Organ Sonatas, Op. 65 (Mendelssohn)
Encyclopedia
Felix Mendelssohn
's six Organ Sonatas, Op.
65, were published in 1845. Mendelssohn's biographer Eric Werner has written of them, 'next to Bach
's works, Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas belong to the required repertory of all organists'.
recitals. These often included the improvisation
s for which he was famous (e.g. at his recitals during his 1842 tour in London
and Oxford
). In an article in the magazine Musical World of 1838, the English organist Henry John Gauntlett noted:
These qualities are evident in the organ sonatas, which were commissioned as a 'set of voluntaries
' by the English publishers Coventry and Hollier in 1844, (who also commissioned at the same time an edition by him of the organ chorale
s of J. S. Bach
), and were published in 1845. Correspondence between Mendelssohn and Coventry relating to the Sonatas took place between August 1844 and May 1845. Mendelssohn suggested that Gauntlett undertake the proof reading but this was in fact probably carried out by Vincent Novello
. The publisher's original announcement referred to the work as 'Mendelssohn's School of Organ-Playing' (see illustration), but this title was rescinded at the composer's request.
190 subscribers to the publication produced a sales income of £199/10/-. Mendelssohn himself received £60 from the publisher.
, but using the word as it had been used by Bach, for a collection or suite
of varying pieces. The sonatas include references to a number of Bach chorales, and No. 3 (in A major) incorporates a processional piece which Mendelssohn had written for the wedding of his sister Fanny
. No 4 was the last to be written.
The six sonatas are:
of 1846, writing from Leipzig
to his friend Ignaz Moscheles
:
The first public performance in Britain of any of the sonatas was probably given by Edmund Chipp
in 1846; he also performed all six from memory in 1848. Although British critics rated the music highly, often drawing attention to its echoes of the composer's improvisatory style, Mendelssohn himself never performed any of the sonatas in public (either in England or elsewhere). He did however play them privately to the English music critic William Rockstro during the latter's visit to Frankfurt am Main in 1845, and wrote to his sister Fanny Mendelssohn
in 1845 offering to play them to her.
The sonatas were well received in other European countries (as they had been simultaneously published by Maurice Schlesinger
in Paris
, Ricordi
in Milan
and Breitkopf & Härtel
in Leipzig
). Robert Schumann
wrote to Mendelssohn in 1845 that he had played them over on the piano, and described them as 'intensely poetical [...] what a perfect picture they form!'. They are likely to have prompted Schumann's Six Fugue
s on B-A-C-H, and, later in the century, the sonatas of Josef Rheinberger
.
The American Guild of Organists
requires for its admissions examination that the examinee play at least one movement from one of the Mendelssohn sonatas.
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's six Organ Sonatas, Op.
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...
65, were published in 1845. Mendelssohn's biographer Eric Werner has written of them, 'next to Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's works, Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas belong to the required repertory of all organists'.
Background
Mendelssohn was a skilled organist and during his visits to Britain gave a number of well-received organPipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
recitals. These often included the improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
s for which he was famous (e.g. at his recitals during his 1842 tour in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
). In an article in the magazine Musical World of 1838, the English organist Henry John Gauntlett noted:
His execution of Bach's music is transcendently great [...] His extempore playing is very diversified - the soft movements full of tenderness and expression, exquisitely beautiful and impassioned [...] In his loud preludes there are an endless variety of new ideas [....] and the pedal passages so novel and independent [...] as to take his auditor quite by surprise
These qualities are evident in the organ sonatas, which were commissioned as a 'set of voluntaries
Voluntary (music)
In music a voluntary is a piece of music, usually for organ, which is played as part of a church service. In English-speaking countries, the music played before and after the service is often called a 'voluntary', whether or not it is titled so....
' by the English publishers Coventry and Hollier in 1844, (who also commissioned at the same time an edition by him of the organ chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
s of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
), and were published in 1845. Correspondence between Mendelssohn and Coventry relating to the Sonatas took place between August 1844 and May 1845. Mendelssohn suggested that Gauntlett undertake the proof reading but this was in fact probably carried out by Vincent Novello
Vincent Novello
Vincent Novello , English musician, son of an Italian who married an English wife, was born in London....
. The publisher's original announcement referred to the work as 'Mendelssohn's School of Organ-Playing' (see illustration), but this title was rescinded at the composer's request.
190 subscribers to the publication produced a sales income of £199/10/-. Mendelssohn himself received £60 from the publisher.
The music
In response to the commission, Mendelssohn at first drafted seven individual voluntaries, but then determined to extend and regroup them into a set of six sonatas, meaning by this not pieces in classical sonata formSonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
, but using the word as it had been used by Bach, for a collection or suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
of varying pieces. The sonatas include references to a number of Bach chorales, and No. 3 (in A major) incorporates a processional piece which Mendelssohn had written for the wedding of his sister Fanny
Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn , later Fanny Hensel, was a German pianist and composer, the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn...
