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Felix Mendelssohn: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
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Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born Hamburg February 3 1809; died Leipzig November 4 1847) was a German composer. 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 traditions they had made. Mendelssohn was a child prodigy. He was already composing great music when he was a teenager. He wrote music for orchestra, chamber music and music for the piano and organ as well as music for singing.
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Like many other famous composers, Felix Mendelssohn began his musical life as a child prodigy. He and his sister Fanny learned many languages and artistics pursuits from their mother. Felix, born in Hamburg, performed at the piano and composed music from a very early age. The social life of his parents brought him widespread recognition, and provided much experience. His grandfather was a Jewish philosopher, but his father (a banker) left the Jewish faith for Christianity and adopted the family name of Bartholdy which is why Felix's surname is sometimes quoted as Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. As a young boy, Felix met and befriended the elder Goethe who was to prove an enduring influence on the musician.
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During the 1830s and 1840s the remarkably versatile composer-pianist-organist-conductor Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy stood at the forefront of German and English musical life. Bringing together previously unpublished essays by historians and musicologists, reflections on Mendelssohn written by his contemporaries, the composer's own letters, and early critical reviews of his music, this volume explores various facets of Mendelssohn's music, his social and intellectual circles, and his career. The essays in Part I cover the nature of a Jewish identity in Mendelssohn's music (Leon Botstein); his relationship to the Berlin Singakademie (William A. Little); the role of his sister Fanny Hensel, herself a child prodigy and accomplished composer (Nancy Reich); Mendelssohn's compositional craft in the Italian Symphony and selected concert overtures (Claudio Spies); his oratorio Elijah (Martin Staehelin); his incidental music to Sophocles' Antigone (Michael P. Steinberg); his anthem "Why, O Lord, delay forever?" (David Brodbeck); and an unfinished piano sonata (R. Larry Todd). Part II presents little-known memoirs by such contemporaries as J. C. Lobe, A. B. Marx, Julius Schubring, C. E. Horsley, Max Mller, and Betty Pistor.
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Felix Mendelssohn (Bartholdy) was born in Hamburg on Feb. 3, 1809. He was the son of a wealthy banker, Abraham Mendelssohn and Leah Salomon and the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, a Jewish rabbi. Felix was baptized in a Lutheran church so that he would be accepted socially. His parents converted to Lutheranism as well in 1816, the same year that the Mendelssohn family moved from Hamburg to Berlin to escape the French occupation. Bartholdy is Mendelssohn's Christian surname. read more
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Felix Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) was born in Hamburg in 1809. His father was a wealthy Jewish banker, who converted to Christianity and added Bartholdy to his surname. Felix was raised in Berlin, and began learning piano at an early age. He showed an astonishing musical precocity, giving his first piano recital at age nine, and beginning his compositional career at ten. By the time he was introduced to the 72-year-old poet Goethe at age twelve, he had composed several string symphonies, piano pieces, and songs, as well as two operettas.
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Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of the distinguished Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, the additional surname Bartholdy adopted on his conversion to Christianity, was born in Hamburg, the son of a banker. The family moved to Berlin, where Mendelssohn was brought up, able to associate with a cultured circle of family friends. He was associated with the revival of public interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and in the early 1830s travelled abroad for his education, spending time in Italy and ... visiting England, Wales and Scotland. He was later conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, where he also established a Conservatory, his stay there interrupted briefly by a return to Berlin. He died in Leipzig in 1847. Prolific and precocious, Mendelssohn had many gifts, musically as composer, conductor and pianist.
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