Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Composer) - Short Biography Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Composer) Born: February 3, 1809 - Hamburg , Germany Died: November 4, 1847 - Leipzig , Germany Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, now known generally as Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer of the early Romantic period. His work includes symphonies, concertos, oratories, piano and chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration, his creative originality is now beiong recognised and re-evaluated. Biography Mendelssohn was the son of a banker, Abraham, who was himself the son of the famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, and of Lea Salomon, a member od the Itzig family. Abraham sought to renounce the Jewish religion; his children were first brought up without religious education, and were baptised as Lutherans in 1816. (Abraham and his wife were not themselves baptised until 1822).

The name Bartholdy was assumed at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob, who had purchased a property of this name and adopted it as his own surname. Abraham was later to explain this decision in a letter to Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his father Moses: 'There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius'. Although Felix continued to sign his letters as 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy' in obedience to his fsther's injunctions, he seems not to have objected to the use of 'Mendelssohn' alone. The family moved to Berlin in 1812. His sister Fanny Mendelssohn (later Fanny Hensel), became a well-known pianist and amateur composer; originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than her brother, might be the more musical. Mendelssohn is often considered the greatest child prodigy after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin .

He probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert. He was also a prolific composer as a child, and wrote his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. Zelter introduced Felix to his friend and correspondent, the elderly Goethe. Felix later took lessons from the composer and virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles who however confessed that he had little to teach him. Moscheles became a close colleague and lifelong friend. As an adolescent, Felix's works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the intellectual elite of Berlin . Mendelssohn wrote his first twelve symphonies in his early teens (more specifically, from ages twelve to fourteen). These works were ignored for over a century, but are now recorded and heard occasionally in concerts. At fifteen he wrote his first acknowledged symphony for full orchestra, his opus 11 in C minor in 1824.

At the age of sixteen he wrote his String Octet in E Flat Major, the first work which showed the full power of his genius, and, together with his overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later, the best known of his early works. (He wrote incidental music for the play in 1842, including the famous Wedding March). In 1827 he saw the first production of his opera, Die Hochzeit des Camacho. In 1829 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to England, where Moscheles, already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles. Felix had a great success, conducting his First Symphony and playing in public and private concerts. On subsequent visits he met with Queen Victoria and her musical husband Prince Albert, both of whom were great admirers of his music. In the course of ten visits to Britain during his life he won a strong following, and the country inspired two of his most famous works, the overture Fingal's Cave (also known as the Hebrides Overture) and the Scottish Symphony (Symphony no.3).

His oratorio Elijah was premiered in Birmingham on August 26, 1846. In 1835, he was appointed as conductor of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig . This appointment was extremly important for him as he felt himself to be a German and wished to play a leading part in his country's musical life. Despite efforts by the king of Prussia to lure him to Berlin , Mendelssohn sought to develop the musical life of Leipzig and in 1843 he founded the Leipzig Conservatory, where he succesfully persuaded Moscheles to join him. Mendelssohn's personal life was conventional. His marriage to Cécile Jeanrenaud in March of 1837 was very happy and the couple had five children. Felix was an accomplished painter in water-colour, and his enormous correspondence shows that he could also be a witty writer (in both German and English - and sometimes accompanied by humorous sketches and cartoons in the text). Mendelssohn suffered from bad health in the final years of his life, probably aggravated by nervous problems and overwork, and he was greatly distressed by the death of his sister Fanny in May 1847.

Felix Mendelssohn died later that same year after a series of strokes, in Leipzig . He is buried in the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof (Trinity Cemetery) I in Berlin -Kreuzberg. Mendelssohn's Revival of the Music of Bach and Schubert Mendelssohn was deeply influenced by the music of J.S. Bach. His aunt, Sarah Levy (née Itzig) was a pupil of Bach's son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach , and had supported the widow of another son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach . She had collected a number of Bach manuscripts. J.S. Bach's music, which had fallen into relative obscurity by the turn of the 19th century, was also deeply respected by Felix's teacher Zelter. In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of Felix's friend, the actor Eduard Devrient, Felix arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St. Matthew Passion ( BWV 244 ). The success of this performance (the first since Bach's death in 1750) was an important element in the revival of J.S.

Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of twenty. It also led to one of the very few references which Felix ever made to his origins: 'To think that it took an actor and a Jew-boy (Judensohn) 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 at Leipzig on March 21, 1839, more than a decade after the composer's death. Mendelssohn and his Contemporaries Throughout his life Mendelssohn was chary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if somewhat cool, terms with the likes of Berlioz, Liszt and Meyerbeer but in his letters expresses his frank disapproval of their works. In particular he seems to have regarded Paris and its music with the greatest of suspicion, with an almost Puritan distaste. Attempts made, during his visit there, to interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended in embarrassing scenes.

He thought the Paris style of opera vulgar, and the works of Meyerbeer insincere. and cost him When Ferdinand Hiller suggested in conversation to Felix that he looked rather like Meyerbeer (they were distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserlis), Mendelssohn was so upset that he immediately went to get a hair-cut 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. Moscheles preserved thoutlook at the Lepizig Conservatoire until his own death in 1870. Reception History This conservative strain in Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a similar condescenscion on their part toward his music. Together with Felix's success, his popularity and his Jewish origins, it irked Richard Wagner sufficiently to damn him with faint praise, three years after Felix's death, in his anti-Jewish pamphlet Das Judenthum in der Musik. This was the start of a movement to denigrate Mendelssohn's achievements which lasted almost a century, the remants of which can still be discerned today amongst some writers.

The Nazi regime was to cite his Jewish origin in banning his works and destroying memorial statues. In England however Mendelssohn's reputation remained high for a long time; the adulatory (and today scarcely readable) novel Charles Auchester by the teen-aged Sarah Sheppard, published in 1851, which features Mendelssohn as the 'Chevalier Seraphael', remained in print for nearly eighty years. However many critics, including George Bernard Shaw began to condemn his music for its association with Victorian cultural insularity. Over the last fifty years a new apprecation of his work has developed which takes into account not only the popular 'war horses' such as the Violin Concerto and the Italian Symphony, but has been able to remove the Victorian varnish from the oratorio Elijah, and has explored the frequently intense and dramatic world of the chamber works. Virtually all of Mendelssohn's published work is now available on CD. Music Juvenilia and Early works: Influences The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his childhood by the music of J.S. Bach, L.v.

