ABSTRACT
The story of the Tower of Babel, in which a universal, divine language is fragmented and dissolved by God as a punishment for man's ambition, features, in one form or another, in most of the world's mythologies. A closer examination of the materials used by Mendelssohn, however, suggests other lines of enquiry. The dependency of certain works by Mendelssohn on older works or styles was frequently commented on by his contemporaries. Translation also provides us with a means of differentiating between the degree of affinity that links the works of Mendelssohn and, say, Grell and their models. Of course, several significant objections could be made to the transference of translation from literature to music. Translation, the idea of a musical work as a 'translating text' containing a dialogue between two musical languages, provides a concept, a body of terms, and a practical tool for discussing an important and relatively neglected part of Mendelssohn's output.
