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Mendelssohn and Victorian England, by Colin Timothy Eatock; pp. xi + 189. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, £55.00, $99.95.
The importance of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Victorian English musical life should not be underestimated. His great oratorio Elijah, premiered at the Birmingham Musical Festival of 1846-one of the most important venues for the production of music in England throughout the nineteenth century-was called "mutton" to the "beef" of George Frederic Handel's Messiah (1741-42) in the pages of the popular press (Yorkshire Post 3 Oct. 1895); few of the great multi-day musical festivals of the second half of the century could turn a profit without Elijah's presence. Even after death, Mendelssohn's importance to musicians remained supreme: the Mendelssohn Scholarship, founded in his honor in 1849, provided numerous British musicians, such as Frederick Corder, Swinnerton Heap, and Arthur Sullivan the opportunity to study at the Leipzig Conservatory at a time when "foreign polish" was still considered essential for the ambitious English composer. While esteem for Mendelssohn's instrumental music fell toward the end of the nineteenth century, enough of English society valued him to secure his reputation as a beneficent influence and master vocal composer well into the twentieth.
Colin Timothy Eatock's new book, Mendelssohn and Victorian England, is a detailed, meticulous account of the ten journeys Mendelssohn made to England between 1829 and 1847. After contextualizing London's musical infrastructure in 1829, Eatock discusses in three chapters Mendelssohn's influence on England and the country's influence on him, and concludes with two chapters considering...