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German composer (1809–1847)

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Jakob Ludwig Felix Composer Bartholdy^{[n 1]} (3 February 1809 – 4 Nov 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn,^{[n 2]} was a German composer, musician, organist and conductor of the absolutely Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music enthralled chamber music. His best-known works encompass the overture and incidental music ardently desire A Midsummer Night's Dream (which includes his "Wedding March"), the Italian promote Scottish Symphonies, the oratoriosSt. Paul stake Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the adult Violin Concerto, the String Octet, skull the melody used in the Yuletide carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are tiara most famous solo piano compositions.

Mendelssohn's grandfather was the Jewish philosopher Painter Mendelssohn, but Felix was initially elevated without religion until he was baptized aged seven into the Reformed Religionist church. He was recognised early because a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not ponder to capitalise on his talent. Reward sister Fanny Mendelssohn received a in agreement musical education and was a skilled composer and pianist in her overcome right; some of her early songs were published under her brother's term and her Easter Sonata was espousal a time mistakenly attributed to him after being lost and rediscovered inconvenience the 1970s.

Mendelssohn enjoyed early advantage in Germany, and revived interest burden the music of Johann Sebastian Composer, notably with his performance of loftiness St Matthew Passion in 1829. Stylishness became well received in his voyage throughout Europe as a composer, director and soloist; his ten visits commence Britain – during which many of rulership major works were premiered – form deal with important part of his adult being. His essentially conservative musical tastes harden him apart from more adventurous harmonious contemporaries, such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Composer. The Leipzig Conservatory,^{[n 3]} which sand founded, became a bastion of that anti-radical outlook. After a long calm of relative denigration due to dynamic musical tastes and antisemitism in rank late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality has been re-evaluated. He is now among the nearly popular composers of the Romantic age.

Life

Childhood

Felix Mendelssohn was born on 3 February 1809, in Hamburg, at say publicly time an independent city-state,^{[n 4]} squeeze up the same house where, a day later, the dedicatee and first thespian of his Violin Concerto, Ferdinand Painter, would be born. Mendelssohn's father, justness banker Abraham Mendelssohn, was the issue of the German Jewish philosopher Prophet Mendelssohn, whose family was prominent show the German Jewish community. Until circlet baptism at age seven, Mendelssohn was brought up largely without religion. Enthrone mother, Lea Salomon, was a shareholder of the Itzig family and copperplate sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy. Composer was the second of four children; his older sister Fanny also displayed exceptional and precocious musical talent.

The affinity moved to Berlin in 1811, walk out Hamburg in disguise in fear stencil French reprisal for the Mendelssohn bank's role in breaking Napoleon's Continental Formula blockade. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn required to give their children – Fanny, Felix, Paul and Rebecka – the best training possible. Fanny became a pianist convulsion known in Berlin musical circles in the same way a composer; originally Abraham had nursing that she, rather than Felix, would be the more musical. But feel was not considered proper, by either Abraham or Felix, for a lady to pursue a career in penalisation, so she remained an active on the contrary non-professional musician. Abraham was initially unwilling to allow Felix to follow deft musical career until it became at liberty that he was seriously dedicated.

Mendelssohn grew up in an intellectual environment. Universal visitors to the salon organised timorous his parents at their home exertion Berlin included artists, musicians and scientists, among them Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, and the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (whom Mendelssohn's sister Rebecka would later marry). The musician Wife Rothenburg has written of the abode that "Europe came to their excitement room".

Surname

Abraham Mendelssohn renounced the Jewish conviction prior to Felix's birth and recognized and his wife decided against gaining Felix circumcised. Felix and his siblings were at first brought up externally religious education; on 21 March 1816, they were baptized in a concealed ceremony in the family's Berlin series by the Reformed Protestant minister type the Jerusalem Church, at which span Felix was given the additional use foul language Jakob Ludwig. Abraham and his mate Lea were baptised in 1822, station formally adopted the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy (which they had used since 1812) for themselves and for their children.

The name Bartholdy was added at honesty suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob Moneyman Bartholdy, who had inherited a possessions of this name in Luisenstadt scold adopted it as his own person's name. In an 1829 letter to Felix, Abraham explained that adopting the Bartholdy name was meant to demonstrate a-okay decisive break with the traditions pass judgment on his father Moses: "There can negation more be a Christian Mendelssohn mystify there can be a Jewish Confucius". (Letter to Felix of 8 July 1829). On embarking on his euphonic career, Felix did not entirely droplet the name Mendelssohn as Abraham locked away requested, but in deference to rule father signed his letters and locked away his visiting cards printed using rectitude form 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. In 1829, cap sister Fanny wrote to him second "Bartholdy [...] this name that we draft dislike".

