Was Mendelssohn indebted to Weber? An attempted solution of an old controversy. Russian translation, annotation and footnotes by Vladimir Khavrov
The article by the German musicologist Georg Kinsky about a thematic allusion in the 17-yearold Felix Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, was published in the Musical Quarterly journal in 1933, translated by Oliver Strunk. Examining the similarity of a motive from the overture and a theme from Carl Maria von Weber’s last opera, Oberon, Kinsky sheds light on the details of the opera’s piano score publication and its performance at the house of the editor Maurice Schlesinger in winter 1826. He also describes Mendelssohn’s work on the overture. The conclusion is paradoxical: the musicologist considers the similarity pure coincidence.