Talk:Elijah, Op. 70 (Felix Mendelssohn)

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I've created this page to be a central place to link off to the individual movements of the oratorio. I do have one problem, however, and that is that I don't speak German! Would someone care to translate "Engel-terzett: Hebe deine Augen" for me? It is one of the movements in the original German, I know that much, but I don't know which one. Thanks in advance. Bobnotts 17:35, 14 February 2007 (PST)

The translation is roughly "Angel trio - Lift thine eyes" (to the mountains), and is #28 in your movement list. -- ChuckGiffen 10:46, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Page names

I'm not entirely sure how we should name the pages of individual movements of Elijah... according to the Wikipedia article:

"Mendelssohn originally composed the work to a German text, but upon being commissioned by the Birmingham Festival to write an oratorio, he had the libretto translated into English, and the oratorio was premiered in the English version. In German speaking countries today, the oratorio is very popular in Mendelssohn's original German version."

Which should we go for? Mendelssohn's clear preference of German or the first performed version in English? --Bobnotts talk 20:54, 4 October 2007 (PDT)

Why not numbers? They are the same in both languages. According to to the wiki article that you cite, Mendelssohn himself was responsible for the English translation. Add to that, the fact that wiki pages for mendelssohn are in English, and I see no problem with using English. I would think that the important point is whether people, who speak a variety of languages, can find the items that they are seeking.--Jennings 03:40, 6 October 2007 (PDT)

p. s. Hmmm...the date stamp looks wrong. It is now about 10:45 Pacific Daylight Time

I don’t mind to see English page names. It is more important that we have the lists bilingual—at least for those works been published in both languages (not only Elijah/Elias). CPDL is accessible worldwide, so we should prefer English titles when such works have been translated on behalf of the composer (and we’re not sure which language he’d preferred). Website visitors usually make use of available search functions first: then the results should display German titles, too. I’m going to upload another edition of No. 28, and I’ll format the list item as a specimen we could apply to the entire list later on. —Robert Urmann 01:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you make valid points, but when I look at the result it looks cumbersome to me (e. g. there are two separate links, but both link to the same page). Also, why did you give the voicing in Italian? What do you think about creating a separate page for Elias/Elijah entirely in German? The links to the pages for the individual movements could, of course, be the same for both pages. Jennings 03:34, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Dear James, I agree that the current solution combining English and German titles in a single list item is not the best one (that’s why I wrote it could be applied). Of course, they have to direct to the same pages, and when you follow the link to #28 you’ll find bilingual titling. An alternative could be a single link formatted like English title [German title], which in many cases stretches over the entire browser window width and/or starts a new line (almost surely unpredictable). An additional page in German could be created quickly, but that means to maintain both pages in the future. I wouldn’t mind to have one large page including all movements (like Johannespassion). This list will be as extensive as St John Passion, but all would be in the right place.

Voicing/movements in Italian: that’s according to Mendelssohn. In my opinion it’s distinctive musical language like dynamics or tempi, and I thought it looked better like all of a piece. —Robert Urmann 02:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)