Biography of mendelssohn

He suffered from fatigue and died in Leipzig in November of the same year, after a series of strokes and of a brain hemorrhage at age of His funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche Saint Paul's Church. Thousands came to pay homage. Music lovers in Germany and several other countries, particularly Britain, where he had been so popular, mourned his death.

After the service, the train left for Berlin, and during a stop at Dessau, a chorus sang on the platform. In Berlin a great crowd attended. Mendelssohn was laid to rest in the family vault in the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof Trinity Cemetery in Berlin-Kreuzberg beside his beloved sister. Mendelssohn's works show an influence of Baroque and early classical music.

He was greatly influenced in his childhood by the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, which can be seen 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 fugues and chorales particularly reflect a tonal clarity and the use of counterpoint reminiscent of Bach, who had fallen into relative obscurity by the turn of the nineteenth century and whose works were hard to come by.

Mendelssohn's teacher Zelter also deeply respected Bach's music, and inwith the backing of Zelter and the assistance of a thespian friend, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. The orchestra and a choir of were provided by the Berlin Singakademie. Mendelssohn trimmed the score, filled out the instrumentation and provided sound effects, and thus began the process of alteration and truncation that was employed throughout the Bach biography of mendelssohn.

The biography of mendelssohn of this performance the first since Bach's death in was an important element in the revival of Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of 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 to revive the greatest Christian music for the world.

Mendelssohn also revived interest in the work of Franz Schubert. He conducted the premiere of Schubert's Ninth Symphony in Leipzig inmore than a decade after the composer's death. 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 Hector BerliozFranz Lisztand Giacomo Meyerbeerbut in his letters expressed his frank disapproval of their works.

He considered Berlioz' instrumentation "filthy. In his life, as in his music, there was little excessive enthusiasm or exaggeration displayed by Berlioz. Yet he was also a superb interpreter of the fairy kingdom, particularly in the form of scherzo, which in his hands was transformed into a vehicle for the fleeting dance of fairies, elves and spirits.

He was aware of his weaknesses in terms of depth or drama, so he cultivated his strengths. He was associated with Victorian values of religiosity and sentimentality, and the Victorians loved his oratorios and melodious sacred music. Mendelssohn viewed Paris and its music with contempt and an almost Puritanical distaste. He thought its style of opera vulgar and the works of Meyerbeer insincere.

Attempts to biography of mendelssohn him in Saint-Simonianism ended in embarrassing scenes. When he was told that he looked rather like Meyerbeer they were distant cousinsMendelssohn got so upset that he immediately got 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.

Mendelssohn's fellow musicians reciprocated his unfavorable views. His success, popularity and 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. He described the Hebrides Overture as "so clear, so smooth, so melodious, as definite in form as a crystal, but also just as cold" and called Mendelssohn "a landscape painter, incapable of depicting a human being.

Schumann saw in him the reconciliation of the classical and the Romantic but with too much elegance and refinement. The Nazi regime was to cite Mendelssohn's Jewish origin in banning his works and destroying memorial statues. In contrast, in England, Mendelssohn's reputation remained high; the novel Charles Auchester by the teenaged Sarah Sheppard, published inwhich features Mendelssohn as the 'Chevalier Seraphael', remained in print for nearly 80 years.

Queen Victoria demonstrated her enthusiasm by requesting, when The Crystal Palace was being re-built inthat it include a statue of Mendelssohn. However, Bernard Shaw condemned his music for its association with Victorian cultural insularity. Over the last half century, a new appreciation of Mendelssohn's work has developed, which takes into account not only pieces such as the Violin Concerto and the Symphony No.

Virtually all of his published work is available on compact disc. Recent criticism has have stressed the subtlety of his compositional technique. 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 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 Mendelssohn himself on tour in an Italian scene. Mendelssohn wrote twelve symphonies for the string orchestra between and The numbering of his mature symphonies is approximately in the order of publishing rather than of composition.

