jan 1, 1829 - Mendelssohn conducts St. Matthew Passion

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Immensely significant cultural moment, which spawned the Bach revival movement. This happened because Mendelssohn was a student of Carl Friedrich Zelter, into whose possession Bach's colorful manuscript came. The rediscovery placed Bach in a new context, one in which the aspects of his style that had led to his temporary eclipse could now be prized: its complexity, its conservatism, its uncompromising religiosity, its sharpness. These features that had caused his music to be dismissed by some critics during his lifetime as showing an "excess of art" and a "turgid and confused style" could now be held up as a model for emulation. The conditions that brought about this change in Bach's status had a great deal to do with the blossoming of Romanticism, to which we will return in Chapters 19-20.

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