The Rediscovery of Baroque Music — Mendelssohn’s Legacy

The significance of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s contribution to music history can hardly be overstated. It is a fact often underestimated in its scope: until the mid-nineteenth century, almost exclusively music by living composers was performed — usually by the composers themselves.

Johann Sebastian Bach, whom we revere today as one of the greatest composers of all time, was known during his lifetime primarily as an organist and cantor. His works largely fell into obscurity after his death. His music lived on almost exclusively in churches, where it continued to be heard in liturgical contexts. Outside the church walls, however, Bach’s music had virtually disappeared.

Then something extraordinary happened. In 1829, a young composer and conductor named Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy dared to do something revolutionary for his time: he performed Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Leipzig, almost a hundred years after the composer’s death. The event marked the beginning of the rediscovery of Baroque music and changed musical life for good. Suddenly the music of the past was no longer seen merely as a historical document but as living repertoire.

The revival of interest in Bach’s works presented a practical problem: there were hardly any printed scores, only manuscripts. The composer’s originals were difficult to access and often hard to decipher. The Leipzig publisher Edition Peters, then the leading publisher of classical music, commissioned nineteenth-century musicians to prepare editions. These musicians — shaped by the Romantic spirit of their time — added their own dynamics, bowings and articulations, reflecting their personal readings. They were not writing down what Bach had notated, but what they believed it should sound like.

These first printed editions became the authoritative source well into the twentieth century. Generations of musicians grew up with them and took them for the authentic text. What they did not know: they were playing a Romantic overpainting. The added phrasing slurs, the dramatic dynamic changes, the pronounced rubati — all of these were interpretations of the nineteenth century, not the eighteenth.

Only in the late twentieth century did musicians and musicologists begin to explore in earnest how these works might have sounded when they were written. Quite apart from the question of historical instruments, they sought sources describing how this music was interpreted — because unlike organ music, which had an uninterrupted tradition in church, Bach’s works have no continuous performing tradition.

The message is clear: when we interpret Bach or Mozart today, we should not simply rely on older recordings. We should study the original manuscripts, question the Urtext editions critically, and develop an understanding of the aesthetic principles of the period. Historically informed performance is not a dogma but an invitation to explore the music with open ears and a curious mind.

Not a dogma, but a question

Historically informed performance is not an end in itself and not a museumification of music. It is the attempt to make the works of the past audible in their original sound and expressive force — not only Baroque music, but the whole of music history up to Romanticism.

There is no unbroken performing tradition for the works of Bach and his contemporaries. The music was forgotten and then rediscovered in the nineteenth century in a way heavily shaped by Romantic ideas. What we know today as the Bach sound is often the sound of the nineteenth century — with wide vibrato, soft bowing and a dynamic shaping Bach did not know in this form.

Historically informed performance seeks to remove these overpaintings and return to the sources. It studies the manuscripts, the contemporary writings on music and the instruments of the time. It asks how a harpsichord or a Baroque violin really sounded, how articulation and ornamentation were formed, and what rhythmic freedoms the player was permitted.

Yet it is no dogma. It offers no easy answers but poses questions. It asks us to examine our listening habits. And it teaches us that there is not one correct interpretation but many possible ones — each with its own justification.

Its significance for the present lies also in helping us hear with new ears. Once you have heard the original sound of a Baroque piece you do not forget it. And once you have engaged with the principles of the doctrine of affects, you understand the music of the eighteenth century in an entirely new way. Historically informed performance is an invitation to discover music — not as something old and dusty, but as something alive.

Back to the overview