Mendelssohn's grandfather was the renowned Jewish philosopher
Reformed Christian church. He was recognised early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his talent. His sister Fanny Mendelssohn received a similar musical education and was a talented composer and pianist in her own right; some of her early songs were published under her brother's name and her Easter Sonata
was for a time mistakenly attributed to him after being lost and rediscovered in the 1970s.
Mendelssohn enjoyed early success in Germany, and revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, notably with his performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829. He became well received in his travels throughout Europe as a composer, conductor and soloist; his ten visits to Britain – during which many of his major works were premiered – form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes set him apart from more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Berlioz. The Leipzig Conservatory,[n 3] which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality has been re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.
Life
Childhood
Felix Mendelssohn was born on 3 February 1809, in Hamburg, at the time an independent city-state,[n 4] in the same house where, a year later, the dedicatee and first performer of his Violin Concerto, Ferdinand David, would be born.[4] Mendelssohn's father, the banker Abraham Mendelssohn, was the son of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, whose family was prominent in the German Jewish community.[5] Until his baptism at age seven, Mendelssohn was brought up largely without religion.[6] His mother, Lea Salomon, was a member of the Itzig family and a sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy.[7] Mendelssohn was the second of four children; his older sister Fanny also displayed exceptional and precocious musical talent.[8]
The family moved to
Rebecka – the best education possible. Fanny became a pianist well known in Berlin musical circles as a composer; originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than Felix, would be the more musical. But it was not considered proper, by either Abraham or Felix, for a woman to pursue a career in music, so she remained an active but non-professional musician.[10] Abraham was initially disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he was seriously dedicated.[11]
Mendelssohn grew up in an intellectual environment. Frequent visitors to the salon organised by his parents at their home in Berlin included artists, musicians and scientists, among them Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, and the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (whom Mendelssohn's sister Rebecka would later marry).[12] The musician Sarah Rothenburg has written of the household that "Europe came to their living room".[13]
Surname
Abraham Mendelssohn renounced the Jewish religion prior to Felix's birth and he and his wife decided against having Felix circumcised.[14] Felix and his siblings were at first brought up without religious education; on 21 March 1816, they were baptized in a private ceremony in the family's Berlin apartment by the Reformed Protestant minister of the Jerusalem Church,[6] at which time Felix was given the additional names Jakob Ludwig. Abraham and his wife Lea were baptised in 1822, and formally adopted the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy (which they had used since 1812) for themselves and for their children.[6]
The name Bartholdy was added at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, who had inherited a property of this name in Luisenstadt and adopted it as his own surname.[15] In an 1829 letter to Felix, Abraham explained that adopting the Bartholdy name was meant to demonstrate 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". (Letter to Felix of 8 July 1829).[16] On embarking on his musical career, Felix did not entirely drop the name Mendelssohn as Abraham had requested, but in deference to his father signed his letters and had his visiting cards printed using the form 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'.[17] In 1829, his sister Fanny wrote to him of "Bartholdy [...] this name that we all dislike".[18]
Career
Musical education
Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by
fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music influenced him deeply.[23]
Early maturity
Mendelssohn probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert accompanying a horn duo.[24] He was a prolific composer from an early age. As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the intellectual elite of Berlin.[25] Between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn wrote 13 string symphonies for such concerts, and a number of chamber works.[26] His first work, a piano quartet, was published when he was 13. It was probably Abraham Mendelssohn who procured the publication of this quartet by the house of Schlesinger.[27] In 1824 the 15-year-old wrote his first symphony for full orchestra (in C minor, Op. 11).[28]
At age 16 Mendelssohn wrote his
concert overture – that is, a piece not written deliberately to accompany a staged performance but to evoke a literary theme in performance on a concert platform; this was a genre which became a popular form in musical Romanticism.[30]
In 1824 Mendelssohn studied under the composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles, who confessed in his diaries[31] that he had little to teach him. Moscheles and Mendelssohn became close colleagues and lifelong friends. The year 1827 saw the premiere – and sole performance in his lifetime – of Mendelssohn's opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture into the genre again.[32]
Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy. He had a particular interest in
classical literature[33] and translated Terence's Andria for his tutor Heyse in 1825; Heyse was impressed and had it published in 1826 as a work of "his pupil, F****" [i.e. "Felix" (asterisks as provided in original text)].[34][n 5] This translation also qualified Mendelssohn to study at the University of Berlin, where from 1826 to 1829 he attended lectures on aesthetics by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, on history by Eduard Gans, and on geography by Carl Ritter.[36]
Meeting Goethe and conducting Bach
