Felix Mendelssohn: A midsummer night's dilemma

Portrait of Felix Mendelssohn
Eduard Magnus, 1846 

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was just 17 when he wrote his famous Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The year before that, he wrote his equally famous String Octet in E-flat major.  Warm-ups for both occurred between the ages of 12 and 14 when he wrote twelve string symphonies.

He might have instead become a theological prodigy like his grandfather, Moses Mendelssoh, were it not for the opposition of Abraham (Moses' son and Felix's father) to this Jewish legacy.  Abraham, a well-established German banker, felt that Jews should assimilate into the overall society.  Since he felt that the "heyday" of Judaism had passed, he not only changed the family surname to Bartholdy, but also decided against having his son circumcised.  Because of Moses Mendelssohn's fame as a Jewish scholar, Abraham later wrote to Felix: ...there can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucious...

Felix, however, never stopped using the name Mendelssohn.  He would sometimes combine it with the name Bartholdy as a concession to his father, but in public would often go by only "Mendelssohn."  When baptized as a Christian at age seven (six years before his parents took that same step), Felix was given the additional names of Jakob and Ludwig.

In addition to Mendelssohn's many secular compositions, there were also his grand religious works.  In 1829, he arranged and conducted a Berlin performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion (which set Matthew 26 and 27 to music).  Were it not for Mendelssohn's revival of this sacred masterpiece, the subsequent popularity of it might never have occurred.  The success with which his theatrical rendition was met led Mendelssohn to exclaim: To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!

Although Mendelssohn continued a biblical focus with his two famous oratorios, St. Paul in 1836 and Elijah in 1846, he also composed The First Walpurgis Night which highlighted pagan rituals of the Druids.  The famed German music critic and theorist Heinz-Klaus Metzger commented that this latter work was Mendelssohn's "Jewish protest against the domination of Christianity."

This seems a rather somber way of analyzing the genius behind such Christian hymns as Hear My Prayer and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.  Perhaps this midsummer night's dream of a composer had instead found a way to integrate his faith journey through the musical Gifts of his Spirit.

Resources

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156430/