Mendelssohn's Five Piano Fantasies

Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi(Mendelssohn Bartholdy Felix,1809-1847), was a famous German musician. Mendelssohn was a lucky fellow,growing up in the care of his parents and living a happy and comfortable life. His father was a successful banker, and his mother was his first teacher on music teacher,who herself could draw and play the piano. He showed an exceptional talent and had a very high aesthetic accomplishment in his childhood. Mendelssohn developed the personality of pursuing kindness, honesty, justice in the good family atmosphere. The smooth and comfortable life had a great influence on his music creation.Mendelssohn's music is always full of happiness and bright, which is closely linked with his disposition. Mendelssohn stands out among romantic musicians. His music is more elegant and charming, more pure and flawless, more serene and happy. From his music pieces, people can not only see the creation technique with relative exaggerated emotion in the early 19 th century, but also find out that he was a genius musician who had received a good music education and had a unique mastery of music style.His music is famous for its nobility and elegance. While we mention Mendelssohn's works, the first thing we think of is his A Midsummer Night's Dream and Songs without Words, however, in addition to these popular creations, Mendelssohn also showed his unique insights on pianos fantasia. Mendelssohn's fantasy was the product of freedom and romance, in which lies the exquisite and delicate music image.Although it is not as shine as Chopin's and Schumann's fantasia, but it still occupies a certain position in the development of fantasia. And it provides clues for learning more about Mendelssohn's piano works and is outstanding works worthy of the later excavation and research. Mendelssohn created five piano fantasias, which perfectly combines fantasy, beautiful lyric, pure music melody and beautiful harmony texture and reflects Mendelssohn's absolute master of music elements. The music image was clear and pure, although sometimes slightly sad, but their main characteristic is still lyrical singing. Over the years, people have been arguing Mendelssohn's works. Hisfantasia is also under valued by people so that it appears to be even more precious.This paper takes Mendelssohn's five fantasias, namely Fantasia the Last Rose of Summer Op. 15(composed in 1827), Three Fantasias and Scherzos Op. 16(created in1829) and Fantasia in F-sharp Minor Op. 28(created in 1830) as the research object,on the basis of the further understanding of Mendelssohn's life and his creation, to further study on Mendelssohn's five fantasias. First of all, the paper conducts the music ontology analysis on the five fantasias, respectively from the music form, mode,tonality, harmony and melody analysis research, aiming at extracting the composing and style characteristics of Mendelssohn's five piano pieces. Finally, from my personal playing experience, the paper analyzes Mendelssohn's five piano fantasias regarding on performance and illustrates from the "cantabile" playing, the treatment of background music, the multi-voice playing of the right hand and processing of speed and pedals, in order to make learners better grasp the performing skill of the five fantasias so as to perfectly present the sound effect to audience.