The composer (Jakob Ludwig) Felix Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy) was born on 3 February 1809 in Hamburg. Already as a boy he was writing music with skill and maturity. He first studied with his mother, and then studied in Berlin with various teachers, and then in Paris. HisOverture to a Midsummer Night's Dreamwas written in 1826 when he was seventeen. In the early 1830s he travelled widely in Europe and hisHebridesoverture was inspired by a visit to Scotland in 1829. Mendelssohn was the favourite composer of Queen Victoria and hisScottish Symphonyis dedicated to her.

Mendelssohn became conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835, and he founded the Leipzig conservatory of music in 1843. Both he and Robert Schumann taught there. Felix Mendelssohn died in Leipzig on 4 November 1847.

The Scottish composer John Thomson (1805-1841) was the first Reid Professor of Music Theory at Edinburgh University. Thomson was well acquainted with Mendelssohn having first met him in Edinburgh in 1829. He renewed his contact with the composer later in Berlin and elsewhere on the continent, also making the acquaintance of Schumann.