Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

by Philip Hale

OVERTURE AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC TO SHAKESPEARE’S LAY, “A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM”

Translations by Schlegel and Tieck of Shakespeare’s plays were read by Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny in 1826. The overture, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was written in July and August of that year.

Klingemann tells us that part of the score was written “in the summer, in the open air, in the Mendelssohns’ garden at Berlin, for I was present.” This garden belonged to a house in the Leipziger Strasse (No. 3). It was near the Potsdam gate, and when Abraham Mendelssohn, the father, bought it, his friends complained that he was moving out of the world. There was an estate of about ten acres. In the house was a room for theatrical performances; and the center of the garden house formed a hall which held several hundred, and it was here that Sunday music was performed. In the time of Frederick the Great this garden was part of the Thiergarten. In the summer-houses were writing materials, and Felix edited a newspaper, called in summer The Garden Times, and in the winter The Snow and Tea Times.

Mendelssohn told Hiller that he had worked long and eagerly on the overture: “How in his spare time between the lectures at the Berlin University he had gone on extemporizing at it on the piano of a beautiful woman who lived close by; ‘for a whole year, I hardly did anything else,’ he said; and certainly he had not wasted his time.”

It is said that Mendelssohn made two drafts of the overture, and discarded the earlier after he completed the first half. This earlier draft began with the four chords and the fairy figure; then followed a regular overture, in which use was made of a theme typical of the loves of Lysander and Hermia, and of kin to the “love melody” of the present version.

The overture was first written as a pianoforte duet, and it was first played to Moscheles in that form by the composer and his sister, November 19, 1826. It was performed afterwards by an orchestra in the garden house. The first public performance was at Stettin in February, 1827, from manuscript, when Karl Löwe conducted. The critic was not hurried in those days, for an account of the concert appeared in the Harmonicon for December of that year. The critic had had time to think the matter over, and his conclusion was that the overture was of little importance.

The overture was performed in England for the first time on June 24 (Midsummer Day), 1829, at a concert given by Louis Drouet in the Argyll Rooms. Sir George Smart, who returned from the concert with Mendelssohn, left the score of the overture in a hackney coach. So the story is told; but is it not possible that the blameless Mendelssohn left it? The score was never found, and Mendelssohn rewrote it. The overture was played in England for the first time in connection with Shakespeare’s comedy at London, in 1840, when Mme Vestris appeared in the performance at Covent Garden.

The orchestral parts were published in 1832; the score in April, 1835. The overture is dedicated to His Royal Majesty the Crown Prince of Prussia.

The overture opens allegro di molto, E major, 2-2, with four prolonged chords in the wood-wind. On the last of these follows immediately a pianissimo chord of E minor in violins and violas. This is followed by the “fairy music” in E minor, given out and developed by divided violins with some pizzicati in the violas. A subsidiary theme is given out fortissimo by full orchestra. The melodious second theme, in B major, begun by the wood-wind, is then continued by the strings and fuller and fuller orchestra. Several picturesque features are then introduced: the Bergomask dance from the fifth act of the play; a curious imitation of the bray of an ass in allusion to Bottom, who is, according to Maginn’s paradox, “the blockhead, the lucky man on whom Fortune showers her favors beyond measure”; and the quickly descending scale passage for violoncellos, which was suggested to the composer by the buzzing of a big fly in the Schoenhauser Garten. The free fantasia is wholly on the first theme. The third part of the overture is regular, and there is a short coda. The overture ends with the four sustained chords with which it opened.

In 1843 King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia wished Mendelssohn to compose music for the plays Antigone, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Athalie, which should be produced in September. During March and April of that year Mendelssohn, who had written the overture in 1826, composed the additional music for Shakespeare’s play. Tieck had divided the play into three acts and had said nothing to the composer about the change. Mendelssohn had composed with reference to the original division. The first performance was in the Royal Theater in the New Palace, Potsdam, October 14, 1843, on the eve of the festival of the King’s birthday. Mendelssohn conducted.

The score was published in June, 1848; the orchestral parts in August of that year. The first edition for pianoforte was published in September, 1844.

Mendelssohn’s music to the play consists of thirteen numbers:

I. Overture; II. Scherzo (Entr’acte after Act I); III. Fairy March (in Act II); IV. “You spotted snakes,” for two sopranos and chorus (in Act II); V. Melodrama (in Act II); VI. Intermezzo (Entr’acte after Act II); VII. Melodrama (in Act III); VIII. Notturno (Entr’acte after Act III); IX. Andante (in Act IV); X. Wedding March (after the close of Act IV); XI. Allegro commodo and Marcia funebre (in Act V); XII. Bergomask Dance (in Act V); XIII. Finale to Act V.

Many of the themes in these numbers were taken from the overture.

The scherzo (entr’acte between Acts I and II) is an allegro vivace in G minor, 3-8. “Presumably Mendelssohn intended it as a purely musical reflection of the scene in Quince’s house—the first meeting to discuss the play to be given by the workmen at the wedding—with which the first act ends. Indeed, there is a passing allusion to Nick Bottom’s bray in it. But the general character of the music is bright and fairy-like, with nothing of the grotesque about it.” The scherzo presents an elaborate development of two themes that are not sharply contrasted; the first theme has a subsidiary. The score is dedicated to Heinrich Conrad Schleinitz.