A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61

The Overture opens with four soft, sustained woodwind chords, a kind of curtain-raising spell, before scurrying violins introduce the fairies who rule the forest. Listen for a braying figure low in the strings, Mendelssohn's joke for the weaver Bottom after he is given a donkey's head, and a broad, singing theme for the young lovers whose confusions drive the plot.

The Scherzo dances by on quick, light strings and chattering woodwinds, music for fairies flitting between scenes. The Nocturne slows everything down: a long, calm horn melody floats over hushed strings, a moment of stillness before the play's tangled love plot resolves. The Wedding March then arrives with brass fanfares and a stepping, ceremonial tune, written for a stage wedding but now heard everywhere from concert halls to actual weddings. A closing Finale brings back music from the Overture, tying the whole work together before the fairies have the last, quiet word.

Most concert performances play a selection of these movements rather than the full seventy-minute score with its spoken text, so the order and number of pieces heard can vary from one concert to the next.

Mendelssohn wrote the Overture alone in 1826, at seventeen, inspired by reading Shakespeare's play in German translation. Sixteen years later, in 1843, King Frederick William IV of Prussia commissioned him to compose the rest of the incidental music for a production in Potsdam, and Mendelssohn added the Scherzo, Nocturne, Wedding March, Finale, and other numbers to fit around his youthful overture, matching its style so closely that listeners cannot hear the gap of years between them. The Potsdam premiere in 1843 was a success, and the Wedding March in particular soon left the theater behind, becoming a fixture at weddings after it was played at a royal wedding in England in 1858. Orchestras today usually perform a concert selection of the movements rather than the complete incidental score.