1855–1933 · Germany
Arnold Mendelssohn (1855–1933) was a German composer and music teacher, a professor from 1899. He wrote sacred choral works, operas and chamber music, and taught in Bonn, Cologne, Darmstadt and Frankfurt. His pupils included Paul Hindemith. The site features his music through a single ensemble trio.
Arnold Ludwig Mendelssohn came into the world on 26 December 1855 in Ratibor, in Prussian Silesia, the first of five children. His father, Wilhelm, worked on the railway and was a relative of the composer Felix Mendelssohn — the two were cousins. His mother was born into the Cauer family.
In the summer of 1866, when the Austro-Prussian War broke out, the father moved the family to Potsdam, fearing cholera along the busy railway line used for troop transport. He himself returned to Ratibor and volunteered to care for wounded soldiers. When the war ended, he brought the family back to Silesia, where he caught cholera and died three days later. After this, the mother found refuge in Berlin with her five children, staying with relatives on the Cauer side — the family of her sister Emma Cauer lived there, as did Alexander Mendelssohn, a cousin of her late husband.
While still at the gymnasium in Berlin, Mendelssohn began piano lessons with the organist Carl August Haupt, who later became director of the Royal Institute of Church Music; Haupt was regarded as an outstanding performer of Bach and exerted a decisive influence on Mendelssohn. In 1871 Mendelssohn went through a crisis caused by conflicts at school and a prolonged bout of typhus, and in 1872 he was sent to study at the gymnasium of his uncle Eduard Cauer in Danzig. There his first compositions appeared, and among composers he especially admired Mozart.
After school Mendelssohn briefly studied law, but soon realised his calling was music and returned to Berlin, where he entered the Institute of Church Music — Haupt again taught him organ — while also studying at the Academy of Music under Wilhelm Taubert, Friedrich Kiel and Eduard Grell, who noted his particular gift for composition. He completed the institute in 1878 and the academy in 1880.
In 1880 Mendelssohn was appointed music director and organist of Bonn University: he became organist and choir director of the New Evangelical Church (today the Kreuzkirche) and at the same time took up a teaching post in organ and music theory at the university. There he took part in the revival of Heinrich Schütz's music: during these years his "St Matthew Passion", "Apostolic Words" and "St John Passion" were performed for the first time in a long while, along with a motet by Schütz's teacher Giovanni Gabrieli.
In 1883 Mendelssohn left for two years to Bielefeld as music director, where he worked more on secular music, choral and orchestral work, and organising subscription concerts. In 1885 he married his second cousin, the artist Maria Cauer, daughter of the sculptor Carl Cauer; the wedding took place in Bad Kreuznach. Soon afterwards Mendelssohn accepted an invitation from Franz Wüllner to move to Cologne, where he lectured on organ and theory at the conservatory and became close to the composer Engelbert Humperdinck, the librettist Hermann Wette and the composer Hugo Wolf.
Mendelssohn's family life during the Cologne years was overshadowed by heavy losses: three of his four children died of meningitis in different years, and only the eldest daughter, Dora, survived, though the illness left her with a permanent severe mental impairment. Mendelssohn sought consolation in composing and kept a diary that he continued until the end of his life; autobiographical traces can be seen, for example, in his opera "Elsi, die seltsame Magd" ("Elsi, the Strange Maid") — it was staged at the Cologne City Theatre in 1896 and published, but remained less well known than his other works.
In 1890 Mendelssohn became a music teacher at the Darmstadt gymnasium and organist at several Protestant churches in the city, and the following year took up the post of director of church music for the Evangelical regional church of Hesse; in his new post he again performed the Passions and cantatas of Schütz and Bach. His main instrument remained the organ. In 1899 he was granted the title of professor.
The idea for the opera "Der Bärenhäuter" ("The Bear-Skinner"), based on a Grimm fairy tale, came to Mendelssohn in his first years in Darmstadt, with a libretto by Hermann Wette. The text of the first two acts was ready in 1896, and that same year Mendelssohn finished and published the opera — a rivalry arose between him and Siegfried Wagner, who was working on an opera with the same subject. Wagner's opera was staged as early as 1898, while the premiere of Mendelssohn's work at the Theater des Westens in Berlin came only in 1900; nonetheless, "Der Bärenhäuter" brought him greater success than his opera "Elsi".
From 1912 Mendelssohn taught at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, where his pupils included Paul Hindemith, Günter Raphael, Kurt Thomas and Heinrich Spitta.
In 1914 Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse awarded Mendelssohn the Knight's Cross of the Hessian Order of Ludwig. In 1917 Mendelssohn became an honorary doctor of the theological faculty of the University of Giessen, in 1919 a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, and in 1923 the first laureate of the Georg Büchner Prize, established that same year by the state of Hesse. In 1925 he received an honorary doctorate from Leipzig University, in 1927 an honorary doctorate from the theological faculty of the University of Tübingen, in 1928 the Prussian State Academy awarded him the Beethoven Prize, and that same year he was elected to the governing committee of the Heinrich Schütz Society, and in 1930 Darmstadt made him an honorary citizen.
Mendelssohn died in Darmstadt on 18 February 1933 and was buried at the city's Bessunger cemetery. His music was banned in Nazi Germany after his death because of his Jewish ancestry.
Mendelssohn left chamber music, three operas and choral works; his sacred choral music began the renewal of Protestant church music in Germany. He revived the music of Bach and Schütz and wrote in a polyphonic liturgical idiom, thereby influencing younger composers — Hugo Distler, Ernst Pepping and Günter Raphael. His early choral cantata "Abendkantate" (1881) is closest to Bach, while later works — the incidental music to Goethe's "Paria" (1906) and the motet collection "Geistliche Chormusik" (1926) — sound more individual. His opera "Der Bärenhäuter", based on a Grimm fairy tale, avoids Wagner's influence and draws on the plots and music of German folklore. Mendelssohn also wrote instrumental music: three string quartets, two piano sonatas, three symphonies, and a Violin Concerto first performed in 1920. He presented his First Symphony in Darmstadt in 1920.
Mendelssohn's sacred choral music includes the "Deutsche Messe", op. 89, recorded in 2012 by the SWR Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart, and the collection of fourteen motets for the liturgical year, "Geistliche Chormusik", op. 90, recorded by the Berlin Vocal Ensemble in 1999. His chamber music includes three string quartets, a trio for two violins and piano, and sonatas for violin and for cello with piano — this later, truly instrumental side of his output only took shape around 1914, after decades devoted mainly to vocal and choral music. Mendelssohn wrote several choral works specifically for the Leipzig Thomanerchor choir — at the request of its director, cantor Karl Straube, whom he met in Darmstadt in 1906. His orchestral works also include a suite for woodwind, brass and percussion, op. 62 (1916).
On the site Mendelssohn is represented by a single ensemble piece — a trio that can be learned either from the score or from the separate parts; the difficulty on the site is marked as "Средний+" ("Intermediate+"). Getting acquainted with the composer is best started with this very trio — there are no other scores on the site yet.