Mendelssohn’s Approach to the Music of the Past: Clues from the Italian Journey 1830–1831

A few weeks after his twentieth birthday, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy conducted a performance of one of the musical masterpieces of the Baroque era—Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. In early nineteenth-century Berlin, a concert performance of a sacred work composed over a century earlier was no trivial matter. By undertaking it, Mendelssohn became a symbol for those advocating the application of historicist ideals to music. Immediately following the performance, he set out on his "Grand Tour," spending more than half a year in Italy. This article examines the letters Mendelssohn wrote during his travels, and his reflections on encounters with the past: the ruins of ancient Rome, Renaissance art, and the traditions of church music. These letters illuminate the philosophical and ideological background to Mendelssohn’s engagement with early music. What emerges is a portrait of a young intellectual anticipating developments that would only take shape many decades later—a musician with a nuanced conception of the difficult question: how should the music of the past be performed? The rival camps that continue to debate this question today frequently enlist Mendelssohn as an emblematic figure, but in doing so often reduce the complexity of his thought and artistic practice.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847), one of the most prominent composers of the Romantic period, is regarded as a key figure in cultivating a retrospective gaze toward the composers of the past as a significant element in the musical life of Germany and beyond. Some of his compositions, which engage in dialogue with earlier musical styles, have sparked a longstanding critical debate concerning his historicist outlook. Supporters of Mendelssohn’s approach have seen his turn to the past as a bold act of modernism in a confused era when composers’ commitment to a shared stylistic language was crumbling. Critics, by contrast, have viewed his retrospective stance as a sign of a lack of originality, leading to kitsch. Mendelssohn’s commitment to the past is no less evident in his activities outside composition: as a pianist, he frequently performed works by earlier composers, above all Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750); he rediscovered forgotten compositions and conducted their modern premieres—including, notably, the first performance of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony; and in 1843, he founded Germany’s first conservatory, in Leipzig, Bach’s city. Above all these, the 1829 Berlin performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (an oratorio narrating the crucifixion of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Matthew), conducted by the young Mendelssohn on March 11, has come to be seen as a defining event—perhaps even a “year zero”—in what would later be termed the Early Music Revival: a movement that sparked renewed interest in music written before 1750.

Mendelssohn’s energetic and enthusiastic engagement with early music reflected a broader intellectual trend shared by many of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, especially in Germany. Some of the leading figures in philosophy, historiography, poetry, and painting engaged in a complex debate about the role of history in their lives and in their art. In this intellectual climate, it is striking that Mendelssohn alone, among the great composers of his time, came to stand as the musical representative of historicist thinking. The scope of this article does not permit a full mapping of Mendelssohn’s historicism onto broader historicist thought, as exemplified in Hegel’s philosophy of history (although Mendelssohn did attend the former’s lectures on aesthetics at the University of Berlin in 1828). Nonetheless, it is easy to point to the fundamental question that characterized historicist approaches to art and creativity: what should contemporary artists take from ancient models, and how should they apply it in their own work? This question had immediate consequences for the poetry of the Schlegel brothers, of Wackenroder and Novalis, and was also a guiding principle for the Nazarene painters, who uncompromisingly adopted ancient techniques and styles, thus paving the way for similar movements outside Germany, such as the Pre-Raphaelites in England.

Less than a month after the St. Matthew Passion performance, Mendelssohn, then twenty years old, set out on a grand journey. During this period, he wrote, traveled, and wove an impressive network of personal connections which, combined with his extraordinary musical talent, made him one of the most successful and esteemed musicians of his generation. He first spent eight months in Britain; after a brief return to Berlin for about half a year, he set out again on a journey of over two years, passing through Weimar, Munich, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Naples, Florence, Milan, Lucerne, Paris, and London. For the young composer, this was an intellectual and creative journey that helped shape his identity. He absorbed landscapes, books, paintings, sculptures, and ruins—and the intensity of these experiences was reflected not only in his *Scottish* and *Italian* symphonies but also in numerous smaller works, most of them sacred, that reveal how the journey prompted deep reflection on religion and faith. A talented draftsman, Mendelssohn documented parts of his journey through drawings and watercolors. He also wrote extensively: no fewer than 94 letters survive from his time in Italy, dated between October 10, 1830, and July 25, 1831 (letters no. 352–445 in the critical edition of his correspondence; these numbers will be cited in reference to specific letters below). This ongoing correspondence with his family and with his music teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), offers an unmediated glimpse into his intellectual life during this formative period.

Mendelssohn’s journey to Italy was almost inevitable—not only because Italy was considered the heart of the fashionable Grand Tour. As the son of a wealthy banker, Mendelssohn received an excellent private education from an early age and demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for classical studies. His earliest private tutors included the historian Gustav Adolf Stenzel and the philologist Karl Heyse. By age ten, his weekly routine already included six hours of Latin; he read Julius Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum, translated excerpts from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and at age eleven composed, for fun, an epic poem in German using dactylic hexameter about his younger brother Paul (whom he nicknamed "Paflos Lightfoot"). Beyond his rigorous education, Mendelssohn benefited from his tutors’ extensive networks: at twelve, Zelter introduced him to Goethe, with whom he formed a special bond. Even in May 1830, en route to Munich (and eventually Italy), Mendelssohn made a pilgrimage to Weimar, spending two weeks with the elderly poet, discussing literature and philosophy and playing music—his own and that of past masters. Given his deep “long-distance” familiarity with Rome’s cultural heritage, it was only natural that he would eventually undertake an actual visit. In light of his classical education, it is not surprising that the six months he spent in Rome at the age of twenty-two eclipsed his time in other Italian cities—both in terms of his extended stay (he spent no more than two weeks in Venice, Florence, or Milan) and in terms of the artistic and historical stimulation he experienced. (He described the two months he spent in Naples and its surroundings as intellectually dull.)

Many biographies of Mendelssohn focus on the letters and fragments of letters from his Italian journey that discuss his social life or creative processes—passages that are directly connected to the history of several of his masterpieces and are thus of great importance to musicological research. In contrast, the letters describing his experiences as a viewer (in galleries and churches) or as a listener (primarily in churches) have received comparatively little attention. Yet it is precisely these that offer valuable insights into Mendelssohn’s views on the art of the past in general, and on early music in particular. This article surveys Mendelssohn’s letters from his Italian journey, focusing on his responses to the ancient and modern art he encountered, and seeks to clarify his views on key issues in musical performance—issues whose surrounding debates continue to this day. At the center of the analysis is Mendelssohn’s most significant musical experience in Rome: his repeated listening to the singing of the Papal Choir during Holy Week (which fell in 1831 between March 27 and April 2), the music performed by the choir, and the manner in which it was executed.

