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Modalities of Assimilation: Subcultural Currents in Felix Mendelssohn's Lieder Ohne Worte

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2021

Dan Deutsch Open the ORCID record for Dan Deutsch [Opens in a new window]
Dan Deutsch*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
*
dan.deutsch@mail.huji.ac.il
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Abstract

In this article I examine the impact of Felix Mendelssohn's affiliation with a German-Jewish subculture on his music as reflected in the Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words) for piano solo. To better understand the interrelationship between musical formations and sociocultural realities, I associate the real and imaginary tensions between the German, the Jewish, and the German-Jewish with stylistic ambiguities in Mendelssohn's piano songs, which often destabilize the lyrical simplicity projected by the lieder framework through formal complexities that exceed the narrow scope of the piano miniature.

I establish the connections between Mendelssohn's music and sociocultural disposition by identifying a correlation between his so-called stylistic ‘conservatism’ and the anachronistic devotion of German Jewry to the universal ideals of the Enlightenment during the rise of German nationalism. Against this background, I primarily reveal the generic heterogeneity of the Lieder ohne Worte, which feature ‘progressive’ stylistic frameworks associated with the lied traditions yet concurrently point toward the formal ideals of eighteenth-century classicism. And following this, I position the stylistic duality of Mendelssohn's piano songs within a broader context through Heinrich Heine's essay The Romantic School, which sheds crucial light on the negotiation of Jewishness within German culture as it is reflected in aesthetic movements, historical changes, and political climates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , December 2022 , pp. 545 - 572
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

†

The online version of this article has been updated since original publication. A notice detailing the change has been published at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409822000076

References

1 Sorkin, David, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987): 6Google Scholar.

2 Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 7.

3 HaCohen, Ruth, The Music Libel Against the Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012): 181Google Scholar.

4 Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 191.

5 Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, ‘Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music’, in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000): 1–58, here 35. Italics in original.

6 Born and Hesmondhalgh, ‘Introduction’, 31–2. Italics in original.

7 Born and Hesmondhalgh, ‘Introduction’, 33.

8 The permeation of the sonata form into other generic frameworks is, in itself, not unusual in Mendelssohn. Sonata form features can be found in many inner movements (slow movements and scherzos) within Mendelssohn's multi-movement chamber and orchestral works. In addition, as Paul Wingfield and Julian Horton demonstrate, Mendelssohn regularly features sonata form in his fantasies, caprices, and scherzos for piano solo. See Paul Wingfield and Julian Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, in Mendelssohn Perspectives, ed. Nicole Grimes and Angela R. Mace (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012): 83–112, here 94–7.

9 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Foreword to Das Problem Mendelssohn’ [1974], trans. Benedict Taylor, in Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2015): 3–5, here 3.

10 Michael P. Steinberg, ‘Mendelssohn and Judaism’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, ed. Peter Mercer-Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 26–41, here 26.

11 Steinberg, ‘Mendelssohn and Judaism’, 27.

12 Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 32.

13 Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 20.

14 Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 33.

15 Dahlhaus, ‘Mendelssohn and the Traditions of Musical Genre’ [1974], trans. Benedict Taylor, in Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2015): 5–10, here 7.

16 Charles Rosen identifies similar stylistic changes in his Sonata Forms (New York: Norton, 1980): 292.

17 Dahlhaus, ‘Mendelssohn and the Traditions of Musical Genre’, 5.

18 HaCohen presents a similar argument from a different point of view. She argues that with the Lieder ohne Worte, Mendelssohn stressed that ‘within the new, more aesthetically confined Biedermeier world that had reattached itself to textual specificities, pure musical qualities should emerge as the underlying spiritual force’. And these ‘pure’ qualities were, according to her, specifically associated with the legacy of Viennese instrumental music for Mendelssohn's generation. See HaCohen, The Music Libel against the Jews, 186.

19 R. Larry Todd, ‘Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte and the Limits of Musical Expression’, in Mendelssohn Perspectives, ed. Nicole Grimes and Angela R. Mace (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2012): 197–222, here 197.

20 R. Larry Todd, ‘Piano Music Reformed: The Case of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, ed. Larry Todd (New York: Routledge, 2004): 178–220, here 193.

21 Wingfield and Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, 85, 87.

22 Wingfield and Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, 88.

23 Wingfield and Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, 104–105.

24 Rothstein, William, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music (New York: Schirmer, 1989): 183–213Google Scholar, here 193–4.

25 In his analysis of the first movement of Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E minor, Op. 44 No. 2, Benedict Taylor identifies a similar strategy within the context of the sonata form. Taylor defines this strategy as an ‘harmonic undercutting of recapitulation’ in which the thematic recapitulation occurs before the harmonic one. In correlation with Rothstein's analysis, the development – which is the middle section within the sonata – thus ends with a reprise of the first subject that is ‘heard over a dominant pedal’. See Benedict Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn and Sonata Form’, in Rethinking Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020): 185–209, here 192.

26 Dahlhaus, Carl, Nineteenth-Century Music [1980], translated by J. Bradford Robinson (California: University of California Press, 1989): 110Google Scholar.

27 Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 88.

