ABSTRACT
The critical reputation of Felix Mendelssohn has been both made and marred by the association of art with irrationalism. Since his music generally lacks the rhetorical extremity typical, say, of Beethoven's, which he of course took as a model, or of Robert Schumann's, which he consistently championed, Mendelssohn has been damned with faint praise as the most classical of Romantic composers. Mendelssohn's music, with its combination of formal clarity and restless, at times even hectic, melodic vitality, takes this Goethean ambience as its own. Mendelssohn's dynamism, then, may not be aggressive, but neither does it represent the prattle of a repressive tolerance. Mendelssohn's dynamism, then, may not be aggressive, but neither does it represent the prattle of a repressive tolerance. The Adagio begins with a perfect image of embryonic motion as solo basses state the primary motif under the veil of a static D major chord.
