Mendelssohn: Athalia Incidental Music, Op. 74

Earlier to-day I listened to Mendelssohn's incidental music for Athalia, Op. 74 (I recently got a three-CD set of some Mendelssohn incidental music, and this was the first time I listened to it).

The beginning of the overture sounded familiar, but I had to look up the notation before I realized why it sounded familiar:

(notation found here)

Initially, I thought it resembled the melody of Handel's "See the conqu'ring hero comes" from Judas Maccabaeus (I know it as a melody, but I've never heard Handel's oratorio).  After I lookt up the notation for "See the conqu'ring hero comes," I realized that Mendelssohn's overture sounds familiar because it starts with the same rhythm, not the same melody:

(notation found here)

Both have a half note, a dotted quarter note, an eighth note, and then two half notes.

After I discovered this similarity, I did some research to see if this was actually Handel's influence or whether it was just a coincidence.  I referenced R. Larry Todd's Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, which I read last year.  In the index, there are a dozen entries for "Handel influences."  I lookt up Judas Maccabaeus specifically, and - while I couldn't find anything about its influence on the Athalia overture - I did find some things that evidence Mendelssohn's familiarity with it.  In Chapter 5 (1825-1826), Todd writes that "Felix extracted themes from the oratorio and dexterously wove them into an improvisation, 'thoroughly Handelian' yet with 'no pretension to display.'"  Later, Todd mentions Judas Maccabaeus among other Handel works that Mendelssohn conducted in Düsseldorf in the 1830s.  So it seems that the rhythm from "See the conqu'ring hero comes" could very well have influenced the rhythm in the overture to the Athalia incidental music.

Mozart's Requiem

I'm still making my way through The Argo Years, the 28-disc box set of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  To-night, it was Mozart's Requiem.  I hadn't heard this particular recording before, but I do have it performed by Orchestra e Coro della RAI.

The first few notes of the Benedictus sounded familiar, and it didn't take me too long to discover that I'd heard them in the second movement of Mendelssohn's Organ Sonata in A major, Op. 65, No. 3.  (I just listened to Peter Hurford's recording a couple days ago.)

I wasn't sure how similar they were, so I looked up the music for both of them:

(notation found here and here)

The note values and time signatures are different, and the melodies don't really resemble each other after the fifth note, but the notes do occur in the same intervals (even if they're in different keys).

However, I'm not sure if this was intentional on Mendelssohn's part.

Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107 "Reformation"

I've been making my way through some Mendelssohn lately.  To-day that included the later symphonies, performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker directed by Christoph von Dohnányi.

I feel pretty stupid for not noticing this earlier, but the fourth movement of Symphony No. 5 includes some variations on Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."  It becomes glaringly obvious once the name ("Reformation") is taken into account.

Additionally, I think Mendelssohn may have also included a few measures of the melody from "Ich Sterbe Täglich," a tune from 1756 that is also used for hymns (such as "I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table" and "Thy Body, Given for Me, O Savior"), so it also relates to the religious theme of the symphony.

At the eleventh measure of section I*, the melody comes in with the bassoons and trumpets:

(notation found here)

A measure or two after this, the melody diverges, but it's enough to recognize it.

---

*I might not be using the correct terminology; I never really learned to read scores.  It took me long enough to actually find the particular measures.

Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2

I'm staying up late listening to some Mendelssohn organ works performed by Peter Hurford.  I noticed in the fugue part of his Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2, he sneaks in the B-A-C-H motif... sort of:

(notation found here)

In the second measure here, (skipping the first note) it's G to F# and then C to B.  While this isn't the Bb A C B of the B-A-C-H motif, it's still the same sort of paradigm.  He has a half-step from G to F# and then a half-step from C to B.  Two sequential half-steps are also heard in other places in the work (assuming I'm hearing them correctly), although I didn't look those up in the notation, so I don't know if they're also G to F# and C to B or if they're comprised of other notes.

Among the little I know of Mendelssohn is that he promoted Bach's music and was something of a Bach revivalist, so it makes sense that Bach's musical signature would - in some form - find its way into his music, especially his organ works.