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Felix Mendelssohn

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

   Portrait by James Warren Childe 1839
   Portrait by James Warren Childe 1839

   Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and known generally as
   Felix Mendelssohn ( February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German
   composer and conductor of the early Romantic period. He was born to a
   notable Jewish family, being the grandson of the philosopher Moses
   Mendelssohn. His work includes symphonies, concertos, oratorios, piano
   and chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to
   changing musical tastes in the late 19th century, his creative
   originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated, and he is now
   among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

Life

   Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the son of banker, Abraham Mendelssohn
   Bartholdy, who was himself the son of Moses Mendelssohn, and of Lea
   Salomon, a member of the Itzig family and the sister of Jakob Salomon
   Bartholdy.

   Abraham sought to renounce the Jewish religion; his children were first
   brought up without religious education, and were baptised as Lutherans
   in 1816 (at which time Felix took the additional names Jakob Ludwig).
   (Abraham and his wife were not themselves baptised until 1822). The
   name Bartholdy was assumed at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob,
   who had purchased a property of this name and adopted it as his own
   surname. Abraham was later to explain this decision in a letter to
   Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his
   father Moses: 'There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there
   can be a Jewish Confucius'. Although Felix continued to sign his
   letters as 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy' in obedience to his father's
   injunctions, he seems not to have objected to the use of 'Mendelssohn'
   alone.
   Mendelssohn's music room in Leipzig
   Mendelssohn's music room in Leipzig

   The family moved to Berlin in 1812. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn sought
   to give Felix, his brother Paul, and sisters Fanny and Rebecka (who
   later married the mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet), the best education
   possible. His sister Fanny Mendelssohn (later Fanny Hensel), became a
   well-known pianist and amateur composer; originally Abraham had thought
   that she, rather than her brother, might be the more musical. However,
   at that time, it was not considered proper for a woman to have a career
   in music, so Fanny remained an amateur musician.

   Mendelssohn is often regarded as the greatest musical child prodigy
   after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He began taking piano lessons from his
   mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in
   Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in
   Berlin. He probably made his first public concert appearance at the age
   of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert. He was also a
   prolific composer as a child, and wrote his first published work, a
   piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. Zelter introduced
   Mendelssohn to his friend and correspondent, the elderly Goethe. He
   later took lessons from the composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles
   who however confessed in his diaries that he had little to teach him.
   Moscheles became a close colleague and lifelong friend.

   Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature,
   languages, and philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil and
   watercolour, he could speak English, Italian, and Latin, and he had an
   interest in classical literature.

   As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with a private
   orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the
   intellectual elite of Berlin. Mendelssohn wrote 12 string symphonies
   between the ages of 12 and 14. These works were ignored for over a
   century, but are now recorded and heard occasionally in concerts. In
   1824, still aged only 15, he wrote his first symphony for full
   orchestra (in C minor, Op. 11). At the age of 16 he wrote his String
   Octet in E Flat Major, the first work which showed the full power of
   his genius. The Octet and his overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer
   Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later, are the best known of his
   early works. (He wrote incidental music for the play 16 years later in
   1842, including the famous Wedding March.) 1827 saw the premiere — and
   sole performance in his lifetime — of his opera, Die Hochzeit des
   Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture
   into the genre again; he later toyed for a while in the 1840s with a
   libretto by Eugene Scribe based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, but
   rejected it as unsuitable.

   From 1826 to 1829, Mendelssohn studied at the University of Berlin,
   where he attended lectures on aesthetics by Hegel, on history by Eduard
   Gans and on geography by Carl Ritter.

   In 1829 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to Britain, where Moscheles,
   already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical
   circles. He had a great success, conducting his First Symphony and
   playing in public and private concerts. In the summer he visited
   Edinburgh and became a friend of the composer John Thomson. On
   subsequent visits he met with Queen Victoria and her musical husband
   Prince Albert, both of whom were great admirers of his music. In the
   course of ten visits to Britain during his life he won a strong
   following, and the country inspired two of his most famous works, the
   overture Fingal's Cave (also known as the Hebrides Overture) and the
   Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3). His oratorio Elijah was premiered
   in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival on 26 August 1846.

