Question.

Op. 53 no. 5; Measure 23. I'm looking at a B E G# in the right hand, which looks like an E chord and then a G (natural) and E in the left hand. It sounds unbelievably terrible and completely out of character for Mendelssohn.

Can anyone confirm it's a G(natural) or G# in the left hand? All the recordings I'm listening to sound like a G# in the left hand as well. Seems like odd notation not to indicate a # in the left if it's supposed to be there.

The Schirmer edition has a g# in the left and right hands on the third beat.

And the one at imslp.org has g# too. Looks like that one is from the 19th Century.

So that's 2 out of 3 votes for g#. What edition do you have that has a g?

Sam

Home in my shoes you do play that beautifully Your flubs didn't ruin my enjoyment becuase your playing flows along so nicely. The beginning is so delicate and lovely. I still haven't worked out if my laptop has a built in mike... I should lean sideways and look, no! not now - all too hard. I'll pounce on the next technical proficient who visits. If the recordings posted here are anything to go by, recording is very very good for improving your playing. Well done all you!

I haven't had such good progress on my mendelssohn (85 no2) because my RH is not developed enough yet to play those stretches at speed. I have to take it in smaller practice doses. I have to make sure I don't hurt myself. The other thing I found is that the coordination of the 2 parts in the RH at speed is... ? beyond me, as if it is a different language altogether. I suspect I give up too easily and go on to other pieces. I'm just not used to trying hard, been cruising for too long. Ok off to work on it again.

Pretty good job, actually. I think the tempo is fine, and the interpretation. Id like to hear more difference in the dynamics. In the beginning, for instance, the crescedo into the third measure is great, but the p in measure 5 sounds about like the mf in the beginning. Overall I think we could all make our soft passages softer for more contrast, especially with the amateur recording techniques that we all use.

Nicely done HIMS. Nice control with dynamics and good execution on the trills. I'm not familiar with this piece so I cannot offer any suggestions as to interpretation.

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

First of all, I want to say how excited I am to find this page today! You are doing a great job with this group, it is absolutely wonderful and I would love to be a part of it. I've been working on Songs without Words on and off for over a year now, and since I haven't had a piano lessons in six years (where I attained ABRSM Grade 7), I really would absolutely love both feedback and encouragement. Due to a leave of absence from work, I've been practicing piano for at least two hours every day, and just started a blog about it.

So, I'm at a good level with 53/1 'On the Seashore' and 85/1 'Reverie', and am currently working on 62/1 'May Breezes' and 85/4 'Elegy'. I would love to record them for you to hear, but unfortunately I've tried with my laptop recorder and mic, and the quality just sounds terrible.

Anyway, I have a few questions, that if anyone could answer, it would be great: in 85/1, I'm unsure about the off-beats between right and left hand, eg. 3rd bar. In this instance, I am playing R C with L F and C, then R A and L F together, followed by R G and L A together. Do you think that is correct? Secondly, the 'hairpins' above the treble chef lines on the second page, does this indicate the dynamics for right hand only? Finally, I am little confused as to how Mendelssohn's numbering system works--does anyone have any insight into this, or a good website to look at?

Finally, I am going to work on 85/2 with Canonie and 19/2 with Sam Smith. 85/2 - this is my first time looking at the piece, my initial thought is the relief that playing in C Major brings! :-) Sam - I think that your recording of 19/2 is just lovely. You have a nice contrapuntal style, you've really mastered those grace notes and I find your interpretation of the final chords very interesting.

Oh, and both pieces I find really interesting, as you can distinctly hear M's Baroque influence. I'm actually reading a book now that briefly discusses the influence of Bach's WTC in the collection, it's Kirby Music for Piano: A Short History (Portland: Amadeus, 1995).

Welcome Sarah. That's "Home in My Shoes" that plays 19/2 so well, not me. Maybe one day I can play it as well as he does.

85/1 is tough. The measure you are talking about is a polyrhythm, 6 in the bass against 4 in the treble, or 3 against 2 if you count the eighth notes. The recording that I have (by Peter Nagy) he is playing it slowly, so it's really 3 against 2, except that he plays the last sixteenth in that measure as if it were the same length as a triplet sixteenth, which is how the notation indicates it. The first two sixteenths in the right hand in that measure are played as 3 against 2. Sometimes the right hand is played as 3 against 2, sometimes it isn't. You're just going to have to feel it, and listen to some recordings.

Anyway, welcome to the Mendelssohn thread and I can't wait to hear you play.

