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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abeca9f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50258 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50258) diff --git a/old/50258-0.txt b/old/50258-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a36a0af..0000000 --- a/old/50258-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1858 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks, by Herbert F. Peyser - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks - -Author: Herbert F. Peyser - -Release Date: October 19, 2015 [EBook #50258] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENDELSSOHN, CERTAIN MASTERWORKS *** - - - - -Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - HERBERT F. PEYSER - - - - - MENDELSSOHN - and - Certain Masterworks - - - [Illustration: Logo] - - Written for and dedicated to - the - RADIO MEMBERS - of - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - of NEW YORK - - Copyright 1947 by - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - of NEW YORK - 113 West 57th Street - New York 19, N. Y. - - [Illustration: Mendelssohn. - Sketch by Carl Mueller, 1842.] - - - - - FOREWORD - - -In the compass of the present pamphlet it is impossible to give more -than a cursory survey of Mendelssohn’s happy but extraordinarily crowded -life. He was only slightly less prolific a composer than such masters as -Bach, Mozart or Schubert, even if he did not reach the altitude of their -supreme heights. But irrespective of the quality of much of his output, -the sheer mass of it is astounding, the more so when we consider the -extent of his travels and the unceasing continuity of his professional -and social activities, which immensely exceeded anything of the kind in -the career of Schubert or Bach. In these few pages it has not been -feasible to mention more than a handful of his more familiar -compositions which happen, incidentally, to rank among his best. The -reader will find here neither a detailed record of Mendelssohn’s endless -comings and goings nor any originality of approach or appraisal in the -necessarily casual comments on a few works. If the booklet encourages -him to listen with perhaps a fresh interest to certain long familiar -scores, now that a full century has passed since the composer’s death, -its object will have been achieved. - - H. F. P. - - - - - Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks - - - _By_ - HERBERT F. PEYSER - -In 1729—the year of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”—a humble Jew of Dessau -on the Elbe, Mendel by name, became the father of a boy whom he called -Moses. Mendel was something of a scholar as the times went, but -desperately poor. He kept body and soul together by running a small -Hebrew day-school and transcribing the Pentateuch. His infant son might -know the pangs of hunger but he should have the boon of a sound -education. The training was begun almost before the child could walk. -Mendel would rout him out of bed at three or four on winter mornings, -fortify him with a cup of tea and carry him, wrapped in a shawl, to a -public seminary where he was put in charge of the learned Rabbi David -Frankel. - -Moses showed himself an extraordinarily gifted pupil. For one thing, he -was consumed by a restless spirit of inquiry. He set about making an -exhaustive study of the Scriptures, read voraciously, acquired languages -with uncanny facility and, before he was ten, composed Hebrew verses. -Nothing influenced him so deeply as Maimonides’ “The Guide of the -Perplexed”. But the intensity of his intellectual occupation was such -that he fell prey to a nervous malady which deformed his spine for life. -He bore his ailment with the patience of Job and was never heard to -complain. “If Maimonides weakened my body”, he had a habit of saying, -“has he not made ample atonement by invigorating my soul with his -sublime instructions?” - -According to a traditional Jewish manner of forming a surname Moses -called himself “Son of Mendel”—in German, “Mendels Sohn”—albeit he long -alluded to himself as “Moses Dessauer”. When Rabbi Frankel transferred -his activities to Berlin his disciple, though only fourteen, followed -him on foot. Hunger, sickness, deprivations, bitter antagonisms, far -from breaking the youth’s spirit, deepened his perceptions and broadened -his vision. He wrote and studied with fanatic zeal and in the fullness -of time developed into one of the greatest scholars and philosophers of -the age. The poet Lessing was one of his intimates. His work, “Phaedon, -or the Immortality of the Soul”, gained such currency that it was -translated into every language of Europe. - -Moses Mendelssohn endured without a murmur the numberless hardships and -disabilities to which the German Jews of the period of Frederick the -Great and his tyrannical father were subjected. One of the most -preposterous of these regulations obliged every Jew when he married to -buy a certain amount of chinaware from the royal porcelain factory in -Berlin, whether he needed it or not. Not even the choice of articles was -left to him, so long as the factory manager decided the place was -overstocked. In this way Moses Mendelssohn when in 1762 he took to wife -Fromet, daughter of Abraham Gugenheim, of Hamburg, acquired twenty -life-sized china apes which had been found unsaleable. Much later the -apes became valued family heirlooms. - -The domestic happiness and tranquility he had never known in his youth -were at last to be the philosopher’s portion. Moses and Fromet had a -considerable family, though only six of the children—three sons and -three daughters—survived to maturity. Moses himself died in Berlin at -57. Longevity, as it proved, was not to be a trait of the Mendelssohns. - -Of the three sons the second, Abraham, was destined to play a role in -musical history. True, he was not himself a trained musician although he -had very sensitive artistic instincts; and he labored under a mild sense -of inferiority, which used to find expression in his whimsical phrase: -“Formerly I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son”. In -any case he had not to endure anything like the paternal struggles and -poverty. Of his boyhood not much is known. But in his twenties he was -sent to Paris and worked for a time as cashier in the bank of M. Fould. -When he returned to Germany he entered a banking business founded in -Berlin and Hamburg by his brother, Joseph. It was possibly on his trip -home that he met his future wife, Leah Salomon. If marriages are made in -heaven this match assuredly could boast a celestial origin! Leah Salomon -was an wholly unusual woman. She came of a Berlin family of wealth and -position, she was exquisitely sensitive and cultured and, although she -strictly limited her singing and playing to the home circle, was a -musician of gifts quite out of the ordinary. Moreover, she drew, was an -accomplished linguist (she even read Homer in Greek, though only in the -privacy of her boudoir, lest anyone suspect her of “immodesty”), and -dressed with studied simplicity. Among Leah’s elaborate virtues was her -tireless devotion to her mother. She kept house for her and granted her -a substantial income. - -Small wonder that such a union was blessed with exceptional offspring. -Of the four children of Abraham and Leah Mendelssohn, Fanny Cäcilie, -Jakob Ludwig Felix and Rebecka saw the light at Hamburg, in the order -named. The youngest, Paul, came not long after the family had removed to -Berlin. It may not be inappropriate to call briefly into the picture at -this point Leah’s brother, Jacob Salomon Bartholdy, if for no other -reason than to account for a surname which formed an adjunct to part of -the Mendelssohn family, including the composer. Salomon, a distinguished -art critic who spent his later years in Rome as Prussian consul-general, -had embraced Protestantism (despite a traditional curse launched by his -mother) and adopted the name “Bartholdy” after “the former proprietor of -a garden belonging to the family”—a garden which subsequently passed -into the hands of Abraham Mendelssohn. It was Salomon Bartholdy who at -length persuaded his brother-in-law to procure for his children what -Heinrich Heine had called “a ticket of admission to European culture”—in -short, conversion to the Christian faith. To distinguish between the -converted members of the family and those who clung to their old belief -“Bartholdy” was henceforth affixed to “Mendelssohn”. In time, Abraham -and Leah followed their children into the Lutheran faith, Leah adding to -her own name those of Felicia and Paulina, in allusion to her sons. - -Felix was born on Friday, Feb. 3, 1809, at 14 Grosse Michaelisstrasse, -Hamburg. Long afterwards the place was marked by a commemorative tablet -above the entrance, a tribute from Jenny Lind and her husband. Curiously -enough, the violinist Ferdinand David, Felix’s friend and associate of -later days, was born under the same roof scarcely a year after. Hamburg -became an unpleasant place during the occupation by Napoleon’s troops -and in 1811, soon after the birth of Rebecka, the family escaped in -disguise to Berlin where Abraham, at his own expense, outfitted a -company of volunteers. The Mendelssohns took up residence in a house -belonging to the widow Fromet. It was situated in what was then an -attractive quarter of north-eastern Berlin, on a street called the Neue -Promenade that had houses on one side and a tree-bordered canal on the -other. It offered a spacious playground for the children and the singer, -Eduard Devrient, recalled seeing Felix play marbles or touch-and-run -with his comrades. - - [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN’S BIRTHPLACE IN HAMBURG] - -Abraham Mendelssohn, having severed the partnership with his brother, -started a banking business of his own which soon prospered famously. -Somehow even the myriad cares of running a bank did not prevent the -father from scrupulously overseeing the education of his sons and -daughters. If the young people were virtually bedded on roses, Abraham -was of too strong a character and, indeed, too much of a martinet not to -subject them to the discipline of a carefully ordered routine. Wealth -and ease did not cause him to forget the privations and the conflicts -which helped to forge the greatness of his own father’s soul. His -children need not hunger, they need not be denied opportunities to -develop what talents nature had bestowed on them. But given such -opportunities they must labor unremittingly to make the most of them. -They had to be up and about at five in the morning and, shortly after, -repair to their lessons. Felix always looked forward to Sundays when he -could sleep late! In some ways one is reminded of the manner Leopold -Mozart supervised the training of Wolfgang and Nannerl. If Abraham -Mendelssohn was not, like Father Mozart, a practising musician, he had -an artistic insight which nobody valued higher than Felix himself. “I am -often unable to understand”, he wrote his father when he was already a -world celebrity, “how it is possible to have so accurate a judgment -about music without being a technical musician and if I could only say -what I feel in the same clear and intelligent manner that you always do, -I should certainly never make another confused speech as long as I -live”. It is easy to believe that some of the adoration Felix felt for -his father above all others grew out of his unbounded respect for the -older man’s intellectual superiority. - -Business connected with war indemnities associated with the Napoleonic -conflicts obliged Abraham in 1816 to go to Paris and on this journey he -took his family with him. Felix and Fanny were placed for piano -instruction under a Madame Marie Bigot de Morogues and both appear to -have profited. Their first piano lessons had been given them at home by -their mother who, in the beginning restricted them to five minute -periods so that they ran no risk of growing weary or restive. Fanny no -less than her brother disclosed an unusual feeling for the keyboard at -an early age and even when she was born Leah noted that the infant -seemed to have “Bach fugue fingers”. - -When the Mendelssohns returned to Berlin the young people’s education -was begun systematically. General tuition was administered by Karl -Heyse, father of the novelist; the painter, Rösel, taught drawing, for -which Felix exhibited a natural aptitude from the first; Ludwig Berger, -a pupil of Clementi’s, developed the boy’s piano talents, Carl Wilhelm -Henning gave him violin lessons and Goethe’s friend, Carl Zelter, taught -thorough-bass and composition. Nor were the social graces neglected. -Felix learned to swim, to ride, to fence, to dance. Dancing, indeed, was -one of his passions all his life. Father Mendelssohn always found time -to supervise his children’s studies and to guide their accomplishments. -For that matter he never considered his sons and daughters—even when -they grew up—too old for his discipline; and, certainly, Felix welcomed -rather than resented it. - -On Oct. 28, 1818, the boy made his first public appearance as pianist. -The occasion was a concert given by a horn virtuoso, Joseph Gugel. Felix -collaborated in a trio for piano and two horns, by Joseph Wölfl. He -earned, we are told, “much applause”. But Abraham, though pleased, was -not the man to have his head turned by displays of precocity, shallow -compliments or noisy acclamations. Neither did Zelter flatter his pupil -on his never-failing facility. No problem seemed excessive for the boy, -who could read orchestral scores, transpose, improvise—what you will. -“Come, come”, Zelter would grumble contemptuously, as if these feats -were the most natural thing in the world, “genius ought to be able to -dress the hair of a sow and make curls of it!” Yet to Goethe he made no -effort to conceal his satisfaction. “Felix is a good and handsome boy, -merry and obedient”, he confided in a letter; “his father has brought -him up the proper way.... He plays piano like a real devil and is not in -the least backward on string instruments...”. And the crusty -contrapuntist saw to it that the ten-year-old genius entered the -Singakademie and sang among the altos where he could learn to know, -inside and out, works by Palestrina, Bach, Handel and lesser masters, -distinguish between styles and observe the minutest technicalities of -fugal construction. - -It was only natural that Felix should, at this stage, have tried his own -hand at composition. He wrote to his father, in Paris, asking for music -paper. Abraham took the request as the text for a mild sermon: “You, my -dear Felix”, he admonished his son, “must state exactly what kind of -music paper you wish to have—ruled or not ruled; and if the former you -must say distinctly _how_ it is to be ruled. When I went into the shop -the other day to buy some, I found that I did not know myself what I -wanted to have. Read over your letter before you send it off and -ascertain whether, if addressed to yourself, you could execute the -commission contained in it”. Sooner or later he must have gotten his -music paper for in 1820, when Felix began to compose, it is figured that -he wrote fifty or sixty movements of one sort or another, solo and part -songs, a cantata and a comedy. In every instance his methodical training -caused him to inscribe the work with the exact date and place of its -composition—a practice which saved no end of doubt and conjecture in -later years, the more so as Felix remained quite as systematic his life -long. These scores (of which he kept a painstaking catalogue) are headed -in many cases with the mysterious formula “L.v.g.G.” or “H.d.m.”, which -though never satisfactorily deciphered, reappears again and again in his -output. - -Some of these compositions, together with several by Fanny were -dispatched to Abraham in Paris. The father was particularly pleased with -a fugue and wrote home: “I like it well; it is a great thing. I should -not have expected him to set to work in such good earnest so soon, for -such a fugue requires reflection and perseverance”. He was perturbed -over his daughter’s composing, though he appreciated her talent. It was -well enough, he declared, for Felix to take up music as a profession but -Fanny must bear in mind that a woman’s place is in the home. As a -warning example he points to the sad end of Madame Bigot, who busied -herself professionally with music and now is dead of consumption! - - [Illustration: Mendelssohn at the age of eleven. - Sketch by an unknown artist.] - -In 1821 there took place in Berlin an event which