Beethoven and Mozart and these can all be seen, albeit often rather crudely, 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 astounding capacities are, however, clearly revealed in a clutch of works of his early maturity (that is, before he was 18 years old!) : the String Octet (1825), the Overture 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1826), and the String Quartet in A minor (listed as no. 2 but written before no. 1) of 1827. These show a intuitive grasp of form, harmony, counterpoint, colour and the compositional technique of L.v. Beethoven which justify the claims often made that Felix's precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp. Orchestral Music Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in 1830, inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the 1820s, although its main theme is now known to have been sketched before this.

These visits also inspired his Symphony No 3, The Scottish, which was written intermittently between around 1830 and 1842. The piece, whilst 'atmospheric' in the ethos of Romanticism, does not include any actual Scottish folk melodies. Mendelssohn travelled widely in Europe throughout his life, and a visit to Italy inspired the Symphony No 4 in A major, known as the Italian. Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in 1833, but he did not allow the score to be published during his lifetime as he continued to rewrite it. Concertos Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64, (1844).written for Ferdinand David, has become one of the most popular of all of Mendelssohn's compositions. Many violinists have commenced their solo careers with a performance of this concerto, including Jascha Heifetz, who gave his first public performance of the piece at the age of seven. Mendelssohn also wrote two piano concertos, a less well known, early, violin concerto, and a double concerto for piano and violin.

Chamber Music Choral Music The two large oratorios, St. Paul in 1836 and Elijah in 1846, were greatly influenced by Bach. Piano Music Felix Mendelssohn Biography - life, family, childhood, children, name, death, mother, son Felix Mendelssohn Biography 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 (1729–1786).

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 (1749–1832). 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 (1794–1870) 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 (1547–1616), 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 (1685–1750) 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, Felix Mendelssohn. Library of Congress . 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 (1797–1828), newly discovered by Robert Schumann (1810–1856), 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 Felix Mendelssohn | German musician and composer | Britannica.com German musician and composer Alternative Title: Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Felix Mendelssohn Johann Sebastian Bach Felix Mendelssohn, in full Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born February 3, 1809, Hamburg [Germany]—died November 4, 1847, Leipzig), German composer, pianist, musical conductor, and teacher, one of the most-celebrated figures of the early Romantic period . In his music Mendelssohn largely observed Classical models and practices while initiating key aspects of Romanticism —the artistic movement that exalted feeling and the imagination above rigid forms and traditions. Among his most famous works are Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826), Italian Symphony (1833), a violin concerto (1844), two piano concerti (1831, 1837), the oratorio Elijah (1846), and several pieces of chamber music. He was a grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn .

Felix Mendelssohn, painting by Eduard Magnus, c. 1845. Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Early life and works Felix was born of Jewish parents, Abraham and Lea Salomon Mendelssohn, from whom he took his first piano lessons. Though the Mendelssohn family was proud of their ancestry, they considered it desirable in accordance with 19th-century liberal ideas to mark their emancipation from the ghetto by adopting the Christian faith. Accordingly, Felix, together with his brother and two sisters, was baptized in 1816 as a Lutheran . In 1822, when his parents were also baptized, the entire family adopted the surname Bartholdy, following the example of Felix’s maternal uncle, who had chosen to adopt the name of a family farm. In 1811, during the French occupation of Hamburg , the family had moved to Berlin , where Mendelssohn studied the piano with Ludwig Berger and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter , who, as a composer and teacher, exerted an enormous influence on his development.

Other teachers gave the Mendelssohn children lessons in literature and landscape painting , with the result that at an early age Mendelssohn’s mind was widely cultivated . His personality was nourished by a broad knowledge of the arts and was also stimulated by learning and scholarship. He traveled with his sister to Paris, where he took further piano lessons and where he appears to have become acquainted with the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . Mendelssohn was an extemely precocious musical composer. He wrote numerous compositions during his boyhood, among them 5 operas , 11 symphonies for string orchestra , concerti , sonatas , and fugues . Most of these works were long preserved in manuscript in the Prussian State Library in Berlin but are believed to have been lost in World War II . He made his first public appearance in 1818—at age nine—in Berlin. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent In 1821 Mendelssohn was taken to Weimar to meet J.W. von Goethe , for whom he played works of J.S. Bach and Mozart and to whom he dedicated his Piano Quartet No. 3. in B Minor (1825).

A remarkable friendship developed between the aging poet and the 12-year-old musician. In Paris in 1825 Luigi Cherubini discerned Mendelssohn’s outstanding gifts. The next year he reached his full stature as a composer with the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream . The atmospheric effects and the fresh lyrical melodies in this work revealed the mind of an original composer, while the animated orchestration looked forward to the orchestral manner of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov . Mendelssohn also became active as a conductor. On March 11, 1829, at the Singakademie, Berlin, he conducted the first performance since Bach’s death of the St. Matthew Passion , thus inaugurating the Bach revival of the 19th century. Meanwhile he had visited Switzerland and had met Carl Maria von Weber , whose opera Der Freischütz , given in Berlin in 1821, encouraged him to develop a national character in music. Mendelssohn’s great work of this period was the String Octet in E Flat Major (1825), displaying not only technical mastery and an almost unprecedented lightness of touch but great melodic and rhythmic originality.

Mendelssohn developed in this work the genre of the swift-moving scherzo (a playful musical movement) that he would also use in the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1843). Felix Mendelssohn, watercolour by James Warren Childe, 1829; in a private collection Courtesy of Hugo von Mendelssohn Spinnerlied ” (“Spinning Song”), Op. 67, No. 34, in C major, one … In the spring of 1829 Mendelssohn made his first journey to England , conducting his Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (1824) at the London Philharmonic Society. In the summer he went to Scotland , of which he gave many poetic accounts in his evocative letters. He went there “with a rake for folksongs, an ear for the lovely, fragrant countryside, and a heart for the bare legs of the natives.” At Abbotsford he met Sir Walter Scott . The literary, pictorial, and musical elements of Mendelssohn’s imagination are often merged.