   On the death of Zelter, Mendelssohn had some hopes of becoming the
   conductor of the Berlin Singakademie with which he had revived Johann
   Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion (see below). However he was
   defeated for the post by Karl Rungenhagen. This may have been because
   of Mendelssohn's youth, and fear of possible innovations; it was also
   suspected by some (and possibly by Mendelssohn himself) to be on
   account of his Jewish origins.
   Felix Mendelssohn's study in Leipzig
   Felix Mendelssohn's study in Leipzig

   Nonetheless, in 1835 he was appointed as conductor of the Leipzig
   Gewandhaus Orchestra. This appointment was extremely important for him;
   he felt himself to be a German and wished to play a leading part in his
   country's musical life. In its way it was a redress for his
   disappointment over the Singakademie appointment. Despite efforts by
   the king of Prussia to lure him to Berlin, Mendelssohn concentrated on
   developing the musical life of Leipzig and in 1843 he founded the
   Leipzig Conservatory, where he successfully persuaded Ignaz Moscheles
   and Robert Schumann to join him.

   Mendelssohn's personal life was conventional. His marriage to Cécile
   Jeanrenaud in March of 1837 was very happy and the couple had five
   children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Felix, and Lilli. Mendelssohn was an
   accomplished painter in watercolours, and his enormous correspondence
   shows that he could also be a witty writer in German and English —
   sometimes accompanied by humorous sketches and cartoons in the text.

   Mendelssohn suffered from bad health in the final years of his life,
   probably aggravated by nervous problems and overwork, and he was
   greatly distressed by the death of his sister Fanny in May 1847. Felix
   Mendelssohn died later that same year after a series of strokes, on
   November 4, 1847, in Leipzig. His funeral was held at the
   Paulinerkirche and he is buried in the Trinity Cemetery in Berlin-
   Kreuzberg.
   Felix Mendelssohn's grave
   Felix Mendelssohn's grave

Revival of Bach's and Schubert's music

   Mendelssohn's own works show his study of Baroque and early classical
   music. His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and
   use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, by whom he
   was deeply influenced. His great-aunt, Sarah Levy (née Itzig) was a
   pupil of Bach's son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and had supported the
   widow of another son Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach. She had collected a
   number of Bach manuscripts. J.S. Bach's music, which had fallen into
   relative obscurity by the turn of the 19th century, was also deeply
   respected by Mendelssohn's teacher Zelter. In 1829, with the backing of
   Zelter and the assistance of a friend, the actor Eduard Devrient,
   Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St
   Matthew Passion. The orchestra and choir were provided by the Berlin
   Singakademie of which Zelter was the principal conductor. The success
   of this performance (the first since Bach's death in 1750) was an
   important element in the revival of J.S. Bach's music in Germany and,
   eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim
   at the age of twenty. It also led to one of the very few references
   which Mendelssohn ever made to his origins: 'To think that it took an
   actor and a Jew-boy (Judensohn) to revive the greatest Christian music
   for the world' (cited by Devrient in his memoirs of the composer).

   Mendelssohn also revived interest in the work of Franz Schubert.
   Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony and
   sent it to Mendelssohn who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 March
   1839, more than a decade after the composer's death.

Contemporaries

   Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical
   developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally
   on friendly, if somewhat cool, terms with the likes of Hector Berlioz,
   Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but in his letters expresses his
   frank disapproval of their works.

   In particular, he seems to have regarded Paris and its music with the
   greatest of suspicion and an almost Puritanical distaste. Attempts made
   during his visit there to interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended in
   embarrassing scenes. He thought the Paris style of opera vulgar, and
   the works of Meyerbeer insincere. When Ferdinand Hiller suggested in
   conversation to Felix that he looked rather like Meyerbeer (they were
   distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserlis), Mendelssohn
   was so upset that he immediately went to get a haircut to differentiate
   himself. It is significant that the only musician with whom he was a
   close personal friend, Moscheles, was of an older generation and
   equally conservative in outlook. Moscheles preserved this outlook at
   the Leipzig Conservatory until his own death in 1870.

Reputation

   This conservative strain in Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some
   of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a similar condescension on
   their part toward his music. His success, his popularity and his Jewish
   origins, irked Richard Wagner sufficiently to damn Mendelssohn with
   faint praise, three years after his death, in an anti-Jewish pamphlet
   Das Judenthum in der Musik. This was the start of a movement to
   denigrate Mendelssohn's achievements which lasted almost a century, the
   remnants of which can still be discerned today amongst some writers
   (for example, Charles Rosen's essay on Mendelssohn, whose style he
   criticizes as 'religious kitsch'). The Nazi regime was to cite
   Mendelssohn's Jewish origin in banning his works and destroying
   memorial statues.

