Felix Mendelssohn
...elssohn’s successful career as a musician began at an early age. At the age of nine he made his first public performance on the piano and performed his own work, 19 Psalm, at the age of ten. His public performance at age nine was widely known because he played the instrument 'politely' and rarely banged the keyboard like the violent Beethoven. This ‘polite’ playing indicated that Mendelssohn's playing was always clear, elegant, precise, logical and with little use of the pedal. An English critic described Mendelssohn’s playing as "Scarcely had he touched the keyboard when...a pleasurable electric shock passed through his listeners and held them spellbound." In 1829 he directed a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie, promoting the modern cultivation of Bach's music and thus the performance that had shown Mendelssohn as a gifted composer. From 1833 to 1835 Mendelssohn conducted at Düsseldorf where he extensively studied Handel’s oratorios. During this period he composed a series of works including The Herbrides, G minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony, and St. Paul. From 1835-1847, at the age of 24, Mendelssohn directed the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig which rapidly became the most prestigious orchestra in Germany. Just five years later Mendelssohn was invited to the court of King Wilhelm IV as the Royal General Music Director. Here, he wrote the famous incidental music entitled A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After his success under King Wilhelm IV, he returned home to organize and direct the Leipzig Conservatory which opened April 3, 1843. Leipzig is where Mendelssohn is said to have had his most productive years as a composer. Mendelssohn’s musical influences include: Bach and the use of his fugal technique, Handel’s rhythms and harmonic progressions, Mozart’s dramatic characterization, forms, and textures and Beethoven’s instrumental technique. Early influences include Goethe’s poetry and Schlegel translations of Shakespeare which can be found in the String Octet op.20 and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Although his influences were that of Classical composers, he developed a characteristic style of his own, mostly based on literary, artistic, historical, geographical or emotional connection that characterized his music as romantic with classic form. Under the study of Zelter, Mendelssohn had written thirteen string symphonies that announced him the master of form, counterpoint, and fugue. Mendelssohn's music was very much relaxed, clear and fresh as it was mainly diatonic and contained very few dissonance and simple melodies. His music expresses the gentler and happier side of human experiences and beauties of nature were mostly reflected in his music. His music consisted of a clear outline and well-organized form; he had regular and very precise rhythm, phrases were equally balanced; the modulations were done safely without much exaggeration, polyphony was applied to add excitement in his music instead of increasing intensity. His early and prodigious operas, clearly reliant on Mozart, failed to develop but his passion for drama found expression in his oratorios as well as in Ruy Blas overture, his incidental compositions entitled Antigone and Midsummer Night's Dream, in which themes from the overture are cleverly adapted as motifs. The oratorios draw inspiration from Bach and Handel and content from the composer's personal experience, St Paul being an allegory of Mendelssohn's own family history and Elijah of his unhappy experience in Berlin. Among his other vocal works, the high...