But it is Mendelssohn whose place in this field is unrivalled. His ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, written when he was seventeen, has a place on modern concert programs analogous to that of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ This work is equally the delight of the musical purist and of the untechnical music-lover. It is marked by all Mendelssohn’s finest qualities. Not a measure of it is slipshod or lacking in distinction. Its scoring is deft in the extreme. Its themes are fresh and charming. And upon it all is the polish in which Mendelssohn excelled; no note seems out of place, and none, one feels, could be otherwise than as it is. It is mildly descriptive--as descriptive as Mendelssohn ever was. The three groups of characters in Shakespeare’s play are there--the fairies, the love-stricken mortals, and the rude mechanicals--each with its characteristic melody. The opening chords, high in the wood-wind, set the fanciful tone of the whole. For deft adaptation of the means to the end it has rarely been surpassed in all music. In his other overtures Mendelssohn is even less descriptive, being content to catch the dominant mood of the subject and transmit it into tone in the sonata form. ‘Fingal’s Cave,’ the chief theme of which occurred to him and was noted down on the supposed scene of its subject in Scotland, is equally picturesque in its subject matter, but lacks the buoyant invention of its predecessor. The ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ is a masterpiece of restraint. The technical means are exceedingly simple, for in his effort to paint the reigning quiet of his theme Mendelssohn dwells inordinately upon the pure tonic chord. Yet the work never lacks its composer’s customary freshness or sense of perfect proportion. His fourth overture--‘To the Story of the Lovely Melusina’--is only second to the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in popularity. In these works Mendelssohn is at his best; only the ‘Elijah’ and the violin concerto equally deserve long life and frequent repetition. For the overtures best show Mendelssohn the synthesist. In them he has caught absolutely the more refined spirit of romanticism, with its emphasis on tone coloring and its association of literary ideas, and has developed it in a classic mold as perfect as anything in music. Nowhere else do the dominating musical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries come to such an amicable meeting ground. IV