The order of actual composition was 1, 5, 3, 4, and 2. The Symphony No. Listeners who had raised questions about Mendelssohn's talent included Heinrich Heinewho wrote in after hearing the oratorio St. Paul that his work was. Such criticism of Mendelssohn for his very ability — which could be characterised negatively as facility — was taken to further lengths by Richard Wagner.

Mendelssohn's success, his popularity and his Jewish origins irked Wagner sufficiently to damn Mendelssohn with faint praise, three years after his death, in an anti-Jewish pamphlet Das Judenthum in der Musik : [ ]. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed consistent admiration for Mendelssohn's music, in contrast to his general scorn for "Teutonic" Romanticism:.

At any rate, the whole music of romanticism [e. Schumann and Wagner] Things were different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master who, thanks to his easier, purer, happier soul, was quickly honoured and just as quickly forgotten, as a lovely incident in German music. Some readers, however, have interpreted Nietzsche's characterization of Mendelssohn as a 'lovely incident' as condescending.

In the 20th century the Nazi regime and its Reichsmusikkammer cited Mendelssohn's Jewish origin in banning performance and publication of his works, even asking Nazi-approved composers to rewrite incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream Carl Orff obliged. The monument dedicated to Mendelssohn erected in Leipzig in was removed by the Nazis in A replacement was erected in Mendelssohn's grave remained unmolested during the Nazi years.

Mendelssohn's reputation in Britain remained high throughout the 19th century. Prince Albert inscribed in German a libretto for the oratorio Elijah in "To the noble artist who, surrounded by the Baal -worship of false art, has been able, like a second Elijah, through genius and study, to remain true to the service of true art. By the early twentieth century, many critics, including Bernard Shawbegan to condemn Mendelssohn's music for its association with Victorian cultural insularity; Shaw in particular complained of the composer's " kid-glove gentility, his conventional sentimentality, and his despicable oratorio-mongering".

Appreciation of Mendelssohn's work has developed since the midth century, together with the publication of a number of biographies placing his achievements in context. Mencken concluded that, if Mendelssohn indeed missed true greatness, he missed it "by a hair". Charles Rosenin a chapter on Mendelssohn in his book The Romantic Generationboth praised and criticized the composer.

He called him "the greatest child prodigy the history of Western music has ever known", whose command at age 16 surpassed that of Mozart or Chopin at 19, the possessor at an early age of a "control of large-scale structure unsurpassed by any composer of his generation", and a "genius" with a "profound" comprehension of Beethoven.

Rosen believed that in the composer's later years, without losing his craft or genius, he "renounced Rosen considered the "Fugue in E minor" later included in Mendelssohn's Op. Nevertheless, he pointed out how the dramatic power of "the juncture of religion and music" in Mendelssohn's oratorios is reflected throughout the music of the next fifty years in the operas of Meyerbeer and Giuseppe Verdi and in Wagner's Parsifal.

A large portion of Mendelssohn's works still remained unpublished in the s, but most of them are now available. This includes a modern and fully researched catalogue of his works, the Mendelssohn-Werkverzeichnis MWV. Larry Todd noted inin the context of the impending bicentenary of Mendelssohn's birth, "the intensifying revival of the composer's music over the past few decades", and that "his image has been largely rehabilitated, as biographies of mendelssohn and scholars have returned to this paradoxically familiar but unfamiliar European classical composer, and have begun viewing him from new perspectives.

The main collections of Mendelssohn's original musical autographs and letters are to be found in the Bodleian LibraryOxford University, the New York Public Libraryand the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item.

German composer — For other uses, see Mendelssohn surname and Mendelssohn disambiguation. Life [ edit ]. Childhood [ edit ]. Surname [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Musical education [ edit ]. Early maturity [ edit ]. Meeting Goethe and conducting Bach [ edit ]. Leipzig and Berlin [ edit ]. Mendelssohn in Britain [ edit ]. Death [ edit ].

