1809–1847 · Romantic
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) was a German composer, pianist, conductor and organist, one of the leading figures of Romantic-era music and the founder of the Leipzig Conservatory. He revived European audiences' interest in the nearly forgotten music of Bach by conducting the St Matthew Passion, and wrote symphonies, overtures, oratorios and piano pieces. The site holds his organ, choral and several piano works of varying difficulty.
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born on 3 February 1809 in Hamburg, into the family of the banker Abraham Mendelssohn. The composer's paternal grandfather was the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, founder of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. In 1811 the family moved to Berlin, where young Felix grew up in a creative, intellectual household; among the visitors to his parents' home were the philosopher Friedrich Hegel and the music teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter.
Felix had an older sister, Fanny: she received the same musical education and was herself a gifted pianist and composer; a number of her early songs appeared in print under his name instead of hers, and for some years her Easter Sonata was taken for a piece by Felix, until it turned up again in the 1970s. Zelter noticed the boy's musical talent and began teaching him theory. Already at nine Felix made a successful appearance as a pianist, and a year later he made his vocal debut in Berlin. He studied piano with Ludwig Berger and violin first with Carl Henning and then with Eduard Rietz, to whom in 1822 he dedicated his youthful concerto in D minor. In 1821 Zelter introduced the twelve-year-old Felix to Goethe, who received the boy's talent warmly; later Mendelssohn also met Carl Maria von Weber, who had come to Berlin for a production of his opera Der Freischütz.
From this period date his first serious compositions: a piano trio, a sonata for violin and piano, two piano sonatas and several organ pieces. Mendelssohn was already leading an active concert life as a pianist and conductor: works from these years include the First Symphony in C minor, the Piano Concerto in A minor, a piano quintet and sextet, and in 1824 his opera The Two Nephews was staged. Around the same time he met the famous pianist Ignaz Moscheles, and the acquaintance grew into a lifelong friendship and artistic partnership.
In 1825 his father took Felix with him on a trip to Paris — one of Europe's musical centres, where Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer were then working; the director of the Paris Conservatory, Luigi Cherubini, praised the young man's gift highly, while the music of the French composers themselves, judging by Mendelssohn's letters from those years, left him largely unmoved. In May that year the Mendelssohns returned to Berlin, where Felix met Goethe for a second time: at the writer's house his Piano Quartet, dedicated to Goethe, was performed. In August the composer finished a two-act opera, The Wedding of Camacho, taking its plot from Cervantes's Don Quixote. The family settled into a spacious old house at Leipziger Straße 3 with a large music room, and Mendelssohn's Saturday concerts became a tradition that drew as many as several hundred listeners.
In 1826 Mendelssohn wrote the overture to Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream — one of his most famous works, which he would later conduct many times at his own concerts. The following year The Wedding of Camacho was staged under the direction of Gaspare Spontini: the audience received the opera well, but intrigues surrounding the production caused the second performance to fall through, and the disappointed Mendelssohn never wrote another opera, concentrating instead on instrumental music and oratorios. That same year, 1827, he enrolled at the University of Berlin, where he attended Hegel's lectures.
As early as 1823 his grandmother had given Mendelssohn a copy of the manuscript of Bach's St Matthew Passion — Bach being, at that time, an almost forgotten composer. Zelter treated Bach's choral works merely as teaching material and objected when, in 1829, Mendelssohn and the singer and stage director Eduard Devrient decided to perform the whole Passion. The performance nonetheless took place — the first since Bach's death: Devrient himself sang the part of Jesus, while Mendelssohn played the harpsichord part on a fortepiano; the work had to be shortened and the orchestra's makeup slightly altered. It was a great success, and Mendelssohn performed the Passion twice more in concerts that followed.
After this Mendelssohn, at Moscheles's invitation, went on tour to London, where he conducted his own works at concerts of the Philharmonic Society — the Symphony in C minor and the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream — and appeared as a pianist in music by Weber and Beethoven; at one concert, together with Moscheles, he performed his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. In 1829 he also travelled through Scotland and returned to Berlin a celebrity across Europe: impressed by the trip, he began a symphony later named the 'Scottish' (finished and performed only in 1842) and the overture The Hebrides.
The trip to England had been only the first part of a grand concert tour funded by the composer's father; in 1830 Mendelssohn was offered a professorship in Berlin, but he declined it and set off on a new tour to Italy, stopping on the way in Weimar to see Goethe, who was living there at the time. Returning from Italy he gave concerts in Munich, where he wrote and premiered his Piano Concerto in G minor, then in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, arriving in Paris in December 1831, where he met Liszt and Chopin; the Paris public received his new works, including the Reformation Symphony, coolly. In March 1832 the composer caught cholera and had to cancel his remaining concerts, but recovered quickly and, already in April, gave a series of concerts in London, where he appeared not only as a conductor but also as an organist, and published the first book of his Songs Without Words.
In May 1832 Carl Zelter died — Mendelssohn's first teacher and director of the Berlin Singakademie. At his father's urging Felix put himself forward for the post, but the Academy's members voted for the deputy director, Carl Rungenhagen; according to Eduard Devrient, antisemitic views held by some of the members played a part in that decision. Mendelssohn then decided to leave Berlin.
