Felix mendelssohn composer biography for children

In Frankfurt am Main he stayed with a family who had two daughters. They had a happy marriage and had five children. Felix and his young wife went to live in Leipzig where he became the conductor of the famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This was one of the highest musical jobs in Germany. He conducted a lot of music by 18th century composers who had been forgotten.

Mendelssohn got some of the most famous musicians to come to Leipzig and perform with the orchestra: Clara SchumannFranz LisztAnton Rubinsteinthe young violinist Joseph Joachim and the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Mendelssohn improved the playing of the orchestra, making them one of the best orchestras in the world. He also made sure that the players were paid well.

In the early s Mendelssohn spent some time in Berlin. The new king, Friedrich Wilhelm IVKing of Prussiawas very keen on music and had lots of ideas about new plans for concerts. He wanted Mendelssohn to be in charge of this. The king wanted to see Greek plays performed and Mendelssohn had to write incidental music for the performances of Antigone.

Mendelssohn thanked the Queen by dedicating his Scottish Symphony to her. He became director of the new Conservatoire in Leipzig. He had already written some of this music 17 years earlier but now he finished it and performed it in During his last years Mendelssohn suffered from bad health. His trips to other countries inspired some of his best music, like his Scottish and Italian Symphonies.

Mendelssohn also became well known as a conductor. See More Composers. Shows About: Felix Mendelssohn. Contact Us. CFK YouTube. Cincinnati Public Radio. Goethe met the young Mendelssohn and took quite a shine to him, saying to him "When I am sad, come and cheer me with your playing.

Felix mendelssohn composer biography for children: Born: 3rd February in Hamburg,

In he saw the first production of one of his operasDie Hochzeit des Camachohaving written several others before then. InMendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebridesotherwise known as Fingal's Cavea piece which remains popular today. It was inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the s. These visits also inspired his Symphony No.

Mendelssohn travelled widely in Europe throughout his life, and a visit to Italy inspired one of his best known works, the Symphony No. In all, Mendelssohn wrote five symphonies. He also wrote two piano concertos and a famous violin concerto which is often seen as an essential piece for young prodigies to play. Abraham and his wife Lea were baptised inand formally adopted the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy which they had used since for themselves and for their children.

The name Bartholdy was added at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, who had inherited a property of this name in Luisenstadt and adopted it as his own surname. Letter to Felix of 8 July Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. Zelter had almost certainly been recommended as a teacher by his aunt Sarah Levywho had been a pupil of W.

Bach and a patron of C. Sarah Levy displayed some talent as a keyboard player, and often played with Zelter's orchestra at the Berliner Singakademie ; she and the Mendelssohn family were among its leading patrons. Sarah had formed an important collection of Bach family manuscripts, which she bequeathed to the Singakademie; Zelter, whose tastes in music were conservative, was also an admirer of the Bach tradition.

His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bachwhose music influenced him deeply. 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. As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the intellectual elite of Berlin.

It was probably Abraham Mendelssohn who procured the publication of this quartet by the house of Schlesinger. At age 16 Mendelssohn wrote his String Octet in E-flat majora work which has been regarded as "mark[ing] the beginning of his maturity as a composer. Later, inhe also wrote incidental music for the play, including the famous " Wedding March ".

The Overture is perhaps the earliest example of a concert overture — that is, a piece not written deliberately to accompany a staged performance but to evoke a literary theme in performance on a concert platform; this was a genre which became a popular form in musical Romanticism. In Mendelssohn studied under the composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheleswho confessed in his diaries [ 31 ] that he had little to teach him.

Moscheles and Mendelssohn became close colleagues and lifelong friends. The year saw the premiere — and sole performance in his lifetime — of Mendelssohn's opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture into the genre again. Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy.

In Zelter introduced Mendelssohn to his friend and felix mendelssohn composer biography for children, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe then in his seventieswho was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart in the following conversation between Goethe and Zelter:. Mendelssohn was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions, [ 38 ] and set a number of Goethe's poems to music.

Inwith the backing of Zelter and the assistance of the actor Eduard DevrientMendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. Four years previously his grandmother, Bella Salomonhad given him a copy of the manuscript of this by then all-but-forgotten masterpiece. The success of this performance, one of the very few since Bach's death and the first ever outside of Leipzig[ n 6 ] was the central event in the revival of Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe.

It also led to one of the few explicit references which Mendelssohn made to his origins: "To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world! Over the next few years Mendelssohn travelled widely. His first visit to England was in ; other places visited during the s included Vienna, Florence, Milan, Rome and Naples, in all of which he met with local and visiting musicians and artists.

