| Contents |
New Christians. The Mendelssohns and the synagogue ; Reinventing Mendelssohn ; Mendelssohn's evolving relationship with Judaism -- The St. Matthew Passion revival. Judicious cuts ; The St. Matthew Passion chorales and the Berlin hymn tradition ; The St. Matthew Passion and the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher ; Other performances of the St. Matthew Passion -- Moses. Christology, anti-Semitism, and Moses ; Mendelssohn, Marx, and the nineteenth-century anti-Semitic tradition -- Paulus. A textual history of Paulus ; Paulus and the influences of Carl Loewe, Louis Spohr, and Abraham Mendelssohn ; Paulus and philo-heathenism ; The evolution of the anti-Semitic image in Paulus ; Lessons from Paulus: a reevaluation of Die erste Walpurgisnacht -- Elias. A textual history of Elias ; Christology in Elias ; The Jewish image in Elias -- Christus. The genesis of Christus ; The Jewish image in Christus ; The universality of Das Volk -- Conclusion: matters of perspective. |
| Abstract |
This book offers a bold, revisionist account of composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's relationship to his Jewish roots. The author challenges the notion that Mendelssohn's identity was strongly informed by a sense of Jewishness, a view that came into currency in the aftermath of the Holocaust. As scholars since then have rightly noted, Mendelssohn was born Jewish and not converted 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. But these facts tell only part of the story. Through a mix of cultural analysis, biographical study, and a close examination of original sources and drafts of Mendelssohn's sacred works, The Price of Assimilation provides dramatic new answers to the so-called "Mendelssohn Jewish question." |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-220) and index. |
| LCCN | 2004021553 |
| ISBN | 0195149742 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 9780195149746 |