stirred the musical -world of Germany to its depths—the first performance of Weber’s “Der -Freischütz”. The composer, who supervised the rehearsals, was generally -accompanied by his young friend and pupil, Julius Benedict. One day -while escorting his master to the theatre, Benedict noticed a boy of -about eleven or twelve running toward them with gestures of hearty -greeting. “’Tis Felix Mendelssohn!” exclaimed Weber delightedly, and he -at once introduced the lad to Benedict, who had heard of the remarkable -talents of the little musician even before coming to Berlin. “I shall -never forget the impression of that day on beholding that beautiful -youth, with the auburn hair clustering in ringlets round his shoulders, -the look of his brilliant, clear eyes and the smile of innocence and -candour on his lips”, wrote Benedict much later in his “Sketch of the -Life and Works of the late Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy”. Felix wanted -the pair to visit the Mendelssohn home at once, but as Weber was -expected at the opera house he asked Benedict to go in his stead. “Felix -took me by the hand and made me run a race till we reached his house. Up -he went briskly to the drawing-room where, finding his mother, he -exclaimed: ‘Here is a pupil of Weber’s, who knows a great deal of his -music of the new opera. Pray, mamma, ask him to play it for us’; and so, -with an irresistible impetuosity, he pushed me to the pianoforte and -made me remain there until I had exhausted all the store of my -recollections”. - -A more spectacular event in Felix’s young life was his first visit to -Goethe, in Weimar, the same year. It was Zelter who, anxious to acquaint -the poet with his prodigious young pupil, had engineered the meeting. -Felix had never gone anywhere without his parents and the family was not -a little concerned about this expedition. He was plied with no end of -advice before setting out, told how to behave at table, how to eat, how -to talk, how to listen. “When you are with Goethe, I advise you to open -your eyes and ears wide”, admonished Fanny; “and after you come home, if -you can’t repeat every word that fell from his mouth, I will have -nothing more to do with you!” His mother, for her part, wrote to Aunt -Henrietta (the celebrated family spinster, “Tante Jette”): “Just fancy -that the little wretch is to have the good luck of going to Weimar with -Zelter for a short time. You can imagine what it costs me to part from -the dear child even for a few weeks. But I consider it such an advantage -for him to be introduced to Goethe, to live under the same roof with him -and receive the blessing of so great a man! I am also glad of this -little journey as a change for him; for his impulsiveness sometimes -makes him work harder than he ought to at his age.” - -The Mendelssohns need not have worried. The old poet took the boy to his -heart from the first. Nor was Felix remiss about communicating his -impressions. “Now, stop and listen, all of you”, he writes home in an -early missive which forms part of one of the finest series of letters -any of the great composers has left posterity. “Today is Tuesday. On -Saturday the Sun of Weimar, Goethe, arrived. We went to church in the -morning and heard half of Handel’s 100th Psalm. After this I went to the -‘Elephant’, where I sketched the house of Lucas Cranach. Two hours -afterwards, Professor Zelter came and said: ‘Goethe has come—the old -gentleman’s come!’ and in a minute we were down the steps and in -Goethe’s house. He was in the garden and was just coming around a -corner. Isn’t it strange, dear father, that was exactly how you met him! -He is very kind, but I don’t think any of the pictures are like him.... - -“Every morning I get a kiss from the author of ‘Faust’ and ‘Werther’ and -every afternoon two kisses from my friend and father Goethe. Think of -that! It does not strike me that his figure is imposing; he is not much -taller than father; but his look, his language, his name—they are -imposing. The amount of sound in his voice is wonderful and he can shout -like ten thousand warriors. His hair is not yet white, his step is firm, -his way of speaking mild....” - -Felix made much music for the poet’s enjoyment. Every day he played him -something of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or compositions of his own (he had -even brought some of Fanny’s songs for Goethe’s daughter-in-law, who had -a pretty voice). “Every afternoon”, wrote Felix, “Goethe opens the -Streicher piano with the words: ‘I haven’t heard you at all today; make -a little noise for me’; then he sits beside me and when I am finished (I -usually improvise), I beg him for a kiss or else I just take it!” Once -Felix played a Bach fugue and suffered a slip of memory. Nothing daunted -he went on improvising at considering length. The poet noticed nothing! -At other times he would sit by the window listening, the image of a -Jupiter Tonans, his old eyes flashing. And when the boy finally left -Weimar Goethe missed him sorely. “Since your departure”, he lamented, -“my piano is silent. A solitary attempt to waken it to life was a -failure. I hear, indeed, much talk about music but that is only a sorry -diversion”. A certain classical symmetry and a halcyon beauty in the -boy’s music and in his performances seem to have appealed to a -deep-seated element of the poet’s nature. When some time afterwards -Felix dedicated a quartet to him, Goethe accepted it with a letter of -fulsome praise. Yet when poor Schubert about the same period sent him a -number of his finest Goethe settings the Olympian did not even deign to -acknowledge them! - -Leah Mendelssohn, delighted with the letters Felix was writing from -Weimar, proudly forwarded them to Aunt Jette, in Paris. “If God spare -him”, replied that worthy person, “his letters will in long years to -come create the deepest interest. Take care of them as of a holy relic; -indeed, they are already sacred as the effusion of so pure and -child-like a mind. You are a happy mother and you must thank Providence -for giving you such a son. He is an artist in the highest sense, rare -talents combined with the noblest, tenderest heart....” The good woman -spoke prophetically! Not all of Mendelssohn’s letters have been -preserved and some of them were withheld out of scruples which today are -rather difficult to appreciate. Whether the anti-Semitic excesses of the -Nazi regime spared those portions of the correspondence not previously -given to the world is still unknown. Perhaps we shall never read it in -all its inundating fullness. There were times in his short life when he -wrote as many as thirty-five letters in one day! At any rate, those we -have are precious. - -It must not be imagined that Felix’s numerous boyhood compositions -served student ends primarily. This early spate of symphonies, -concertos, songs, piano and organ pieces, chamber music and what not -furnished matter for regular family musicales. The Mendelssohns had for -some time been in the habit of holding miscellaneous concerts on -alternate Sunday mornings in the big dining room of the house on the -Neue Promenade. In these the young people participated and invariably -some work or other by Felix made up a part of the program. Felix and -Fanny usually played piano, Rebecka sang, Paul played cello. Felix also -conducted and had at first to be placed on a stool so that his small -figure could be seen. Little operas and operettas varied the programs, -the boy being the author of four of them. These “operas” were not given -in costume or with any attempt at dramatic, action. The characters were -duly assigned and sung, but the dialogue was read and the chorus sat -grouped around a table. The listeners offered their opinions freely, -Zelter (who never missed one of these events) commending or criticising, -as the case might be. - -On Felix’s fifteenth birthday, Zelter suddenly rose and, “in masonic -phraseology”, promoted his pupil from the grade of “apprentice” to that -of “assistant”, adding that he welcomed him to this new rank “in the -name of Mozart, of Haydn and of old Bach”. This last name was -significant. For a little earlier the boy had received as a Christmas -present a score of the “St. Matthew Passion” transcribed by Zelter’s -express permission from a manuscript preserved in the Singakademie. -Henceforth