references - people.fas.harvard.edu - Harvard University

Indeed, it is mournful—but mournful of what? Douglass
Seaton of has perspicaciously situated this
movement, which he calls an “arioso,” as follows:
One might hear it as expressing nostalgia,
a voice from outside the main
action of the symphony that tends to
turn the symphonic plot into narrative
rather than direct dramatic action. 31
To the ears of Biedermeier-era Germans, this was
31 Loc. cit.
ces papers - open forum # 6, 2011
Ex. 4a: Mendelssohn, “Reformation” Symphony, Andante, opening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDq3QxECkhY&feature=related
(Wiener Philharmoniker, John Eliot Gardiner, Conductor, June 1996, live)
defi nitely the case. I hear this movement, and understand
Professor Seaton’s allusion to its minor modality,
quite foreign to the melodic and harmonic timbres
of its neighboring movements, as being, euphemistically,
“Jewish-sounding,” if, for any reason, that its
melody, in minor, evokes, quite symbolically, the
Jewish folksong, Havenu shalom alechem (“Peace
unto you”), for which no precise date has been found:
�
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