Felix Mendelssohn

When Felix was the age of 12 in 1821 , Beethoven heard him play and was astounded. By the age of 14 Felix had composed 12 string symphonies and completed his first complete symphony by the age of 15 leaving Queen Victoria to pronounce him the greatest musical genius since Mozart.

It is noteworthy that this greatest classical composer of the early 19th century, also reknown as the greatest Jewish classical composer in all of history, composed the music for the greatest christmas  carol about the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem  as the Hebrew Scriptures predict (Micah 5:2). Mendelsohn's cantada was adopted as the music for the Christmas carol, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".

As grandson of the famed Jewish philosopher and founder of the ‘haskala’ (the Jewish enlightenment) Moses Mendelssohn, Felix refused to bow to antisemitism by dropping his Jewish family name to adopt the name bartholdy in order to assimilate. he was rather scorned as a jew by the antisemitic wagner and his music was later banned by Hitler. inspired by the life of Rabbi Saul of Tarsus - that is ‘Paul the Apostle’, a fellow Jew who first opposed belief in Jesus but then followed Jesus as Messiah. Mendelssohn composed his famous ‘St Paul’s oratio’ relating his own life as a Jew to Paul’s. from his Hebrides overture to ‘Hark the Herald angels sing’, this very Jewish musical genius Mendelssohn suffered no lack of creativity.