In 1821 Zelter introduced Mendelssohn to his friend and correspondent, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (then in his seventies), who was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart in the following conversation between Goethe and Zelter:
"Musical prodigies ... are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Goethe, "... but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child."[37]
Mendelssohn was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions,[38] and set a number of Goethe's poems to music. His other compositions inspired by Goethe include the overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Op. 27, 1828), and the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832).[39]
In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. Four years previously his grandmother, Bella Salomon, had given him a copy of the manuscript of this (by then all-but-forgotten) masterpiece.[40] The orchestra and choir for the performance were provided by the Berlin Singakademie. The success of this performance, one of the very few since Bach's death and the first ever outside of Leipzig,[n 6] was the central event in the revival of Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe.[42] It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of 20. It also led to one of the few explicit references which Mendelssohn made to his origins: "To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!"[43][44]
Over the next few years Mendelssohn travelled widely. His first visit to England was in 1829; other places visited during the 1830s included Vienna, Florence, Milan, Rome and Naples, in all of which he met with local and visiting musicians and artists. These years proved to be the germination for some of his most famous works, including the Hebrides Overture and the Scottish and Italian symphonies.[45]
Düsseldorf
On Zelter's death in 1832, Mendelssohn had hopes of succeeding him as conductor of the Singakademie; but at a vote in January 1833 he was defeated for the post by Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. This may have been because of Mendelssohn's youth, and fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected by some to be attributable to his Jewish ancestry.[46] Following this rebuff, Mendelssohn divided most of his professional time over the next few years between Britain and Düsseldorf, where he was appointed musical director (his first paid post as a musician) in 1833.[47]
In the spring of that year Mendelssohn directed the
In Leipzig, Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the town's musical life by working with the orchestra, the opera house, the Thomanerchor (of which Bach had been a director), and the city's other choral and musical institutions. Mendelssohn's concerts included, in addition to many of his own works, three series of "historical concerts" featuring music of the eighteenth century, and a number of works by his contemporaries.[51] He was deluged by offers of music from rising and would-be composers; among these was Richard Wagner, who submitted his early Symphony, the score of which, to Wagner's disgust, Mendelssohn lost or mislaid.[52] Mendelssohn also revived interest in the music of Franz Schubert. Robert Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony and sent it to Mendelssohn, who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 March 1839, more than a decade after Schubert's death.[53]
A landmark event during Mendelssohn's Leipzig years was the premiere of his oratorio Paulus, (the English version of this is known as St. Paul), given at the Lower Rhenish Festival in Düsseldorf in 1836, shortly after the death of the composer's father, which affected him greatly; Felix wrote that he would "never cease to endeavour to gain his approval ... although I can no longer enjoy it".[54]St. Paul seemed to many of Mendelssohn's contemporaries to be his finest work, and sealed his European reputation.[55]
When
Antigone (1841 – an overture and seven pieces) and Oedipus at Colonus (1845), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1843) and Racine's Athalie (1845).[n 7] But the funds for the school never materialised, and many of the court's promises to Mendelssohn regarding finances, title, and concert programming were broken. He was therefore not displeased to have the excuse to return to Leipzig.[58]
In 1843 Mendelssohn founded a major music school – the Leipzig Conservatory, now the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy".[n 8] where he persuaded Ignaz Moscheles and Robert Schumann to join him. Other prominent musicians, including the string players Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim and the music theorist Moritz Hauptmann, also became staff members.[59] After Mendelssohn's death in 1847, his musically conservative tradition was carried on when Moscheles succeeded him as head of the Conservatory.[60]
Mendelssohn in Britain
Mendelssohn first visited Britain in 1829, where Moscheles, who had already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles. In the summer he visited
Edinburgh University.[61] He made ten visits to Britain, lasting altogether about 20 months; he won a strong following, which enabled him to make a good impression on British musical life.[62] He composed and performed, and also edited for British publishers the first critical editions of oratorios of Handel and of the organ music of J. S. Bach. Scotland inspired two of his most famous works: the overture The Hebrides (also known as Fingal's Cave); and the Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3).[63] An English Heritageblue plaque commemorating Mendelssohn's residence in London was placed at 4 Hobart Place in Belgravia, London, in 2013.[64]
His protégé, the British composer and pianist William Sterndale Bennett, worked closely with Mendelssohn during this period, both in London and Leipzig. He first heard Bennett perform in London in 1833 aged 17.[65][n 9] Bennett appeared with Mendelssohn in concerts in Leipzig throughout the 1836/1837 season.[67]
On Mendelssohn's eighth British visit in the summer of 1844, he conducted five of the Philharmonic concerts in London, and wrote: "[N]ever before was anything like this season – we never went to bed before half-past one, every hour of every day was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, and I got through more music in two months than in all the rest of the year." (Letter to Rebecka Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Soden, 22 July 1844).
