Adolf Bernhard Marx and Felix Mendelssohn were closely connected during the 1820s and 1830s, with Marx exerting a significant intellectual and artistic influence on the young composer. Their relationship was especially strong in the early period when they were both active in Berlin’s musical life. Contemporary accounts, including the memoirs of Eduard Devrient, emphasize that Mendelssohn’s 1826 revision of his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was undertaken under the impact of Marx’s theoretical ideas, demonstrating the depth of Marx’s influence on Mendelssohn’s musical thinking.
Marx’s influence extended beyond purely artistic matters. In 1829 he persuaded publisher Schlesinger to print Bach’s St Matthew Passion, newly revived by Mendelssohn, thus supporting and enabling one of Mendelssohn’s most historically significant achievements. Their collaboration was reciprocal in some respects—Mendelssohn later recommended Marx for a new professorship at the University of Berlin in 1830—but the intellectual direction of the relationship consistently reflected Marx’s strong impact on Mendelssohn’s developing aesthetic and compositional approach.