Sam

Hi Sarah
Welcome from me too. I'm very excited to hear that you are going to learn 85 no.2 as well. I am relatively new to these forums so have not yet had the experience of learning a piece alongside someone else. So stick around and we can compare notes (and woes). I look forward to this

If your initial thought was "relief at C major" your second thought will definitely be "oh, A minor!" LOL I'll be most interested in your next thoughts - as I wrote before, the coordination and speed of this little piece have been a bigger challenge than I was expecting. The other difficulty for me is that I've found that my RH was not physically ready for the piece, so I have learnt it a bit, left it for a week or 2, had another go and so on.

I began teaching piano accidentally a few years ago and lately have been making the effort to take my playing to a higher level, and get some breadth of repertoire so that I can be of use to students as they begin to tackle intermediate pieces. It's quite exciting to be learning and teaching at the same time. I have lots of broad musical skills so I am not out of my depth with students by any stretch, but I would really like to be ready to lead them down a good path.

I have an excellent teacher who I go to occasionally and am looking forward to a lesson tomorrow YAY where i will ask why 85 no2 can hurt a bit, whether I should approach it any differently. I will keep you posted.

Interested to hear about Mendelssohn's connection to Bach, I really have to buy a good edition of all the songs without words i think. I'd borrowed my teachers for a bit but having returned it i think it's time to go shopping. [i would assume that those hairpins refer to RH only by their location].

One of the things I'm working on is to learn (properly!) some Bach Inventions, and memorising them at the same time. This has been just wonderful! No way could I play these when I was a kid, and now I can learn the easier one's so quickly.. so practice really works hehe.

Welcome to the forum sarahplayspiano. Sam needs to post his newer 19/4 from the recital here.

I haven't figured out the last chords of 19/2. What I recorded was something I've tried twice now. I completely ignored the pedal indications in the version I've got and went with something that made sense to me. Not sure if it does, but I've played it a few different ways and never quite found what makes sense to me.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Hoping to hear some more stuff out of everyone, finished or in-progress. It's nice to bounce ideas off everyone.

Thank you for your kind welcomes! :-) And thanks for reminding me Canonie about the existence of minor keys lol. I guess you can really tell how little theory or formal training I've had in so long...

Regarding Bach: here's a very obscure but fascinating article I found in archives from the NYT about Mendelssohn and JS Bach:

http://www.box.net/shared/8rqmeuvcuf

As for collections of SWW, I have the Schirmer Library edition, which is a pretty thorough collection and I'm happy with it, but it's not complete by any means (Op. 20-29 missing for instance). I think the only complete collection currently in print is the Kalmus:

http://www.amazon.com/Mendelssohn-Withou...191&sr=1-2.

I've started work on 19/2 and 85/2, but really don't know how I'm going to do a decent recording on my laptop. Does anyone have any tips on this?

I've never heard of the Op. 20-29. Op 26 is The Hebrides, so maybe you're thinking of something else?

I have the Schirmer edition too, and there are two things I don't like about it - the silly titles and the music is cramped on the page. I would love to get an urtext edition like the Henle.

I ordered the biography by Larry Todd - I'm still waiting on it to arrive. I'll report back when I have had time to look it over.

Sam

Thanks Sam, I've decided to get the schirmer as I really liked the fingering in all but 2 bars of 85 no2, so I'm assuming the finger editor suits me. Yeah the music is sort of small, but i'm not minding too much (my eyes are good).

Thanks for the obscure article sarah, am remembering references to bach's influence on M from uni studies, had forgotten...

Had my lesson today, and am feeling much more confident about my progress on this piece, and it didnt hurt at all today in the lesson. I am holding the notes in the RH parts enough to apply pedal at speed later, so that's a relief Perhaps I hadn't done quite enough Hands Together in the early stages, as I was very focused on RH techniq, but my coordination is ok for most of it. So current status is: can play all through very slowly with quite a few hesitations (at least a dozen?). Do post descriptions of ur progress as you go.
Now it is time for me to speed it up Look forward to that.

And there is no mike on my laptop, had a thorough look at all the little holes and symbols. I'll have to get an external mike. Sometime...

I feel so pedestrian with my Alfred's edition of the Songs. I do like the contrast and note size so it's easy to read off of and I'll give another thumbs up for a spiral binding.


What I worked on today:

op. 19 no. 2 certainly sounds at least Baroquesque if not like Bach to my ears. Odd that I would work on that one given my complete lack of technique for all things Baroque.