Prince Albert, himself a composer, who both greatly admired his music.[69][70]
On his last visit to Britain in 1847, Mendelssohn was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 and conducted his own Scottish Symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra before the Queen and Prince Albert.[73]
Death
Mendelssohn suffered from poor health in the final years of his life, probably aggravated by nervous problems and overwork. A final tour of England left him exhausted and ill, and the death of his sister, Fanny, on 14 May 1847, caused him further distress. Less than six months later, on 4 November, aged 38, Mendelssohn died in Leipzig after a series of strokes.
Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The pallbearers included Moscheles, Schumann and Niels Gade.[78] Mendelssohn had once described death, in a letter to a stranger, as a place "where it is to be hoped there is still music, but no more sorrow or partings."[79]
Personal life
Personality
While Mendelssohn was often presented as equable, happy, and placid in temperament, particularly in the detailed family memoirs published by his nephew Sebastian Hensel after the composer's death,[80] this was misleading. The music historian R. Larry Todd notes "the remarkable process of idealization" of Mendelssohn's character "that crystallized in the memoirs of the composer's circle", including Hensel's.[81] The nickname "discontented Polish count" was given to Mendelssohn on account of his aloofness, and he referred to the epithet in his letters.[82] He was frequently given to fits of temper which occasionally led to collapse. Devrient mentions that on one occasion in the 1830s, when his wishes had been crossed, "his excitement was increased so fearfully ... that when the family was assembled ... he began to talk incoherently in English. The stern voice of his father at last checked the wild torrent of words; they took him to bed, and a profound sleep of twelve hours restored him to his normal state".[83] Such fits may be related to his early death.[75]
Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic visual artist who worked in pencil and
watercolour, a skill which he enjoyed throughout his life.[84][85] His correspondence indicates that he could write with considerable wit in German and English – his letters were sometimes accompanied by humorous sketches and cartoons.[86]
Religion
On 21 March 1816, at the age of seven years, Mendelssohn was baptised with his brother and sisters in a private domestic ceremony by Johann Jakob Stegemann, Minister of the
New Church.[6] Although Mendelssohn was a conforming Christian as a member of the Reformed Church,[n 11] he was both conscious and proud of his Jewish ancestry and notably of his connection with his grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn. He was the prime mover in proposing to the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus a complete edition of Moses' works, which continued with the support of his uncle, Joseph Mendelssohn.[88] Felix was notably reluctant, either in his letters or conversation, to comment on his innermost beliefs; his friend Devrient wrote that "[his] deep convictions were never uttered in intercourse with the world; only in rare and intimate moments did they ever appear, and then only in the slightest and most humorous allusions".[89] Thus for example in a letter to his sister Rebecka, Mendelssohn rebukes her complaint about an unpleasant relative: "What do you mean by saying you are not hostile to Jews? I hope this was a joke [...] It is really sweet of you that you do not despise your family, isn't it?"[90] Some modern scholars have devoted considerable energy to demonstrate either that Mendelssohn was deeply sympathetic to his ancestors' Jewish beliefs, or that he was hostile to this and sincere in his Christian beliefs.[n 12]
Mendelssohn and his contemporaries
Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if sometimes somewhat cool, terms with Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but in his letters expresses his frank disapproval of their works, for example writing of Liszt that his compositions were "inferior to his playing, and […] only calculated for virtuosos";[92] of Berlioz's overture Les francs-juges "[T]he orchestration is such a frightful muddle [...] that one ought to wash one's hands after handling one of his scores";[93] and of Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable "I consider it ignoble", calling its villain Bertram "a poor devil".[94] When his friend the composer Ferdinand Hiller suggested in conversation to Mendelssohn that he looked rather like Meyerbeer – they were actually distant cousins, both descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserles – Mendelssohn was so upset that he immediately went to get a haircut to differentiate himself.[95]
In particular, Mendelssohn 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.[96] It is significant that the only musician with whom Mendelssohn remained a close personal friend, Ignaz Moscheles, was of an older generation and equally conservative in outlook. Moscheles preserved this conservative attitude at the Leipzig Conservatory until his own death in 1870.[60]