Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy lived in the heyday of men's choruses. Early on, the composer had encountered the genre by way of his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter and his Berlin “Liedertafel”, founded in 1809, had then gathered his own experience from the Leipzig “Liedertafel” societies, and was in contact with a number of male choral societies throughout his lifetime. Nevertheless, his relation to male choral singing was characterised not only by his inclination, but also by critical distance.
The festive compositions for male chorus and orchestra forming the content of this volume are all commissioned works, two of which, the so-called “Gutenberg-Kantate” and the “Festgesang an die Künstler” on a text by Friedrich Schiller, also appeared in print during Mendelssohn's lifetime.