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

Descrizione:

Mendelssohn's engagement with the music of Bach had important consequences for teh rediscovery of the older composer's music and for the deployment of Baroque compositional styles in Romantic music. The signal event in the "Bach revival" occurred in 1829, when the twenty-year-old Mendelssohn conducted the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin.

In 1833 appointed music director in Dusseldorf, where he conducted orchestral music, opera, and a great deal of choral music. Next he was appointed chief conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus (Drapers' Hall) orchestra concerts, which under his leadership became the most prestigious concert series in Germany. He held this post with great distinction for a dozen years, in teh course of which he did more than any other musician to reinvent modern concert life in the form that we now know it. Under his directorship, subscription seasons were extended to increase the orchestra members' pay and ensure their exclusive loyalty so that standards of performance would improve. More serious programming was advanced, with symphonies given complete, uninteerrupted performances, and older repertory, including Bach, maintained alongside performances of new works. An international roster of big-name soloists regularly appeared with the orchestra. Mendelssohn himself conducted a wide range of choral and orchestral works, old and new.

From 1843 Mendelssohn added to his civic duties the role of director of the newly founded Leipzig Conservatory. The faculty included Schumann, the violinist Ferdinand David, and the pianist IGnaz Moscheles. That same year he was enlisted to revitalize musical life in Berlin, becoming director of the Berlin Cathedral Choir and composer of the symphonic subscription concerts of the Berlin Opera Orchestra. From around 1840, he was the unofficial composer and conductor laureate of England as well. He made many trips there, where his preeminence was cemented with his second oratorio, Elijah, premierd in English at the 1846 Birmingham Festival. Elijah remained, alongside Handel's Messiah, a favorite British choral festival item, performed as an annual national sacrament until the end of the Victorian era at the dawn of the new century. The endless travel, and multiple jobs and responsibilities, all pursued while composing, eventually seem to have taken their toll on his health. After a series of strokes in 1847, Mendelssohn died at age thirty-eight.

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