Mendelssohn And Mohn Analysis

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Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in E Minor

Felix Mendelssohn was brought up in a wealthy family, with a strong Jewish faith, and was one of four children. He was born in 1809, in Hamburg, Germany, and died in Leipzig, Germany in 1847. Soon after he and his sister Fanny were born, the family moved to Berlin, to elude the French troops of Napoleon. While in Berlin, the Mendelssohn family experienced some wealth; because of this Felix was able to encounter many artists, musicians, philosophers, and writes. By the young age of thirteen, Mendelssohn was an adept composer.
During his thirty-eight year life, Mendelssohn traveled the world as a concert pianist and musical director. Mendelssohn served as the conductor for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig from 1835-1840, and then from 1845-1847, he also served the Berlin Philharmonic in various positions from 1840-1844. Felix Mendelssohn also founded the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany, with faculty including Robert Schumann.
Mendelssohn and Mozart are often compared, due to the vast amount of similarities they hold. Both Mendelssohn and Mozart began playing and composing music at a young age. They both had a virtuosic quality about them. These composers also had the misfortune of suffering an early death; Mendelssohn passed at the age of thirty-eight and Mozart at thirty-five.
Mendelssohn’s life wasn’t always carefree and easy; he often set expectations too high for himself, which added a great deal of tension to his life. As he was Jewish, he also was the victim of anti-Semitism.
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor is a staple in professional violin literature. The music starts out with the solo violin playing the main theme. It is noted that before Mendelssohn officia...

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...are presented, the development beings. This is where the composer develops his themes; it is similar to the body paragraphs of an essay. During the development the violins carry the majority of the theme, while the main theme is fragmented, and then varied in the solo violin part. As the development ends the solo violin descends into the lower register, and the orchestra crescendos. After the development, comes the cadenza. The cadenza is the place in the music where the soloist is allowed to show off his virtuosic quality. The first composer to use a cadenza was Mozart, however the first composer to use virtuosic quality was Vivaldi. Mendelssohn’s cadenza is unique because he wrote it all out, leaving no room for interpretation or improvisation. The cadenza is played with the solo violin only, and is made up of broken chords and many trills. The main melody is

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