Encounter II

Intuition, Intellect, and Insects:
Felix and the Fireflies,
with Bruce Adolphe

THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2009
7:30 p.m., Martin Family Hall, Menlo School
Tickets: $40 adult; $20 student

In Felix Mendelssohn we find the extraordinary musical intuition of a child prodigy combined with a prodigious intellect that embraced all areas of art and literature. Intuitively, he found music in the buzz of bugs and in the flickering light of a firefly. Intellectually, he was inspired by the poetry of Goethe and Shakespeare. The result was that, at age sixteen, he gave the musical world a new kind of scherzo—dizzy, comical, and delightfully mysterious. Join composer and public radio personality Bruce Adolphe for a serious listen to Mendelssohn’s personal magic.

More Encounters:

Encounter I »
Encounter III »
Encounter IV »

Image: Musical Insects, illustration from Stories of Insect Life by William J. Claxton, 1912. Color litho by Louis Fairfax Muckley (fl.1887–1914). (Private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)