Six Organ Sonatas op.65 (Mendelssohn)

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Elaborate promotion of Mendelssohn's organ sonatas in Music World on July 24, 1845

The six organ sonatas, Op. 65 Felix Mendelssohn ( MWV W 56-61) were published 1845th They are the culmination of Mendelssohn's work for the organ . Like the organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach , they belong to the core repertoire of organ music.

History of origin

Mendelssohn was considered a brilliant organist . During his total of seven stays in Great Britain, he gave a number of well-attended organ concerts, including in 1842 in the presence of the young British Queen Victoria and her German Prince Consort in the Christ Church in London . The concerts often included improvisations for which Mendelssohn was famous, such as the performances in London and Oxford in 1842 . In an article in Musical World magazine (1838), the British organist Henry Gauntlett described Mendelssohn's interpretation of Bach as "unearthly great". His improvisation play is "very differentiated", the soft sentences "full of tender expression and exquisite passion". In his loud foreplay he saw "a limitless wealth of new ideas".

Title page of the first edition of op.65 by Breitkopf & Härtel 1845

These qualities are evident in the organ sonatas. As early as 1841, Mendelssohn announced 12 studies for the organ to his German publisher Breitkopf & Härtel . These eventually became larger. They were commissioned to Mendelssohn by the English publisher “Coventry and Hollier” in 1844 as a set of voluntaries , at that time organ pieces with an imaginative touch. Coventry also asked Mendelssohn for an edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's 44 short chorale preludes . Mendelssohn concentrated on this composition in Frankfurt in 1845. He used existing pieces, composed new ones and discarded old ones in order to form a uniform cycle. Mendelssohn wavered in his considerations between "a kind of organ-school", "organ sonatas" and "studies". Finally, he decided to combine 24 smaller pieces, which he had composed in a colorful sequence, into six sonatas . He finished the conceptual work on April 2, 1845 with the fugue finale of the 4th Sonata, continued to refine parts of it and arranged the simultaneous international publication of the work by four publishers. On April 10, 1845, he described the new work to his publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig as a collection of pieces "in which I tried my way of treating the organ and trying to think and write down for it".

The six sonatas were first published on September 15, 1845. From August 1844 to May 1845, correspondence between Mendelssohn and Coventry took place. Mendelssohn suggested that Gauntlett do the proofreading , which turned out to be difficult. The English publisher first announced the work as Mendelssohn's School of Organ-Playing , but this title was rejected by Mendelssohn. 190 subscribers to the publication generated sales of £ 199, of which Mendelssohn received £ 60.

Mendelssohn was the first composer of international standing after Bach, who after almost 100 years seriously dealt with the organ again. The sonatas were published eight years after the three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37 and at the end of Mendelssohn's life work are at the peak of his fame and triumph. Mendelssohn established the separation of piano and organ music for the genre of the sonata. He is thus considered to be the creator of the romantic organ sonata. In the first decade after Mendelssohn's organ sonatas were published in 1845, 15 new organ sonatas were written by other composers, 13 in the second and 158 from 1865 to 1901.

shape

In response to the order, Mendelssohn first designed seven individual voluntaries , but then decided to expand them and regroup them into six sonatas. The form does not correspond to the classical sonata with a first movement in sonata form . Gotthold Frotscher saw in the six sonatas a "string of different partial movements and character pieces without any essential inner relational character". According to Andreas Schröder, the statement of a “noticeable incoherence” does not do justice to the work. The apparent stylistic inconsistency of the organ sonatas corresponds to the romantic concept; it is precisely this that is the characteristic principle of the sonata in Romanticism .

One can rather differentiate between cyclically arranged forms (sonatas 1, 2, 4) and free forms (sonatas 3, 5, 6). The cyclical sonatas are not to be understood as classical, because the (classical) sonata main clause does not appear constant here either. No two sonatas are the same. Their openness, not a scheme, is characteristic. The collage-like interlocking pieces contain suggestions from the past of organ literature and thus give Mendelssohn the opportunity to bring in his own style in addition to historical models. These organ sonatas are an expression of overcoming the unreflective imitation of historical styles, if one wants to do them justice.

music

The sonatas contain Protestant chorale motifs : In the first movement of Sonata No. 1 (F minor), Mendelssohn quotes What my God wants, that g'scheh always . In the first movement of Sonata No. 3 (A major) under bar 40, a cantus firmus is designated as follows: Ped. Chorale, Out of deep need . The 6th Sonata (D minor) is based on the Luther chorale Our Father in Heaven , which is artistically varied in 190 bars, the longest of these sonata movements. The Sonata no. 2 contains as third and second set Allegro maestoso a festive and homophon held Prelude in C major, which Mendelssohn as stoppage D-Dur 1831 wrote in Rome. The first movement of the third sonata is probably a reworking of the entrance that Mendelssohn composed in 1829 for the wedding of his sister Fanny .

