Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

(Feb. 3, 1809, Hamburg – Nov. 4, 1847, Leipzig)

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a German composer. Grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he grew up in a wealthy Jewish family that had converted to Protestantism. He began to compose at age 11; at 16 he wrote his first masterpiece, the String Octet in E Flat Major (1825), followed by the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826). In 1829 he conducted the first performance in 100 years of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, greatly contributing to the Bach revival. He wrote the first of a series of elegant piano works, Songs Without Words, in 1830. His Reformation (1832) and Italian (1833) symphonies date from this period. He observed Classical models and practices while initiating key aspects of Romanticism, which exalted emotions and the imagination above rigid forms and traditions. After serving as music director of the Catholic city of Düsseldorf (1833 – 35), he took the parallel position in Protestant Leipzig. There he built up the Gewandhaus Orchestra, making Leipzig the musical capital of Germany. In his last decade he produced great works such as the Scottish Symphony (1842), the violin concerto (1844), and the oratorio Elijah (1846). His beloved sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805 – 47), had been considered his equal in musical talent as a girl, but she was discouraged from composing until her marriage to the painter Wilhelm Hensel (1794 – 1861); she eventually wrote more than 500 works. Her death was a severe shock to Mendelssohn; years of overwork simultaneously caught up with him, and he died six months after her.

While being sensitive to certain romantic tendencies, as the fantastic musing, the intimist inspiration and the suggestive expression, Mendelssohn remained altogether a well-balanced and serene musician, inclined to the lyric situations and to the pleasant and brilliant climates rather than to the depth and to the dramatic antitheses. Faithful to an ideal of "classic" beauty and endowed with an always watchful and accurate formal consciousness, which does not know the anxieties of his friend and contemporary Schumann, Mendelssohn reflects in its work the optimistic spirit of an easy and active rising bourgeoisie. He represents within the framework of the German romanticism the equivalent of the careful liberal reformism which subordinates the innovation to the worship of technical wisdom and to the respect for a noble culture. In the vast production of Mendelssohn, two qualities stand out especially: a crystal clear and fluid melodic inspiration and a robust knowledge of the art of the orchestration.

The shape of the oratorio satisfies completely Mendelssohn who was not turned to a global religiosity of romantic type, but rather aligned on confessional positions. In oratorioes, what spring it is the typically romantic treatment of the choral parts which are setting up of equality with the orchestra, and very above the parts soloists; the membership in the classic models of Bach and Haendel reveals a certain search for the dramatic side.

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