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Felix Mendelssohn | LCIS | SIU

Born: Hamburg, February 3, 1809

Died: Leipzig, November 4, 1847

Having shown exceptional musical talent at an early age, Mendelssohn was encouraged by his family to study music and to make it his career. At the age of seventeen, he composed an overture based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which was so successful that some years later he composed more music on the subject, resulting in a suite of pieces to be used in conjunction with productions of the play. Such a collection of pieces is known as incidental music, and the fleet and airy Scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is typical of the seemingly effortless and beguiling style of this composer. Mendelssohn responded to nature as did most composers of the period One of the results of nature's influence was the Fingal's Cave Overture, also known as The Hebrides, which depicts the rocky, wind-swept coast and ancient caverns of Scotland. Mendelssohn's many travels also influenced two of his five symphonies, the third in A minor, known as the "Scotch"

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Biography

Felix Mendelssohn was a precocious musical talent. Aged twelve, he astonished the great writer Goethe with his keyboard technique. Three years later, his teacher Carl Zelter proclaimed him a ‘master’ and a member of the brotherhood of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. His genius for writing exhilarating themes was already apparent. And his ability to construct dazzlingly original textures was matched by an assured mastery of musical form. When, at 17, Mendelssohn conjured subtle, shimmering orchestral sonorities in his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was clear that he had found his vocation. Unlike Mozart, he was not made to perform in the courts and theatres of Europe as a child. His parents were determined to give their children a rigorous, rounded education. Discipline and self-improvement were encouraged in the wealthy yet sober Berlin household in which Felix and his three siblings were raised. In an age of growing anti-Semitism, it seemed prudent to distance the children from their Jewish heritage, and all four were baptised into the Christian faith. They took the

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Felix Mendelssohn

Biography

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the son of a banker, Abraham, who was himself the son of the famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn. Felix's family, however, converted to Lutheranism, and moved to Berlin in 1812. His sister was Fanny Mendelssohn (later Fanny Hensel), who was a well known pianist and amateur composer herself.

Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. He probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert. He was also a prolific composer as a child, writing his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. The elderly Goethe met the young Mendelssohn and took quite a shine to him, saying to him 'When I am sad, come and cheer me with your playing.'

As a teenager, his works were performed at home with a private orchestra for the elites and intellectuals of Berlin. Mendelssohn w