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Felix Mendelssohn. Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy [n 1] (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, [n 2] was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music.
- List of Compositions by Felix Mendelssohn
Lieder & Songs. Des Mädchens Klage, song for voice and piano...
- Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Hensel, 1842, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim. Fanny...
- Symphony No. 4
The Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. Posth. 90, MWV N 16,...
- List of Compositions by Felix Mendelssohn
- Overview
- Early life and works
Felix Mendelssohn (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 movem...
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.
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Composers & Their Music
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.
- Edward Lockspeiser
Apr 2, 2014 · Learn about the life and works of Felix Mendelssohn, a German Romantic composer, pianist and conductor. Find out his childhood, early work, personal life, final years and death, as well as his famous songs and compositions.
Jul 19, 2023 · Felix Jakob Ludwig Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on 3 February 1809. His family was well-off; his grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a noted liberal philosopher, while his father Abraham was a banker in Gebrüder Mendelssohn & Co of Hamburg. His mother Leah Saloman was from a wealthy Jewish family from Berlin.
- Mark Cartwright
- What was Felix Mendelssohn's real cause of death?Felix Mendelssohn died of a stroke, perhaps brought on by overwork and the stress of his sister's premature death.
- What was Felix Mendelssohn most known for?Felix Mendelssohn is most known for his symphonies, Wedding March, and Hebrides Overture.
- How did Felix Mendelssohn influence music?Perhaps Felix Mendelssohn's greatest contribution to the history of music was not his own music but his championing of the music composed before hi...
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Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (born Hamburg 3 February 1809; died Leipzig 4 November 1847) was a German composer . His grandfather was the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. He was one of the great composers of the Romantic period. He loved the music of earlier composers like Bach, Handel and Mozart and he built on the ...
May 21, 2018 · views 2,321,883 updated May 29 2018. Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), (Jakob Ludwig) Felix (1809–47) German composer and conductor. A child prodigy, at 16 he composed an octet, and at 17 he wrote his overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. His performance (1829) of the St Matthew Passion revived 19th-century interest in J. S. Bach.