Describing, in a letter written from the Hebrides , the manner in which the waves break on the Scottish coast, he noted down, in the form of a musical symbol, the opening bars of The Hebrides (1830–32). Between 1830 and 1832 he traveled in Germany , Austria , Italy , and Switzerland and in 1832 returned to London , where he conducted The Hebrides and where he published the first book of the piano music he called Lieder ohne Worte ( Songs Without Words ), completed in Venice in 1830. Mendelssohn, whose music in its day was held to be remarkable for its charm and elegance, was gradually becoming the most popular of 19th-century composers in England. His main reputation was made in England, which, in the course of his short life, he visited no fewer than 10 times. At the time of these visits, the character of his music was held to be predominantly Victorian , and indeed he eventually became the favourite composer of Queen Victoria herself.

Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Mendelssohn’s subtly ironic account of his meeting with the queen and the prince consort at Buckingham Palace in 1843, to both of whom he was affectionately drawn, shows him also to have been alive to both the pomp and the sham of the royal establishment. His Symphony No. 3 in A Minor–Major, or Scottish Symphony, as it is called, was dedicated to Queen Victoria. And he became endeared to the English musical public in other ways. The fashion for playing the “ Wedding March ” from his A Midsummer Night’s Dream at bridal processions originates from a performance of this piece at the wedding of the Princess Royal after Mendelssohn’s death, in 1858. In the meantime he had given the first performances in London of Ludwig van Beethoven ’s Emperor and G Major concerti. He was among the first to play a concerto from memory in public—Mendelssohn’s memory was prodigious—and he also became known for his organ works.

Later the popularity of his oratorio Elijah , first produced at Birmingham in 1846, established Mendelssohn as a composer whose influence on English music equaled that of George Frideric Handel . After his death this influence was sometimes held to have had a stifling effect. Later generations of English composers, enamoured of Richard Wagner , Claude Debussy , or Igor Stravinsky , revolted against the domination of Mendelssohn and condemned the sentimentality of his lesser works. But there is no doubt that he had, nevertheless, succeeded in arousing the native musical genius, at first by his performances and later in the creative sphere, from a dormant state. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest A number of new experiences marked the grand tour that Mendelssohn had undertaken after his first London visit. Lively details of this tour are found in his long series of letters. On Goethe’s recommendation he had read Laurence Sterne ’s Sentimental Journey , and, inspired by this work, he recorded his impressions with great verve. In Venice he was enchanted by the paintings of Titian and Giorgione .

The papal singers in Rome , however, were “almost all unmusical,” and Gregorian music he found unintelligible. In Rome he describes a “haggard” colony of German artists “with terrific beards.” Later, at Leipzig , where Hector Berlioz and Mendelssohn exchanged batons, Berlioz offered an enormous cudgel of lime tree covered with bark, whereas Mendelssohn playfully presented his brazen contemporary with a delicate light stick of whalebone elegantly encased in leather. The contrast between these two batons precisely reflects the violently conflicting characters of the two composers. In 1833 Mendelssohn was in London again to conduct his Italian Symphony (Symphony No. 4 in A Major–Minor), and in the same year he became music director of Düsseldorf , where he introduced into the church services the masses of Beethoven and Cherubini and the cantatas of Bach. At Düsseldorf, too, he began his first oratorio , St. Paul. In 1835 he became conductor of the celebrated Gewandhaus Orchestra at Leipzig, where he not only raised the standard of orchestral playing but made Leipzig the musical capital of Germany.

Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann were among his friends at Leipzig, where, at his first concert with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, he conducted his overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (1828–32; Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). Marriage and maturity Eyjafjallajökull volcano In 1835 Mendelssohn was overcome by the death of his father, Abraham, whose dearest wish had been that his son should complete the St. Paul . He accordingly plunged into this work with renewed determination and the following year conducted it at Düsseldorf. The same year at Frankfurt he met Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a French Protestant clergyman. Though she was 10 years younger than himself, that is to say, no more than 16, they became engaged and were married on March 28, 1837.

His sister Fanny, the member of his family who remained closest to him, wrote of her sister-in-law: “She is amiable , childlike, fresh, bright and even-tempered, and I consider Felix most fortunate for, though inexpressibly fond of him, she does not spoil him, but when he is capricious , treats him with an equanimity which will in course of time most probably cure his fits of irritability altogether.” This was magnanimous praise on the part of Fanny, to whom Mendelssohn was drawn by musical as well as emotional ties. Fanny was not only a composer in her own right—she had herself written some of the Songs Without Words attributed to her brother—but she seems to have exercised, by her sisterly companionship, a powerful influence on the development of his inner musical nature. Felix Mendelssohn, painting by Wilhelm Hensel. © Photos.com/Jupiterimages Listen: Mendelssohn, Felix: excerpt An excerpt from Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op.

… Works written over the following years include the Variations sérieuses (1841), for piano, the Lobgesang (1840; Hymn of Praise), Psalm CXIV, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor (1837), and chamber works. In 1838 Mendelssohn began the Violin Concerto in E Minor–Major . Though he normally worked rapidly, throwing off works with the same facility as one writes a letter, this final expression of his lyrical genius compelled his arduous attention over the next six years. In the 20th century the Violin Concerto was still admired for its warmth of melody and for its vivacity, and it was also the work of Mendelssohn’s that, for nostalgic listeners, enshrined the elegant musical language of the 19th century. Nor was its popularity diminished by the later, more turgid , and often more dramatic violin concerti of Johannes Brahms , Béla Bartók , and Alban Berg . It is true that many of Mendelssohn’s works are cameos, delightful portraits or descriptive pieces, held to lack the characteristic Romantic depth.

But occasionally, as in the Violin Concerto and certain of the chamber works, these predominantly lyrical qualities, so charming, naive, and fresh, themselves end by conveying a sense of the deeper Romantic wonder. In 1843 Mendelssohn founded at Leipzig the conservatory of music where, together with Schumann, he taught composition. Visits to London and Birmingham followed, entailing an increasing number of engagements. These would hardly have affected his normal health; he had always lived on this feverish level. But at Frankfurt in May 1847 he was greatly saddened by the death of Fanny. It is at any rate likely that for a person of Mendelssohn’s sensibility, living at such intensity, the death of this close relative, to whom he was so completely bound, would undermine his whole being. In fact, after the death of his sister, his energies deserted him, and, following the rupture of a blood vessel, he soon died.

