Le 29 juin 2017
de 11h30 à 12h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
amphithéâtre 4
Séance - Partimento and Schemata
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Marina Mezzina
This paper attempts to take a picture of Berlin music life during the early XIX century thanks to the story of young Mendelssohn and his studies with his revered teacher Zelter. It tries to find out how far the Italian tradition of partimento and the so called « Galant Style” spread beyond their early boundaries of countries and their cultural environment.
Thanks to the most recent researches of, among others, G. Sanguinetti and R. Gjerdingen we may consider the compositional practice of the XVIII century under the light of a courtly taste. If we consider young Mendelssohn like a perfect heir of that tradition and not an imperfect romantic composer, it is possible to read in a different manner the criticism to his compositions.
I will try to sketch a genealogical line of composers and their musical styles, and the traditions crossing in the Berlin musical area from the early eighteenth century, until they eventually arrived in Zelter’s hands, ready to teach to the gifted young Mendelssohn. I will hunt for footprints of “schemata” in some Zelter compositions and in C. P. E. Bach and I’ll try to find the same “schemata” in Mendelssohn early works. As a result, these works can be finally related to a great tradition and relieved from a criticism ex post that judged them with its own artistic point of view. In particular I will try to reinterpret the early compositional attempts of Mendelssohn through that tradition in the aim of putting them in the right place in music history.
