Born in 1809, Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn was a great champion of Baroque music. He studied the music of J. S. Bach as a child, and his early works—particularly his keyboard music and twelve string symphonies—strongly reveal this influence. Mendelssohn wasn’t the only Romantic composer who felt an affinity with Bach. The notion that Bach’s music expressed something beyond words—something innately Romantic—was not uncommon in the nineteenth century. As writer E. T. A. Hoffmann put it, “There are moments—above all when I have been reading for a long time in the works of the great Sebastian Bach—in which the numerical relationships of music, indeed the mystical rules of counterpoint, awaken in me an inward terror.” In 1829, Mendelssohn encouraged the Berlin Singakademie to mount a public performance of the Passion According to St. Matthew, the first since Bach’s death. As the conductor and primary instigator of the event, Mendelssohn is usually credited with the work’s revival. Mendelssohn was similarly enthusiastic about Handel, and in 1833 opened the Lower Rhein Music Festival with a new edition of Israel in Egypt prepared from the original manuscript in London’s Royal Music Library.   

After conducting the St. Matthew Passion, Mendelssohn began a grand European tour. In 1831 he reached Italy and wrote to his family, “This is Italy! And now has begun what I have always thought...to be the supreme joy in life. And I am loving it. Today was so rich that now, in the evening, I must collect myself a little, and so I am writing to you to thank you, dear parents, for having given me all this happiness.” By the end of his stay, Mendelssohn wasn’t quite as impressed with the country; as he put it, “The fortunate circumstances which formerly made [Italy] a country of arts seem to have ceased and arts with them.” He ultimately concluded that while “Italy was a land of art, …[with] life and beauty everywhere,” Germany was the “land of the artist.” Mendelssohn’s mixed review is captured perfectly in the Symphony No. 4 in A Major, also known as the Italian. The opening Allegro vivace is full of irrepressible joy, while the somber Andante that follows was inspired by chant-filled religious processions Mendelssohn witnessed in Naples or Rome. In the style of a stately minuet, the third movement sets the stage for the raucous conclusion—a frenzied saltarello modeled on folk dances heard in Rome (the movement also features a tarantella, a southern Italian dance associated with a tarantula’s bite). Interestingly, the Italian Symphony begins in the major mode but ends in the minor—perhaps mirroring Mendelssohn’s conflicted response to the country.