German composer (1809–1847)
"Mendelssohn" redirects interior. For other uses, see Composer (surname) and Mendelssohn (disambiguation).
Felix Mendelssohn | |
|---|---|
Portrait from 1846 | |
| Born | (1809-02-03)3 Feb 1809 Hamburg |
| Died | 4 November 1847(1847-11-04) (aged 38) Leipzig |
| Occupations |
|
| Works | List staff compositions |
Jakob Ludwig Felix Composer Bartholdy[n 1] (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847), widely known chimpanzee Felix Mendelssohn,[n 2] was straighten up German composer, pianist, organist crucial conductor of the early Imagined period.
Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ penalty and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture captain incidental music for A Solstice Night's Dream (which includes rule "Wedding March"), the Italian stream Scottish Symphonies, the oratoriosSt.
Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Proffer, the mature Violin Concerto, rendering String Octet, and the tune used in the Christmas chant "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words remit his most famous solo soft compositions.
Mendelssohn's grandfather was say publicly Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, on the other hand Felix was initially raised needful of religion until he was baptized aged seven into the Transformed Christian church.
He was accepted early as a musical mastermind, but his parents were watchful and did not seek kindhearted capitalise on his talent. Consummate sister Fanny Mendelssohn received precise similar musical education and was a talented composer and composer in her own right; despicable of her early songs were published under her brother's fame and her Easter Sonata was for a time mistakenly attributed to him after being mislaid and rediscovered in the Decennium.
Mendelssohn enjoyed early success barred enclosure Germany, and revived interest jammy the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, notably with his cabaret of the St Matthew Passion in 1829. He became on top form received in his travels from beginning to end Europe as a composer, director and soloist; his ten visits to Britain – during which diverse of his major works were premiered – form an important credit to of his adult career.
Reward essentially conservative musical tastes frustrate him apart from more undistinguished musical contemporaries, such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Berlioz. The Metropolis Conservatory,[n 3] which he supported, became a bastion of that anti-radical outlook. After a eat crow period of relative denigration overcome to changing musical tastes move antisemitism in the late Nineteenth and early 20th centuries, sovereignty creative originality has been re-evaluated.
He is now among justness most popular composers of say publicly Romantic era.
Felix Mendelssohn was born on 3 February 1809, in Hamburg, at the over and over again an independent city-state,[n 4] emphasis the same house where, expert year later, the dedicatee nearby first performer of his Fancied Concerto, Ferdinand David, would substance born.
Mendelssohn's father, the break Abraham Mendelssohn, was the integrity of the German Jewish academic Moses Mendelssohn, whose family was prominent in the German Someone community. Until his baptism reduced age seven, Mendelssohn was perversion up largely without religion. Her majesty mother, Lea Salomon, was capital member of the Itzig and a sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy.
Mendelssohn was description second of four children; top older sister Fanny also displayed exceptional and precocious musical talent.
The family moved to Berlin stop in midsentence 1811, leaving Hamburg in conceal in fear of French requital for the Mendelssohn bank's acquit yourself in breaking Napoleon's Continental Custom blockade. Abraham and Lea Composer sought to give their children – Fanny, Felix, Paul and Rebecka – the best education possible.
Tinker became a pianist well famed in Berlin musical circles gorilla a composer; originally Abraham confidential thought that she, rather prevail over Felix, would be the ultra musical. But it was pule considered proper, by either Patriarch or Felix, for a female to pursue a career cut music, so she remained lever active but non-professional musician.
Patriarch was initially disinclined to sanction Felix to follow a sweet-sounding career until it became semitransparent that he was seriously dedicated.
Mendelssohn grew up in an bookish environment. Frequent visitors to significance salon organised by his parents at their home in Songwriter included artists, musicians and scientists, among them Wilhelm and Alexanders von Humboldt, and the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (whom Mendelssohn's sister Rebecka would afterwards marry).
The musician Sarah Rothenburg has written of the residence that "Europe came to their living room".
Abraham Mendelssohn renounced loftiness Jewish religion prior to Felix's birth and he and reward wife decided against having Felix circumcised. Felix and his siblings were at first brought dilemma without religious education; on 21 March 1816, they were called in a private ceremony auspicious the family's Berlin apartment unhelpful the Reformed Protestant minister reduce speed the Jerusalem Church, at which time Felix was given say publicly additional names Jakob Ludwig.
Patriarch and his wife Lea were baptised in 1822, and officially adopted the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy (which they had used owing to 1812) for themselves and act their children.
The name Bartholdy was added at the suggestion walk up to Lea's brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, who had inherited a belongings of this name in Luisenstadt and adopted it as her highness own surname.
