Mendelssohn
Mendelssohn is renowned for being a child prodigy who died early, and also for having a hard name to spell. He lived, worked, breathed, etc. during the early part of the 1800s. This means that his music was definitely rooted in the Romantic style, which had been seducing and bedazzling the denizens of the Western world for a good few years by the time old Felix started pumping out the tunes.
His music is fairly conservatively Romantic however, without so many big emotional swoops and stuff as you get with the lusher Romantics like Wagner or Brahms or Tchaikovsky. He’s got a kind of similar spirit to Mozart: often playful, clever, but not necessarily with a lot of emotional baggage. You might find this a good or bad thing, depending on your taste for emotionality and dramatic swoops.
In fact the similarities to Mozart extend past their musical lives. They were both child prodigies, and both ended up popping their clogs at a tragically early age. Mendelssohn was always close to his sister, an after she died in May 1847 he promptly had a series of strokes and died the following November at the age of 38.
Musical Snippets
The Hebrides Overture - This was inspired by a visit to Fingals’ Cave in Scotland, with the sea rising and falling and foaming at its mouth. His musical representation of the waxing and waning of the waves is beautiful. It reminds me so much of the shifting floor, and the smell of salt and stars on the deck of a ship in the dead of night. Tasty.
Variations Serieuses - Man, if I were French so many pronunciation problems would be solved. Oh how I can dream. This piece is called a set of variations, because there is a melody which keeps getting repeated but changed every time in style, accompaniment, intensity, emotion. This particular set of variations is one of my utmost favorites of any composer.
4th Symphony (”the Italian”), 4th movement - Does that sound Italian to you? This is the second of Mendelssohn’s countrified symphonies (with the other being the “Scottish”) I love the rhythms in this, which are based on an old Italian dance called the Salterello featuring “peculiar leaping motions”. Sounds awesome!
Piano Trio #2, 3rd movement - I don’t think this is particularly well known piece of his, and I don’t get terribly excited by the other movements, but this one rocks. It’s got that neat, in-place sort of feeling which both Mendelssohn and Mozart often share, but with a fierce pace to it. It’s one of the first Mendelssohn compositions that really grabbed me.
