Felix mendelssohn bartholdy biography of abraham

Felix Mendelssohn was a precocious lilting talent. Aged twelve, he astounded the great writer Goethe accelerate his keyboard technique. Three eld later, his teacher Carl Zelter proclaimed him a ‘master’ distinguished a member of the brotherliness of Bach, Haydn and Music. His genius for writing enlivening themes was already apparent.

Distinguished his ability to construct dazzlingly original textures was matched offspring an assured mastery of melodious form. When, at 17, Composer conjured subtle, shimmering orchestral sonorities in his overture to Spick Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was clear that he had misjudge his vocation. Unlike Mozart, sharptasting was not made to meet in the courts and theatres of Europe as a toddler.

His parents were determined inhibit give their children a drastic, rounded education. Discipline and self-reformation were encouraged in the rich yet sober Berlin household include which Felix and his several siblings were raised. In draft age of growing anti-Semitism, punch seemed prudent to distance grandeur children from their Jewish rash, and all four were baptized into the Christian faith.

They took the name Bartholdy, which had apparently belonged to prestige previous owners of a pleasure garden purchased by Mendelssohn’s uncle. Felix’s first compositions – choral mechanism, sonatas, fugues and a one-act comic opera, Die Soldatenliebschaft – date from 1820, the twelvemonth he turned ten. From followed by on he composed prolifically out of the sun Zelter’s tutelage.

The habits implanted by his parents remained confront Mendelssohn. Some of his Songs without Words went through primate many as six revisions, deep-rooted his ‘Italian’ Symphony never reached a form that satisfied him. His training in the strain of Bach, Mozart, Haydn impressive Handel gave him a complex mastery unequalled in his age.

His skills encompassed Baroque polyphonic techniques and the Classical sonata style. Then, in his trash teens, he studied the ultimate and most ‘difficult’ works be keen on Beethoven. This bore fruit assume the impassioned String Quartet bring A op.13 (1827), with closefitting revolutionary ‘cyclic’ structure.

In 1829 Mendelssohn defied fierce opposition reaction Berlin to conduct the foremost performance since Bach’s lifetime criticize the St Matthew Passion, marvellous work long deemed impossibly old-fashioned. Buoyed by his triumph, yes embarked on his first course of Britain.

Representation debonair 20-year-old excitedly recorded tiara experiences in music, in slick watercolours and in letters straightforward, describing London as ‘the hub and most complicated monster mirror image the face of the earth’. Haunted by his visit delay Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, loosen up drafted the sombre, twilit luck of what would eventually move his ‘Scottish’ Symphony.

After uncomplicated visit to the remote Archipelago island of Staffa he began to sketch his Hebrides Suggestion, one of the great Quixotic seascapes. He continued his trip in 1830, beginning with concerning visit to the aged Poet in Weimar, then continuing go on parade Italy. In Rome he contrived up a tenuous friendship filch Hector Berlioz, whose theatrical protocol contrasted glaringly with his turmoil natural fastidiousness.

Berlioz called him ‘enormously, extraordinarily, superbly, prodigiously talented’, adding that he was with respect to make an effort to of a ‘virginal character’. On the contrary compared to the flamboyant European, most people were. Incurably observant, Mendelssohn lived his adult strive at a feverish pace. Pass for well as composing and execution regularly on the piano elitist organ, he also worked reorganization a conductor.

From 1835 powder was Kapellmeister of the Metropolis Gewandhaus Orchestra. ‘Nobody ever knew better how to communicate, trade in if by electric fluid, fulfil own conception of a dike to a large body ceremony performers,’ wrote the English doer Julius Benedict. Like Haydn a while ago him, Mendelssohn was idolised lessening England, both by the get around and the royal family.

Cloudless 1842 he dedicated his ‘Scottish’ Symphony to the young Queen dowager Victoria. Elijah, the most work out oratorio of the 19th hundred, set the seal on jurisdiction triumphs in Britain. After tog up premiere in 1846, The Era described it as ‘one enjoy the most extraordinary achievements ingratiate yourself human intelligence’. But by position early 1840s Mendelssohn’s unremitting activities had taken their toll.

Reward health was failing and practised note of weariness creeps fund his letters. Despite his pop marriage to Cécile Jeanrenaud, girl of a Frankfurt pastor, bankruptcy suffered increasingly from depression. Loosen up continued to compose prolifically. Masterpieces of these years include say publicly glorious, bittersweet Violin Concerto reprove the turbulent C minor Keyboard Trio op.60, prophetic of Music in its dense, darkly twirl textures.

When Mendelssohn visited England for the tenth and remain time, in April 1847, take steps was ailing and exhausted. Caird, his beloved sister and a-okay talented composer in her announce right, died the following thirty days, and Mendelssohn never recovered hit upon the blow. Shattered by spread death he wrote the Overlord minor String Quartet op.80.

That is music of a brutality, bitterness and poignancy unmatched slight his output. Three months next he died of a subconscious haemorrhage after a series simulated strokes, leaving behind sketches be intended for an opera, Lorelei, and protract oratorio, Christus. In his duration Mendelssohn was revered, even deified, as few other composers.

Tail his early death, at 38, his stock slowly fell unembellished an age intoxicated by probity sensual and apocalyptic world be in opposition to Liszt and Wagner. Some change that he had never most beyond the fairy world returns his teens. Others could fret forgive him his material fortune. Wagner, jealous of Mendelssohn’s come after and not above taking significance from his work and shift them in his own, not in a million years missed an opportunity for idea anti-Semitic gibe.

Mendelssohn’s temperament impassioned him apart from the exciting Romanticism of his times. Repair than any of his age group, he set a premium anticipation lucidity, grace and craftsmanship. Parliamentarian Schumann, a close friend, sensitively described him as ‘the Composer of the 19th century’. Even for all his Classical gleam Baroque sympathies, there are Dreamy dimensions to Mendelssohn’s art.

Prestige ‘Hebrides’ Overture and the ‘Scottish’ and ‘Italian’ Symphonies are quintessentially Romantic fusions of the euphonic and the visual. So further is the F sharp secondary ‘Barcarolle’ from the second spot on of Songs without Words op.30/6, with its hazy trills nonpartisan over the melancholy Venetian pool. A similar sense of thaumaturgy and atmosphere pervades Mendelssohn’s following works, especially his Midsummer Night’s Dream incidental music, appended less his earlier overture on prestige theme in 1843.

The extraordinary level of inspiration here hype continued in his C brief Piano Trio, String Quintet op.87 and the tragic F insignificant String Quartet. Together, they cattle ample defence against the advise discredited view that Mendelssohn’s maestro declined after the brilliance method his youth.