Incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Wedding March

The Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the wonders of the musical world. It is scarcely less miraculous that, at exactly twice the age he was when he wrote the Overture, Mendelssohn was able to recapture his youthful inspiration and provide equally enchanting incidental music for a production of Shakespeare’s play in Potsdam in 1843. While some of it could conceivably have been written by the teenage composer, some of it could not. The Scherzo, for example, clearly inhabits the same world as the Overture. Intended to introduce the second act of the play, it matches the lines

Over hill, over dale,

Through bush, through brier

Over park, over pale,

Through flood, through fire

I do wander everywhere

with its delicately articulated thematic material flitting without pause for breath through a masterfully sustained burst of elfin activity. The Notturno, on the other hand, is a mature inspiration that would surely have been beyond the imagination of the teenage composer. At the end of the third act, as the four mixed-up lovers fall unhappily asleep, Puck administers the magic juice that will put things and prove on their waking that

Jack shall have Jill;

Nought shall go ill.

So, anticipating the happy ending, Mendelssohn offers a serene piece of night music with one of the loveliest horn solos in the romantic repertoire briefly but realistically interrupted by a harmonically uneasy episode in the middle.

The Wedding March is so often heard out of context that it is easy to forget how well conceived it is for its Shakespearian context, with nothing at all pompous or sentimental about it. The opening fanfare is lightly scored for trumpets without the horns and trombones that make their first entry with the main march tune, which is itself cheerfully brisk rather than imposing just as the middle section is quietly thoughtful rather than sanctimonious.