Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847); DEU

Read biography at allmusic.com.

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Felix Mendelssohn has sometimes been called the "classical romantic." Born in 1809 in the first generation of romantic composers, Mendelssohn's music is the most conservative of the group. If Chopin and Schumann are the Shelly and Keats of Music, then Mendelssohn is perhaps her Wordsworth, with music that is highly sensitive, refined and restrained but still filled with the poetic sensibilities of the age. When Mendelssohn died at an early age like his great colleagues, it was not from an archtypal Romantic affliction such as tuberculosis or madness, but rather from overwork and an ensuing stroke.

Felix Mendelssohn was the second child of a wealthy, conservative Jewish banking family who moved after his birth from Hamburg to Berlin. It was not untypical for such a family, anxious to assimilate into German society, to convert to the Protestant church, thereby adding Bartholdy to family name. Indeed Felix's father Abraham felt more identification as a German than as a Jew, and some of the well mannered conservatism that may not have always served Mendelssohn well as a composer, may possibly be traced to the innate carefulness such a family must subliminally feel given their situation in Germany.

Felix's grandfather was the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and he grew up in a world of tremendous intellectual sophistication. Felix was a child prodigy on the order of Mozart, and actually reached musical maturity earlier than the latter, writing masterpieces such as the Octet for strings at age sixteen and the Overture to a Midsummer Night's Dream at age seventeen.

After early piano studies with his mother, Mendelssohn studied harmony with Carl Friedrich Zelter and made his performance debut at age nine. By age twelve he had written numerous sonatas, a piano trio, a cantata and two operettas with the family hiring an orchestra so that he could hear his music. At this age he composed the first of his twelve string symphonies, wonderfully fresh and inventive music that quickly shows his precocious contrapuntal and formal mastery combined with an emerging romantic voice. In addition to his phenomenal music precocity, Felix also painted well, was multi-lingual and was introduced to the 72 year old Goethe with whom he became friends.

Mendelssohn attended Berlin University from 1826 to 1829. In March of that year he conducted at the Singakadamiethe first performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion since Bach's death. This was a seminal moment in the Bach revival of the nineteenth century and a key event in Mendelssohn's important conducting career. In fact, Mendelssohn can be considered the first conductor of the modern style and also among the first to use a baton. 1829 was also the year Mendelssohn traveled to England where he performed Beethoven's Emperor concerto and subsequently became beloved by the English. The strong impresssions of his travels around the British Isles resulted in the Hebrides Overture and ten years later, the Scottish Symphony.

In the next two years, Mendelssohn undertook the grand European tour that was traditional for a cultivated child of a wealthy family, visiting Italy and Austria as well as touring Germany. This trip produced the impressions that inspired the wonderfully original and fresh "Italian Symphony"(published posthumously as op.90). Perhaps using Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in the same key of Ama as a point of departure, this is Mendelssohn's most perfect symphony and is a work filled with his particular lyricism, immaculate technique and transparent orchestration.

The first of the three books of the "Songs Without Words" (1834) (Opus 38, No.4) is also from this period. The "Lieder ohne Worte" are wonderful examples of the early romantic love of short character pieces that were meant to be played intimately in the home. They are the quintessential music of the Biedermeier period and are the musical equivalent of early romantic lyric poetry. Although many have descriptive titles such as "Venetian Gondola Song", they are in no way programmatic. Mendelssohn's belief was that "music is not too indefinite for words, but too definite."

This music is also a good example of the difference between Mendelssohn and the other great early romantics. There is an objective clarity to Mendelssohn's harmony and a classical symmetry to his melodic phrasing that is quite different from the revolutionary chromatic explorations and outbursts of Chopin even in shorter pieces such as the "Preludes", or the enigmatic irregularities of Schumanns highly personal style in his sets of character pieces for the piano.

In Paris in 1831, Mendelssohn first came in direct contact with his contemporaries. A generous man, it still took him a while to trust the unsettling aspects of Chopin's music and while he admired Schumann, he found his music frankly strange. In contrast, Schumann revered Mendelssohn as the most perfect and technically adroit of the Romantics. Berlioz however, although respectful of Mendelssohn, said of him, "He loves the dead too much."

In 1833, Mendelssohn was appointed music director at Dusseldorf. Here he programmed such unusual fare as late Renaissance music by Orlando di Lassus and Palestrina. In 1835, he seized the opportunity to take over the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Bach's long-time residence, which he quickly made into the musical capital of Germany. He enlarged the orchestra to fifty people and was known to be a conductor of the strictest standards. Instead of playing the standard repertoire of the day which we now would consider to be music of the second and third rank, Mendelssohn programmed the music of Mozart and Beethoven along with Schubert, Chopin, Liszt and even Schumann.

In Leipzig, Mendelssohn became married to Cecile Jeanrendaud, daughter of a clergyman of the French Reformed Church. In addition to his Gewandhaus duties, he took over the Berlin Academy of Arts concerts in 1841 and traveled widely as a guest conductor and pianist as well as helping to set up festivals in Cologne, Dusseldorf and elsewhere. In 1842, Mendelssohn established the Leipzig Conservatory where he and Schumann taught composition and piano. Thus we see that this tremendously energetic but sensitive man stretched himself to the breaking point. When in May1847 he learned of the stroke suffered by his beloved elder sister, Fanny, he himself had a stroke from which he never fully recovered. After time off in Switzerland, Mendelssohn felt recovered enough to return to work in September of that year. However he soon suffered another stroke which left him partially paralyzed and he died on November 4, 1847, at the age of thirty eight.

Mendelssohn in his short intense life, left important works in every form except opera. Of the five full symphonies, the darker Scottish and lighter Italian are particularly beloved. There are oratorios (St. Paul and Elijah), a number of concertos including two for piano (op. 25 and 40)and the immortal Violin Concerto in Emi (op.64) , much chamber music (six string quartets (Quartet in Eb, Op.44 No.3) and the Dmi and Cmi Piano Trios), piano music (Variations Serieuse, Two Capriccios, etc.), solo songs, part songs and theater music which includes the incidental music to a "Midsummer Night's Dream" (Wedding March) which was completed to go with the earlier Overture in 1843.

Mendelssohn's reputation has been more fragile than the other great early romantic composers. If some of his music is now considered sentimental, it is certainly sentiment in the loftiest sense of the word. It is also often supposed that all his best work dates from his youth, but the Violin Concerto from 1844 disproves that simplistic view. Mendelssohn's youthful music is certainly consistently inspired. In addition to the early works mentioned above, the op. 12 and 13 string quartets with their references to late Beethoven are particularly wonderful works. The middle section of the Canzonetta from op.12, contains the kind of gossamer light scherzo music sometimes referred to as "elfin"(also in the later Scherzo of a "Midsummer Night's Dream"), that was a particular contribution of Mendelssohn's, and an influence on composers as different as Brahms (3rd mvt., Second Symphony) and Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker Suite).