MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY, JAKOB LUDWIG FELIX (1809-1847), German composer, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn (q.v.) was born in Hamburg on Feb. 3, 1809. His father, Abraham Mendelssohn, caused Felix, with his brother and two sisters, to be baptized as Lutheran Christians ; and during the French occupation of Hamburg the family migrated to Berlin and lived with Abraham Mendelssohn's mother. Under the teach ing of their mother and of other good musicians, Felix and his sister Fanny (some of whose compositions are included in Men delssohn's songs and Lieder ohne Worte), soon showed extraordi nary musical talent.
At the age of nine he played in public, and at II composed voluminously. He and Fanny played their own (or each other's) pianoforte compositions, and his sister Rebecka sang and his brother Paul played the violoncello. Five symphonies were written for this string-band in 1821, in which year Felix produced unac companied motets, two and a half operas and an immense amount of other music. The violin sonata of 182o was published as op. 4.
In 1821 Mendelssohn, with Zelter as his bear-leader, visited Goethe. It is hard to say which of the two impressed the other most. Goethe had not been lucky in his musical acquaintances. Beethoven had repelled him. And now Goethe met this wonderful grandson of "Nathan der Weise," with gifts equal to Mozart's. The boy soon tried, with partial success, to convert Goethe to the gospel of Beethoven.
Before Mendelssohn was 17 he had composed his wonderful octet (op. 2o) and a 13th symphony in C minor which he published as his first. A pianoforte quartet in B minor, the last of three, was dedicated to Goethe. Meanwhile he was making important discoveries apart from his own work. At the age of 12 he had read Bach's Matthew Passion in the autograph in the royal library, and was so excited by it that his mother had a copy made for him as a birthday present.
A visit to Paris in 1825 brought him into contact with many famous musicians, notably Rossini and Meyerbeer, and he found congenial friends in the great virtuosos of the pianoforte and violin. Hummel, Rode, Baillot and others. He also showed his
compositions to the formidable Cherubini, whom he described as "an extinct volcano still throwing out occasional sparks and ashes." Cherubini astonished all musical Paris by praising Mendelssohn to his face, though in the third person. "Le garcon est riche: it fera bien. Mais it faut couper." Perhaps Mendelssohn's parents overshot the mark in their anxiety to protect him from the dangers of conceit. He saw no great merit in his own smooth technique and was the less inclined to think that there was anything inherently noble in clumsiness. Yet his quick temper was so manifestly generous that artists like Schumann adored him as man and as musician.
After returning from Paris, Abraham Mendelssohn removed from his mother-in-law's house to a spacious old mansion with a music-room and grounds containing a "Gartenhaus" capable of seating several hundred persons. In Aug. 1826 Felix's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed here. He was only 171 years old; but in later years he rarely equalled and never surpassed this work, which, written in the years of Beet hoven's last quartets, belongs not only to fairyland but to an orches tration which Rimsky-Korsakov might have thought up-to-date.
A full-sized opera, Die Hochzeit des Camacho, on an episode in the story of Don Quixote, had been finished in 1825, and was produced under Spontini on April 29, 1827. After one much applauded performance Mendelssohn's opera was shelved, and violently abused by the critics.
This organized failure depressed Mendelssohn, but did not check his activity. Besides his usual flood of composition he collected a choir for the study of Bach's choral works (not one of which was then in print) ; and he succeeded, in 1829, in per suading the Berlin Sing-Akademie to perform the Matthew Pas sion, under his direction, with a chorus of some 35o voices. This was the first known performance of a choral work of Bach since his death in 175o.