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Mendelssohn: Music
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In 1842, Mendelssohn wrote incidental music for the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, including the famous Wedding March that is played as the recessional at many weddings. The first time it was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church, Tiverton, UK, on 2 June 1847. However it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to the Crown Prince of Prussia on January 25, 1858.
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Mendelssohn was one of the most lovable of men, gentle as his music, pure as the mountain stream. He had nothing Bohemian about him. Weaknesses he had, no doubt, but they were lovable too. He had little coaxing ways with his friends, which made them love him with something of a child’s love. When in company with Edward Devrient, he would sometimes pronounce his name with an affectionate and lingering drawl, "Ed-e-ward," apropos of nothing in particular. He retained through life something of the impulsiveness and the simplicity of a child.
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As a conductor, Mendelssohn was very busy both in his native Germany and in England, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert adored him. He had a deep respect for musical tradition and for the past, and was largely responsible for the mid-19th century revival of interest in J.S. Bach's music. In 1829, at the age of 20, Mendelssohn conducted the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion since Bach's death nearly eighty years before.
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Mendelssohn's first public appearance occurred at the age of 9. Famous musicians gave concerts every Sunday at his father's house; in addition to broadening the musical horizons of the gifted boy, they enabled him, as a budding composer, to test many of his works as he wrote them. In 1819 he entered the Singakademie, and from that time on compositions flowed steadily from his pen. In 1820, for example, he produced two piano sonatas, a violin sonata, songs, a quartet for men's voices, a cantata, and a short opera.
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The main collections of Mendelssohn's original musical autographs and letters are to be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, the New York Public Library, and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. His letters to Moscheles are in the Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds.
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Mendelssohn did not take up an invitation to visit the United States, but his popularity there was second only to that in the United Kingdom. Elijah, for example, was first performed in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York on 8 November 1847 by the New York Sacred Music Society. The second performance was given on 9 November 1847 by the American Musical Institute in the same hall.
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