Mendelssohn Elijah
Mendelssohn’s fiery, dramatic oratorio, with powerful choruses depicting the prophet Elijah’s struggles
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Recordings
Scores
These are some of the more common scores; other editions are available. Different editions may vary significantly e.g. in the music, words or page numbering. Check which edition your choir is using before purchasing. Also watch out for different formats (e.g. large print, spiral-bound reprints) as these may not be what you want.
Old Novello
Reprint of 1903 edition (NOV 959134). New versions are ring-bound - they lie flat and are durable (but heavy.) English only. Music and text much larger than new edition, though notation is old-fashioned. Also uses same page numbers & rehearsal letters (and same notes & words as far as I know.)
Barenreiter Urtext
I've not used this edition, but generally like Barenreiter scores for other works. German and English words (German top). Page numbers completely different to Novello, and uses bar numbers instead of rehearsal letters. That aside, I don't know if there are any significant differences in the music or words.
(See the Practice aids page for more information)
Practice aids
Musical Notes
Few major choral works give the choir quite as much to do as Elijah. From furious crowd scenes and dramatic confrontations to thrilling fugues, it offers an extraordinary quantity and variety of singing.
Elijah was premiered at Birmingham Town Hall in 1846, conducted by Mendelssohn himself, with a choir of 271 (!) and an orchestra of 125. It was a sensational success, with encores for eight movements. But the immense effort of composing and subsequently revising the work took its toll. Mendelssohn died the following year, aged only 38.
Although a romantic work from the Victorian era, Elijah combines nineteenth-century passion with Mendelssohn's love of baroque music, with homages to Handel and Bach evident in its grand choruses and its fugues such as the finale to the closing movement.