Romantic Generation, calling him a "genius" [as a composer] with a "profound" comprehension of Beethoven" & "the greatest child prodigy the history of Western music has ever known." Although Rosen feels that in his later years, without losing his craft or "genius" the composer "renounced...his daring," he calls his (relatively) late Violin Concerto in E minor "the most successful synthesis of the Classical concerto tradition & the Romantic virtuoso form." Rosen calls his adolescent "Fugue in E minor" (later included in his Op. 35 for piano) a "masterpiece" but in the same paragraph calls Mendelssohn "the inventor of religious kitsch in music," of which he writes: "It does not comfort, but only makes us more comfortable." On the one hand, Rosen writes that "[t]he decline of Mendelssohns's reputation may appear inexplicable when we consider [his] achievements", but he also comments (rather ambiguously) regarding his popular Songs without Words: "It is not true that they are insipid but they might as well be." The two large biblical oratorios, St Paul in 1836 & Elijah in 1846, are greatly influenced by Bach. From the unfinished oratorio, Christus, the chorus "There Shall a Star Come out of Jacob" (which together with the preceding recitative & male trio comprises all of the existing material from that work) is sometimes performed. Strikingly different is the more overtly 'romantic' Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), a setting for chorus & orchestra of a ballad by Goethe describing pagan rituals of the Druids in the Harz mountains in the early days of Christianity. This remarkable score has been seen by the scholar Heinz-Klaus Metzger as a "Jewish protest against the domination of Christianity". Mendelssohn also wrote many smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir & for choir with organ. Some were written, & most have been translated into English, & remain highly popular. Perhaps the most famous is Hear My Prayer, with its 2nd half containing 'O for the Wings of a Dove', which became extremely popular as a separate item. The piece is written for full choir, organ, & a treble or soprano soloist who has many challenging & extended solo passages. As such, it is a particular favourite for choirboys in churches & cathedrals, & has perhaps been recorded more than any other treble solo. The hymn tune Mendelssohn—an adaptation by William Hayman Cummings of a melody from Mendelssohn's cantata Festgesang—is the standard tune for Charles Wesley's popular hymn Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. This extract from an originally secular 1840s composition, which Mendelssohn felt unsuited to sacred music, is thus ubiquitous at Christmas.