The Debate Regarding Musical Performance

In order to understand the significance of clarifying Mendelssohn’s views on music in Rome, one must first briefly address the dominant schools of musical performance currently found in chamber and symphonic concert halls. What is broadly referred to as “classical music” is, in fact, a misleading generalization. In music historiography, the term “Classical” refers to a relatively brief period in the history of Western music (approximately 1750–1820). More than it signals the iconic status of this historical period, the label “Classical” implies that the works of its three principal composers—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—remained present and influential in musical life long after their deaths, in contrast to the reception of their predecessors. Indeed, although it is tempting to think of names such as Bach or Handel as having always been revered authorities, the fact is that prior to the nineteenth century, the “shelf life” of musical compositions was typically brief. Many works now considered cornerstones of the Western tradition were originally intended to be performed only a handful of times.

As Lydia Goehr has argued at length, the very idea of the musical “work” as a defined, autonomous text with meaning that transcends its historical context only emerged in the early nineteenth century. Thus, even if the name of a sixteenth-century composer remained familiar among certain intellectual elites for some decades after his death, his music was typically forgotten and not performed in concert settings. Contrary to popular belief, then, Mendelssohn’s revival of the *St. Matthew Passion* did not bring back the music of a long-forgotten Bach; rather, it contributed more broadly to the formation of the concept of the “forgotten composer.” In fact, Bach became “forgotten” only retroactively—once the complementary idea of a composer whose work endures over time had been firmly established (in this respect, Germany lagged behind England and perhaps even France). Likewise, Mendelssohn helped secure the status of the *St. Matthew Passion* as a “work”—even a “masterpiece”—though a century earlier the Passion would have been understood more as an event, or even as the musical component of a larger event.

The integration of historical music into the fabric of concert life—the musical present—at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought about far-reaching changes in every aspect of musical culture. It solidified the concept of the work; established a canon of masterpieces; constructed a pantheon of “geniuses”; granted certain historical periods the status of “classical”; encouraged composers to consider their artistic “legacy” for future generations; and created a division between composers and performers. Until the mid-eighteenth century, composers typically took part in the performance of their own music, often leading it while playing the violin or harpsichord, and professional musicians were expected to carry out clearly creative tasks such as improvisation or composing additional material, alongside the performance of others’ written notes.

As with the connections between historiographical schools and political or philosophical movements, musical approaches to the past reflect different worldviews. The post–World War II reshuffling of cultural values deepened the divide between two distinct performance approaches, each characterized by a particular attitude toward the past: the “traditional” approach and the “historically informed” approach. Every modern performance of concert music, whether explicitly or implicitly, is grounded in one of these two interpretative ideologies—and both, interestingly, invoke Bach and Mendelssohn to justify their aims.

Broadly speaking, the “traditional” approach upholds the autonomy of the musical work and the “work concept” as shaped in the nineteenth century. According to this view, music of the past (the notated score) should be performed as the interpreter understands it in the present, based on the assumption that the work’s intrinsic value does not depend on the cultural or historical context in which it was created. Thus, performers are expected to deepen their interpretation through insights passed down from their teachers, who in turn learned from their own teachers—an intergenerational reliance that gives this school its name. In addition, performers in this tradition often aim to provide the “optimal” performance conditions as they understand them, including the use of modern instruments not available when the work was composed.

Musicians aligned with the traditional approach typically focus on repertoire written after 1700 and seldom perform earlier music. At the same time, they tend to exhibit surprising conservatism with regard to music composed after 1900. One might therefore say that the traditional approach represents a kind of selective modernism, applied retroactively to music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. Avant-garde composers of the early twentieth century—who themselves invoked the notion of progress to justify their innovations—were excluded from the traditionalist mainstream, which set its upper boundary with late Romantic composers like Mahler and Richard Strauss (along with a handful of pieces by declared modernists such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók). Most of today’s symphony and philharmonic orchestras represent the traditional performance school, both in their choice of repertoire and in their use of modern instruments and interpretative approaches.

By contrast, the “historically informed” approach maintains that the musical work should be understood within its historical context. In the case of Baroque and earlier compositions, this demand may even challenge the notion of the “work” itself, since early musical texts are often incomplete and were intended to leave room for performer creativity and improvisation. The central task of the historically informed performer is to adapt their playing style as much as possible to the time and place in which the piece was written. On core stylistic issues—such as which notes to emphasize, how much vibrato to use, or what tempo to adopt—the historically informed performer relies on historical sources, resorting to personal taste only when documentation is lacking. To the traditional performer, however, such historical constraints or chameleon-like shifts in style may seem to negate the performer's individual voice.

Historically informed performers exhibit sensitivity to changes in notational language over time. Their effort to understand works in historical context leads them to consult Urtext editions; at times, they forgo these in favor of facsimile editions from the period in which the music was composed—thereby deliberately reconstructing the original performers’ lack of access to authoritative scores. They read contemporary theoretical treatises to grasp notational subtleties; they reject the authority of pedagogical “lineages”; they insist on period instruments (or accurate reconstructions); and they attempt to recreate performance conditions as close as possible to the originals. Yet this historical orientation paradoxically fosters contemporary performers’ creativity, often encouraging improvisation and even the composition of entirely new pieces in older styles. While this approach emerged from an interest in Renaissance and Baroque music, its principles are now applied to incomplete notation from the Middle Ages through the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, in numerical terms, most recordings and concerts associated with this school are of works written before 1750.

Since the term “orchestra” usually refers to a standardized instrumental ensemble of significant size, it applies only narrowly to the repertoire associated with the historically informed movement (roughly 1650–1750). As a result, this movement is represented primarily by smaller ensembles, many of which operate outside the institutional spotlight. In Israel, for example, there are currently more than ten subscription-based orchestras, but only two explicitly identify as historically informed.

The overview above reveals a fundamental difference between the two schools in their attitude toward the notion of progress. The traditional school focuses on the Enlightenment and its aftermath—the period in which concepts such as “masterpiece” and “genius” matured. While these Romantic ideals are sometimes anachronistically extended to earlier composers such as Bach or even Palestrina (ca. 1525–1594), the traditional school tends to regard music from before the “Classical” period with a degree of condescension. Of the late Baroque composers, only four—Vivaldi, Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, and of course Bach—have attracted sustained attention, while works by their contemporaries (ca. 1700–1760) and predecessors are rarely performed. The traditional school thus walks a fine line: from its modernist perspective, it may be tempted to regard certain musical developments—such as increased dynamic range, larger orchestras, and extended formal structures—as indicators of “improvement,” and to infer that music as a whole has progressed. The historically informed school, by contrast, rejects the assumed superiority of the Classical-Romantic canon over earlier repertoires, and counters this modernist risk with an implicit assertion that no shared cultural yardstick can be applied across historical periods. But of course, even in the historically informed school, the slope towards orthodoxy is particularly slippery, as reflected in a statement attributed to the Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), one of the school's pioneers: "You play Bach your way, and I will play Bach his way."

Not only does orthodoxy lurk at the door of both schools, but also paradoxical tensions inherent in each of them. The historically informed performers of the 1960s adopted a subversive style (rebelling the conservative concert hall dress code, breaking down the barriers between performers and audience), but the sympathy they gained and the commercial success of their recordings during the 1970s and 1980s led to the leaders of the revolution beginning to enjoy financial prosperity and academic appointments, which in turn dulled the movement's subversive sting. Furthermore, the de facto "retirement" of historically informed performers from the traditional performance stream in the 1960s (when they founded the first orchestras performing music on period instruments) ostensibly revealed the unhistorical nature of the dominant performance tradition (the traditional one - the only tradition up to that time), but in practice it created a duplication (and then a proliferation) of performance approaches, which in turn began to invert and become traditions whose historically informed aspect was deficient. Those subversive performers, once they took over chairs for teaching historically informed performance, became a source of authority themselves, thus taking the place of historical sources, and did not always take care to educate their students in critical thinking. In doing so, they spared their students direct contact with the sources at the heart of the ethos of this school.

On the other hand, the traditionalist school's reliance on a lineage of teachers and students itself creates a historicist appearance. Above all, each school seems to base part of its arguments on the negation of the other side: traditionalists tend to justify the use of instruments that the composer did not recognize by criticizing the limitations of historical instruments or describing the use of ancient instruments as "musical archaeology." Historically informed performers rely on the "traditionalists'" evasion of questions of historical and cultural context as a basis for comparison with the "scientific" investigation that serves as the basis for historically informed performance. This is a flattering comparison that obscures the fact that the historical validity of the reconstructed performance style cannot be tested and that historically informed performance will always remain a hypothesis, an attempt to deal with the reconstruction of a musical world that has been lost forever.

A quick look at the concert hall and recording studio today demonstrates that each school dominates its own chronological sequence. Most recordings of music from before 1700 are distinctly "historically-informed" while most recordings of music written after 1750 are "traditional." This situation gives the intervening years 1700-1750, which coincide with the five creative decades of Johann Sebastian Bach, the status of a hotbed of controversy: performers belonging to both schools frequently perform and record Bach's works, and in many cases accompany these performances with explanatory notes (booklets accompanying recordings, press interviews) that directly or indirectly refer to the controversy. For example, "historically-informed" performers will explain on the basis of which documents they determined the number of singers in the choir; "Traditional" performers would explain why Bach would have preferred the modern piano to the contemporary harpsichord, if only he had lived another hundred years.

The Italian Journey Begins

The migration of "northern" composers to Italy began at the end of the fourteenth century with Johannes Ciconia and later with Guillaume Dufay, Josquin de Prez, Adrian Willaert and Philippe Verdelot. But while these lived and worked in Italy for many years, from the mid-sixteenth century Italy began to be perceived by musicians as a place where even a short visit could broaden their horizons and strengthen their professional abilities. Thus, we can observe a growing movement of musicians who came to study in Italy, returned to their homes across the Alps, and mastered the fashionable styles they had learned in Venice or Rome. The English composer John Dowland traveled to Italy for a few months in 1595 to meet the great composers Croce and Marenzio; another Englishman, John Cooper, returned to his homeland in 1601 after a stay in Italy, changed his name to Coprario, and under this name served as one of the most important court composers and theorist; in 1609, Heinrich Schütz went to Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli for several years, and upon his return he played a central role in updating the local German style; in 1637, the 21-year-old Johann Jakob Froberger even converted to Catholicism in order to travel to Rome to study with Frescobaldi, and thereafter spread the principles of Italian keyboard writing in Vienna and Paris.

The eighteenth century brought about a shift in the nature of composers’ travels, aligning them more closely with the aristocratic tradition of the “Grand Tour.” Just as it was customary for a nobleman to supplement his university education with firsthand experiences of language, history, and society acquired during a journey to Italy and back, so too was a musician’s training no longer considered complete if it relied solely on music available in his homeland, or if he could not boast of having established professional ties with the musical capital of the world. In 1706, Georg Friedrich Handel, a young German from a modest background in Halle, arrived in Italy and spent three and a half years there. Handel was not necessarily in search of a patron or mentor; rather, he adopted the demeanor of a gentleman and succeeded in integrating himself into Rome’s patronage circles. By the time he settled in England, he was perceived there as an ambassador of the Italian style far more than of the German one.

Similarly, the journey of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Rome in 1770 far exceeded the scope of mere professional development. His father, Leopold, capitalized on his son’s extraordinary abilities. When the fourteen-year-old Wolfgang heard Allegri’s Miserere—a piece forbidden to be performed outside the Sistine Chapel—and transcribed it entirely from memory, Leopold ensured that the event caused a stir, ultimately attracting the attention, admiration, and even affection of the pope himself.

Felix Mendelssohn’s journey was fundamentally different. First, in the sixty years that had passed since Mozart’s visit to Rome, the European musical landscape had undergone significant transformation. The importance of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris had risen, while the former musical capitals—Venice, Rome, and Naples—were in decline. Local operatic genres in France and Germany had begun to erode the monopoly of Italian opera. Moreover, the French Revolution and the social and political upheavals across the German-speaking world, France, and Britain altered listening habits and diminished the practical benefits a composer might expect from a journey to Italy.

