Notes on Elijah
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© ANDREW SPINA 2019
On November 20 at 7 PM, we will perform Mendelssohn’s Elijah at St. George’s Church in Stuyvesant Square. Tickets are on sale now!
Want to learn more before the concert? Here are our program notes:
In 1845 the Birmingham Festival committee wrote to Mendelssohn asking him to write a new oratorio for the 1846 Festival. He wrote back accepting the new commission, adding, “Since some time I have begun an oratorio and hope I shall be able to bring it out for the first time at your Festival; but it is still a mere beginning and I cannot yet give you any promise as to my finishing it in time.” He returned to Elijah, a project he began about a decade earlier, with renewed enthusiasm.
The first performance, conducted by Mendelssohn, took place on August 26, 1846 before an audience of two thousand packed into Birmingham Town Hall for the eagerly awaited event. It was an unprecedented success. Mendelssohn recounted the experience in a letter to his brother: “No work of mine went so admirably the first time of execution, or was received with such enthusiasm by both the musicians and the audience.” It was without doubt the crowning glory of Mendelssohn’s spectacularly successful career, but tragically it was to prove his last major triumph. A lifetime of overwork now brought rapidly failing health, and when his beloved sister Fanny unexpectedly died, he never recovered from the shock. He died on November 4, 1847.
Structurally the work is clearly influenced by the choral masterpieces of Bach and Handel, but its highly dramatic style, at times bordering on the operatic, constitutes a significant step forward from its Baroque predecessors. Elijah has many other outstanding qualities: the imaginative orchestration, the spontaneity and energy of the counterpoint, the variety which Mendelssohn brings to the recitatives to ensure that they always maintain the dramatic impetus, and the sheer beauty of many of the arias and choruses. Above all, there is no mistaking the work’s considerable dramatic impact, epitomized by the vivid characterization of Elijah himself.
The story of Elijah comes from 1 Kings 17:19 and 2 Kings 2:1. As recounted in the oratorio, Elijah prophesies that as punishment for worshiping the god Baal under King Ahab, God will bring about a drought to Israel. Ahab blames the drought on Elijah, but Elijah states that it is the fault of Baal worship. The drought ends when Elijah prays to God, who first brings forth a fire for their sacrifice and then rain to end the drought. In the second part of the oratorio, Queen Jezebel demands the death of Elijah, who flees. Angels comfort him in the desert, and he returns to Israel until he is carried to heaven in a fiery chariot.
Adapted from John Bawden’s Choral Programme Notes and from the NY Philharmonic notes from November 2010.