the “assistant” was to immerse himself in this music and it -was the exhaustive study of the treasurous score which resulted a few -years later in the historic revival of the work an exact century after -its first production under Bach’s own direction. - -The summer of 1824 Felix for the first time saw the sea. His father took -him and Rebecka to Dobberan, on the Baltic, a bathing resort in the -neighborhood of Rostock. Here he received those first marine impressions -which in due course were to shape themselves musically in the “Calm Sea -and Prosperous Voyage” and “Fingal’s Cave” Overtures. For the moment, -the scope of this inspiration was less ambitious. He wrote for the -military band at the local casino an overture for wind instruments -(“Harmoniemusik”), which stands in his output as Op. 24. It is sweetly -romantic music, with a dulcet _andante con moto_ introduction that has a -kind of family resemblance to the softer phraseology of Weber, a -spirited, vivacious _allegro_ forming the main body of the piece. - -But the “Harmoniemusik” Overture was only an incident of the creative -activity marking the year 1824. The chief composition of the time was -the Symphony in C minor, which ranks as Mendelssohn’s First. Actually, -it is his thirteenth in order of writing, though for conventional -purposes the preceding twelve (for strings) may pass for juvenile -efforts. We may as well record here that, irrespective of the dates of -the composition, the official order of Mendelssohn’s symphonies is as -follows: The Symphony-Cantata in B flat (the so-called “Hymn of Praise”, -dated 1840) stands as No. 2, the A minor (“Scotch”), written between -1830 and 1842, as No. 3, the A major (“Italian”), composed in 1833, as -No. 4, and the “occasional” one in D minor, known as the “Reformation -Symphony” (1830-32), as No. 5. - -The Mendelssohn family was outgrowing the old home on the Neue Promenade -and late in the summer of 1825 Abraham bought that house on Leipziger -Strasse which was henceforth to be inalienably associated with the -composer. If it had its drawbacks in winter the spacious edifice with -its superb garden (once a part of the Tiergarten) was ideal at all other -seasons. The so-called “Garden House” was one of its most attractive -features and became the scene of those unforgettable Sunday concerts -where a number of new-minted masterpieces were first brought to a -hearing. The young people published a household newspaper, in summer -called the “Garden Times”, in winter the “Tea and Snow Times”. Pen, ink -and paper were conveniently placed and every guest was encouraged to -write whatever occurred to him and deposit it in a box, the -contributions being duly printed in the little sheet. These guests -included the cream of the intellectual, social and artistic life of -Europe who chanced to be in Berlin. It was a point of honor to be -invited to the Mendelssohn residence. - -To this period belongs Felix’s operatic effort “Die Hochzeit des -Camacho” (“Camacho’s Wedding”). The text, by Karl Klingemann, a -Hanoverian diplomat who played a not inconsiderable role in -Mendelssohn’s life, was based on an episode from “Don Quixote”. The -story has to do with the mock suicide of the student, Basilio, to rescue -his beloved from the wealthy Camacho. Possibly the little work would -never have been written but for the ambitions of Leah Mendelssohn to see -her son take his place among the successful opera composers of the day. -Having embarked upon the scheme Felix went about it with his usual zeal. -But the piece was played exactly once, and in a small playhouse, not at -the big opera. Although there were many calls for the composer he seems -to have sensed a defeat and left the theatre early. It was not long -before he lost interest in the work altogether. - -However, better things were at hand to obliterate the memory of the -check suffered by “Camacho’s Wedding”. For we are now on the threshold -of the composer’s first mature masterworks. It must be understood that -there was really no relation between Mendelssohn’s years and the -extraordinary creations of his adolescence. In point of fact, his -creative mastery at the age of sixteen and seventeen is maturity arrived -at before its time. That preternatural development, as remarkable in its -way as Mozart’s, is the true answer to the problem why the later -creations of Mendelssohn show relatively so little advance over the -early ones. We can hardly believe, for instance, that the F sharp minor -Capriccio for piano or the Octet could have been finer if written twenty -years after they were. How many not familiar with the respective dates -of composition could gather from the music itself that the incidental -pieces fashioned for the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by royal command came -fully seventeen years after the immortal Overture? The whole might have -been created at one sitting, so undiscoverable is any sign of cleavage. - -The Octet for strings, finished in the autumn of 1825 represents, -perhaps, the finest thing Mendelssohn had written up to that point. It -is a masterpiece of glistening tone painting, exquisite in its mercurial -grace and color, imaginative delicacy and elfin lightness. The unity of -the whole is a marvel. But the pearl of the work is the Scherzo in G -minor, a page as airy and filamentous as Mendelssohn—whose scherzos are, -perhaps, his most matchless achievements—was ever to write. Not even the -most fairylike passages in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” excel it. - -Before passing on to the last-named, however, we must not fail to -signalize the “Trumpet” Overture, composed about the same time (which -Abraham Mendelssohn liked so much that he said he should like to hear it -on his deathbed); the Quintet, Op. 18, the Sonata, Op. 6, the songs of -Op. 8 and 9, the unfailingly popular Prelude and Fugue in E minor, of -Op. 35. Let us not be confused, incidentally, by opus numbers in -Mendelssohn which have as little to do with priority of composition as -they have in the case of Schubert. - -Felix and Fanny read Shakespeare in translations of Schlegel and Tieck. -Their particular favorite was the “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. In August -1826, in the delightful garden of the Leipziger Strasse home the youth -of seventeen signed the score of an Overture to the fantastic comedy -which, as much as anything he was to write, immortalized his name. The -famous friend of the family, Adolph Bernhard Marx, claimed to have given -Felix certain musical suggestions. Be this as it may, the Overture was -something new under the sun and not a measure of it has tarnished in the -course of an odd 130 years. It was first performed as a piano duet and -shortly afterwards played by an orchestra at one of the Sunday concerts -in the garden house. - -Felix entered the University of Berlin in 1826 and offered as his -matriculation essay a translation in verse of Terence’s “Andria”. -Nevertheless, he seems to have had no time to bother about a degree. -Music was absorbing him completely, especially his weekly rehearsals of -Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” with a small choir. The more intimately he -penetrated into this mighty work the keener became his desire to produce -it at the Singakademie. Together with his friend, Eduard Devrient, he -divulged his scheme to Zelter, only to be rebuffed. Spurred by the -energetic Devrient he returned again and again to the attack, till -Zelter finally weakened. Having carried the day Mendelssohn left the -Singakademie jubilantly exclaiming to the elated Devrient: “To think -that it should be an actor and a Jew, to give this great Christian work -back to the world!” It was the only recorded occasion on which -Mendelssohn alluded to his Hebraic origin. - -Three performances were given of the “St. Matthew Passion” at the -Singakademie—the first on March 11, 1829, a century almost to a day -since the original production in the Leipzig Thomaskirche. Mendelssohn -conducted the first two. It was the real awakening of the world to the -grandeur of Bach, the true beginning of a movement which has continued -undiminished right up to the present. Fanny spoke more truly than -perhaps she realized when she declared that “the year 1829 is likely to -form an epoch in the annals of