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?