Assessment Listen: Mendelssohn, Felix; “You Spotted Snakes” Felix Mendelssohn’s setting of the fairies’ song, “ You Spotted Snakes ” (from … Though the music of Mendelssohn, stylish and elegant, does not fill the entire musical scene, as it was inclined to do in Victorian times, it has elements that unite this versatile 19th-century composer to the principal artistic figures of his time. In the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, with its hilarious grunting of an ass on the bassoon and the evocative effect of Oberon ’s horn , Mendelssohn becomes a partner in Shakespeare ’s fairyland kingdom . The blurred impressionist effects in The Hebrides foreshadow the later developments of the painter J.M.W. Turner . Wagner understood Mendelssohn’s inventive powers as an orchestrator, as is shown in his own opera The Flying Dutchman, and, later, the French composers of the 20th century learned much from his grace and perfection of style. The appeal of Mendelssohn’s work has not dwindled in the 21st century.

It is true that Elijah is not so frequently performed as it once was and some of his fluent piano works are now overshadowed by the more-enduring works of Beethoven and Schumann. But the great pictorial works of Mendelssohn, the Scottish and Italian symphonies, repeatedly yield new vistas, and the Songs Without Words retain their graceful beauty. Mendelssohn was one of the first of the great 19th-century Romantic composers, and in this sense he remains even today a figure to be rediscovered. Fanny Mendelssohn | German musician and composer | Britannica.com German musician and composer Alternative Titles: Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel Fanny Mendelssohn Fanny Mendelssohn, in full Fanny (Cäcilie) Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), married name Fanny Hensel (born November 14, 1805, Hamburg [Germany]—died May 14, 1847, Berlin , Prussia ), German pianist and composer, the eldest sister and confidante of the composer Felix Mendelssohn . Fanny Mendelssohn.

EBook #18138/Project Gutenberg Fanny is said to have been as talented musically as her brother, and the two children were given the same music teachers. Felix readily admitted that his sister played the piano better than he did, and Fanny remained his chief musical adviser until he left home. She is said to have memorized J.S. Bach ’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier by age 13. Fanny married the Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829. She traveled in Italy with her husband in 1839–40. Upon her mother’s death in 1842 she took over the direction of the Mendelssohn family home in Berlin, in which role she organized local concerts and occasionally appeared as a pianist. Fanny remained very close to her brother, and her death in May 1847 greatly contributed to Felix’s own demise six months later. Fanny wrote about 500 musical compositions in all, including about 120 pieces for piano, many lieder (art songs), and chamber music , cantatas , and oratorios .

Six of her songs were published under Felix’s name in his two sets of Twelve Songs (Opuses 8 and 9), while the few works published under her own name include several collections of short piano pieces, some lieder, and a piano trio. Most of her remaining works exist only in manuscript. Stylistically her music is similar to that of her brother. Fanny’s son Sebastian wrote a biography of the Mendelssohn family based partly on Fanny’s diaries and letters, which provide a great deal of information about her brother Felix. Learn More in these related articles: Mendelssohn(-Bartholdy), Felix | San Francisco Classical Voice San Francisco Classical Voice “The Mozart of the Nineteenth Century,” according to Robert Schumann. Mendelssohn’s Romanticism was tempered by a love of J.S. Bach and other German classic composers.

Vital Statistics Born: February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, but grew up in Berlin Died: November 4, 1847, Leipzig, Saxony (Germany) Nationality: German Genre: Romantic Performed as: Pianist, organist, and conductor During the composer's lifetime: The philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel gave his famous Lectures on Aesthetics in 1828-29, which Mendelssohn attended as a student at the University of Berlin. German nationalism stirs up renewed anti-Semitism. Biographical Outline Full Name: Felix Mendelssohn(-Bartholdy). Mendelssohn and his siblings are secretly baptized as Protestants in 1816, and his parents convert to Christianity in 1822, adding “Bartholdy” to the family name. Education: The son of a wealthy banker, Mendelssohn has private tutors. His musical studies continue at the Berlin Singakademie, which promoted the music of J.S. Bach. Child prodigy: Mendelssohn’s first public performance takes place at age 9.

In 1822, the Mendelssohns begin giving Sunday concerts at their home, spreading Felix’s fame as a musical prodigy. In 1825 he composes his first masterpiece, the string Octet, Op. 20, followed, the next year, by the famous concert overture, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Early music, 1829: Conducts Bach’s oratorio the St. Matthew Passion to celebrate the centenary of its composition. His performance of this unpublished work precipitates a revival of Bach’s vocal music. Grand tour, 1829: Visits England, Italy, and France; the tour features some concertizing. He makes contact with a number of prominent musicians, including Berlioz and Chopin. He is especially well-received in England, and returns there several times over the course of his career. First gig, 1833: Mendelssohn is appointed music director of Düsseldorf. He writes and conducts the “Italian” Symphony for the Philharmonic Society in London. A-List, 1835-1847: Mendelssohn is appointed conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

His careful choice of repertory for their 20 concerts each year helps to solidify the canon (the standard musical repertory) of the 18th and early 19th centuries. A sought-after conductor, he leads the premiere of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in 1839, as well as Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in 1841. He revives oratorios at summer music festivals, and writes one himself (St. Paul, 1835, rev. 1837). 1840-47: Mendelssohn is hired by the Prussian king to play a directorial role within Berlin’s musical life. The Berlin Cathedral Choir is created especially for him. Final years: In 1843, he founds the Leipzig Music Conservatory. In 1846, he conducts the premiere of his oratorio Elijah at the Birmingham Festival in England. In October 1847, he suffers a series of strokes and dies on Nov. 4. 1850: Although Mendelssohn was internationally renowned during his lifetime, his posthumous reputation suffers, due in part to anti-Semitism.