The imaginative final movement of the 1st sonata shows a pronounced virtuoso-improvisational style with numerous arpeggios over the entire manual . In addition to the 1st movement of the 4th sonata, the long variation movement of the 6th sonata is also improvisational. Chords spray over the constantly recurring chorale motif, which appears in irregular alternation in the pedal, in the upper and middle parts. The slow movements of the 2nd and 4th sonatas have a pronounced song character. All sonatas except the fifth have fugal sections or complete fugues, which clearly give the composition a Bachian tinge. It is mixed with contemporary stylistic elements of spontaneous sentiment and formal freedom.

Parts of the second sonata were the earliest in 1831; the 4th sonata was the last to be written in 1845.

Melody of the chorale Our Father in Heaven from Valentin Schumann's hymn book from 1539:

{\ key c \ major \ time 64/2 \ set Score.tempoHideNote = ## t \ tempo 2 = 100 \ set Staff.midiInstrument = "english horn" \ override Score.TimeSignature # 'transparent = ## t \ override Score .BarNumber # 'transparent = ## t a'1 a'2 f' g 'a' f 'e' d'1 \ fermata \ bar "!" a'1 a'2 g 'c' 'a' f 'g' a'1 \ fermata \ bar "!" a 'c''2 d' 'f' 'e' 'd' 'cis'' d''1 \ fermata \ bar "!" d '' e''2 d '' c '' b 'a' gis' a'1 \ fermata \ bar "!" d '' c''2 b 'c' 'a' a 'g' f'1 \ fermata \ bar "!" a 'bes'2 a' f 'g' f 'e' d '\ breve \ bar "|."}

The six sonatas are:

  • No. 1 in F minor (Allegro - Adagio - Andante recitativo - Allegro assai vivace) (comp. 1844)
  • No. 2 in C minor (Grave - Adagio - Allegro maestoso e vivace - Fugue: Allegro moderato) (comp. 1831/39/44)
  • No. 3 in A major (based on Luther's chorale Out of deep need I scream to you ) (Con moto maestoso - Andante tranquillo) (comp. 1844)
  • No. 4 in B flat major (Allegro con brio - Andante religioso - Allegretto - Allegro maestoso) (comp. 1845)
  • No. 5 in D major (Andante - Andante con moto - Allegro) (comp. 1845)
  • No. 6 in D minor (based on the Luther chorale Our Father in Heaven ) (chorale and variations: Andante sostenuto - Allegro molto - Fuga - Finale: Andante) (comp. 1845)

Performances

Edmund Chipp, probably played the first public performance of Mendelssohn's organ sonatas

Mendelssohn refused to play the sonatas himself on the occasion of his invitation to the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival in 1846. From Leipzig he wrote to his friend Ignaz Moscheles that the spring pressure of the organ manuals had seemed so difficult to him on his last visit to Birmingham that he did not dare to play them in public. If the organ was mechanically improved, however, he would be happy to play one of his sonatas there.

The first public performance of any of the sonatas in Great Britain was likely that of Edmund Thomas Chipp in 1846. In 1848 he played all six sonatas by heart. Although British critics rated the music very highly and referred to Mendelssohn's improvisational style, Mendelssohn did not perform any of them publicly, either in England or anywhere else. However, he played it privately in the Katharinenkirche for the English music critic WS Rockstro on his last visit to Frankfurt am Main in 1845 and announced in a letter to his sister Fanny Hensel in 1845 that he would play it for her. Rockstro remembered Mendelssohn's “wonderfully tender staccato” in the pedal part.

