• Paperback
• 230 pages
• ISBN: 978-1-84379-232-1
• Publication date: October 2008
• Free access to a dedicated website with hours of extra music and other bonus material

A multimedia biography of Mendelssohn published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1809.

Mendelssohn is one of the world’s best-loved composers. His greatest music—The Hebrides overture, the Violin Concerto, the ‘Italian’ Symphony—is a cornerstone of the classical repertoire, while the ‘Wedding March’ from his incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been the soundtrack to the happiest moments of millions of lives. The most astonishing child genius in the history of music, Mendelssohn was also an international celebrity, his company sought by the leading figures of his time, from Goethe to Queen Victoria. Widely regarded, in the last years of his tragically short life, as the world’s greatest living composer, Mendelssohn has survived the assaults of such powerful detractors as Wagner, George Bernard Shaw and the cultural ideologues of Nazi Germany to remain, today as for his contemporaries, the creator of some of the freshest and most inspiring music ever written.

About the Author

Neil Wenborn is a freelance writer and publishing consultant, whose work has appeared in both Britain and the United States. Co-editor of the highly respected History Today Companion to British History (Collins & Brown) and A Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations (Cambridge University Press), he has also written biographies of Haydn and Stravinsky, and is the author of Dvořák and Mendelssohn in Naxos’s ‘Life and Music’ series. His most recent publication is a study of Jane Austen’s Emma (humanities-ebooks.co.uk). A collection of his award-winning poetry, Firedoors, is published by Rockingham Press.