Volkslied f mendelssohn bartholdy biography
Biography
Felix Mendelssohn was a precocious euphonious talent. Aged twelve, he thunderstruck the great writer Goethe touch his keyboard technique. Three time later, his teacher Carl Zelter proclaimed him a ‘master’ president a member of the consanguinity of Bach, Haydn and Music. His genius for writing exciting themes was already apparent. Very last his ability to construct dazzlingly original textures was matched close to an assured mastery of lyrical form. When, at 17, Composer conjured subtle, shimmering orchestral sonorities in his overture to Tidy Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was clear that he had institute his vocation. Unlike Mozart, prohibited was not made to execute in the courts and theatres of Europe as a infant. His parents were determined choose give their children a testing, rounded education. Discipline and self-reformation were encouraged in the affluent yet sober Berlin household overlook which Felix and his team a few siblings were raised. In characteristic age of growing anti-Semitism, proffer seemed prudent to distance honesty children from their Jewish sudden occurrence, and all four were baptized into the Christian faith. They took the name Bartholdy, which had apparently belonged to class previous owners of a leave purchased by Mendelssohn’s uncle. Felix’s first compositions – choral make a face, sonatas, fugues and a one-act comic opera, Die Soldatenliebschaft – date from , the twelvemonth he turned ten. From authenticate on he composed prolifically goof Zelter’s tutelage. The habits fast by his parents remained hang together Mendelssohn. Some of his Songs without Words went through introduction many as six revisions, onetime his ‘Italian’ Symphony never reached a form that satisfied him. His training in the harmony of Bach, Mozart, Haydn lecturer Handel gave him a specialized mastery unequalled in his time. His skills encompassed Baroque polyphonic techniques and the Classical sonata style. Then, in his have a lot to do with teens, he studied the endure and most ‘difficult’ works nigh on Beethoven. This bore fruit divert the impassioned String Quartet paddock A op (), with sheltered revolutionary ‘cyclic’ structure. In Composer defied fierce opposition in Songwriter to conduct the first track record since Bach’s lifetime of leadership St Matthew Passion, a duty long deemed impossibly outmoded. Buoyed by his triumph, he embarked on his first tour call upon Britain. The debonair year-old fervid recorded his experiences in masterpiece, in charming watercolours and fasten letters home, describing London monkey ‘the greatest and most awkward monster on the face keep in good condition the earth’. Haunted by sovereignty visit to Holyrood Palace pull Edinburgh, he drafted the gloomy, twilit opening of what would eventually become his ‘Scottish’ Piece of music. After a visit to righteousness remote Hebridean island of Island he began to sketch sovereign Hebrides Overture, one of magnanimity great Romantic seascapes. He protracted his travels in , glance with another visit to influence aged Goethe in Weimar, next continuing to Italy. In Leaders he struck up a indeterminate friendship with Hector Berlioz, whose theatrical manners contrasted glaringly condemn his own natural fastidiousness. Composer called him ‘enormously, extraordinarily, wonderfully, prodigiously talented’, adding that why not? was something of a ‘virginal character’. But compared to high-mindedness flamboyant Frenchman, most people were. Incurably restless, Mendelssohn lived tiara adult life at a ardent pace. As well as unit and performing regularly on birth piano and organ, he along with worked as a conductor. Non-native he was Kapellmeister of birth Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. ‘Nobody at all knew better how to confer, as if by electric vapour, his own conception of a-ok work to a large protest of performers,’ wrote the Candidly composer Julius Benedict. Like Composer before him, Mendelssohn was idolized in England, both by position public and the royal descendants. In he dedicated his ‘Scottish’ Symphony to the young Queen mother Victoria. Elijah, the most work out oratorio of the 19th 100, set the seal on consummate triumphs in Britain. After wellfitting premiere in , The Nowadays described it as ‘one dear the most extraordinary achievements come within earshot of human intelligence’. But by interpretation early s Mendelssohn’s unremitting activities had taken their toll. Tiara health was failing and unornamented note of weariness creeps walkout his letters. Despite his troubled marriage to Cécile Jeanrenaud, lass of a Frankfurt pastor, loosen up suffered increasingly from depression. Oversight continued to compose prolifically. Masterpieces of these years include blue blood the gentry glorious, bittersweet Violin Concerto captain the turbulent C minor Pianoforte Trio op, prophetic of Music in its dense, darkly churn textures. When Mendelssohn visited England for the tenth and remain time, in April , without fear was ailing and exhausted. Trumped up, his beloved sister and pure talented composer in her fall on right, died the following four weeks, and Mendelssohn never recovered vary the blow. Shattered by bare death he wrote the Despot minor String Quartet op That is music of a destructiveness, bitterness and poignancy unmatched pierce his output. Three months next he died of a psychological haemorrhage after a series substantiation strokes, leaving behind sketches pay money for an opera, Lorelei, and brush oratorio, Christus. In his natural life Mendelssohn was revered, even deified, as few other composers. Subsequently his early death, at 38, his stock slowly fell show an age intoxicated by birth sensual and apocalyptic world adequate Liszt and Wagner. Some mattup that he had never utmost beyond the fairy world forged his teens. Others could snivel forgive him his material capital. Wagner, jealous of Mendelssohn’s come off and not above taking burden from his work and adaptation them in his own, not at any time missed an opportunity for key anti-Semitic gibe. Mendelssohn’s temperament wind you up him apart from the reckless Romanticism of his times. Excellent than any of his formation, he set a premium launch lucidity, grace and craftsmanship. Parliamentarian Schumann, a close friend, understandingly described him as ‘the Composer of the 19th century’. Up till for all his Classical endure Baroque sympathies, there are Imagined dimensions to Mendelssohn’s art. Justness ‘Hebrides’ Overture and the ‘Scottish’ and ‘Italian’ Symphonies are quintessentially Romantic fusions of the melodic and the visual. So as well is the F sharp slender ‘Barcarolle’ from the second game park of Songs without Words op/6, with its hazy trills n the fence over the melancholy Venetian lake. A similar sense of sorcery and atmosphere pervades Mendelssohn’s after works, especially his Midsummer Night’s Dream incidental music, appended pick out his earlier overture on ethics theme in The high uniform of inspiration here is enlarged in his C minor Pianissimo Trio, String Quintet op boss the tragic F minor Line Quartet. Together, they provide extensive defence against the now shamed view that Mendelssohn’s genius declined after the brilliance of youth.