Union In Partition: The Case of Wagner v. Mendelssohn

NOTE: This concert, originally scheduled for June 27th is being rescheduled for early Fall, 2010. Please check our website in a few weeks for information on the new date.

In December of 2008, Symphony In The Glen was invited to participate in Ring Festival LA as a Performance Partner. Having been so honored, we set out to devise a concert that would delight our audience and at the same time, provide a stimulating and thought-provoking connection to Wagner’s immortal Ring of the Niebelungen. We decided to present the incidental music Mendelssohn composed for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the Colburn Children’s Chorus, featuring the Independent Shakespeare Company performing selections from the play.

Why Mendelssohn in a Wagner festival? The answer lies in the concert’s title: “Union In Partition: The Case of Wagner v Mendelssohn.”

For over a century, historians, theologians and musicologists have provided fuel for an enduring Mendelssohn/Wagner controversy. Wagner, the recognized giant of 19th century German Romantic music, opined that Jewish composers were incapable of expressing the true German spirit in music, often targeting Mendelssohn specifically with his contempt. He dismissed Mendelssohn’s work as “superficial and spiritless”. Despite Wagner’s protestations, however, these two rivals of 19th century romantic music are forever bound by the traditional wedding ceremony. As the city celebrates Wagner and German romanticism, Symphony In The Glen takes a Puckish delight in pairing Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” from Lohengrin with Felix Mendelssohn’s  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

Does Wagner truly define the German soul? Or, are Mendelssohn and Wagner two brilliant facets of a thing far too complex to be defined by one vision? Was Wagner’s vitriol toward Mendelssohn based on race? Or could it be envy of Mendelssohn’s graceful and effortless genius that led to his defamation at Wagner’s hand? And, is it thus fair to say to Mr. Wagner “Methinks thou doest protest too much”?

So we grew together,
Like to a double-cherry, seeming parted,
But an union in partition

—Wm. Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream