Mendelssohn's letters concerning the final version of Die erste Walpurgisnacht make clear that the differences between it and the version of 1831–33 were crucial. In this instance there is no doubt that in retrospect Mendelssohn regarded these two versions as different stages in the life of a single work concept rather than autonomous texts validated by their respective contexts. Nor is there any question but that he considered the later version superior once it had been completed. Nevertheless, through the mid-1830s he intended to revise rather than rewrite the early version, and as late as August 1835 he expected these revisions to be sufficiently noninvasive that he could enter the changes into the parts used for the 1833 premiere. Only after he had actually begun the revision process did the new version begin to depart radically from the old one. By January 1843 he could “no longer bear to think that anyone [knew] it in its first version,” and by March 1843 he had come to think of it as “practically a new piece.” Foundational to these revisions as well as Mendelssohn's ultimate decision to publish the work were the historical and symbolic programs discussed in chapters 3 and 4.

Because of the wealth of surviving information concerning Goethe's and Mendelssohn's ideas concerning the Walpurgis Night as cultural and artistic topos, because of the extensive changes Mendelssohn's setting underwent between 1831 and 1844, and because Mendelssohn explicitly distanced the revised version of Die erste Walpurgisnacht from its early version, this chapter treats those two versions of the ballad as separate settings.