Examining Mendelssohn, Protestant Music

For two decades, Siegwart ‘Zig’ Reichwald, Westmont’s Adams professor of music and worship, engrossed himself in the sacred music of German composer and performer Felix Mendelssohn. But when he came to his works written for the Berlin Cathedral in 1843-44, he was struck by how unusual they were compared to the rest of Mendelssohn’s musical creations.

“Unlike his other sacred works, these pieces have liturgical function and purpose,” Reichwald says. “The purpose was to help establish a new liturgy for German Protestantism and their function was to lead the congregation into deeper worship, both intellectually and emotionally.”

Reichwald’s new book, Mendelssohn and the Genesis of the Protestant A Cappella Movement, is part of the Cambridge Elements Series targeted broadly to musicologists, historians, and theologians.

While most deemed Mendelssohn’s brief stint as director of Prussian church music as inconsequential, Reichwald has reevaluated 25 compositions for the Berlin Cathedral that offer a different narrative. “This book tells that story and presents a missing link in our understanding of the rise of the Protestant a cappella movement,” he says. “It’s the first study that places any of his works within their very specific theological and liturgical contexts.”