Lobgesang (‘Hymn of Praise’), Symphony No. 2
Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Programme notes by Heath Lees
Mendelssohn never thought of this work as one of his symphonies. For him it
was always Lobgesang — the ‘sacred’ half of two large-scale compositions that
were performed at a festival in Leipzig in June, 1840. The companion piece
was a ‘secular’ work — Festgesang — outdoor music for male choir with brass
bands, proudly staged in the town’s market place but largely forgotten today,
except for one of its tunes, put to Wesleyan words and quickly finding fame as
Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
The purpose of all this festive activity in Leipzig was to mark the four hundredth
anniversary of Gutenberg’s invention of a movable-type printing press. Leipzig
was a great choice for such a festival since it was the centre of the printing
trade, and had many Lutheran connections — important since Luther had
printed and published his own German translation of the Bible. Leipzig could
also claim ownership of the man who was, thanks to Mendelssohn’s efforts,
to be acknowledged as the most celebrated Lutheran composer ever —
J. S. Bach.
For the music, Mendelssohn decided to re-work three movements of a
symphony already in progress. In place of a finale, and well aware of the direct
link between Gutenberg’s invention and the Bible, he put together a scriptural
anthology that resembled the shape and order of a Bach cantata in its sequence
of solo and choral items. And since Gutenberg had clearly ushered in a newage ‘democratisation of knowledge’ Mendelssohn chose his texts to signify
human progress from darkness to light.
In its final form, the work fell into two large sections: a three-part symphonic
‘overture’ followed by a nine-part ‘cantata’, where lay the main message of
the Gutenberg celebration. It was only after the composer’s death that an
enterprising publisher saw a space in his line-up of symphonies, and re-named
Lobgesang as Symphony Number Two. Mendelssohn himself had been perfectly
content with the one-off, hybrid title of Symphony-Cantata.
To unify his seventy-minute, multi-purpose work, Mendelssohn conjured up a
recurring theme that is not a Lutheran chorale, but sounds very like one — strong,
four-square and majestic. The trombones intone it at the opening, alternating
grandly with strings and woodwind. It is recalled in the other instrumental
movements. It is transformed into a fugue theme for chorus in the ‘cantata’
part, and it reappears at the very end as a triumphant fanfare.
The three ‘symphony’ movements are echt Mendelssohn — elegant, charming,
and finely crafted. There’s a warm, open-air freshness in the first movement’s
sonata-allegro course, while the second movement, vaguely waltz-like, is
piously punctuated with some chorale-like moments. The Adagio religioso
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