Mendelssohn for winds

Synopsis

In the summer of 1824, the fifteen-year-old Mendelssohn spent a holiday with his father in the fashionable spa town of Bad Doberan, on the Baltic coast near Rostock. Writing home to his family in Berlin he confessed that, although he was “comfortably lodged … with friendly people, a decent piano, [and a] pretty view … so far I have not written a note.”

That would change, however, as Mendelssohn befriended musicians employed by the local Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose court ensemble was a wind band. For them, the young Mendelssohn composed a Nocturno, scored for the classical octet of double winds, plus a flute, trumpet, and an odd brass instrument called a Como Inglese di Basso, roughly similar in shape to a bassoon, but with a cup mouthpiece and both open and keyed holes.

Mendelssohn described it in a letter he wrote on today’s date in 1824 as “a large brass instrument with a fine, deep tone, that looks like a watering can or a stirrup pump.”

Music for that original 1824 Nocturno has not survived, but eventually Mendelssohn reworked and enlarged the piece, adding new music, and much later, in 1838, expanded the scoring to a full wind ensemble and published the result as his Overture for Winds.

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Overture for Winds; London Symphony; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 423 104

On This Day

Births

• 1896 - French composer Jean Rivier, in Villemomble

Deaths

• 1838 - German inventor of the metronome, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, 65, on board the brig Otis in the harbour of La Guiara, Venezuela, en route to Philadelphia. Beethoven’s orchestral battle-symphony, Wellington’s Victory, was originally written for one of Maelzel’s mechanical music-machines.

Premieres

• 1733 - Handel: oratorio Athalia, in Oxford (Julian date: July 10)

• 1938 - Hindemith: ballet, St. Francis, at Covent Garden in London, with composer conducting (the suite Nobilissima Visone is drawn from this score)

• 1971 - William Bolcom: Frescoes in Montreal, with Bruce Mather (piano and harmonium) and Pierrette LePage (piano and harpsichord).

• 1983 - Thomas Oboe Lee: Morango … almost a tango for string quartet, at the Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Composers in Red Sneakers ensemble.