Nineteenth-century audiences were fascinated by virtuosos. The concerto for soloist and orchestra was a perfect vehicle for virtuosos to showcase their skill and artistry and became quite popular. Many of the master composers of the romantic era composed such works. Notable among them were Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, and Felix Mendelssohn.
Felix Mendelssohn was born into a wealthy and cultured family. His musical training began with piano lessons from his mother, Leah, when he was still quite young. In 1812 the family moved to Berlin, where his training was entrusted to Carl Zelter, a well-respected and widely known composer and teacher.
In addition to his formal training, Felix was exposed to continual music making in his home, which was a meeting place for well known musicians and poets. His mother organized and directed concerts of chamber works for family guests on a regular basis. Some of Felix’s (and his sister’s) first compositions were performed at these events.
At age nine, Felix debuted as a concert pianist. By age twelve, he had composed a number of chamber works and operettas. He also became an accomplished violinist and violist while still in his teens.
His first significant work, composed when he was just seventeen, was the overture to Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A few years later, he demonstrated his skill as a conductor, leading a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. A few years after this, he embarked on a series of travels throughout Europe. In 1843 he established the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, attracting a distinguished faculty that included Robert and Clara Schumann.
After 1846, Mendelssohn’s health began to fail. This was exacerbated by the death of his sister, Fanny, to whom he had been extremely close. He became severely depressed and eventually bedridden. He died in 1849 at the age of thirty-eight.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was Felix’s older sister, born in 1804. She was also a talented performer and composer. Abraham Mendelssohn, her father, did not want her to pursue a public career, however. This was largely due to the nineteenth-century outlook that it was somewhat demeaning for a woman of her high status to compose music for sale or perform in public. Although Felix agreed with his father about Fanny’s not performing in public, he did support his sister’s desire to compose.
In 1829 Fanny married the court painter Wilhelm Hensel. Wilhelm was something of a liberal thinker and encouraged his wife’s career as a performer and composer. It was not until after her father’s death, however, that she was able to publish any of her works. She died in 1847.
One of Mendelssohn’s greatest concertos, and one of his most popular works, is the Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64. This concerto maintained the three-movement structure of the classical concerto, but Mendelssohn connects the first and second movements with a held note in the bassoon. Another innovative approach Mendelssohn used was having the soloist introduce the first theme before the orchestra.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Felix Mendelssohn was a talented artist as well as musician. Wherever he traveled, he made pencil sketches and watercolors of the countryside and other subjects. These are fine works. A very good, easy-to-read biography of Mendelssohn by Robert Marek, Gentle Genius: The Story of Felix Mendelssohn, contains reproductions of some of these sketches. It might enhance a discussion of the composer if you had some of these to display in class. It can lead into a rewarding discussion of the romantic spirit and the romantic artist.
2. The Mendelssohn family was of Jewish origin. Largely because of anti-Semitism, Abraham and his family converted to Christianity. Occasionally your students might run into a reference to Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. This was a Christian appellation they adopted to indicate that they were a Christian family.
3. Mendelssohn epitomizes the beginning of the modern conductor, the person standing in front of the orchestra, wielding a baton. Until his time, conductors were performers in the ensemble who directed from the keyboard or the violin section, rather than standing in front of the ensemble to direct it.
4. Although many nineteenth-century composers wrote works for other individuals to perform, they had to be quite well versed in the solo instruments for which they composed. It’s not enough to be a composer and write beautiful melodies. The composer needs to understand the range of the instrument, the timbre and how it blends with other instruments, and any special techniques that are unique to the instrument. Many composers wrote works that they could play themselves. Others spent a great deal of time talking to performers about their instruments and listening to them play. Only after coming to know the instrument well would they begin composing.
FURTHER TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How would you describe the character of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto?
2. Why do you suppose the concerto was so popular during the nineteenth century?
3. What do you think about Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s father’s reluctance to let his daughter compose or perform in public?