music”. - -Scarcely had Mendelssohn restored the “St. Matthew Passion” to the world -than he left Berlin for the first of those ten trips he was to take to -the country that was to become his true spiritual home. Abraham -Mendelssohn having finally decided his son might safely adopt music as a -means of livelihood resolved to let him travel for three years in order -to gain experience, extend his artistic reputation and settle on the -scene of his activities. Felix was not averse to the idea. Already he -was feeling some of those pin-pricks of hostility which Berlin, for -reasons of jealousy or latent anti-Semitism was to direct against him in -years to come. It was Moscheles who counseled a visit to London, where -another friend, Klingemann, filled a diplomatic post. - -Mendelssohn’s first Channel crossing was not calculated to put him in a -pleasant frame of mind. He was seasick, he had fainting fits, he -quarrelled with the steward and solemnly cursed that “Calm Sea and -Prosperous Voyage” Overture he had composed scarcely a year earlier. The -boat trip lasted almost three days! Luckily his friends had found him -comfortable quarters in London, at 103 Great Portland Street. At once it -developed that he and London were predestined for each other. The -metropolis both appalled and enchanted him. “It is fearful! It is -maddening!”, he wrote home; “I am quite giddy and confused. London is -the grandest and most complicated monster on the face of the earth. How -can I compress into a letter what I have been three days seeing? I -hardly remember the chief events and yet I must not keep a diary, for -then I should see less of life.... Things roll and whirl round me and -carry me along as in a vortex”. - -He had arrived at the height of the season. The wife of Moscheles took -him about in a carriage (“me in my new suit, of course!”) He went to the -opera and to the theatre, saw Kemble in “Hamlet” and was incensed at the -way Shakespeare was cut. Still “the people here like me for the sake of -my music and respect me for it and this delights me immensely”. He made -his first London appearance with the Philharmonic on May 25, 1829, and -even at the rehearsal found two hundred listeners on hand, “chiefly -ladies”. The program contained his C minor Symphony, though later an -orchestrated version of the scherzo from the Octet was substituted for -the original minuet. J. B. Cramer led Mendelssohn to the stage “as if I -were a young lady”. “Immense applause” greeted him. This was soon to be -an old story. When people spied him in the audience at a concert someone -was sure to shout: “There is Mendelssohn!”; whereupon others would -applaud and exclaim: “Welcome to him!” In the end Felix found no other -way to restore quiet than to mount the stage and bow. - -He played piano for the first time in London at the Argyll Rooms on May -30. His offering was Weber’s “Concertstück” and he caused a stir by -performing it without notes. One might say he was heard _before_ the -concert—for he had gone to the hall to try a new instrument several -hours earlier but, finding it locked, seated himself at an old one and -improvised for a long time to be suddenly roused from his revery by the -noise of the arriving audience. Whereupon he dashed off to dress for the -matinee in “very long white trousers, brown silk waistcoat, black -necktie and blue dress coat”. Not long afterwards he gave concerts with -Moscheles and with the singer, Henrietta Sontag. The Argyll Rooms were -so crowded that “ladies might be seen among the double basses, between -bassoons and horns and even seated on a kettle drum”. - -London life, for that matter, seemed made to order for Felix, the more -so as he was received with open arms by those influential personages to -whom he brought letters of introduction. Yet the whole spirit of London -was vastly to his taste. Writing later from Italy he confided to his -sister that, for all the luminous atmosphere of Naples, “London, that -smoky nest, is fated to be now and ever my favorite residence. My heart -swells when I even think of it”! - -The admiration was mutual! England of that age (and for years to come) -adored Mendelssohn quite as it had Handel a century earlier and -peradventure even more than it did Haydn and Weber. Musically, the -nation made itself over in his image. And Felix loved the rest of the -country as he loved its metropolis. The London season ended, he went on -a vacation in July, 1829, to Scotland, accompanied by Klingemann. The -travelers stopped first at Edinburgh, where they heard the Highland -Pipers and visited Holyrood Palace. Like any conventional tourist Felix -saw the apartments where Mary Stuart lived and Rizzio was murdered, -inspected the chapel in which Mary was crowned but now “open to the sky -and ... everything ruined and decayed; I think I found there the -beginning of my ‘Scotch’ Symphony”. And he set down sixteen bars of what -became the slow introduction in A minor. It was to be some time, -however, before the symphony took its conclusive shape. If Holyrood -quickened his fancy “one of the Hebrides” (which he saw a few days -later) struck even brighter sparks from his imagination. A rowboat trip -to Fingal’s Cave inspired him to twenty bars of music “to show how -extraordinarily the place affected me”, as he wrote to his family. He -elaborated the overture—than which he did nothing greater—in his own -good time and recast it before it satisfied him. For in the first form -of this marine mood picture, he missed “train oil, salt fish and -seagulls”. Yet the twenty bars he set down on the spot form its main -subject. - -Back in London his mind was occupied with numerous compositions, among -them the first stirrings of the “Scotch” and “Reformation” Symphonies -and the “Hebrides” Overture. But before developing these he wanted to -write an organ piece for Fanny’s marriage to the painter, Wilhelm Hensel -(whom Leah Mendelssohn had put on a five years’ “probation” before she -consented to give him her daughter’s hand!); and a household operetta -for the approaching silver wedding of his parents. Klingemann wrote the -libretto of this piece (“Heimkehr aus der Fremde”, which the critic -Chorley in 1851 Englished as “Son and Stranger”). It contained special -roles for Fanny, Rebecka, Devrient and Hensel—the last-named limited to -one incessantly repeated note, because he was so desperately unmusical. - - _Hebrides, August 7, 1829._ - - _... in order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides - affected me, the following came into my mind there:_ - - [Illustration: Musical Manuscript] - -Felix returned to Berlin for the parental festivities. But Fanny’s -wedding he missed, having injured his leg in a carriage accident and -being laid up for two months. He might, had he chosen, have accepted a -chair of music at the Berlin University in 1830, but he preferred to -continue his travels. It seemed almost a matter of routine that he -should stop off at Weimar to greet Goethe once more. He may or may not -have suspected that he was never to see the poet again. Another friend -he visited was Julius Schubring, rector of St. George’s Church in -Dessau. Nürnberg, Munich, Salzburg, the Salzkammergut and Linz were -stations on the way to Vienna, where his enjoyment was poisoned by the -depressing level of musical life and the shocking popular neglect of -masters like Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He made a side trip to -nearby Pressburg to witness the coronation of the Austrian crown prince -as King of Hungary. The most exciting incident of the day was the -smashing of Mendelssohn’s high hat by a spectator whose view it -obstructed! - -Italy was another story. “The whole country had such a festive air”, he -wrote in one of the first of those Italian letters which are among the -gems of his correspondence, “that I seemed to feel as if I were myself a -prince making his grand entry”. To be sure, there was not much music -worth listening to and he was horrified by some of the things he heard -in the churches. But there were the great masters of painting, there was -the beauty of the countryside, the unnumbered attractions of Venice, -Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, the fascination of Italian life and the -charm of the Italian people. He heard the Holy Week musical services in -the