It is sad to read about Chopin's fears regarding his religious faith and, perhaps, the turbulence in his music. The devout music of César Franck from later in the century would surely have been an assuagement to him.

Quote from Daniel Gregory Mason's From Grieg to Brahms (1903):

An antithesis of artistic product and of personal character exists in a peculiar degree between Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, the two greatest composers France has produced since Bizet. Each of these men is great by virtue of qualities somewhat wanting in the other. The one is clever, worldly, learned - and a little superficial; the other, profound, religious, of singularly pure and exalted spirit, is yet emotional to the verge of abnormality. And so with their music; that of Saint-Saëns is energetic, lucid, consummately wrought, while Franck's, more moving and more subtle, is so surcharged with feeling as to become vague and inarticulate.

Would this criticism of Franck, at least in a volume as scholarly as Mason's, have ever been made of Chopin? Or is this another instance where, as in the case with Mendelssohn, a composer's perceived conservatism (in view of certain trends) renders him more vulnerable to critics?

In short, the critical dialogue about Mendelssohn may, generally speaking, involve far too much reliance on easy descriptive terms carrying historical baggage and deserving to be questioned. The Wikipedia entry on Mendelssohn says, "His essentially conservative musical tastes... set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz." This statement clearly frames the trajectory of 19th century aesthetics around the particular adventure(s) of these composers. Judged in terms of this trajectory, Mendelssohn's music is said to have been "essentially conservative."

Mendelssohn's music, however, is not like that of Beethoven, not like that of Mozart. It is precisely this distance, this [ad]venture (one that fits squarely, by the way, in the larger historical picture with regard to early romanticism), that deserves judgement apart from these comparisons to particular contemporaries.

I have run into a number of instances of the use of the word "puritanical" in writings about Mendelssohn (in one instance relating to the fact that he did not like the Victor Hugo play for which he wrote the Ruy blas overture). Serious writers about music should not be so quick to use this word so casually. Surely, they would not be so casual in referring to a particularly devout Renaissance composer in the same way.

An early Grove's Dictionary entry on Felix Mendelssohn was criticized for its slighting tone. Given this history, it is curious that the present New Grove entry on Mendelssohn concludes with the statement that if Mendelssohn had perhaps missed "true greatness," he only missed it "by a hair."

While it is encouraging that, despite concerns about subjectivity, there is still room for criticism by notable scholars in a New Grove entry, one wonders if this was the best that the editors might have come up with in the case of Mendelssohn. Critical statements made in the New Grove do imply, to the extent possible given individual authorship, a sense of representative authority.

Does this statement about Mendelssohn meet this criterion? Would Ferruccio Busoni's early twentieth century assertions that Mendelssohn was "a master of undisputed greatness" and "an heir to Mozart" be widely considered today to be radical (or even merely vagarious) thoughts?