83 Facts About Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.

Felix Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music.

Felix Mendelssohn was baptised at the age of seven, becoming a Reformed Christian.

Felix Mendelssohn was recognised early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his talent.

Felix Mendelssohn's sister Fanny Mendelssohn received a similar musical education and was a talented composer and pianist in her own right; some of her early songs were published under her brother's name and her Easter Sonata was for a time mistakenly attributed to him after being lost and rediscovered in the 1970s.

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Felix Mendelssohn enjoyed early success in Germany, and revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, notably with his performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829.

Felix Mendelssohn is among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

Felix Mendelssohn was born on 3 February 1809, in Hamburg, at the time an independent city-state, in the same house where, a year later, the dedicatee and first performer of his Violin Concerto, Ferdinand David, would be born.

Felix Mendelssohn's mother, Lea Salomon, was a member of the Itzig family and a sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy.

Felix Mendelssohn was the second of four children; his older sister Fanny displayed exceptional and precocious musical talent.

Abraham was initially disinclined to allow Felix Mendelssohn to follow a musical career until it became clear that he was seriously dedicated.

On embarking on his musical career, Felix did not entirely drop the name Mendelssohn as Abraham had requested, but in deference to his father signed his letters and had his visiting cards printed using the form 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'.

Felix Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris.

Later in Berlin, all four Felix Mendelssohn children studied piano with Ludwig Berger, who was himself a former student of Muzio Clementi.

From at least May 1819 Felix Mendelssohn studied counterpoint and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin.

Felix Mendelssohn probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert accompanying a horn duo.

Felix Mendelssohn was a prolific composer from an early age.

Between the ages of 12 and 14, Felix Mendelssohn wrote 13 string symphonies for such concerts, and a number of chamber works.

In 1824 Felix Mendelssohn studied under the composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles, who confessed in his diaries that he had little to teach him.

Besides music, Felix Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy.

Felix Mendelssohn was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions, and set a number of Goethe's poems to music.

In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of the actor Eduard Devrient, Felix Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Felix Mendelssohn's first visit to England was in 1829; other places visited during the 1830s included Vienna, Florence, Milan, Rome and Naples, in all of which he met with local and visiting musicians and artists.

On Zelter's death in 1832, Felix Mendelssohn had hopes of succeeding him as conductor of the Singakademie; but at a vote in January 1833 he was defeated for the post by Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen.

Felix Mendelssohn worked with the dramatist Karl Immermann to improve local theatre standards, and made his first appearance as an opera conductor in Immermann's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of 1833, where he took umbrage at the audience's protests about the cost of tickets.

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Felix Mendelssohn had offers from both Munich and Leipzig for important musical posts, namely, direction of the Munich Opera, the editorship of the prestigious Leipzig music journal the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and direction of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; he accepted the latter in 1835.

In Leipzig, Felix Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the town's musical life by working with the orchestra, the opera house, the Thomanerchor, and the city's other choral and musical institutions.

Felix Mendelssohn's concerts included, in addition to many of his own works, three series of "historical concerts" featuring music of the eighteenth century, and a number of works by his contemporaries.

Felix Mendelssohn was deluged by offers of music from rising and would-be composers; among these was Richard Wagner, who submitted his early Symphony, the score of which, to Wagner's disgust, Mendelssohn lost or mislaid.

Felix Mendelssohn was reluctant to undertake the task, especially in the light of his existing strong position in Leipzig.

Felix Mendelssohn nonetheless spent some time in Berlin, writing some church music such as Die Deutsche Liturgie, and, at the King's request, music for productions of Sophocles's Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Racine's Athalie .

Felix Mendelssohn was therefore not displeased to have the excuse to return to Leipzig.

Felix Mendelssohn first visited Britain in 1829, where Moscheles, who had already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles.

Felix Mendelssohn made ten visits to Britain, lasting about 20 months; he won a strong following, which enabled him to make a good impression on British musical life.

Felix Mendelssohn first heard Bennett perform in London in 1833 aged 17.

On subsequent visits Felix Mendelssohn met Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, himself a composer, who both greatly admired his music.

On his last visit to Britain in 1847, Felix Mendelssohn was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4 and conducted his own Scottish Symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra before the Queen and Prince Albert.

Felix Mendelssohn's funeral was held at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, and he was buried at the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Felix Mendelssohn was frequently given to fits of temper which occasionally led to collapse.

Felix Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic visual artist who worked in pencil and watercolour, a skill which he enjoyed throughout his life.

On 21 March 1816, at the age of seven years, Felix Mendelssohn was baptised with his brother and sisters in a home ceremony by Johann Jakob Stegemann, minister of the Evangelical congregation of Berlin's Jerusalem Church and New Church.

Felix Mendelssohn was notably reluctant, either in his letters or conversation, to comment on his innermost beliefs; his friend Devrient wrote that "[his] deep convictions were never uttered in intercourse with the world; only in rare and intimate moments did they ever appear, and then only in the slightest and most humorous allusions".

