Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3, 1809, and died on November 4, 1847. He was a German composer, pianist, organist, and conductor who lived during the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn wrote many types of music, including symphonies, concertos, piano pieces, organ music, and chamber music. Some of his most famous works include the overture and music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which includes the "Wedding March"), the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the Violin Concerto, the String Octet, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." His Songs Without Words are his most well-known solo piano pieces.
Mendelssohn’s grandfather was the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. However, Felix was not raised with a religion until he was baptized into the Reformed Christian church at age seven. He was recognized as a musical talent at a young age, but his parents were careful not to push him too hard. His sister, Fanny, also received a strong musical education and was a skilled composer and pianist. Some of her early songs were published under Felix’s name, and her Easter Sonata was once wrongly credited to him after being lost and rediscovered in the 1970s.
Mendelssohn had early success in Germany and helped bring renewed attention to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially through his performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. He was well received during his travels across Europe as a composer, conductor, and soloist. His ten visits to Britain, where many of his major works were first performed, were an important part of his career. His musical style was more traditional compared to other composers of his time, such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan, and Hector Berlioz. The Leipzig Conservatory, which he founded, became a center for this traditional approach.
For many years, Mendelssohn’s work was not widely appreciated due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 1800s and early 1900s. However, his creativity has since been recognized again, and he is now considered one of the most popular composers of the Romantic era.
Life
Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, which was an independent city-state at the time. He was born in the same house where Ferdinand David, the dedicatee and first performer of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, was born a year later. Mendelssohn’s father, Abraham Mendelssohn, was a banker and the son of Moses Mendelssohn, a German Jewish philosopher whose family was well-known in the German Jewish community. Until he was baptized at age seven, Mendelssohn was raised without religious instruction. His mother, Lea Salomon, was part of the Itzig family and the sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy. Mendelssohn was the second of four children; his older sister, Fanny, also showed early and exceptional musical talent.
The family moved to Berlin in 1811, leaving Hamburg secretly to avoid French punishment for the Mendelssohn bank’s role in breaking Napoleon’s Continental System blockade. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn wanted to give their children—Fanny, Felix, Paul, and Rebecka—the best education possible. Fanny became a well-known pianist and composer in Berlin, though Abraham initially believed she would be more musically talented than Felix. However, it was not considered proper for a woman to pursue a career in music, so Fanny remained an active but non-professional musician. Abraham was hesitant to let Felix follow a musical path until it became clear that Felix was seriously committed to it.
Mendelssohn grew up in an intellectual environment. His parents hosted a salon in their Berlin home, where artists, musicians, and scientists, including Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (who later married Mendelssohn’s sister Rebecka), often visited. Sarah Rothenburg, a musician, described the household as a place where “Europe came to their living room.”
Abraham Mendelssohn stopped practicing Judaism before Felix was born and decided not to have Felix circumcised. Felix and his siblings were initially raised without religious education. On March 21, 1816, they were baptized in a private ceremony in their Berlin apartment by the Reformed Protestant minister of the Jerusalem Church. At that time, Felix was given the additional names Jakob Ludwig. Abraham and Lea were baptized in 1822 and officially adopted the surname Mendelssohn Bartholdy (which they had used since 1812) for themselves and their children.
The name Bartholdy was added at the suggestion of Lea’s brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, who had inherited a property with that name and used it as his surname. In a letter to Felix in 1829, Abraham explained that adopting the Bartholdy name was meant to show a clear break from the traditions of his father, Moses: “There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius.” When Felix began his musical career, he did not completely drop the name Mendelssohn as Abraham had requested, but he used the form “Mendelssohn Bartholdy” on his letters and visiting cards. In 1829, his sister Fanny wrote to him about “Bartholdy […] this name that we all dislike.”
Mendelssohn began piano lessons with his mother at age six and studied with Marie Bigot in Paris at age seven. Later in Berlin, all four Mendelssohn children studied piano with Ludwig Berger, who had been a student of Muzio Clementi. From at least May 1819, Mendelssohn (along with his sister Fanny) studied counterpoint and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. This was an important influence on his future career. Zelter was likely recommended by his aunt Sarah Levy, who had been a student of W. F. Bach and a patron of C. P. E. Bach. Sarah Levy was a talented keyboard player and often performed with Zelter’s orchestra at the Berliner Singakademie. She and the Mendelssohn family were important supporters of the Singakademie. Sarah had collected many Bach family manuscripts, which she donated to the Singakademie. Zelter, who preferred traditional music, admired the Bach tradition, which likely shaped Felix Mendelssohn’s musical tastes. His works, especially his fugues and chorales, show a clear and precise style similar to Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music deeply influenced him.
