Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2016 The kS etches for Mendelssohn's Paulus, Op. 36 Karl Joseph Simmerman Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Music Commons Recommended Citation Simmerman, Karl Joseph, "The kS etches for Mendelssohn's Paulus, Op. 36" (2016). LSU Master's Theses. 4410. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4410 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SKETCHES FOR FELIX MENDELSSOHN’S PAULUS, OP. 36 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music in The School of Music by Karl Joseph Simmerman B.M., Louisiana State University, 2010 December 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude first and foremost to my advisor, Dr. Andreas Giger, not only for his continued commitment to and meticulous editing of this thesis, but also for his enduring support and sustained interest in my studies and wellbeing. Without him, this project would not have been possible. I also wish to thank my committee members, Drs. Blake Howe and Jeffrey Perry, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. I am extremely grateful to Reina Abolofia and to my father, Brett Simmerman, for their help in explaining some basics of programming, without which I would not have been able to produce typeset transcriptions. And of course, I offer my thanks and love to my all of my other family members for being supportive of my endeavors throughout this process. Finally, but by no means the least in importance, I would like to thank the dear friends I have made through the musicology department at Louisiana State University: Dr. Tina Huettenrauch, Jamie Kurumaji, Dr. Tim Love, and Megan Murph; the countless cups of coffee, phone calls, and laughs that we have shared together have often given me the motivation to see this project through. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………...ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2: AN OVERVIEW OF SKETCH STUDIES: HISTORY AND TYPOLOGY……..5 CHAPTER 3: THE SOURCES AND EDITIONS OF PAULUS………………………………..20 CHAPTER 4: THE PAULUS SKETCHES: METHODOLOGY, TRANSCRIPTION, AND ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………………………………28 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………108 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………110 APPENDIX: LETTERS OF PERMISSION……………………………………………………115 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………119 iii ABSTRACT Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Paulus, Op. 36 (1836) is one of the most important nineteenth-century contributions to the oratorio genre. Current scholarly understanding of the oratorio’s creation rests on three dissertations: Stuart Douglass Seaton identified, transcribed, and discussed some of the sketches for Paulus; Siegwart Reichwald examined the extant autographs for Paulus; and Jeffrey S. Sposato thoroughly documented the collaborative compilation of the libretto. None of these studies, however, provides a thorough examination of all the sketches for Paulus. This study constitutes the first complete transcription of the sketches for Paulus, basing its methodology on the transcription practices of Joseph Kerman and Fabrizio Della Seta. Critical notes are provided alongside the transcriptions, and analyses based on comparisons of the sketches to the autograph and printed versions of the score are attempted. The results reveal new insights concerning the composition of Paulus, ranging from compositional details to structural planning and chronology of the sources. When compared to the various versions of the oratorio, for instance, the longer sketches demonstrate Mendelssohn’s concern for rhythmic continuity and harmonic planning. The sketches furthermore help clarify the complex chronology of the autograph scores. In addition to these findings, this study identifies two previously unidentified sketches pertaining to an aria from Paulus. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In addition to being one of the composer’s masterworks, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Paulus, Op. 36 is also one of the most important nineteenth-century contributions to the oratorio genre; composed between 1832 and 1837, it was premiered on 22 May 1836 at the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf.1 Current scholarly understanding of the oratorio’s creation rests primarily on three dissertations: Douglass Seaton’s “A Study of a Collection of Mendelssohn’s Sketches and Other Autograph Material: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Berlin Mus. Ms. Autogr. Mendelssohn 19,” Jeffrey Sposato’s “The Price of Assimilation: The Oratorios of Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition,” and Siegwart Reichwald’s “The Musical Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus.”2 Seaton identifies and discusses many of the sketches for Paulus, Sposato thoroughly documents the collaborative compilation of its libretto, and Reichwald compares Mendelssohn’s autographs to the first published editions by Nikolaus Simrock. Seaton’s 1977 dissertation examines one volume of sketches and other working materials Mendelssohn compiled and had bound together around 1845:3 “Mus. ms. autogr. Mendelssohn 19” (hereafter MN19),4 housed at the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Berlin (scans of the 118-page 1 Ralf Wehner, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke (MWV), Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, XIII/1A (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2009), 13. 2 Stuart Douglass Seaton, “A Study of a Collection of Mendelssohn’s Sketches and Other Autograph Material: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Berlin Mus. Ms. Autogr. Mendelssohn 19” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1977); Jeffrey Stuart Sposato, “The Price of Assimilation: The Oratorios of Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth- Century Anti-Semitic Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2000), published as The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Siegwart Reichwald, “The Musical Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1998), published as The Musical Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). 3 Seaton, “A Study of a Collection of Mendelssohn’s Sketches and Other Autograph Material,” 1. 4 This form of abbreviation follows that used by Reichwald. Seaton refers to the same collection as “DSB19.” 1 collection are available for public access through the Staatsbibliothek’s Web site).5 Seaton’s dissertation provides a thorough physical description of MN19, attempts to identify all of the collection’s sketches and drafts, categorizes the various types of sketches and drafts, and provides sketch studies of three pieces found in the collection (the 42nd Psalm, Op. 42; the Symphony No. 2 [Lobegesang], Op. 52; and the Symphony No. 3 [Scottish], Op. 56). Seaton identifies sixteen sketches in MN19 that are known to belong to various movements from Paulus.6 Like MN19, the two principal autograph scores, “Mus. ms. autogr. Mendelssohn 53” (MN53) and “Mus. ms. autogr. Mendelssohn 54” (MN54), once belonged to the collection in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek but were moved to Krakow’s Jagiellonian Library in 1945.7 MN53 contains the autograph score of the oratorio’s Part 1, whereas MN54 contains the autograph score of Part 2; both manuscripts contain a mixture of numbers with and without corrections.8 The Jagiellonian Library also houses an autograph of the piano-vocal score, “Mus. ms. autogr. Mendelssohn 55” (MN55), the Staatsbibliothek also the autographs of some discarded movements; various other archives house alternate autograph fragments of individual movements.9 Research concerning the sketches in MN19 is sparse and inconclusive. As we have stated above, Seaton identifies sixteen sketches as belonging to Paulus, but even though he transcribes and discusses some of them, a complete examination of the sketches’ significance lies beyond the scope of his dissertation. Seaton’s transcriptions, furthermore, contain some inaccuracies. 5 These scans can be viewed at the following Web site: http://digital.staatsbibliothek- berlin.de/dms/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN667644865. 6 Seaton, “A Study of a Collection of Mendelssohn’s Sketches and Other Autograph Material,” 4–7. 7 Wehner, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 18. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 2 Reichwald’s attempts to trace Mendelssohn’s compositional process focus primarily on a comparison of the autograph full scores of MN53 and MN54 to the autograph piano-vocal score of MN55 rather than the sketches of MN19. To be sure, Reichwald does address the sketches, but his examinations are often cursory and purely descriptive. For instance, his discussion of the 129-measure continuity draft for “Mache dich auf,” the central chorus of Part 1, is relegated to a brief, three-sentence paragraph.10 Reichwald neither discusses any musical details of the sketch nor does he draw any conclusions concerning its significance. Like Seaton, Reichwald provides occasional transcriptions of some sketches,