Mendelssohn, Felix

views updated May 21 2018

Felix Mendelssohn

Born: February 3, 1809
Hamburg, Germany

Died: November 4, 1847
Leipzig, Germany

German composer

Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer (a writer of music), conductor (the leader of a musical group), pianist, and organist. He developed a basic classical approach to musical composition with fresh romantic harmonies and expressiveness.

Childhood

Felix Jakob Ludwig Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in Hamburg, Germany, on February 3, 1809, the son of Abraham and Leah Mendelssohn and the grandson of the famous Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (17291786). In later years Felix's father humorously referred to himself as "formerly the son of my father and now the father of my son." In 1812 the family moved to Berlin, Germany, where Abraham established himself as a banker, converted to Protestantism (a branch of Christian religion), and changed the family name to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

Felix and his elder sister, Fanny, received their early piano instruction from their mother. In 1816, on a visit to Paris, France, he studied with the pianist Marie Bigot. The next year he began formal studies in composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter, a composer greatly admired by the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832). Also as a child, Mendelssohn took a keen interest in drawing and painting and took lessons in foreign languages.

Mendelssohn's first public appearance occurred at the age of nine. Famous musicians gave concerts every Sunday at his father's house; in addition to broadening the musical horizons of the gifted boy, they enabled him, as a budding composer, to test many of his works as he wrote them. In 1819 he entered the Singakademie, a music academy, and from that time on compositions flowed steadily from his pen. In 1820, for example, he produced two piano sonatas (pieces for one instrument), a violin sonata, songs, a quartet for men's voices, a cantata, and a short opera.

First appearances

The first public presentation of Mendelssohn's works took place in 1822. That year he also wrote his official op. 1, a Piano Quartet in C Minor. All these works were well received. He had a private orchestra, for which he wrote the work now known as Symphony no. 1 in C Minor. He also continued with other work, such as the Piano Quartet in F Minor (1823).

In 1824 the famous pianist Ignaz Moscheles (17941870) arrived in Berlin from London, England, and for a time Mendelssohn studied piano with him. The following year Mendelssohn visited Paris, where he met many famous composers and performed his Piano Quartet in B Minor, dedicated to Goethe. Back in France he wrote with mature craftsmanship the celebrated Midsummer Night's Dream Overture.

In 1827 Mendelssohn's only opera, Die Hochzeit des Camacho (The Marriage of Camacho ), based on Don Quixote by Cervantes (15471616), was presented in Berlin. More successful was the Octet for Strings, one of Mendelssohn's freshest and most original works. The same year he became acquainted with Anton Thibaut, a professor of law and a gifted amateur writer of music who was concerned with revitalizing interest in old church music. Through him, Mendelssohn came to know the masterpieces of the Renaissance (a period of great artistic awakening during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) and early baroque choral music, an elaborate style of music popular in the eighteenth century. In 1828 appeared the Goethe-inspired overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

Gaining popularity

On March 11, 1829, a great musical event occurred: Mendelssohn conducted the Singakademie in the first complete performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's (16851750) St. Matthew Passion since the composer's death. The work was a huge success, and the performance was of great importance to all later German composers for it marked the beginning of the revival of Bach's works. Later that year Mendelssohn visited England, where he conducted a concert of the Philharmonic Society. He took a long trip through Scotland, where he sketched the now famous Hebrides, or Fingal's Cave, Overture. On his return to Berlin he was offered the post of professor of music at the university but turned it down.

After writing the Reformation Symphony (1830) Mendelssohn began a series of visits to various European cities that lasted for almost three years. After a short stay with Goethe at Weimar, Mendelssohn went to Rome, Italy, where he began both the Scottish and the Italian symphonies. In the autumn he returned to Germany and played his newly composed Piano Concerto in G Minor in Munich, Germany. In 1832 he left for London, where he conducted the Hebrides Overture and the Piano Concerto in G Minor with great praise. That same year his first book of Songs without Words (Lieder ohne Worte ) was published.

In 1835 Mendelssohn became director of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig, Germany. He made Leipzig into a musical center of European significance because of his gifts as conductor, his creativity, and his all-encompassing (including all) musical education. He featured many contemporary (modern) compositions, such works as the C Major Symphony of Franz Schubert (17971828), newly discovered by Robert Schumann (18101856), and selected compositions of J. S. Bach. The only sadness he experienced was the death of his father in 1835. A year later he met Cécile Jeanrenaud, whom he married in 1837. Five children were born of this marriage.

Later years

Upon the urging of the king of Prussia, Mendelssohn was appointed music director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Until 1845 he worked only occasionally in Berlin without giving up his post at Leipzig. His schedule was marked with several trips to London, with performances of his works in London and Birmingham, England.

In 1843 Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, the first of its kind in Germany. He completed the Scottish Symphony, the Violin Concerto, and other major works of his maturity in Leipzig. In 1844 he conducted five Philharmonic concerts in London, and in 1846 he gave the first performance of his Elijah, written for the Birmingham Festival of that year. His chief occupation was still as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts, but he also functioned as director of the Leipzig Conservatory, teaching piano and composition as part of his duties.

