Beschreibung:
The published version of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Piano Trio No. 1 op. 49 has been repeatedly compared to an older, manuscript version of the piece. These comparisons have documented motivic, harmonic, syntactic, and formal changes, but have not yet discussed the comprehensive changes in the »brilliant« passagework. However, these changes admittedly were the reason for the revision, and they provide the most apparent examples of change between the two versions. They have prominently shaped the aesthetic impression of the work to the present day. This article examines a few selected examples of changes in the passagework between the two versions, in order to deliberate the question why they have not, to date, been the subject of discussion in Mendelssohn studies. As a result of the revisions of the passagework, the piano part became more »brilliant«. This can be attributed to at least four discernable factors: 1. the »filling out« of the piano part, 2. the priority given to the descant voice, 3. the priority given to figures that »avalanche down from« a peak note, 4. an arrangement of the accompanying parts that makes these features audible. Three further types of compositional changes can be discerned: 1. the addition of accompanying melodic voices, 2. their reinforced integration with the other instruments, 3. passagework that is increasingly expressively charged. Existing analysis has yet to address such extensive modifications. They do not comply with a concept of structure, in which solely motives, themes, and harmonies appear as substantial and everything else as procedural. A reason for the long-lasting disregard of the passage groups and figurations might thus be found in the fact that they are not thematic, but »melodic«. Since these melodic figures did not immediately attract the attention of analysts, the structural consequences of the melodic peak notes in the piano figurations, now more closely integrated with the string melodies, remained unnoticed. It is also likely that Mendelssohn-analysts have missed the expressivity gained by the revisions of the passagework, at least partly on account of general reservations concerning the category of expression. Expression was, however, one of the primary function-carrying determinants during the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Mendelssohn performance practice, usually caught in the same substance/ procedure-antagonism as musical analysis, suffers equally from a deficit of attention paid to the »brilliant«, expressive, and structural possibilities of the passagework.