The composer Richard Wagner anonymously publishes an essay called “Jewishness in Music” in this year that mars Mendelssohn’s legacy. Fun Facts Precocious progress: Mendelssohn composed many of his best-known works before he was 20. Genes of genius: Mendelssohn’s grandfather was a famous philosopher named Moses Mendelssohn. Sibling rivalry: Felix’s sister, Fanny, was also a talented composer and pianist. Felix called her his “Minerva.” Misleading monikers: While Mendelssohn might have been inspired to write his “Italian” Symphony during a tour of Italy, the work actually premiered in London in 1833. Similarly, his “Scottish” Symphony was begun during a trip to Scotland in 1829, but not finished until 1842 in Berlin. Disordered ordering: Mendelssohn’s five symphonies are numbered by their order of publication, not composition. The real order: Symphony in C Minor, 1824 (No. 1); “Reformation” Symphony, 1830 (No. 5); “Italian” Symphony, 1833 (No.

4); “Lobgesang” (Song of Praise), 1840 (No. 2); “Scottish,” 1842 (No. 3). Recommended Biography R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford, 2005). Peter Mercer-Taylor, The Life of Mendelssohn. Musical Lives (Cambridge, 2000). Explore the Music Mendelssohn was well-versed in music history, so that his musical style seems to meld influences from both the 18th and the 19th centuries. He is famous for orchestral, piano, and chamber music. In his own time, the oratorios were both important pieces. Recommended Websites Mendelssohn - Composers - Classic FM Classic FM Guides Now Playing Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Biography Beethoven heard him play in 1821 and made a prophetic entry in one of his conversation books: "Mendelssohn - 12 years old- promises much." Mendelssohn was born into a prosperous middle-class family that played host to many distinguished guests.

By the time Felix was 12, he had already produced four operas, 12 string symphonies and a large quantity of chamber and piano music. If Mendelssohn's early progress had been nothing short of phenomenal, no one could have predicted what was shortly to follow: an astonishingly accomplished String Octet in 1825 and, only a year later, the magical overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, arguably two of the most stunning displays of youthful talent in western music. During the summer of 1834 Mendelssohn was appointed music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1837 he married Cecile Jeanrenaud. It was an inspired partnership, one which - to Felix's great relief - gained the approval of Fanny and produced no fewer than five children. In 1842 Felix enjoyed his first personal contact with the young Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert. In gratitude, he dedicated his ‘Scottish’ Symphony to the Queen. British people quickly took Felix Mendelssohn into their hearts.

Indeed, such was the 37-year-old Mendelssohn's impact in England that in 1846 he directed the first performance of his new oratorio, Elijah, as the chief attraction of the Birmingham Festival. In March 1847 Mendelssohn's sister Fanny died, prematurely dealing an incalculable emotional blow to the composer. He never fully recovered, and following a slight stroke died in November of the same year. Queen Victoria was distraught: "We were horrified, astounded and distressed to read in the papers of the death of Mendelssohn, the greatest musical genius since Mozart and the most amiable man." Did you know? Mendelssohn was one of the first conductors to use a baton to beat time when he stood in front of the orchestra. Meet The Musical Mendelssohns: Felix And Fanny : Deceptive Cadence : NPR Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn relied on each other to shape their very different musical careers. Bettmann/Corbis Musical talent tends to run in families. Think of Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart , Rufus and Martha Wainwright , Colin and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead , or The Jackson 5 .

But long before those musical siblings, there were the Mendelssohns — Felix and Fanny, the subjects of a new album by the versatile Ebène Quartet from Paris. The Mendelssohns grew up making music together in Berlin at the beginning of the 19th century. Felix, younger by four years, became one of history's most brilliant composers. Fanny, a strong-willed pianist but worried about her worth as a composer, has been neglected. Still, as Felix's career soared and Fanny struggled to publish her pieces, the two remained close. "The connection between Fanny and Felix was more than brother and sister," Ebène cellist Raphaël Merlin says. "It was almost soul mates." iTunes Early on, Fanny helped Felix with structuring some of his pieces. Later, Felix was supportive of his sister but, like their father, discouraged her from actually publishing her music. Fanny wrote a String Quartet in E-flat major in 1834, and it's the centerpiece of the Ebène Quartet's new recording. Violist Mathieu Herzog says that while Fanny's work might not quite be up to the standards of her brother's String Quartets Nos.

2 and 6 (also on the album), it's very fine music. Article continues after sponsorship "We thought it would be great to put Fanny in the middle, like a sandwich of Mendelssohn," Herzog says. "It's also our gift to her, if I may say that." Merlin is more positive about Fanny's string quartet, noting that along with all its imagination, freedom and sensitivity, it's not always easy to play. "It's maybe even more difficult to bring to the stage, just because of the fourth movement, which is so physical," Merlin says. "There is something fighting in here between contradictory emotions. It's very close to what Schumann could do at this time." The Ebene Quartet perform Mendelssohn at powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn. Credit: NPR Other than playing and conducting in salon settings, Fanny made just one public appearance, as soloist in her brother's First Piano Concerto at a benefit concert. Very little of her music was published in her lifetime, and much of it today remains privately owned. Fanny died suddenly of a stroke at age 41, in 1847.

Felix was crushed, and Herzog says you can hear the pain he poured into the String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, completed in September of that year. "Felix Mendelssohn's music is always a joy. He's an optimistic guy," Herzog says. "In this quartet you feel immediately that there's something strange. You will be shocked by music with so much power and drama." "And violence," Merlin adds. Felix referred to the quartet as his "Requiem for Fanny." He would die two months later, at 38, after a series of strokes. He was buried next to his sister in Berlin. "We think he died of sadness," Herzog says. Felix Mendelssohn Felix Mendelssohn Location of death: Leipzig, Germany Cause of death: Stroke Remains: Buried, Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof, Berlin, Germany Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Executive summary: Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream German composer, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn , was born in Hamburg on the 3rd of February 1809.

