Felix Mendelssohn, "Spring Song"

The songs without words story

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy is one of the many composers of the 19th century whose life was cut short before his fortieth birthday. A blessed musician born into a wealthy Jewish family who was able to embark on three-year study tours before the age of twenty, he died in Leipzig at the age of thirty-eight. At that time, he was music director in Düsseldorf, had charge of the Berlin School of Arts music department, founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and wrote symphonies and concertos, oratorios and chamber music, and solo piano pieces. In this last field, it can be said that he even invented a genre, the Songs Without Words, a kind of lied with no lyrics, later continued by other authors, such as Alkan, Rubinstein, or Grieg.

Between 1829 and 1845, Mendelssohn wrote 36 short piano pieces, less than five minutes long in ABA structure (song-like). They are included in six volumes of six pieces each, to which were added two more published posthumously. They were part of the growing enthusiasm for the piano among the middle classes of Europe in the first half of the romantic 19th century, and they were readily incorporated into the repertoires of pianists of the most diverse abilities, thus proving incredibly popular, which led some critics of the time to downplay them.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)

Songs Without Words
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)The term used to denote them is apparently Mendelssohn's own invention. His sister Fanny wrote in 1828: "My birthday was very pleasant... Felix has given me one of his 'songs without words' for my album, and has written some more."
The little works accompanied the author's entire life as if they were entries in a musical diary. There are some joyful, or dreamy, and there are also melancholic, or dramatic. Such expressive range stems from Mendelssohn's own definition, which, in his words, he pointed out to a friend:

"If you ask me what I had in mind when I wrote it, I would say: just the song as it is. And if I have certain words in mind for one or another of these songs, I would never want to say them to anyone, because the same words never mean the same thing to others. Only the song can say the same thing, can arouse the same feelings in one person as in another, feelings that are not expressed, however, with the same words."

"Spring Song" - Song Without Words No 30, opus 62 No 6, in A Major
Some pieces bear titles, usually added by the publishers, although five belong to the author. This is the case of the Song Without Words No. 30, from the fifth volume, called "Spring Song," which we present here in the rendition of the Greek pianist Marios Panteliadis.
Characteristic of the piece is a figure of five leaping eighth notes, which are repeated in the manner of a symphonic development.