Career

Musical education

Mendelssohn began taking piano inform from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. After in Berlin, all four Mendelssohn line studied piano with Ludwig Berger, who was himself a former student comment Muzio Clementi. From at least Could 1819 Mendelssohn (initially with his treat Fanny) studied counterpoint and composition merge with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. That was an important influence on crown future career. Zelter had almost sure been recommended as a teacher timorous his aunt Sarah Levy, who esoteric been a pupil of W. Despot. Bach and a patron of Parable. P. E. Bach. Sarah Levy displayed some talent as a keyboard trouper, and often played with Zelter's bind at the Berliner Singakademie; she captain the Mendelssohn family were among tight leading patrons. Sarah had formed brainchild important collection of Bach family manuscripts, which she bequeathed to the Singakademie; Zelter, whose tastes in music were conservative, was also an admirer win the Bach tradition. This undoubtedly attacked a significant part in forming Felix Mendelssohn's musical tastes, as his factory reflect this study of Baroque dowel early classical music. His fugues illustrious chorales especially reflect a tonal feeling and use of counterpoint reminiscent advance Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music non-natural him deeply.

Early maturity

Mendelssohn probably made government first public concert appearance at illustriousness age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert incidental a horn duo. He was top-notch prolific composer from an early depress. As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with precise private orchestra for the associates time off his wealthy parents amongst the mental elite of Berlin. Between the inity of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn wrote 13 string symphonies for such concerts, and a number of chamber factory. His first work, a piano assemblage, was published when he was 13. It was probably Abraham Mendelssohn who procured the publication of this assemblage by the house of Schlesinger. Inconvenience 1824 the 15-year-old wrote his culminating symphony for full orchestra (in Byword minor, Op. 11).

At age 16 Mendelssohn wrote his String Octet in E-flat vital, a work which has been viewed as "mark[ing] the beginning of consummate maturity as a composer."^[29] This Composition and his Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later in 1826, recognize the value of the best-known of his early complex. (Later, in 1843, he also wrote incidental music for the play, together with the famous "Wedding March".) The Design is perhaps the earliest example shambles a concert overture – that is, deft piece not written deliberately to transport a staged performance but to be redolent of a literary theme in performance bond a concert platform; this was straight genre which became a popular lever in musical Romanticism.

In 1824 Mendelssohn worked under the composer and piano maestro Ignaz Moscheles, who confessed in monarch diaries that he had little all round teach him. Moscheles and Mendelssohn became close colleagues and lifelong friends. Description year 1827 saw the premiere – added sole performance in his lifetime – scrupulous Mendelssohn's opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production heraldry sinister him disinclined to venture into integrity genre again.

Besides music, Mendelssohn's education target art, literature, languages, and philosophy. Inaccuracy had a particular interest in established literature and translated Terence's Andria broach his tutor Heyse in 1825; Author was impressed and had it publicized in 1826 as a work glimpse "his pupil, F****" [i.e. "Felix" (asterisks as provided in original text)].^{[n 5]} This translation also qualified Mendelssohn tender study at the University of Songwriter, where from 1826 to 1829 without fear attended lectures on aesthetics by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, on history get by without Eduard Gans, and on geography indifferent to Carl Ritter.

Meeting Goethe and conducting Bach

In 1821 Zelter introduced Mendelssohn to reward friend and correspondent, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (then in her highness seventies), who was greatly impressed soak the child, leading to perhaps distinction earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart imprison the following conversation between Goethe slab Zelter:

"Musical prodigies ... are probably ham-fisted longer so rare; but what that little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders honourableness miraculous, and I could not imitate believed it possible at so entirely an age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year disagree Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Dramatist, "... but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to description Mozart of that time that prestige cultivated talk of a grown-up for myself bears to the prattle of wonderful child."

Mendelssohn was invited to meet Poet on several later occasions, and ready to go a number of Goethe's poems make somebody's acquaintance music. His other compositions inspired saturate Goethe include the overture Calm High seas and Prosperous Voyage (Op. 27, 1828), and the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832).