In consequence of the troubles caused by the French occupation of Hamburg, Abraham Mendelssohn, his father, migrated in 1811 to Berlin, where his grandmother Fromet, then in the twenty-fifth year of her widowhood, received the whole family into her house, No. 7 Neue Promenade. Here Felix and his sister Fanny received their first instruction in music from their mother, under whose care they progressed so rapidly that their exceptional talent soon became apparent. Their next teacher was Madame Bigot, who, during the temporary residence of the family in Paris in 1816, gave them valuable instruction. On their return to Berlin they took lessons in thoroughbass and composition from Zelter, in pianoforte-playing from Ludwig Berger, and in violin-playing from Henning -- the care of their general education being entrusted to the father of the novelist Paul von Heyse . Felix first played in public on the 24th of October 1818, taking the pianoforte part in a trio by Woelfi. On the 11th of April 1819 he entered the Berlin Singakademie as an alto, and in the following year began to compose with extraordinary rapidity.

His earliest dated work is a cantata, In r�hrend feierlichen T�nen, completed on the 13th of January 1820. During that year alone he produced nearly sixty movements, including songs, pianoforte sonatas, a trio for pianoforte, violin and violoncello, a sonata for violin and pianoforte, pieces for the organ, and even a little dramatic piece in three scenes. In 1821 he wrote five symphonies for stringed instruments, each in three movements; motets for four voices, an opera, in one act, called Soldatenliebschaft; another, called Die beiden P�dagogen; part of a third, called Die wandernden Com�dianten; and an immense quantity of other music of different kinds, all showing the precocity of his genius. The original autograph copies of these early productions are preserved in the Berlin Library, where they form part of a collection which fills forty-four large volumes, all written with infinite neatness, and for the most part carefully dated -- a sufficient proof that the methodical habits which distinguished his later life were formed in early childhood.

In 1821 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to Goethe , with whom he spent sixteen days at Weimar, in company with Zelter. From this year also dates his first acquaintance with Carl Maria von Weber , who was then in Berlin superintending the production of Der Freisch�tz; and from the summer of 1822 his introduction, at Cassel, to another of the greatest of his contemporaries, Ludwig Spohr. During this year his pen was even more prolific, producing, among other works, an opera, in three acts, entitled Die beiden Neffen, oder der Onkel aus Boston, and a pianoforte concerto, which he played in public at a concert given by Frau Anna Milder. It had long been a custom with the Mendelssohn family to give musical performances on alternate Sunday mornings in their dining-room, with a small orchestra, which Felix always conducted, even when he was not tall enough to be seen without standing upon a stool. For each of these occasions he produced some new work -- playing the pianoforte pieces himself, or entrusting them to Fanny, while his sister Rebecka sang, and his brother Paul played the violoncello.

In this way Die beiden Neffen was first privately performed, on the fifteenth anniversary of his birthday, the 3rd of February 1824. Between the 3rd and the 31st of March in this year he composed his fine symphony in C minor, now known as Op. 10, and soon afterwards the quartet in B minor, Op. 3, and the (posthumous) pianoforte sestet, Op. 110. In this year also began his lifelong friendship with Moscheles, who, when asked to receive him as a pupil, said, "If he wishes to take a hint from me, as to anything new to him, he can easily do so; but he stands in no need of lessons." In 1825 Abraham Mendelssohn took Felix to Paris, where among other musicians then resident in the French capital he met the two most popular dramatic composers of the age, Gioacchino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer , and lived on terms of intimacy with Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Rode, Baillot, Herz, and many other artists of European celebrity.

On this occasion also he made his first acquaintance with Luigi Cherubini , who, though he rarely praised anyone, expressed a high opinion of his talent, and recommended him to write a Kyrie, for five voices, with full orchestral accompaniments, which he himself described as "exceeding in thickness" anything he had attempted. From letters written at this period we learn that Felix's estimate of the French school of music was far from flattering; but he formed some friendships in Paris, which were renewed on later occasions. He returned to Berlin with his father in May 1825, taking leave of his Parisian friends on the 19th of the month, and interrupting his journey at Weimar for the purpose of paying a second visit to Goethe, to whom he dedicated his quartet in B minor. On reaching home he must have worked with greater zeal than ever; for on the 10th of August in this same year he completed an opera, in two acts, called Die Hochzeit des Camacho, a work of considerable importance. No ordinary boy could have escaped uninjured from the snares attendant upon such a life as that which Mendelssohn now lived.

Notwithstanding his overwhelming passion for music, his general education had been so well cared for that he was able to hold his own, in the society of his seniors, with the grace of an accomplished man of the world. He was already recognized as a leading spirit by the artists with whom he associated, and these artists were men of acknowledged talent and position. The temptations to egoism by which he was surrounded would have rendered most clever students intolerable. But the natural amiability of his disposition, and the healthy influence of his happy home-life, counteracted all tendencies towards self-assertion. Soon after his return from Paris, Abraham Mendelssohn removed from his mother's residence to No. 3 Leipziger Strasse, a roomy, old-fashioned house, containing an excellent music-room, and in the grounds adjoining a "Gartenhaus" capable of accommodating several hundred persons at the Sunday performances. In the autumn of the following year this "garden house" witnessed a memorable private performance of the work by means of which the greatness of Mendelssohn's genius was first revealed to the outer world -- the overture to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

The finished score of this famous composition is dated "Berlin, August 6, 1826" -- its author was only seventeen and a half years old. Yet in no later work does he exhibit more originality of thought, more freshness of conception, or more perfect mastery over the details of technical construction, than in this delightful inspiration. The overture was first publicly performed at Stettin (Szczecin), in February 1827, under the direction of the young composer, who was at once accepted as the leader of a new and highly characteristic manifestation of the spirit of progress. Henceforth we must speak of him, not as a student, but as a mature and experienced artist. Meanwhile Camacho's Wedding had been submitted to Spontini, with a view to its production at the opera. The libretto, founded upon an episode in the history of Don Quixote, was written by Klingemann, and Mendelssohn threw himself into the spirit of the romance with a keen perception of its peculiar humor.

