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From his childhood reputation as gifted musical prodigy, Felix Mendelssohn matured to become a masterful composer who, despite his relatively short life, ranks among the great composers of the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Mendelssohn was truly fortunate to have been born in Hamburg, on February 3, 1809, as the son of Lea Salomon and Abraham Mendelssohn, a wealthy banker. He was the grandson of Rabbi and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, one of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the late Eighteenth Century. Having been born into a family of art-loving intellectuals, Mendelssohn’s parents provided the ideal cultural environment for nurturing the artistic talent of such a precocious child. In addition to receiving an excellent education, Mendelssohn and his family traveled extensively around Europe, which proved to be a considerable influence on Felix.
The defeat of Napoleon led directly to increased wealth for the Mendelssohn family, since the emergence of Prussia as a post-Napoleonic power facilitated the rapid rise of the Mendelssohn brothers’ bank. At the beginning of 1815 the Mendelssohns moved their business to the financial center of Berlin, the Jägerstraße, where the firm remained until its liquidation by the Nazis in 1938. According to the second peace treaty of Paris, France garrisoned allied troops for five years and paid reparations of seven hundred million francs to the allies which had defeated Napoleon. J&A; Mendelssohn joined a consortium of banks (led by the Rothschilds of Frankfurt) to oversee these payments, which began on December 1, 1815. At the end of October, Joseph Mendelssohn took up residence with his family in Paris and established a bureau to manage the fund transfers.
In a move that would have greatly shocked his father, Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham and Lea baptized their four children, Fanny, Rebekah, Felix, and Paul, in the Lutheran Church, and the entire family converted to the Lutheran faith in 1816 when they moved from French occupied Hamburg to Berlin. Although his parents added the surname Bartholdy upon their conversion, Felix resisted the name change and obstinately kept the last name of Mendelssohn.
Moving to Berlin was quite beneficial for Felix, who had received all of his previous musical instruction from his mother. In Berlin, he studied piano under Ludwig Berger and composition with Karl Zelter, the director of the Berlin Singakademie. The Mendelssohn family’s circle of friends was also a positive influence on the children, since most were intellectuals who were involved in the arts. From a young age, Felix Mendelssohn demonstrated a high degree of musical talent, playing both the piano and the violin exceptionally well.
Felix traveled to Paris to study the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach with his sister Fanny. They both studied piano while in Paris with Marie Bigot, who was highly esteemed by Haydn and Beethoven. Inspired by these masters of Classicism, he composed several youthful, largely experimental, works in symphonic and operatic forms, as well as other pieces for the piano. In 1821, Karl Zelter took his 12-year-old student to visit German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The visit was most important to the young Mendelssohn, who remained at the 72-year-old poet’s home for over two weeks. Goethe was fascinated by the gifted young man, and the two later corresponded in a series of letters. In 1825, when Goethe heard Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet No. 3 in B minor, he showed such great admiration for the piece that the young composer dedicated it to him. Between 1821 and 1830, Mendelssohn made five trips to visit Goethe, staying for a substantial number of days during each visit. Their relationship deepened during these years, and their continued friendship proved to be a mutually enriching one.
When Felix Mendelssohn was 16, he composed his Octet for Strings in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, which was impressive, not only because of its composer’s age, but also because it was the one of the first works of its kind. Mendelssohn’s piece featured an ingenious interplay between two distinct string quartets, resulting in a charming, highly imaginative new genre.
In addition to the literary works of Goethe, Mendelssohn found inspiration in the works of English playwright William Shakespeare. At the age of 17, he composed the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21, based on the Shakespeare’s play. The piece featured lush orchestration, and it is widely considered one of the most beautiful works of the Romantic period.
From 1826 to 1829, Mendelssohn studied at Berlin University. It was then he decided on music as his chosen profession. During the years that followed, Mendelssohn traveled and performed all over Europe, discovering England, Scotland, Italy and France. In 1832, Mendelssohn conducted his magnificent Hebrides Overture, Op. 26, as well as other important works in London, a city where he greatly enjoyed performing. Mendelssohn visited Great Britain ten times during his short lifetime, and he was on close terms with Queen Victoria, who viewed him, not only as a personal friend, but also as one of her favorite composers. Mendelssohn’s reputation in England was truly great, and the composer developed a sincere affection for the British public, which was reciprocated by his audiences in London. In 1833, he took on the post of conductor at Düsseldorf, giving concert performances of Handel’s Messiah among other works. That same year, he composed many of his own vocal works, including the Responsorium and hymnus, Op. 121 and the chorus Lord, Have Mercy Upon Us, as well as his Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 (“Italian”) and Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107 (“Reformation”).
