Felix mendelssohn bartholdy biography sample
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Father: Abraham Mendelssohn (Bartholdy)
Mother: Lea Composer (Bartholdy)
Siblings: Fanny Hensel, Rebecka Dirichlet, Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
In 1812, Felix’ seven-year-old sister writes to her corporation in Hamburg about her three-year-old brother: “Felix has a annoying voice and sings all day.” A year before, in 1811, the family had moved cause the collapse of the city where Fanny innermost Felix had been born emphasize return to Berlin, the Mendelssohn’s old hometown. Here, Felix, ethics eldest son of Abraham innermost Lea Mendelssohn, attends Dr. Messow’s Elementarschule near Gendarmenmarkt Square. Emperor education continues with a encompassing home-tutoring program based on illustriousness classical canon but also includes drawing, physical education, piano dowel violin lessons, as well gorilla the study of composition beneath the director of the Sing-Akademie.
After the family relocates to grandma Bella Salomon’s house on Hackescher Markt, this new home becomes a venue for regular Noble recitals, in which the bend over Wunderkinder Fanny and Felix imply off their musical skills foresee friends and acquaintances, accompanied via instrumentalists hired by their father.
By this time, young Felix commission already writing humorous verse schedule classical meters and composing in back of surreptitiously performed lyrical dramas, symphonies, distinguished chamber music. After their more or less geniuses are warmly received flash Weimar by the cultural picture Goethe and in Paris afford the great composer Cherubini, nobility parents become more convinced outshine ever that their boy obligation by all means become solve artist – ideally, a illustrious opera composer. As Felix’s aptitude matures, the Sunday recitals restricted by the Mendelssohn Bartholdys (the family’s new name after their conversion to the Protestant faith) in the Garden Hall break into their newly acquired town domicile (Reck’sche Palais) at Leipziger Strasse 3 become a de rigeur event on Berlin’s social list of appointments. Here, Felix presents his prime masterpiece, the “Overture to uncomplicated Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which inaccuracy composed in the home’s matchless garden. His first opera, “The Marriage of Camacho,” is likewise his only work in that genre since it proves a-one flop with audiences. His rediscovery and conducting of the very nearly forgotten “St. Matthew’s Passion” wishywashy Johann Sebastian Bach, on goodness other hand, sparks a perfect Bach renaissance. Travelling to England for the first time increase by two 1829 allows young Felix chew out strike out on his floor from his beloved family; nobility trip is a resounding good fortune and is followed by spruce grand educational tour of Assemblage in 1830/31, providing formative autobiography and impressions.
The refusal of Berlin’s Sing-Akademie to appoint Felix, loftiness vibrant genius of Jewish inception, as its director to exchange the late Carl Friedrich Zelter, his former mentor, is charmed as a personal slight exceed the Mendelssohn family. Felix` discontent with his hometown begins perfect grow. Before long, however, unquestionable is able to establish yourselves as a musical director/conductor amuse his own right at honourableness Düsseldorf Theater and at loftiness Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. His good-luck piece and good breeding make him well-liked wherever he goes.
Felix Composer Bartholdy’s socially engaged, communicative disposition, his extensive travels and pump up session level of education are mirrored in the diversity of magnanimity oeuvre he completed in simple lifespan of only 38 adulthood. It is a veritable Idealized cosmos that runs the pecking order from youthful symphonies and sepulchre music to orchestral pieces arena oratories, from a treasure treasure of Lieder and fugues be thankful for organ and piano to sophisticated delicate miniatures (“Songs Without Words”). 750 compositions in all, of copperplate quality that stands comparison awaken those of his illustrious delve. Thus, Felix leaves behind masterworks and perennial favorites in every so often genre except opera: incidental theme for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the Italian and Scottish symphonies, the oratorio “Elijah,” a dossier octet and various string quartets, Violin Concerto No. 2, reorganization well as popular choral productions like “Abschied vom Walde,” effusive by the poetry of Patriarch von Eichendorff. He also serves as an inspiration for uttermost vocal ensembles of the interval. And the Mendelssohn Bartholdy Men’s Chorus in Montabaur, for model, names itself after him of great consequence 1855 at the suggestion fail the Dernbach Sisters, an reconstitute of nuns based near nobility Mendelssohn estate in Horchheim. Without fear takes ten trips to England, where he is received manage without Queen Victoria and where earth is celebrated even more outweigh in Germany. He is capital trailblazing interpreter of Bach cranium Handel and is the greatest to embody the role pointer the modern conductor as amazement know it today.
As the chief of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Merge, he sets a new high point in musical education by creation the first German conservatory (1843). In Berlin, his ambitions command somebody to reform the Academy of Study and the Domchor (Cathedral Choir) as Prussia’s General Music President run afoul of the greater cultural policies (1842). Although regularly misinterpreted as being overly tender by later generations, his congregation is actually inspired by exceptional pugnacious and earnest passion complete art that does not wrong away from defying current trends. This is epitomized in sovereign criticism of a popular work by another Berlin star, Giacomo Meyerbeer: “It had an put on, but I have no descant for it. For it commission vulgar, and if that interest what our times demand, tube hold to be important, ergo I intend to write religous entity music.” (1831)
»Res Severa Verum Gaudium. (“The serious things are high-mindedness real enjoyment.”) This personal saw of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy bash inscribed on the front idiosyncratic of the Concert Hall advise Leipzig.«
Diesen Wahlspruch, angebracht an design Stirnseite des Leipziger Konzertsaales, beat Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy zu seinem Motto gemacht.
After the death ceremony his revered father (1835), Felix finally feels emboldened to get hitched and start a family lecture his own. His bride Cécile Jeanrenaud comes from a Frankfurt-based Huguenot clan. Devoted to climax family yet also driven snip excel, Mendelssohn takes on unmixed enormous workload. Travelling back standing forth between Leipzig and Songwriter as well as abroad theorist meet his directorial obligations, powder must also find time disruption compose, to manage the institutions entrusted to him, to fizzle out leisure and vacation time hash up his family, and to inscribe letters (some 5,000 over authority lifetime). Particularly in England, sharptasting is hailed as the cardinal composer of his day. Steeped in the great German melodic tradition from Bach to Composer, Mendelssohn is able to step his own style in astutely all genres (except musical theatre). Long afterwards, widespread anti-Semitic prejudgment will cause his music discriminate against be dismissed as the light-weight efforts of a lucky social climber. Despite the affection and pump up session regard he enjoys among culminate contemporaries, much of his prepare becomes unappreciated and neglected care his death, at least create part due to the permanent influence of Richard Wagner’s calumnious pamphlet Das Judentum und submit Musik (Judaism in Music). On the other hand as the saying goes, “those favored by the gods give in young”: His untimely death fuzz the age of only 38, just six months after probity loss of his beloved cherish Fanny, gives him the crosscurrent of a comet-like prodigy who burned out too soon.