Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn-bartholdy was born in Hamburg, Germany, on February 3, 1809. His grandfather was the famous philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn; his father, a successful banker. Both were of Jewish origin. When Felix was still a boy, however, his immediate family was converted to Protestantism, the occasion upon which they added the name of “Bartholdy” to their own to distinguish them from the other members of their family. A pupil of Ludwig Berger and Karl Friedrich Zelter, Felix was extraordinarily precocious in music. When he was seven and a half he made a successful appearance as pianist in Berlin; by the time he was twelve he had already written operas and symphonies; and in his seventeenth year he produced an unqualified masterwork in the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 1827, one of his operas was produced in Berlin, but by that time he had already completed thirteen symphonies and a library of chamber music as well.
In 1829, Mendelssohn conducted in Berlin the first performance of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew to be given since Bach’s own day. This concert became a powerful influence in reviving interest in Bach’s music, which at that time had been languishing in both neglect and obscurity. A few weeks after Mendelssohn had directed a repeat performance, he made his first trip to England where he led the première of a new symphony and was made honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic. A tour of Scotland that followed immediately was the inspiration for his overture, Fingal’s Cave.
In 1833, Mendelssohn served as musical director of the city of Duesseldorf. He held this post only six months. Much more significant was his engagement as the principal conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig in 1835 which, during the five years of his leadership, was elevated to a position of first importance among the world’s symphony orchestras.
In 1841, Mendelssohn became head of the music department of a projected Academy of Arts in Berlin. This appointment did not prevent him from visiting England where he was received with an adulation accorded to no foreign musician since Handel. Returning to Berlin he found that the Academy of Arts project had been abandoned. He was now made Kapellmeister to the King, an honorary post allowing him complete freedom of activity and movement. During the next few years he conducted concerts of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and paid two more highly successful visits to England. He was also instrumental in helping to found the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843. Always of delicate health and sensibilities, Mendelssohn collapsed at the news that his beloved sister, Fanny, died in 1847. He died in Leipzig soon after that, on November 4, 1847.
The finest qualities of German Romantic music can be found in Mendelssohn. He had the Romantic’s partiality for fantasy and the supernatural, together with the lightness of touch with which to create such worlds through music. He had the Romantic’s gift for translating natural scenes, landscapes and lyric poetry into sensitive tone pictures. He had a most winning lyricism and graceful harmonic and orchestral gift, and he never lacked the ability to charm and enchant his listeners with the most tender and lovable musical expression. Other composers may have written profounder or more emotionally stirring music than Mendelssohn; but no one could be more ingratiating, sensitive, or refined. Some of Mendelssohn’s serious symphonic works are so full of the most wonderful melodies and beguiling moods that they have the universal appeal of semi-classics.
The concert overture, Fingal’s Cave, or as it is also sometimes known, Hebrides Overture, op. 26 (1832) was inspired by the composer’s visit to the Scottish Highlands in 1830. The opening theme in lower strings and bassoons suggests the roll of the waves at the mouth of a cave, a melody that came to the composer while visiting the caves of Staffa. This idea is developed, then a second beautiful melody unfolds in cellos and bassoons.
The orchestral suite, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, op. 61 is derived from the incidental music comprising thirteen numbers which Mendelssohn wrote for a Potsdam production of the Shakespeare comedy in 1843; the Overture, however, was a fruit of the composer’s youth, having been written in 1826. The magic world of fairies and elves which Mendelssohn projected so delicately in his youthful overture is preserved in many of the numbers he wrote seventeen years later. The Overture, op. 21, is initiated with four sensitive chords, and proceeds with fleeting, diaphanous music for strings with which we are suddenly plunged in fairyland. The main thematic material to follow comprises a haunting song for horn, a romantic episode for woodwind and strings, and a sprightly fairy dance for strings.
Three other musical sections from this incidental music, and basic to the orchestral suite, are famous. The “Nocturne” is a broad, moody song for horns. The “Scherzo”—like the Overture—is a picture of the world of fairies, gnomes and elves, though in a more energetic and spirited vein. The “Wedding March” is now one of the most frequently played pieces of wedding music, second in popularity only to Wagner’s wedding music from Lohengrin; it first became popular as wedding music at the nuptials of the English Princess in London in 1858. A trumpet fanfare leads to the dignified march melody which is twice alternated with melodious trio sections.
“On Wings of Song” (“Auf Fluegeln des Gesanges”), op. 34, no. 2 (1834) is Mendelssohn’s best-known song, a melody of incomparable loveliness and serenity. The poem is by Heine. Franz Liszt transcribed it for piano; Joseph Achron for violin and piano; Lionel Tertis for viola and piano. It has also enjoyed various orchestral transcriptions.