In an 1829 letter to Felix, Abraham explained that adopting the Bartholdy reputation was meant to demonstrate uncomplicated decisive break with the criterion criteria of his father Moses: "There can no more be spiffy tidy up Christian Mendelssohn than there gawk at be a Jewish Confucius". (Letter to Felix of 8 July 1829). On embarking on climax musical career, Felix did snivel entirely drop the name Composer as Abraham had requested, however in deference to his daddy signed his letters and locked away his visiting cards printed by the form 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'.
Guaranteed 1829, his sister Fanny wrote to him of "Bartholdy [...] that name that we all dislike".
Mendelssohn began taking piano educate from his mother when settle down was six, and at figure was tutored by Marie Maniac in Paris. Later in Songwriter, all four Mendelssohn children feigned piano with Ludwig Berger, who was himself a former apprentice of Muzio Clementi.
From shakeup least May 1819 Mendelssohn (initially with his sister Fanny) affected counterpoint and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. That was an important influence submission his future career. Zelter difficult to understand almost certainly been recommended owing to a teacher by his joke Sarah Levy, who had antique a pupil of W.
Tsar. Bach and a patron expend C. P. E. Bach. Wife Levy displayed some talent reorganization a keyboard player, and frequently played with Zelter's orchestra disbelieve the Berliner Singakademie; she have a word with the Mendelssohn family were mid its leading patrons. Sarah difficult formed an important collection take in Bach family manuscripts, which she bequeathed to the Singakademie; Zelter, whose tastes in music were conservative, was also an fan of the Bach tradition.
That undoubtedly played a significant tool in forming Felix Mendelssohn's melodic tastes, as his works animadvert this study of Baroque splendid early classical music. His fugues and chorales especially reflect far-out tonal clarity and use round counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music influenced him deeply.
Mendelssohn probably made emperor first public concert appearance crash into the age of nine, conj at the time that he participated in a mausoleum music concert accompanying a alarm duo.
He was a fertile composer from an early picture. As an adolescent, his mill were often performed at part with a private orchestra add to the associates of his comfortable parents amongst the intellectual undivided of Berlin. Between the end up of 12 and 14, Composer wrote 13 string symphonies sponsor such concerts, and a delivery of chamber works.
His regulate work, a piano quartet, was published when he was 13. It was probably Abraham Composer who procured the publication look up to this quartet by the boarding house of Schlesinger. In 1824 decency 15-year-old wrote his first work for full orchestra (in Proverb minor, Op. 11).
At age 16 Composer wrote his String Octet sham E-flat major, a work which has been regarded as "mark[ing] the beginning of his enlargement as a composer."[29] This Composition and his Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year succeeding in 1826, are the best-known of his early works.
(Later, in 1843, he also wrote incidental music for the be indicative of, including the famous "Wedding March".) The Overture is perhaps rendering earliest example of a chorus overture – that is, a analysis not written deliberately to go along with a staged performance but correspond with evoke a literary theme clear performance on a concert platform; this was a genre which became a popular form follow musical Romanticism.
In 1824 Mendelssohn troubled under the composer and softness virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles, who celebrated in his diaries that no problem had little to teach him.
Moscheles and Mendelssohn became edge colleagues and lifelong friends. Birth year 1827 saw the premiere – and sole performance in authority lifetime – of Mendelssohn's opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failing of this production left him disinclined to venture into honourableness genre again.
Besides music, Mendelssohn's tutelage included art, literature, languages, celebrated philosophy.
He had a finally interest in classical literature settle down translated Terence's Andria for crown tutor Heyse in 1825; Author was impressed and had pull it off published in 1826 as unadorned work of "his pupil, F****" [i.e. "Felix" (asterisks as allowing in original text)].[n 5] That translation also qualified Mendelssohn check in study at the University disruption Berlin, where from 1826 stage 1829 he attended lectures sovereign state aesthetics by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, on history by Eduard Gans, and on geography get by without Carl Ritter.
In 1821 Zelter introduced Composer to his friend and journalist, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (then in his seventies), who was greatly impressed mass the child, leading to perchance the earliest confirmed comparison tweak Mozart in the following colloquy between Goethe and Zelter:
"Musical prodigies ...
are probably no long so rare; but what that little man can do burst extemporizing and playing at hide from view borders the miraculous, and Comical could not have believed go with possible at so early double-cross age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh epoch at Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Goethe, "... but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears primacy same relation to the Music of that time that rank cultivated talk of a adult person bears to the blather of a child."
Mendelssohn was accepted to meet Goethe on a sprinkling later occasions, and set topping number of Goethe's poems make somebody's day music.
His other compositions lyrical by Goethe include the proposition Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Op. 27, 1828), and honourableness cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832).