Sounds good Canonie. Some days I'm jealous of the people with teachers. I know I could make better progress on some things with one, but it's just not going to happen right now.

op. 19, no. 2: played the entire work at half tempo (I'm experimenting with a bit of slow practice at times for things) and drilled measures 17-22 and 45-62.

op. 19, no. 4: still working on the opening and closings to get them smoother. Worked on tempo as well and played the opening bars staccato, legato without pedal, and with a eighth/sixteenth alternating rhythm to try to separate my brain into the notes better.

op. 30, no. 6: I've still got a few gigantic pauses (bars 32/33 and bars 44/45 where the left hand descends against the trill) and I seem to want to add another triplet into measure 47. I think actually just sitting down and reading the patterns away from the piano will help sort that out.

op. 53, no. 5: just played through it again slowly. Counting is going to be the key for me as well as ironing out measuers 56-73. A relaxed feel is also going to be important with all the big chords and octaves. This one might be a bit beyond me right now.

H.I.M.s.
I only have a few lessons a year at present. If you ever are in position to have lessons you might be able to do the same because you obviously work so well on your own. Motivated adults with a good notebook don't always need frequent lessons. Anyway, keep up the mendelssohn addiction

I'll look at the Alfred's edition too (when I get to shopping). My teacher had the Schirmer so that's why I though i'd get it. But the main reason I need the book is so that I can refer to it when reading this thread without having to go to IMSLP or ISMLP or whateveritis.

ciao for now
(that's my 201st post Hurray! what a sad addict I am )

Here's my rough draft of 102/6.

Song Without Words 102/6

This is one of the "easier" Songs w/o Words, probably a grade 5. I kept track of my practice time this time - 9 hours 5 minutes to this point. Criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome. It's too slow, I think. The beginning seems slow, but the beginning is simple, and later on things are more difficult. There's at least one bobble where I missed a bass note in the left hand.

Problem areas:
measures 13-14 - sort of a theme and answer.
measures 27-28 - piano - I had to memorize these two measure to play them
measures 28 to end. That's a B-D-F-Ab-C chord - a ninth chord with the ninth in the base - a fourth inversion...

Sam

Sorry for the late response Sam. Just been crazy busy the last little while. I've missed five pages of the piano bar I need to catch up on too.

Nine hours doesn't seem like too much for the shape you've gotten the piece in. Sounds in quite good shape. Could be a little zippier as you said. Not too much though. Sounds in the 70ish range already. Watch the dynamics, overall I thought they were good, but I noticed in bars 32-34 that you started the crescendo a little early. You could really push the (dim) further and softer before starting the crescendo. And watch the melody in places it could be a bit more distinct. It's something I know I fight with a lot.

Thanks, Shoes. I think 102/6 is one of the easier ones. It's very similar to 19/4 without the sixteenth note beginning and ending.

Sam

Just finished reading the biography "Mendelssohn - A Life in Music" by R. Larry Todd. It's a very detailed biography intended for the music student - over 550 pages of facts.

Lots of interesting things - Mendelssohn was the son of a wealthy Jewish banker and the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. His family was among the tiny minority of Jews in Germany that were not treated as second-class citizens - or worse. He and his sister were baptized as Lutherans, as were his parents, and Felix wrote a lot of Church music.

He was a child prodigy, compared favorably to Mozart. He had perfect pitch, and there are many stories of his feats of improvisation at the piano, even in front of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. He was instrumental in reviving the music of J.S. Bach.

For many years he was the music director in Leipzig, and everyone who was anyone in the world of music visited him - Clara and Robert Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Wagner, Jenny Lind, Berlioz, and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn. He even had lunch with Charles Dickens.

The Songs without Words were composed over a number of years and gathered into sets of six so that they complemented each other and each set formed a small cycle. They were not given titles, except rarely. The silly titles that they bear now were added by later editors. Opus 67 was the last volume that Felix published. The rest were published posthumously. 38/6 (the duet) was a wedding gift to his wife. 62/3 was played at his funeral.

He died at 39, the same year that his sister Fanny died. She was a few years older than he was, and it seems that Felix suppressed her desire to publish her own music. Just before her death she did publish a few of her own Songs without words.

So it's an excellent biography, well worth it as a reference to the life and works of Felix Mendelssohn.

Glad to see this thread. Mendelssohn deserves more appreciation.

Elene

Thank you very much Sam, not playing my Mendellsohn at the moment (it's resting shhhhh) but it is always good to read something about the composer for later inspiration.

Listening to ABFer's works in progress, and works rather polished has been an engaging way to get to know more of these pieces. Enjoying Sam's 102 right now, and I like the hymn-quality of the composition. Perhaps someone has set it to words? Sam you seem to get a huge dynamic range on my tiny laptop. Looking forward to more, thanks for sharing this.
Canonie

Mendelssohn - A Life in Music Todd, auth. 25.60 paper cover 736pp ISBN 9780195179880 Oxford University Press

Thanks for the recommendation--- I love musician biographies. I have one or two others published by Oxford that seem readable, yet very informative and reliably-researched. A 736 page book at $25.00 is not such a bad deal.