Mendelssohn likely made his first public concert appearance at age nine, when he accompanied a horn duo in a chamber music concert. He was a very productive composer from an early age. As a teenager, his works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for his parents’ friends, who were part of Berlin’s intellectual elite. Between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn wrote 13 string symphonies for these concerts, as well as many chamber works. His first published work, a piano quartet, was released when he was 13. It is likely that Abraham Mendelssohn arranged for this quartet to be published by the Schlesinger music house. In 1824, at age 15, Mendelssohn wrote his first symphony for a full orchestra (in C minor, Op. 11).
At age 16, Mendelssohn composed his String Octet in E-flat major, a work considered “mark[ing] the beginning of his maturity as a composer.” This Octet and his Overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written a year later in 1826, are his best-known early works. Later, in 1843, he also wrote incidental music for the play, including the famous “Wedding March.” The Overture is perhaps the earliest example of a concert overture—a piece not written to accompany a staged performance but to evoke a literary theme during a concert. This genre became popular in the Romantic music era.
In 1824, Mendelssohn studied under the composer and pianist Ignaz Moscheles, who wrote in his diaries that he had little to teach him. Moscheles and Mendelssohn became close friends and lifelong colleagues. In 1827, Mendelssohn’s opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho premiered and was performed only once in his lifetime. The failure of this production made him reluctant to write operas again.
In addition to music, Mendelssohn studied art, literature, languages, and philosophy. He was especially interested in classical literature and translated Terence’s *Andria
Personal life
Felix Mendelssohn was often described as calm and happy, especially in family stories written by his nephew Sebastian Hensel after Mendelssohn's death. However, this view was not entirely accurate. Music historian R. Larry Todd explains that people in Mendelssohn's circle, including Hensel, made his character seem better than it was. Mendelssohn was sometimes called the "discontented Polish count" because he was distant with others. He mentioned this nickname in his letters. He also had sudden outbursts of anger that sometimes caused him to collapse. In one instance during the 1830s, after his wishes were ignored, he became so upset that he spoke incoherently in English. His father finally stopped him, and he slept for 12 hours before returning to normal. These outbursts may have contributed to his early death.
Mendelssohn loved drawing and painting with pencil and watercolor, a skill he practiced his whole life. His letters show he could write humorously in German and English, often including funny sketches or cartoons.
On March 21, 1816, when he was seven years old, Mendelssohn was baptized with his siblings in a private ceremony by Johann Jakob Stegemann, a minister of the Evangelical Church in Berlin. Though he was a member of the Reformed Church, Mendelssohn was proud of his Jewish heritage, especially his connection to his grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn. He worked with a publisher to create a complete collection of Moses' writings, with help from his uncle, Joseph Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn rarely discussed his personal beliefs, even with close friends. His friend Devrient wrote that Mendelssohn only shared his deepest thoughts in rare, private moments, often through light jokes. For example, in a letter to his sister, he teased her about a relative's comment on Jews: "What do you mean by saying you are not hostile to Jews? I hope this was a joke […] It is really sweet of you that you do not despise your family, isn't it?" Some modern scholars argue Mendelssohn either deeply respected his Jewish roots or was fully committed to his Christian faith.
Mendelssohn was cautious about new musical styles popular among his peers. He had friendly but sometimes distant relationships with composers like Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Meyerbeer. In his letters, he criticized their work. He called Liszt's music "inferior to his playing" and "only for skilled musicians." He described Berlioz's overture Les francs-juges as having "a frightful muddle" in its orchestration, and he called Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable "ignoble," calling its villain "a poor devil." When a friend, Ferdinand Hiller, joked that Mendelssohn resembled Meyerbeer—both were descendants of Rabbi Moses Isserles—Mendelssohn was so upset he immediately got a haircut to look different.
Mendelssohn strongly disliked Paris and its music, viewing them with suspicion and a near-puritanical dislike. Attempts to introduce him to Saint-Simonianism, a radical movement, led to awkward situations. His closest friend, Ignaz Moscheles, was an older composer with similar conservative views. Moscheles kept these traditional ideas at the Leipzig Conservatory until his death in 1870.
Mendelssohn married Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a French Reformed Church clergyman, on March 28, 1837. They had five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Lili, and Felix August. Felix August, the second youngest, suffered from health issues after contracting measles in 1844 and died in 1851. Carl became a historian and professor at Heidelberg and Freiburg universities, later dying in a psychiatric institution. Paul was a chemist who helped develop aniline dye. Marie married Victor Benecke and lived in London, while Lili married Adolf Wach, a law professor in Leipzig.
The family papers collected by Marie and Lili's children form the basis of Mendelssohn's manuscript collection, including his letters, now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Cécile died six years after Mendelssohn, on September 25, 1853.
