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The Price of Assimilation - Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition (Paperback)
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The Price of Assimilation - Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition (Paperback)
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Most scholars since World War Two have assumed that composer Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) maintained a strong attachment to
Judaism throughout his lifetime. As these commentators have rightly
noted, Mendelssohn was born Jewish and did not convert to
Protestantism until age seven, his grandfather was the famous
Jewish reformer and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and his music
was banned by the Nazis, who clearly viewed him as a Jew.
Such facts tell only part of the story, however. Through a mix of
cultural analysis, biographical study, and a close examination of
the libretto drafts of Mendelssohn's sacred works, The Price of
Assimilation provides dramatic new answers to the so-called
"Mendelssohn Jewish question."
Sposato demonstrates how Mendelssohn's father, Abraham, worked to
distance the family from its Jewish past, and how Mendelssohn's
reputation as a composer of Christian sacred music was threatened
by the reverence with which German Jews viewed his family name. In
order to prove the sincerity of his Christian faith to both his
father and his audiences, Mendelssohn aligned his early sacred
works with a nineteenth-century anti-Semitic musical tradition, and
did so more fervently than even his Christian collaborators
required. With the death of Mendelssohn's father and the near
simultaneous establishment of the composer's career in Leipzig in
1835, however, Mendelssohn's fear of his background began to
dissipate, and he began to explore ways in which he could prove the
sincerity of his faith without having to publicly disparage his
Jewish heritage.
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