In 1833 he visited London for a third time, where he performed his Symphony in A major, later called the 'Italian', and then conducted at the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf. The concert was a great success, and the composer was offered the post of Generalmusikdirektor; he accepted and for two years regularly conducted opera productions and symphony concerts. Mendelssohn's relations with the city theatre's management were not always smooth, and when in 1835, after his performance at the Cologne Music Festival, he was offered the post of conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus symphony concerts, he accepted the offer.
On 4 October 1835 the first concert under Mendelssohn's direction took place in Leipzig, opening with the overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The Gewandhaus concerts became one of the most important events of European musical life, with Mendelssohn one of its central figures; in 1836 the University of Leipzig awarded him an honorary doctorate of philosophy. Already in Düsseldorf he had conceived a trilogy of oratorios on biblical subjects, 'Elijah — Paul — Christ', but his busy concert life kept him from taking it up; in Leipzig he was able to begin realising the plan — the oratorio Paul was finished in the spring of 1836 and performed under his own direction at the Lower Rhine Music Festival.
In March 1837 Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud (1817–1853), who came from a French Huguenot family settled in Germany; they had five children, among them the historian Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the chemist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Mendelssohn again toured to London, where he conducted the oratorio Paul, gave organ concerts and masterclasses, and began work on the oratorio Elijah. The composer's authority kept growing, musicians turned to him for advice, and his judgment of new works was thought decisive; in April 1840 he petitioned for a conservatory to be opened in Leipzig and, turning down the post of its head, took charge of the first German conservatory, which opened three years later, where he taught classes in solo singing, composition and orchestration.
In 1841 the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV invited Mendelssohn to the post of Kapellmeister in Berlin: the king wanted to turn the city into Germany's cultural centre, and the composer was tasked with reforming the Royal Academy of Arts and directing the cathedral choir. Mendelssohn's reform work met with strong resistance, and he decided to return to concert life: in 1842 he again visited England with his wife, where his concerts continued to enjoy great success, and during this period he wrote music for stage productions — Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
In 1843, with Mendelssohn's active involvement, the Conservatory opened in Leipzig — Germany's first institution of higher music education, where Schumann, David, Moscheles and other leading musicians of the time taught. A year later he again gave concerts in England, and on returning submitted a request to the king to resign his post as Berlin Kapellmeister.
In September 1845 Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig, resumed his post as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts, taught at the Conservatory and worked on the oratorio Elijah: the piece was finished in 1846 and performed in Birmingham. Back in Leipzig he took up the third part of the trilogy, the oratorio Christ, but his health declined and the work had to be set aside. In 1847 Mendelssohn travelled to England for the last time, conducting Elijah in Manchester and Birmingham.
In these years Mendelssohn grew close to the Swedish singer Jenny Lind, whom he had been supporting since 1844: he promised, for her sake, to leave his family and flee with her to America, and in his letters threatened suicide, but the singer refused to share his fate. On 14 May 1847, at the age of forty-two, Mendelssohn's older sister Fanny died; shaken by the news, the composer stopped his concert activity and went away to Switzerland for a time. On 28 October that year he suffered a stroke in Leipzig, and a second on 3 November; the next day, 4 November 1847, Mendelssohn died. In accordance with his last wish, his body was taken to Berlin, where he was buried beside his recently deceased sister Fanny in the Mendelssohn family plot.
Mendelssohn worked in almost every genre of instrumental and choral music — from symphonies, concertos and overtures to organ works and chamber ensembles; his best-known compositions include the incidental music he wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream (among it the 'Wedding March'), together with the symphonies nicknamed 'Italian' and 'Scottish', the oratorios Paul and Elijah, the overture The Hebrides and his Violin Concerto. After the failure of The Wedding of Camacho he never wrote another opera, concentrating instead on instrumental and choral music. Among his piano works his Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte) are especially well known — the most popular of his pieces for a single instrument.
The organ pieces on the site are the Prelude and Fugue in C minor and the Prelude and Fugue in D minor, Op. 37, both at an advanced level, the Prelude and Fugue in G major from the same opus at an upper-intermediate level, and the finale of the Sixth Organ Sonata, Op. 65 No. 6, also upper-intermediate. Among the piano pieces are the Scherzo in E minor, Op. 16 No. 2, and the piece Inquiétude, Op. 19 No. 5, together with three Songs Without Words: Op. 19 No. 6, Op. 30 No. 6 and Op. 85 No. 1; all of them are at an upper-intermediate level.
Most numerous on the site are choral sacred works to German texts. The most accessible, at an elementary+ level, are 'Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr', 'Dir, Herr, dir will ich mich ergeben', 'Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat', Op. 47, and the hymn tune 'Consolation'. The next level up, intermediate, includes 'Zwei geistliche Chöre: Beati mortui', Op. 115, 'Aus tiefer Not schrei' ich zu dir', 'Gottes Rat und Scheiden', Op. 47, 'Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Frieden fahren' and the hymn tune 'Mendelssohn'; the companion piece from the same 'Zwei geistliche Chöre', 'Periti autem', Op. 115, is upper-intermediate.