Felix Mendelssohn
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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy at the age of thirty |
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and known generally as
Felix Mendelssohn (
February 3,
1809 –
November 4,
1847) was a
German composer and
conductor of
Jewish parentage of the early
Romantic period. His work includes
symphonies,
concertos,
oratorios,
piano and
chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes in the late 19th century, his creative originality is now being recognised and re-evaluated, and he is now amongst the most popular composers of the
Romantic era.
Mendelssohn was born in
Hamburg, the son of a
banker,
Abraham, who was himself the son of the famous
Jewish
philosopher,
Moses Mendelssohn, and of Lea Salomon, a member of 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 (at which time Felix took the additional names Jakob Ludwig). (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 father's injunctions, he seems not to have objected to the use of 'Mendelssohn' alone.
[See discussion of this in biographies by Werner and Todd.]The family moved to
Berlin in 1812. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn sought to give Felix, his brother Paul, and sisters Fanny and Rebecka (who later married the mathematician
Lejeune Dirichlet), the best education possible. 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. However, at that time, it was not considered proper for a woman to have a career in music, so Fanny remained an amateur musician.
Mendelssohn is often regarded as the greatest musical 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 piano virtuoso
Ignaz Moscheles who however confessed in his diaries
[Published in 1873 by his wife Charlotte ] that he had little to teach him. Moscheles became a close colleague and lifelong friend.
Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil and watercolour, he could speak English, Italian, and Latin, and he had an interest in classical literature.
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 symphonies in his early teens (more specifically, from the age of 12 to 14). These works were ignored for over a century, but are now recorded and heard occasionally in concerts. At 15 he wrote his first acknowledged symphony for full orchestra, his
opus 11 in C minor in
1824. At the age of 16 he wrote his String
Octet in E Flat Major, the first work which showed the full power of his genius. The Octet and his
overture to
Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later, are the best known of his early works. (He wrote incidental music for the play 16 years later in 1842, including the famous
Wedding March). 1827 saw the premiere - and sole performance in his lifetime - of his
opera,
Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture into the genre again; he later toyed for a while in the 1840s with a libretto by
Eugene Scribe based on
Shakespeare's
The Tempest, but rejected it as unsuitable.
From 1826 to 1829, Mendelssohn studied aesthetics with
Hegel at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that he decided to pursue music as a career.
In 1829 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to Britain, 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. In the summer he visited
Edinburgh and became a friend of the composer
John Thomson. 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
26 August,
1846.
On the death of Zelter, Mendelssohn had some hopes of becoming the conductor of the
Berlin Singakademie with whom he had revived
Johann Sebastian Bach's
St Matthew Passion (see below). However he was defeated for the post by
Karl Rungenhagen. This may have been because of Mendelssohn's youth, and fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected by some (and possibly by Felix) to be on account of his Jewish origins.
|
Felix Mendelssohn's grave |
Nonetheless, in 1835 he was appointed as conductor of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This appointment was extremely important for him; he felt himself to be a German and wished to play a leading part in his country's musical life. In its way it was a redress for his disappointment over the Singakademie appointment. Despite efforts by the king of Prussia to lure him to
Berlin, Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the musical life of
Leipzig and in 1843 he founded the
Leipzig Conservatory, where he successfully persuaded Moscheles and
Robert Schumann 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: Carl, Marie, Paul, Felix, and Lilli. Mendelssohn 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). It is said, partly in jest, that it may have been this very life of success and ease, that limited his developing all the greatness that his prodigal genius might have predicted. One can only wonder if more hardship (not to mention life into the 5th decade, as also eluded Mozart and Schubert) might have produced more masterpieces on the order of his 2nd violin concerto.
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, on
November 4,
1847, in Leipzig. His funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche and his death was mourned by music lovers in Germany and several other countries, particularly Britain, where he had been so popular. Mendelssohn is buried in the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof (Trinity Cemetery) I in
Berlin-
Kreuzberg.
Mendelssohn was deeply influenced by the music of
Johann Sebastian Bach. His great-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 Emmanuel 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. The orchestra and choir were provided by the
Berlin Singakademie of which Zelter was the principal conductor. 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' (cited by Devrient in his memoirs of the composer).
Mendelssohn also revived interest in the work of
Franz Schubert. He conducted the premiere of
Schubert's Ninth Symphony at Leipzig on the
21st March 1839, more than a decade after the composer's death.
Mendelssohn's own works show the influence of Baroque and early classical music. His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and use of counterpoint reminiscent of Bach.
Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if somewhat cool, terms with the likes of
Hector Berlioz,
Franz Liszt, and
Giacomo 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 and an almost Puritanical 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. 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 haircut to differentiate himself. It is significant that the only musician with whom he was a close personal friend, Moscheles, was of an older generation and equally conservative in outlook. Moscheles preserved this outlook at the Leipzig Conservatory until his own death in 1870.
This conservative strain in Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a similar condescension 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 remnants of which can still be discerned today amongst some writers (for example,
Charles Rosen's essay on Mendelssohn, whose style he criticizes as 'religious kitsch').
[ Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, (1998)] The
Nazi regime was to cite Felix's Jewish origin in banning his works and destroying memorial statues.
In England, Mendelssohn's reputation remained high for a long time; the adulatory (and today scarcely readable) novel
Charles Auchester by the teenaged Sarah Sheppard, published in 1851, which features Mendelssohn as the 'Chevalier Seraphael', remained in print for nearly eighty years. Queen Victoria demonstrated her enthusiasm by requesting, when
The Crystal Palace was being re-built in
1854, that it include a statue of Mendelssohn. It was the only statue in the Palace made of bronze and the only one to survive the fire that destroyed the Palace in
1936. (The statue is now situated in
Eltham College, London). Mendelssohn's Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream was first played at the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter to the crown prince of Prussia in
1856 and it is still popular today. However many critics, including
Bernard Shaw, began to condemn his music for its association with Victorian cultural insularity.
Over the last fifty years a new appreciation of Mendelssohn's 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.
Recent critical evaluations of Mendelssohn's work have stressed the subtlety of his compositional technique. For example, the
Hebrides Overture has been interpreted as presenting a musical equivalent to the aesthetic subject in the paintings of
Caspar David Friedrich. The first lyrical theme represents the person apprehending the landscape described by the music behind this theme. Similarly, the use of French Horns in the opening movement of the
Italian Symphony may represent a German presence in an Italian scene -- Mendelssohn himself on tour.
Juvenilia and early works
The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his childhood by the music of Bach, 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: 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 an intuitive grasp of form, harmony,
counterpoint, colour and the compositional technique of Beethoven which justify the claims often made that Felix's precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp.
Symphonies
Mendelssohn wrote 12 symphonies for strings orchestra from 1821 to 1823 (i.e. between the ages of 12 and 14).
The numbering of his mature symphonies is approximately in order of publishing, rather than of composition. The order of composition is No.1, No.5, No.3, No.4, No.2.
Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony No.1 C minor for full-scale orchestra in 1824, aged 15 . This work is experimental, showing the influence of
Bach,
Beethoven and
Schubert.
From 1829 to 1830 he wrote his
Symphony No.5 in D Major, the
Reformation Symphony. Despite its quality, Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied with it and did not allow publication of the score.
The
Scottish Symphony (
Symphony No. 3 in A minor), was written and revised intermittently between 1830 and 1842. This piece evokes Scotland's atmosphere in the ethos of
Romanticism, but does not employ actual Scottish folk melodies. Mendelssohn published the score of the symphony in 1842.
Mendelssohn travelled widely in Europe throughout his life, and a visit to
Italy inspired him to write the
Symphony No 4 in A major, known as the
Italian. Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in 1833, but he did not allow this score to be published during his lifetime as he continually sought to rewrite it.
In 1840 Mendelssohn wrote the choral
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, entitled
Lobgesang (
Hymn of Praise), and this score was published in 1841.
Other 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. He visited the
cave, on the
Hebridean isle of
Staffa, as part of his Grand Tour of Europe, and was so impressed that he scribbled the opening theme of the overture on the spot, including it in a letter he wrote home the same evening.
Throughout his career he wrote a number of other concert overtures; those most frequently played today include
Ruy Blas written for the drama by
Victor Hugo and
Meerestille und Glückliche Fahrt (
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) inspired by the poem by
Goethe.
The incidental music to
A Midsummer Night's Dream (op. 61), including the well-known
Wedding March, was written in 1843, seventeen years after the overture.
Opera
Mendelssohn wrote some
Singspiels for family performance in his youth. In 1827 he wrote a more sophisticated work,
Die Hochzeit von Camacho, based on an episode in
Don Quixote, for public consumption. This was however not a success - Mendelssohn left the theatre before the conclusion of the first performance and subsequent performances were cancelled.
Although he never abandoned the idea of composing a full opera, and considered many subjects - including that of the
Nibelung saga later adapted by Wagner - he never wrote more than a few pages of sketches for any project. In his last years the manager
Benjamin Lumley tried to contract him to write an opera on
The Tempest on a libretto by
Eugène Scribe, and even announced it as forthcoming in the year of Mendelssohn's death. The libretto was eventually set by
Fromental Halévy.
