LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Felix Mendelssohn: Composers
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Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (2 published posthumously), remain his most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour recital items, and their overwhelming popularity has caused many critics to under-rate their musical value. Other composers who were inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included Charles Valentin Alkan (the five sets of Chants, each ending with a barcarolle), Anton Rubinstein, Ignaz Moscheles and Edvard Grieg.
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Mendelssohn was one of the 19th century's greatest composers. He is know to have loved the oratorios of Handel and he was ... a major force in restoring Bach's music to the world. Certainly Elijah shows abundantly the dramatic techniques of the former masters, especially in the use of the chorus in different roles. Mendelssohn may well have surpassed his mentors, however in creating in Elijah the most dramatic oratorio ever written.
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Mendelssohn was an important figure of the early 19th century Romantic Era. Felix and his beloved sister Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel (... a composer and talented pianist) had wealth, status, good education and a supportive family. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he based most of his works on personal experiences rather than from inspired literature or drawn out imagination.
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Mendelssohn's mature output contains many chamber works, many of which display an emotional intensity that some people think his larger works lack. In particular his String Quartet No. 6, his last string quartet and major work, written following the death of his sister Fanny, is both powerful and eloquent. Other works include two string quintets, sonatas for the clarinet, cello, viola and violin, two piano trios and three piano quartets. For the Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Mendelssohn unusually took the advice of a fellow-composer, (Ferdinand Hiller) and rewrote the piano part in a more romantic, 'Schumannesque' style, considerably heightening its effect.
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Adolescence was a prolific time for the precocious Mendelssohn. In 1823 he wrote a two-piano concerto as a birthday gift for his sister Fanny... an accomplished musician and composer. The siblings first performed the three-movement concerto at one of the Mendelssohn family’s Sunday musicales. Though Mendelssohn would perform the concerto a few more times, it eventually was set aside as a youthful exercise. The unpublished score was left among his stacks of papers and manuscripts when he died in 1847.
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Mendelssohn tells the tale of visiting the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who asked the composer to accompany their singing after dinner. Victoria first had her pet parrot removed, otherwise, as she said, it would make more noise than she.
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