In addition, when Mendelssohn set out on his Italian journey, he was already a well-established and sought-after composer—more so than most of those discussed above. Combined with his family’s financial stability, this endowed his journey with a distinctly aristocratic character: he devoted much of his time to walking tours, visits to ancient ruins, gallery excursions, and dancing at balls. His model was not that of composers’ travels but rather that of Goethe’s journey as recounted in The Italian Journey (Die Italienische Reise). Mendelssohn’s letters reveal that, in his view, contemporary Italy had little to offer him as a composer. But as a man of letters and culture, in the broadest sense, the art and history he encountered served as a necessary source of inspiration.

His focus on the experience of listening to the papal choir is likewise characteristic of travelers from non-musical backgrounds. The Holy Week liturgies were among the principal attractions in Rome, especially for German, English, and American tourists—that is, for non-Catholics with an interest in liturgical culture. Writers who devoted considerable attention to these rites in their memoirs include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, Stendhal, and of course Goethe himself.

While Mendelssohn’s emphasis on art and church music stemmed primarily from the abundance Italy had to offer, it seems that his journey into the heart of Catholicism also presented an opportunity for religious introspection. In his letters, he repeatedly comments on the congregations filling the churches, criticizing their lack of piety. In at least one instance, he launches a pointed attack on the Holy Week liturgy, noting that during the chanting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, not only the lamentations themselves were sung, but also liturgical markers such as Lectio primo, Lectio secundo, and even the Hebrew letters—Aleph, Beth, Gimel, and so on. In one letter, he remarks that the singing of such words “shocks the Protestant heart” (see Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters, vol. 2, letter no. 432). He also criticizes the formulaic Gregorian melodies used for the more emotionally charged texts relating to the Passion.

Even his Jewish ancestry—an aspect more frequently remarked upon by his critics and admirers than by Mendelssohn himself—surfaces here in a subtle yet significant manner. He discusses, without elaborating on his reasons, those rituals he perceived as imbued with anti-Jewish sentiment. Though he avoids emotional language, a trace of bitter irony colors his description of the annual ceremony in which Jews pleaded not to be expelled from Rome: they are refused at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, but upon ascending to its summit, their request is granted and they are permitted to remain in the ghetto for another year (Mendelssohn to his family, 8 February 1830, ibid., letter no. 396). This same tone also pervades his account of the stomping of feet during a Holy Wednesday service—symbolizing the tumult allegedly caused by the Jews at Jesus’s arrest—and the Good Friday prayer for the souls of the “perfidious Jews,” during which no one in the church kneels or responds “Amen” (letter to his music teacher Zelter, 16 June 1830, ibid., letter no. 432). Mendelssohn’s attitude toward these rituals is especially striking in light of Zelter’s comment to Goethe, not without a hint of antisemitism, that Mendelssohn’s mother feared her son’s journey to Italy would cause him to “shed his Jewish skin” once and for all (see Todd, Mendelssohn, p. 235).

Mendelssohn wrote his first letter from Italy immediately upon arriving in Venice (Mendelssohn to his family, 10 October 1830; see Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters, vol. 2, letter no. 352). The majority of the letter is devoted to a vivid and animated description of the journey from the city of Graz—described as “dreary and yawn-inducing”—to Venice. In contrast, his account of Venice itself is rather brief, and he quickly turns to describing his encounter with “Signor” Giorgione, whom he had previously known only by name, as well as with Pordenone (ibid.). The humorous tone of this “encounter,” which suggests that he had met these early sixteenth-century painters in person, when in fact he had merely viewed their works, is characteristic of the light-hearted and informal style Mendelssohn often adopts in his letters home. Nonetheless, as his travels in Italy progressed, the joke from his first letter gradually came to resemble a statement of intent: while he developed a swift aversion and even disdain for contemporary Italian painters, he increasingly immersed himself in Renaissance art in his search for genuine and moving artistic expression.

Mendelssohn then surveys several paintings by Titian he had seen during the early days of his stay in Venice—most notably The Assumption of the Virgin in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, which left a strong impression on him and would be referenced frequently in his later correspondence. The letter concludes with an account of his experience viewing Titian’s Martyrdom of Saint Peter in the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo. At that moment, however—serving as a foreshadowing of things to come—Italy’s present-day artistic reality jolts him back to the dismal present: as he gazes upon the painting, the church organist begins to play a banal musical excerpt. According to Mendelssohn, the use of a contemporary operatic style in such a sacred context amounted to nothing short of desecration.

Alongside the many letters he sent to his parents and siblings, Mendelssohn also wrote five letters from Italy to his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter (ibid., letters nos. 355, 365, 375, 383, and 432), the first of which is dated 16 October 1830. In several instances—despite knowing that Zelter would eventually read the family letters as well (and vice versa)—Mendelssohn does not hesitate to recount certain events again in his letters to Zelter. This occasionally allows for fruitful comparison and reveals varied perspectives on the same experience. In general, the letters to his family tend to be anecdotal or concerned with literary and artistic matters—his brother-in-law Wilhelm Hensel was a painter—while the letters to Zelter are densely packed with technical musical commentary and musical examples.

For instance, the irritating organ playing described in the letter to his family is also mentioned in his first letter to Zelter. Though the tone here is less scathing, Mendelssohn includes a notated excerpt of the organ’s opening phrases, stressing that these banal notes were played before a distinguished audience and in close proximity to Titian’s *Martyrdom of Saint Peter*. It is as if he expects Zelter—who could easily read and “hear” the music mentally—to perceive the offense for himself. Needless to say, Mendelssohn’s musical memory and transcription abilities render these notated examples highly reliable.

Later in the same letter to Zelter, Mendelssohn continues to voice his disappointment with contemporary Italian culture: he laments that gondoliers no longer sing texts by the poet Tasso; criticizes modern painting as uninspired; dismisses contemporary architecture as tasteless; and complains of local pianists’ unfamiliarity with Beethoven’s works and their lack of appreciation for Mozart. As his journey continues, he will go on to criticize the design of Italian gardens and proclaim that the local orchestras are “worse than one could possibly imagine” (Mendelssohn to his family, 17 January 1831; ibid., letter no. 391).

In late October, on his way from Venice to Rome, Mendelssohn stopped in Florence. From there, he wrote to his family for about a week. Apart from some remarks on impressive Renaissance paintings, his letters focus largely on descriptions of the landscape and on his experiences hiking around the city. As was his habit, Mendelssohn ignored all contemporary artistic activity and indulged in nostalgia for Italy’s artistic past.

