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Review of:

Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the St Matthew Passion by Celia Applegate
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2004
Pages: 288. £22

Reviewed By: Mark-Daniel Schmid
Reviewed in: Nations and Nationalism
Date accepted online: 02/11/2007
Published in print: Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 341-367
See all reviews for this journal

Book Reviews

Felix Mendelssohn's legendary performance of the St Matthew Passion on 11 March 1829 has been acknowledged as the impetus for the revival of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. This event, hailed by scholars as the most famous musical moment in Germany's cultural history, has secured a lasting place not only in nineteenth-century music history texts and in music appreciation surveys, but also in biographies of Mendelssohn and Bach. The critical reception of this performance has been amply documented and analysed at great length. Why, then, another book about Bach, Berlin, Mendelssohn, and the St Matthew Passion?

Celia Applegate, well aware of this question, has nonetheless undertaken the daunting task of centring on the 1829 performance, if only in one of the six chapters of Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the St Matthew Passion. She has furnished a narrative of the cultural preparation in Berlin leading to the pivotal event set against the intellectual and religious background of music reception in Germany and the political currents that impacted it. The reader follows the individuals responsible for bringing Bach once more into the public arena, tracing their early goals and activities. Applegate goes even further, showing us how the event lived on in the musical and cultural work of its main participants.

She reveals that a renewal of German Protestantism in the early nineteenth century played a pivotal role in the St Matthew Passion's reception, establishing Bach as the leading Protestant composer of all time. Bach's growing significance is shown to be at the core of the formation of patriotism that was to culminate in establishing a unified German state in 1871 under Otto von Bismarck. Furthermore, the 1829 performance helped to establish music as a central focus of Germany's national identity, cherished for its aesthetic value and patriotic importance and as a favourite past-time of Germans, all of which, Applegate compellingly argues, had not been present before the 1830s.

The cross-disciplinary approach to this topic, effortlessly blending German history with musicology, should make this work benchmark reading for an audience at home in many intellectual disciplines. Applegate draws on major studies from artistic and intellectual sources outside of musicology, quoting philosophers, poets and important German literary figures, and employing journalistic sources and political documents.

Composers, conductors, educators, singers, instrumentalists, music critics, publishers and civilians serving different branches of Berlin and German society at large, Applegate demonstrates, were responsible for the revival of Bach through perhaps his most eclectic vocal composition. Surprisingly, however, the institution of the church 'proved to be a missing champion', a role the Berlin Singakademie took on instead.

Readers of Applegate's book need not be historians to appreciate the scope of her work and the presentation of the non-musical facets surrounding the 1829 concert. Scholars in the field of German studies will enjoy this account, as will sociologists, philosophers, linguists, or, for that matter, lay readers attracted to cultural studies.

The goals Applegate set herself are more than accomplished: to show how strands of developments in Germany - coming from musical aesthetics, music journalism, music making and Protestantism - over several decades from the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the nineteenth century, converged in the historical performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829. Applegate 'takes apart the pieces of a well-integrated whole', allowing the reader to witness how this pivotal event took shape and was prepared by everyone involved. As a result of this performance, music became central as a discipline in German cultural life, resulting in traditions that today are taken for granted - singing in a choir being just one of them.

Through interpretation of a myriad of correspondence between members involved in the revival of Bach, through music journalism as it was practised in Leipzig and Berlin, through diary entries and other primary sources - all superbly converted from the original German into eloquent English - Applegate writes convincing reception history and sheds new light on hitherto unexplored developments and links. She supports her arguments with vivid first-hand accounts of solid primary sources as well as references to most of the important scholars working in related fields.

The year 1829 marks the beginning of her book, and we arrive there again in the concluding chapters, after having been taken backwards in time and reliving the developments leading up to the auspicious year with an amplified and deeper understanding of the interplay between human deeds, historical events and sheer twists of fate.

It is easy to enjoy Applegate's fascinating and flawlessly written book, which abounds in colourful prose and into which a myriad of well-chosen and superbly translated quotations are woven. Every page is engaging.