Note to my readers: This post is a chapter from the book I wrote about Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, which I was privileged to perform with my own choir a number of years ago. This coming October the Cherry Creek Chorale will be performing one of Mendelssohn’s songs in a lovely, varied program titled “Harmony and Hops.” I’ll be writing specific posts about our selections, but in the meantime here’s this material on one of our composers:
I remember seeing this version of Mendelssohn’s name on a piano piece I was (very unsuccessfully) working on, and thinking, Is this another Mendelssohn? You’ll see both version of Felix’s last name used. So what gives? It’s a very complicated, and fascinating, story that concerns itself with Jewish culture in Europe and the role of anti-Semitism.
To begin with, Felix’s grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, came to Berlin from a small town in Germany in 1743 at the age of 14, even though that city’s society was very hostile to Jews. He managed to become quite prominent in the philosophical and literary world, beating Immanuel Kant in an essay contest sponsored by the Berlin Academy. Frederick the Great even granted him the title of “Protected Jew,” which guaranteed his right to live peacefully in Berlin. (But of course this distinction only makes the lowly status of most Jews even more obvious by contrast.) Moses is a worthwhile historical figure in his own right and was hailed as the “German Socrates.” He devoted much of his later life to writings that eloquently supported the idea of religious freedom, saying that the state should not seek to control the religion of its citizens.
But even such a respected and beloved figure as Moses Mendelssohn couldn’t wipe out the widespread anti-Semitism in European culture. So Abraham, Moses’ son and Felix’s father, took several steps to distance himself and his family from their Jewish heritage. One of those actions was to adopt the surname “Bartholdy,” an action suggested by Abraham’s brother-in-law, Jakob Salomon, who took the name from a property he had acquired. Abraham urged Felix to drop the Mendelssohn name and just use Bartholdy, but even though Felix was baptized as a Protestant and married a minister’s daughter, he refused to drop his use of Mendelssohn. It’s never possible to know exactly what was going on in the mind and heart of someone from the past (or even someone in the present), but it seems to me that Felix wanted to honor both aspects of his background. Most of the time, his public knew him as Mendelssohn without the Bartholdy, but sometimes both names were listed. And that inconsistency has carried over until today.
