Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, painting by Eduard Magnus , 1846Signature Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.JPG

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (born February 3, 1809 in Hamburg , † November 4, 1847 in Leipzig ) was a German composer , pianist and organist . He is considered to be one of the most important musicians of the Romantic era and as a conductor he set new standards that have shaped conducting to this day.

In addition, Mendelssohn Bartholdy campaigned for the performance of works by Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach . In doing so, he made a significant contribution to their rediscovery and to the development of an understanding of the “classical” epoch of German music. He is considered to be a co-founder of historical music care and founded the first conservatory in Germany.

Life

Birthplace, Große Michaelisstraße 14 in Hamburg, around 1900

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy came from the respected and wealthy middle-class Jewish family Mendelssohn . On his father's side, he was a grandson of the great philosopher Moses Mendelssohn . His father Abraham joined his older brother Joseph's bank as a partner in 1804 after completing an apprenticeship as a banker . His mother Lea , née Salomon, came from a family of manufacturers. After their marriage in 1804, Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn moved from Berlin to Hamburg. In 1805 Felix's musically gifted sister Fanny (from 1829 Fanny Hensel ) was born. Further siblings followed in 1811 Rebecca (she married the mathematician Dirichlet in 1831 ) and Paul Mendelssohn in 1812 .

All of Abraham Mendelssohn's children were raised Christian and on March 21, 1816, Johann Jakob Stegemann, the pastor of the Reformed Congregation of the Berlin Jerusalem and New Churches , was baptized Protestant in a house baptism. On this occasion Felix received his baptismal names Jakob and Ludwig. In addition, the “Christian” name Bartholdy was added to the family name , which Lea's brother Jakob Salomon , the Prussian ambassador in Rome , had adopted when he was baptized after the name of the previous owner of one of the family's gardens. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy finally converted to Christianity in 1822 . Felix was confirmed in the Berlin Parochial Church in 1825 .

Childhood (1809-1824)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy at the age of 12, oil sketch by Carl Joseph Begas (1821)

Because of the French occupation of Hamburg , the family moved to Berlin in 1811 , where the widowed grandmother lived. Here Felix and Fanny received their first music lessons from their mother, who was in a direct Bach tradition, whose mother (her grandmother) had been a student of the Bach student Kirnberger. The great-aunt of the two children, Sara Levy , daughter of the Berlin court factor Daniel Itzig , who was the first Prussian Jew to receive the naturalization patent from Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1791 , conveyed this tradition as a student of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and benefactor of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach . The next teacher of Felix and Fanny was Marie Bigot during a temporary stay in Paris in 1816. After returning to Berlin they received lessons in composition from Carl Friedrich Zelter , piano from Ludwig Berger and violin from Carl Wilhelm Henning; They received their general training from Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse , the father of the writer Paul Heyse .

Felix first appeared in public on October 24, 1818 at the age of nine, taking over the piano part in a piano trio by Joseph Woelfl . In April 1819 he joined the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin as an alto singer , where he studied older church music under Zelter's direction. In 1820 he began to compose with extraordinary speed. In that year alone he wrote almost 60 works, including songs, piano sonatas, a piano trio, a sonata for violin and piano, organ pieces and even a small dramatic piece in three scenes. In 1821, to name just a few, he created five three-movement string symphonies, four-part motets, the one-act Singspiele Soldiers' Love and The Two Pedagogues, as well as parts of the Singspiel The Wandering Comedians .

In 1821 , at the age of twelve, Mendelssohn and Carl Friedrich Zelter first visited Goethe , with whom he spent 16 days in Weimar. He also met Carl Maria von Weber for the first time in 1821 , who directed the production of Freischütz in Berlin . In 1822 he met Ludwig Spohr in Kassel and Johann Nepomuk Schelble in Frankfurt , with whom he remained lifelong friends. During this year he was even more productive and wrote, among other things, the opera The Two Neffen or The Uncle from Boston and a piano concerto, which he performed in a concert by Anna Milder .

In the Mendelssohn family it had long been the custom to give musical performances on Sunday mornings in the dining room with a small ensemble, from around 1822 onwards with professional musicians from the royal court orchestra. Felix always led the orchestra and wrote new works for these occasions. He played the piano himself or left it to Fanny, while his sister Rebecca sang and his brother Paul played the cello . In this way, The Two Nephews was performed privately for the first time on his fifteenth birthday in 1824. Between March 3 and 31, 1824 he composed his first symphony in C minor (op. 11), soon afterwards the piano quartet in B minor (op. 3) and the (posthumous) piano sextet (op. 110). It was also at this time that his lifelong friendship with Ignaz Moscheles began .

Youth (1825–1829)

In 1825 Abraham Mendelssohn took Felix with him to Paris, where he met two of the most famous dramatic composers of the time: Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer . On this occasion he also met for the first time with Luigi Cherubini , who expressed a high opinion of his talent and recommended him for the composition of a Kyrie for five voices with full orchestral accompaniment. It is known from letters from this period that Felix had little appreciation of the French school of music; but he made some friendships in Paris, and renewed them on later occasions.

Felix returned to Berlin with his father in May 1825 and interrupted his trip for a second visit to Goethe, in whose house he performed his quartet in B minor, which was dedicated to Goethe and for which he received much applause. On August 10, 1825, he completed the two-act opera The Wedding of Camacho .

Palais Groeben, Mendelssohn house in Berlin, Leipziger Strasse 3
Autograph of the three-part song When the Evening Wind Pulls Through the Trees , 1828

Soon after returning from Paris, Abraham Mendelssohn moved to Leipziger Strasse 3 in 1825 - the Federal Council building is now located there in the former seat of the Prussian mansion - into a spacious, old-fashioned house with an excellent music room and a garden house, where several concerts are held on Sundays a hundred people could listen. The Midsummer Night's Dream Overture was first performed here in the fall of 1826 . The score of this composition is dated “Berlin, August 6, 1826”; Mendelssohn was seventeen and a half years old at the time. He conducted the overture publicly for the first time in Stettin in February 1827.

He also studied at the University of Berlin , where he heard from Hegel , among others .