28 In providing a more nuanced outlook on Mendelssohn's relation to the classical style and the New Formenlehre, Steven Vande Moortele asserts that ‘it is time to move beyond an analytical discourse that seems capable of approaching Mendelssohn only in terms of dependence’. Thus, in his analyses he shows that Mendelssohn uses techniques that are familiar to theoreticians of the classical style, but he positions them in ‘novel constellations and in combination with techniques that are rare or non-existent in the classical style’. See Steven Vande Moortele, ‘Expansion and Recomposition in Mendelssohn's Symphonic Sonata Forms’, in Rethinking Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020): 210–35, here 234.

29 Taylor relates to this duplicity from a different perspective, arguing that ‘Mendelssohn's instrumental music usually works on two levels: a surface conformity to generic expectations for the average listener, more subtle departures within this for the more attentive’. See Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn and Sonata Form’, 204.

30 Wingfield and Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, 84.

31 Hepokoski, James and Darcy, Warren, Elements of Sonata Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 344CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hepokoski and Darcy are adamant about the ‘inappropriateness of the term “Recapitulation”’ for the subordinate theme in type 2 sonatas. Nonetheless, in the context of this lied I find this term appropriate enough to convey the sonata character of implied by a large-scale resolution. Recently, there is also an ongoing discussion on type 2 sonata in the nineteenth century. See Smith, Peter H., ‘The Type 2 Sonata in the Nineteenth Century: Two Case Studies from Mendelssohn and Dvořák’, Journal of Music Theory 63/1 (2019): 103–38Google Scholar.

32 On the duality of simplicity and complexity, see Taylor's remark cited above in footnote 29.

33 Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, 344.

34 This interpretation of the caesura fill does not imply that the phenomenon of caesura fill inherently features the negation of formal boundaries, but rather that it serves this function in the constellation of this particular lied.

35 Steven Vande Moortele, The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017): 73.

36 Taylor describes a similar procedure in his analysis of the first movement of Op. 44 No. 2, where a clear ‘standing on the dominant’ that prepares the arrival of the subordinate theme in the secondary key of B minor (the minor dominant) unexpectedly slips ‘onto a luminous G major harmony’ (the VI of v). Taylor also mentions other examples that present a similar effect, including the first Caprice, Op. 33 No. 1 and the finale of Symphony No. 3 (‘Scottish’). See Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn and Sonata Form’, 192; and Taylor, Mendelssohn, Time and Memory: The Romantic Conception of Cyclic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 266–7.

37 The absence of a cadential punctuation correlates with what Wingfield and Horton describe as the elision of formal boundaries, which frequently occurs in Mendelssohn's overt sonata forms. See Wingfield and Horton, ‘Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms’, 100. In complementing Wingfield and Horton's observation, both Taylor and Vande Moortele point out that Mendelssohn's sonata form expositions frequently replace the expected perfect authentic cadence (PAC) at the end of the subordinate theme with an imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) and sometimes exclude any form of cadential punctuation. See Vande Moortele, ‘Expansion and Recomposition in Mendelssohn's Symphonic Sonata Forms’, 213; Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn and Sonata Form’, 192.

38 This is another strategy that Mendelssohn employs in his sonata form. As Taylor states, several of Mendelssohn's works from the mid-1820s onwards feature ‘a parallel two-part design, where the coda explicitly forms a corollary to the development section (the movement thus consisting of two rotations of a larger exposition–development layout)’. See Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn and Sonata Form’, 206.

39 Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School, translated by Helen Mustard in The Romantic School and Other Essays, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub (New York: Continuum, 1985).

40 Seyhan, Azade. Heinrich Heine and the World Literary Map: Redressing the Canon (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 42–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 HaCohen, The Music Libel against the Jews, 182.

42 See Hegel, G.W.F., Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. I, translated by T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975): 73–81Google Scholar and passim.

43 Heine, The Romantic School, 138.

44 Heine, The Romantic School, 143.

45 Heine, The Romantic School, 137.

46 Heine, The Romantic School, 151.

47 Heine, The Romantic School, 145.

48 Heine, The Romantic School, 161. It would be careless to perceive Heine's use of Jewish imagery at face value, especially given that protestants usually referred to figures, images and tropes of the Old Testament. And yet, one should also bear in mind the marked depreciation of the Old Testament on moral grounds, which – according to Sorkin – ‘was the standard tactic for thinkers attempting to unburden themselves of orthodox Christianity’. Against this background, Heine's Jewish background, along with the common assumption that contemporary Jewry was the ‘bearer of an Old Testament immorality unchanged by time’, make his use of Jewish imagery highly prominent in its ironic self-awareness. See Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 22.

49 Heine, The Romantic School, 143.

50 Heine, The Romantic School, 144.

51 Heine, The Romantic School, 146.

52 Heine, The Romantic School, 23.

53 See Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Mendelssohn and the Traditions of Musical Genre’, 6–7; and Leon Botstein, ‘Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Emancipation: The Origins of Felix Mendelssohn's Aesthetic Outlook’, in The Mendelssohn Companion, ed. Douglass Seaton (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001): 1–27.