Arts and Humanities Colloquium Series - Mendelssohn�s Overture to A Midsummer Night�s Dream: Fantasy as the Bottom Line

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Friday, March 13th, 2020
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

With its vivid depiction of a nighttime fairy world in which dreams and fantasy triumph over the forces of reason and reality, A Midsummer Night's Dream is arguably Shakespeare's most magical play. This magic also bewitched the nineteenth-century German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who had, in fact, been fascinated with the plays of Shakespeare since his childhood. Indeed, along with his older sister Fanny, the precocious youngster had once put on a series of performances of the Bard's works at home in which their younger siblings, Rebecca and Paul, also took part. The Mendelssohn children's favourite play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Fanny remembered in one of her letters how they each took turns at all the roles, performing under illumination at night amid their stately trees and fragrant lilacs.

Mendelssohn was a gifted musical prodigy who had written twelve symphonies before the age of 14. In 1826, the seventeen-year-old composer remained fascinated by A Midsummer Night's Dream and was inspired to compose a concert overture based on the play. In this piece, Mendelssohn’s masterly crafted music infuses the narrative with fantasy and intrigue: it conjures up the kingdom of the fairies, while following humans, high and low, in the magic wood.

Moreover, if Shakespeare’s play is a comedy with elements of fantasy, Mendelssohn’s overture is more like a fantasy with elements of comedy. "This inversion is made clear at the opening," says Koerbler. "When the curtain goes up, we are not in Theseus’s court, but in a forest, at night, where the presence of the supernatural is signaled at the onset. As we enter the fairyland for Mendelssohn’s rendition of Shakespeare’s narrative, our ears are infused with 'a spirit of enchantment' such as had rarely been heard in music before." In their collaborative and interdisciplinary presentation, Koerbler and Lepage will explain the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream and delve into an explanation of Mendelssohn's musical retelling of Shakespeare.

https://ah.viu.ca/colloquium-series