Dear Form Masters, 

Have you ever heard of musical pieces such as, the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' from the well-known Shakespearean play? Or the Wedding March, which is the choice of song for majority of weddings around the world. What about the famous carol 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing', which can always be heard, counting down the days to Christmas? The reason are so well known is because of their mutual composer – Felix Mendelssohn. 

 

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (February 3rd 1809 – November 4th 1847), was one of the great composers of the early Romantic period, and still is a largely celebrated figure to this day. Felix Mendelssohn, spent his life largely as a composer, but also had skills as a teacher, a musical conductor, a pianist, a violinist, a violist and a cellist . As shown, Felix Mendelssohn was a key figure in the historical musical society.  

 

Felix Mendelssohn is well known for his unique style of composing. In his works, he delicately combined key aspects of romanticism as well as using classical tools. Thus, he brought out a new style of composing. Now you might be wondering, what's so difficult about combining these two styles of music? Well, these two styles of music are virtually opposite to each other. For example, While classical music is neat and symmetrical (mostly Ternary form – Where the beginning and end of the piece are the same, while the middle of the composition is different), Romantic music is free and expressive - there doesn't have to be a set key, or time signature, and ornaments such as Mordents, Turns, Trills Acciaccaturas and Appoggiaturas, and even Cadenzas, are used wherever possible. 

  

It is even easy for the eye to see the vast difference between romantic music and classical music 

Mendelssohn managed to perfect a 'balance' between classical and romantic music. For example, Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream – one of Mendelssohn's most well-known Pieces, capture these points exactly. Nocturne uses classical modeling, yet is still expressive and flowing, not sounding like Mozart's pieces made up of endless staves of quavers. Yet it is not so ornamental that it starts sounding messy like Sicilian and proper romantic music. By finding this new style of music is  Mendelssohn's greatest contribution to music. 

 

Mendelssohn was not only a prodigious musician and composer, but he also believed that anybody can have good ideas. Mendelssohn was born as a Jewish child, though at the time Jews were much discriminated against. At the age of seven, Mendelssohn was Baptized as a Lutheran along with his siblings, under their father's command. Though despite his father's wishes, Mendelssohn would not change his name to one that of a Christian. He would bear a Jewish name instead. 

 

In summary, Mendelssohn was a musical prodigy and genius.