Trade fairs for the bestFelix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition 2024

Every year, the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition recognises the best young classical musicians in Germany. The Berlin State Library holds in its collection some of the original autograph manuscripts of key pieces from this year’s competition.

Every year, the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition (FMBHW) seeks out the best up-and-coming talents in classical music in Germany. In 2024, outstanding musicians will once again compete against one another – this time in the categories of voice and string quartet. With 38 singers and 16 string quartets registered, the number of entries for this year’s competition is exceptionally high.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is organising the competition in collaboration with the Rectors’ Conference of German Music Academies and the Berlin University of the Arts.

The FMBHW programme features pieces from the competition repertoire as well as orchestral songs and arias from operas and oratorios. In both categories, the repertoire focuses on works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy or Fanny Mendelssohn.

One of the most significant sacred compositions

In the 2024 competition, the vocal pieces available for participants to choose from include an aria from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor. The Mass is one of the most significant sacred compositions of the 18th century, and the original autograph of the piece is held by the Berlin State Library.

Around 1733, Bach first composed a ‘Missa’, a setting of the Kyrie and Gloria sections of the Catholic Mass text. With this composition, Bach hoped to recommend himself to Elector Frederick Augustus II in Dresden as Royal Saxon Court Composer. Later, Bach completed the significant work into a Mass, presumably as part of a musical legacy for posterity. The manuscript of the complete Mass from 1748/1749 is part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

The Bach Renaissance through Mendelssohn Bartholdy

The fair is of particular significance to the FMBHW because its namesake, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, played a key role in the rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach and his work. In 1829, Mendelssohn Bartholdy performed the St Matthew Passion for the first time with 150 singers from the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, thereby triggering a veritable Bach Renaissance in the 1830s, which contributed significantly to Bach’s current reputation.

However, significant works by Mendelssohn Bartholdy himself, such as his string quartets from Opus 44, also form part of the competition’s repertoire. The original manuscripts of these pieces are likewise held at the Berlin State Library.

“It is important to preserve the original documents because interpretations of the works—and of the underlying source material—can change over time,” explains musicologist Roland Schmidt-Hensel, deputy head of the Music Department at the Berlin State Library. “It is not uncommon for researchers to come to us wanting to examine the autographs in order to compare them with their own research findings.” This leads time and again to new insights into works that are sometimes very old and well-known.

To facilitate work with the original autographs of Bach, Mendelssohn and other composers, the Berlin State Library has already digitised key parts of its collections and made them available on a website. With the help of these digitised materials, new editions of the works are constantly being produced, which the participants of the FMBHW are now also using.

As every year, the competition will conclude with two public concerts. The vocal final concert will take place on 20 January at 4 pm in the concert hall of the Berlin University of the Arts, and the prize-winners’ concert on 21 January at 7 pm in the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus Berlin. All rounds of the competition and the final can also be viewed via livestream. Information about the competition and the concerts is available at www.fmb-hochschulwettbewerb.de.