Mendelssohn

Classicism, Romanticism and public musical life

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born in Hamburg on 3 February 1809 into the prominent Mendelssohn family. His grandfather Moses Mendelssohn was a major Jewish Enlightenment philosopher; Felix’s parents Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn created a highly cultivated household in Berlin.

The children received an exceptional education. Felix studied piano with Ludwig Berger and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter, absorbed Bach and Handel through the Berlin Sing-Akademie, and became an astonishingly mature composer while still a teenager.

Mendelssohn’s mature career combined composition with practical leadership. He conducted the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, promoted historical and contemporary repertory, maintained close ties with Britain and helped found the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843.

Why Mendelssohn is essential

Hamburg and Berlin: 1809–1824

Felix was born in Hamburg but the family moved to Berlin in 1811. His mother Lea gave him early piano instruction, after which he studied with Ludwig Berger and Carl Friedrich Zelter.

The Mendelssohn household hosted writers, scholars, diplomats and musicians. Sunday musicales offered the young composer practical access to excellent performers and allowed early works to be tried in sophisticated private surroundings.

He and his sister Fanny showed exceptional ability. Fanny remained one of Felix’s closest musical confidantes throughout life, although nineteenth-century social expectations severely restricted her public career.

Goethe, early masterpieces and artistic formation: 1821–1829

Zelter introduced the twelve-year-old Mendelssohn to Goethe in Weimar in 1821. The friendship and repeated visits became important to Mendelssohn’s intellectual formation.

The Octet op. 20 of 1825 and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream of 1826 show a fully individual voice: fleet orchestral writing, formal control, luminous textures and a fascination with fantastical atmosphere.

In 1829 Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Berlin with the Sing-Akademie. Although Bach had never disappeared completely, the performance became a major public event and helped reshape nineteenth-century engagement with the composer.

European travels: Britain, Italy and beyond, 1829–1833

Mendelssohn’s first British visit in 1829 was a major success. London remained central to his career, and he returned repeatedly as pianist, conductor and composer.

Journeys through Scotland inspired the Hebrides Overture and contributed to the long gestation of the Scottish Symphony. Travel through Italy supplied impressions later associated with the Italian Symphony.

These journeys were documented in unusually vivid letters and drawings. Mendelssohn was a skilled visual artist and often captured landscapes and architecture alongside musical impressions.

Düsseldorf and Leipzig: 1833–1841

After posts and projects in Düsseldorf, Mendelssohn became music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts in 1835. He strengthened ensemble discipline and broadened repertory through Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and contemporary music.

His oratorio St Paul premiered in 1836 and became internationally successful. That same year he met Cécile Jeanrenaud, whom he married in 1837.

In 1839 he conducted the premiere of Schubert’s Great C-major Symphony after Schumann helped recover the score. Mendelssohn’s advocacy was decisive in bringing the work into the repertory.

Berlin, Leipzig Conservatory and mature works: 1841–1846

King Friedrich Wilhelm IV summoned Mendelssohn to Berlin for court and cultural projects. The relationship produced important commissions, including the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, completed in 1842, but Mendelssohn never found Berlin as professionally satisfying as Leipzig.

In 1843 he founded the Leipzig Conservatory, one of Europe’s first major modern conservatories. Faculty included Robert Schumann, Ignaz Moscheles, Ferdinand David and Moritz Hauptmann.

The Violin Concerto in E minor, developed over several years with Ferdinand David, premiered in 1845. Elijah premiered in Birmingham in 1846 and became one of the great choral successes of the century.

Fanny’s death, final months and death: 1847

On 14 May 1847 Fanny Hensel died suddenly in Berlin. The loss devastated Mendelssohn. His String Quartet in F minor op. 80 is closely associated with the grief and turbulence of this final period.

Mendelssohn’s own health deteriorated after a series of strokes. He died in Leipzig on 4 November 1847, aged thirty-eight.

His posthumous reputation was repeatedly distorted by aesthetic prejudice and antisemitism, most notoriously in Wagner’s writings and later Nazi suppression. Modern scholarship and performance have restored the breadth of his achievement well beyond a small group of popular works.

Counterpoint and historical models

His study of Bach and Handel was not antiquarian imitation but a living compositional resource.

Fugues, chorales and Baroque procedures appear inside an unmistakably nineteenth-century harmonic and expressive language.

Orchestration and texture

Woodwind color, transparent string writing and precise dynamic gradation create a characteristic luminosity.

Rapid figurations in scherzos and fairy music became an instantly recognizable Mendelssohnian signature.

Form and lyricism

Mendelssohn valued proportion and continuity, often resisting the rhetoric of fragmentation associated with some other Romantic composers.

Songs without Words demonstrate how lyrical vocal thinking could be translated directly into instrumental form.

Revision and performance

He revised many major works repeatedly, sometimes withholding scores from publication if dissatisfied.

Letters, autograph scores and correspondence with performers such as Ferdinand David document a highly practical approach to refinement.

Major modern studies

Institutional and critical references