''Ouvertüre zum Märchen von der schönen Melusine'',
Op. 32, (German: ''Overture to the Legend of the Fair Melusine'') is a
concert overture
Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...
by
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...
written in 1834. It is generally referred to as ''Die schöne Melusine'' in modern concert programming and recordings, and is sometimes rendered in English as ''The Fair Melusine''.
Inspiration
The overture is loosely illustrative of aspects of the legend of
Melusine, a water-nymph who marries Count Raymond, on the condition that he never enter her room on a Saturday (on which day she takes on the form of a
mermaid). In the 19th century, the story was familiar in Germany in the retelling by
Ludwig Tieck (''Melusina'', 1800) and the poetic version of
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (his
''Undine'' of 1811).
[Seaton (2004), p. 107.] Mendelssohn denied close musical references to the story which critics, including
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
, believed they detected. When asked what the piece was about, Mendelssohn replied drily "Hmm ... a misalliance".
Nevertheless, some aspects of the music have clear pictorial implications. The opening passage of
string instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the ...
arpeggio
A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves.
An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...
s in rhythm anticipates the river music of the opening of
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's 1854 opera ''
Das Rheingold''.
Composition
The piece was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's sister
Fanny
Fanny may refer to:
Given name
* Fanny (name), a feminine given name or a nickname, often for Frances
In slang
* A term for the vulva, in Britain and many other parts of the English-speaking world
* A term for the buttocks, in the United States
...
. In a letter to her of 7 April 1834, he explains that he had picked on the subject after seeing
Conradin Kreutzer's opera ''Melusina'' the previous year in Berlin. Kreutzer's overture, writes Mendelssohn "was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not
he singer
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not ''encore'', but which would cause them more solid pleasure."
First performance and revision
The overture, which is broadly in
sonata form,
was first performed in London by the
Philharmonic Society orchestra, conducted by
Ignaz Moscheles, under the title ''Melusine, or the Mermaid and the Knight''. The performance was received politely but not enthusiastically. Mendelssohn subsequently revised the piece, and it was published in the revised form in 1836. A German contemporary reviewer commented that the Overture "does not try to translate the whole tale into musical language ... but only to conjure up for us, from the dreamworld of harmonic power, the happiness and unhappiness of two beings."
[Cited in Brown (2003), p. 359.]
References
Notes
Sources
* Brown, Clive (2003). ''A Portrait of Mendelssohn''. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Mendelssohn, Felix, tr. Lady Wallace (1864). ''Mendelssohn's Letters from 1833 to 1847''. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt.
* Seaton, Douglass (2004). "Symphony and Overture", ''The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn'', ed. Peter Mercer-Taylor, pp. 91–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press.
* Todd, R. Larry (2003). ''Mendelssohn: A Life in Music''. Oxford: Oxford University Press
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:schöne Melusine, Die
Overtures by Felix Mendelssohn
1834 compositions
Concert overtures
Melusine
Music based on European myths and legends
Fanny Mendelssohn