A Portrait of Mendelssohn

Since his death in 1847, Felix Mendelssohn's music and personality have been both admired and denigrated to extraordinary degrees. In this study Clive Brown weaves together a rich array of documents - letters, diaries, memoirs, reviews, news reports and more -with the aim of presenting a balanced picture of the composer and his work. Rejecting the received view of Mendelssohn as a facile, lightweight musician, Brown demonstrates that he was in fact an innovative and highly cerebral composer who exerted a powerful influence on musical thought into the 20th century.