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.