In his first letter from Rome, Mendelssohn recounts meeting Fortunato Santini, a monastery priest and passionate collector of early music. Santini’s deep appreciation for early German music flattered Mendelssohn, who, for the first time, felt that the music he sought to promote—particularly that of Bach—was being met with due regard by contemporary Italians. By the time of his second letter from Rome (8–9 November 1830), he had settled into his temporary residence at Piazza di Spagna no. 5 and had established a daily routine: composing in the morning and exploring the city in the afternoon, with the express goal of visiting at least one work of art or historical site each day.

Mendelssohn interwove the Italian Renaissance with the history of ancient Rome, listing the recent destinations of his afternoon walks: the ruins of the ancient city, the Borghese Gallery, the Capitoline Hill, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Vatican. Evenings were spent at social gatherings or reading contemporary English and French literature—a domain in which he took care to remain current with the latest trends. In his second letter from Rome, he describes his study, the fine Viennese piano at his disposal, and the portraits adorning the room, including those of Palestrina and Allegri—composers indelibly linked with Roman church music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

For Mendelssohn, traveling to Rome was tantamount to a journey into the past: “Just as Venice and its past seem to me like a gravestone \[...], so does Rome’s past appear to me as the very embodiment of history \[...]” (ibid., letter no. 367). With the same enthusiasm he displays in discussing Titian’s brushwork, he writes about the city’s ruins, noting: “The monuments \[of Rome] elevate the spirit, imparting solemnity and tranquility to the soul, and it is uplifting to think that a person may leave behind something which, even a thousand years later, continues to inspire and strengthen others” (ibid.). Joy and contentment permeate his letters from Rome—he reports feeling healthier than ever and describes his morning composition sessions as particularly fruitful and full of inspiration.

Mendelssohn's letters from the rest of November indicate that the social gatherings he attended gradually became more musical. At one gathering, which was pleasant to the mostly German audience, he played works by Bach and told of the re-premiere he had given of the Matthew Passion before setting off on his travels. Later in the month, he met the members of the papal choir at the home of the scholar and diplomat Christian von Bunsen, with whom he was on close terms. At this gathering, he heard the choir members sing works by Palestrina, outside their liturgical context. Mendelssohn was then asked to demonstrate his abilities to those present. Although he could juggle playing a virtuoso piece in a modern and fashionable style, Mendelssohn chose to improvise a work based on an archaic theme presented to him on the spot by Mariano Astolfi, the choir conductor. This kind of improvisation, based on a theme suggested by another person, is still considered a rare skill, even if only educated listeners can appreciate the full complexity of the result. Indeed, he later recounts that the choir singers began to call him "the incomparable little professor" (l'insuperabile professorone, Mendelssohn to his family, November 30, 1830, ibid., letter no. 374). Apart from further evidence that Mendelssohn was aware of his own worth, his story about the flattering nickname proves that intellectual complexity and the ability to improvise music in an ancient style were the artistic values perceived as central in the dialogue between Mendelssohn, Bach's knight, and the papal choir, the custodians of the musical tradition of Palestrina, Allegri, and the other composers who composed music for the Holy See in the Renaissance and Baroque. As fate would have it, Mendelssohn now had many opportunities to hear the choir, for on that very day Pope Pius VIII died, and the choir was charged with singing a funeral mass every day. Mendelssohn declared that he did not intend to miss a single one.

It is worth noting that not every composer who came to Rome at that time shared Mendelssohn’s curiosity about the past and his interest in the papal chapel choir and its traditional repertoire. The French composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) arrived in Rome two months after Mendelssohn, having won the Prix de Rome in 1829, with all his attention focused on new art. The prestigious Rome Prize, a scholarship from the Académie des Beaux-Arts, allowed artists (and, from 1803, composers) to practice their art for two years at the Villa Medici, home of the Académie de France à Rome. The exams for the prize consisted of two stages: the first stage tested the candidate's skills in the traditional contrapuntal style, including writing a fugue—an archaic genre that Mendelssohn extemporized during his encounter with the singers of the papal choir; those who passed this stage were invited to compose, as the second stage, a work in a modern style. In his memoirs, Berlioz happily recounts the two times he failed the second stage (1827 and 1828) because he was so modern that the conservative members of the Academy did not understand his works, but he does not mention his previous attempt to enter the competition in 1826, when his limited abilities in traditional counterpoint had already failed him in the first stage. In his writing about that period, Berlioz chooses to mock his counterpoint teachers at the Paris Conservatoire, Reicha and Lesueur, and the way they subjected themselves to the age-old rules of composition.

After meeting in Rome, the geniuses Berlioz and Mendelssohn quickly developed a complex attitude towards each other. On the one hand, they spent a lot of time together and walked together in the city; on the other hand, the abysmal differences between their artistic perceptions also led to mutual contempt. Berlioz, a tormented genius whose works (certainly during this period) were an escape for him from feelings of confusion and distress (including contemplated suicide), must have had difficulty accepting the fact that the works of his young friend Mendelssohn stemmed from feelings of health and happiness. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, testified that he had difficulty accepting Berlioz's sharp transitions from enthusiasm to extreme shyness, as well as the unusual orchestral compositions in their scope that he requested in order to describe ideas that were, in essence, autobiographical. Their testimonies indicate that they saw eye to eye on only one issue—their almost identical complaints about the local musicians' lack of familiarity with Mozart and Beethoven. Apart from this agreement that prevailed between them, Berlioz's memories of Rome provide a negative picture of the burst of inspiration it aroused in Mendelssohn. At the beginning of his memoirs of Rome, Berlioz writes that for a serious composer, life in Rome is "the saddest thing that can be" (Memoirs, Chapter 39, p. 153. The references are to the English edition) and that all the arts flourish in Rome except music. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, ignores contemporary art in Rome but is mesmerized by the artistic and musical past (as reflected in his description of the activities of the papal choir). While Mendelssohn gives a "cold" account of the size of the papal choir (32 singers when the choir is fully formed), Berlioz, who on the surface gives exactly the same number, does so disparagingly, comparing it to the 90 singers of the "Conservatoire" choir and emphasizing the incongruity between the small choir and the enormous dimensions of St. Peter's Basilica.

