Mendelssohn, Werner, and the Jews A Final Word

Abstract

MQ is delighted that a debate concerning Mendelssohn and Eric Werner can continue in these pages. I would like to add a last footnote in response to the fine contributions in this issue by Peter Ward Jones and our colleague and friend Michael P. Steinberg. Perhaps Jones is a bit too enthusiastic in his criticism of Werner as a scholar. On the one hand, in terms of this dispute it is a relief to discover that Werner's errors were not limited to issues concerning Jewish identity. On the other hand, are all scholars not afraid of the inevitable, that ultimately we all will be found unreliable in detail by subsequent generations? Few scholars have managed to avoid making embarrassing but crucial mistakes, often in minor matters that end up casting doubt on convincing and valid large-scale historical generalizations. Werner worked in an era before Xerox machines and scanners. He relied on memory and on the painstaking process of copying out archival material. I am afraid that errors of the sort Jones puts forth inhabit a good deal of well-respected scholarship simply because one's memory and the eye play tricks all too frequently and successfully. Those of us working with closely edited, printed critical editions of music are always astonished to discover how many errors slip by, despitethe watchful eyes of composers, copyists, proofreaders, and editors. Jones admits that Werner's work was the first to use entirely uncatalogued primary materials. And as if to underscore the potential ideological innocence of Werner's mistakes, given the inherently high probability of errors when one uses uncatalogued primary sources, Jones himself suggests that one of the falsifications highlighted by Jeffrey Sposato might have been an inadvertent transposition from one source to another. Historians and biographers hope to fashion evidence into a coherent narrative and interpretation. As these objectives take a particular shape in the mind of the researcher, the sorts of errors Werner made increase with frequency as wishful thinking and elision become more plausible and tempting.

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