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Felix Mendelssohn: Leipzig Conservatory
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Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in Leipzig in 1847. He completed his Violin Concerto in 1844, and it was first performed the following year by Ferdinand David, violin, with the Gewandhous Orchestra, Leipzig conducted by Niels Gade. The work is scored for solo violin, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani and strings.
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Effectively a Renaissance Man of his time, Mendelssohn excelled in virtually any undertaking, musical or otherwise. Like some other composers he was a voluminous letter writer, and his missives are more readily available and affordable to collectors than those of, say, Brahms or Beethoven, whose letters today can command a small fortune at auction. Like Robert Schumann's, even Mendelssohn's most mundane letters can be small literary gems. His musical note-hand was remarkably neat and clean, and even today a musician could easily play from the holograph manuscripts themselves. A gifted graphic artist with exceptional skill in drawing, during a stay in Rome he sketched the façade of his dwelling, the Spanish Steps Nr.5, and painted the old Leipzig Gewandhaus in watercolors. He met and was esteemed by the important composers and musicians of the day, including Liszt, Chopin, Robert and Clara Schumann, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Paganini, Berlioz, and even Wagner.
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Before stepping upon his new Mendelssohn paid a fourth visit to London, with his father, returning to Düsseldorf on the 27th of September 1833. His influence produced an excellent effect upon the church music and in the concert-room; but his relations with the management of the theatre were not altogether pleasant; and it was probably this circumstance which first led him to forsake the cultivation of the opera for that of sacred music. At Düsseldorf he first designed his famous oratorio St Paul, in response to an application from the Cäcilien-Verein at Frankfort [Frankfurt], composed his overture to Die schöne Melusine, and planned some other works of importance. He liked his appointment, and would probably have retained it much longer had he not been invited to undertake the permanent direction of the Gewandhaus concerts at Leipsic [Leipzig], and ... raised to the highest position attainable in the German musical world. To this new sphere of labour he removed in August 1835, opening the first concert at the Gewandhaus, on the 4th of October, with his overture Die Meeresstille, a work possessing great attractions, though by no means on a level with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Isles of Fingal, or Melusine.
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In 1833 Mendelssohn became Düsseldorf's music director. Continuing the tradition he created, he performed Bach's cantatas and music by Cherubini (who had encouraged him as a youngster), motets by Palestrina and music by Beethoven. Two years later he was made conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. Under his direction the ensemble soon became the most distinguished orchestra in Germany. The conductor's podium, replete with its candle-holders, was one of the few articles saved from the old Gewandhaus when it was destroyed during World War II. That very rostrum, from which Mendelssohn and later Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and others had conducted, is now displayed in Leipzig's Old City Hall.
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In 1833, Mendelssohn took a conducting post in Düsseldorf. Two years later he took his most important position, as director of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. He remained in Leipzig for another ten years, maintaining a busy schedule of performances, conducting works of contemporaries as well as the old masters. He ... founded and directed the Leipzig conservatory. His abilities as a conductor and as an organizer of festivals created a great demand for his services. Because of his schedule, most of his compositional work was restricted to the summer months.
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Mendelssohn appeared as a pianist and conductor throughout Europe, making frequent trips to England, where he was a favourite of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was musical director for the city of Düsseldorf (1833-1835), conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig (from 1835), and musical director to King Frederick William IV of Prussia (from 1841). In 1842 he helped organize the Leipzig Conservatory. He suffered a physical collapse at the death of his favourite sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and died a few months later in Leipzig on November 4, 1847.
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