The first document to come down to us about the three overtures is a letter of 7 July 1826; here Mendelssohn reported to his sister Fanny his intent ‘to dream the Midsummer Night's Dream’, that is, to begin the overture, an enterprise he likened to a ‘grenzenlose Kühnheit’ (‘a boundless boldness’). Not until April 1835, however, did the overture and its two companions appear in full score from Breitkopf & Härtel. This nine-year period of conception, gestation, composition, revision and performance (in varying orders), and publication spanned the end of Mendelssohn's student period in Berlin; his years of travel in England and Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, and France; his first appointment as music director in Düsseldorf; and his arrival in Leipzig to assume the position at the Gewandhaus as municipal music director. During this extended period, Mendelssohn came to view the three overtures, conceived and composed separately, as a related group of compositions that should be published together in full score, ideally with the same opus number. The complex chronologies of the overtures, which describe three quite intricate paths, have never been examined in detail; and so our first task must be to reconstruct their course, thereby to understand more fully Mendelssohn's own views of the overtures, and, indeed, to determine how the three compositions were created.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826–35)

Between 1797 and 1810 August Wilhelm Schlegel issued his widely acclaimed translations of Shakespeare's plays, including Ein Sommernachtstraum. In 1825 a reissue of Schlegel's translations began to appear, and in all likelihood Mendelssohn first came to know the play well around this time.