The work was put into rehearsal soon after the composer's return from Stettin, produced on the 29th of April 1827, and received with great apparent enthusiasm; but a cabal was formed against it, and it never reached a second performance. The critics abused it mercilessly; yet it exhibits merits of a very high order. The solemn passage for the trombones, which heralds the first appearance of the knight of La Mancha, is conceived in a spirit of reverent appreciation of the idea of Cervantes , which would have done honor to a composer of lifelong experience. Mendelssohn was annoyed at this injustice, and some time elapsed before his mind recovered its usual bright tone; but he continued to work diligently. Among other serious undertakings, he formed a choir for the study of the choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach , then unknown to the public; and, in spite of Zelter's opposition, he succeeded, in 1829, in inducing the Berlin Singakademie to give a public performance of the Passion according to St. Matthew, under his direction, with a chorus of between three and four hundred voices.

The scheme succeeded beyond his warmest hopes, and proved the means of restoring to the world great compositions which had never been heard since the death of Bach. But the obstructive party were offended; and at this period Mendelssohn was far from popular among the musicians of Berlin. In April 1829 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to London. His reception was enthusiastic. He made his first appearance before an English audience at one of the Philharmonic Society's concerts -- then held in the Argyll Rooms -- on the 25th of May, conducting his symphony in C minor from the pianoforte, to which he was led by John Cramer. On the 30th he played Weber's Concertst�ck, from memory, a proceeding at that time extremely unusual. At a concert given by Drouet, on th 24th of June, he played Beethoven 's pianoforte concerto if E flat, which had never before been heard in the country; and the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream was also for the first time, presented to a London audience. On returning home from the concert, Attwood, then organist of St.

Paul's Cathedral, left the score of the overture in a hackney coach whereupon Mendelssohn wrote out another, from memory without an error. At another concert he played, with Moscheles, his still unpublished concerto in E, for two pianofortes and orchestra. After the close of the London season he started with Klingemann on a tour through Scotland, where he was inspired with the first idea of his overture to The Isles of Fingal, returning to Berlin at the end of November. Except for an accident to his knee, which lamed him for some time, his visit was highly successful and laid the foundation of many friendships and prosperous negotiations. The visit to England formed the first division of a great scheme of travel which his father wished him to extend to all the most important art centers in Europe. After refusing the offer of a professorship at Berlin, he started again, in May 1830, for Italy, pausing on his way at Weimar, where he spent a fortnight with Goethe, and reaching Rome, after many pleasant interruptions, on the 1st of November.

No excitement prevented him from devoting a certain time every day to composition; but he lost no opportunity of studying either the countless treasures which form the chief glory of the great city or the manners and customs of modern Romans. He attended, with insatiable curiosity, the services in the Sistine Chapel; and his keen power of observation enabled him to throw much interesting light upon them. His letters on this subject, however, lose much of their value through his incapacity to comprehend the close relation existing between the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries and the ritual of the Roman Church. His Lutheran education kept him in ignorance even of the first principles of ordinary chanting; and it is amusing to find him describing as enormities peculiar to the papal choir customs familiar to every village singer in England, and as closely connected with the structure of the "Anglican chant" as with that of "Gregorian music." Still, though he could not agree in all points with Baini, the greatest ecclesiastical musician then living, he shared his admiration for the Improperia, the Miserere, and the cantus planus of the Lamentationes and the Exultet, the musical beauty of which he could understand, apart from their ritual significance.

In passing through Munich on his return in October 1831 he composed and played his pianoforte concerto in G minor, and accepted a commission (never fulfilled) to compose an opera for the Munich theatre. Pausing for a time at Stuttgart, Frankfurt and D�sseldorf he arrived in Paris in December, and passed four pleasant months in the renewal of acquaintances formed in 1825, and in close intercourse with Liszt and Chopin . On the 19th of February 1832 the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream was played at the conservatoire, and many of his other compositions were brought before the public; but he did not escape disappointments with regard to some of them, especially the Reformation symphony, and the visit was brought to a premature close in March by an attack of cholera, from which, however, he rapidly recovered. On the 23rd of April 1832 he was again in London, where he twice played his G minor concerto at the Philharmonic concerts, gave a performance on the organ at St. Paul's, and published his first book of Lieder ohne Worte.

He returned to Berlin in July, and during the winter he gave public performances of his Reformation symphony, his concerto in G minor, and his Walpurgisnacht. In the following spring he paid a third visit to London for the purpose of conducting his Italian symphony, which was played for the first time, by the Philharmonic Society, on the 13th of May 1833. On the 26th of the same month he conducted the performances at the Lower Rhine festival at D�sseldorf with such brilliant effect that he was at once offered, and accepted, the appointment of general music-director to the town, an office which included the management of the music in the principal churches, at the theatre and at the rooms of two musical associations. Before entering upon his new duties, Mendelssohn paid a fourth visit to London, with his father, returning to D�sseldorf on the 27th of September 1833.

His influence produced as excellent effect upon the church music and in the concert-room; but his relations with the management of the theater were not altogether pleasant; and it was probably this circumstance which first led him to forsake the cultivation of the opera for that of sacred music. At D�sseldorf he first designed his famous oratorio St. Paul, in response to an application from the C�cilien-Verein at Frankfurt, composed his overture to Die sch�ne Melusine, and planned some other works of importance. He liked his appointment, and would probably have retained it much longer had he not been invited to undertake the permanent direction of the Gewandhaus concerts at Leipzig, and thus raised to the highest position attainable in the German musical world. To this new sphere of labor he removed in August 1835, opening the first concert at the Gewandhaus, on the 4th of October, with his overture Die Meeresstille, a work possessing great attractions, though by no means on a level with the Midsummer Night's Dream, The Isles of Fingal, or Melusine.

Mendelssohn's reception in Leipzig was most enthusiastic; and under their new director the Gewandhaus concerts prospered exceedingly. Meanwhile St. Paul steadily progressed, and was first produced, with triumphant success, at the Lower Rhine festival at D�sseldorf, on the 22nd of May 1836. On the 3rd of October it was first sung in English, at Liverpool, under the direction of Sir George Smart; and on the 16th of March 1837 Mendelssohn again directed it at Leipzig. The next great event in Mendelssohn's life was his happy marriage, on the 28th of March 1837, to Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud. The honeymoon was scarcely over before he was again summoned to England to conduct St. Paul, at the Birmingham festival, on the 20th of September. During this visit be played on the organ at St. Paul's and at Christ Church, Newgate Street, with an effect which exercised a lasting influence upon English organists. It was here also that he first contemplated the production of his second oratorio, Elijah.