Mendelssohn's health began to fail in 1844. Three years later he was literally devastated by the death of his beloved sister, Fanny, on May 14. From then on his health fell apart drastically, and although he went on a short summer trip to Switzerland for his health, finishing the String Quartet in F Minor, he returned exhausted to Leipzig, where he died on November 4, 1847, at the age of thirty-eight.

For More Information

Mercer-Taylor, Peter. The Life of Mendelssohn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Radcliffe, Philip. Mendelssohn. New York: J. M. Dent, 1954.

Todd, R. Larry, ed. Mendelssohn and His World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Werner, Eric. Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and His Age. Trans. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963.

Mendelssohn, Felix

views updated May 18 2018

MENDELSSOHN, FELIX

MENDELSSOHN, FELIX (Jakob Ludwig Felix ; 1809–1847), composer. Born in Hamburg, Felix was the grandson of Moses *Mendelssohn and the son of Abraham Mendelssohn, a successful banker first in Hamburg and later in Berlin, and Lea Mendelssohn, the granddaughter of Daniel *Itzig (see *Mendelssohn family). His parents had their children baptized and later converted to Christianity themselves. Felix grew up in an intellectual, cultivated atmosphere. The Sunday morning concerts at his parents' Berlin home were notable occasions attended by many celebrities, and most of Mendelssohn's early music was written for these gatherings. Abraham Mendelssohn added the name Bartholdy (after a property that had belonged to his wife's brother) to the family name, stating that "A Christian Mendelssohn is an impossibility." He wished his son to go by the professional name of Felix M. Bartholdy, but he refused to comply and in 1829 conducted under the name Felix Mendelssohn. (His sister Rebecca often signed her letters Rebecca Mendelssohn Meden (the latter meaning "never" in Greek) Bartholdy.)

Mendelssohn advanced rapidly as a composer and pianist. His String Octet, completed in 1825, is a major work of chamber music. Two years later the first public performance of his overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream took place, and in 1829, Mendelssohn performed what some believe to be his greatest achievement: the revival of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion (at the Singakademie in Berlin), which initiated the renewed popularity of Bach's works. That same year, he made the first of many journeys to England, where his popularity grew. This trip was the first episode in a three-year grand tour that included Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, and France. Some important works of this time, reflecting impressions of his travels, are the Hebrides Overture and the Italian and Scotch symphonies.

In 1833, Mendelssohn was appointed musical director of the Dusseldorf Music and Theater Society; he also supervised the city's church music and directed the subscription concerts of the Society's orchestra. Far more to his liking was his appointment as director of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig in 1835. He continued to be identified with this city for the rest of his life. In 1835 he completed his oratorio St. Paul for the Lower Rhine Festival in Duesseldorf (May 1836). Then he traveled to Frankfurt to direct the Caecilien-Verein.

In 1840 Mendelssohn was the most famous living composer in Central Europe. It was therefore inevitable that Frederick William iv, who wished to ensure Prussia's cultural and political supremacy, would summon him to court. In spite of the frustrations of bureaucracy, Mendelssohn did accomplish some good work there, notably the complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream. During this period he also continued writing his many Songs Without Words, the most popular piano pieces of their genre. In 1843 he returned to Leipzig and founded the conservatory which became the most renowned institution of its kind in Germany in the 19th century. Mendelssohn's last years saw many triumphs, the greatest of which was the première of Elijah in Birmingham (1846). But his strenuous existence as pianist, conductor, composer, and pedagogue had worn him out prematurely. His sister Fanny's sudden death in May 1847 was a shock to his already weakened system, and he died six months later in Leipzig.

Fanny Caecile (Zipporah) *Mendelssohn (1805–1847) was unusually close to her brother Felix, and her marriage to the painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829 did not weaken this bond. Felix relied upon her musical taste and advice, and six of her songs which were published along with his (without identification) are stylistically indistinguishable from his work. Under her own name, she published four books of piano pieces, two books of solo songs, and one book of part-songs. After her death, a few more piano pieces, some songs, and a piano trio in d major were published.

bibliography:

G. Grove, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn (Eng., 1951); S. Hensel, Mendelssohn Family 1729–1847, 2 vols. (1882); J. Horton, Chamber Music of Mendelssohn (1946); F. Mendelssohn, Letters, ed. by G. Selden-Goth (1945); J. Petitpierre, Romance of the Mendelssohns (1948); P. Radcliffe, Mendelssohn (Eng., 1954, 19672); E. Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age (1963); J. Werner, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, in: Music and Letters, 28 (Oct. 1947), 303–38; P. Young, Introduction to the Music of Mendelssohn (1949); Grove, Dict, s.v.; mgg, s.v.; Riemann-Gurlitt, s.v.; Baker, Biog Dict, s.v.

[Dika Newlin]

Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), (Jakob Ludwig) Felix

views updated May 29 2018

Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), (Jakob Ludwig) Felix (1809–47) German composer and conductor. A child prodigy, at 16 he composed an octet, and at 17 he wrote his overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. His performance (1829) of the St Matthew Passion revived 19th-century interest in J. S. Bach. His orchestral works include a famous violin concerto (1845) and five symphonies. He also wrote much piano and chamber music. His two oratorios, St Paul (1836) and Elijah (1846), are considered to be among the greatest of the 19th century. Mendelssohn's visit to Scotland inspired his popular orchestral overture The Hebrides (or “Fingal's Cave”, 1845).

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