Mendelssohn became close to the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he met in October 1844. Private papers, revealed in 2013, showed Mendelssohn wrote passionate letters to Lind, urging her to join him in an adulterous relationship and threatening suicide if she refused. These letters were destroyed after Lind's death.
Mendelssohn and Lind worked together, and he wrote an opera, Lorelei, for her based on a Rhine legend. The opera was unfinished when he died. He also tailored the aria "Hear Ye Israel" in his oratorio Elijah to Lind's voice, though she sang it only after his death. In 1847, Mendelssohn attended a performance of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable to hear Lind's debut, despite disliking the opera. A critic noted Mendelssohn's relief after hearing Lind's performance, calling his admiration for her "unbounded."
After Mendelssohn's death, Lind wrote, "[He was] the only person who brought fulfillment to my spirit, and almost as soon as I found him I lost him again." In 1849, she founded the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation, which awards young British composers every two years. The first winner was Arthur Sullivan in 1856. In 1869, Lind placed a plaque in Mendelssohn's memory at his birthplace in Hamburg.
Music
Mendelssohn deeply cared about how he expressed his musical ideas. He once told a friend that the music he loved was too clear and specific to be put into words. Instead, it was the exactness of the music that made it meaningful to him.
Schumann called Mendelssohn "the Mozart of the nineteenth century," saying he was the most talented musician of his time. He saw Mendelssohn as someone who understood the challenges of his era and helped bring harmony to them. Mendelssohn’s music was shaped by his deep knowledge of earlier composers, like Bach and Beethoven. He studied their styles and used them to create his own works. He also respected the early Romantic style found in the music of Beethoven and Weber. James Garratt, a historian, noted that Mendelssohn’s interest in older music was a key part of his creative process. Mendelssohn even taught the poet Goethe about music history by playing pieces from different time periods and explaining how they influenced music’s development.
Unlike some of his peers, Mendelssohn focused on preserving and improving the musical traditions he inherited, rather than creating completely new styles or using unusual orchestration. This made him different from composers like Wagner, Berlioz, and Franz Liszt. While Mendelssohn admired Liszt’s piano skills, he thought Liszt’s music was too simple. Berlioz once said that Mendelssohn studied the music of the past too closely.
Musicologist Greg Vitercik explained that Mendelssohn’s music rarely aimed to shock or provoke. However, his early works showed how he solved the challenge of combining classical musical forms with the emotional depth of Romantic music. In Romantic music, the final section of a movement (called the recapitulation) could feel dull or lack passion. Classical music often placed the emotional climax near the end of a movement, but Romantic composers like Berlioz preferred to delay it until the very end, sometimes adding long sections to achieve this. Mendelssohn found a different solution by adjusting the balance of musical sections. In his works, the transition between the development and recapitulation was less dramatic, and the recapitulation was changed slightly in harmony or melody. This allowed the music to build naturally toward a final, powerful ending. Vitercik said this approach made the structure of Mendelssohn’s music feel like a smooth, logical story.
Richard Taruskin noted that Mendelssohn created masterful works at a very young age. As a child, he was influenced by the music of J. S. Bach, C. P. E. Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart. These influences are visible in his 13 early string symphonies, written between 1821 and 1823 when he was 12 to 14 years old. These pieces were performed in his family and not published until after his death.
His first published works were three piano quartets (1822–1825). However, his talent became more evident in works from his early adulthood, such as the String Octet (1825), the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826), and two early string quartets (Op. 12 and Op. 13, written in 1829 and 1827). These works showed a deep understanding of Beethoven’s techniques. Music scholar R. Larry Todd said Mendelssohn’s early skill surpassed even that of Mozart in some ways.
A 2009 BBC survey of 16 music critics named Mendelssohn the greatest composing prodigy in Western classical music history.
Mendelssohn’s mature symphonies were numbered based on when they were published, not when they were written. The order in which he composed them was: Symphony No. 1, No. 5 ("Reformation"), No. 4 ("Italian"), No. 2 ("Lobgesang"), and No. 3 ("Scottish"). The placement of No. 3 is confusing because he worked on it for over ten years, starting after he began No. 5 but finishing it after completing both No. 5 and No. 4.
Symphony No. 1 in C minor was written in 1824 when Mendelssohn was 15. It shows the influence of Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. He conducted the symphony in London in 1829 with the Philharmonic Society orchestra. For the third movement, he used a version of the Scherzo from his Octet. This performance helped establish his reputation in Britain.
Between 1829 and 1830, Mendelssohn wrote Symphony No. 5, called the "Reformation," to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Reformation. He was not satisfied with the work and did not allow it to be published during his lifetime.
Mendelssohn’s travels in Italy inspired Symphony No. 4 in A major, known as the "Italian Symphony." He conducted the premiere in 1833 but did not publish the score during his lifetime, as he kept revising it.
The Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3 in A minor) was written and revised between 1829 and 1842. Mendelssohn first sketched the opening theme during a visit to Holyrood Palace in Scotland. The piece was first performed in Leipzig in 1842 and reflected the Romantic spirit of Scotland, though it did not use traditional Scottish folk melodies.
Mendelssohn wrote the symphony-cantata Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) in B-flat major, later named Symphony No. 2. It was composed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The first performance took place on June 25, 1840, in Leipzig.
In 1830, Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), inspired by his visit to Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa during his Grand Tour of Europe. He wrote the opening theme of the overture on the spot and included it in a letter to his family that same evening. He also composed other overtures, such as Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (1828), inspired by poems by Goethe, and The Fair Melusine (1830). A contemporary writer called these works "perhaps the most beautiful overtures that, so far, we Germans possess."
In 1839,
Reputation and legacy
After Mendelssohn died, people in Germany and England felt sad about his passing. However, some of his contemporaries looked down on his music because he was more reserved and traditional compared to others who were more showy. Mendelssohn had tense and uncertain relationships with composers like Berlioz and Liszt. Some people, like Heinrich Heine, questioned Mendelssohn’s talent after hearing his oratorio St. Paul in 1836.
Richard Wagner criticized Mendelssohn even more harshly. Wagner disliked Mendelssohn’s success, his popularity, and his Jewish heritage. In a pamphlet titled Das Judenthum in der Musik, Wagner gave Mendelssohn only faint praise three years after his death.
In contrast, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche admired Mendelssohn’s music. He respected Mendelssohn’s work, even though he generally disliked other forms of Romantic music from Germany. Some people, however, thought Nietzsche’s description of Mendelssohn as a “lovely incident” was not respectful enough.
During the 20th century, the Nazi regime banned Mendelssohn’s music because of his Jewish heritage. They even asked approved composers, like Carl Orff, to rewrite parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Nazis claimed Mendelssohn was a harmful “accident” in music history who made German music “degenerate.” The Mendelssohn Scholarship in Leipzig was canceled in 1934 and not restarted until 1963. A statue of Mendelssohn in Leipzig was removed by the Nazis in 1936, but a new one was built in 2008. Another statue in Düsseldorf was destroyed by the Nazis in 1936 and replaced in 2012. Mendelssohn’s grave was not harmed during the Nazi years.
In Britain, Mendelssohn was highly respected throughout the 19th century. Prince Albert praised Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah in 1847, calling him a noble artist who stayed true to good art. A novel titled Charles Auchester was written in 1851 and celebrated Mendelssohn as a character named “Chevalier Seraphel.” Queen Victoria wanted a statue of Mendelssohn included in the rebuilt Crystal Palace in 1851. Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was played at the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter in 1858 and is still used in weddings today. His student, Sterndale Bennett, helped teach British composers until his death in 1875.
By the early 20th century, critics like Bernard Shaw began to criticize Mendelssohn’s music for being too tied to Victorian traditions. Shaw called Mendelssohn’s style “too gentle and sentimental.” In the 1950s, scholar Wilfrid Mellers said Mendelssohn’s music showed “fake religious feelings.” However, pianist Ferruccio Busoni praised Mendelssohn as a “master of undisputed greatness” and compared him to Mozart. Busoni, along with other musicians, often performed Mendelssohn’s piano works.
Since the mid-20th century, more people have appreciated Mendelssohn’s work. Many biographies have been published, helping people understand his achievements better. Mercer-Taylor noted that the reevaluation of Mendelssohn’s music is possible because the idea of a strict musical “canon” has weakened. H. L. Mencken said Mendelssohn came close to true greatness but missed it “by a hair.”
Charles Rosen, in a book about the Romantic era, both praised and criticized Mendelssohn. He called Mendelssohn the greatest child prodigy in Western music history, noting his skill at age 16 surpassed that of Mozart or Chopin at 19. Rosen believed Mendelssohn had a deep understanding of Beethoven and created a successful blend of Classical and Romantic styles in his Violin Concerto in E minor. However, he also called Mendelssohn “the inventor of religious kitsch in music.” Rosen pointed out that Mendelssohn’s oratorios influenced later composers like Verdi and Wagner.
Many of Mendelssohn’s 750 works remained unpublished in the 1960s, but most are now available. A complete scholarly edition of his works and letters is being prepared, expected to take many years and include over 150 volumes. A modern catalog of his works, the Mendelssohn-Werkverzeichnis (MWV), is also being developed. Today, recordings of Mendelssohn’s music are widely available, and his works are often performed in concerts and on radio. R. Larry Todd noted in 2007 that Mendelssohn’s music has seen a revival, and his reputation has improved as people study him from new perspectives.