References to Fundamental Issues of Performance

The positions of Berlioz and Mendelssohn, which in most cases were polar opposites, extended beyond the realm of taste. Regarding their perception of the state of contemporary plastic art in Rome, their views were focused on a much more fundamental issue, namely the ideal of progress. The fashionable painters in Rome used to meet at the Café Greco, a few steps from Mendelssohn's residence. Berlioz, who claimed that contemporary art in Rome was actually thriving, was critical of the crowding, the stuffiness, and the bad food served there, but spoke enthusiastically of the local artists who frequented the place and of the foreign artists who sought to receive their letters there. While Berlioz clearly appreciated the group of regulars at the "Café Greco", Mendelssohn did not content himself with expressing contempt for their neglected appearance and the poor quality of their paintings, but focused his criticism on the artists' lack of understanding of the works of the past: "And so they drink coffee and talk about Titian and Pordenone, as if the latters were sitting there among them, bearded and wearing hats like them. Moreover, they paint such sickly Madonnas and feeble saints [...] that I feel like punching them. These diabolical critics do not shrink from the mere discussion of Titian's painting in the Vatican [...] and say that it has no subject and no meaning" (Mendelssohn to his father, December 10 and 11, 1830, see Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters, vol. 2, letter number 381). It is interesting that the image that Mendelssohn used in early October to describe the closeness he felt to the "masters" Giorgione and Pordenone, as if in his visit to the gallery in Venice he were visiting the past and getting to meet the artists in person, is here reversed. Mendelssohn likens the lack of understanding of the "Greco" painters, who criticize Titian and Pordenone, to the arrogance of the feeling that here the artists of the past are sitting with them in the present in the smoky, dark café.

There is, therefore, a sharp difference between Mendelssohn's openness to understanding the style of the past in the mirror of the culture that gave birth to it, and Berlioz's attempt to understand the style of the past against the backdrop of modern fashions. This difference between the ways of observation became more extreme in their relationship to music. Mendelssohn said of Palestrina's Improperia, the responsorial hymn sung on Good Friday and rebuking the Jews for their denial of Jesus, that it was the closest thing to perfection in the liturgy of this holiday. Berlioz, on the other hand, quotes a sample of notes from it to show that bestowing the title of "genius" on composers who "have wasted their lives in composing chord combinations such as the one taken from Palestrina's Improperia" (Memoirs, Chapter 39, p. 155) is nothing more than a joke. Even without entering into a discussion of Palestrina's level of composition, it is clear that Berlioz seeks to act like the artists at the "Caffè Greco" who criticized Titian, and to judge the Renaissance composer by romantic standards of genius and originality. Berlioz acknowledges Palestrina's contrapuntal abilities (which are essentially similar to Bach's strong point that Mendelssohn himself extols and develops), but refuses to see them as the essence of the musical work. According to Berlioz, the expression of emotion is the main thing and this "is not strengthened in the slightest if the work is written as a precise canon" (ibid., p. 156) - a defiance of the conventional view that the incorporation of precise canons in polyphonic works indicates polished compositional technique.

On 1 December 1830, immediately after the Pope's death, Mendelssohn writes a letter to Zelter containing technical descriptions and examples of the choir's singing style. The immediate incentive for writing another letter on 18 December was Zelter's birthday, and it does not add much information about the papal choir. But the letter he sent to Zelter six months later, on June 16, 1831, on the eve of his departure from Rome, is a treasure trove of information about the choir's activities during the Holy Week ceremonies. During that week, Mendelssohn planned to write Zelter a precise account of the entire course of the ceremonies (this is evident from a letter he wrote to his family in April 1831), but in the end he left for Naples and only got around to writing the letter more than two months later, based on draft notes and the strong impression left on him by the week, which, according to him, "I have forgotten nothing of, and will probably find it difficult to forget" (see Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters, vol. 2, letter no. 432). In these letters, Mendelssohn touches on the most essential points regarding his view of the past.

In a letter dated December 1, 1830, Mendelssohn raised no fewer than eight important points with Zelter regarding the conduct of the papal choir during his time: the choir conductor alternately strengthens the different voices; the choir does not employ children to sing the higher voices; the choir singers have a unique and powerful vocal production that, according to them, is passed down in the choir from generation to generation; they use traditional "ornamentations and frills" (Verzierungen und Trillerchen); they employ techniques of improvised polyphony; their pronunciation of words (diction) is unclear; in solo passages, each singer chooses a comfortable scale for himself without considering the passages sung before or after him; In addition, he listed the works sung in the last ceremonies by Giuseppe Baini (1775–1844), Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni (1657–1743), and of course Palestrina and Allegri.

Mendelssohn mentions the four composers—Baini, Pitoni, Palestrina, and Allegri—in succession, even though they are composers from different periods: Palestrina died in 1595, while Baini, a senior member of the papal choir, was still active at the time of Mendelssohn's visit. Allegri, Pitoni, and Baini, although they were later than Palestrina, preserved in their works many characteristics of Palestrina's style of sacred music, and the more they were chronologically distant from Palestrina, the more their choice to adhere to the Renaissance style made them anachronistic and unoriginal in the eyes of composers who held a modernist view. In Baini's case, this unsympathetic view even characterizes the writing of scholars today. An entry about him in the New Grove Dictionary (Grove Music Online: Oxford Music Online), one of the main reference tools in musicology today, states that "his remoteness and conservatism [...] influenced his own music, which tended towards anachronism and the impossible recovery of the past. For these reasons Baini did not understand the music of his time [...]" (see the entry "Baini, Giuseppe"). While Berlioz does not mention Baini (and may have thought that all the composers whose works he heard in the Sistine Chapel were from previous generations), Mendelssohn had met Baini personally only two weeks earlier, and was therefore aware of the fact that the stylistic unity in the repertoire of the papal choir stems from anachronism by choice. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this choice became a real ideology, and the extreme conservatism of the composers of the papal chapel became a model for the composers of the Cecilian associations (Caecilien-Bündnisse) in the Catholic regions of the German-speaking world - associations of church musicians who sought to return church music to the purity that characterized the period of the "Council of Trent" (Concilium Tridentinum). This process parallels, as mentioned, the rise of the historicist concept in German culture, so that the apparent anachronism in the musical repertoire of the papal choir constitutes a kind of touchstone for Mendelssohn's historicist concept. The Protestant Mendelssohn's silence regarding conservatism, which was often perceived as defiant, suggests that he accepted, at least to some extent, the violation of the value of originality in the name of the role that music was supposed to play.

Mendelssohn paid attention to the types of voices participating in the choir, and his remark that it did not employ boys suggests that the high voices were sung by low-voiced singers who, in addition to their natural voices, had developed a vocal production suitable for high singing (falsetto). Alternatively, they may have been castrated in their youth (castrati), who were employed in the papal chapel until the end of the nineteenth century, and whose vocal production remained as high as that of boys. The choirs that Mendelssohn used to hear in Germany, in which the high voices were sung by women, sounded very different. Another and equally important point is the choir's use of "curls", especially in light of the claim that these were passed down in the form of oral tradition from one generation of choir singers to the next. This oral transmission gave the Papal Chapel Choir a central part of its prestige, for several reasons: first, it was essentially analogous to the source of the papal institution’s dynastic authority. Second, it created a dependency between physical presence in Rome during Holy Week and listening to the choir’s unique repertoire (hence the “danger” inherent in the young Mozart’s transcription demonstration – it enabled the preservation and dissemination of Allegri’s Miserere in writing and at all times). Third, the transmission gave a select group of 32 singers exclusive control over the local, elaborate singing tradition.

The idea that an oral tradition authentically preserves an ancient source is a controversial one, and here too Mendelssohn and Berlioz stand on opposite sides of the fence. Berlioz, referring to the singing tradition of the papal choir, claims that "a musician will find in the music of the past, as transmitted without change in its style and form, the same interest that the painter finds in the frescoes of Pompeii" (Memoirs, Chapter 39, p. 155). At the heart of this claim is the rather naive assumption that music of the past is transmitted orally "without change in its style and form," and Mendelssohn completely rejects this idea. Initially, Mendelssohn attempts to treat that "authentic" source critically and dates the style of the decorations to the eighteenth century. In doing so, he does leave room for the very existence of a tradition, even if not as long-standing as claimed. Alternatively, Mendelssohn seems willing to recognize a tradition that began in the days of Palestrina in the sixteenth century, but has changed and now bears, among other things, the stamp of the eighteenth century. This conception of tradition is already much more complex and distinguishes between different layers that change the original, add to it, or subtract from it. In the following months, as Mendelssohn deepens his acquaintance with the choir, he becomes more skeptical about the approach itself, and in his last letter to Zelter he writes that he does not believe in the traditional claim at all and that musical tradition is in any case a bad thing.

Perhaps the most fascinating passage on this subject is the one dealing with the flagship of the Papal Choir’s repertoire—Allegri’s Miserere—the very piece that the young Mozart famously transcribed 61 years earlier. The Miserere challenges the Romantic concept of the “work” not only because it preserves layers of transmission and improvisational practices, but also because for over a century after its composition, it was not disseminated in written form beyond the circles of the Papal Choir. This piece constitutes the most complex case Mendelssohn addresses in his discussion of “ornamentation,” and he approaches it in an original manner: he transcribes a section of the piece, identifies elements he believes to be later additions, and offers a reconstructed version resembling an Urtext—that is, a hypothetical original form of the composition (see Example 1).

Example 1 - A cadence typical of the papal chapel repertoire, based on Mendelssohn's transcription (see Letter No. 432). The example creates a synthesis between two adjacent note examples that Mendelssohn appends to his letter and emphasizes the distinction between what Mendelssohn actually heard (in large typeface) and those elements that distinguish the "Urtext" (in small typeface – two staves marked as "presumed source").

Although by 1831 it was already possible to access (conflicting) sources of the work and to undertake a philological inquiry based on concrete materials, Mendelssohn sketches the outlines of such an investigation based solely on auditory evidence. He even proposes a hypothesis concerning the motivation behind the added ornamentation: in his view, one of the choir’s past directors sought to showcase the capabilities of the ensemble’s high voices. Analysis of Example 1 shows that Mendelssohn identified the upper choral voice in the section (exceptionally high, requiring boys or castrati) as originally a lower voice, suggesting that its transformation into an “angelic” register was itself part of the work’s historical evolution. This may also explain Mendelssohn’s particular curiosity about the types of singers and vocal timbres present in the choir.

Incidental to this, Mendelssohn introduces a conceptual separation between the composer’s creative layer on the one hand, and generations of performers on the other. His emphasis on the processes of transformation in the hands of anonymous performers—rather than on the recovery of the *urtext* associated with Allegri himself—reflects a view not strictly beholden to the Romantic ideal of the "genius" who inscribes every detail in the score, leaving minimal interpretative freedom to performers. Mendelssohn expresses a related idea in his visit to the Roman ruins: observing a thousand-year-old artwork whose creator is lost to time, he describes the experience as a sober and unprejudiced one—contrasting it with the modern Romans’ tendency to judge art by the fame of its creator.

Mendelssohn’s analysis of the *Miserere*’s process of transmission and transformation demands considerable conceptual flexibility and an effort to understand decentralized modes of creativity (composer, choir director, performer)—very different from his own compositional practices during his morning routines at 5 Piazza di Spagna. Mendelssohn himself expected his performers to execute his works without ornamentation, alteration, or improvisation.

Another noteworthy point is his insistence on understanding music within its original context—whether liturgical or physical. Mendelssohn remarked that during the papal funeral rites, “the choir did not sing particularly well, the compositions were poor, the audience was not devout, and yet the overall effect was heavenly” (Mendelssohn to Zelter, 18 December 1830, *Letters from Mendelssohn’s Journey*, Letter 383). At nearly the same time, Mendelssohn reached a similar conclusion while listening to French nuns sing at the church of Trinità dei Monti. There, despite the banality of the composition and the poor organ playing, the sacred atmosphere at sunset and the sweet voices of the unseen nuns impressed him so deeply that he immediately composed a piece for them. Surprised at his own openness to inspiration without the stimulus of a “masterpiece,” he declared: “I thank God that I am becoming rather tolerant” (Mendelssohn to his family, 20 December 1830, ibid., Letter 384).

Berlioz, for his part, cites a German critic who expressed a similar view regarding the strong impression left by a performance of Palestrina’s *Improperia* before the cardinals during Holy Week. Yet Berlioz ultimately chooses to “isolate” the musical work from its compelling context and underscore its failure to pass the test of inspiration and genius.

Meeting Signor Mendelssohn and Seeking His Counsel

Although Mendelssohn’s Italian journey resembled the format of the aristocratic “Grand Tour,” it is clear that he worked intensely throughout the trip and completed several of his greatest compositions during this period. From an intellectual standpoint as well, Mendelssohn did not content himself with exploring the ruins of the Roman Empire but undertook a deeper inquiry into the roots of the relationship between the cultured individual and the historical past. In this sense, his journey can be seen not as a voyage to Italy, but rather as a journey toward the “embodiment of history.” His engagement with the past—expressed directly and sincerely in letters to his family and to Zelter—adds crucial dimensions to his intellectual profile, especially for those musicians and scholars who, in the present-day debates between “traditional” and “historically informed” performance practices, might seek Mendelssohn’s own advice.

Just as Mendelssohn wished to “meet the gentlemen Giorgione and Pordenone” as directly as possible, so too do present-day performers seek to “meet Mr. Mendelssohn” and consult him. Ironically, Mendelssohn’s pivotal role in the revival of Bach’s music has led both performance schools to claim him as their own. His 1829 revival of the *St. Matthew Passion* is cited by historically informed performers as a key precedent in the restoration of Baroque works. They appropriate this event precisely because Mendelssohn stands chronologically at the heart of the "traditional" era, because his own compositions are typically performed only by members of the traditional school, and because his veneration of Bach serves as an endorsement of Baroque music’s artistic merit.

The traditionalists, by contrast, emphasize that Mendelssohn did not hesitate to adapt Bach’s century-old work to suit a 19th-century audience: the orchestration was expanded with modern instruments, sections were omitted, the acoustics were changed from church to concert hall, and most significantly—the work’s original liturgical function as the climax of Lutheran Holy Week observances was fundamentally altered when it became part of a ticketed public concert repertoire.

Since the event occurred near the Mendelssohn family home in Berlin, his letters do not offer a direct account of his views on the very issues that would later become central to the rift between the traditional and historically informed camps. Thus, the Italian letters help fill in the gaps. The most significant record we possess concerning Mendelssohn’s approach to the *Passion* performance is the memoir of his friend (and performance collaborator) Eduard Devrient (1801–1877), published forty years after the event. Devrient’s account reveals not only Zelter’s deep skepticism about the ambitious project, but also that Zelter’s initial resistance stemmed—beyond the logistical challenge of assembling a large enough ensemble—from precisely those concerns related to the original context of performance. According to Zelter, a proper rendering required a choir comparable to the one for which the work was originally composed.

Moreover, if Devrient’s recollection is accurate, Zelter was even more exacting, believing that only the specific performing conditions available to Bach—namely, the choir of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig—made an authentic performance possible. Zelter’s second objection is no less telling: he claimed that “today’s violinists” were no longer capable of performing such music. Zelter, undoubtedly aware that violin technique (in terms of speed, range, and expectations of the average orchestral player) had developed significantly since Bach’s time, understood that a "correct" performance of the work involved more than technical facility—it required stylistic understanding. In other words, Zelter—who was born only eight years after Bach’s death—already perceived a rupture in Germany’s violin tradition over the course of the hundred years separating Bach’s Passion from his own era.

Mendelssohn likely absorbed from Zelter this sensitivity to the precise makeup of a choir, to vocal production and voice types, and most importantly, to the continuity of performance traditions—principles he would apply, day after day, in his critical listening to the Papal Choir in Rome. Mendelssohn similarly identified a rupture between contemporary Italian art—represented by the bearded painters smoking at the Caffè Greco—and its Renaissance heritage.

Mendelssohn sought to avoid such a rupture. He tried to understand works through the correct historical lens and refrained from judging a musical composition autonomously, in isolation from its broader context (just as he avoided judging architecture or religious ritual independently). He rejected the notion of a fixed “tradition” linking him reliably and unchanged to the past; rather, he sought to deconstruct the dynamic tradition in order to reach the *urtext*. In this respect, Mendelssohn anticipates ways of thinking that would only fully mature many decades later in historically informed performance practice. Naturally, some of his views—as expressed in his letters—are too nuanced to allow for a single interpretation: for instance, his sense of liberation upon not knowing the name of a long-deceased artist seems to oppose the cult of the “genius” (a historically informed view), yet in the same passage, Mendelssohn disparages scholarly analysis of the artwork’s style or historical context and calls instead for judgment based solely on its impact on the viewer (a more traditional stance).

Mendelssohn was certainly not "historically-informed" in the sense accepted today, and he most likely felt no need to apologize when he played Bach's keyboard music on the piano rather than the harpsichord, whether during the trip or at home. It is also difficult to say what he would say if he met a pianist who still insists today, in the name of historical fidelity, on playing the works he himself composed during his stay in Rome on the very same "good Viennese piano" that was in the apartment at Piazza di Spagna No. 5 (the pianos in Mendelssohn's time were quite different from those found in concert halls today). However, the descriptions that appear in Mendelssohn's letters from the trip to Italy raise, at the very least, the possibility that Mendelssohn would have identified with the principle that one should pay homage to the past, and that the observer or listener has a duty to make the effort and understand the work in its historical and social context. And as for musical traditions, as Mendelssohn suspected and contrary to Berlioz’s opinion, it is clear that they have continued to change and continue to change. Allegri’s Miserere is still one of the most beloved and recorded works in the field of church music, but in a version quite different from the one that Mendelssohn heard (musicology seems to have adopted the Mendelssonian way of thinking, as scholars still struggle with the complex delivery of this work). The historically informed approach has also continued to advance in unexpected directions, and today one can find recordings of performances that attempt to reconstruct (in a historically informed manner) the St. Matthew Passion with the same changes that Mendelssohn introduced about a century after the work was composed—everything that was historically flawed in Mendelssohn’s performance is now being made a model for historically informed reconstruction by curious performers.

The basic assumptions underlying Mendelssohn's views, as he formulated them in Italy, are close to those later adopted by the proponents of the "historically informed" view and rejected by the proponents of the "traditional" view. It can be said that this line of thought of Mendelssohn, which differs from that of Berlioz or others of their time, joins other aspects that made it difficult for him to enter the Romantic pantheon: his Jewish origin, the wealth he enjoyed since childhood, the normative family life he led, the recognition and success he achieved during his lifetime. But the simplicity of his life story does not make his thought simplistic. On the contrary, his letters indicate that his approach to the music of the past was far too complex to make his recruitment to one side of the performance polemic obvious. Both perspectives, the traditional and the historically informed, should learn from Mendelssohn precisely the complexity of the issue, and the caution with which questions of precedence, the continuity of tradition, and understanding the historical and cultural context of the work of art should be approached.