Biography Of Felix Mendelssohn s The Mendelssohn Quartet

The piece my ensemble piece will be performing is the Mendelssohn Quartet Op.44, movement 1. The composer, Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3, 1809, in Hamburg. Germany. As a son of Moses Mendelssohn, who was a successful banker, Mendelssohn was born into a very wealthy family, which gave him certain advantages such as providing him a rich and ideal cultural setting for his artistic mind to flourish. His received good education as well. While Mendelssohn’s father disliked Jews that converted from Judaism to Christianity to gain social acceptance outside of the jewish ghettos, Felix still ended up following Christianity, and even baptized his whole family in the name of Jesus. When Mendelssohn was a child, his family moved to Berlin where he would meet Ludwig Berger. Felix took piano lessons from Berger and also studied from Karl Zelter on compositions. In the early 19th century, Mendelssohn quickly established himself as prodigy and displayed an interest in arts and musi c thru his ability to perform on the piano and violin, as well as painting. At the young age of nine, he made is public debut and during his childhood he had written five operas and eleven full orchestral symphonies. In the late 1810’s, Felix Mendelssohn took part in the Singakedemie Music Academy, where he wrote numerous pieces such as multiple violin sonatas, a cantata, two piano sonatas, and a short opera. In 1821, Karl Zelter took Mendelssohn to the port, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Immediately,Show MoreRelatedThe Role of Women in the Musical Life of the 19th Century. Essay1785 Words   |  8 Pagesmen. However, their opportunities were still limited by tradition. Therefore, the role of the 19th century women as performers and composers was not equal to men, as can be seen in the case of Fanny Hansel, a sibling of the well known composer Felix Mendelssohn. At the beginning of the 19th century, the numbers of female amateur musicians rose due to the increasingly prosperity of the middle classes. According to Reich (1991), most women from well-to-do families had an opportunity to learn to playRead MoreRebecca Clarke s `` Cinderella No More ``3827 Words   |  16 Pageswrite about her personality as a composer and a performer, her role in music history considering her gender. Biography Rebecca Clarke was born 1886 in Harrow, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke, an American, and his German wife, Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich. Her father was interested in music and was an amateur cellist who chose instruments for the family to create a string quartet. Her mother Agnes played viola, leaving Rebecca to play the violin, which she studied at the Royal Academy beginning