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On my way back from Schumann-Haus, I passed this building. It is a house of world-renowned classical music publisher, Edition Peters. It was founded here in Leipzig in 1800. As I play the piano, I mostly use music sheets published by Edition Peters, so this building meant a lot to me! |
And only one block away from Peters, I got to the Mendelssohn-Haus. This is where Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy spent his last two years in this house from 1845. |
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Being welcomed by Mendelssohn, I stepped into the gate. |
At the entrance, there was a portrait plaque of Mendelssohn that said he died in this house on November 4, 1847. | |
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One of the most exciting areas in this museum was the section named Effektorium. I've been to several museums of classical music composers, but those museums are getting quite high tech now, and so was this museum, using state-of-the-art technology. Here in this room, each pole speaker represents Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass. And in front of them, I started waving a conductor stick on a screen right before me, and soon realized that I could control the tempo the poles (the orchestra members) play. It was so fun! Best of all, there was no one else around, I kept being an orchestra conductor, waving a conductor stick for multiple tunes in the memu. |
There were five musical pieces of Mendelssohn to select from in the screen menu. Looking at the music sheet of his Abschied vom Walde (Farewell to the Forest) I chose, I enjoyed being a conductor for ten minutes. Each time I watched a concerto or a symphony, I wondered how it would feel like to conduct an orchestra, so it was quite a good experience. |
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| Life size of Mendelssohn welcomed me on entering the second floor. | I believe this is the most famous portrait of Mendelssohn, by a German artist, | |
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| This is the very room he spent a lot of time composing his music. Not as large as I had imaged. | In the age of the Romantic periods, pianos were still much smaller. I sometime wonder how all those Romantic-era composers like Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt composed those beautiful music with a small piano like this. | |
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| The bust of Mendelssohn by the window was a familiar one created by the famous German sculptor, Ernst Rietschel who also designed and created the Goethe–Schiller Monument in Weimar. | A lot of visitors might miss the backyard of the house. There was another bust statue of Mendelssohn in the garden, which I found much more vivid and lively. | |
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| There was a sounenir shop downstairs. There are various kinds of things associated with Mendelssohn, but they also had tiny little version of the Edition Peters music sheets. The inside is all blank. I bought one of those as a nice memento of the Mendelssohn-Haus and Edition Peters I saw nearby. Right is the actual size of one of the Edition Peters music sheet I own. |
Outside, heading back to Market Square, I again saw the face of Mendelssohn in the advertisement under the street clock. It was about the Mendelssohn-Haus that I had just visited, saying Sie! Gehen sie zurück, meaning, "You! Go back." Open hours and direction were also indicated. This city is so filled with classical music and its composers all over the place, indeed! | |
