beautiful

music

prohibition

sacredness

trombone

nationality

German

occupation / innovator as

composer

conductor

organist

pianist

innovator in the field of

music pedagogue

intellectual movement

romantic music

musician

musicologist

university teacher

religion

Lutheranism

race / ethnicity

Ashkenazi Jews

organ

scientific organization

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

cause of death

natural causes

is art when it can pull everyone in, when it can show one person another's most intimate thoughts and feelings, when it throws open the window of the soul.

This is what I think art is and what I demand of it: that it pull everyone in, that it show one person another's most intimate thoughts and feelings, that it throw open the window of the soul.

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety. (Felix Mendelssohn)

is capable of expressing thoughts not too indefinite for words, but rather too definite.

People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite...what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite.

is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike.

And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain number have a propensity to steal?

The trombone is too sacred for frequent use.

Felix MendelssohnThinkers

Felix Mendelssohn