Incidental Music to ' A Midsummer Night's
Dream ' : Overture ; Nocturne ; Scherzo ; Wedding March
WHEN Mendelssohn was a boy of seventeen he wrote an Overture to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream which wonderfully caught the spirit of the Comedy. Seventeen years later lie wrote Incidental Music to the play. The Nocturne is called for by Titania to lull to sleep the poor, weary mortals, victims of the fairies' tricks.
The delicious Scherzo, the Prelude to the Second Act, aptly suits the pranks of Puck and the dainty train of sprites, whom, in this Act, the Queen sends on their duties.
The other famous extract, the Wedding March, is played for the marriages of the three pairs of lovers, when all their troubles (or shall we say their pre-marital troubles ?) are ended.