In particular, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have regarded Paris and its music with the greatest of suspicion and an almost puritanical distaste.

Felix Mendelssohn married Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a French Reformed Church clergyman, on 28 March 1837.

The second youngest child, Felix Mendelssohn August, contracted measles in 1844 and was left with impaired health; he died in 1851.

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The eldest, Carl Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, became a historian, and Professor of History at Heidelberg and Freiburg universities; he died in a psychiatric institution in Freiburg aged 59.

Paul Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a noted chemist and pioneered the manufacture of aniline dye.

Family papers inherited by Marie's and Lili's children form the basis of the extensive collection of Felix Mendelssohn manuscripts, including the so-called "Green Books" of his correspondence, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

Cecile Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy died less than six years after her husband, on 25 September 1853.

Felix Mendelssohn became close to the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he met in October 1844.

Felix Mendelssohn met and worked with Lind many times, and started an opera, Lorelei, for her, based on the legend of the Lorelei Rhine maidens; the opera was unfinished at his death.

Richard Taruskin wrote that, although Felix Mendelssohn produced works of extraordinary mastery at a very early age,.

Felix Mendelssohn conducted the symphony on his first visit to London in 1829, with the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society.

Felix Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied with the work and did not allow publication of the score.

Felix Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in 1833, but did not allow the score to be published during his lifetime, as he continually sought to rewrite it.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote the symphony-cantata Lobgesang in B-flat major, posthumously named Symphony No 2, to mark the celebrations in Leipzig of the supposed 400th anniversary of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg; the first performance took place on 25 June 1840.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides in 1830, inspired by visits to Scotland around the end of the 1820s.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote other concert overtures, notably Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, inspired by a pair of poems by Goethe and The Fair Melusine .

Felix Mendelssohn wrote in 1839 an overture to Ruy Blas, commissioned for a charity performance of Victor Hugo's drama .

Felix Mendelssohn played and composed for organ from the age of 11 until his death.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote some Singspiele for family performance in his youth.

Felix Mendelssohn's opera Die beiden Neffen was rehearsed for him on his 15th birthday.

Felix Mendelssohn left the theatre before the conclusion of the first performance, and subsequent performances were cancelled.

At his death Felix Mendelssohn left some sketches for an opera on the story of the Lorelei.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote five settings from "The Book of Psalms" for chorus and orchestra.

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Felix Mendelssohn wrote many smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir, such as a setting of Psalm 100, Jauchzet dem Herrn, alle Welt, and for choir with organ.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote many songs, both for solo voice and for duet, with piano.

Felix Mendelssohn admired the grand pianos of the Viennese maker Conrad Graf; he acquired one in 1832 which he used in the family house and recitals in Berlin, and later another for use in Dusseldorf.

Felix Mendelssohn was a noted conductor, both of his own works and of those by other composers.

At Leipzig, Felix Mendelssohn led the Gewandhaus Orchestra to great heights; although concentrating on the great composers of the past he included new music by Schumann, Berlioz, Gade and many others, as well as his own music.

One critic who was not impressed was Richard Wagner; he accused Felix Mendelssohn of using tempos in his performances of Beethoven symphonies that were far too fast.

Felix Mendelssohn was concerned in preparing and editing such music, whether for performance or for publication, to be as close as possible to the original intentions of the composers, including wherever possible a close study of early editions and manuscripts.

Felix Mendelssohn edited a number of Bach's works for organ, and apparently discussed with Robert Schumann the possibility of producing a complete Bach edition.

At the Leipzig Conservatoire Felix Mendelssohn taught classes in composition and ensemble playing.

However, the conservative strain in Felix Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a corollary condescension amongst some of them toward his music.

Listeners who had raised questions about Felix Mendelssohn's talent included Heinrich Heine, who wrote in 1836 after hearing the oratorio St Paul that his work was.

The monument dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn erected in Leipzig in 1892 was removed by the Nazis in 1936.

Felix Mendelssohn's pupil Sterndale Bennett was a major force in British musical education until his death in 1875, and a great upholder of his master's traditions; he numbered among his pupils many of the next generation of English composers, including Sullivan, Hubert Parry and Francis Edward Bache.

Appreciation of Felix Mendelssohn's work has developed since the mid-20th century, together with the publication of a number of biographies placing his achievements in context.

Mercer-Taylor comments on the irony that "this broad-based reevaluation of Felix Mendelssohn's music is made possible, in part, by a general disintegration of the idea of a musical canon", an idea which Felix Mendelssohn "as a conductor, pianist and scholar" had done so much to establish.

Mencken concluded that, if Felix Mendelssohn indeed missed true greatness, he missed it "by a hair".

Nevertheless, he points out how the dramatic power of "the juncture of religion and music" in Felix Mendelssohn's oratorios is reflected throughout the music of the next fifty years in the operas of Meyerbeer and Giuseppe Verdi and in Wagner's Parsifal.

Recordings of virtually all of Felix Mendelssohn's published works are now available, and his works are frequently heard in the concert hall and on broadcasts.