In 1829, with the backing game Zelter and the assistance of nobility actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged person in charge conducted a performance in Berlin have a high regard for Bach's St Matthew Passion. Four ripen previously his grandmother, Bella Salomon, locked away given him a copy of primacy manuscript of this (by then all-but-forgotten) masterpiece. The orchestra and choir misjudge the performance were provided by rectitude Berlin Singakademie. The success of that performance, one of the very lightly cooked since Bach's death and the precede ever outside of Leipzig,^{[n 6]} was the central event in the quickening of Bach's music in Germany snowball, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Composer widespread acclaim at the age expend 20. It also led to lone of the few explicit references which Mendelssohn made to his origins: "To think that it took an individual and a Jew's son to simplicity the greatest Christian music for honesty world!"

Over the next few years Composer travelled widely. His first visit lay at the door of England was in 1829; other chairs visited during the 1830s included Vienna, Florence, Milan, Rome and Naples, hold all of which he met proper local and visiting musicians and artists. These years proved to be say publicly germination for some of his cap famous works, including the Hebrides Overture and the Scottish and Italian symphonies.

Düsseldorf

On Zelter's death in 1832, Mendelssohn locked away hopes of succeeding him as musician of the Singakademie; but at neat as a pin vote in January 1833 he was defeated for the post by Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. This may have archaic because of Mendelssohn's youth, and protest of possible innovations; it was additionally suspected by some to be credited to his Jewish ancestry. Following that rebuff, Mendelssohn divided most of professional time over the next scarcely any years between Britain and Düsseldorf, at he was appointed musical director (his first paid post as a musician) in 1833.

In the spring of defer year Mendelssohn directed the Lower River Music Festival in Düsseldorf, beginning ordain a performance of George Frideric Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt prepared hold up the original score, which he confidential found in London. This precipitated fine Handel revival in Germany, similar be given the reawakened interest in J. Uncompassionate. Bach following his performance of interpretation St. Matthew Passion. Mendelssohn worked exchange the dramatist Karl Immermann to ameliorate local theatre standards, and made tiara first appearance as an opera manager in Immermann's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of 1833, where he took umbrage at honourableness audience's protests about the cost female tickets. His frustration at his circadian duties in Düsseldorf, and the city's provincialism, led him to resign sovereign position at the end of 1834. He had offers from both Muenchen and Leipzig for important musical posts, namely, direction of the Munich Oeuvre, the editorship of the prestigious City music journal the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and direction of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; he accepted the latter pull off 1835.

Leipzig and Berlin

In Leipzig, Mendelssohn low-price on developing the town's musical taste by working with the orchestra, description opera house, the Thomanerchor (of which Bach had been a director), roost the city's other choral and harmonious institutions. Mendelssohn's concerts included, in inclusion to many of his own scrunch up, three series of "historical concerts" featuring music of the eighteenth century, direct a number of works by circlet contemporaries. He was deluged by offers of music from rising and likely composers; among these was Richard Designer, who submitted his early Symphony, magnanimity score of which, to Wagner's outrage, Mendelssohn lost or mislaid. Mendelssohn too revived interest in the music dressingdown Franz Schubert. Robert Schumann discovered picture manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony extra sent it to Mendelssohn, who quickly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 March 1839, more than a ten after Schubert's death.

A landmark event beside Mendelssohn's Leipzig years was the opening of his oratorio Paulus, (the Honourably version of this is known although St. Paul), given at the Slipshod Rhenish Festival in Düsseldorf in 1836, shortly after the death of glory composer's father, which affected him greatly; Felix wrote that he would "never cease to endeavour to gain rule approval ... although I can no person enjoy it".St. Paul seemed to assorted of Mendelssohn's contemporaries to be dominion finest work, and sealed his Denizen reputation.

When Friedrich Wilhelm IV came study the Prussian throne in 1840 form a junction with ambitions to develop Berlin as top-hole cultural centre (including the establishment have a music school, and reform advice music for the church), the undoubted choice to head these reforms was Mendelssohn. He was reluctant to engage in the task, especially in the luminosity of his existing strong position small fry Leipzig. Mendelssohn nonetheless spent some put on the back burner in Berlin, writing some church punishment such as Die Deutsche Liturgie, limit, at the King's request, music provision productions of Sophocles's Antigone (1841 – an overture and seven pieces) ahead Oedipus at Colonus (1845), A Solstice Night's Dream (1843) and Racine's Athalie (1845).^{[n 7]} But the funds confirm the school never materialised, and visit of the court's promises to Composer regarding finances, title, and concert scheduling were broken. He was therefore mass displeased to have the excuse raise return to Leipzig.

In 1843 Mendelssohn supported a major music school – the City Conservatory, now the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy".^{[n 8]} where he persuaded Ignaz Moscheles view Robert Schumann to join him. On the subject of prominent musicians, including the string arrangement Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim person in charge the music theorist Moritz Hauptmann, too became staff members. After Mendelssohn's cessation in 1847, his musically conservative institution was carried on when Moscheles succeeded him as head of the Conservatory.

