Felix Mendelssohn (1 gen 1809 anni – 1 gen 1847 anni)

Descrizione:

aka Mendelssohn-Bartholdy; a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music and chamber music. He is the brother of Fanny.

Mendelssohn
A. The Prodigious Mendelssohn
1. One of Mendelssohn’s early works, the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also
depicts fantasy in a brilliant demonstration of orchestration.
2. Mendelssohn was acknowledged as a child prodigy, like Mozart, but he was not
exploited by his father (as the earlier composer had been).
3. Mendelssohn knew the music of Bach and Handel well, conducting the revival of the
St. Matthew Passion in 1829, at age twenty.
4. Mendelssohn’s musical talent, his excellent education, university education, and
travels enabled him to rise to the position of being a preeminent figure in German music in the 1840s.
5. He wrote public and private (domestic) music.
6. The composer held impressive posts during his adult years, but the strain of travel, work, and composition seems to have resulted in a series of strokes in 1847, killing the composer
at age thirty-eight.

Nationalist Takes a Racial Turn
1. The critics in Leipzig overwhelmingly approved of Mendelssohn.
2. Only three years after his death, however, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik published an
inflammatory article entitled “Judaism in Music,” claiming that Jews were biologically distinct from gentile Christians and served therefore to dilute Christian musical traditions.
3. This article influenced thoughts about music in the years to come.
4. It was written by Wagner, although not published under his name.

Mendelssohn also wrote several organ works. His 6 sonatas for organ were for English commissions of virginals - a compositional term that he did not know. These sonatas do not exactly follow sonata allegro form. However, they are each clearly structured and incorporate themes from Romanticism as well as Baroque German organ music. They are exceptional teaching pieces as they are versatile to many pipe organs, accessible, and not too difficult (though also not sight-readable).

It is briefly mentioned in a point above, but it should be reinforced that Mendelssohn is heavily credited with the revival of Bach's music, especially through his choral works such as the Passions.

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