''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") is a music instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overtures which were ...

Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions inc ...

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'' and ''The Fair Melusina''.

Inspiration

The overture is loosely illustrative of aspects of the legend of

Melusine Mélusine () or Melusine or Melusina is a figure of European folklore, a nixie (folklore), female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a Serpent symbolism, serpent or Fish in culture, fish fr ...

, 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 folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are ...

). In the 19th century, the story was familiar in Germany in the retelling by

Ludwig Tieck Johann Ludwig Tieck (; ; 31 May 177328 April 1853) was a German poet, fiction writer, translator, and critic. He was one of the founding fathers of the Romanticism, Romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Early life Tieck w ...

(''Melusina'', 1800) and the poetic version of

Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué (; 12 February 1777 – 23 January 1843) was a German writer of the Romantic style. Biography He was born at Brandenburg an der Havel, of a family of French Huguenot origin, as evidenced in h ...

(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 music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...

, 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 In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

arpeggio An arpeggio () is a type of Chord (music), chord in which the Musical note, notes that compose a chord are individually sounded in a progressive rising or descending order. Arpeggios on keyboard instruments may be called rolled chords. Arpe ...

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, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

's 1854 opera ''

Das Rheingold ''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 86A, is the first of the four epic poetry, epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Literary cycle, cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nib ...

''.

Composition

The piece was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's sister Fanny. In a letter to her of 7 April 1834, he explains that he had picked on the subject after seeing

Conradin Kreutzer Conradin Kreutzer or Kreuzer (22 November 1780 – 14 December 1849) was a German composer and conductor. His works include the operas ''Das Nachtlager in Granada'' and incidental music to ''Der Verschwender'', both produced in 1834 in Vienna. ...

'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 singerMlle. 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 The sonata form (also sonata-allegro form or first movement form) is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of t ...

, was first performed in London by the

Philharmonic Society The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) is a British music society, formed in 1813. Its original purpose was to promote performances of instrumental music in London. Many composers and performers have taken part in its concerts. It is now a membe ...

orchestra, conducted by

Ignaz Moscheles Isaac Ignaz Moscheles (; 23 May 179410 March 1870) was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano in the Co ...

, 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