instrument

The change in organ composition, organ playing and organ building since the middle of the 18th century tended to lead to ever larger instruments, especially in England, where previously there were only a few large instruments with fully expanded pedals. The organ was primarily used for church services and, with the increasing importance of the characteristic timbres ( couleur locale ), also appeared more and more in emerging concerts in the middle-class concert industry and in the opera . For the first time, the newly built concert building was also equipped with organs that were not used for liturgical purposes. Their task was initially the interplay of choir, orchestra and organ in the great oratorios of the Romantic period, here one thinks of the organ section, for example, the "Paulus" op. 36 by Mendelssohn. The majority of the instruments built in the first half of the 19th century still followed the classic principles of organ building (mechanics and sliding chest) and their disposition. Ideologists of the so-called organ movement at the beginning of the 20th century liked to talk about the "decay of organ building" in complete ignorance of the actual situation; in fact, the opposite can be stated both qualitatively and quantitatively. Changes in the disposition tend to arise most likely in the ancillary works. While the main work and pedal disposition could hardly be distinguished from the respective regional traditions of the Baroque period, two or three eight-foot registers such as Flaut amabile were arranged in the auxiliary works (positive, upper works, lower works) in order to allow greater differentiation of the timbres in piano and mezzoforte area. This is particularly needed in Mendelssohn's sonatas. Sound crowns from two-foot position upwards, as well as mixed voices are hardly used there apart from cornet mixes. In this way, the second manual of the two-manual organ became the (dynamically graded) echo of the first manual, which was already laid out in the tradition of the baroque organ. Mendelssohn's first organ sonata shows a procedure whereby the main theme is assigned to the first (major work) and the secondary theme to the second manual (auxiliary work). Many of the instruments that today can be described as "ideal Mendelssohn instruments" can be found in the more remote regions of Westphalia, Mecklenburg and Saxony. Most of the organs from the 19th century in the Netherlands also deserve this title. Mendelssohn organ works can still be performed and represented easily on instruments influenced or inspired by the Baroque with at least two manuals and around twenty-five registers.

The change in sound ideas becomes clear in Mendelssohn's sonata work. The treatment of the instrument already requires typical registers of the so-called romantic organ for an appropriate interpretation. Mendelssohn's organ sonatas thus contribute to the transformation of the sound ideals. The scaling brought a steady increase in the sound intensity towards the height. Since consideration for polyphony took a back seat , this preference for the higher registers corresponded to the ideal of melody-stressed homophonic spelling at the time. It can be found in Mendelssohn's sonatas. A typical example of this is the finale of the first sonata. The composer reckons with the dominant treble register (melody) of the organ when he combines the pianistic scales of the upper part with the chord breaks in the middle register.

The staggering of the manuals also allows a crescendo technique in the fugue game. Fugues begin quietly on the upper manuals and become increasingly louder on the lower manuals. Mendelssohn implemented this in the third sonata, where it says in the fugue: "Poco a poco più animato e più forte". This principle became the model for all later organ sonatas by other composers who followed Mendelssohn's example. This type of crescendo should not be confused with the infinitely variable swell effects of later organs of the 19th century.

Mendelssohn's sentence designations no longer contain information on registration because, as he noted, "even the registers of the same name do not always produce the same effect on different instruments". Instead, in addition to tempos, he only noted dynamic indications from pianissimo to fortissimo . In the preliminary remark of the first edition by Breitkopf & Härtel he explains the terms piano as “several gentle eight-foot registers together”, forte with “full organ without some of the strongest registers”, fortissimo with “full work”.

reception

The sonatas were very well received in other European countries, since they were published in London by Maurice Schlesinger (Paris), Ricordi (Milan) and Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig). In a letter to Mendelssohn dated October 22, 1845, Robert Schumann acknowledged "the striving forwards everywhere [...] these genuinely poetic new forms, as they round off to a perfect picture in every sonata". He particularly emphasized the 5th and 6th sonatas. It is considered likely that Mendelssohn's sonatas inspired Robert Schumann to write his 6 fugues on BACH , op. 60, and later Josef Gabriel Rheinberger to write his 20 organ sonatas .

The opus was quickly recognized as a masterpiece. It was attested that it gave the organ new impulses and revived the rich historical legacy of the instrument. With the new technical means of organ sonatas, Mendelssohn, according to Martin Weyer, brought organ music out of a “state of complete decline” and laid the foundation for overcoming the gap between the early classical music and other musical genres. Victor Lukas emphasizes the path of Mendelssohn's organ music as "ridiculed relics from a time hostile to the organ" to trend-setting "links between Baroque and Romanticism".

