Mendelssohn - Reformation Symphony Program Note

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)

Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 107 “Reformation”
Composed 1830

October 31, 1517, is traditionally held to be the day that Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saint’s Church in Wittenberg, an act that signaled the start of the Protestant Reformation. In this 500th anniversary year, it is worth revisiting Felix Mendelssohn’s fifth symphony, composed in 1830 to mark the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession.

Though bearing the number 5, the work was actually the second of Mendelssohn’s mature symphonies, written before both the more popular Scottish and Italian Symphonies (numbers 3 and 4, respectively) and the more obscure Lobegesang (Hymn of Praise, number 2). The fact that the fifth was not published until 1868, twenty-one years after the composer’s death, explains its current position in the accepted sequence.

Despite his ample experience with symphonic form—one of the great musical prodigies, he had written thirteen symphonies for strings, between the ages of twelve and fourteen—Mendelssohn, like many composers who struggled in the shadow of Beethoven, appears to have been uneasy with his mature symphonies. He revised and then withheld from publication even the most popular of them, the Italian, continually revising the piece and attributing to the process some of the bitterest moments of his career.

Though he himself was baptized as a Reformed Christian at the age of seven, his personal religious beliefs remain the subject of debate. He was the grandson of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and it is clear that he was proud of the connection. When at the age of twenty he received widespread approbation for reviving the St. Matthew Passion by (Protestant) Johann Sebastian Bach, he remarked, “To think that it took . . . a Jew’s son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!”

A whiff of anti-Semitism would haunt him throughout his career, and, along with Jewish opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, he became a preferred bête-noire of Richard Wagner. It has been suggested by some sources that anti-Semitism may have played a role in the symphony being excluded from the celebrations for which it had been commissioned. Whether or not that was the case, it is indisputable that Mendelssohn had been delayed several times in the work’s composition through a combination of professional and health-related issues, including a bout with measles that he contracted from his sister Rebecka.

Though he flourished in the Romantic age—a contemporary of Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, who pushed beyond traditional forms—Mendelssohn for the most part adhered to classical principles and structures. Aspects of his symphony are evidently reflective of a narrative about the emancipating effect of Protestantism over Catholic doctrine, but the work is first and foremost an abstract symphony in the fullest classical sense.

The first movement conveys the drama of conflict, even as it references the “Dresden Amen” (a motif also employed in Wagner’s Parsifal), which is heard twice, a radiant rising scale played by the strings. Mendelssohn being Mendelssohn, the tension is relieved by the second movement, a cheerful interlude, and the third, a wistful arioso. For the finale, again mindful of the purpose of his commission, the composer turns to Luther’s Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God). The hymn is put through various permutations before bringing the symphony to a triumphant close.

~Ross Amico
Classical Music Journalist and Radio Host