Meanwhile, Camacho's wedding had been given to the famous Spontini with a view to a possible performance at the opera . The libretto, which is based on an episode in Don Quixote , had been written by Karl Klingemann (1798–1862), and Mendelssohn had put himself into the romance with a clear sense of the particular humor of the original. The work was rehearsed soon after the composer's return from Szczecin and premiered on April 29, 1827. It was apparently received enthusiastically, but it was not performed again because of an intrigue. Mendelssohn himself felt that the opera (now 20 months old) was not appropriate to his artistic development and said that he had already paved his own way in instrumental music. From then on he no longer composed an opera.

Mendelssohn founded a choir to study the choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach (the great Thomaskantor was almost unknown to the public at the time); as early as 1823 he had received a copy of the St. Matthew Passion from Pölchau's autograph from his grandmother Bella Salomon . Above all, Carl Friedrich Zelter had brought Mendelssohn's Bach opus closer with his lessons and rehearsals at the Sing-Akademie in Berlin . Together with Eduard Devrient , Mendelssohn, against Zelter's initial resistance in 1829, carried out a public performance of the shortened St. Matthew Passion at the Sing-Akademie under his direction, with a 158-member Sing-Akademie choir. It was the first revival of the Passion since Bach's death. Heinrich Heine , Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher attended this performance. Zelter had previously rehearsed individual parts of the Passion with the Sing-Akademie, but had considered an overall performance to be impracticable. The performance was so successful that it had to be repeated twice. The third performance was directed by Zelter, as Mendelssohn had meanwhile left for England. According to more recent findings from the analysis of the performance score, it was by no means a “strongly romanticizing” performance. However, Mendelssohn cut out some recitatives, chorales and arias so as not to overwhelm the performers and the audience. Some instruments that were not available also had to be re-instrumented: Mendelssohn himself played the basso continuo on the fortepiano , the oboes d'amore were replaced by clarinets, and the oboes da caccia by violins. Devrient sang the part of Jesus. The grand piano by the Berlin instrument maker Johann Christoph Oesterlein , who belonged to Carl Friedrich Zelter and from whom Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy presumably directed the performances of the St. Matthew Passion, is still on permanent loan from the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum .

First concert tours (1829–1832)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, watercolor by James Warren Childe, 1830
Florence: a watercolor by the 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 1830

In April 1829 Mendelssohn traveled to London for the first time and was enthusiastically received. He made his first appearance in front of an English audience at one of the concerts of the Philharmonic Society , where he conducted his symphony in C minor from the piano on May 25th. On the 30th he played Weber's concert piece by heart , on June 25th Beethoven's Piano Concerto in E flat major (which had not previously been performed in England) and, for the first time, the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. When he returned home from the concert, the score of the overture was left in a cab , whereupon Mendelssohn wrote it down again from memory without any mistakes. At another concert he played his as yet unpublished Concerto in E major for two pianos and orchestra with Moscheles.

After the season was over, Mendelssohn traveled with Klingemann through Scotland , where he was inspired to write his Hebridean Overture and the Scottish Symphony . At the end of November he returned to Berlin.

The visit to England was the first part of a comprehensive travel program planned by his father that took him to all the major art centers in Europe. After rejecting a professorship in Berlin, he went to Italy in May 1830, paused on the way for two weeks in Weimar with Goethe and, after a few stops, reached Rome on November 1st. In Rome he met the French composer Hector Berlioz in March 1831 and became friends with him. Letters from Berlioz show how immensely Mendelssohn impressed him as a person and an artist.

When he came through Munich on his return in October 1831 , he composed and conducted his piano concerto in G minor and accepted a (never fulfilled) commission for an opera at the Munich theater. After stopping in Stuttgart , Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf , he came to Paris on December 9th, where he stayed until April 20th, 1832 this time. At first he lived with his friend, banker Auguste Léo , renewed the old acquaintances of 1825 and had close contact with Liszt and Chopin . On February 19, 1832, the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture was played at the Conservatoire and many of his other compositions were presented to the public. With some of them he also suffered disappointments, for example with the Reformation Symphony . The trip came to an early end due to a cholera infection in March; but he recovered quickly.

On April 23, 1832, he was back in London, where he gave his Concerto in G minor twice at the Philharmonic Concerts, played on the organ in St Paul's Cathedral and published the first volume of his songs without words . He returned to Berlin in July and publicly performed his Reformation Symphony, his Concerto in G minor and his Walpurgis Night in winter .

Berlin, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt (1832–1835)

Mendelssohn house at Schadowstrasse 30 in Düsseldorf, photo around 1905

Felix Mendelssohn did not want to accept a permanent, binding position in the next few years. At the insistence of his father, he nevertheless applied for the position of director of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which had become vacant due to the death of Zelter. In the vote of the members, however, he was subject to the long-time Vice Director Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen , whereby, according to his friend Eduard Devrient, anti-Semitism should have played a role. In the decision to leave Berlin for years, the disappointment about not being elected may have played a not insignificant role, despite the entire family's relationship with the Sing-Akademie and its considerable artistic successes with it (St. Matthew Passion).

In the spring of 1833 he paid a third visit to London to conduct his Italian Symphony , which was first played on May 13 by the Philharmonic Society . On May 26th, he conducted the performances at the Niederrheinischer Musikfest in Düsseldorf with such great success that he was immediately offered the appointment of general music director of the city. The office included the direction of music in the main churches, at the theater and in the rooms of two musical associations.

Before he took on this new obligation, he went to London again with his father and returned to Düsseldorf on September 27, 1833. The composition of Vespers also fell during this period, but was only published posthumously from his estate. His work made a good impression with church music and in the concert hall, but his relationships with the management of the theater , which he was to lead together with Carl Leberecht Immermann , were not very encouraging. Perhaps because of these circumstances, he began to turn away from opera and more towards church music.

During these years Mendelssohn also headed the choir association of the Frankfurt Cäcilien-Verein . He had been very close to this choir and its director, Johann Nepomuk Schelble, for many years and therefore felt obliged to continue the rehearsals and concerts, which Schelble had suffered from a serious illness, as soon as possible. At the request of the Cecilia Society, he composed the overture The Fairy Tale of the Beautiful Melusine and planned several other important works. The stay in Frankfurt also helped Mendelssohn to have a second, friendly encounter with the important opera composer Gioachino Rossini , who stayed there for a few days.

