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Mendelssohn's Adolescence:From composing String Symphonies to conducting St. Matthew's Passion

Felix Mendelssohn's teenage years were studded with extraordinary achievements of a precocious musical genius, beginning with his String Symphonies of 1821~23 and climaxed by his leading of the first public performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew's Passion since the old composer's own life time. String Symphonies can be best understood as a surprisingly mature attempt of assimilating the retrospective forms and contents of the genre, while the performance has been regarded as an epoch-making event in the history of German music. This essay is primarily concerned with tracing the main discourses on the latter, in order to clarify the significance of this event without all the biases accumulated upon it since it happens. The primary issues were the racial controversy surrounding the Jewishness of Mendelssohn and his music as well as the identity of German national music, especially the supremacy of the instrumental over vocal music. The situation was aggravated by the exaggeration of such issues during the Nazi regime. It is necessary to reassess the currency of given musicological discourses in order to establish balanced and unbiased viewpoint concerning such controversial topics.