Who Was Felix Mendelssohn? The Prodigy Behind the Wedding March Who Brought Bach Back to Life

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) was a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic era, best known today for the "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Violin Concerto in E minor, the Hebrides overture, the Italian and Scottish symphonies, and the oratorio Elijah. He was one of the most astonishing child prodigies in music history, writing his String Octet at sixteen. He also changed what we listen to: in 1829, aged twenty, he conducted Bach's nearly forgotten St Matthew Passion and helped launch the revival of Bach's music.

A grandson of Moses Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born on 3 February 1809 in Hamburg into one of Germany's most remarkable families. His grandfather was Moses Mendelssohn, the famous Jewish philosopher. His father, Abraham, was a banker.

Abraham had turned away from Judaism, and Felix was baptised as a Lutheran Christian at the age of seven in a private ceremony in Berlin. When his parents were baptised in 1822, the family adopted the additional surname "Bartholdy", taken from his mother's brother. This double identity, Jewish by origin and Christian by upbringing, would follow Felix long after his death.

Felix and Fanny

Felix grew up in Berlin alongside his older sister Fanny, who was just as precocious a musician and composer. The two shared a close musical relationship all their lives, and she advised him on his works. But their father saw things differently for each child: in 1820 he wrote that music could and must be "only an ornament" for Fanny, while it might become Felix's profession. Six of her songs ended up published under Felix's name, in his Opus 8 and 9 collections.

Fanny wrote more than 450 works, including over 250 songs and the piano cycle Das Jahr, one piece for each month of the year. Her first published opus appeared under her own married name, Hensel, only in 1846, when she was about forty.

This led to a famous awkward moment. In 1842 Queen Victoria told Felix she wanted to sing her favourite song of his, Italien. He had to confess that it was actually by Fanny.

A teenage master

From 1819 Felix studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen he wrote thirteen symphonies for strings, mostly for performance at home. Zelter also took him to meet the poet Goethe, who was greatly impressed and compared the boy with Mozart.

Then came two works that would be the envy of any adult composer. At sixteen, in 1825, he wrote the String Octet, often seen as the start of his mature style. At seventeen, in 1826, he wrote the overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, full of fairy flutter and moonlight. Seventeen years later he added incidental music for the play, including the "Wedding March".

Not everything went well. His opera Die Hochzeit des Camacho was performed only once in his lifetime, in 1827, and the experience discouraged him from opera.

Bringing Bach back

In the early nineteenth century Johann Sebastian Bach was respected by experts but rarely performed. Felix's grandmother had given him a manuscript copy of the St Matthew Passion. In 1829 he conducted it in Berlin, one of the very few performances since Bach's death and the first outside Leipzig.

The concert was central to the revival of Bach's music in Germany and beyond. Every time you hear Bach in a concert hall today, you are hearing part of a tradition that a twenty-year-old helped restart.

The grand tour: Scotland and Italy

That same year Felix made his first trip to Britain. He would return ten times, spending about twenty months there in total. A journey to Scotland inspired The Hebrides overture, also known as Fingal's Cave, and the first ideas for his Scottish Symphony, which he finally premiered in Leipzig in 1842.

Travels in Italy produced the sunny Italian Symphony, premiered in 1833. Strangely, Mendelssohn was never satisfied with it and did not allow it to be published during his lifetime.

Leipzig: conductor, teacher, builder

In 1835 he became director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1843 he founded the Leipzig Conservatory and brought in colleagues such as Robert Schumann and Ignaz Moscheles to teach.

In 1837 he married Cécile Jeanrenaud, and they had five children. His Violin Concerto in E minor, completed in 1844 for the violinist Ferdinand David, who gave its premiere, is still a pillar of the violin repertoire, and his Songs Without Words remain his most famous solo piano pieces.

A favourite of Queen Victoria

In Britain Mendelssohn became a celebrity. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert admired his music and received him on his visits. His oratorio Elijah was premiered at Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August 1846.

The "Wedding March" got its royal moment after his death: it was played in 1858 at the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, to Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia. It has remained popular at weddings ever since.

Grief, early death and a long shadow

On 14 May 1847 Fanny suffered a stroke while rehearsing one of Felix's cantatas, and died. Felix was deeply distressed. He died in Leipzig on 4 November 1847, aged only 38, after a series of strokes. His grandfather, his sister and both his parents had died of similar causes.

His reputation then suffered for reasons that had nothing to do with music. In 1850 Richard Wagner published an antisemitic pamphlet, Das Judenthum in der Musik, which belittled Mendelssohn because of his Jewish origins. The Nazi regime later banned the performance and publication of his works, and in 1936 removed his monument in Leipzig. A replacement statue was erected there in 2008.

Since the mid-twentieth century his reputation has steadily recovered, and recordings now exist of nearly all his published works. The boy Goethe compared to Mozart is once again heard everywhere, and not just at weddings.

Learn with Mendelssohn: English phrases about talent and family

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a child prodigy	a child with exceptional talent	Mendelssohn was a child prodigy who wrote symphonies at twelve.
to run in the family	to be common among relatives	Musical talent ran in the Mendelssohn family.
ahead of his time	having ideas before others	His Bach revival was ahead of its time.
to give credit where it's due	to recognise who really did something	Felix gave credit where it was due and named Fanny.
to stand the test of time	to stay valued for a long time	The Wedding March has stood the test of time.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a talented person in your family or among your friends, using "run in the family" and "child prodigy".