In Düsseldorf he designed the Paulus oratorio based on the life of the Apostle Paul . He found his stay here "extremely pleasant" and he would probably have kept his office much longer if he had not been offered the permanent direction of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig, which put him in one of the highest positions in the German music world at that time could achieve.

Leipzig (1835-1841)

The old Gewandhaus with sheet music from the opera Ali-Baba or The Forty Robbers by Luigi Cherubini performed at Mendelssohn's inaugural concert on October 4, 1835 , watercolor by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1836), dedicated to the singer Henriette Grabau
Cécile Charlotte Sophie Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1846)

In August 1835 Mendelssohn went to Leipzig and on October 4th gave - officially as Kapellmeister , but for the first time in the style of a modern conductor - the first concert in the Gewandhaus with his overture Meeresstille und Happy Fahrt , which is performed less often today than his other overtures will. Mendelssohn's Gewandhaus concerts were enthusiastically received. His recognition was also expressed in an honorary doctorate in philosophy, which he was awarded on March 20, 1836. In the meantime he made progress with his first oratorio ( Paulus ) and performed it for the first time on May 22nd, 1836 at the Niederrheinischer Musikfest in Düsseldorf. On October 3, it was conducted in Liverpool by Sir George Smart for the first time in the English version and on March 16, 1837 again by Mendelssohn in Leipzig.

During this time he tried - as a great admirer of Joseph Haydn - to promote Haydn's works, which he performed with great success on February 22, 1838 in Leipzig.

The next big event in Mendelssohn's life was on March 28, 1837, his marriage to Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud (* October 10, 1817, † September 25, 1853), whom he had met the previous summer in Frankfurt. Eduard Devrient described her as follows: “Cécilie was one of those sweet female appearances, whose quiet and childlike spirit, whose mere closeness, must have a beneficial and calming effect on every man. A slender figure, the facial features of striking beauty. ”The marriage resulted in five children: Carl Wolfgang Paul (February 7, 1838; † February 23, 1897), Marie (October 2, 1839; † October 28, 1897), Paul (January 18, 1841 - February 17, 1880), Felix (May 1, 1843 - February 16, 1851) and Lili (September 19, 1845 - October 10, 1910).

The honeymoon was hardly over when he was called back to England, where he conducted Paulus at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival on September 20th . During this trip he played the organ in St. Paul's and the Christ Church Greyfriars and thus had a lasting influence on the English organists. Here he first considered the plan for his second oratorio Elias .

Between 1838 and 1844 the Violin Concerto in E minor was written for his friend, the violinist Ferdinand David . Today it is one of the most frequently performed and most popular violin concertos of all. Mendelssohn Bartholdy also gave organ concerts in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church and performed his own choral compositions.

During his time in Leipzig, Mendelssohn had three different apartments. When he came to Leipzig unmarried in 1835, he moved into a small apartment on the first floor of the so-called Reichel front building on today's Dittrichring, at that time the eastern border development of the Reichelschen , formerly Apelschen Garten. When he and his wife came to Leipzig in the fall of 1837, they moved into a larger apartment in the part of the Lurgenstein Garden residential complex across from St. Thomas Church, which was completed in the same year . The first four children were born here. In 1845 the family moved again, now to the first floor of a three - story neo - renaissance building on Königstraße (the Mendelssohn house is now at Goldschmidtstraße 12, is maintained by the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation and houses the Mendelssohn Museum) . The apartment with the 23-meter-long corridor had eight rooms, a kitchen and a music room.

Berlin (1841-1845)

After composing the hymn of praise in 1840 and a sixth trip to England in the same year, Mendelssohn was called back to Berlin as Kapellmeister by Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1841 . The Prussian king had lofty plans to make Berlin the art capital of German-speaking countries. Mendelssohn's hopes lay in a reform of the Royal Academy of Arts and the direction of the cathedral choir .

Although he was appointed General Music Director of Prussia in the fall of 1842, the ambitious plans were countered by a hesitant realization and various degrees of resistance. Therefore he did not let himself be deterred from other activities at the Gewandhaus concerts. In 1842 he went to England for the seventh time with his wife and conducted his Scottish Symphony . In his office, which lasted until 1845, he wrote the theater music for Antigone , Oedipus Coloneus , Athalie and for Midsummer Night's Dream .

Last years in Leipzig

Mendelssohn's house where he lived and where he died, Königstrasse (now Goldschmidtstrasse) 12 in Leipzig, around 1900

In 1843 Mendelssohn founded the Conservatorium in Leipzig - the first music academy in Germany - and opened it on April 3 in the buildings of the Gewandhaus. In the same year he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Leipzig. In 1844 he conducted six Philharmonic concerts in London and performed his Midsummer Night's Dream music. He returned to Berlin in September but was able to convince the king to free him from his most onerous obligations.

After a short stay in Frankfurt, Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig in September 1845, resumed his old position at the Gewandhaus and taught regularly at the Conservatory. He devoted himself primarily to his second great oratorio, Elias , which was premiered on August 26, 1846 at the Birmingham Festival. The reception of the work was enthusiastic and after his return to Leipzig he continued to work as usual, but it was clear that his health was seriously affected. In 1847 Mendelssohn traveled a tenth and final time to England to direct performances of Elijah at Exeter Hall, Manchester and Birmingham.

After his return home, the news of the death of his sister Fanny on May 14, 1847 came as a shock. He withdrew from public life and spent several months on vacation in Switzerland and southern Germany. In Leipzig he suffered a first stroke on October 9th . After further strokes on October 25 and November 3, he lost consciousness and died on November 4, 1847 at 9:24 p.m.

After the memorial service on November 7th in the Paulinerkirche in Leipzig , Mendelssohn's coffin was transported to Berlin on a special train. There he was buried on November 8th in the Trinity Cemetery I in Berlin-Kreuzberg next to his sister Fanny and other family members. The grave, as an honorary grave of the State of Berlin , is in field 1.

On November 11, 1847, a memorial concert was held in his honor in the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

His house where he lived and where he died on Königstrasse (today Goldschmidtstrasse 12) in Leipzig is now a museum as the Mendelssohn House and was included in the federal government's blue book as a place of national importance .

