Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words, Vol. 1

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Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 - 1847)Songs without WordsTo contemporaries of Mendelssohn thenotion of songs without words seemed paradoxical. If there were no words, infact, there could be no song. Yet what Mendelssohn achieved was exactly what histitle suggested, music in its purest and simplest form, expressing its ownmusical meaning, imbued with feeling, but without verbal connotation. At thesame time short piano pieces of this kind would always find a ready amateurmarket and would be welcomed by publishers, although this may have beenirrelevant to the composer's purpose.Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of MosesMendelssohn, the great Jewish thinker of the Enlightenment, was born in Hamburgin 1809, the son of a prosperous banker. His family was influential in culturalcircles, and he and his sister were educated in an environment that encouragedboth musical and general cultural interests. At the same time the extensiveacquaintance of the Mendelssohns among artists and men of letters brought anunusual breadth of mind, a stimulus to natural curiosity.Much of Mendelssohn's childhood waspassed in Berlin, where his parents moved when he was three, to escapeNapoleonic invasion. There he took lessons from Goethe's much admired Zelter,who introduced him to the old poet in Weimar. The choice of a career in musicwas eventually decided on the advice of Cherubini, consulted by AbrahamMendelssohn in Paris, where he was director of the Conservatoire. Therefollowed a period of further education, a Grand Tour of Europe that took him toItaly and north to Scotland. His professional career began in earnest with hisappointment as general director of music in D??sseldorf in 1833.Mendelssohn's subsequent career wasintense and brief. He settled in Leipzig as conductor of the Gewandhausconcerts, and was instrumental in establishing the Conservatory there. Brieflylured to Berlin by the King of Prussia and by the importunity of his family, hespent an unsatisfactory year or so as director of the music section of theAcademy of Arts, providing music for a revival of classical drama under royalencouragement. This appointment he was glad to relinquish in 1844, laterreturning to his old position in Leipzig, where he died in 1847.As a composer Mendelssohn possessed aperfect technical command of the resources available to him and was always ableto write music that is felicitous, apt and often remarkably economical in theway it achieves its effects. Mendelssohn had, like the rest of his family,accepted Christian baptism, a ceremony Heine once described as a ticket ofadmission into European culture. Nevertheless he encountered anti-Semiticprejudice, as others were to, and false ideas put about in his own life-timehave left some trace in modern repetitions of accusations of superficiality forwhich there is no real justification.The series of Songs without Wordsthat Mendelssohn wrote and published from 1830 onwards serve as a very personalmusical diary in which the composer expressed