One of the most accomplished organists of his day, Mendelssohn had begun studying organ at the age of eleven with August Wilhelm Bach (not a descendent of J. S. Bach). This was in addition to his lessons in piano, violin, drawing, painting, Latin and Greek (and other languages), music theory, and general studies, as well as gymnastics, swimming, horseback riding, dancing, and chess—all of which showed his prodigious talents.

A few of Mendelssohn’s great organ highlights include improvising on the St. Paul’s Cathedral organ when he was in London in 1833 to premiere his Italian Symphony and in 1837 completing his three organ Preludes and Fugues, op. 37. He performed organ works by Bach at the Birmingham Festival, when he also premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 and conducted a performance of his oratorio St. Paul. Then in 1840 he gave a challenging concert of Bach’s organ works at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to raise funds for a new Bach monument. He also began drafting the pieces that would become the six Organ Sonatas, op 65. He completed the first in F minor on December 28, 1844, and the other five by January 1845.

Mendelssohn wrote to the publisher Coventry that he considered these sonatas a “kind of Organ-school” and to Breitkopf & Härtel that they represented his personal way of handling the organ. They are all very representative of his adoration of Bach in their use of chorales and fugues. At the same time, in their varied movements, they show Mendelssohn’s interest in contemporary styles of writing, such as song and Lieder ohne Worte (songs without words), while eschewing the usual sonata forms and also refecting his penchant for improvisation.

Sonata No. 1 unfolds in four innovative movements—the first full of contrasts including an exordium for full organ, a fugato over organ pedal point, the calm introduction of the chorale Was mein Gott will, das ich g’scheh allzeit alternating with strains of a fugue, the fugue in mirror inversion, the mirror combined with the original, and finally a return to the chorale. The unusual form may have been inspired by a recitative in the same key in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (No. 25), in which Jesus’ agitated utterances alternate with a chorale. The second movement sounds like a song without words, the third like a recitative, and the fourth a fantasia-like movement with virtuosic toccata elements that may have arisen in Mendelssohn’s imaginative improvisations at the organ.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe