FelixMendelssohn

In 1825 the sixteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn wrote a birthday present for his violin teacher, Eduard Rietz. It was scored for four violins, two violas and two cellos, and gave Rietz a first-violin part that rises above the other seven players in long arcs. Eleven years later the composer played second viola in a public performance of the E♭ major Octet. Writing to Karl Klingemann on 31 January 1836, he admitted to “heart palpitations”.

BerlinFamily, teachers and early works

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on 3 February 1809; the family moved to Berlin two years later. In 1812 his sister Fanny wrote to friends in Hamburg: “Felix has a strong voice and sings all day.” His father Abraham was a banker, his grandfather Moses the Jewish philosopher. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn had their children baptised as Christians in 1816 and used the additional surname Bartholdy. Fanny and Felix learnt piano with Ludwig Berger and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter.

The family’s money paid for players. At the family’s Sunday concerts the children heard their scores performed by experienced musicians. Felix wrote string symphonies and concertos at an age when most pupils were still learning to write a correct exercise. Zelter introduced him to Goethe in Weimar in 1821. His education also included drawing, languages and classical literature, and his German verse translation of a comedy by Terence was published in 1826.

The Octet’s scherzo is marked Allegro leggierissimo, as light as possible. Short detached notes pass between the players, and the movement ends high and quiet. In 1826 Mendelssohn used the same kind of writing in the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he wrote at seventeen. It opens with four quiet wind chords, and then divided violins play fast in E minor. The lovers have melodic music, the tradesmen have heavier music, and Bottom’s donkey bray is imitated in the orchestra.

1829Bach and the British Isles

That spring he made his first visit to Britain, playing and conducting in London before travelling through Scotland with Karl Klingemann. On 7 August, in Tobermory, he sent home a musical sketch of the low, falling phrase that begins The Hebrides. They visited Staffa and Fingal’s Cave the next day. The finished overture took several more years and revisions. The opening figure is first played quietly by bassoons and lower strings, and it stays audible as the rest of the orchestra enters and builds to full strength.

1835–⁠43At the Gewandhaus

After a frustrating period as music director in Düsseldorf, Mendelssohn took charge of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig in 1835. In 1837 he married Cécile Jeanrenaud; they had five children. The orchestra, the household and his correspondence took time from composition. In March 1839 he conducted the first public performance of Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony, whose manuscript Schumann had brought to his attention. In 1843 he founded the Leipzig Conservatoire, with Ferdinand David and Schumann among its teachers.

The D minor Piano Trio went through several rounds of revision. Mendelssohn completed a version in July 1839, rewrote it after a private performance, then revised the piano part again at Ferdinand Hiller’s urging. Further changes followed in the proofs. Mendelssohn himself played the piano part at the first public performance in February 1840, with David on violin and Carl Wittmann on cello.

The Songs without Words brought his music into domestic use. In each the melody is set over an accompaniment that a good amateur can often manage, though keeping the two distinct is harder. When Marc-⁠André Souchay asked what particular pieces meant, Mendelssohn replied on 15 October 1842: “If you ask me what I was thinking, I say: precisely the song as it stands.”

1843–⁠46Potsdam, Leipzig and Birmingham

Prussian court duties repeatedly drew him away from Leipzig. One result was the complete music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed at Potsdam in October 1843, seventeen years after the overture. The new Nocturne set a horn melody beside two bassoons; the Wedding March added the trombones. At the end of the play the four wind chords from the opening of the overture returned.

The E minor Violin Concerto was finished in 1844 after years of discussion with David. The soloist enters near the start, plays the cadenza before the main theme returns, then continues in arpeggios beneath the orchestra. At the end of the movement a bassoon holds one note across the gap into the Andante. David gave the première in Leipzig in March 1845, with Niels Gade conducting.

St Paul, first performed in 1836, had already made Mendelssohn a favourite with choral societies. Elijah was first performed in Birmingham in August 1846, in William Bartholomew’s English translation. The chorus takes the part of a people suffering drought, calls on Baal and comments on the prophet’s fate. Mendelssohn continued to revise the work after the première, and the surviving performance materials contain replacement numbers and alterations in his own hand.

1847Fanny’s death and the F minor Quartet