Pianist, organist and conductor

pianist

Mendelssohn was one of the most talented piano virtuosos of his time. Even during his lifetime he was legendary for his improvisational skills. There is evidence that he received piano lessons from his mother Lea in 1816 at the age of seven, initially in units of five minutes of lessons, which were then expanded into longer units. On the trip to Paris in 1816 he played for his aunt in Frankfurt, who noted that little Felix had “strength, skill, precision and expression” when he played Bach and Handel for her. In 1817, at the age of eight, he was able to transpose studies by Johann Baptist Cramer from the sheet into other keys . At that time he was taking piano lessons from Marie Bigot in Paris . The first commentary on Mendelssohn's pianistic abilities by a professional musician comes from the French flautist Louis Drouet , whom the young Mendelssohn accompanied on the piano in the winter of 1820. Because of the misalignment of the instruments, Mendelssohn transposed the notes from D to D flat major offhand.

The young Mendelssohn with Goethe in the Juno room (1821)

During Mendelssohn's visit to Goethe in Weimar in 1821, there was a rigorous, comprehensive test of 12-year-old Felix's talent for playing as a pianist. They wanted to measure him against Mozart, whom Goethe himself had heard playing the piano as a child prodigy with covered hands in 1763. On this occasion, Mendelssohn had to prove his ability to improvise as well as his ability to reproduce an orchestral score by heart on the piano, for which he chose the overture from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro . "He gave the orchestral effects so admirably, [...] that the effect was ravishing," said the later music critic Ludwig Rellstab who was present . Mendelssohn then played handwriting by Mozart and Beethoven, which Goethe owned and submitted to him.

In 1824, at the age of fifteen, at the urging of his mother, Mendelssohn received piano lessons from the famous pianist Ignaz Moscheles for a few weeks . According to his own judgment, the latter could not teach him much. Moscheles saw himself sitting next to a master, not a student. He heard the fifteen-year-old play the orchestral part of Mozart's Requiem at a public performance .

During his numerous travels, Mendelssohn performed as a celebrated, versatile pianist at home and abroad. He played his own piano concertos repeatedly, especially the first . In addition, he interpreted the piano concertos No. 4 in G major , his "old riding horse", and No. 5 in E flat major by Beethoven as well as his piano sonatas, often played Weber's concert piece , a favorite, or showed his virtuoso skills with Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue . He jumped in at public performances on the piano for missing orchestral parts, improvised opera melodies on the piano or played Beethoven symphonies. His memory never forgot what he had heard once, and he could call up a melody he had heard at any time and play it on the piano, including Wagner's Venusberg theme from Tannhauser , which the composer had suggested to him on the piano, its notes but he didn't want to show him.

Mendelssohn played many of his concerts on instruments made by the Viennese master piano maker Conrad Graf . In 1832 he asked Aloys Fuchs to buy a fortepiano from Graf and deliver it to his parents' house in Berlin. Mendelssohn was so enthusiastic about this instrument that he decided to order two more pianos from Graf: one for himself and one for his brother's bride.

organist

Mendelssohn was one of the most important organists of the 19th century. He began taking organ lessons at the end of 1820 at the age of 11. His organ teacher was August Wilhelm Bach , a musician who was not related to the Bach family. The young Mendelssohn probably played an organ for the first time in the Rochuskapelle near Bingen. On his first trip to England in 1829, Mendelssohn had the opportunity to play the organ of St Paul's Cathedral . On his second trip to England in 1832, Mendelssohn once again demonstrated his organ skills. He performed again in St Paul's, but also tried the organs in Westminster Abbey , St. John's Chapel and St. John's (Waterloo). The English organs lacked a full pedal for a performance of works by Bach, which forced Mendelssohn to make spontaneous adjustments when playing. The influence of Mendelssohn's playing led to a "complete revolution in the style of English organ playing" in England. Mendelssohn Bach was only able to play on the organ in St. Paul's without significant restrictions. At a further performance in St. Paul's in 1837, the crowd of the crowded cathedral by Mendelssohn's Bach interpretations was so impressed that they did not want to leave the church and the clerk forced the Kalkanten to go home. The organ then quietly faded away without the bellows being stepped on. The English music critic Henry Gauntlett , himself an organist, wrote about the concert in an article in Musical World magazine (1838) that Mendelssohn's attack was “so even and constant, so delicate and so floating that no difficulties, however terrifying they might be, could hinder or even disturb his equanimity ”. Gauntlett went on to describe Mendelssohn's interpretation of Bach as “unearthly large”. His improvisational play is "very differentiated", the soft sentences "full of tender expression and exquisite passion". In his loud foreplay he saw "a limitless wealth of new ideas". The Six Organ Sonatas , the most important composition for this instrument since Bach's death, published two years before his death, Mendelssohn no longer played himself in public.

conductor

Mendelssohn was a respected conductor of both his own works and the works of other composers. He was one of the first conductors to conduct with a baton and to systematically complete rehearsals. But the news required great care about the tempos, dynamics, and the orchestra players themselves. They were rebuked when they were defiant and praised when he was satisfied with them.

On February 11, 1829, Mendelssohn conducted the dress rehearsal for the St. Matthew Passion with choir, soloists and orchestra from a grand piano positioned diagonally to the stage with the baton. In doing so, he did not keep beating the beat. One choir stood behind him, the other and the orchestra in front of him. The first public concert with the baton was on May 25, 1829 in London. One of the first orchestral concerts in Germany, which the composer conducted with the baton, took place in Munich in 1831, including his C minor symphony and his 1st piano concerto . When Mendelssohn took over the orchestra in the Gewandhaus Leipzig in 1835, he insisted on the fundamental innovation of conducting choir and orchestra with a baton and no longer practicing separate rehearsals between choir and orchestra. In Leipzig Mendelssohn directed the Gewandhaus Orchestra and made it very famous. Although he focused on the great composers whose names were already beginning to take on classical status, as a conductor he added works by Schumann, Berlioz , Gade and others to his programs. Wagner criticized Mendelssohn's performance of the Beethoven symphonies as being too fast. Among those who admired Mendelssohn's conducting skills was Hector Berlioz, who, on the occasion of an invitation to Leipzig in 1843, exchanged baton with Mendelssohn.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in posterity

The composer's artistic and social heritage is researched, preserved and cultivated internationally by the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig.

