Practical discussions
An examination of practical performance issues is also necessary for the 19th century. In his dissertation, Burkhard Wind examined Mendelssohn's organ works from this point of view.
In his Review of volume 7 of the Studien zur Orgelmusik (SMZ 3/2020) the reviewer had regretted that the volume on Felix Mendelssohn's organ works published by Butz-Verlag in 2018 (edited by Birger Petersen and Michael Heinemann), despite a wealth of analytical and historical information, did not deal much with explicitly practical questions of interpretation. Fortunately, the present book (a doctoral thesis submitted to the Frankfurt University of Music) now seems to create a kind of "complementarity" to this. Using comprehensive source texts from the composer's historical environment, the author Burkhard Wind sheds light on the essential practical performance aspects of Mendelssohn's organ music (and, more generally, the music of the early German Romantic period), i.e. questions of fingering, pedal technique, articulation, phrasing and punctuation, accentuation, ornamentation and tempo. Only Mendelssohn's instrumental preferences and his registration practice are not further elaborated on by the author - with reference to existing works. The wealth of material testifies to a meticulous examination of the available primary sources, primarily German organ schools from the first third of the 19th century (often written for teacher training at seminaries and therefore relatively fundamental), piano schools and writings on music aesthetics from the time of Mendelssohn and his teachers. In addition, there is a thorough examination of numerous secondary sources relating to Mendelssohn's organ music up to recent times, which are briefly presented in the introductory "literature report" and then commented on in the individual chapters, in some cases in more detail and sometimes critically.
Conclusion: an important and fundamental work that impressively demonstrates that an in-depth examination of practical performance issues has also become necessary with regard to 19th century music, as our time no longer stands in an unbroken "line of tradition" to Mendelssohn's era.
Burkhard Wind: On the performance of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's organ works, 280 p., € 48.00, Georg Olms, Hildesheim and others, 2021, ISBN 978-3-487-16935-1
