Under the corona lockdown, all students of the classical music department at the Thelma Yellin high school in Israel home recorded their parts for Mendelssohn's Psalm 42.
German Jewish composer Felix Jakob Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was identified by the age of 12 by Beethoven as the rare musical prodigy that he was. Grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, a distinguished philosopher and spiritual leader of German Jewry, he wrote his inspired overture, A Midsummer Night's Dream, when only seventeen. Mendelssohn is considered one of the greatest composers of the Romantic Era, his choral and organ music often regarded the best ever produced.
Though baptised into Christianity, Mendelssohn remained in the eyes of many a Jew. Mendelssohn's immense success, his popularity and his Jewish origins irked Wagner enough to damn Mendelssohn with faint praise in an anti-Jewish essay, accusing him of being too somber to produce the profundities of Bach and Beethoven:
"Mendelssohn has shown us that a Jew may have the amplest store of specific talents, may own the finest and most varied culture, the highest and tenderest sense of honour – yet without all these pre-eminences helping him, were it but one single time, to call forth in us that deep, that heart-searching effect which we await from art [...] The washiness and the whimsicality of our present musical style has been [...] pushed to its utmost pitch by Mendelssohn's endeavour to speak out a vague, an almost nugatory content as interestingly and spiritedly as possible".
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on the other hand, was an avid and consistent admirer of Mendelssohn:
"The whole music of romanticism [e.g. Schumann and Wagner] ... was second-rate music from the very start, and real musicians took little notice of it. Things were different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master who, thanks to his easier, purer, happier soul, was quickly honoured and just as quickly forgotten, as a lovely incident in German music".
The rise of the Third Reich in the 20th century did further, seemingly irreparable, damage to Mendelssohn’s reputation. The Nazis tore down his statues, banned his music, persecuted his family and liquidated their assets which included real-estate and banking businesses.
But they were unable to expunge Mendelssohn completely from German culture. When Richard Strauss was asked to write new music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he replied that not he nor anyone could improve on Mendelssohn’s music. Mendelsohn remains among the most admired and popular composers of the Romantic era.
Psalms 42:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
