Felix Mendelssohn (b. Hamburg, Feb. 3, 1809; d. Leipzig, Nov. 4, 1847) was born into a prominent family. He was the great grandson of a Jewish schoolmaster, Mendel, who was converted to Christianity and insisted that his children be reared in the Christian faith. His grandfather was the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a scholar who has been called “the modern Plato.” His father, Abraham, moved to Berlin in 1812 to escape the French occupation of Hamburg. In Berlin, Abraham met and married Felix’s mother, Lea Salomon-Bartholdy. The full prop- er name of the composer is Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Mendelssohn was devoted to his family, and his home life was one of refinement and social position. His education was carefully planned. His mother taught early piano lessons to both Felix and his older sister, Fanny. Felix was precocious and excelled in languages and painting as well as music. It became apparent, however, that music was Felix’s most intense interest, and piano study was continued with Ludwig Berger in Berlin and, for a short time in Paris when Felix was seven, with Marie Bigot. He also studied theory with Carl Friedrich Zelter, and at the age of ten he entered the Berlin Singakademie as an alto. The same year the Singakademie performed a composition by Mendelssohn based on the text of the nineteenth psalm. By 1826, he had reached complete matu- rity in his composition, for he wrote the overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of the best pianists of his age, Mendelssohn had a style of playing that was characterized by a facile technique and phenomenal memory. A conductor of great authority, he worked consistently and constantly in the cause of worthwhile music. A significant contribution in this regard took place on March 11, 1829, when at the age of twenty he conducted Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the Sing- akademie, the first performance anywhere since Bach’s death. He also made his first journey to England at the age of twenty. There he conducted his first symphony in ¢, Op. 11, dedicating it to the London Philharmonic Society, which in turn made him an honorarymember, On the same tour, he played Weber's Concertstiick and Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, Op. 73. In 1833, he began conducting at the Lower-Rhine Music Festival in Diisseldorf and soon after accepted the position of Kapellmeister, taking charge of the church music, the municipal opera, and two singing societies. Two years later he was offered the position of music director of the celebrated Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. In 1841, Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed Mendelssohn to take charge of the major orchestral and choral concerts of the city of Berlin, conferring on him the title of Royal General Musical Director. Mendelssohn eventually became frustrated, however, with the Berlin appointment because of local jealousies and politics. The remain- der of Mendelssohn's career was centered on concertizing both on the Continent and in London, where he was especially successful, and activ- ities associated with his positions in central Germany. Mendelssohn was one of the first to bring discipline into the orches- tra, insisting that the performance be faithful to the written score. He was especially noted for bringing the orchestra at Leipzig to a very high level. As a successful musician he enjoyed high visibility, and he num- bered among his friends many celebrated writers and musicians: Weber, Goethe, Halévy, Herz, Kalkbrenner, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Paganini, Berlioz, Liszt, Chopin, Field, Spohr, Hiller, Cherubini, and Wagner. Mendelssohn's feverish schedule, however, was a mixed blessing, for in later life he grew somewhat irritable because of overwork and ner- vous strain, and he was often impatient with others’ viewpoints. Although he married in 1837 and enjoyed a harmonious home life, he persisted in working himself to the point of exhaustion. The death of his sister, Fanny, on May 14, 1847, threw him into depression, and his over- wrought nervous system collapsed six months later. He was thirty-eight years old.Valuation of Mendelssohn's work as a composer has varied since his death. At first Mendelssohn's brilliance and the high visibility of his career resulted in worldwide lamentation of his premature passing. Mendelssohn societies, scholarships in his name, and musical events all contributed to enshrining his memory. As the century progressed, how- ever, musical taste evolved in a direction that tended to devalue Men- delssohn’s work. His strengths continued to be recognized: superbly crafted compositions, filled with glittering brilliance and contrapuntal ingenuity and deft at evoking a unique quality