Hi everyone,

time to revive this thread!

I am working on 19/6 as well, and the start of the 2nd page (after the repeated staccato D's) is giving me a lot of trouble.

If I do it RH only, I just don't have the chops yet to bring out the melody properly while having a cleanly articulated middle voice. So my teacher suggested playing the bass octaves and then the middle voice with my LH. This of course allows much better articulation and separation of the voices, but I wonder if I'll ever get the jumps from the bass to the treble fast and clean enough...

What do you guys do in this measure?

I'm glad to see that Mendelssohn has his own thread! I don't play piano (yet -I'm about a week into beginner lessons) but I do listen to music, and Mendelssohn is a favorite. I love his Songs Without Words.



I was wondering about something I heard in a lecture this weekend about Chopin. The lecturer brought up Fanny Mendelssohn as an example of how women weren't encouraged to take on music as anything more than a leisure activity, and the example given was Fanny, whose brother discouraged her from publishing her music, but later regretted it and spent the rest of his life after she died championing and getting her music published. I thought the speaker alluded as if this was Felix, but he died so closely after her, that the timing doesn't seem right. Didn't he have a stroke when he heard that she died and wasn't really well for the next few months, until he died himself? I know there was a second brother - could that have been who the lecturer was referring to? Maybe I read Felix into it.

I'm working on 19/6 too. I only play the bass notes with the left hand and everything else with the right. I'll have to try it the other way at tonight's practice session and report back...

I have a Schirmer edition that indicates pedal all through those measures. I didn't like that idea. I finally got an urtext edition - now I can make up my own mind about what to do.

Sam

hmm pedal, really? mine is marked non-legato. I did use pedals on every 8th, which wouldn't be necessary if the LH does the middle voice. What does the Urtext say?

I am using the Peters edition from IMSLP: http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/51/IMSLP00651-Songs_Without_Words__Op_19.pdf

No pedal in that section at all. Very little pedal elsewhere in 19/6. Of course, the pianos were different back then, and composers did not mark pedal that often or very consistently.

I'll check it tonight and let you know which measures have pedal marked.

Sam

The Henle urtext edition for 19/6 only has a few pedal markings. This edition is based on first editions and manuscripts.

measure 22 first beat - pedal down
measure 23 last beat - pedal up
measure 34 first beat - pedal down
measure 36 below the staff - "sempre" pedal
measure 40 beat 3 - pedal up

There are no other pedal markings. I've tried playing it like this, and it's pretty dry in the measures with no pedal (and difficult to play) and muddy when the pedal is held down. Of course, Mendelssohns's piano probably had less sustain than a modern piano.

To use one pedal change per measure, like the Schirmer edition has, is way too much pedal for my taste. Two pedal changes per measure is still too much for me. So I use something closer to a pedal per beat. This makes the left hand low bass notes more detached, which might be closer to what Mendelssohn wanted, since they are usually marked with a dot, and it helps me connect things. It is marked sostenuto and cantabile.

I prefer using the urtext and making my own decisions. And the urtext doesn't have the silly titles, which I really hate - Mendelssohn did not give the Songs without Words those silly titles.

Anyway, I hope to play 19/6 for the next ABF recital, if I can work out some remaining little problems.

Sam

Sam, thanks for a lot for the information! 19/6 is going to be my entry as well, can't wait to hear yours!

I played mostly with a pedal change to take out the bass note for the remaining 2/3 in each half-measure, then another pedal change after each LH group. Almost no pedal for the staccato 16th in measure 10, and right now experimenting with pedalling in measures 26-31.

I think I'll end up with 8th pedal or so for most of it on the digital - but I suspect once the grand arrives I'll use none or almost none on that one. Tricky piece!

Fanny died first, then Felix six months later. Their family had a history of heart problems, so I don't think Felix died of a broken heart over Fanny. He had a wife and kids of his own, after all.

Felix did advise Fanny not to publish - her father did the same thing, telling her that music could only be an ornament in her life. She did publish a few things in her lifetime. Felix may have published some of her works under his name.

If Fanny hadn't been rich - or if her family hadn't been rich (bankers) - she might have been another Clara Wieck Schumann. She was an excellent player, and played with Felix at musical evenings at home when they were growing up in Berlin. These were not little parties of family and a couple of friends, but free concerts with a lot of people attending. If Fanny had been forced to support a family or had an undependable husband like Clara she might have gone onto the concert stage. Fanny and Clara were contemporaries and knew each other.

Anyway, it's fun to speculate and play the "what if?" game.

Sam

Cool! The more Mendelssohn the better!

Sam