When he was 26 years old, Mendelssohn moved to Leipzig where he became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, performing many works by Bach and Beethoven in particular. His activities as conductor in Leipzig developed into what must be regarded overwhelmingly as the most far-reaching achievement of his life, whereby he improved the quality of orchestral playing, the musicians’ wages, and created wonderful concert seasons unmatched in Europe at the time. There was little attention given to J.S. Bach’s music when he first arrived in Leipzig, but Mendelssohn used his influence, popularity, and the four hundred singers of the Singakademie to renew interest in Bach’s choral music.
In his formative years, Mendelssohn’s wealthy great-aunt Sarah Itzig Levy had exposed Felix to much of Bach’s music. Sarah Itzig Levy had been a harpsichord pupil of W.F. Bach, and at her salon she performed J.S. Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto and others. She commissioned works from C.P.E. Bach and performed them as well. Her two sisters also gave salon concerts in which the music of J.S. Bach was frequently performed. These women continued to do so when they moved to Vienna, where even Beethoven was a visitor at their salon. The long-held impression that Bach’s music was largely unknown when Felix Mendelssohn (despite his teacher Zelter’s misgivings) put on a performance of the St Matthew Passion pales in the light of these facts. For here was a living performance tradition leading from Bach’s sons into the Mendelssohn household, and another branch of this tradition was the Berlin Singakademie, conducted by Fasch and then by Zelter, in which Sarah Itzig Levy sang, and which regularly rehearsed Bach Motets and even sections of the Passions and the B minor Mass. In 1829, Mendelssohn conducted the first (almost complete) performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion since the composer’s death in 1750. He had a deep respect for musical tradition and for the past, and Mendelssohn was largely responsible for the revival of J.S. Bach’s choral music that continues to the present day.
It was during this decade spent in Leipzig that Mendelssohn developed a friendship with Robert Schumann, and he conducted the premiere performances of Schumann’s first two symphonies and his piano concerto as well. Schumann owed much of his fame as a composer to Mendelssohn’s support of his works during their collaborative years in Leipzig. Clara Schumann gave 21 performances with Mendelssohn as conductor, and in March 1840, Liszt gave three special concerts in the Gewandhaus. Other famous performers engaged by Mendelssohn during his tenure in Leipzig included Thalberg, Moscheles, and Anton Rubinstein.
In 1832, Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a Protestant clergyman. It was a happy marriage, and they were blessed with five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Felix and Lilli. Over the years that followed, Mendelssohn was a prolific composer, and in addition to his own works, he gave successful performances of music by many Eighteenth Century composers who were then largely forgotten. Mendelssohn composed several works for the piano, which were highly popular at the time; but he also wrote for many different combinations of instruments and voices.
In his two great oratorios, Mendelssohn was inspired by the works of Handel which he heard during his trips to England and which he had studied intensively and conducted in Dusseldorf. He composed Saint Paul between early 1834 and the spring of 1836. Mendelssohn viewed the story of Saint Paul’s conversion as an allegory of his family’s history and conversion to Lutheranism, and he matched the dramatic tension in the story with the inclusion of large-scale choruses, symbolic both of the blind rage of followers of the old idolatries and also to the victorious followers of the new faith. In the structure of the work, Mendelssohn greatly emulated Handelian models. The overture is based of the chorale melody Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, and the same theme later becomes a powerful choral movement that dominates the central part of the oratorio. In appropriate places, Mendelssohn inserted simple chorale settings in the same manner of the Bach Cantatas and Passions.