Felix mendelssohn composer biography for children: Mendelssohn was a child prodigy. He

These years proved to be the germination for some of his most famous works, including the Hebrides Overture and the Scottish and Italian symphonies. On Zelter's death inMendelssohn had hopes of succeeding him as conductor of the Singakademie; but at a vote in January he was defeated for the post by Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. This may have been because of Mendelssohn's youth, and fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected by some to be attributable to his Jewish ancestry.

This precipitated a Handel revival in Germany, similar to the reawakened interest in J. Bach following his performance of the St. Matthew Passion. He had offers from both Munich and Leipzig for important musical posts, namely, direction of the Munich Operathe editorship of the prestigious Leipzig music journal the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitungand direction of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra ; he accepted the latter in In Leipzig, Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the town's musical life by working with the orchestra, the opera house, the Thomanerchor of which Bach had been a directorand the city's other choral and musical institutions.

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. Robert Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony and sent it to Mendelssohn, who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 Marchmore than a decade after Schubert's death.

A landmark event during Mendelssohn's Leipzig years was the premiere of his oratorio Paulusthe English version of this is known as St. Paul seemed to many of Mendelssohn's contemporaries to be his finest work, and sealed his European reputation. When Friedrich Wilhelm IV came to the Prussian throne in with ambitions to develop Berlin as a cultural centre including the establishment of a music school, and reform of music for the churchthe obvious choice to head these reforms was Mendelssohn.

He was reluctant to undertake the task, especially in the light of his existing strong position in Leipzig. He was therefore not displeased to have the excuse to return to Leipzig. Other prominent musicians, including the string players Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim and the music theorist Moritz Hauptmannalso became staff members. Mendelssohn first visited Britain inwhere Moscheles, who had already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles.

In the summer he visited Edinburghwhere he met among others the composer John Thomsonwhom he later recommended for the post of professor of music at Edinburgh University.

Felix mendelssohn composer biography for children: He was already a terrific

He first heard Bennett perform in London in aged On Mendelssohn's eighth British visit in the summer ofhe conducted five of the Philharmonic concerts in London, and wrote: "223ever before was anything like this season — we never went to bed before half-past one, every hour of every day was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, and I got through more music in two months than in all the rest of the year.

It was composed to a German text translated into English by William Bartholomewwho authored and translated many of Mendelssohn's works during his time in England. Mendelssohn suffered from poor health in the final years of his life, probably aggravated by nervous problems and overwork. A final tour of England left him exhausted and ill, and the death of his sister, Fanny, on 14 Maycaused him further distress.

Less than six months later, on 4 November, aged 38, Mendelssohn died in Leipzig after a series of strokes. Mendelssohn's funeral was held at the PaulinerkircheLeipzig, and he was buried at the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I in Berlin- Kreuzberg. The pallbearers included Moscheles, Schumann and Niels Gade. While Mendelssohn was often presented as equable, happy, and placid in temperament, particularly in the detailed family memoirs published by his nephew Sebastian Hensel after the composer's death, [ 80 ] this was misleading.

The music historian R. Larry Todd notes "the remarkable process of idealization" of Mendelssohn's character "that crystallized in the memoirs of the composer's circle", including Hensel's. Devrient mentions that on one occasion in the s, when his wishes had been crossed, "his excitement was increased so fearfully The stern voice of his father at last checked the wild torrent of words; they took him to bed, and a profound sleep of twelve hours restored him to his normal state".

Mendelssohn was an enthusiastic visual artist who worked in pencil and watercoloura skill which he enjoyed throughout his life. On 21 Marchat the age of seven years, Mendelssohn was baptised with his brother and sisters in a private domestic ceremony by Johann Jakob Stegemann, Minister of the Evangelical congregation of Berlin's Jerusalem Church and New Church.

He was the prime mover in proposing to the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus a complete edition of Moses' works, which continued with the support of his uncle, Joseph Mendelssohn. I hope this was a joke [ Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if sometimes somewhat cool, terms with Hector BerliozFranz Lisztand Giacomo Meyerbeerbut in his letters expresses his frank disapproval of their works, for example writing of Liszt that his compositions were "inferior to his playing, and […] only calculated for virtuosos"; [ 92 ] of Berlioz's overture Les francs-juges "[T]he orchestration is such a frightful muddle [ In particular, Mendelssohn seems to have regarded Paris and its music with the greatest of suspicion and an almost puritanical distaste.