   In England, Mendelssohn's reputation remained high for a long time; the
   adulatory (and today scarcely readable) novel Charles Auchester by the
   teenaged Sarah Sheppard, published in 1851, which features Mendelssohn
   as the 'Chevalier Seraphael', remained in print for nearly eighty
   years. Queen Victoria demonstrated her enthusiasm by requesting, when
   The Crystal Palace was being re-built in 1854, that it include a statue
   of Mendelssohn. It was the only statue in the Palace made of bronze and
   the only one to survive the fire that destroyed the Palace in 1936.
   (The statue is now situated in Eltham College, London). Mendelssohn's
   Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream was first played at the
   wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter, The Princess Victoria, The
   Princess Royal, to Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1858 and it is
   still popular today. However many critics, including Bernard Shaw,
   began to condemn his music for its association with Victorian cultural
   insularity.

   Over the last fifty years a new appreciation of Mendelssohn's work has
   developed, which takes into account not only the popular 'war horses',
   such as the E minor Violin Concerto and the Italian Symphony, but has
   been able to remove the Victorian varnish from the oratorio Elijah, and
   has explored the frequently intense and dramatic world of the chamber
   works. Virtually all of Mendelssohn's published works are now available
   on CD.

   Recent critical evaluations of Mendelssohn's work have stressed the
   subtlety of his compositional technique. For example, the Hebrides
   Overture has been interpreted as presenting a musical equivalent to the
   aesthetic subject in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. The first
   lyrical theme, in this interpretation, represents the person
   apprehending the landscape described by the music behind this theme.
   Similarly, the use of French Horns in the opening movement of the
   Italian Symphony may represent a German presence in an Italian scene --
   Mendelssohn himself on tour.

Works

   A portrait by Gustav Zerner of Felix Mendelssohn.
   A portrait by Gustav Zerner of Felix Mendelssohn.

Juvenilia and early works

   The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his childhood by the
   music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart and these can all be seen, albeit
   often rather crudely, in the twelve early 'symphonies,' mainly written
   for performance in the Mendelssohn household and not published or
   publicly performed until long after his death.

   His astounding capacities are, however, clearly revealed in a clutch of
   works of his early maturity: the String Octet (1825), the Overture A
   Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) (which in its finished form owes much to
   the influence of Adolf Bernhard Marx, at the time a close friend of
   Mendelssohn), and the String Quartet in A minor (listed as no. 2 but
   written before no. 1) of 1827. These show an intuitive grasp of form,
   harmony, counterpoint, colour and the compositional technique of
   Beethoven, which justify the claims often made that Mendelssohn's
   precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp.

Symphonies

   Mendelssohn wrote 12 symphonies for string orchestra from 1821 to 1823
   (between the ages of 12 and 14).

   The numbering of his mature symphonies is approximately in order of
   publishing, rather than of composition. The order of composition is: 1,
   5, 4, 2, 3. (Because he worked on it for over a decade, the placement
   of No. 3 in this sequence is problematic; he started sketches for it
   soon after the No. 5, but completed it following both Nos. 5 and 4.)

   The Symphony No. 1 in C minor for full-scale orchestra was written in
   1824, when Mendelssohn was aged 15. This work is experimental, showing
   the influence of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Mendelssohn conducted this
   symphony on his first visit to London in 1829 with the orchestra of the
   Royal Philharmonic Society. For the third movement he substituted an
   orchestration of the Scherzo from his Octet. In this form the piece was
   an outstanding success and laid the foundations of his British
   reputation.

   During 1829 and 1830 Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony No. 5 in D Major,
   known as the Reformation. It celebrated the 300th anniversary of the
   Lutheran Church. Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied with the work and
   did not allow publication of the score.

   The Scottish Symphony ( Symphony No. 3 in A minor), was written and
   revised intermittently between 1830 and 1842. This piece evokes
   Scotland's atmosphere in the ethos of Romanticism, but does not employ
   actual Scottish folk melodies. Mendelssohn published the score of the
   symphony in 1842 in an arrangement for piano duet, and as a full
   orchestral score in 1843.

   Mendelssohn's travels in Italy inspired him to write the Symphony No 4
   in A major, known as the Italian. Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in
   1833, but he did not allow this score to be published during his
   lifetime as he continually sought to rewrite it.

   In 1840 Mendelssohn wrote the choral Symphony No. 2 in B flat Major,
   entitled Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), and this score was published in
   1841.

Other orchestral music

   Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in
   1830, inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the
   1820s. He visited the cave, on the Hebridean isle of Staffa, as part of
   his Grand Tour of Europe, and was so impressed that he scribbled the
   opening theme of the overture on the spot, including it in a letter he
   wrote home the same evening.

   Throughout his career he wrote a number of other concert overtures;
   those most frequently played today include Ruy Blas written for the
   drama by Victor Hugo and Meerestille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and
   Prosperous Voyage) inspired by the poem by Goethe.