Passing over the composition of the Lobgesang in 1840, a sixth visit to England in the same year, and his inauguration of a scheme for the erection of a monument to Bach, we find Mendelssohn in 1841 recalled to Berlin by the king of Prussia, with the title of Kapellmeister. Though his appointment resulted in the production of Antigone, Oedipus Coloneus, Athalie, the incidental music to the Midsummer Night's Dream, and other great works, it proved an endless source of vexation, and certainly helped to shorten the composer's life. In 1842 he came to England for the seventh time, accompanied by his wife, conducted his Scotch symphony at the Philharmonic, again played the organ at St. Peter's, Cornhill, and Christ Church, Newgate Street, and was received with honor by the queen and the prince consort.

He did not, however, permit his new engagements to interfere with the direction of the Gewandhaus concerts; and in 1843 he founded in Leipzig the great conservatoire which soon became the best musical college in Europe, opening it on the 3rd of April in the buildings of the Gewandhaus. In 1844 he conducted six of the Philharmonic concerts in London, producing his new Midsummer Night's Dream music, and playing Beethoven's pianoforte concerto in G with extraordinary effect. He returned to his duties at Berlin in September, but succeeded in persuading the king to free him from his most onerous engagements. After a brief residence in Franfurt, Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig in September 1845, resuming his old duties at the Gewandhaus, and teaching regularly in the conservatoire, Here he remained, with little interruption, during the winter -- introducing his friend Jenny Lind, then at the height of her popularity, to the critical frequenters of the Gewandhaus, and steadily working at Elijah, the first performance of which he conducted at the Birmingham festival, on the 26th of August 1846.

The reception of this great work was enthusiastic, Unhappily, the excitement attendant upon its production, added to the irritating effect of the worries at Berlin, mad a serious inroad upon the composer's health. On his return to Leipzig he worked on as usual, but it was clear that his health was seriously impaired. In 1847 he visited England for the tenth and last time, to conduct four performances of Elijah at Exeter Hall, on the 16th, 23rd, 28th and 30th of April, one at Manchester on the 20th, and one at Birmingham on the 27th. But the exertion was beyond his strength. He witnessed Jenny Lind's first appearance at Her Majesty's Theatre, on the 4th of May, and left England on the 9th, little anticipating the trial that awaited him in the tidings of the sudden death of his sister Fanny, which reached him only a few days after his arrival in Frankfurt. The loss of his mother in 1842 had shaken him much, but the suddenness with which this last intelligence was communicated broke him down. He fell to the ground insensible, and never fully recovered.

In June he was so far himself again that he was able to travel, with his family, by short stages, to Interlaken, where he stayed for some time, illustrating the journey by a series of watercolor drawings, but making no attempt at composition for many weeks. He returned to Leipzig in September, bringing with him fragments of Christus, Loreley, and some other unfinished works, taking no part in the concerts, and living in privacy. On the 9th of October he called on Madame Frege, and asked her to sing his latest set of songs. She left the room for lights, and on her return found him in violent pain and almost insensible. He lingered for four weeks, and on the 4th of November he passed away, in the presence of his wife, his brother, and his three friends, Moscheles, Schleinitz, and Ferdinand David. A cross marks the site of his grave, in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits Kirchhof, at Berlin. Mendelssohn's title to a place among the great composers of the 19th century is incontestable.

His style, though differing little in technical arrangement from that of his classical predecessors, is characterized by a vein of melody peculiarly his own, and easily distinguishable by those who have studied his works, not only from the genuine effusions of contemporary writers, but from the most successful of the servile imitations with which, even during his lifetime, the music-shops were deluged. In less judicious hands the rigid symmetry of his phrasing might, perhaps, have palled upon the ear; but under his skillful management it serves only to impart an additional charm to thoughts which derive their chief beauty from the evident spontaneity of their conception. In this, as in all other matters of a purely technical character, he regarded the accepted laws of art as the medium by which he might most certainly attain the ends dictated by the inspiration of his genius. Though caring nothing for rules, except as means for producing a good effect, he scarcely ever violated them, and was never weary of impressing their value upon the minds of his pupils. His method of counterpoint was modelled in close accordance with that practiced by Bach.

This he used in combination with an elastic development of the sonata-form, similar to that engrafted by Beethoven upon the lines laid down by Joseph Haydn . The principles involved in this arrangement were strictly conservative; yet they enabled him, at the very outset of his career, to invent a new style no less original than that of Schubert or Weber , and no less remarkable as the embodiment of canons already consecrated by classical authority than as a special manifestation of individual genius. It is thus that Mendelssohn stands before us as at the same time a champion of conservatism and an apostle of progress; and it is chiefly by virtue of these two apparently incongruous though really compatible phases of his artistic character that his influence and example availed, for so many years, to hold in check the violence of reactionary opinion which injudicious partisanship afterwards fanned into revolutionary fury. Concerning Mendelssohn's private character there have never been two opinions. As a man of the world he was more than ordinarily accomplished -- brilliant in conversation, and in his lighter moments overflowing with sparkling humor and ready pleasantry, loyal and unselfish in the more serious business of life, and never weary of working for the general good.

As a friend he was unvaryingly kind, sympathetic and true. His earnestness as a Christian needs no stronger testimony than that afforded by his own delineation of the character of St. Paul; but it is not too much to say that his heart and life were pure as those of a little child. Mendelssohn's influence on the early career of Joseph Joachim is, next to his work in the rediscovery of Bach , his greatest bequest to later musical history. Those many profound and sincere admirers to Joachim to whom the name of Mendelssohn calls up only the Widow in Elijah and the weaker Songs without Words, may find the idea strange; but there is no doubt that Joachim regarded the continuation of a true Mendelssohn tradition as identical with his own efforts to "uphold the dignity of art." Father: Abraham Mendelssohn (d. 1835) Mother: Lea Salomon Mendelssohn Sister: Rebecka (m. Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet) Wife: Cécile Jeanrenaud (m. 28-Mar-1837)

Question: Composer Felix Mendelssohn had a musical sister what was her christian name
Answer: Fanny