In addition to Johann Sebastian Bach's works, Mendelssohn's sonatas are now part of the basic repertoire of many organists. Currently (as of June 2016) there are a dozen CD recordings.

literature

  • Michael Heinemann and Birger Petersen (eds.): The organ music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . Bonn (Butz), 2018 ( partially digitized )
  • Susanne Grossmann-Vendrey: Problems of style in Mendelssohn's organ sonatas op. 65. In: Carl Dahlhaus (Ed.): The Mendelssohn problem. Regensburg 1974, pp. 185-194.
  • Annemarie Klostermann: Mendelssohn Bartholdy's church music work. New research on history, form and content. Mainz 1989.
  • William A. Little: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Six sonatas for the organ (op. 65): beginning - change - completion. In: Freiberger studies on the organ , 5, 1997, pp. 26–36.
  • Orlando A. Mansfield. Characteristics and Peculiarities of Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Oct., 1917), pp. 562-576. Oxford University Press
  • Jürgen Thym (ed.): Mendelssohn, the Organ and the Music of the Past. Constructing Historical Legacies. University of Rochester Press 2014.
  • Martin Weyer: The German organ sonata from Mendelssohn to Reger. Phil. Diss. Cologne 1969. Regensburg 1969 ( Cologne contributions to music research, 35).

Web links

Recordings on YouTube

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Eric Werner, tr. D. Newlin: Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age. London 1963.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life his music . Carus / Reclam 2008, p. 532ff.
  3. ↑ Clive Brown: A Portrait of Mendelssohn. New Haven / London 2003, ISBN 978-0-300-09539-5 , pp. 214-215.
  4. ^ FG Edwards: Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas. In: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 21st Session (1894-5), London 1895, p. 4.
  5. ^ FG Edwards: Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas. In: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 21st Session (1894-5). London 1895, p. 3.
  6. ↑ Eric Werner, tr. D. Newlin: Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age. London 1963, p. 425.
  7. ^ FG Edwards: Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas. In: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 21st Session (1894-5). London 1895, p. 4.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Andreas Schröder: Mendelssohn and the organ. In: Ars Organi , 57th year, issue 3, September 2009.
  9. ↑ Martin Weyer. The romantic organ sonatas from Mendelssohn to Reger. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg. 1969. p. 39 ff.
  10. ^ William A. Lille. Mendelssohn and the Oran. In: Jürgen Thym (ed.) Mendelssohn, the Organ and the Music of the Past. Constructing Historical Legacies. University of Rochester Press. 2014. p. 103
  11. ^ A b Franz Lüthi: On the Mendelssohn year of commemoration 1997. The 6 organ sonatas by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Bulletin "Orgelfreunde St. Gallen" (OFSG) 15, No. 1, 1997.
  12. ↑ The division of the sonata into movements varies in the literature.
  13. ^ Annual figures: Mendelssohn Bartholdy. New edition of all organ works II. Bärenreiter 1994
  14. ↑ Moscheles (1878), letter of July 12, 1846. 275–276.
  15. ^ Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas. In: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 21st Session (1894-5). London 1895, p. 5.
  16. ↑ Percy F. Scholes: The Mirror of Music , 1844-1944, London / Oxford (1947) (2 vols.), P. 596.
  17. ^ Glenn Stanley: The music for the keyboard, in The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn. Edited by Peter Mercer-Taylor. Cambridge 2004, p. 159.
  18. ^ Edwards, FG: Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas. In: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 21st Session (1894-5). London 1895, p. 5.
  19. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life his music . Carus / Reclam 2008, p. 540. Note: Rockstro refers to the 2nd sonata, actually the pedal part of the 5th sonata is meant (Todd)
  20. ↑ Martin Weyer. The romantic organ sonatas from Mendelssohn to Reger. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg. 1969. p. 35
  21. ↑ Martin Weyer. The romantic organ sonatas from Mendelssohn to Reger. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg. 1969. p. 51
  22. ↑ Martin Weyer. The romantic organ sonatas from Mendelssohn to Reger. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg. 1969. p. 36
  23. ^ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 6 sonatas for the Leipzig organ : Breitkopf & Härtel 1845, preliminary remark
  24. ↑ Martin Weyer. The romantic organ sonatas from Mendelssohn to Reger. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg. 1969. p. 203
  25. ↑ Viktor Lukas. Organ music guide. Reclam 1975 p. 133