Robby Meese, conductor
Sunday, October 25th 2026, 5pm
In celebration of the re-opening of Holy Trinity’s renovated sanctuary space, Bach Vespers presents Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Symphony no. 5, composed in 1830 to honor the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the defining document of the tenets of the Lutheran Reformation.
Mendelssohn represents at least three great legacies. Descended from a distinguished Jewish family, Mendelssohn proudly bore the heritage of the Jewish ethical and intellectual tradition. Baptized into the Lutheran Church at the age of seven, along with his sisters and brother, he composed Christian sacred music throughout his career. In addition to the Jewish and Lutheran traditions, Mendelssohn also ranks musically as the nineteenth century’s most important inheritor of the legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach. He championed Bach’s music and set in motion its revival and that of early music more generally.
Appropriately for a work commemorating the Augsburg Confession, Mendelssohn brought his symphony to its culmination in a stirring quotation of the melody of Martin Luther’s chorale “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” The chorale, which Luther composed at about the same time as the Augsburg Confession, has been nicknamed “the Battle Hymn of the Reformation.” A century before Mendelssohn’s Symphony it had served as the basis for Bach’s magnificent Reformation Day Cantata 80.
