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Mendelssohn: Leipzig Conservatory
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Upon the urging of the king of Prussia, Mendelssohn was appointed music director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Until 1845 he worked intermittently in Berlin without relinquishing his post at Leipzig. Interspersed were trips to London, with performances of his works in London and Birmingham.
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In 1842, Mendelssohn returned again to England where he performed private concerts for Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, his devoted admirers. A year later, Mendelssohn founded and directed the Leipzig Conservatory, which opened at the beginning of April 1843. In the courtyard of the Gewandhaus, the City Council had a two-storey house built and placed at the disposal of the conservatory. Mendelssohn gave much thought to how the academic structure of the conservatory should be arranged, and his resulting division of the curriculum into several distinct learning areas became the model for modern conservatories. He was successful in engaging well-known teachers of specialized subjects, including Moritz Hauptmann for harmony and counterpoint, Robert Schumann for piano, composition, and score-reading, Ferdinand David for violin, and Carl Becker for organ, music history, and theory. The Leipzig Conservatory remained one of the most prestigious music institutions in Germany for half a century.
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In 1843 Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, the first of its kind in Germany. He completed the Scottish Symphony, the Violin Concerto, and other major works of his maturity in Leipzig. In 1844 he conducted five Philharmonic concerts in London, and in 1846 he gave the first performance of his Elijah, written for the Birmingham Festival of that year. His chief occupation was still as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts, but he ... functioned as director of the Leipzig Conservatory, teaching piano and composition as part of his duties.
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Mendelssohn's main treatments of language can be found in two places, at the beginning and at the end of his career of writing. At the outset he critically addresses Rousseau's views on the origin of language in the context of the Berlin Academy's essay competitions on language (see Sendschreiben an den Herrn Magister Lessing in Leipzig, the appendix to the translation of Rousseau's Discours sur les origins de l'inégalité (1756), and Mendelssohn's review of Michaelis’ prize-winning essay (1759) in Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend and “Über die Sprache” (circa 1759)). Michaelis won the Academy's prize for answering its question: “Quelle est l'influence réciproque des opinions d'un people sur le langage et du langage sur les opinions?”). Mendelssohn takes issue both with Rousseau's attempt to explain the origin of human language on the basis of a description of the natural condition that human beings share with other animals and with his neglect of any consideration of the providential character of the development of language (Gesammelte Schriften 6/2, p. 27). In these early writings on language, Mendelssohn emphasizes the interdependence of language and its development with the development of innate, divinely-endowed propensities. These propensities include not only reason as the propensity to grasp conceptual connections and employ arbitrary signs (Gesammelte Schriften 6/2, 9f), but ... the propensity for attachments and affiliations with others.
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In 1836 Mendelssohn received an honorary doctorate from the University of Leipzig. He finished the oratorio St. Paulin the spring, and it was performed in May at the Lower Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf. Later that year he met Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a Huguenot minister, whom he married in 1837. Five children were born of this marriage.
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In 1835, Mendelssohn left Düsseldorf and relocated to Leipzig where he was employed as the director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Over the next twelve years, Mendelssohn presided over the ensemble, molding it into one of the most prestigious in Europe. The result of this renown was a grueling schedule, which had Mendelssohn conducting in London, Birmingham, Frankfurt, and Cologne.
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