Editing Felix Mendelssohn (section)

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[[File:Mendelssohn plays to Goethe, 1830.jpg|thumb|''Mendelssohn plays to [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], 1830'', by [[Moritz Oppenheim]], 1864]] Something of Mendelssohn's intense attachment to his personal vision of music is conveyed in his comments to a correspondent who suggested converting some of the ''[[Songs Without Words]]'' into [[lied]]er by adding texts: "What [the] music I love expresses to me, are not thoughts that are too ''indefinite'' for me to put into words, but on the contrary, too ''definite''."{{refn|1="Das, was mir eine Musik ausspricht, die ich liebe, sind mir nicht zu ''unbestimmte'' Gedanken, um sie in Worte zu fassen, sondern zu ''bestimmte''." From a letter to Marc-André Souchay of 15 October 1842; Mendelssohn's own emphases.[https://books.google.com/books?id=fJ2N80aCpwAC p. 298]|group=n}}{{sfn|Youens|2004|p=190}}

Schumann wrote of Mendelssohn that he was "the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most brilliant musician, the one who most clearly sees through the contradictions of the age and for the first time reconciles them."{{sfn|Vitercik|2004|p=71}} This appreciation brings to the fore two features that characterized Mendelssohn's compositions and his compositional process. First, that his inspiration for musical style was rooted in his technical mastery and his interpretation of the style of previous masters,{{sfn|Brown|2003|p=312}} although he certainly recognized and developed the strains of early [[Romanticism (music)|Romanticism]] in the music of Beethoven and Weber.<ref name=Men7 /> The historian James Garratt writes that from his early career, "the view emerged that Mendelssohn's engagement with early music was a defining aspect of his creativity."{{sfn|Garratt|2004|p=55}} This approach was recognized by Mendelssohn himself, who wrote that, in his meetings with Goethe, he gave the poet "historical exhibitions" at the keyboard; "every morning, for about an hour, I have to play a variety of works by great composers in chronological order, and must explain to him how they contributed to the advance of music."{{sfn|Garratt|2004|p=64}} Secondly, it highlights that Mendelssohn was more concerned to reinvigorate the musical legacy which he inherited, rather than to replace it with new forms and styles, or with the use of more exotic [[orchestration]].{{sfn|Brown|2003|pp=311, 314}} In these ways he differed significantly from many of his contemporaries in the early Romantic period, such as Wagner, Berlioz and [[Franz Liszt]].{{sfn|Brown|2003|pp=311, 317–318}} Whilst Mendelssohn admired Liszt's virtuosity at the keyboard, he found his music jejune. Berlioz said of Mendelssohn that he had "perhaps studied the music of the dead too closely."<ref name=Men7>{{harvnb|Todd|2001|loc=§7}}</ref>

The musicologist Greg Vitercik considers that, while "Mendelssohn's music only rarely aspires to provoke", the stylistic innovations evident from his earliest works solve some of the contradictions between classical forms and the sentiments of Romanticism. The expressiveness of Romantic music presented a problem in adherence to [[sonata form]]; the final ([[recapitulation (music)|recapitulation]]) section of a movement could seem, in the context of Romantic style, a bland element without passion or soul. Furthermore, it could be seen as a pedantic delay before reaching the emotional climax of a movement, which in the classical tradition had tended to be at the transition from the [[Sonata form#Development|development]] section of the movement to the recapitulation; whereas Berlioz and other "modernists" sought to have the emotional climax at the end of a movement, if necessary by adding an extended [[coda (music)|coda]] to follow the recapitulation proper. Mendelssohn's solution to this problem was less sensational than Berlioz's approach, but was rooted in changing the structural balance of the formal components of the movement. Thus typically in a Mendelssohnian movement, the development-recapitulation transition might not be strongly marked, and the recapitulation section would be harmonically or melodically varied so as not to be a direct copy of the opening, [[exposition (music)|exposition]], section; this allowed a logical movement towards a final climax. Vitercik summarizes the effect as "to assimilate the dynamic trajectory of 'external form' to the 'logical' unfolding of the story of the theme".{{sfn|Vitercik|2004|pp=71–82}}

[[Richard Taruskin]] wrote that, although Mendelssohn produced works of extraordinary mastery at a very early age,
<blockquote>he never outgrew his precocious youthful style.&nbsp;[...] He remained stylistically conservative&nbsp;[...] feeling no need to attract attention with a display of "revolutionary" novelty. Throughout his short career he remained comfortably faithful to the musical status quo&nbsp;– that is, the "classical" forms, as they were already thought of by his time. His version of romanticism, already evident in his earliest works, consisted in musical "pictorialism" of a fairly conventional, objective nature (though exquisitely wrought).{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|pp=180–183}}</blockquote>