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He was born to a notable Jewish family, the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
Moses Mendelssohn, for some the ``third'' Moses (the first being the Biblical lawgiver and the second Moses Maimonides), was the key figure behind the Haskalah, enlightenment.
The Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the late 18th century that advocated adopting enlightenment values. Among them pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies as well as Hebrew, and Jewish history.
Haskalah in this sense marked the beginning of the wider engagement of European Jews with the secular world, ultimately resulting in the first Jewish political movements and the struggle for Jewish emancipation.
In a more restricted sense, haskalah can also denote the study of Biblical Hebrew and of the poetical, scientific, and critical parts of Hebrew literature. The term is sometimes used to describe modern critical study of Jewish religious books, such as the Mishnah and Talmud, when used to differentiate these modern modes of study from the methods used by Orthodox Jews.
Felix Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the more popular composers of the Romantic era.
He grew up in an environment of intense intellectual ferment. The greatest minds of Germany were frequent visitors to his family's home in Berlin, including Wilhelm von Humboldt and Alexander von Humboldt. His sister Rebecka married the great German mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet.
His father, Abraham, sought to renounce the Jewish religion; his children were first brought up without religious education, and were baptised as Lutherans in 1816 (at which time Felix took the additional names Jakob Ludwig). The name Bartholdy was assumed at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob, who had purchased a property of this name and adopted it as his own surname.
Abraham was later to explain this decision in a letter to Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his father Moses: ``There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius''.
The family moved to Berlin in 1812. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn sought to give Felix, his brother Paul, and sisters Fanny and Rebecka, the best education possible. His sister Fanny Mendelssohn (later Fanny Hensel), became a well-known pianist and amateur composer; originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than her brother, might be the more musical. However, at that time, it was not considered proper (by either Abraham or Felix) for a woman to have a career in music, so Fanny remained an amateur musician. Six of her early songs were later published (with her consent) under Felix's name.
Mendelssohn is often regarded as the greatest musical child prodigy after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and before Camille Saint-Saens.
As a true intellectual of the enlightenment period, besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil and watercolour, he could speak (besides his native German) English, Italian, and Latin, and he had an interest in classical literature.
Mendelssohn's own works show his study of Baroque and early classical music. His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and a masterly use of counterpoint.
His great-aunt, Sarah Levy (née Itzig) was a pupil of Bach's son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and had supported the widow of another son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. She had collected a number of Bach manuscripts. J.S. Bach's music, which had fallen into relative obscurity by the turn of the 19th century, was also deeply respected by Mendelssohn's teacher Zelter.
In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of a friend, the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. The orchestra and choir were provided by the Berlin Singakademie of which Zelter was the principal conductor.
The success of this performance (the first since Bach's death in 1750) was an important element in the revival of J.S. Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of twenty. It also led to one of the very few references which Mendelssohn ever made to his origins: ``To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son (Judensohn) to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!''4.2 .
Mendelssohn also revived interest in the work of Franz Schubert. Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony and sent it to Mendelssohn who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 March 1839, more than a decade after the composer's death.
The oratorio Elijah was composed in homage Bach and Handel, whose music Mendelssohn deeply loved.
In contrast to Bach, Handel's oratorios never went out of fashion. Elijah is modeled on the oratorios by these two Baroque masters; however, the style clearly reflects Mendelssohn's own natural tendencies as an early Romantic composer.
The work is scored for four vocal soloists (bass/baritone, tenor, alto, soprano), a full symphony orchestra (including trombones, ophicleide, and an organ), and a large chorus singing usually in four, but occasionally eight or three (women only) parts. The part of Elijah is sung by the bass/baritone and is a major role. Can this be a reference to cantoral singing which is usually in bass tone as well?
Mendelssohn originally composed the work to a German text, but upon being commissioned by the Birmingham Festival to write an oratorio, he had the libretto translated into English, and the oratorio was premiered in the English version.
Given the importance of Elijah in Jewish and Christian tradition, the story of his career occupies remarkably little space. The details are largely contained in 1st and 2nd Kings, with smaller references in 2nd Chronicles and Malachi.
Elijah is introduced in 1 Kings 17:1 as Elijah ``The Tishbite''. He gives a warning to Ahab, king of Israel, that there will be years of drought, a drought so severe that not even dew will fall. This catastrophe will come because Ahab and his queen-Jezebel-stand at the end of a line of kings of Israel who are said to have ``done evil in the sight of the Lord''. In particular, Ahab and Jezebel had encouraged the worship of Baal and killed the prophets of the Lord.
Elijah appears on the scene with no fanfare. Nothing is known of his origins or background. His name, Elijah, ``My god is Jehovah (Yahweh)'', may be a name applied to him because of his challenge to Baal worship. Even the title of "the Tishbite" is problematic, as there is no reference from the period to a town or village of Tishbe.
In what is a characteristic of Elijah, his challenge is bold and direct. Baal was the local nature deity responsible for rain, thunder, lightning, and dew. Elijah not only challenges Baal on behalf of the Yahweh( Jehovah) the God of Israel, he challenges Jezebel, her priests, Ahab, and the people of Israel.
Mendelssohn uses the Biblical episodes, which in the original are narrated in rather laconic form, to produce intensely – almost luridly – dramatic scenes.
Among the episodes are the resurrection of a dead youth, the bringing of rain to parched Israel through Elijah's prayers, and the bodily assumption of Elijah on a fiery chariot into heaven. Perhaps the most dramatic episode is the ``contest of the gods'', in which Jehovah consumes an offered sacrifice in a column of fire, after a failed sequence of frantic prayers by the Hebrew people to their favored god Baal. Mendelssohn did not shrink from portraying the episode in its full Old Testament harshness, as the prophets of Baal are afterward taken away and slaughtered.
It is not known if Mendelssohn's own position as a converted Jew, he became a Lutheran at age seven, have had an influence on the libretto; though certainly many scholars have speculated on this issue.
The final section of the oratorio draws parallels between the lives of Elijah and Jesus.
Elijah was popular at its premiere and has been frequently performed, particularly in English-speaking countries, ever since.
A number of critics, however, including Bernard Shaw and Richard Wagner, have treated the work harshly, emphasizing its conventional outlook and undaring musical style. Wagner's opinion, however, may be interpreted in light of that composer's extreme anti-semitism...
Charles Rosen praises the work in general ``Mendelssohn's craft easily surmounted most of the demands of the oratorio, and [his oratorios, which also include St. Paul] are the most impressive examples of that form in the nineteenth century.'' However, Rosen additionally has characterized Mendelssohn as ``the inventor of religious kitsch in music''. In Rosen's view, Mendelssohn's religious music ``is designed to make us feel that the concert hall has been transformed into a church. The music expresses not religion but piety...This is kitsch insofar as it substitutes for religion itself the emotional shell of religion.'' 4.3