No. 1 of the 3 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37.
Felix Mendelssohn was an accomplished organist, and he composed several dozen organ pieces of one kind or another throughout his short life. Only two Mendelssohn organ items, however, are of real weight and significance, and, not coincidentally, they are the only two organ items to which opus numbers were applied: the masterly Six Sonatas, Op. 65, of 1845 and the perhaps more frequently played Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37, published eight years before that. With the exception of some very early pieces (1820 - 1823), all of Mendelssohn's other organ works were composed in the near vicinity of one or the other of these two important volumes, and seem to be either preparatory work -- exercises, in a sense -- done before Op. 37 or Op. 65, or extra thoughts and material left over after their completion. Op. 37 contains some of Mendelssohn's most very traditional-minded music; we read "prelude and fugue" and we think J.S. Bach, and it seems that so, too, did Mendelssohn. The spirit of the great Leipzig master positively oozes from the pages of Op. 37, and yet Mendelssohn's own technical skills, and, in the end, whatever his detractors might say, strength of personality (a mild-mannered, ingratiating, inoffensive personality is, after all, still a personality), are so great that one sometimes doesn't even notice the retrospective qualities of the work.
The three prelude-fugue pairs in Op. 37 are in C minor, G major, and D minor. Though the work was published in 1837, some of the music began to take shape as early as 1833 during a visit -- one of many -- the composer made to England. Mendelssohn had become acquainted with the English organist Thomas Attwood, and the seeds of the fugues of Op. 37, No. 1 and Op. 37, No. 3 were planted in some improvisations that Mendelssohn did at Attwood's encouragement. The other fugue, that in G major of Op. 37, No. 2, was written in 1836. All three of the preludes were composed in early April 1837, and later in the year the whole bunch of six pieces was printed with a dedication to Attwood. (AllMusic)
Organist : Peter Hurford
