ABSTRACT
Originally subtitled a "Symphony" and renamed a "Symphony-Cantata" only after its premiere, the Mendelssohn's Lobgesang is openly modeled on Beethoven's Ninth, with three instrumental movements followed by a multi-sectional finale for chorus and soloists. Mendelssohn's Lobgesang was commissioned to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg's invention of printing by movable type. In adopting the large-scale form of Beethoven's Ninth, Mendelssohn openly acknowledged what at the time was the latest and by far the most challenging of all symphonies. The Lobgesang was not Mendelssohn's first compositional attempt to come to terms with Beethoven's Ninth, or with Beethoven's late works in general. Mendelssohn's self-criticism in the genre reached its greatest extreme with his first attempt to emulate the Ninth: the "Reformation" Symphony, originally composed but never performed for Berlin's celebration of the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession in 1830.
