Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, (Jacob Ludwig) Felix. b. Hamburg, 3 February 1809; d. Leipzig, 4 November 1847. Grandson of the Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), Felix Mendelssohn was baptized in Berlin as a Protestant in 1816, around which time the family added the second surname Bartholdy. An extraordinarily versatile child prodigy likened by Goethe and Heinrich Heine to a second Mozart, Mendelssohn established his credentials through a precocious series of romantic instrumental works, including the Octet (1825) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture (1826), and through reviving J. S. Bach*’s St. Matthew Passion (1829) some one hundred years after its first...