Attempts made during his visit there to interest him in Saint-Simonianism ended in embarrassing scenes. Moscheles preserved this felix mendelssohn composer biography for children attitude at the Leipzig Conservatory until his own death in The second youngest child, Felix August, contracted measles in and was left with impaired health; he died in Marie married Victor Benecke and lived in London.

Lili married Adolf Wachlater professor of law at Leipzig University. The family papers inherited by Marie's and Lili's children form the basis of the extensive collection of Mendelssohn manuscripts, including the so-called "Green Books" of his correspondence, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Mendelssohn became close to the Swedish soprano Jenny Lindwhom he met in October Papers confirming their relationship had not been made public.

Mendelssohn met and worked with Lind many times, and started an opera, Loreleifor her, based on the legend of the Lorelei Rhine maidens; the opera was unfinished at his death. He is said to have tailored the aria "Hear Ye Israel", in his oratorio Elijahto Lind's voice, although she did not sing the part until after his death, at a concert in December The music critic Henry Chorleywho was with him, wrote: "I see as I write the smile with which Mendelssohn, whose enjoyment of Mdlle.

Lind's talent was unlimited, turned round and looked at me, as if a load of anxiety had been taken off his mind. His attachment to Mdlle. Lind's genius as a singer was unbounded, as was his desire for her success. Upon Mendelssohn's death, Lind wrote: "[He was] the only person who brought fulfillment to my spirit, and almost as soon as I found him I lost him again.

The first winner of the scholarship, inwas Arthur Sullivanthen aged InLind erected a plaque in Mendelssohn's memory at his birthplace in Hamburg. Something of Mendelssohn's intense attachment to his personal vision of music is conveyed in his comments to a correspondent who suggested converting some of the Songs Without Words into lieder by adding texts: "What [the] music I love expresses to me, are not thoughts that are too indefinite for me to put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.

Schumann wrote of Mendelssohn that he was "the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most brilliant musician, the one who most clearly sees through the contradictions of the age and for the first time reconciles them. First, that his inspiration for musical style was rooted in his technical mastery and his interpretation of the style of previous masters, [ ] although he certainly recognized and developed the strains of early Romanticism in the music of Beethoven and Weber.

Berlioz said of Mendelssohn that he had "perhaps studied the music of the dead too closely. The musicologist Greg Vitercik considers that, while "Mendelssohn's music only rarely aspires to provoke", the stylistic innovations evident from his earliest works solve some of the contradictions between classical forms and the sentiments of Romanticism.

The expressiveness of Romantic music presented a problem in adherence to sonata form ; the final recapitulation section of a movement could seem, in the context of Romantic style, a bland element without passion or soul. Furthermore, it could be seen as a pedantic delay before reaching the emotional climax of a movement, which in the classical tradition had tended to be at the transition from the development section of the movement to the recapitulation; whereas Berlioz and other "modernists" sought to have the emotional climax at the end of a movement, if necessary by adding an extended coda to follow the recapitulation proper.

Mendelssohn's solution to this problem was less sensational than Berlioz's approach, but was rooted in changing the structural balance of the formal components of the movement. Thus typically in a Mendelssohnian movement, the development-recapitulation transition might not be strongly marked, and the recapitulation section would be harmonically or melodically varied so as not to be a direct copy of the opening, expositionsection; this allowed a logical movement towards a final climax.

Vitercik summarizes the effect as "to assimilate the dynamic trajectory of 'external form' to the 'logical' unfolding of the story of the theme". Richard Taruskin wrote that, although Mendelssohn produced works of extraordinary mastery at a very early age. Throughout his short career he remained comfortably faithful to the musical status quo — that is, the "classical" forms, as they were already thought of by his time.

Felix mendelssohn composer biography for children: He was also a major force

His version of romanticism, already evident in his earliest works, consisted in musical "pictorialism" of a fairly conventional, objective nature though exquisitely wrought. The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his childhood by the music of both J. Bach and C. Bachand of Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Mozart; traces of these composers can be seen in the 13 early string symphonies.

These were written from towhen he was between the ages of 12 and 14, principally for performance in the Mendelssohn household, and not published or publicly performed until long after his death. His first published works were his three piano quartets —; Op. Larry Todd justifies claims frequently made that Mendelssohn's precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp.

A survey by the BBC of 16 music critics opined that Mendelssohn was the greatest composing prodigy in the history of Western classical music. Mendelssohn's mature symphonies are numbered approximately in the order of publication, rather than the order in which they were composed. The order of composition is: 1, 5, 4, 2, 3. The Symphony No.

This work is experimental, showing the influences of Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. For the third movement he substituted an orchestration of the Scherzo from his Octet.