Monuments

The old monument in Leipzig, around 1900
The monument in Leipzig, inaugurated in 2008, 2011

  • Bronze copy of the marble bust by Ernst Rietschel , exhibited at Friedhof I of the Trinity Community in Berlin-Kreuzberg

  • Monument in Düsseldorf, inaugurated in 2012, cast bronze based on the original from 1901

  • Bronze bust in front of the Mendelssohn Remise in Berlin-Mitte by Lore Plietzsch

Places of remembrance and plaques

Grave cross by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
  • The tomb of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny is located in Berlin-Kreuzberg on Trinity Cemetery I between Mehringdamm and Zossener Straße (near Hallesches Tor underground station ).
  • In Frankfurt am Main , the Mendelssohnruhe in the south of the Frankfurt city forest commemorates the composer with a memorial stone and plaque, donated in 1906. In July 1839 a festival in honor of Mendelssohn Bartholdy had taken place here in the presence of Mendelssohn. During the festivities, one of his choral works, Six Songs for Singing in the Open Air, was premiered there. The memorial stone was destroyed during the Nazi era and restored in the same place after the Second World War.
  • In the Taunus town of Eppstein , near the imperial temple, there is a memorial in honor of Felix Mendelssohn. The inscription on the bronze plaque near a vantage point with a view of Eppstein reads: TO THE GREAT COMPOSER FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY, WHO WAS Often times in EPPSTEIN BETWEEN 1837 AND 1847, DEDICATED AGAIN IN 1995, SINGERS ASSOCIATION EPPSTEINESVEREINUNGSVEREINUNGSVEREININGS 1845/61 EPPSTEIN EV
  • In Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park in Berlin , near Potsdamer Platz , there is a large boulder, which is designated as a natural monument and designed as a memorial stone. The portrait relief and Mendelssohn's signature come from Ivo Breuker .
  • In Hamburg , in 1997, on the 150th year of death, two memorial plaques with portrait reliefs of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Fanny Hensel were erected in a small green area on Ludwig-Erhard-Straße near the house where he was born (Große Michaelisstraße 14), which was destroyed in the war. In the Hamburg City Hall there is a column relief with his portrait, and in the anteroom of the Michel there is also a relief.
  • On March 20, 2002, the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit , unveiled the memorial plaque for Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Fanny Hensel on what is now the Bundesrat building , Leipziger Strasse, where the Mendelssohn Bartholdy family once lived. It was installed there on the initiative of the Mendelssohn Society .
  • Memorial in Wengen , Switzerland: On August 21, 1842, Felix Mendelssohn made a sketch of the Jungfrau mountain on his hike . A memorial has been located here since 2004.
  • In the church of Ringgenberg BE , a memorial plaque is attached to the case of the organ from 1837, which reminds us that he repeatedly played on this organ in 1847 during his several months' stay in Interlaken . However, the console and pipe material are no longer preserved.
  • The Mendelssohn Inlet , a bay on the coast of the Antarctic Alexander Island , carries since 1961 its name

Postage stamps and commemorative coin

Other honors

reception

Extreme views

Mendelssohn's reception during his lifetime to this day fluctuates between extreme extremes. He was celebrated as a young composer, conductor, pianist and organist who toured numerous European countries. In England there was almost a “Mendelssohn mania”. He was considered the driving force behind a Bach renaissance , saved the genre of the oratorio , composed a number of undisputed masterpieces and was nicknamed "Mozart of the 19th century" by Schumann. The personality cult around him was intensified in the years after his death. Fifty years after his death, however, owing to current trends, it was almost completely erased from public memory. This applied to Germany and also, shifted by a few decades, to Great Britain, where he had enjoyed just as much fame during his lifetime.

Criticism from the 1840s

Inseparable from the political framework and change ( March Revolution 1848 ), in which Wagner's tirade against Mendelssohn was embedded, after his death his music was not considered innovative in terms of harmony and tonality. It was said to have a sentimental and soft character with clearly constructed, symmetrical phrases and an abundance of rhythmically predictable melodies. Similar criticism came from abroad, for example from Berlioz . In general, there was increasing talk of pleasant, elegant and superficial music without the depth of Beethoven or Wagner.

Anti-Semitic agitation and unprejudiced appreciation in the 19th century

After his death, Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the target of anti-Semitic propaganda. It began with Richard Wagner , who was also influenced by Mendelssohn's compositions, with his pamphlet Judaism in Music , in 1850, three years after Mendelssohn's death, appeared at first under a pseudonym, and then expanded in 1869 under his name. At the time of the second publication, Wagner was already an influential composer, and he “damaged Mendelssohn's reputation permanently”: his view contributed to the disdain for the work of Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the second half of the 19th century.

In the 19th century, however, there were also many voices who appropriately appreciated Mendelssohn's music and contribution to music history and ignored anti-Semitic clichés. August Reissman wrote in 1867:

“Accordingly, Mendelssohn's creative activity was conducive to the entire development of culture through a series of eternally valid works of art which he created; not to the same extent for the further development of art, since it did not actually strike a new tone that encouraged further pursuit. The myriad of his imitators were only able to appropriate his artistic style, but not to continue it in a certain direction. (...) Thanks to the high level of mastery with which he executed these sound images, he brought this special feature of the musical development of our time to a perfect conclusion. "

Rejection in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century

In addition to Wagner's criticism, there was a second setback in Great Britain, which tried to overcome the Victorian era towards the end of the 19th century . Mendelssohn was a symbol of the Victorian era, which was based on a long-lasting German-British friendship. The artist enjoyed the Queen's personal admiration. Mendelssohn no longer fit into the backlash towards the end of the 19th century. The Encyclopædia Britannica noted in 1911 that Mendelssohn's reputation had "disappeared apart from a few inexpressibly beautiful exceptional works".

Early 20th century

Ernst Wolff wrote in 1905:

“Felix Mendelssohn can be regarded as one of the first modern masters of music in this sense. The history of music has long recognized how he has supported their development through his work as a creative and performing artist; ... "

Works like his Midsummer Night's Dream , the Italian and Scottish symphonies , the violin concerto or the songs without words have always been very popular with classical music lovers .

