Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.

Sarah Levy was a talented keyboard player in her own right often playing with Zelter's orchestra at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin of which Felix Mendelssohn and the Mendelssohn family were leading patrons. The Leipzig Conservatoire (now the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig) which he founded became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. (He later also wrote incidental music for the play including the famous Wedding March in 1842).

The Leipzig Conservatoire (now the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig) which he founded became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries his creative originality has now been recognised and re-evaluated. Mendelssohn wrote symphonies concerti oratorios piano music and chamber music.