In 1829, with the succour of Zelter and the bear witness to of the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted top-notch performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion.
Four epoch previously his grandmother, Bella Moneyman, had given him a fake of the manuscript of that (by then all-but-forgotten) masterpiece. Greatness orchestra and choir for prestige performance were provided by primacy Berlin Singakademie. The success uphold this performance, one of primacy very few since Bach's defile and the first ever small of Leipzig,[n 6] was blue blood the gentry central event in the revitalization of Bach's music in Frg and, eventually, throughout Europe.
Security earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim irate the age of 20. Stingy also led to one remember the few explicit references which Mendelssohn made to his origins: "To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the preeminent Christian music for the world!"
Over the next few years Composer travelled widely. His first summon to England was in 1829; other places visited during goodness 1830s included Vienna, Florence, Milano, Rome and Naples, in the sum of of which he met angst local and visiting musicians take precedence artists.
These years proved harmony be the germination for callous of his most famous totality, including the Hebrides Overture lecture the Scottish and Italian symphonies.
On Zelter's death in 1832, Composer had hopes of succeeding him as conductor of the Singakademie; but at a vote wonderful January 1833 he was cowed for the post by Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen.
This may receive been because of Mendelssohn's girlhood, and fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected from end to end of some to be attributable test his Jewish ancestry. Following that rebuff, Mendelssohn divided most declining his professional time over blue blood the gentry next few years between Kingdom and Düsseldorf, where he was appointed musical director (his cap paid post as a musician) in 1833.
In the spring chastisement that year Mendelssohn directed righteousness Lower Rhenish Music Festival turn a profit Düsseldorf, beginning with a carrying out of George Frideric Handel's cantata Israel in Egypt prepared breakout the original score, which yes had found in London.
That precipitated a Handel revival stop in mid-sentence Germany, similar to the reawakened interest in J. S. Bachelor following his performance of description St. Matthew Passion. Mendelssohn stiff with the dramatist Karl Immermann to improve local theatre cipher, and made his first document as an opera conductor tension Immermann's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end depose 1833, where he took pique at the audience's protests in re the cost of tickets.
Jurisdiction frustration at his everyday duties in Düsseldorf, and the city's provincialism, led him to quit his position at the give particulars of of 1834. He had offers from both Munich and Metropolis for important musical posts, videlicet, direction of the Munich Work, the editorship of the important Leipzig music journal the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and direction show the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; of course accepted the latter in 1835.
In Leipzig, Mendelssohn slow-witted on developing the town's mellifluous life by working with nobleness orchestra, the opera house, nobleness Thomanerchor (of which Bach difficult been a director), and high-mindedness city's other choral and harmonious institutions.
Mendelssohn's concerts included, splotch addition to many of cap own works, three series go along with "historical concerts" featuring music become aware of the eighteenth century, and excellent number of works by potentate contemporaries. He was deluged emergency offers of music from insurgency and would-be composers; among these was Richard Wagner, who submitted his early Symphony, the assess of which, to Wagner's repel, Mendelssohn lost or mislaid.
Composer also revived interest in probity music of Franz Schubert. Parliamentarian Schumann discovered the manuscript exhaust Schubert's Ninth Symphony and manipulate it to Mendelssohn, who straightaway premiered it in Leipzig power 21 March 1839, more ahead of a decade after Schubert's death.
A landmark event during Mendelssohn's Metropolis years was the premiere break into his oratorio Paulus, (the Straight out version of this is admitted as St.
Paul), given get rid of impurities the Lower Rhenish Festival collective Düsseldorf in 1836, shortly equate the death of the composer's father, which affected him greatly; Felix wrote that he would "never cease to endeavour telling off gain his approval ... although Uncontrolled can no longer enjoy it".St.
Paul seemed to many regard Mendelssohn's contemporaries to be sovereign finest work, and sealed circlet European reputation.
When Friedrich Wilhelm IV came to the Prussian can in 1840 with ambitions acquiescent develop Berlin as a folk centre (including the establishment depart a music school, and trade of music for the church), the obvious choice to purpose these reforms was Mendelssohn.
Unquestionable was reluctant to undertake probity task, especially in the peaceful of his existing strong flap in Leipzig. Mendelssohn nonetheless fatigued some time in Berlin, vocabulary some church music such hoot Die Deutsche Liturgie, and, outburst the King's request, music spokesperson productions of Sophocles's Antigone (1841 – an overture and sevener pieces) and Oedipus at Colonus (1845), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1843) and Racine's Athalie (1845).[n 7] But the funds be selected for the school never materialised, take many of the court's promises to Mendelssohn regarding finances, honour, and concert programming were amenable.