. No 4 was the last to be written.
The six sonatas are:
- No. 1 in F minor (Allegro - Adagio - Andante recitativo - Allegro assai vivace)
- No. 2 in C minor (Grave - Adagio - Allegro maestoso e vivace - Fugue: Allegro moderato)
- No. 3 in A major (based on the LutherMartin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
's choraleChoraleA chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dirAus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dirAus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir , BWV 38, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig in 1724 in his second annual cycle for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 19 October 1724...
) (Con moto maestoso - Andante tranquillo) - No. 4 in B major (Allegro con brio - Andante religioso - Allegretto - Allegro maestoso)
- No. 5 in D major (Andante - Andante con moto - Allegro)
- No. 6 in D minor (based on the Lutheran Bach chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich, BWV 416) (Chorale and variations: Andante sostenuto - Allegro molto - Fuga - Finale:Andante)
Reception
The sonatas demand good standards of pitch and touch from the organ and also a satisfactory pedalboard. Few English instruments were adequately equipped in these respects at the time, which probably explains the slow growth in interest in the pieces in Britain. Mendelssohn himself refused to play them when invited to do so at the Birmingham FestivalBirmingham Triennial Music Festival
The Birmingham Triennial Musical Festival, in Birmingham, England, founded in 1784, was the longest-running classical music festival of its kind. Its last performance was in 1912.-History:...
of 1846, writing from Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
to his friend Ignaz Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.-Sources:Much of what we know about Moscheles's life...
:
'[T]he last time I passed through Birmingham the touch of the organ appeared to me so heavy that I could not venture to perform upon it in public. If however it is materially improved I shall be happy to play one of my sonatas; but I should not wish this to be announced before I had tried the organ myself'.
The first public performance in Britain of any of the sonatas was probably given by Edmund Chipp
Edmund Thomas Chipp
Edmund Thomas Chipp was an English organist and composer. His compositions were principally church organ music and oratorios.-Life and career:Chipp was born in London on Christmas Day, December 25, 1823...
in 1846; he also performed all six from memory in 1848. Although British critics rated the music highly, often drawing attention to its echoes of the composer's improvisatory style, Mendelssohn himself never performed any of the sonatas in public (either in England or elsewhere). He did however play them privately to the English music critic William Rockstro during the latter's visit to Frankfurt am Main in 1845, and wrote to his sister Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn , later Fanny Hensel, was a German pianist and composer, the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn...
in 1845 offering to play them to her.
The sonatas were well received in other European countries (as they had been simultaneously published by Maurice Schlesinger
Maurice Schlesinger
Moritz Adolf Schlesinger , generally known during his French career as Maurice Schlesinger, was a German music editor. He is perhaps best remembered for inspiring the character of M...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Ricordi
Casa Ricordi
Casa Ricordi is a classical music publishing company founded in 1808 as G. Ricordi & Co. by violinist Giovanni Ricordi in Milan, Italy...
in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
and Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...
in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
). Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
wrote to Mendelssohn in 1845 that he had played them over on the piano, and described them as 'intensely poetical [...] what a perfect picture they form!'. They are likely to have prompted Schumann's Six Fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
s on B-A-C-H, and, later in the century, the sonatas of Josef Rheinberger
Josef Rheinberger
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was a German organist and composer, born in Liechtenstein.-Short biography:...
.
The American Guild of Organists
American Guild of Organists
The American Guild of Organists, or AGO, is a national organization of academic, church, and concert organists in the U.S., headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City. It was founded in 1896 as both an educational and service organization...
requires for its admissions examination that the examinee play at least one movement from one of the Mendelssohn sonatas.
External links
- Sonata no. 4, 4th movement on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, played by Andreas Feyrer
Sources
- Brown, Clive, A Portrait of Mendelssohn, New Haven and London (2003) ISBN 9780300095395
- Edwards, F. G., Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas in Proceedings of the Musical Association 21st Session (1894-5), pp. 1–16. London, 1895.
- Moscheles, Felix, Letters of Felix Mendelssohn to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles, London, 1888
- Scholes, Percy F., The Mirror of Music, 1844-1944, London and Oxford (1947) (2 vols.)
- Stanley, Glenn, The music for the keyboard, in The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, ed. Peter Mercer-Taylor, Cambridge (2004)
- Todd, R. Larry, Mendelssohn, A Life in Music, Oxford (2003), ISBN 0195110439
- Werner, Eric, tr. D. Newlin, Mendelssohn:A New Image of the Composer and his Age, London, 1963