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. In addition, there are several works for soloist and orchestra in one movement. Those for piano are the
Rondo Brillant, Op. 29 of 1834; the
Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22 of 1832; and the
Serenade and Allegro Giojoso Op. 43 of 1838. Opp. 113 and 114 are
Konzertstücke (concerto movements) for
clarinet,
basset horn, and piano that were orchestrated and performed in that form in Mendelssohn's lifetime.
Chamber Music
Mendelssohn's mature output contains many chamber works many of which display an emotional intensity some people think lacking in his larger works. In particular his
string quartet op. 80 in F minor (1847), his last major work, written following the death of his sister Fanny, is both powerful and eloquent. Other works include two
string quintets, sonatas for the
clarinet,
cello,
viola and
violin, and two
piano trios. For the first of these trios, in D minor (1839), Mendelssohn unusually took the advice of a fellow-composer, (
Ferdinand Hiller) and rewrote the piano part in a more romantic, '
Schumannesque' style, considerably heightening its effect.
Choral
The two large biblical
oratorios, 'St Paul' in 1836 and 'Elijah' in 1846, are greatly influenced by Bach. One of Mendelssohn's most performed sacred pieces is "There Shall a Star Come out of Jacob," a chorus from the unfinished oratorio, "Christus" (which together with the preceding
recitative and male trio comprises all of the existing material from that work). Mendelssohn also wrote many smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir and for choir with organ including 'Hear my prayer', which includes the famous solo 'O for the wings of a dove'.
Strikingly different is the more overtly 'romantic'
Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (
The First Walpurgis Night), a setting for chorus and orchestra of a ballad by
Goethe describing
pagan rituals of the
Druids in the
Harz mountains in the early days of Christianity. This remarkable score has been seen by the scholar Heinz-Klaus Metzger as a "Jewish protest against the domination of Christianity".
Piano
Mendelssohn's
Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (2 published posthumously), remain his most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour recital items, and their overwhelming popularity has caused many critics to under-rate their musical value. Other composers who were inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included
Charles Valentin Alkan (the five sets of
Chants, each ending with a
barcarolle),
Anton Rubinstein,
Ignaz Moscheles and
Edvard Grieg.
Other notable piano pieces by Mendelssohn include his
Variations sérieuses op. 54 (1841), the
Seven Characteristic Pieces op. 7 (1827) and the set of six
Preludes and Fugues op. 35 (written between 1832 and 1837).
Organ
Mendelssohn played the organ and composed for it from the age of 11 to his death. His primary organ works are the Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37 (1837), and the Six Sonatas, Op. 65 (1845).
Symphony no. 3 in A minor ("Scottish")Violin Concerto in E minor*
Itzig family*
Abraham Mendelssohn* Todd, R. Larry: "Mendelssohn - A Life in Music" Oxford and New York, 2003. ISBN 0195110439: The most recent (as of December 2005) comprehensive survey.
* Mercer-Taylor, Peter: "The Life of Mendelssohn", Cambridge, 2000. ISBN 0521639727.: In the Cambridge University series of musical lives, compact and reliable.
* Hensel, Sebastian: "The Mendelssohn Family". 4th revised edition, London, 1884 (often reprinted).: Edited by Felix's nephew, an important collection of letters and documents about the family.
* Werner, Eric: "Mendelssohn, A New Image of the Composer and his Age", New York and London, 1963.: A pioneering re-evaluation when first published, now the subject of controversy because of Werner's unnecessarily over-enthusiastic interpretation of some documentation in an attempt to establish Felix's Jewish sympathies. See
Musical Quarterly, vols. 82-83, articles by Sposato,
Leon Botstein and others.
* Moscheles, Charlotte: "Life of Moscheles, with selections from his Diaries and Correspondence", London, 1873 (2 volumes).
There are numerous published editions and selections of Felix's letters. A complete edition is now (2006) in preparation but is expected to take twenty years to complete.
The main collections of Mendelssohn's original musical autographs and letters are to be found in the
Bodleian Library,
Oxford University, the
New York Public Library, and the
Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. His letters to Moscheles are in the Brotherton Collection,
Leeds University.
External links
*
Felix Mendelssohn House and Foundation, Leipzig*
Felix Mendelssohn on Carolina Classical site*
Mendelssohn's Scores*
BBC Radio 3 Classical Study and musical links*
Mendelssohn cylinder recordings, from the
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the
University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
*
ViolinMP3.com - Contains information about the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto*
