The Happy One

Felix Mendelssohn was born today in 1809 in Germany. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was a famous Jewish philosopher. After Felix became a noted musical genius, his father supposedly made the statement, "Formerly I was the son of my father: now I am the father of my son." Felix means "the happy one", and his life was indeed quite happy, until near the end, when he suffered from bad health; sorrow over the death of his beloved sister contributed to his early death at age 38.

Mendelssohn was another child prodigy akin to Mozart. He wrote a lot of good music at quite a young age. One of his best and most original works, the Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, was written when he was only 17 years old. Woodwinds dialogue with the violins, who play a very flittering, soft melody in the beginning reminiscent of fairies before the whole orchestra comes in with a very triumphant section, and the piece goes on from there.

Mendelssohn also wrote a lot of piano music, including 2 piano concertos (they're charming pieces, but not among the greats), and a whole host of pieces called "Songs without words", which are delightful and span a range of emotions. One of the best is the "Spinning Song" - watch Artur Rubinstein's hands fly on this one. On the more serious side (pun intended) are his "Variations Serieuses", a masterful set of variations on a theme that sounds almost like a sarabande by Bach.

Mendelssohn also wrote some lovely chamber music. My favorites are his two piano trios. The Piano Trio in D minor is an incredibly powerful piece, requiring some really fast and light hands on the pianist's part. He also wrote an Octet for Strings when he was 16 years old, showing his genius at a young age.

He wrote great orchestral works also. Here is the opening to the "Italian Symphony", a work written in his early twenties. Possibly his most popular and beloved work is his Violin Concerto in E minor. Listen to the 1st and 3rd movments here. This is one of the most beautiful, perfect violin concertos ever written (though I still maintain the Beethoven violin concerto is "The" perfect violin concerto).

Finally, a comment about Mendelssohn's important role in the history of music. He performed a real service to the musical world by "resurrecting" music that had sunk into oblivion, namely that of J. S. Bach and Schubert, who nowadays are probably more famous than he.