Sistine Chapel with works of Palestrina, Allegri and lesser men; -wrote long and detailed letters to Zelter about the technical aspects of -church singing in Rome, composed industriously, saw his boyhood playmate -Julius Benedict and became acquainted with a wildly eccentric young -French musician named Berlioz. On his way northward, in Milan, Felix met -Beethoven’s friend, Dorothea von Ertmann; also, Karl Mozart, whom he -delighted by playing some of his father’s music. - -With his incredible dispatch he had managed to accomplish a great amount -of creative work in Italy, despite his social and sight-seeing -activities. He had finished a version of the “Hebrides” Overture, had -made progress with his “Scotch” and “Italian” Symphonies, written a -Psalm, several motets, the “First Walpurgis Night” (later recast), piano -pieces, songs. Returning to Germany via Switzerland he stopped off in -Munich and gave a benefit concert on Oct. 17, 1831. It was for this -event that he composed his G minor Piano Concerto. In a letter to his -father Felix referred to it, somewhat contemptuously, as “a thing -rapidly thrown off”. It has been assumed that Mendelssohn may have had -Paris in mind composing this concerto. At any rate, the first three -months of 1832 found him once more in the French capital, where he made -new musical acquaintances. One of these was the conductor, Habeneck; -others, Chopin, Liszt, Ole Bull, Franchomme. Yet Mendelssohn found it -difficult, even as he had earlier, to adjust himself to some musical -insensibilities of Paris. He was appalled on one occasion to learn that -his own Octet was given in a church at a funeral mass commemorating -Beethoven. “I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd than a priest at -the altar and my Scherzo going on”, he wrote his parents. Habeneck, who -had him play at one of the Conservatoire concerts, wanted to produce at -one of them the “Reformation” Symphony, which Felix had composed in 1830 -for the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession. The performance never -took place; the orchestra disliked the work, finding it “too learned, -too much fugato, too little melody”. - -Were these objections wholly unfounded? Irrespective of what passed in -those days for excessive “learning” the “Reformation Symphony” is, in -good truth, a stodgy work, far more willed than inspired. The most -engaging thing in it is the citation in the first movement of that -“Dresden Amen” formula, which half a century later Wagner was to employ -in “Parsifal”. Strangely enough, some pages of the symphony sound like -Schumann without the latter’s melodic invention. It is only just to -point out that the composer himself came to detest it, declared it was -the one work of his he would gladly burn and refused to permit its -publication. - -Zelter died not long after Goethe and the Singakademie found itself -without a head. Mendelssohn seemed his old teacher’s logical successor -and he would gladly have accepted the post. But many of the old ladies -of the chorus did not take kindly to the idea of “singing under a Jewish -boy”. When it came to a vote Felix was defeated by a large majority and -one Karl Rungenhagen installed as Zelter’s successor. Rather tactlessly -the Mendelssohns resigned their membership in a body. Felix’s popularity -in Berlin was not improved by the situation, despite the family’s wealth -and influence. He said little but the wound rankled, somewhat as -happened earlier over Berlin’s rejection of “Camacho’s Wedding”. - -The Cäcilienverein, of Frankfort, asked the composer to write an -oratorio based on St. Paul. But if Mendelssohn was unable to oblige at -once, the seed was planted and, in proper season, was to take root. Late -in 1832 a different kind of offer came from another quarter. The Lower -Rhine Festival was to be given in Düsseldorf the spring of 1833. Would -Felix conduct it? - -The Düsseldorf commission was accepted and as soon as preliminaries were -arranged Felix was off to his “smoky nest” once more. He had now -completed his “Italian” Symphony and placed it, along with his “Calm Sea -and Prosperous Voyage” and “Trumpet” Overtures at the disposal of the -London Philharmonic. The Symphony was produced on May 13, 1833. To this -day it remains one of the most translucent, gracious and limpid -creations imaginable—“kid glove music”, as some have called it, but no -less inspired for its gentility. Is it really Italian, despite the -Neapolitan frenzy of its “Saltarello” finale? Is it not rather Grecian, -like so much else in Mendelssohn’s art, with its incorruptible symmetry -and its Mediterranean _limpidezza_? Where has Mendelssohn instrumented -with more luminous clarity than in the first three movements? The second -one, a kind of Pilgrims’ March, has none of the sentimentality which -wearies in some of the composer’s _adagios_. The third, in its weaving -grace is, one might say, Mendelssohnian in the loveliest sense. - -“Mr. Felix”, as he was freely called, returned to Germany for the -Düsseldorf festival, which began on May 26 (Whitsuntide), 1833. Abraham -Mendelssohn came from Berlin to witness his son’s triumph. The -Düsseldorf directorate was so pleased with everything that Mendelssohn -was asked to take charge “of all the public and private musical -establishments of the town” for a period of three years. He was to have -a three months’ leave of absence each summer. “One thing I especially -like about Felix’s position is that, while so many have titles without -an office he will have a real office without a title”, declared the -father. - -Meanwhile, the projected “St. Paul” oratorio was more and more filling -its composer’s mind and probably a large part of it had already taken -shape. As a matter of fact, he looked upon his appointment at Düsseldorf -less as a lucrative engagement than as furnishing him an opportunity -“for securing quiet and leisure for composition”. Still, he gave much -attention to his duties, particularly those in connection with church -music “for which no appropriate epithet exists for that hitherto given -here”. In an evil hour he had lightly agreed to take charge of the -activities at the theatre. It was not long before he regretted it. Felix -was never made to cope with the intrigues and irritations of an opera -house. On the opening night, at a performance of “Don Giovanni”, there -was a riot in the theatre and the curtain had to be lowered four times -before the middle of the first act. Associated with him was Karl -Immermann, with whom he had previously negotiated about an opera book -based on Shakespeare’s “Tempest”. In Düsseldorf their relations became -strained and eventually Felix, in disgust, gave up his theatrical -labours and the salary that went with them. - -“St. Paul” was not so swiftly completed as the composer may have hoped -from his Düsseldorf “leisure” (actually, it was finished only in 1836). -But he could not, from a creative standpoint, have been called an idler. -To the Düsseldorf period of 1833-34 belong the Overture “The Beautiful -Melusine”, the “Rondo Brillant” in E flat, for piano and orchestra, the -A minor Capriccio for piano, the concert aria, “Infelice”, a revision of -the “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” Overture and not a little else. The -“Melusine” is one of his most poetic and mellifluous inspirations, with -its lovely “wave figure” based on the arpeggiated form of the F major -chord and so intimately related to one of the Rhine motives in Wagner’s -“Ring”. How Mendelssohn managed to accomplish so much without slighting -in any way his social obligations, his watercolor painting, his -excursions here and there is hard to grasp. - -In good truth, the enormous productivity which his unremitting facility -encouraged, his piano playing and conducting, his incessant travels were -subtly undermining his system. The effects did not make themselves felt -at once but they contributed, bit by bit, to a nervous irritation that -grew on him. Whether or not he appreciated that he came from a stock -which, though healthy, bore in itself the seeds of an early death he -made no effort to spare himself and never hesitated to burn the candle -at both ends. The Mendelssohns had delicate blood vessels, they were -predisposed to apoplexy. Abraham may or may not have been forewarned -when, on returning to