In 1842, Mendelssohn returned again to England where he performed private concerts for Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, his devoted admirers. A year later, Mendelssohn founded and directed the Leipzig Conservatory, which opened at the beginning of April 1843. In the courtyard of the Gewandhaus, the City Council had a two-storey house built and placed at the disposal of the conservatory. Mendelssohn gave much thought to how the academic structure of the conservatory should be arranged, and his resulting division of the curriculum into several distinct learning areas became the model for modern conservatories. He was successful in engaging well-known teachers of specialized subjects, including Moritz Hauptmann for harmony and counterpoint, Robert Schumann for piano, composition, and score-reading, Ferdinand David for violin, and Carl Becker for organ, music history, and theory. The Leipzig Conservatory remained one of the most prestigious music institutions in Germany for half a century. Mendelssohn first performed his most famous oratorio Elijah in 1846 on a return trip to England at the Birmingham Music Festival. The chorus He, Watching Over Israel is the most popular single choral piece by the composer, and Elijah on the whole is Mendelssohn’s choral masterwork, still often performed today.
In addition to his posts in Leipzig, Mendelssohn was named director of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts in Berlin by King Frederick of Prussia, but this appointment, from the start, was not a positive situation for Mendelssohn, since he was often asked to compose on demand. He was not accustomed to working in this manner, and he was left with little time for the creation of music of his own choosing, but he still managed to compose such masterpieces as the Ruy Blas Overture and The Scottish Symphony, the third of his five mature symphonies. However, Mendelssohn began a rather complicated process of gradual withdrawal from his duties in Berlin, and eventually, he took steps to release himself from his responsibilities, refusing additional commissions from the King of Prussia, in preference to his duties in Leipzig, where he had genuine and complete artistic freedom.
The Nineteenth Century was the age of the piano, a period in which the instrument became an essential item of household furniture and the center of domestic music-making. Short piano pieces always found a ready market, none more so than Mendelssohn’s eight albums of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words), a novel title that admirably describes the length, quality and intention of these short works. Mendelssohn composed 48 Songs Without Words, and he composed them for what was, at the time, a fairly new but growing market: amateur pianists who wanted music that was of good quality, yet not too difficult to play in their own homes. However, not all of the Songs Without Words fall into this classification since some contain virtuoso elements, placing them beyond being merely easy, lyrical pieces sought by the general public. Therefore, a wide range of performance difficulty exists in these works: some being easy, others of moderate difficulty, and still others only for the advanced pianist. They form what may be Mendelssohn’s most enduring legacy as a composer, since they continue to be frequently played by students of the piano. Mendelssohn did not originally give programmatic titles to most of these pieces, but the descriptive titles by which they are now known were added by his publishers in first and subsequent editions.
Felix Mendelssohn was very close to his family. When his father died in 1835, Mendelssohn felt he had lost his best friend. Seven years later, his mother died, adding to the tragedy, but the worst event was when, following a Christmas family reunion, his sister Fanny suffered a stroke while rehearsing for a Sunday concert. She died on May 14th, 1847. Mendelssohn is said to have screamed and fainted upon hearing the news. Mendelssohn fell into a deep depression. Already exhausted and ill, he never recovered from Fanny’s death, and his own death followed a few months later. His death at the tragically young age of 38 robbed the music world of an outstanding conductor and a highly inventive musical genius. His funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig with Schumann, David, Gade, Hauptmann, Rietz, and Moscheles serving as his pallbearers. His body was shipped by train to Berlin where he was buried next to his dear sister in the Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchhof Cemetery.
Although Felix Mendelssohn was a close contemporary of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Verdi (all six were born within five years of each other), his musical nature was more traditionally Classical than that of his contemporaries. Although he grew up surrounded by Romantic influences, his inspirations were essentially the works of Bach, Handel, and Mozart. Mendelssohn excelled as a composer in all musical genres except opera, and his gift for writing lyrical melodies was unsurpassed during the Nineteenth Century. His impeccable musical craftsmanship and his thorough knowledge and understanding of the media for which he wrote remain the distinguishing traits of his elegant, refined music. History has rewarded him with genuine and continuing popularity with symphony audiences and with students of the piano around the world. While Mendelssohn is remembered today primarily as a composer of a considerable body of masterful works, it should be noted that the bulk of his time was spent as an orchestra conductor and festival organizer. When viewed in this light, his creative accomplishments seem even more astonishing.