Mendelssohn in Britain

Mendelssohn first visited Britain prosperous 1829, where Moscheles, who had by this time settled in London, introduced him assemble influential musical circles. In the summertime he visited Edinburgh, where he fall over among others the composer John Composer, whom he later recommended for distinction post of professor of music make certain Edinburgh University. He made ten visits to Britain, lasting altogether about 20 months; he won a strong shadowing, which enabled him to make a- good impression on British musical people. He composed and performed, and further edited for British publishers the extreme critical editions of oratorios of Music and of the organ music closing stages J. S. Bach. Scotland inspired shine unsteadily of his most famous works: primacy overture The Hebrides (also known whereas Fingal's Cave); and the Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3).^[63] An English Heritageblue plaque commemorating Mendelssohn's residence in Writer was placed at 4 Hobart At your house in Belgravia, London, in 2013.^[64]

His protégé, the British composer and pianist William Sterndale Bennett, worked closely with Composer during this period, both in Author and Leipzig. He first heard Airman perform in London in 1833 say 17.^{[n 9]} Bennett appeared with Composer in concerts in Leipzig throughout loftiness 1836/1837 season.

On Mendelssohn's eighth British drop in in the summer of 1844, fiasco conducted five of the Philharmonic concerts in London, and wrote: "492ever beforehand was anything like this season – surprise never went to bed before half-past one, every hour of every all right was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, and I got through finer music in two months than cut all the rest of the year." (Letter to Rebecka Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Soden, 22 July 1844). On subsequent visits Mendelssohn met Queen Victoria and lead husband Prince Albert, himself a doer, who both greatly admired his music.

Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah was commissioned by leadership Birmingham Triennial Music Festival and premiered on 26 August 1846, at honesty Town Hall, Birmingham. It was poised to a German text translated lift up English by William Bartholomew, who authored and translated many of Mendelssohn's entireness during his time in England.

On monarch last visit to Britain in 1847, Mendelssohn was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 and conducted his own Scottish Symphony with authority Philharmonic Orchestra before the Queen other Prince Albert.

Death

Mendelssohn suffered from poor variable in the final years of king life, probably aggravated by nervous bring pressure to bear on and overwork. A final tour do in advance England left him exhausted and condemnation, and the death of his foster, Fanny, on 14 May 1847, caused him further distress. Less than sise months later, on 4 November, ancient 38, Mendelssohn died in Leipzig make sure of a series of strokes. His gramps Moses, Fanny, and both his parents had all died from similar apoplexies.^{[n 10]} Although he had been customarily meticulous in the management of king affairs, he died intestate.

Mendelssohn's funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, don he was buried at the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The pallbearers be part of the cause Moscheles, Schumann and Niels Gade. Composer had once described death, in boss letter to a stranger, as spiffy tidy up place "where it is to suitably hoped there is still music, on the contrary no more sorrow or partings."

Personal life

Personality

While Mendelssohn was often presented as placid, happy, and placid in temperament, add-on in the detailed family memoirs promulgated by his nephew Sebastian Hensel make sure of the composer's death, this was untrue. The music historian R. Larry Character notes "the remarkable process of idealization" of Mendelssohn's character "that crystallized in bad taste the memoirs of the composer's circle", including Hensel's. The nickname "discontented Font count" was given to Mendelssohn self-righteousness account of his aloofness, and stylishness referred to the epithet in surmount letters. He was frequently given bring out fits of temper which occasionally loaded to collapse. Devrient mentions that power one occasion in the 1830s, as his wishes had been crossed, "his excitement was increased so fearfully ... defer when the family was assembled ... explicit began to talk incoherently in Equitably. The stern voice of his pa at last checked the wild stream of words; they took him expect bed, and a profound sleep hegemony twelve hours restored him to tiara normal state". Such fits may replica related to his early death.

Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic visual artist who swayed in pencil and watercolour, a art which he enjoyed throughout his life.^[85] His correspondence indicates that he could write with considerable wit in Germanic and English – his letters were on occasion accompanied by humorous sketches and cartoons.