National Socialist Hostility

After the takeover of the Nazi regime in 1933, the works of Mendelssohn were barely played. There was no official ban, but the anti-Semitic campaign of the Reichsmusikkammer induced most musicians to refrain from performing Jewish composers of their own accord, and consequently also led to the deliberate exclusion of Mendelssohn's music. A counter-example to this was Wilhelm Furtwängler , who performed Mendelssohn's 125th birthday in February 1934, Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream .

For the Luther anniversary in 1933, the dissident seminar director and later senior church councilor Julius Schieder gave a lecture in Neustadt an der Aisch , and on this occasion a Luther hymn by Mendelssohn Bartholdy was performed by local musicians.

The German composers Carl Orff , Julius Weismann , Walter Girnatis and Winfried Zillig were asked to write musical alternatives to Mendelssohn Bartholdy's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream . Busts and memorial plaques by Mendelssohn Bartholdy were removed (e.g. the Mendelssohn memorial in front of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in November 1936 - against which Furtwängler publicly protested).

The Mayor of Leipzig, Carl Goerdeler , resigned from his office in his absence due to the removal of the Mendelssohn monument and subsequently became one of the central figures of the German resistance.

First decades of the post-war period

The anti-Semitically motivated devaluation of Mendelssohn's music practiced during the Nazi era continued to have an effect for several decades after 1945. The musicologist Hans Schnoor , who was strictly Nazi and a member of the NSDAP , rated Mendelssohn's music in his book History of Music in 1973 with the following words, which now avoid propaganda terms such as “racial” or “Jewish-degenerate”:

“As a setback against Mendelssohn's 'fine talk', which in the course of the 19th century diluted into meaningless rhetoric of entire genders of 'Mendelssohnians', clear symptoms of quick forgetting of the master's form and content emerged around a hundred years after the birth of the master but to non-binding art; people began to speak of a musical miracle with no emotional substance. "

The topic of anti-Semitic agitation against Mendelssohn was also not addressed for a long time after 1945. For example, in the Brockhaus Riemann Musiklexikon from 1979, in the four-page personal entry on Mendelssohn, neither the anti-Semitic agitation of Wagner nor the National Socialist agitation against the composer from 1933 to 1945 is dealt with in one word.

Recent rehabilitation

In the second half of the 20th century, efforts were made increasingly to rehabilitate Mendelssohn. A plethora of primary sources including thousands of letters addressed to him have been sighted. Mendelssohn's polarizing opposition to Beethoven or Wagner, for example, was relativized in favor of more differentiated considerations. One increasingly recognizes a “wide-ranging aesthetic” in Mendelssohn's oeuvre, which allows for new and different evaluations.

Mendelssohn Awards

Mendelssohn Scholarship (United Kingdom)

The Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation , which is affiliated with the Royal Academy of Music , has been awarding scholarships to promote the education of musicians at irregular intervals since 1856 . Initially, the money was used to finance additional training at the Leipzig Conservatory. The first winner was Arthur Sullivan .

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize (Berlin)

The Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin is the oldest prize for classical musicians in Germany. It succeeds the Mendelssohn Prize , which was donated by the Prussian state from 1879 to 1936.

International Mendelssohn Prize in Leipzig

The International Mendelssohn Prize in Leipzig (until 2009: Leipzig Mendelssohn Prize) has been awarded by the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Foundation in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig since 2007 . It can be awarded in three categories: music , visual arts and social engagement .

Sibling Mendelssohn Medal

The Geschwister Mendelssohn Medal is awarded annually by the Berlin Choir Association in cooperation with the Mendelssohn Society in the Mendelssohn Remise in Berlin-Mitte for outstanding services to Berlin's amateur choirs.

Works and catalogs of works

The composer's works are indexed in two catalogs of works. A directory from 1882 lists 350 compositions. On August 26, 2009 a new, scientific catalog raisonné - the Mendelssohn catalog raisonné (MWV) - with 750 compositions in 26 groups was published by the Mendelssohn Research Center of the Saxon Academy of Sciences . The collective manuscripts and prints of Mendelssohn Bartholdy's works are also included. In an appendix to the directory, works with dubious authorship and his adaptations of other works are listed.

Recordings

  • Penelope Crawford. Felix Mendelssohn "The Young Felix Mendelssohn". Conrad Graf 1835, Hammerglügel
  • Ronald bride groom . Felix Mendelssohn "Piano Concertos". Fortepiano after Pleyel 1830 by Paul McNulty
  • Sergei Istomin , Viviana Sofronitsky . Felix Mendelssohn "Complete Works for Cello and Pianoforte". Hammerglügel after Conrad Graf 1819 by Paul McNulty
  • Riko Fukuda, Tobias Koch. Chopin, Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Hiller, Liszt "Grand duo Œuvres pour duo de pianofortes". Conrad Graf 1830 and 1845, fortepianos

Letters

  • Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters . Ed .: Rudolf Elvers . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-22142-0 .
  • Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: All letters in 12 volumes . Based on the collection created by Rudolf Elvers, edited by Helmut Loos and Wilhelm Seidel . Bärenreiter, Kassel.
    • Volume 1: 1816 to June 1830, Kassel 2008
    • Volume 2: July 1830 to July 1832. 2009.
    • Volume 3: August 1832 to July 1834. 2010.
    • Volume 4: August 1834 to June 1836. 2011.
    • Volume 5: July 1836 to January 1838. 2012.
    • Volume 6: February 1838 to September 1839. 2012
    • Volume 7: October 1839 to February 1841. 2013.
    • Volume 8: March 1841 to August 1842. 2013.
    • Volume 9: September 1842 to December 1843. 2015.
    • Volume 10: January 1844 to June 1845, 2016
    • Volume 11: July 1845 to January 1847. 2016.
    • Volume 12: February 1847 to November 1847 as well as the complete index of volumes 1 to 12, 2017.
  • Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Letters . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1997, ISBN 3-930850-68-0 ( facsimile printing of the volumes of letters published by Hermann Mendelssohn in 1861 and 1863).
    • Volume 1: Travel letters from the years 1830 to 1832
    • Volume 2: Letters from the years 1833 to 1847
  • Letters from Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 1-75643 .
  • Regina Back: "Friend of my music soul". Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Carl Klingemann in a letter dialogue . Bärenreiter, Kassel 2014, ISBN 978-3-7618-2299-9 .
  • Robert and Clara Schumann in correspondence with the Mendelssohn family. Edited by Kristin RM Krahe, Katrin Reyersbach and Thomas Synofzik (= Schumann-Briefedition , Series II, Volume 1), Dohr, Cologne 2009, pp. 29–308.

