Musical Characteristics and Performance Techniques of Romantic Violin Concertos—Taking the First Movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor as an Example

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_29How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Romanticism; Violin Concerto; Mendelssohn; Musical Characteristics; Performance Analysis

Abstract

The Violin Concerto in E Minor is the only violin concerto by Romantic composer Mendelssohn. Its first movement is known as the “Immortal Melody.” This article, utilizing literature, musical example analysis, and observational methods, explores the musical characteristics of Romanticism embodied in this first movement through an in-depth analysis. These include both the inheritance and breakthroughs in modal and tonality, harmonic arrangement, and formal structure. The article also examines its performance techniques from the perspectives of bow speed and bow section distribution. The article concludes that Romantic violin concertos inherit the rigor of Classicism while also embodying the innovative, dramatic, symphonic, and lyrical musical characteristics of Romanticism. Their performance techniques embody both virtuosity and individuality, and unify form and emotion, requiring performers to possess strong comprehensive performance skills. This article aims to help future performers deepen their understanding of the musical characteristics and performance techniques of Romantic violin concertos and provide practical performance advice.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yuxin Chen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - Musical Characteristics and Performance Techniques of Romantic Violin Concertos—Taking the First Movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor as an Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 244
EP  - 253
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_29
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_29
ID  - Chen2026
ER  -