Steve Schwartz:

>If Mendelssohn did not in fact "revive" [Bach] with his performance
>of the St. Matthew Passion, what *did* he do? ...  I realize that
>history gets revised every now and then, but does anyone know the
>research on which Rosen's article was based?

It's a matter of Rosen's rhetoric, not his research.  As I read him, he
is saying that, although musicians knew Bach's work privately, Bach never
had public attention to restore, because Leipzig was such a backwater.  In
other words, he had his first wide public recognition in the 19th century,
so strictly speaking there was no "revival." But wasn't it in Leipzig that
Mendelssohn played the St.  Matthew Passion? So either Leipzig had become
more important, or communications had improved, by Mendelssohn's day.

Jim Tobin