of elfin-like delicacy. Weaknesses, however, also began to be cited. He was thought to be inca- pable of grand dramatic gestures, and, as the aesthetics of Wagner and Liszt began to dominate the musical scene, Mendelssohn’s music was regarded more and more as lacking true depth of feeling. Moreover, in the wake of increasing interest in the harmonic complexities of chro- maticism, altered chord progressions, and modulation, Mendelssohn'sSonata Types Of the compositions that can be related to the sonata structure, the Fantasia in f-sharp, Op. 28, is the most frequently played. The work is also known as the Sonate écossaise (Scottish Sonata). This linkage between the concepts of the fantasy and the sonata calls to mind the Op. 27 set of Beethoven, and, as in the Beethoven set, the most imposing movement is shifted away from the first to the last. Here, the last movement makes use of sonata-allegro structure. The opening movement simply alternates between rapid arpeggio-like figurations marked agitato and a songful andante (Example 11.3). The Allegro con moto that serves as a middlemovement feels very much like a minuet and trio or scherzo, notwith- standing its duple meter, unusually long middle section, and written-out da capo. The final Presto offers considerable brilliance, its attractiveness undoubtedly contributing to the fact that the work has a relatively secure place in the performing repertoire. One might hope that the keyboard sonatas of Mendelssohn would turn out to be among his strongest compositions. Although they were written in his teens, a time when Mendelssohn’s precocity enabled him to write masterworks, they show promise rather than fulfillment. The Op. 105 in g, the earliest of Mendelssohn's published works, was written at age eleven. It is a three-movement work of both modest proportion and difficulty. The two outer movements are in a scaled-down sonata- allegro form, the last movement offering an exceedingly short develop- ment section. The middle movement is a free, ternary improvisation, possibly the most imaginative writing in the work. The sonatas in £, Op. 6, and B-flat, Op. 106, were written a few years later, when Mendelssohn was seventeen and eighteen. Here, the influence of Beethoven is obvious, so much so that the Op. 6 is fre- quenuy compared directly to the Op. 101 of Beethoven and the Op. 106 to the Beethoven sonata bearing the same opus number, the Hammer- klavier. (It has been suggested that the editor of Mendelssohn’s complete works, Julius Rietz, in assigning opus numbers to those works published posthumously, noted the similarity and accordingly chose Op. 106 for the Mendelssohn work.)To turn to the Op. 6 first, the work opens with a movement that uses the meter, the same key, the same rhythmic pattern, and the same general mood as Beethoven's Op. 101. Both first movements also are cast in a free sonata-allegro structure that share unusual features, notably with but little contrast between the first and second themes, an exposition that is not repeated, and a recapitulation in which there is a moderate amount of rewriting of the thematic material. Instead of a march for the second moveinent, as Beethoven used in Op. 101, Men- delssohn uses a minuet and trio in fsharp. Other features of the work also suggest late Beethoven sonatas: a recitative to open the third move- ment suggests Beethoven's Op. 110; the return of a fragment suggesting the first movement calls to mind the cyclicism of Op. 101; and the focus on the final movement as the most substantial, although Mendelssohn does not introduce fugal writing into the final movement, as Beethoven did in Opp. 101, 109, and 110, but rather settles for a free sonata-alle- gro structure. The Op. 106 is more foursquare than the Op. 6. Although the rhythmic figure that opens the first movement is not exactly like that of the Hammerklavier, it is close enough to bring to mind the Beethoven work (see Example 8.26a-b). The first movement's sonata-allegro struc- ture tapers off with repeated notes on B-flat to introduce the Scherzo, composed a staccato, pianissimo figurations in b-flat. Here, Mendels- s almost unique ability to create music of elfin grace and charm. The Scherzo thus becomes the best movement of the work. The slow movement is a simple ABA song. The buildup transitional passage to the final movement recalls the opening theme of the sonata, and the middle section of the final movement's sonata-allegro form makes refer- ence to the theme from the Scherzo. Although there is much to recommend the sonatas of Mendels- sohn, there is also much that is awkward, both structurally and, surpr ingly, even pianistically. This, coupled with the fact that the thematic material does not represent the composer at his best, has resulted in the sonatas not being played very often.