LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mendelssohn: Music
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Mendelssohn knew Hector Berlioz from their stay at the French arts academy in Rome, Italy. They ... met later in life in Germany. These meetings are described in Berlioz's memoirs. Mendelssohn's personal life was fairly conventional compared to many composers of note. He was happily married and had four children. He performed as a pianist, organist and conductor in Germany as well as in England where his music was especially popular.
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Mendelssohn wrote four pieces for cello and piano. The Variations concertantes, Op. 17, which shows the power and skills of the cello, was completed in January, 1829. He wrote this piece for his brother Paul, who was four years younger. Paul later gave up music for a banking career. In October, 1838 Mendelssohn completed the Sonata No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 45, which ... was written for his brother Paul. Schumann gave this piece high praise and said: 'This sonata is the purest and most independent and satisfying music.
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A highly entertaining and authoritative account of the Walpurgis Night tradition in European culture, and of Mendelssohn's cantata, which Berlioz praised for the "perfection" of its interweaving of voices and instruments. The author blends skillfully history, criticism, musical analysis, and source studies to shed new light on Mendelssohn's perhaps most provocative, and unjustifiably neglected, work. --R. Larry Todd, Arts & Sciences Professor of Music, Duke University, and author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music
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By this time Mendelssohn was dazzling music-lovers as a composer, pianist, violinist, violist, and conductor. (Less widely known were his gifts as painter and poet.) When only twenty he stunned English audiences on the first of his ten trips to England. He loved to travel, and since he regarded the sea as the finest of nature's beauties, a trip to Scotland's Hebrides inspired the masterpiece, Fingal's Cave.
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Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (2 published posthumously), remain his most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour recital items, and their overwhelming popularity has caused many critics to under-rate their musical value. Other composers who were inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included Charles Valentin Alkan (the five sets of Chants, each ending with a barcarolle), Anton Rubinstein, Ignaz Moscheles and Edvard Grieg.
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Mendelssohn was one of the 19th century's greatest composers. He is know to have loved the oratorios of Handel and he was ... a major force in restoring Bach's music to the world. Certainly Elijah shows abundantly the dramatic techniques of the former masters, especially in the use of the chorus in different roles. Mendelssohn may well have surpassed his mentors, however in creating in Elijah the most dramatic oratorio ever written.
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