   The incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (op. 61), including
   the well-known Wedding March, was written in 1843, seventeen years
   after the overture.

Opera

   Mendelssohn wrote some Singspiels for family performance in his youth.
   His opera "Die beiden Neffen" was rehearsed for him on his fifteenth
   birthday. In 1827 he wrote a more sophisticated work, Die Hochzeit von
   Camacho, based on an episode in Don Quixote, for public consumption. It
   was produced in Berlin in 1827. Mendelssohn left the theatre before the
   conclusion of the first performance and subsequent performances were
   cancelled.

   Although he never abandoned the idea of composing a full opera, and
   considered many subjects - including that of the Nibelung saga later
   adapted by Wagner - he never wrote more than a few pages of sketches
   for any project. In his last years the manager Benjamin Lumley tried to
   contract him to write an opera on The Tempest on a libretto by Eugène
   Scribe, and even announced it as forthcoming in the year of
   Mendelssohn's death. The libretto was eventually set by Fromental
   Halévy. At his death Mendelssohn left some sketches for an opera on the
   story of Lorelei.

Concertos

   Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 (1844), written for
   Ferdinand David, has become one of the most popular of all of
   Mendelssohn's compositions. Many violinists have commenced their solo
   careers with a performance of this concerto, including Jascha Heifetz,
   who gave his first public performance of the piece at the age of seven.

   Mendelssohn also wrote two piano concertos, a less well known, early,
   violin concerto, two concertos for two pianos and orchestra and a
   double concerto for piano and violin. In addition, there are several
   works for soloist and orchestra in one movement. Those for piano are
   the Rondo Brillant, Op. 29 of 1834; the Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22 of
   1832; and the Serenade and Allegro Giojoso Op. 43 of 1838. Opp. 113 and
   114 are Konzertstücke (concerto movements, originally for clarinet,
   basset horn and piano, that were orchestrated and performed in that
   form in Mendelssohn's lifetime.

Chamber Music

   Mendelssohn's mature output contains many chamber works many of which
   display an emotional intensity some people think lacking in his larger
   works. In particular his string quartet op. 80 in F minor (1847), his
   last major work, written following the death of his sister Fanny, is
   both powerful and eloquent. Other works include two string quintets,
   sonatas for the clarinet, cello, viola and violin, and two piano trios.
   For the first of these trios, in D minor (1839), Mendelssohn unusually
   took the advice of a fellow-composer, ( Ferdinand Hiller) and rewrote
   the piano part in a more romantic, 'Schumannesque' style, considerably
   heightening its effect.

Choral

   The two large biblical oratorios, ' St Paul' in 1836 and ' Elijah' in
   1846, are greatly influenced by Bach. One of Mendelssohn's most
   frequently performed sacred pieces is "There Shall a Star Come out of
   Jacob", a chorus from the unfinished oratorio, 'Christus' (which
   together with the preceding recitative and male trio comprises all of
   the existing material from that work). Mendelssohn also wrote many
   smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir and for choir with
   organ including 'Hear my prayer', which includes the famous solo 'O for
   the wings of a dove'.

   Strikingly different is the more overtly 'romantic' Die erste
   Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), a setting for chorus and
   orchestra of a ballad by Goethe describing pagan rituals of the Druids
   in the Harz mountains in the early days of Christianity. This
   remarkable score has been seen by the scholar Heinz-Klaus Metzger as a
   "Jewish protest against the domination of Christianity".

Songs

   Mendelssohn wrote many songs for solo voice and duet. Some of these,
   such as 'O for the wings of a Dove' (adapted from the anthem Hear My
   Prayer) became extremely popular. A number of songs written by
   Mendelssohn's sister Fanny originally appeared under her brother's
   name; this was partly due to the prejudice of the family, and partly to
   her own diffidence.

Piano

   Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte ( Songs without Words), eight cycles
   each containing six lyric pieces (2 published posthumously), remain his
   most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour
   recital items, and their overwhelming popularity has caused many
   critics to under-rate their musical value. Other composers who were
   inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included Charles
   Valentin Alkan (the five sets of Chants, each ending with a
   barcarolle), Anton Rubinstein, Ignaz Moscheles and Edvard Grieg.

   Other notable piano pieces by Mendelssohn include his Variations
   sérieuses op. 54 (1841), the Seven Characteristic Pieces op. 7 (1827)
   and the set of six Preludes and Fugues op. 35 (written between 1832 and
   1837).

Organ

   Mendelssohn played the organ and composed for it from the age of 11 to
   his death. His primary organ works are the Three Preludes and Fugues,
   Op. 37 (1837), and the Six Sonatas, Op. 65 (1845).

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