Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s famous Berlin performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1829 has been described as “miraculous” and “groundbreaking.” It is considered the kindling spark behind the Bach Revival, a defining moment in western music’s history. What is often left out of popular mythology though is that Mendelssohn’s choice of repertory was not revolutionary in context. This paper will demonstrate that it was instead consistent with nearly a century of local tradition in Berlin, reaching back to the era of King Frederick II (r. 1740-1786). The musical activities of three generations of the Mendelssohn family bear witness to it—particularly along the maternal line.

Celia Applegate productively explored aspects of Mendelssohn’s performance in her 2005 book Bach in Berlin (Cornell University Press). Her conclusions though relied upon an outdated music-historical narrative that has since been superseded by scholarly work on both sides of the Atlantic. Fifteen years of research into the formerly lost Sing-Akademie library is bearing fruit. As a result, our received view of Berlin’s musical past is undergoing significant reorientation under the weight of new facts.

The singular musical culture of Frederick’s Berlin, so famously pilloried by Charles Burney in the 1770s, resulted in a pronounced affection for older repertories. The paradox is that what Burney diagnosed as a failure to progress ultimately developed into one of the most vital elements of modern musical culture: a coexistence of styles old and new featuring prominently the music of J. S. Bach. 

Dr. Ellen Exner is a full-time member of New England Conservatory's music history and musicology faculty and an occasional freelance baroque oboist. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2010 with a dissertation on musical culture in the time of King Frederick II (“The Great”). She has published critical editions of music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach for the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Complete Works Edition as well as by his contemporary Gottfried August Homilius for Carus-Verlag (Stuttgart). Dr. Exner's research appears in publications such as Eighteenth-Century Music, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, and German-language volumes devoted to new studies of Georg Philipp Telemann. More recent work includes articles on Mendelssohn’s St. Matthew Passion revival (1829), a new theory about Corelli’s dedication of the Op. V violin sonatas to Electress Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg-Prussia (1700), and stile antico’s role in the music of J. S. Bach, Telemann, and their contemporaries (ca. 1714). Exner's paper for the 2018 meeting of the American Bach Society, “Certifying J. S. Bach’s Interplanetary Funksmanship: George Clinton, Bernie Worrell, and P-Funk’s Baroque Aesthetic,” will mark an exciting departure from her usual areas of specialization. Dr. Exner is a member of the Editorial Board of the American Bach Society and serves as Editor of its official newsletter, Bach Notes.