Berlin from Düsseldorf with his wife and Felix, he -fell ill at Cassel. For a time his sight had been failing and he was -becoming an outright hypochondriac. The more difficult he grew the more -intense was the filial devotion Felix lavished on him. - -Early in 1835 the composer received from Dr. Conrad Schleinitz a -communication which showed that his good fortunes were to remain -constant. It was nothing less than an invitation to accept the post of -conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was -flattered but experience had made him canny. Before giving his reply he -demanded categorical answers to a number of questions touching artistic -and business matters. Everything was settled to his satisfaction and, -with his parents, his sisters and their husbands, he returned to the -Rhineland to conduct another Lower Rhine Festival, this time to be held -in Cologne. - -If there was one place which promised to provide as happy a home for -Felix as London did it was Leipzig. The atmosphere of the town was a -spiritual balm after the hectic life of Düsseldorf. Who shall say that -it was not with symbolic intent that the newcomer led off his activities -with his own “Calm Sea” Overture and Beethoven’s serene Fourth Symphony? -And although Felix’s circle of musical friendships sometimes appeared -boundless he now came into intimate contact with certain choice and -master spirits of the age whom he might otherwise have known only -casually. An early visitor at Mendelssohn’s new home was Chopin and in a -letter to his parents in Berlin he writes of his pleasure in being able -to associate once more with a thorough musician. One of those to whom -Felix introduced Chopin was Clara Wieck, then only sixteen. On October -3—a historic date, as it proved—another stepped into the charmed circle, -Robert Schumann, to whom Mendelssohn was to become a god. “Felix Meritis -entered”, wrote Schumann describing in his best Florestan vein the first -Gewandhaus concert. “In a moment a hundred hearts flew to him!” - -Light-heartedly Felix accompanied his sister, Rebecka, and her husband -on a trip to the family homestead in Berlin. There seemed to be even -more gayety than usual and a greater amount of extempore music-making -for the entertainment of the father. A short time after he had returned -to Leipzig in great good humor he was shocked by the entrance of his -brother-in-law, Hensel, with the news that Abraham Mendelssohn had died -in his sleep on Nov. 19, 1835. The blow was heavy but Felix, once he -regained control of himself, endured it with fortitude. Yet the loss of -the father whom, to the last, he idolized marked the first great sorrow -of his life. To Pastor Schubring he wrote: “The only thing now is to do -one’s duty”. It sounds like a copy-book maxim but it was undoubtedly -sincere. His specific “duty” in this case was to complete the still -unfinished “St. Paul”, about which Abraham had been ceaselessly -inquiring. - -Logically the oratorio should have been given by the Cäcilienverein, in -Frankfort, which had originally commissioned it. But Schelble, the -director of the Society, was ill. So the premiere took place at the -Düsseldorf Festival of 1836. Klingemann, who sent an account of it to -the London “Musical News”, said that the performance was “glorious”, -that he “had never heard such choral singing”. The composer himself was -more restrained. “Many things gave me great pleasure, but on the whole I -learned a great deal”. He had come to the conclusion that the work, like -so many of his others, would benefit by a careful overhauling. And in -due course he set about recasting and improving. He had grounds for -satisfaction. If “St. Paul” does not reach some of the prouder dramatic -heights of the later “Elijah” it is a woeful error to underrate it. - -Mendelssohn felt he owed it to his old friend, Schelble, to take over -the direction of the Cäcilienverein; so he cancelled a Swiss vacation he -had planned and went to Frankfort. He hobnobbed with the Hiller family -and with Rossini, who happened to be in Germany for a few days. But more -important, he made the acquaintance of Cécile Charlotte Sophie -Jeanrenaud, daughter of a clergyman of the French Reformed Church. -Cécile’s widowed mother was herself still so young and attractive that -for a time people thought that she, rather than the 17 year-old girl, -was the cause of Felix’s frequent visits. Fanny Hensel had latterly been -urging her brother to marry, alarmed by his somewhat morbid state of -mind. Cécile Jeanrenaud, according to Wilhelm Hensel, complemented Felix -most harmoniously; still, “she was not conspicuously clever, witty, -learned, profound or talented, though restful and refreshing”. -Mendelssohn was not the man to let his affections stampede him into -marriage. So before an engagement might be announced he accompanied his -friend, the painter Schadow, on a month’s journey to the Dutch seaside -resort, Scheveningen, there to take long walks on the beach, think -things over and come to an understanding with himself. Only then did he -settle definitely upon the step. - -The marriage took place in Frankfort on March 28, 1837, and the couple -went for a honeymoon to Freiburg and the Black Forest. The wedding trip -was followed by a seemingly unending round of social obligations. -Nevertheless, Mendelssohn found time for considerable work. Then a -summons to England, to produce “St. Paul” at the Birmingham Festival -(the oratorio had already been given in Liverpool and by the Sacred -Harmonic Society in London). If only “St. Paul” had been the whole -story! But Mendelssohn had enormous miscellaneous programs to conduct, -he played the organ, he was soloist in his own D minor Piano Concerto. -Back in Leipzig he settled with his wife in a house in Lurgenstein’s -Garden, welcomed Fanny, who saw for the first time those “beautiful -eyes” of Cécile, about which she had heard so much, and greeted the -arrival of a son, named Carl Wolfgang Paul. The Gewandhaus concerts -flourished as never before. Felix produced much Bach, Handel and -Beethoven; also he had many of those typical German “prize-crowned” -scores of sickening mediocrity to perform. Musical friends came and -went—Schumann, Clara Wieck, Liszt, Berlioz, and a young Englishman, -Sterndale Bennet, whom both Mendelssohn and Schumann praised to a degree -which we, today, can scarcely grasp. Small wonder that, amidst all this -unmerciful and never-ending ferment Felix occasionally became worried -about his health. “I am again suffering from deafness in one ear, pains -in my throat, headaches and so on”, he wrote to Hiller. Occasionally his -friends made fun of his intense love of sleep. One can only regret that -he did not yield to it more often! - -We must pass over Mendelssohn’s unending labours in Leipzig, at a number -of German festivals and in England (where his new “symphony-cantata”, -the “Hymn of Praise”, was featured) to follow him once more to Berlin. -In 1840 Frederick William IV had become King of Prussia. One of the pet -cultural schemes of the monarch was an Academy of Arts, to be divided -into classes of painting, sculpture, architecture and music. For the -direction of the last department the king wanted none but Mendelssohn. -Hence much correspondence passed between Mendelssohn and the bureaucrats -concerning the royal scheme. Time had not softened his hostility toward -officialdom, particularly of the Berlin brand. However, he bound himself -for a year, took up residence on the Leipziger Strasse once more, -submitted his scheme for the Musical Academy and received the title -“Kapellmeister to the King of Prussia” along with a very tolerable -salary. Frederick William wished, among other things, to revive certain -antique Greek tragedies, beginning with Sophocles’ “Antigone”. The -scheme led to exhaustive discussions between Mendelssohn and the poet, -Tieck, touching the nature of the music to be written. In due course -there followed “Oedipus at Colonos”. The kind of music needed was, as it -will probably remain forever, a problem defying solution. What -Mendelssohn finally wrote turned out, by and large, to be adequate -Mendelssohnian commonplace. - -Greek tragedy was not the only sort of dramatic entertainment projected -by the King of Prussia. Racine’s “Athalie”, Shakespeare’s “Tempest” and -“Midsummer Night’s