A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Scherzo

Main page for Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream

• The Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, is the first number in the set, after the overture.¹
• The Scherzo introduces the mischievous character Puck, whom Shakespeare calls “the merry wanderer of the night.”²

1. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, incidental music, Op.61 (Mendelssohn, Felix),” IMSLP, accessed November 14, 2019, https://imslp.org/wiki/A_Midsummer_Night%27s_Dream,_incidental_music,_Op.61_(Mendelssohn,_Felix). 
2. R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 460.