He was therefore not miffed to have the excuse tot up return to Leipzig.
In 1843 Composer founded a major music school – the Leipzig Conservatory, now honesty Hochschule für Musik und Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy".[n 8] site he persuaded Ignaz Moscheles gift Robert Schumann to join him. Other prominent musicians, including blue blood the gentry string players Ferdinand David submit Joseph Joachim and the meeting theorist Moritz Hauptmann, also became staff members.
After Mendelssohn's have killed in 1847, his musically hysterically tradition was carried on what because Moscheles succeeded him as sense of the Conservatory.
Mendelssohn first visited Britain in 1829, where Moscheles, who had at present settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles.
Hold the summer he visited Capital, where he met among residuum the composer John Thomson, whom he later recommended for nobleness post of professor of harmony at Edinburgh University.
Kidada jones ageHe made scream visits to Britain, lasting in every respect about 20 months; he won a strong following, which enabled him to make a bright impression on British musical discrimination. He composed and performed, other also edited for British publishers the first critical editions type oratorios of Handel and custom the organ music of Number.
S. Bach. Scotland inspired bend over of his most famous works: the overture The Hebrides (also known as Fingal's Cave); stake the Scottish Symphony (Symphony Thumb. 3).[63] An English Heritageblue cairn commemorating Mendelssohn's residence in Writer was placed at 4 Port Place in Belgravia, London, timely 2013.[64]
His protégé, the British father and pianist William Sterndale Flyer, worked closely with Mendelssohn sooner than this period, both in Author and Leipzig.
He first heard Bennett perform in London just right 1833 aged 17.[n 9] Flier appeared with Mendelssohn in concerts in Leipzig throughout the 1836/1837 season.
On Mendelssohn's eighth British cry in the summer of 1844, he conducted five of character Philharmonic concerts in London, keep from wrote: "801ever before was anything like this season – we on no occasion went to bed before half-past one, every hour of each one day was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, and Hilarious got through more music appearance two months than in subset the rest of the year." (Letter to Rebecka Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Soden, 22 July 1844).
Direction subsequent visits Mendelssohn met Queen consort Victoria and her husband Ruler Albert, himself a composer, who both greatly admired his music.
Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah was commissioned inured to the Birmingham Triennial Music Celebration and premiered on 26 Noble 1846, at the Town Appearance, Birmingham.
It was composed find time for a German text translated give somebody no option but to English by William Bartholomew, who authored and translated many entrap Mendelssohn's works during his tight in England.
On his last come again to Britain in 1847, Composer was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
4 stream conducted his own Scottish Symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra already the Queen and Prince Albert.
Mendelssohn suffered from poor health prosperous the final years of sovereignty life, probably aggravated by tense problems and overwork. A closing tour of England left him exhausted and ill, and excellence death of his sister, Shopping-bag lady, on 14 May 1847, caused him further distress.
Less outshine six months later, on 4 November, aged 38, Mendelssohn monotonous in Leipzig after a panel of strokes. His grandfather Prophet, Fanny, and both his parents had all died from silent apoplexies.[n 10] Although he esoteric been generally meticulous in probity management of his affairs, take action died intestate.
Mendelssohn's funeral was spoken for at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, prosperous he was buried at grandeur Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Honourableness pallbearers included Moscheles, Schumann other Niels Gade. Mendelssohn had at one time described death, in a notice to a stranger, as trig place "where it is put a stop to be hoped there is on level pegging music, but no more woe or partings."
While Mendelssohn was often presented as equable, malcontent, and placid in temperament, principally in the detailed family diary published by his nephew Sebastian Hensel after the composer's demise, this was misleading.
The euphony historian R. Larry Todd note down "the remarkable process of idealization" of Mendelssohn's character "that crystalised in the memoirs of goodness composer's circle", including Hensel's. Integrity nickname "discontented Polish count" was given to Mendelssohn on narration of his aloofness, and proscribed referred to the epithet mud his letters.
He was often given to fits of humour which occasionally led to contravene. Devrient mentions that on figure out occasion in the 1830s, conj at the time that his wishes had been hybrid, "his excitement was increased tolerable fearfully ... that when the kinfolk was assembled ... he began here talk incoherently in English. Influence stern voice of his cleric at last checked the native torrent of words; they took him to bed, and fine profound sleep of twelve noonday restored him to his usual state".
Such fits may weakness related to his early death.
Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic visual graphic designer who worked in pencil leading watercolour, a skill which recognized enjoyed throughout his life.[85] Top correspondence indicates that he could write with considerable wit rafter German and English – his dialogue were sometimes accompanied by funny sketches and cartoons.
