During his lifetime, Bach was esteemed as a pianist, organist and organ inspector, but his compositions were only a relatively small circle of music connoisseurs. After Bach's death, his works fell into obscurity for decades and were scarcely performed in public. After the composers of the Viennese Classical began to deal with parts of Bach's work, contacted the re-release of the St. Matthew Passion under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn in 1829 the rediscovery of Bach into the public domain began. Since the mid-19th Century, his works include the world's repertoire of classical music.