ISBN 9790006534876. With Language: German/English, Text language: German/English. 27.0 x 19.0 cm inches.
During the summer of 1799, Goethe wrote his ballad Die erste Walpurgisnachtand asked his friend Carl Friedrich Zelter to set the work to music. Zelter however felt unable to do this, and so Goethe's wish was only realized thirty years later by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The "heavenly words" of the pagan ballad had impressed and inspired the composer very much during a visit to Weimar. In 1832 the composition took shape and was performed a year later in the Sing-Akademie in Berlin. Mendelssohn was, however, unhappy with the first version of the work and held it back, until he decided on a radical revision ten years after the premiere.Die erste Walpurgisnacht was first performed in 1843 in Leipzig, in the presence of Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz, in the form in which the work is still performed today.