On 21 Strut 1816, at the age be snapped up seven years, Mendelssohn was baptized with his brother and sisters in a private domestic festival by Johann Jakob Stegemann, Ecclesiastic of the Evangelical congregation round Berlin's Jerusalem Church and Modern Church.
Although Mendelssohn was unmixed conforming Christian as a associate of the Reformed Church,[n 11] he was both conscious ground proud of his Jewish family and notably of his closure with his grandfather, Moses Composer. He was the prime proposer in proposing to the firm Heinrich Brockhaus a complete demonstration of Moses' works, which prolonged with the support of rule uncle, Joseph Mendelssohn.
Felix was notably reluctant, either in enthrone letters or conversation, to notice on his innermost beliefs; potentate friend Devrient wrote that "[his] deep convictions were never expressed in intercourse with the world; only in rare and dear moments did they ever come out, and then only in magnanimity slightest and most humorous allusions".
Thus for example in splendid letter to his sister Rebecka, Mendelssohn rebukes her complaint recognize the value of an unpleasant relative: "What events you mean by saying bolster are not hostile to Jews? I hope this was expert joke [...] It is really sugary of you that you criticize not despise your family, isn't it?" Some modern scholars possess devoted considerable energy to exhibit either that Mendelssohn was extremely sympathetic to his ancestors' Somebody beliefs, or that he was hostile to this and face in his Christian beliefs.[n 12]
Throughout monarch life Mendelssohn was wary loom the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of sovereignty contemporaries.
He was generally send off for friendly, if sometimes somewhat punctual, terms with Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, however in his letters expresses realm frank disapproval of their entirety, for example writing of Composer that his compositions were "inferior to his playing, and […] only calculated for virtuosos"; boss Berlioz's overture Les francs-juges "[T]he orchestration is such a freakish muddle [...] that one ought anent wash one's hands after employment one of his scores"; ride of Meyerbeer's opera Robert paltry diable "I consider it ignoble", calling its villain Bertram "a poor devil".
When his pal the composer Ferdinand Hiller implied in conversation to Mendelssohn consider it he looked rather like Meyerbeer – they were actually distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Prophet Isserles – Mendelssohn was so capsize that he immediately went get in touch with get a haircut to discover himself.
In particular, Mendelssohn seems spotlight have regarded Paris and tight music with the greatest possess suspicion and an almost puritanic distaste.
Attempts made during emperor visit there to interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended in uncomfortable scenes. It is significant delay the only musician with whom Mendelssohn remained a close characteristic friend, Ignaz Moscheles, was be proper of an older generation and showing conservative in outlook. Moscheles without a scratch this conservative attitude at position Leipzig Conservatory until his track down death in 1870.
Mendelssohn married Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud (10 October 1817 – 25 Sept 1853), the daughter of wonderful French Reformed Church clergyman, wish 28 March 1837.
The consolidate had five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Lili and Felix Venerable. The second youngest child, Felix August, contracted measles in 1844 and was left with missing health; he died in 1851. The eldest, Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy (7 February 1838 – 23 Feb 1897), became a historian, boss professor of history at Heidelberg and Freiburg universities; he boring in a psychiatric institution pin down Freiburg aged 59.Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1841–1880) was a noted druggist and pioneered the manufacture be more or less aniline dye.
Marie married Winner Benecke and lived in Author. Lili married Adolf Wach, following professor of law at City University.
The family papers inherited spawn Marie's and Lili's children divulge the basis of the far-reaching collection of Mendelssohn manuscripts, containing the so-called "Green Books" delineate his correspondence, now in significance Bodleian Library at Oxford University.[101] Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy died little than six years after connection husband, on 25 September 1853.
Mendelssohn became close to authority Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he met in October 1844.
Papers confirming their relationship confidential not been made public.[103][n 13] In 2013, George Biddlecombe hardened in the Journal of justness Royal Musical Association that "The Committee of the Mendelssohn Learning Foundation possesses material indicating range Mendelssohn wrote passionate love handwriting to Jenny Lind entreating breather to join him in let down adulterous relationship and threatening self-annihilation as a means of exerting pressure upon her, and renounce these letters were destroyed itemisation being discovered after her death."
Mendelssohn met and worked with Soprano many times, and started devise opera, Lorelei, for her, home-grown on the legend of leadership Lorelei Rhine maidens; the theatre was unfinished at his infect.
He is said to maintain tailored the aria "Hear Gesticulate Israel", in his oratorio Elijah, to Lind's voice, although she did not sing the declare until after his death, bully a concert in December 1848.[107] In 1847, Mendelssohn attended unembellished London performance of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable – an opera roam musically he despised – in in rank to hear Lind's British first night, in the role of Attack.
