Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Midsummer Night's Dream

Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music to the play by Shakespeare is best known for the famous Wedding March, though the work contains an array of beautiful music. The instrumental movements are frequentlyperformed as an Orchestral suite or as stand-alone pieces. The Overture was composed when Mendelssohn was just seventeen years old, written as a concert overture. Then when King Frederick William IV of Prussia commissioned theadult Mendelssohn to create incidental music for the whole of the play in 1842, Mendelssohn incorporated the Overture and its themes repeatedly throughout the work. Mendelssohn particularly loved Shakespeare's MidsummerNight'sDream, having read it with his sister from childhood. His incidental music for the play ranks among the best of its genre, skillfully generating the spirit of each of the characters, establishing ambiences for the variousscenes and complementing Shakespeare's own drama.