Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the St. Matthew Passion

by Celia Applegate

Bach's St. Matthew Passion is universally acknowledged to be one of the world's supreme musical masterpieces, yet in the years after Bach's death it was forgotten by all but a small number of his pupils and admirers. The public rediscovered it in 1829, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the work before a glittering audience of Berlin artists and intellectuals, Prussian royals, and civic notables. The concert soon became the stuff of legend, sparking a revival of interest in and performance of Bach that has continued to this day. Mendelssohn's performance gave rise to the notion that recovering and performing Bach's music was somehow "national work." In 1865 Wagner would claim that Bach embodied "the history of the German spirit's inmost life." That the man most responsible for the revival of a masterwork of German Protestant culture was himself a converted Jew struck contemporaries as less remarkable than it does us today―a statement that embraces both the great achievements and the disasters of 150 years of German history.

In this book, Celia Applegate asks why this particular performance crystallized the hitherto inchoate notion that music was central to Germans' collective identity. She begins with a wonderfully readable reconstruction of the performance itself and then moves back in time to pull apart the various cultural strands that would come together that afternoon in the Singakademie. The author investigates the role played by intellectuals, journalists, and amateur musicians (she is one herself) in developing the notion that Germans were "the people of music." Applegate assesses the impact on music's cultural place of the renewal of German Protestantism, historicism, the mania for collecting and restoring, and romanticism. In her conclusion, she looks at the subsequent careers of her protagonists and the lasting reverberations of the 1829 performance itself.

Genres: Music, History, European History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2005

Reviews

[Lydia Utami · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book draws the background of the historical performance of St. Matthew Passion in Berlin. Not only Mendelssohn but also the figures behind this performance andthe importance of music journalism and amateurism that shapes the world of classical music performance as we know it now.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this very interesting book, Applegate looks at Mendelssohn's 1829 performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion and how it intersected with the 19th century development of German national culture and national consciousness. It's packed with insights about the cultural milieu in which this performance occurred and the cultural factors that made is such a landmark event in music history. I especially appreciated the way Applegate wove together so many different threads of 19th century German social, political, and musical life to explore the performance's roots and impact. I was a little afraid that it would fall prey to dry and impenetrable academic prose, but Applegate's writing is clear and enjoyable to read, even when she is discussing dense scholarly subjects like the rise in primacy of print culture.