People often complain that music is too ambiguous... whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the reverse... what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.
Musicians
Born in Hamburg in 1809, Felix Mendelssohn
Born in Hamburg in 1809, Felix Mendelssohn was a composer, pianist, organist, and conductor of the early Romantic era. The grandson of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was a prodigy who composed the String Octet and A Midsummer Night's Dream overture as a teenager. His 1829 revival of Bach's St Matthew Passion pioneered the rediscovery of Bach. He founded the Leipzig Conservatory, and his Violin Concerto in E minor remains one of the most beloved Romantic concertos. He died at thirty-eight.
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