Mendelssohn: The Hebrides and Other Overtures (Cambridge Music Handbooks)

Rating:
Summary: What's behind your sensation
Review: The book is easy to follow, even for a reader like me, that is, one with little or no background in formal musical education. (I knew nothing about the sonata form, except for the name itself. But now, while listening to the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, I can tell when the exposition part ends and the development part starts and so on.) The author meticulously demonstrates how Mendelssohn tried and succeeded in synthesizing form and content, that is, the traditional sonata form and extra-musical contents such as landscape, poetry and drama to which the composer strove to give musical expressions. I'd like to recommend this book to anybody who wants to know what's behind his or her sensation.