Скачать или смотреть A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op61, Overture - by Felix Mendelssohn, IAV[083]

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which includes his "Wedding March"), the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, the String Octet, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.

On two occasions, Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream (in German Ein Sommernachtstraum). First in 1826, near the start of his career, he wrote a concert overture (Op. 21). Later, in 1842, five years before his death, he wrote incidental music (Op. 61) for a production of the play, into which he incorporated the existing overture. The incidental music includes the famous "Wedding March".

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I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet’s debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself, being extant, well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 83

Sonnet 83 in modern English:

I’ve never thought that representations of you need elaboration,
so I haven’t described your beauty in elaborate verse.
I could see – or thought I could see –
that you were above the skills of any poet.
Therefore, I’ve made no effort to represent you
so that you yourself, by virtue of your very existence, would be able to demonstrate
how far short modern verse would come
in representing quality – the real quality that you possess.
You regarded my silence as a fault,
but I’m proud of it because my silence doesn’t detract from your beauty,
whereas others destroy it by trying to bring it to life.
There’s more life in one of your beautiful eyes
than all of your poets can invent in their praise of you.

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