Felix Mendelssohn paid for Leipzig's first Bach monument

Person: Felix Mendelssohn
Lived: 1809–1847
Field: Music
From: German

The story

Johann Sebastian Bach spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig as cantor of the St Thomas School and director of music for the city's churches. After his death in 1750 much of his music fell out of use, and a century later the city still had no public memorial to him.

Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, had done more than anyone to bring Bach back. In 1829, at 20, he had conducted the famous Berlin revival of the St Matthew Passion. In 1835 he became director of Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra, and he worked closely with the Thomanerchor, the choir Bach himself had once led. In 1840 he launched a project to give Bach a monument in the city where he had worked.

Mendelssohn raised the money himself, through music. On 6 August 1840 he gave a solo organ concert in St Thomas Church, playing six works by Bach and opening and closing with his own improvisations. A performance of the St Matthew Passion followed on 4 April 1841, and a third concert of Bach's vocal and instrumental works was held on the day of the unveiling. The net proceeds of the three concerts paid for most of the monument, and Mendelssohn covered the rest from his own private fortune.

The monument was designed by the Dresden painter Eduard Bendemann with Ernst Rietschel and Julius Hübner, and carved in Elbe sandstone by the Leipzig sculptor Hermann Knaur. It was unveiled on 23 April 1843 near St Thomas Church, then directly behind the St Thomas School. After an all-Bach concert at the Gewandhaus, the Thomanerchor sang chorales and Bach's motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied at the monument. Its reliefs show Bach's bust, an angel teaching boys to sing and an angel playing the organ.

The Old Bach Monument is the oldest monument to Bach in the world. It has been restored several times, most recently in 2005, and still stands beside St Thomas Church, distinguished by its name from the later New Bach Monument in Leipzig. It remains a tribute from one great composer to another and a symbol of the renewed respect for Bach that Mendelssohn did so much to create.