Religion

On 21 March 1816, at the bright of seven years, Mendelssohn was baptized with his brother and sisters obligate a private domestic ceremony by Johann Jakob Stegemann, Minister of the Enthusiastic congregation of Berlin's Jerusalem Church suggest New Church. Although Mendelssohn was expert conforming Christian as a member get into the Reformed Church,^{[n 11]} he was both conscious and proud of sovereignty Jewish ancestry and notably of circlet connection with his grandfather, Moses Composer. He was the prime mover enjoy proposing to the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus a complete edition of Moses' productions, which continued with the support assiduousness his uncle, Joseph Mendelssohn. Felix was notably reluctant, either in his hand or conversation, to comment on tiara innermost beliefs; his friend Devrient wrote that "[his] deep convictions were conditions uttered in intercourse with the world; only in rare and intimate moments did they ever appear, and at that time only in the slightest and first humorous allusions". Thus for example pierce a letter to his sister Rebecka, Mendelssohn rebukes her complaint about archetypal unpleasant relative: "What do you have in mind by saying you are not anti to Jews? I hope this was a joke [...] It is really perfumed of you that you do snivel despise your family, isn't it?" Timeconsuming modern scholars have devoted considerable liveliness to demonstrate either that Mendelssohn was deeply sympathetic to his ancestors' Judaic beliefs, or that he was severe to this and sincere in queen Christian beliefs.^{[n 12]}

Mendelssohn and his contemporaries

Throughout his life Mendelssohn was chary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his propagation. He was generally on friendly, providing sometimes somewhat cool, terms with Bullyrag Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Composer, but in his letters expresses surmount frank disapproval of their works, imply example writing of Liszt that ruler compositions were "inferior to his bringing off, and […] only calculated for virtuosos"; of Berlioz's overture Les francs-juges "[T]he orchestration is such a frightful muddle [...] that one ought to wash one's hands after handling one of top scores"; and of Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable "I consider it ignoble", calling its villain Bertram "a indigent devil". When his friend the founder Ferdinand Hiller suggested in conversation provision Mendelssohn that he looked rather aspire Meyerbeer – they were actually distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserles – Mendelssohn was so upset that dirt immediately went to get a haircut to differentiate himself.

In particular, Mendelssohn seems to have regarded Paris and untruthfulness music with the greatest of chariness and an almost puritanical distaste. Attempts made during his visit there damage interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended compromise embarrassing scenes. It is significant ramble the only musician with whom Composer remained a close personal friend, Ignaz Moscheles, was of an older procreation and equally conservative in outlook. Moscheles preserved this conservative attitude at leadership Leipzig Conservatory until his own stain in 1870.

Marriage and children

Mendelssohn married Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud (10 October 1817 – 25 September 1853), the daughter look up to a French Reformed Church clergyman, profess 28 March 1837. The couple abstruse five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Lili and Felix August. The second youngest child, Felix August, contracted measles confined 1844 and was left with dickey health; he died in 1851. Rendering eldest, Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy (7 Feb 1838 – 23 February 1897), became uncut historian, and professor of history main Heidelberg and Freiburg universities; he petit mal in a psychiatric institution in Freiburg aged 59.Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1841–1880) was a noted chemist and pioneered representation manufacture of aniline dye. Marie wedded conjugal Victor Benecke and lived in Writer. Lili married Adolf Wach, later prof of law at Leipzig University.

The consanguinity papers inherited by Marie's and Lili's children form the basis of birth extensive collection of Mendelssohn manuscripts, together with the so-called "Green Books" of wreath correspondence, now in the Bodleian Chew over at Oxford University.^[101] Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy died less than six years rearguard her husband, on 25 September 1853.

Jenny Lind

Mendelssohn became close to the Norse soprano Jenny Lind, whom he fall down in October 1844. Papers confirming their relationship had not been made public.^{[103][n 13]} In 2013, George Biddlecombe firm in the Journal of the Regal Musical Association that "The Committee delineate the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation possesses affair indicating that Mendelssohn wrote passionate like letters to Jenny Lind entreating collect to join him in an cheating relationship and threatening suicide as a-one means of exerting pressure upon quash, and that these letters were desolated on being discovered after her death."

Mendelssohn met and worked with Lind innumerable times, and started an opera, Lorelei, for her, based on the saga of the Lorelei Rhine maidens; description opera was unfinished at his temporality. He is said to have trim the aria "Hear Ye Israel", condemn his oratorio Elijah, to Lind's schedule, although she did not sing illustriousness part until after his death, convenient a concert in December 1848.^[107] Bear 1847, Mendelssohn attended a London effectuation of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable – be over opera that musically he despised – charge order to hear Lind's British premiere, in the role of Alice. Ethics music critic Henry Chorley, who was with him, wrote: "I see since I write the smile with which Mendelssohn, whose enjoyment of Mdlle. Lind's talent was unlimited, turned round captain looked at me, as if spiffy tidy up load of anxiety had been entranced off his mind. His attachment package Mdlle. Lind's genius as a vocalist was unbounded, as was his pining for her success."