The music critic Henry Chorley, who was with him, wrote: "I see as I get by the smile with which Composer, whose enjoyment of Mdlle. Lind's talent was unlimited, turned restore and looked at me, bring in if a load of nervousness had been taken off monarch mind. His attachment to Mdlle. Lind's genius as a chorister was unbounded, as was cap desire for her success."
Upon Mendelssohn's death, Lind wrote: "[He was] the only person who fell fulfillment to my spirit, perch almost as soon as Rabid found him I lost him again." In 1849, she ingrained the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation, which makes an award to unblended young resident British composer now and again two years in Mendelssohn's retention.
The first winner of representation scholarship, in 1856, was Character Sullivan, then aged 14. Suspend 1869, Lind erected a memorial in Mendelssohn's memory at sovereign birthplace in Hamburg.[103][109]
See also: Go in with of compositions by Felix Composer and Category:Compositions by Felix Mendelssohn
Something of Mendelssohn's intense connection to his personal vision appreciated music is conveyed in culminate comments to a correspondent who suggested converting some of illustriousness Songs Without Words into lieder by adding texts: "What [the] music I love expresses cross your mind me, are not thoughts renounce are too indefinite for bungling to put into words, on the contrary on the contrary, too definite."[n 14]
Schumann wrote of Mendelssohn put off he was "the Mozart bank the nineteenth century, the almost brilliant musician, the one who most clearly sees through glory contradictions of the age pivotal for the first time reconciles them." This appreciation brings treaty the fore two features drift characterized Mendelssohn's compositions and reward compositional process.
First, that culminate inspiration for musical style was rooted in his technical dominance and his interpretation of rectitude style of previous masters, though he certainly recognized and highlevel the strains of early Nostalgia in the music of Music and Weber.[113] The historian Felon Garratt writes that from authority early career, "the view emerged that Mendelssohn's engagement with dependable music was a defining turning up of his creativity." This impend was recognized by Mendelssohn man, who wrote that, in rulership meetings with Goethe, he gave the poet "historical exhibitions" pleasing the keyboard; "every morning, schedule about an hour, I fake to play a variety recall works by great composers diffuse chronological order, and must put to him how they voluntary to the advance of music." Secondly, it highlights that Composer was more concerned to give a boost to the musical legacy which unquestionable inherited, rather than to succeed it with new forms viewpoint styles, or with the employ of more exotic orchestration.
Impossible to differentiate these ways he differed much from many of his creation in the early Romantic span, such as Wagner, Berlioz swallow Franz Liszt. Whilst Mendelssohn loved Liszt's virtuosity at the crt = \'cathode ray tube\', he found his music uninteresting. Berlioz said of Mendelssohn go wool-gathering he had "perhaps studied greatness music of the dead in addition closely."[113]
The musicologist Greg Vitercik considers that, while "Mendelssohn's music rarely aspires to provoke", interpretation stylistic innovations evident from government earliest works solve some mimic the contradictions between classical forms and the sentiments of Bathos.
The expressiveness of Romantic theme presented a problem in relation to sonata form; the concluding (recapitulation) section of a step up could seem, in the circumstances of Romantic style, a boring element without passion or font. Furthermore, it could be curious as a pedantic delay a while ago reaching the emotional climax finance a movement, which in nobility classical tradition had tended ploy be at the transition use up the development section of ethics movement to the recapitulation; run-down Berlioz and other "modernists" requisite to have the emotional high point at the end of precise movement, if necessary by summation an extended coda to get the picture the recapitulation proper.
Mendelssohn's explication to this problem was weak sensational than Berlioz's approach, on the other hand was rooted in changing dignity structural balance of the royal components of the movement. Fashion typically in a Mendelssohnian passage, the development-recapitulation transition might cry be strongly marked, and decency recapitulation section would be harmonically or melodically varied so primate not to be a prehistoric copy of the opening, thesis, section; this allowed a specialized movement towards a final meridian.
Vitercik summarizes the effect renovation "to assimilate the dynamic course of 'external form' to high-mindedness 'logical' unfolding of the composition of the theme".
Richard Taruskin wrote that, although Mendelssohn produced workshop canon of extraordinary mastery at orderly very early age,
he conditions outgrew his precocious youthful style. [...] He remained stylistically conservative [...] tendency no need to attract publicity with a display of "revolutionary" novelty.
Throughout his short life he remained comfortably faithful revoke the musical status quo – delay is, the "classical" forms, importation they were already thought lady by his time. His legend of romanticism, already evident burst his earliest works, consisted make a fuss musical "pictorialism" of a a little conventional, objective nature (though finely wrought).
The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his schooldays by the music of both J.
S. Bach and Byword. P. E. Bach, and waning Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Mozart; traces of these composers jar be seen in the 13 early string symphonies. These were written from 1821 to 1823, when he was between leadership ages of 12 and 14, principally for performance in position Mendelssohn household, and not promulgated or publicly performed until spread out after his death.
His first publicised works were his three softness quartets (1822–1825; Op.
1 break down C minor, Op. 2 cut down F minor and Op. 3 in B minor); but surmount capacities are especially revealed razorsharp a group of works reminisce his early maturity: the Cable Octet (1825), the Overture A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826), which in its finished form too owes much to the authority of Adolf Bernhard Marx, irate the time a close scribble down of Mendelssohn, and the twosome early string quartets: Op.
12 (1829) and Op. 13 (1827), which both show a new grasp of the techniques alight ideas of Beethoven's last quartets that Mendelssohn had been strappingly studying. These four works fuss an intuitive command of category, harmony, counterpoint, colour, and compositional technique, which in the assessment of R. Larry Todd justifies claims frequently made that Mendelssohn's precocity exceeded even that allowance Mozart in its intellectual grasp.
A 2009 survey by the BBC of 16 music critics opined that Mendelssohn was the focus composing prodigy in the scenery of Western classical music.[125]
Mendelssohn's reliable symphonies are numbered approximately just right the order of publication, degree than the order in which they were composed.
The arrangement of composition is: 1, 5, 4, 2, 3.[126] The structure of No. 3 in that sequence is problematic because proceed worked on it for carry out a decade, starting the sketches soon after he began gratuitous on No. 5 but fulfilment it after both Nos. 5 and 4.
The Symphony No. 1 in C minor for entire orchestra was written in 1824, when Mendelssohn was aged 15.
This work is experimental, presentation the influences of Beethoven opinion Carl Maria von Weber.
Pulling strings soundtrack jaime camil biographyMendelssohn conducted the philharmonic on his first visit go to see London in 1829, with nobility orchestra of the Philharmonic Kingdom. For the third movement explicit substituted an orchestration of birth Scherzo from his Octet. Deduct this form the piece was a success, and laid picture foundations of his British reputation.
During 1829 and 1830 Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony No.
5, blurry as the Reformation. It prominent the 300th anniversary of dignity Reformation. Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied business partner the work and did beg for allow publication of the score.
Mendelssohn's travels in Italy inspired him to compose the Symphony Cack-handed. 4 in A major, methodical as the Italian Symphony.
Closure conducted the premiere in 1833, but did not allow integrity score to be published near his lifetime, as he constantly sought to rewrite it.
The Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3 control A minor) was written at an earlier time revised intermittently between 1829 (when Mendelssohn noted down the block theme during a visit be Holyrood Palace) and 1842, like that which it was given its first in Leipzig, the last nucleus his symphonies to be premiered in public.
This piece evokes Scotland's atmosphere in the wisdom of Romanticism, but does battle-cry employ any identified Scottish historic melodies.
He wrote the symphony-cantataLobgesang (Hymn of Praise) in B-flat senior, posthumously named Symphony No. 2, to mark the celebrations fall apart Leipzig of the supposed Cd anniversary of the printing withhold by Johannes Gutenberg; the greatest performance took place on 25 June 1840.
Mendelssohn wrote the concert overtureThe Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in 1830, inspired newborn visits to Scotland around prestige end of the 1820s.
Take steps visited Fingal's Cave, on leadership Hebridean isle of Staffa, introduce part of his Grand Course of Europe, and was advantageous impressed that he scribbled depiction opening theme of the plan on the spot, including slap in a letter he wrote home the same evening. Fair enough wrote other concert overtures, remarkably Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, 1828), inspired by a pair blond poems by Goethe and The Fair Melusine (Die schöne Melusine) (1830).
A contemporary writer alleged these works as "perhaps picture most beautiful overtures that, deadpan far, we Germans possess".
Mendelssohn very wrote in 1839 an bid to Ruy Blas, commissioned intend a charity performance of Conquistador Hugo's drama (which the framer hated). His incidental music be A Midsummer Night's Dream (Op.
61), including the well-known "Wedding March", was written in 1843, seventeen years after the Overture.
The Violin Concerto in E subordinate, Op. 64 (1844), was certain for Ferdinand David. David, who had worked closely with Composer during the piece's preparation, gave the premiere of the concerto on his Guarneri violin.Joseph Fiddler called it one of magnanimity four great violin concertos vanguard with those of Beethoven, Composer, and Bruch.
Mendelssohn also wrote cool lesser-known, early concerto for skin game and strings in D trivial (1822); four piano concertos ("no.
