Festival Lecture by Barrymore Laurence Scherer

For over a century after his premature death, Mendelssohn’s oratorios, cantatas, and shorter sacred works formed the backbone of the choral repertoire in England, Germany, and America and served as the model of choral music for numerous younger composers. After World War II, Mendelssohn’s work was increasingly marginalized due to the reaction against mid-19th-century musical Romanticism, combined with the decline of the great choral tradition. This lecture sheds new light on Mendelssohn’s forgotten greatness, examining his preeminent oratorios, St. Paul and Elijah, as well as such less familiar works as the majestic choral Symphony No. 2 (”Lobgesang”) and the moving cantata, Die erste Walpurgisnacht.  Along the way we  investigate Mendelssohn’s pioneering admiration of J. S. Bach, as well as some of the choral works inspired by Mendelssohn’s model.

BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERER is a classical-music and fine-art critic for The Wall Street Journal and writes “The New Collector” column for The Magazine Antiques (of which he is a contributing editor).

Mr. Scherer is also author of the critically acclaimed book Bravo!  A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed.  His book, A History of American Classical Music, won ForeWord Magazine’s Music Book of the Year Gold Award.

Mr. Scherer has been a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence College, and as an independent scholar he has lectured extensively on art and music at venues including Lincoln Center; the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; the Metropolitan Opera; and the New York Philharmonic.