COMPOSERS
Felix Mendelssohn
(b.1809, d.1847) Early Romantic German composer whose music remained essentially Classical. Mendelssohn was a complete musician - a pianist, conductor and scholar responsible for the early Bach revival, he wrote symphonies, oratorios, concertos, songs, chamber and piano music, and the memorable incidental music to a Midsummer Night's Dream.
IN ONE MINUTE
- A greater prodigy even than Mozart, Mendelssohn was composing fully mature works from the age of 12.
- He was the grandson of the Enlightenment philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn.
- He numbered Goethe and Hegel among his friends from childhood.
- He led the way in the revival of Bach’s music by performing the ‘St Matthew Passion’.
- His own oratorios mix Baroque models with 19th-century styles.
- Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto has become one of the best loved and most plagiarised of all concertos.
- Mendelssohn was later dismissed as a composer of sentimental salon music and vilified by anti-Semites, including Wagner.