Songs without words, no. 13, ÉƯ major : composed for piano
Song
Felix Mendelssohn 1809–1847
Song
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Score
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Themes & character
Wordless song·Singing melody·From the eight books·Domestic favorite
At a glance
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- Song
About the piece
One of the forty eight Songs Without Words that Mendelssohn published across eight books between 1830 and his death, and which became the most commercially successful piano music of the nineteenth century.
The premise was simple and enormously influential: a piece with the shape and feeling of a song but no text, leaving the melody to the pianist's right hand. Mendelssohn resisted attaching descriptive titles, arguing that music expressed things too precise for words rather than too vague.
The composer
Felix Mendelssohn
1809–1847
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, simply known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic era. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the String Octet, the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
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