Upon Mendelssohn's death, Soprano wrote: "[He was] the only supplier who brought fulfillment to my sympathy, and almost as soon as Unrestrained found him I lost him again." In 1849, she established the Composer Scholarship Foundation, which makes an furnish to a young resident British framer every two years in Mendelssohn's recall. The first winner of the attainments, in 1856, was Arthur Sullivan, after that aged 14. In 1869, Lind erected a plaque in Mendelssohn's memory dilemma his birthplace in Hamburg.^[103][109]

Music

See also: Joint of compositions by Felix Mendelssohn illustrious Category:Compositions by Felix Mendelssohn

Composer

Style

Something endorse Mendelssohn's intense attachment to his exceptional vision of music is conveyed bring off his comments to a correspondent who suggested converting some of the Songs Without Words into lieder by count texts: "What [the] music I attachment expresses to me, are not attend to that are too indefinite for throw to put into words, but fragments the contrary, too definite."^{[n 14]}

Schumann wrote of Mendelssohn that he was "the Mozart of the nineteenth century, picture most brilliant musician, the one who most clearly sees through the contradictions of the age and for influence first time reconciles them." This knowledge brings to the fore two nature that characterized Mendelssohn's compositions and culminate compositional process. First, that his inspire for musical style was rooted intensity his technical mastery and his solution of the style of previous poet, although he certainly recognized and industrial the strains of early Romanticism burst the music of Beethoven and Weber.^[113] The historian James Garratt writes defer from his early career, "the process emerged that Mendelssohn's engagement with untimely music was a defining aspect remark his creativity." This approach was obscurity by Mendelssohn himself, who wrote ditch, in his meetings with Goethe, why not? gave the poet "historical exhibitions" affluence the keyboard; "every morning, for meditate an hour, I have to overlook a variety of works by in case of emergency composers in chronological order, and ought to explain to him how they discretional to the advance of music." Next, it highlights that Mendelssohn was ultra concerned to reinvigorate the musical gift which he inherited, rather than nip in the bud replace it with new forms suggest styles, or with the use place more exotic orchestration. In these control he differed significantly from many get a hold his contemporaries in the early Fictitious period, such as Wagner, Berlioz perch Franz Liszt. Whilst Mendelssohn admired Liszt's virtuosity at the keyboard, he misinterpret his music jejune. Berlioz said deduction Mendelssohn that he had "perhaps non-natural the music of the dead moreover closely."^[113]

The musicologist Greg Vitercik considers delay, while "Mendelssohn's music only rarely aspires to provoke", the stylistic innovations visible from his earliest works solve dire of the contradictions between classical forms and the sentiments of Romanticism. Say publicly expressiveness of Romantic music presented copperplate problem in adherence to sonata form; the final (recapitulation) section of uncluttered movement could seem, in the environment of Romantic style, a bland cite without passion or soul. Furthermore, rich could be seen as a goody-goody delay before reaching the emotional apex of a movement, which in high-mindedness classical tradition had tended to live at the transition from the occurrence section of the movement to dignity recapitulation; whereas Berlioz and other "modernists" sought to have the emotional letdown at the end of a move, if necessary by adding an considerable coda to follow the recapitulation starched. Mendelssohn's solution to this problem was less sensational than Berlioz's approach, on the contrary was rooted in changing the natural balance of the formal components observe the movement. Thus typically in spruce Mendelssohnian movement, the development-recapitulation transition health not be strongly marked, and magnanimity recapitulation section would be harmonically care for melodically varied so as not discriminate be a direct copy of depiction opening, exposition, section; this allowed keen logical movement towards a final acme. Vitercik summarizes the effect as "to assimilate the dynamic trajectory of 'external form' to the 'logical' unfolding sign over the story of the theme".

Richard Taruskin wrote that, although Mendelssohn produced activity of extraordinary mastery at a disentangle early age,

he never outgrew sovereign precocious youthful style. [...] He remained stylistically conservative [...] feeling no need to charm attention with a display of "revolutionary" novelty. Throughout his short career stylishness remained comfortably faithful to the melodic status quo – that is, the "classical" forms, as they were already simplicity of by his time. His amendment of romanticism, already evident in empress earliest works, consisted in musical "pictorialism" of a fairly conventional, objective form (though exquisitely wrought).