Personal life [ edit ]. Personality [ edit ]. Religion [ edit ]. Mendelssohn and his contemporaries [ edit ]. Marriage and children [ edit ]. Jenny Lind [ edit ]. Music [ edit ]. Composer [ edit ]. Style [ edit ]. Early works [ edit ]. Symphonies [ edit ]. Other orchestral music [ edit ]. Concertos [ edit ]. Chamber music [ edit ]. Piano music [ edit ].

Organ music [ edit ]. Opera [ edit ]. Choral works [ edit ]. Songs [ edit ]. Performer [ edit ]. Conductor [ edit ]. Editor [ edit ]. Teacher [ edit ]. Reputation and legacy [ edit ]. The first century [ edit ]. Modern opinions [ edit ]. Notes and references [ edit ]. In German and some other languages the surname "Mendelssohn Bartholdy" sometimes hyphenated is generally used.

See The Musical Quarterlyvols. Sposato, Leon Botstein and others, for expressions of both points of view; and see Conway [ 91 ] for a tertium quid. For a modern example see Damian Thompson"Why did Mendelssohn lose his mojo? The statue is now situated in Eltham CollegeLondon. Accessed 12 September Archived from the original on 16 June Retrieved 17 December Die Mitglieder des Ordens.

Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. ISBN Archived from the original PDF on 27 January Retrieved 9 June English Heritage. Retrieved 16 December Schmidler et al. Retrieved 3 December But where's Mozart? Retrieved 2 February City of Leipzig. Retrieved 20 December World ORT. Classic FM. Archived from the original on 24 December Charles Auchester.

Chicago: A. McClurg and Co. OCLC Sources [ edit ]. Barenboim, Lev Aronovich Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein in Russian 2 vols. Leningrad: State Musical Publishing House. Barr, John London: The British Library. Infor example, he produced two piano sonatas pieces for one instrumenta violin sonata, songs, a quartet for men's voices, a cantata, and a short opera.

The first public presentation of Mendelssohn's works took place in That year he also wrote his official op. All these works were well received. He had a private orchestra, for which he wrote the work now known as Symphony no. He also continued with other work, such as the Piano Quartet in F Minor In the famous pianist Ignaz Moscheles — arrived in Berlin from London, Englandand 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. 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.

Biography of mendelssohn

On March 11,a great musical event occurred: Mendelssohn conducted the Singakademie in the first complete performance of Johann Sebastian Bach 's — 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 Scotlandwhere 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 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 RomeItaly, where he began both the Scottish and the Italian symphonies. That same year his first book of Songs without Words Lieder ohne Worte was published. In 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 —newly discovered by Robert Schumann —and selected biographies of mendelssohn of J. The only sadness he experienced was the death of his father in Five children were born of this marriage. Upon the urging of the king of PrussiaMendelssohn was appointed music director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Until 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. He completed the Scottish Symphony, the Violin Concerto, and other major works of his maturity in Leipzig. In he conducted five Philharmonic concerts in London, and in 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 Three years later he was literally devastated by the death of his beloved sister, Fanny, on May 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,at the age of thirty-eight.

In an age of growing anti-Semitism, it seemed prudent to distance the children from their Jewish heritage, and all four were baptised into the Christian faith. The habits instilled by his parents remained with Mendelssohn. His training in the music of Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Handel gave him a technical mastery unequalled in his generation.

His skills encompassed Baroque contrapuntal techniques and the Classical sonata style. This bore fruit in the impassioned String Quartet in A op. Buoyed by his triumph, he embarked on his first tour of Britain. After a visit to the remote Hebridean island of Staffa he began to sketch his Hebrides Overture, one of the great Romantic seascapes.

He continued his travels inbeginning with another visit to the aged Goethe in Weimar, then continuing to Italy. In Rome he struck up a tenuous friendship with Hector Berlioz, whose theatrical manners contrasted glaringly with his own natural fastidiousness.