Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in Hamburg in 1809. His father was banker, and his grandfather a noted Jewish philosopher who advocated religious tolerance (Teachout, 2001). He only lived 38 years, dying in 1847. He was a child prodigy (Columbia, 2004), composing and performing as a child much as Mozart had. Like Mozart, he began producing mature compositions that have withstood the test of time beginning at age 16. By age 17 he had composed one of his most famous worked, the "Overture to a Midsummer Night's Dream." (Columbia, 2004) In addition to symphonies and chamber music, he composed choral music, such as the oratorio "Elijah,"
             lieder, and six organ sonatas (Columbia, 2004). However, he composed no operas (Teachout, 2001). In spite of these accomplishments within a very short life, some critics have been reluctant to classify him with the other musical giants such as Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach. Some authors have gone so far as to characterize him as a minor composer focused on "emotion and texture" but not achieving musical greatness (Teachout, 2001). Critics of the day found fault with his composing style. George Bernard Shaw once derided him for his "kid-glove gentility, his conventional sentimentality, and his despicable oratorio-mongering" (Teachout, 2001).
             While it is true that Mendelssohn focused on classical forms, he infused them with his own unique visions. His approaches to orchestration and construction of performance nuances could be viewed as precursors to the later impressionist work of composers such as Debussy. For instance, his E-flat Octet for Strings (op. 20, 1825), used a conservative structure but new and unique scoring. He used a classical symphony structure of four movements, but the relatively unusual instrumentation of a double string quartet with two of each instrument. The scherzo showed the "feathery, mysterious sound" (Teachout, 2001) that would become characteristic of his orchestrations, a...