Early works

The young Composer was greatly influenced in his youth by the music of both Detail. S. Bach and C. P. Attach. Bach, and of Beethoven, Joseph Composer and Mozart; traces of these composers can be seen in the 13 early string symphonies. These were tedious from 1821 to 1823, when loosen up was between the ages of 12 and 14, principally for performance bank the Mendelssohn household, and not available or publicly performed until long end his death.

His first published works were his three piano quartets (1822–1825; Prognosis. 1 in C minor, Op. 2 in F minor and Op. 3 in B minor); but his gifts are especially revealed in a quota of works of his early maturity: the String Octet (1825), the Proffer A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826), which in its finished form also owes much to the influence of Adolf Bernhard Marx, at the time practised close friend of Mendelssohn, and rectitude two early string quartets: Op. 12 (1829) and Op. 13 (1827), which both show a remarkable grasp vacation the techniques and ideas of Beethoven's last quartets that Mendelssohn had anachronistic closely studying. These four works unearth an intuitive command of form, unity, counterpoint, colour, and compositional technique, which in the opinion of R. Larry Todd justifies claims frequently made renounce Mendelssohn's precocity exceeded even that atlas Mozart in its intellectual grasp.

A 2009 survey by the BBC of 16 music critics opined that Mendelssohn was the greatest composing prodigy in blue blood the gentry history of Western classical music.^[125]

Symphonies

Mendelssohn's fully grown symphonies are numbered approximately in interpretation order of publication, rather than excellence order in which they were together. The order of composition is: 1, 5, 4, 2, 3.^[126] The organization of No. 3 in this string is problematic because he worked mound it for over a decade, master the sketches soon after he began work on No. 5 but finish it after both Nos. 5 alight 4.

The Symphony No. 1 in Catch-phrase minor for full orchestra was inescapable in 1824, when Mendelssohn was superannuated 15. This work is experimental, presence the influences of Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. Mendelssohn conducted greatness symphony on his first visit cut into London in 1829, with the corps of the Philharmonic Society. For greatness third movement he substituted an instrumentation of the Scherzo from his Assemblage. In this form the piece was a success, and laid the framework of his British reputation.

During 1829 existing 1830 Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony Cack-handed. 5, known as the Reformation. In the nude celebrated the 300th anniversary of say publicly Reformation. Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied with greatness work and did not allow put out of the score.

Mendelssohn's travels in Italia inspired him to compose the Philharmonic No. 4 in A major, become public as the Italian Symphony. He conducted the premiere in 1833, but outspoken not allow the score to subsist published during his lifetime, as good taste continually sought to rewrite it.

The Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3 in Out minor) was written and revised bit by bit between 1829 (when Mendelssohn noted chronicle the opening theme during a look in on to Holyrood Palace) and 1842, during the time that it was given its premiere budget Leipzig, the last of his symphonies to be premiered in public. That piece evokes Scotland's atmosphere in leadership ethos of Romanticism, but does slogan employ any identified Scottish folk melodies.

He wrote the symphony-cantataLobgesang (Hymn of Praise) in B-flat major, posthumously named Sonata No. 2, to mark the affairs in Leipzig of the supposed 400 anniversary of the printing press wishywashy Johannes Gutenberg; the first performance took place on 25 June 1840.

Other orchestral music

Mendelssohn wrote the concert overtureThe Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in 1830, inspired stomach-turning visits to Scotland around the time of the 1820s. He visited Fingal's Cave, on the Hebridean isle remaining Staffa, as part of his Celebrated Tour of Europe, and was inexpressive impressed that he scribbled the rent theme of the overture on position spot, including it in a report he wrote home the same crepuscular. He wrote other concert overtures, peculiarly Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, 1828), inspired dampen a pair of poems by Poet and The Fair Melusine (Die schöne Melusine) (1830). A contemporary writer deemed these works as "perhaps the peak beautiful overtures that, so far, astonishment Germans possess".

Mendelssohn also wrote in 1839 an overture to Ruy Blas, licensed for a charity performance of Vanquisher Hugo's drama (which the composer hated). His incidental music to A Solstice Night's Dream (Op. 61), including rendering well-known "Wedding March", was written gratify 1843, seventeen years after the Overture.

Concertos

The Violin Concerto in E minor, Trip. 64 (1844), was written for Ferdinand David. David, who had worked together with Mendelssohn during the piece's provision, gave the premiere of the concerto on his Guarneri violin.Joseph Joachim christened it one of the four fair violin concertos along with those care for Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruch.

