John Michael Cooper - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Research and Information Guide

COMPOSERS

Samuel Barber (2001)

Doris Bosworth Powers

Wayne C. Wentzel

Bla Bartk, 2nd Edition (1997)

Elliott Antokoletz

Vincenzo Bellini, 2nd Edition (2009)

Stephen A. Willier

Alban Berg, 2nd Edition (2009)

Bryan R. Simms

Leonard Bernstein (2001)

Paul F. Laird

Johannes Brahms (2003)

Heather Platt

William Byrd, 2nd Edition (2005)

Richard Turbet

Elliott Carter (2000)

John L. Link

Carlos Chvez (1998)

Robert Parker

Frdric Chopin (1999)

William Smialek

Aaron Copland (2001)

Marta Robertson and Robin Armstrong

Frederick Delius, 2nd Edition (2009)

Mary Christison Huismann

Gaetano Donizetti, 2nd Edition (2009)

James P. Cassaro

Edward Elgar (1993)

Christopher Kent

Alberto Ginastera (2010)

Deborah Schwartz-Kates

Christoph Willibald Gluck, 2nd Edition (2003)

Patricia Howard

Charles Franois Gounod (2009)

Timothy S. Flynn

G.F. Handel, 2nd Edition (2004)

Mary Ann Parker

Paul Hindemith, 2nd Edition (2009)

Stephen Luttmann

Charles Ives, 2nd Edition (2009)

Gayle Sherwood Magee

Scott Joplin (1998)

Nancy R. Ping-Robbins

Zoltn Kodly (1998)

Mchel Houlahan and Philip Tacka

Franz Liszt, 3rd Edition (2009)

Michael Saffle

Guillaume de Machaut (1995)

Lawrence Earp

Gustav and Alma Mahler (2008)

Susan M. Filler

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (2010)

John Michael Cooper and Angela R. Mace

Olivier Messiaen (2008)

Vincent P. Benitez Giovanni Pierluigi da

Palestrina (2001)

Clara Marvin

Giacomo Puccini (1999)

Linda B. Fairtile

Maurice Ravel (2004)

Stephen Zank

Gioachino Rossini, 2nd Edition (2009)

Denise P. Gallo

Camille Saint-Sans (2003)

Timothy S. Flynn

Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti (1993)

Carole F. Vidali

Heinrich Schenker (2003)

Benjamin Ayotte

Alexander Scriabin (2004)

Ellon D. Carpenter

Jean Sibelius (1998)

Glenda D. Goss

Giuseppe Verdi (1998)

Gregory Harwood

Toms Luis de Victoria (1998)

Eugene Casjen Cramer

Richard Wagner (2010)

Michael Saffle

Adrian Willaert (2004)

David Michael Kidge

GENRES

American Music Librarianship (2005)

Carol June Bradley

Chamber Music, 3rd Edition (2009)

John H. Baron

Church and Worship Music (2005)

Avery T. Sharp and

James Michael Floyd The Concerto (2006)

Stephen D. Lindeman

Ethnomusicology (2003)

Jennifer C. Post Jazz Scholarship and

Pedagogy, 3rd Edition (2005)

Eddie S. Meadows

The Musical (2004)

William A. Everett

North American Indian Music (1997)

Richard Keeling

Opera, 2nd Edition (2001)

Guy Marco

Piano Pedagogy (2009)

Gilles Comeau

The Recorder, 2nd Edition (2003)

Richard Griscom and David Lasocki

Serial Music and Serialism (2001)

John D. Vander Weg

String Quartets (2009)

Mara E. Parker

The Violin (2006)

Mark Katz

Women in Music (2010)

Karin Pendle and Melinda Boyd

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Any reader who has gone so far as to pick up this book probably already has some knowledge of the fundamental reason for its existence: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, although known by name and by a few warhorse compositions to virtually everyone familiar with any classical music, remains one of the most ambivalently represented composers in the world of musical scholarship. As Mendelssohns reception history has vacillated between excessive adulation and equally excessive dismissals, the elite canon of first-rate research sources has been almost hopelessly outnumbered by a proliferation of biographies and critical essays based on little more than the authors prejudices and assumptionsoften reflecting (but not explicitly articulating) racist agendas that most latter-day readers find untenable, irrelevant, and abhorrent. The result is a bewildering landscape in which some extraordinary fruits of scholarly research exist within a stiflingly arid wasteland of music-historical prose. This book endeavors to assist researchers in locating, assessing, and using those sources.

More directly, the book owes its existence to two of the great men of latter-day Mendelssohn scholarship. Donald Mintz, whose seminal dissertation on the manuscripts for three of the composers major works () broke important new ground in enabling Mendelssohn scholarship to escape the quagmire into which it had descended in the first half of the twentieth century, began collecting the data and wrote preliminary annotations for some sources. Professor Mintz was kind enough to share this material with me when I was contracted for the book, and his contributions provided the foundation for the completed project. For some entries Professor Mintzs information has been retained in toto or only slightly modified; these are designated by a [DM] or a [DM/JMC] at the end of the annotation. In addition, R. Larry Todd, my doctoral advisor at Duke University and by consensus one of the deans of modern Mendelssohn scholarship, contributed not only his global knowledge of sources, issues, and ideas, but also the recommendation for taking on this project.