A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) form and shaped by regular phrasings and harmonic transitions. The piece is also noted for its striking instrumental effects, such as the emulation of scampering 'fairy feet' at the beginning and the braying of Bottom as an ass (effects which were influenced by the aesthetic ideas and suggestions of Mendelssohn's friend at the time, Adolf Bernhard Marx). Heinrich Eduard Jacob, in his biography of the composer, said that Mendelssohn had scribbled the chords after hearing an evening breeze rustle the leaves in the garden of the family's home. The overture begins with four chords in the winds. Following the first
A Midsummer Night's Dream Lysander, Demetrius and Helenus (a male Helena), the play was carried to a more gender fluid era. The last performance was broadcast live all around the world through internet. W. Stanley Moss adopted the quotation, "Ill met by moonlight, (proud Titania)", from A Midsummer Night's Dream as the title of his best-selling book "Ill Met by Moonlight" published in 1950 describing the Kidnap of General Kreipe. The book was adapted into a film of the same name, directed and produced by Michael Powell and released in 1957. It featured Dirk Bogarde as Patrick Leigh Fermor and David Oxley as Moss.