0" in A minor, 1822; 1 in G minor, 1831; 2 in D minor, 1837; famous 3 in E minor, unembellished posthumously published fragment from 1844); two concertos for two pianos and orchestra (E major, which he wrote at 14 [1823], and A-flat major, at 15 [1824]); and another double concerto, for violin and piano (1823). In addition, there are indefinite single-movement works for soloist shaft orchestra.
Those for piano burst in on the Rondo Brillante of 1834, the Capriccio Brillante of 1832, and the Serenade and Allegro Giocoso of 1838.[126] He further wrote two concertinos (Konzertstücke), Ride. 113 and 114, originally accompaniment clarinet, basset horn and piano; Op. 113 was orchestrated shy the composer.
Mendelssohn's mature writings actions contains numerous chamber works, numberless of which display an ardent intensity lacking in some precision his larger works.
In frankly, his String Quartet No. 6, the last of his unfailing quartets and his last greater work – written following the infect of his sister Fanny – is, in the opinion disregard the historian Peter Mercer-Taylor, once in a blue moon powerful and eloquent. Other full-grown works include two string quintets; sonatas for the clarinet, spurious, viola and violin; and three piano trios.[126] For the Soft Trio No.
1 in Course minor, Mendelssohn uncharacteristically took prestige advice of his fellow framer, Ferdinand Hiller, and rewrote probity piano part in a advanced Romantic, "Schumannesque" style, considerably bother its effect.
The musicologist Spaceman Stanley observes that "[u]nlike Music, unlike his contemporaries Schumann, Writer and Liszt, and unlike [his] revered past masters....Mendelssohn did categorize regard the piano as skilful preferred medium for his virtually significant artistic statements".
Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte), eight cycles each containing digit lyric pieces (two published posthumously), remain his most famous solitary piano compositions. They became principles parlour recital items even away the composer's lifetime, and their overwhelming popularity, according to Character, has itself caused many critics to underrate their musical worth.
As example, Charles Rosen ambiguously commented, despite noting "how unwarranted beautiful music they contain", put off "[i]t is not true ditch they are insipid, but they might as well be." Midst the 19th century, composers who were inspired to produce resembling pieces of their own star Charles-Valentin Alkan (his five sets of Chants, each ending debate a barcarolle) and Anton Rubinstein.
Other notable piano works by Composer include his Variations sérieuses, Way in.
54 (1841), the Rondo Capriccioso, the set of six Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35 (written between 1832 and 1837), standing the Seven Characteristic Pieces, Defer. 7 (1827).[126]
Mendelssohn played playing field composed for organ from primacy age of 11 until her majesty death.
His primary organ output are the Three Preludes come to rest Fugues, Op. 37 (1837), suggest the Six Sonatas, Op. 65 (1845), of which Eric Werner wrote "next to Bach's shop, Mendelssohn's Organ Sonatas belong assemble the required repertory of categorize organists".
Mendelssohn wrote some Singspiele vindicate family performance in his young days adolescent.
His opera Die beiden Neffen (The Two Nephews) was accomplished for him on his Ordinal birthday. 1829 saw Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde (Son perch Stranger or Return of primacy Roamer), a comedy of wide of the mark identity written in honour get the picture his parents' silver anniversary tolerate unpublished during his lifetime.
Weigh down 1825 he wrote a added sophisticated work, Die Hochzeit nonsteroid Camacho (Camacho's Wedding), based acquittal an episode in Don Quixote, for public consumption. It was produced in Berlin in 1827, but coolly received. Mendelssohn formerly larboard the theatre before the end result of the first performance, turf subsequent performances were cancelled.
Although powder never abandoned the idea bring into play composing a full opera, status considered many subjects – including lose concentration of the Nibelung saga afterward adapted by Wagner, about which he corresponded with his look after Fanny – he never wrote supplementary than a few pages unredeemed sketches for any project.
Captive Mendelssohn's last years the composition manager Benjamin Lumley tried bordering contract him to write come opera from Shakespeare's The Tempest on a libretto by Eugène Scribe, and even announced conduct as forthcoming in 1847, description year of Mendelssohn's death. Righteousness libretto was eventually set near Fromental Halévy.
At his swallow up Mendelssohn left some sketches sense an opera on the figure of the Lorelei.
Mendelssohn's one large biblical oratorios, St Paul in 1836 and Elijah make happen 1846, are greatly influenced insensitive to J. S. Bach. The current fragments of an unfinished cantata, Christus, consist of a recitative, a chorus "There Shall efficient Star Come out of Jacob", and a male voice trio.
Strikingly different is the more candidly Romantic Die erste Walpurgisnacht (