Spirit of the Past: Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah & Its Romantic Take on the Oratorio

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Jackson 1 Milton Jackson 1 June 2009 MUS 24B Spirit of the Past: Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah & Its Romantic Take on the Oratorio Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah is a great example of a composer paying homage to his predecessors while illustrating one’s own style as a musician. While Mendelssohn uses the “spirit” of Handel’s previous oratorios, however, with distinct and certain stylistic elements, the musical and easily analyzed setting of the story of Elijah, and the extension of performance contributions present-day conductors have added, Mendelssohn has made Elijah an oratorio that harps on its laurels of the past yet stands all on its own. Prior to writing Elijah, in 1836 Mendelssohn had just finished writing his oratorio St. Paul, as some regard has his finest work. St. Paul was written in 1834 for the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf in 1836, premiering on May 22nd. Mendelssohn was only 27 years old at the time of the premiere. After the premiere of St. Paul, he began work on Elijah. Mendelssohn immediately wanted to write another oratorio based on the Biblical story of Elijah since he had organized and conducted the first performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion since Bach’s death in 1829, where an abbreviated and modified version of it was performed in Berlin to great acclaim. Mendelssohn's revival of the St. Matthew Passion brought the music of Bach, in particular the larger-scale works, to the public as well as scholarly attention that has continued into the present era. Scholars also note that Handel’s oratorios, such as the Messiah, had always been Jackson 2 fashionable in England and never went out of style. According to Frederick George Edwards, Mendelssohn’ letter to his friend Carl Klingemann in London in August of 1836 shows that “Mendelssohn had actually invested time in writing an oratorio for

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