LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Felix Mendelssohn: Victorian England
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Mendelssohn had been greatly pleased with his London visit, and though the grand tour he had planned was really only begun, he felt a strong desire to return to England. However, other countries had to be visited first. The following May he started south, bound for Vienna, Florence and Rome. His way led through Wiemar and gave opportunity for a last visit to Goethe. They passed a number of days in sympathetic companionship. The poet always wanted music, but did not seem to care for Beethoven's compositions, which he said did not touch him at all, though he felt they were great, astonishing.
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The next great event in Mendelssohn's life was his happy marriage, on the 28th of March 1837, to Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud. The honeymoon was scarcely over before he was again summoned to England to conduct St. Paul, at the Birmingham festival, on the 20th of September. During this visit be played on the organ at St. Paul's and at Christ Church, Newgate Street, with an effect which exercised a lasting influence upon English organists. It was here ... that he first contemplated the production of his second oratorio, Elijah.
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Mendelssohn penned two hundred musical compositions, his violin concerto being acknowledged one of the best. He is regarded as the consummate nineteenth century writer of oratorios. Notwithstanding his German identity, his music is performed more in England to this day than in any other nation.
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Mendelssohn was one of the best loved composers of the 19th century, particularly in Victorian England, and he was certainly the most successful. His career showed none of the reverses, disappointments and delays that were the rule for the other great Romantic composers; indeed, it was the overwork and exhaustion to meet the demands for his performances and compositions that led to his early death at the age of 38.
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The Birmingham Music Festival was Mendelssohn's high point with Elijah performed in the company of the greatest choral works of all time: Handel's Messiah, Haydn's The Creation, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Of these, Elijah was the only oratorio premiered in England (Birmingham), a significant event in music history.
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Victorian England