motet notes - Mendelssohn

The works generally known today with German texts as Felix Mendelssohn’s Drei Motetten, Op. 69, are patently English in their conception and creation. Their history dates back to 1832, when the London publisher Vincent Novello invited Mendelssohn to compose music for the Morning and Evening Services of the Anglican liturgy. Although he completed a setting of the Te Deum in response to this invitation, his characteristic self-doubts led him to suppress it for thirteen years. In 1846, he offered an overhauled version of the work to his publisher specifying that it was to be published in England only. The work was finally published in 1847.  Mendelssohn’s untimely death in November of 1847 meant he never heard them performed.  However, the Nunc dimittis from the German version was performed at the Gewandhaus’s memorial concert for Mendelssohn on 11 November 1847.

Traditionally sung at evensong, the "Nunc Dimittis" is the joyful Song of Simeon after he has seen the infant Jesus at temple.  Mendelssohn had a passion for the music of previous ages and his appreciation of Bach and Handel is well known. But Mendelssohn also adored the music of earlier composers like Allegri and Lotti, and that influence appears in the clarity and transparency of his music.

The "Nunc dimittis" explores theme of divinely granted peace, and is musically distinctive through Mendelssohn’s opening exploration of canonic techniques. The staggered vocal entrances at the fifth and octave clearly recall the long and venerable tradition (dating back to the Renaissance) of sacred composition. Mendelssohn’s canonic technique is developed in all four voices of the choir from the very opening, allowing him to weave a complex yet delicate contrapuntal fabric throughout, punctuated with occasional moments of solo singing and homophonic declamation, as in the Doxology with which the work closes.

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