You’re 17. You’ve just read “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the first time and are overwhelmed. So you sit down and compose a 12-minute orchestral overture capturing the magic, the confusion, the hilarity, and the romantic craziness that pours out of Shakespeare’s comedy.
You are Felix Mendelssohn, and you’ve just begun a career that will bring you eternal fame as one of the great composers in a time of great composers. George Grove, a future music scholar, will call your overture “the greatest marvel of early maturity that the world has ever seen in music.
