FELIX, a German musical composer, son of Abraham Mendelssolin-Bartholdv, the eminent batiker, and grandson of .Moses .Mendelssolin. the philosopher, was b. at:Hainburg, Feb. 3, 1809. His father was a convert to Christianity.
and young Felix was brought up in the Lutheran faith. The affluent circumstances of his parents enabldd them to bestow a most liberal and careful education on their son, whose 6ne genius early showed itself. Zelter was his instructor in composition, Ludwig Ber ger on the piano. In his ninth year he gave his first public concert in Berlin, and in the following year played in Paris. From this period he commenced to write com positions of all sorts, some of them of a very difficult character, for the piano, violin, violoncello, etc. In 1824 the first of these—three quartets for the piano—were published. In 1823 he went a second tirneto Paris—his father, on the advice of Cherubini and other eminent artists, having consented that he should devote himself exclusively to music. He now gave concerts both in Paris and Berlin, after which he traveled for three years in England, Scotland, France, and Italy. In the first of these countries he obtained enthusiastic applause by his overture to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night '8 Dream, which, in its blending of the fanciful, the delicate, and the grotesque, is said to have caught the inspiration of Shakespeare himself. He aftenvards wrote music to accompany the whole of the play. His Isles of Fingal is a fine memorial of the impres sion left upon him by the wild scenery of the western Highlands. His letters from
Italy also show how profoundly he was affected by that glorious land—the true home of art. Mendelssohu subsequently attempted to start a musical theater for the cul tivation of high art, at Dusseldorf, but it did not succeed. In 1835 he accepted the directorship of the Leipsic concerts. Here, he was in the center of the musical world of Germany, and was stimulated to his highest and most brilliant efforts; yet it was in Eng land that Mendelssohn first met with a reception proportionate to his genius. His oratorio of St. Paul, after being performed at Dresden and Leipsic, was produced under his own management at the-Birmiugham festival, Sept. 20, 1887, and created quite a furor. It and his other oratorio of Elijah, on which he labored for nine years, and which was first brought out at the Birmingham festival of 1846, are reckoned his two great est works. He died at Leipsic Nov. 4, 1847. Among his best-known compositions are his music for Goethe's Walpurgisnacht, the Antigon,e and ffdipus of Sophocles, Athalie, and a great number of splendid sonatas, concertos, trios. In his Leider ohne Worte (songs without words), he has achieved a.great and novel triumph. Mendelssohn's character, which was even finer than his genius, is charmingly delineated in his Letters which have been translated from the German by lady Wallace (London, 1862).