A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture - Free Essay Example.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Analysis. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy of errors, a narrative form that relies on slapstick and chaos for its humor. Magic potions, enchanted lovers, and a.

A Midsummer Night's Dream--Overture--1826, Nocturne and Scherzo--1842 Inspired by William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Felix Mendelssohn completed his famous Overture in 1826. Originally the Overture was written and performed privately as a piano duet, when it was suggested that Mendelssohn should orchestrate it.

Background. The genesis of Mendelssohn's overture, The Hebrides, can be pinpointed to 7 August, 1829, when the composer was staying on the Isle of Mull during a tour of Scotland with his friend Carl Klingemann.He wrote home on that evening, including with the letter a sketch of the opening bars of this work, explaining the profound effect the landscapes had on him.

As practically every classical music fan (and a whole lot of others as well) knows, German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) started working on his music for Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was but a teen, composing the Overture in 1826 when he was only seventeen. But he wasn’t in any hurry, completing the work sixteen years later in 1841 while employed by the.

Felix Mendelssohn. Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born on February 3, 1809, to Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn in Hamburg, Germany (Oxford Companion 1162). He was the second of four children, but he was closer to his older sister Fanny than any of his other siblings. The two of them studied music and played together for many years, and Fanny also composed.

Despite its romantic, programmatical nature, A Midsummer Night's Dream is, like his 'Hebrides' Overture, based on classical sonata principles; exposition (bar 1), development (bar 250) and recapitulation (bar 394) are all clearly discernable. Mendelssohn adds some masterly touches to the traditional sonata model, such as starting the work in the tonic key of E major, but switching to e minor.

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream, an album by Felix Mendelssohn, London Symphony Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir on Spotify We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was unique in Shakespeare's list of works. It alone was not based on any other story, being purely Shakespeare, although borrowing heavily from pagan myth and popular ideas. The complex plot is set in a fantasy world of fairies and queens, magic flowers and misdirected love potions, mistaken identities and love finally triumphant.

Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61, was completed 16 years after he wrote the Overture, Op. 21.The consistency of style and musical unity between them belie the disparate dates of composition. The overture was by an incredibly musically gifted youth of 17, and the incidental music was by the music director of Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm IV's Academy of.

In 2003, R. Larry Todda??s biography, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, was published to near universal acclaim. It was immediately hailed as the definitive biography of this important composer. In researching Mendelssohna??s life over the last two and a half decades, Todd uncovered much new information about the composer, his family, and his peers.

The Overture - The overture was written by Mendelssohn when he was only 17. - It was also the beginning of writing music as literature, which became much more common after this piece. Instrumentation A Midsummer Night's Dream 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2.

Analysis. Mendelssohn: Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Op.21. Key: E major. No. of bars: 686. Structure: Sonata form. Bar: What Happens: Comment: 1-61: The piece opens with four poised woodwind chords; E major-B major-a minor-E major. At bar 6, the upper strings change E major to e minor with an additional held chord. This darkening of the tonality then sparks off the.