Secondary literature

  • Eka Donner: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. From the score of a musician's life . Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, ISBN 3-7700-0989-4 .
  • Johannes Forner: The Mendelssohn Miracle: Portrait of a great musician . Faber & Faber, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86730-090-2 .
  • Martin Geck : Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2009, ISBN 978-3-499-50709-0 .
  • Matthias Geuting (ed.): Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Interpretations of his works . Laaber, Laaber 2016, ISBN 978-3-89007-505-1 .
  • Susanna Großmann-Vendrey: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the music of the past (=  studies on the history of music in the 19th century . Volume 17 ). Gustav Bosse, Regensburg 1969.
  • Peter Gülke : Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. “Who sees through the contradictions of the time most clearly” . Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel / Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-04540-9 .
  • Heinrich Eduard Jacob : Felix Mendelssohn and his time: Portrait and fate of a master . unchanged reprint of the 1st edition. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-596-30862-0 (first edition: 1959).
  • Hans-Günter Klein: The music events at the Mendelssohns - a “musical salon”? The presentations at the symposium on September 2, 2006 in Leipzig. In: Hans-Günter Klein on behalf of the Mendelssohn House (ed.): Leipzig - Music and City - Studies and Documents . tape 2 , 2006, ISBN 3-00-020514-4 (with contributions by Barbara Hahn, Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Wolfgang Dinglinger, Hans-Günter Klein, Ralf Wehner).
  • Hans-Günter Klein (Ed.): Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. An almanac . Henschel-Verlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-89487-619-7 .
  • Eckart Kleßmann: The Mendelssohns. Pictures from a German family . Artemis, Zurich / Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1020-9 .
  • Wulf Konold : Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his time . 3. Edition. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2013, ISBN 978-3-921518-82-3 (first edition: 1984).
  • Thomas Lackmann : The luck of the Mendelssohns - story of a German family . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-351-02600-5 .
  • Johann Christian Lobe : A quartet with Goethe . In: The Gazebo . 1867, p. 4–8 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - The young Mendelssohn-Bartholdy at Goethe - original drawing by C. Döpler).
  • Elise Polko : Memories of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: An artist and human life . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1868.
  • Johannes Popp: Travels to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Stations of his life and work . Westkreuz-Verlag, Berlin / Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-939721-01-7 .
  • Robert Schumann: Memories of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy . ( Wikisource - circa 1848).
  • Peter Sühring : Felix Mendelssohn. The (un) perfect sound artist . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-95565-285-2 .
  • Peter Sutermeister : Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Letters from a trip through Germany, Italy and Switzerland . Niehans, Zurich 1958.
  • Ralph Larry Todd: Mendelssohn: His life - his music . Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89948-098-6 .
  • Eric Werner: Mendelssohn. Life and work in a new perspective . Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7611-0571-1 .
  • Hans Christoph Worbs: Mendelssohn Bartholdy (=  rororo picture monograph . Rm 215). Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1974, ISBN 3-499-50215-1 .

reference books

To the reception

  • Elisabeth Reda: Remembrance and Memory in the Dictatorship. Decanonization of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy under the swastika? In: Lena Nieper, Julian Schmitz (ed.): Music as a medium of memory. Memory - history - present (= music and sound culture. 17). transcript, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8376-3279-8 , pp. 137–155.
  • Willi Reich (Ed.): Felix Mendelssohn in the mirror of his own statements and contemporary documents . Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-7175-1281-1 .
  • Yvonne Wasserloos: Heros and eyesore. The monuments to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in England and Germany from 1860 to 1936 . In: The Tonkunst . No. 3 , 2009, ISSN  1863-3536 , p. 467-478 .
  • Yvonne Wasserloos: Damnatio memoriae. The urban cultural policy and the dismantling of the Mendelssohn monument in Leipzig . In: Sabine Mecking, Andreas Wirsching (ed.): City administration in National Socialism. System-stabilizing dimensions of communal rule . Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-506-79608-9 , pp. 139-179 .
  • Yvonne Wasserloos: Adoration and ostracism: The Mendelssohn monument in Düsseldorf . In: Bernd Kortländer (Ed.): “By the way, I like myself here very much”. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Düsseldorf . Exhibition catalog. Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-936698-11-4 , pp. 150-163 .
  • Yvonne Wasserloos: In the shade. Düsseldorf's relationship with Mendelssohn before and after 1945 . In: Andreas Ballstaedt, Volker Kalisch, Bernd Kortländer (eds.): Citizenship and the public. Mendelssohn's work in Düsseldorf . Ed. Argus, Schliengen / Markgräferland 2012, ISBN 978-3-931264-62-8 , p. 169-184 .

"Mendelssohn Studies"

Novels

  • Pierre LaMure: Beyond Happiness. The romantic life novel by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy . Scherz Verlag, Munich 1987.
  • Thea Derado : Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. From the brother's shadow . Kaufmann, Lahr 2005, ISBN 3-7806-5304-4 (biography of a novel - describes Felix Mendelssohn from the perspective of his older sister).
  • Christa Holtei : The game of deception. Düsseldorf 1834 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2015, ISBN 978-3-7700-1542-9 (historical novel about Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's work as music director in Düsseldorf).

Movie

  • Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - The pain of happiness. A composer's life between tragedy and triumph. 45 minutes; Director: Eva Jobst; MDR television ; First broadcast: February 8, 2009.