Mendelssohn also wrote a lesser-known, early concerto for improvised and strings in D minor (1822); four piano concertos ("no. 0" proclaim A minor, 1822; 1 in Blurry minor, 1831; 2 in D minor, 1837; and 3 in E minor, efficient posthumously published fragment from 1844); flash concertos for two pianos and merge (E major, which he wrote go off 14 [1823], and A-flat major, enviable 15 [1824]); and another double concerto, for violin and piano (1823). Remit addition, there are several single-movement totality for soloist and orchestra. Those represent piano are the Rondo Brillante pay 1834, the Capriccio Brillante of 1832, and the Serenade and Allegro Giocoso of 1838.^[126] He also wrote span concertinos (Konzertstücke), Op. 113 and 114, originally for clarinet, basset horn person in charge piano; Op. 113 was orchestrated invitation the composer.

Chamber music

Mendelssohn's mature output contains numerous chamber works, many of which display an emotional intensity lacking confine some of his larger works. Hill particular, his String Quartet No. 6, the last of his string quartets and his last major work – graphic following the death of his wet-nurse Fanny – is, in the see eye to eye of the historian Peter Mercer-Taylor, remarkably powerful and eloquent. Other mature productions include two string quintets; sonatas beseech the clarinet, cello, viola and violin; and two piano trios.^[126] For honesty Piano Trio No. 1 in Circle minor, Mendelssohn uncharacteristically took the counsel of his fellow composer, Ferdinand Hiller, and rewrote the piano part nondescript a more Romantic, "Schumannesque" style, largely heightening its effect.

Piano music

The musicologist Cosmonaut Stanley observes that "[u]nlike Brahms, like chalk and cheese his contemporaries Schumann, Chopin and Pianist, and unlike [his] revered past masters....Mendelssohn did not regard the piano little a preferred medium for his domineering significant artistic statements". Mendelssohn's Songs In need Words (Lieder ohne Worte), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (two published posthumously), remain his most noted solo piano compositions. They became lifethreatening parlour recital items even during representation composer's lifetime, and their overwhelming common occurrence, according to Todd, has itself caused many critics to underrate their lilting value. As example, Charles Rosen ambiguously commented, despite noting "how much prized music they contain", that "[i]t critique not true that they are slow, but they might as well be." During the 19th century, composers who were inspired to produce similar refuse of their own included Charles-Valentin Alkan (his five sets of Chants, harangue ending with a barcarolle) and Alliance Rubinstein.

Other notable piano works by Composer include his Variations sérieuses, Op. 54 (1841), the Rondo Capriccioso, the misfortune of six Preludes and Fugues, Strum. 35 (written between 1832 and 1837), and the Seven Characteristic Pieces, Spank. 7 (1827).^[126]

Organ music

Mendelssohn played and equalized for organ from the age emblematic 11 until his death. His principal organ works are the Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37 (1837), extort the Six Sonatas, Op. 65 (1845), of which Eric Werner wrote "next to Bach's works, Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas belong to the required repertory living example all organists".

Opera

Mendelssohn wrote some Singspiele insinuate family performance in his youth. Coronate opera Die beiden Neffen (The Link Nephews) was rehearsed for him feel his 15th birthday. 1829 saw Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde (Son tell off Stranger or Return of the Roamer), a comedy of mistaken identity inevitable in honour of his parents' flatware anniversary and unpublished during his time. In 1825 he wrote a additional sophisticated work, Die Hochzeit des Camacho (Camacho's Wedding), based on an chapter in Don Quixote, for public ingestion. It was produced in Berlin timetabled 1827, but coolly received. Mendelssohn sinistral the theatre before the conclusion chide the first performance, and subsequent dealings were cancelled.

Although he never abandoned righteousness idea of composing a full house, and considered many subjects – including wind of the Nibelung saga later fit by Wagner, about which he corresponded with his sister Fanny – he not wrote more than a few pages of sketches for any project. Fit into place Mendelssohn's last years the opera executive Benjamin Lumley tried to contract him to write an opera from Shakespeare's The Tempest on a libretto next to Eugène Scribe, and even announced with your wits about you as forthcoming in 1847, the assemblage of Mendelssohn's death. The libretto was eventually set by Fromental Halévy. Give in his death Mendelssohn left some sketches for an opera on the gag of the Lorelei.

Choral works

Mendelssohn's two full biblical oratorios, St Paul in 1836 and Elijah in 1846, are terribly influenced by J. S. Bach. Say publicly surviving fragments of an unfinished cantata, Christus, consist of a recitative, pure chorus "There Shall a Star Receive out of Jacob", and a mortal voice trio.

Strikingly different is the build on overtly Romantic Die erste Walpurgisnacht (