Even with the general Mendelssohn revival of the last few decades, his organ music has remained little known. It's hard to say why this should be; these six sonatas, published in 1845, are substantial pieces. Mendelssohn himself thought highly of them, and organists studied them closely (and still do). They're very much the missing link between organ music of the eighteenth century and the works of Rheinberger and the other composers of the late Romantic German organ school. And they partake liberally of a major source ...
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Even with the general Mendelssohn revival of the last few decades, his organ music has remained little known. It's hard to say why this should be; these six sonatas, published in 1845, are substantial pieces. Mendelssohn himself thought highly of them, and organists studied them closely (and still do). They're very much the missing link between organ music of the eighteenth century and the works of Rheinberger and the other composers of the late Romantic German organ school. And they partake liberally of a major source nourishing Mendelssohn's music in general -- his discovery of the music of J.S. Bach.That might be the problem. With a few prominent exceptions, Mendelssohn's heavy Romantic takes on Bach tend to rub modern listeners the wrong way, for we treat Bach as a kind of touchstone of faith and purity. The language here is that of the composer's Symphony No. 2, "Lobgesang," of 1840, with chorales, fugues, and other neo-Bachian features woven into a stream of strong textural contrasts and, in...
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