om Goethe's Walpurgis-night Dream in 'Faust':

'Floating cloud and trailing mist
Bright'ning o'er us hover;
Airs stir the brake, the rushes shake--
And all their pomp is over.'

We are reminded of this in the last part, where 'the first violin
takes a flight with a feather-like lightness, and all has vanished.'

But if the Octet serves to mark a distinct stage in the development of
Mendelssohn's genius, what are we to say of the work which followed
it? Several things had paved the way for this new composition. To
begin with, Felix and Fanny made their first acquaintance with
Shakespeare in this year through the medium of a German translation,
and they fell completely under the spell of 'A Midsummer Night's
Dream.' Then the summer proved to be an exceptionally fine one, and
led to many hours being spent in the beautiful garden--in fact, there
is no doubt that the garden began it. It is not difficult to imagine
how the romantic mind of Felix was stirred by reading this delightful
fairy play amidst such charming surroundings. To read thus was to
picture in music, to give a musical setting to both scene and action,
at first indefinite, shadowy, suggestive, but as reading and thinking
progressed, growing ever stronger and more clearly defined. Thus,
stretched upon the turf, book in hand, the silence broken only by the
singing of the birds and the humming of the bees, the music of the
Overture to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' gradually shaped itself in
Mendelssohn's mind, until what at the beginning had in itself been
little more than a dream, became a tangible creation.

When the Overture had been written down, it was frequently played by
Felix and Fanny as a duet. In this simple form Moscheles heard it for
the first time, and he was struck by the force of its beauty. The work
was elaborated and perfected by degrees, until the day arrived when it
was performed by the garden-house orchestra before a crowded audience.
So great was the reception accorded to the overture on this occasion
that in the February following Felix journeyed to Stettin to conduct
the first public performance.

When we listen to this beautiful work, we are constrained to admit
that no happier introduction to the play could have been devised; for
just as the play itself seems to demand for its environment some
lovely garden or woodland glade, so Mendelssohn's music conjures up
visions of the fairy scenes of enchantment with which t