Web links

Commons : Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy  - Sources and full texts

Biographical

grades

Societies and projects

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Wrongly also written to Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy .
  2. ↑ Susanna Großmann-Vendrey: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the music of the past. (= Studies on the history of music in the 19th century. Volume 17). Regensburg 1969, pp. 124, 151.
  3. ^ John Michael Cooper: Mendelssohn and Berlioz - Selective Affinities. In: Angela Mace, Nicole Grimes (Eds.): Mendelssohn Perspectives. Ashgate Publishing, 2012, p. 130.
  4. ↑ Ernst Wolff: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Severus Verlag, Hamburg, 2014, pp. 94 and 95.
  5. ↑ In a letter to Ignaz Moscheles dated February 7, 1834. In Felix Moscheles (ed.): Letters from Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles. Sendet, Nendeln 1976, ISBN 3-500-30220-3 (reprint of the Leipzig 1888 edition).
  6. ↑ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Foundation: Gewandhaus zu Leipzig ( Memento from August 19, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ).
  7. ↑ Eckart Kleßmann: The Mendelssohns. Pictures from a German family . Artemis, Zurich / Munich 1990. p. 128.
  8. ↑ Otto Biba: Mendelssohn and Haydn . Musikblätter der Wiener Philharmoniker (2009), volume 9, p. 351.
  9. ^ Letter from Mendelssohn to his mother dated June 21, 1842, quoted from Mendelssohn in London ( Memento from December 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ August Reissmann: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: his life and his works. Good day, 1872.
  11. ^ Exhibition 2009: Der Leipziger Mendelssohn (accessed on May 1, 2014).
  12. ↑ a b He must have been happy here . In: Die Zeit , No. 20/2009.
  13. ^ Association for the History of Berlin eV, founded in 1865: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . Retrieved October 28, 2020,
  14. ↑ Signals for the musical world , vol. 5, No. 47, 1847, p. 369f. ( Digitized version )
  15. ^ A b c R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 13.
  16. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 58.
  17. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 60.
  18. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 99.
  19. ↑ Ludwig Rellstab: From my life. Second volume. Guttentag, Berlin 1861, p. 143.
  20. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 113 ff.
  21. ↑ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - On dark heights . In: Die Zeit , No. 5/2009.
  22. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 165.
  23. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 486 and 490.
  24. ↑ Todd, R. (ed.) (2012). Mendelssohn and His World . [ebook] Princeton University Press. p.287
  25. ↑ Todd, R. (ed.) (2012). Mendelssohn and His World. [ebook] Princeton University Press. p.293
  26. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 295.
  27. ↑ Henry Gauntlett, quoted and translated. in: R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 397.
  28. ↑ Clive Brown: A Portrait of Mendelssohn. New Haven / London 2003, ISBN 0-300-09539-2 , pp. 214-215.
  29. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 243.
  30. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 228.
  31. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 238.
  32. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 346.
  33. ↑ Richard Wagner: My life. Hofenberg, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8430-2105-0 .
  34. ^ R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, p. 493.
  35. ↑ dradio.de, November 4, 2011: Feature .
  36. ^ Sculpture: Portrait bust of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with an integral socle. Marble. Mendelssohn bust by Ernst Rietschel 1850. In: Royal Academy of Music. Accessed January 14, 2020 .
  37. ↑ mendelssohn-in-duesseldorf.de ( Memento from January 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  38. ↑ Düsseldorf's citizens donated a new monument. In: www.duesseldorf.de. State capital Düsseldorf, September 27, 2012, archived from the original on October 23, 2012 ; accessed on January 14, 2020 . . In detail: Anne Monika Sommer-Bloch: A return. In: Kalonymos . 15th year, no. 12, Duisburg 2012, p. 16.
  39. ^ Frank Berger, Christian Setzepfandt : 101 non-locations in Frankfurt. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-7973-1248-8 , p. 116 f.
  40. ↑ Mendelssohn memorial , Beautification Association Eppstein e. V., accessed on November 1, 2017.
  41. ↑ Colin Tymothy Eatcock: Mendelssohn and Victorian England. Ashgate 2009, pp. 67-92.
  42. ↑ a b c d R. Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life - his music. Carus / Reclam, 2008, pp. 13-22.
  43. ^ Anton Neumayr: Famous composers in the mirror of medicine. Volume 3: Carl Maria von Weber, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms . Ibera, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85052-217-5 , p. 78.
  44. ↑ Thielemann, p. 112.
  45. ↑ August Reissmann: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy - His life and his works. Verlag von I. Guttentag, Berlin 1867, pp. 303, 304 and 306
  46. ↑ Ernst Wolff: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . 1905. (Reprint: Severus Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86347-995-4 , p. 9.)
  47. ↑ No discussion about the value of the compositions. About the reception of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's music in the “Third Reich” In: Neue Musikzeitung. Volume 46, No. 9, 1997.
  48. ^ Curriculum vitae of Wilhelm Furtwängler ( memento from December 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at musikrezensions.de, accessed on June 9, 2018.
  49. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922-1933. (= Streiflichter from the local history. Special volume 4). Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016, ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , p. 157 f.
  50. ↑ REVERBERATIONS; Going Beyond 'Carmina Burana,' and Beyond Orff's Stigma. In: The New York Times . December 5, 2003.
  51. ↑ Peter Hoffmann: Carl Goerdeler against the persecution of the Jews. Böhlau, 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21024-3 .
  52. ^ Gerhard Ritter: Carl Goerdeler and the German resistance movement. DVA, 1984, ISBN 3-421-06181-5 .
  53. ↑ Quoted from Kurt Masur, Wilhelm Seidel (ed.): The pride and ornament of our city - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Leipzig. Edition Peters, 2004, ISBN 3-369-00275-2 , p. 71.
  54. ↑ Leipzig Mendelssohn Prize. Archived from the original on February 2, 2009 ; accessed on January 14, 2020 .
  55. ↑ Mendelssohn Bartholdy's complete catalog of works, mdr.de of August 26, 2009 ( Memento of August 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
  56. ↑ Review by Peter Sühring on info-net-music of 6 March 2013; Retrieved September 22, 2014.
  57. ↑ Review by Peter Sühring on info-netz-musik from March 6, 2013; Retrieved September 22, 2014.
  58. ↑ Review by Peter Sühring on info-netz-musik on September 4, 2014; Retrieved September 22, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Jakob Ludwig Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
BIRTH DATE February 3, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg , Germany
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1847
PLACE OF DEATH Leipzig , Germany