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Fanny Mendelssohn: Berlin Academy
built 289 days ago
Abraham founded a banking house "Mendelssohn Brothers and Company" in the year that Fanny was born. The early years of Fanny’s life were divided between Hamburg, Berlin and Paris, depending on the demands of the business. Paradoxically, considering Abraham’s profession, he taught his children to value art, music, education and morality above all things, including monetary gain. The children’s lives were centered around a relentless stream of learning and not one moment of the day was wasted in their quest for knowledge and artistic attainment. From the outset Fanny and Felix gained reputations as child prodigies. The pair were inseparable, sharing not only sibling love but ... prodigious talent for music.
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Mendelssohn 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 ... a prolific composer as a child, writing his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. Goethe met the young Mendelssohn and took quite a shine to him, saying to him "When I am sad, come and cheer me with your playing."
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In June 1842 Mendelssohn was twice received by Queen Victoria at her palace in London. Mendelssohn thanked the Queen by dedicating his Scottish Symphony to her. He continued to conduct in Leipzig and helped to make Berlioz’s music famous in Germany. He became director of the new Conservatoire in Leipzig. In Berlin the king asked him to provide incidental music for Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream . He had already written some of this music 17 years earlier but now he finished it and performed it in 1843.
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Mendelssohn knew Hector Berlioz from their stay at the French arts academy in Rome, Italy. They ... met later in life in Germany. These meetings are described in Berlioz's memoirs. Mendelssohn's personal life was fairly conventional compared to many composers of note. He was happily married and had four children. He performed as a pianist, organist and conductor in Germany as well as in England where his music was especially popular.
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On 11 March, Mendelssohn directs the Berlin Singakademie in a revival of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, its first hearing since Bach’s death. He travels to England in April, makes several dazzling appearances in the course of London’s concert season, then tours Scotland and Wales on foot. He returns to Berlin for the winter.
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The Count and Countess of Schaumburg-Lippe became well acquainted with Mendelssohn in Pyrmont, where he lived in 1773 on account of his health, and conversed with him about death and immortality. The Berlin Academy of Sciences proposed Mendelssohn as a regular member of the philosophical division, but Frederick the Great struck his name from the list, because the Empress Catherine of Russia ... wished to be elected. The queen dowager, Luise Ulrika of Sweden, Frederick's talented sister, took pleasure in conversing with Mendelssohn. No stranger of importance who came to Berlin failed to pay his personal respects to the "German Socrates," as Mendelssohn was often called after the appearance of the "Phädon."
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