Dream” likewise took their place on the royal -schedule. Nothing came of “The Tempest” so far as Mendelssohn was -concerned. But he fashioned some excellent music for Racine’s play and -enriched the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” with an incidental score which -may well be inseparably associated with the immortal fantasy to the end -of time. There was, to be sure, no need for a new overture, Felix having -written the most perfect conceivable one in his boyhood. But a dozen -other numbers, long or short, were called for and, with the most -consummate ease and soaring inspiration, Mendelssohn produced them. They -are exquisitely delicate settings of Shakespeare’s elfin songs and -choruses, a “funeral march” of extravagant grotesqueness, clownish dance -music, a flashing Intermezzo, depicting the pursuit of the lovers -through the wood, and other “background” pieces. The memorable concert -numbers, however, are the incomparable Scherzo—perhaps the most -priceless of all the famous scherzi the composer wrote; the romantic -Nocturne, with its rapturous horn revery, and the triumphant Wedding -March, a ringing processional which, in reality, belongs to all mankind -rather than to Shakespeare’s stage lovers. - -The royal scheme for the Academy was not advancing and presently the -plans began to gather dust in official pigeon holes. Frederick William, -seeing the turn things were taking, appointed his Kapellmeister the head -of the music performed in the Dom. The Singakademie, conscience-stricken -over its earlier treatment of the composer, now made him an honorary -member. For all that, Mendelssohn was not fundamentally happier in -Berlin than he had been previously. Fortunately he had not resigned his -Gewandhaus post when he left Leipzig and it had again become more -desirable to him than all the royal distinctions Berlin could confer. He -had added greatly to his creative output during this period (for one -thing he had rewritten the “Walpurgisnacht” and finished the “Scotch” -Symphony) and now he was occupied with plans for a new music school in -Leipzig—the famous Conservatory, first domiciled in the Gewandhaus. In -January, 1843, its prospectus was issued. The faculty was to include men -like the theorist Moritz Hauptmann, the violinist, Ferdinand David, the -organist, Carl Becker and finally, as professors of composition and -piano, Schumann and Mendelssohn. Felix was not really overjoyed at the -prospect of pedagogical drudgery; yet to Hiller he wrote “I shall have -to go ... three or four times a week and talk about 6-4 chords ... I am -quite willing to do this for the love of the cause, because I believe it -to be a good cause”. - -Quite as peacefully as her husband, Leah Mendelssohn died shortly before -Christmas, 1842. Felix grieved, if he was perhaps less stricken than by -the passing of his father. Doubtless he felt once more that nothing -remained but “to do his duty”—and these duties were unsparing and seemed -to grow more numerous and complex as the years went by. One sometimes -questions if, truly, the labors of a Bach, a Haydn and a Mozart were -more ramified and unending than Mendelssohn’s—even if he had no need to -toil in order to keep the wolf from the door! - -As time passed the Mendelssohn craze in England grew steadily by what it -fed on and it was only natural that Felix should find himself repeatedly -in London. He alluded to his successes and to the intensity of his -welcome by his British friends as “scandalous”, and declared himself -completely stunned by it all. “I think I must have been applauded for -ten minutes and, after the first concert, almost trampled upon!” The -young Queen Victoria was quite as effusive as her subjects. She invited -the composer to Buckingham Palace and was graciousness itself. He played -her seven of his “Songs Without Words”, then the “Serenade”, then -Fantasies on “Rule Brittania”, “Lützows Wilde Jagd” and “Gaudeamus -Igitur”. It was by no means the only time British royalty was to show -him favor. Up to the year of his death Victoria and Albert were to -shower distinctions upon him, to treat him, as it were, like one of the -family. - -Doubtless this is as good an opportunity as another to particularize. On -one memorable occasion the Queen sang to his accompaniment and both she -and her Consort scrambled to pick up sheets of music that had fallen off -the piano. On another, the sovereign asked if there were “anything she -could do to please Dr. Mendelssohn!”. There was, indeed! Could Her -Majesty let him for a few moments visit the royal nursery? Nothing Dr. -Mendelssohn could have wished would have delighted Victoria more! -Unceremoniously leading the way she showed him all the mysteries of the -place, opened closets, wardrobes and cupboards and in a few minutes the -two were deep in a discussion of infants’ underwear, illnesses and -diets. Mendelssohn and Cécile’s own family was growing by this time and -might easily profit by the example of Buckingham Palace. - -The Queen found so much delight in the “Scotch” Symphony that the -composer promptly dedicated it to her. But for that matter, England -could scarcely hear enough of it. Whether or not one ranks it as high as -the “Italian” the A minor unquestionably represents the other half of -Mendelssohn’s chief symphonic accomplishment. The question to what -degree it embodies Scottish elements or any appreciable degree of local -colour is less important than the fact that it is strong, impassioned -music, informed with a ruggedness and conflict unlike the sunnier A -major. There is a mood of tumult and drama in the first movement, whose -closing subject is a definite prefigurement of the songful theme in the -opening _allegro_ of Brahms’ Second Symphony. The Scherzo begins with a -sort of jubilant extension of the Irish folksong “The Minstrel Boy” and -the buoyant movement, as a whole, is full of tingling life. On the other -hand, the _Adagio_ undoubtedly displays a weakness characterizing so -many of Mendelssohn’s slow movements—it is sentimental rather than -searching or personal, since with Mendelssohn grief is “only a -recollection of former joys”. Yet the _finale_ is superbly vital and the -sonorous coda with which it concludes has a regal stateliness and a -bardic ring. - -Whatever honours, labours, irritations and unending travels and fatigues -were his portion on the Continent (and they seemed steadily to increase) -it was to England that Mendelssohn continually turned to refresh his -spirit. Not that his toil there was lighter or his welcome less hectic! -But there was something about it all that filled his soul. People -presented him with medals, commemorative addresses, they organized -torchlight processions, sang serenades—and almost killed him with -kindness. Yet we are told that “he never enjoyed himself more than when -in the midst of society, music, fun and excitement”. “A mad, most -extraordinary mad time ... never in bed till half-past one ... for three -weeks together not a single hour to myself in any one day ... I have -made more music in these two months than elsewhere in two years”. He -ordered a huge “Baum Kuchen” from Berlin (though usually, Grove informs -us, he made no great ado over “the products of the kitchen”, his chief -enjoyments being milk rice and cherry pie). His power of recovery after -fatigue was said to be “as great as his powers of enjoyment”. With it -all “he was never dissipated”; the only stimulants he indulged in were -“music, society and boundless good spirits”. Seemingly it never occurred -to him that even a strong constitution can have too much of these. - -When Mendelssohn became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra he -appointed as his concertmaster his old friend, the violinist Ferdinand -David, who it will be recalled was born in the same house at Hamburg. As -early as 1838 Felix had written to David: “I should like to write a -violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head -the beginning of which gives me no peace”. Actually, he had tried his -hand at a violin concerto accompanied by a string orchestra during his -boyhood though this was only a kind of student effort. But David took -the promise seriously and when nothing came of it for a time determined -not to let Mendelssohn forget it. - -Fully five years elapsed before the composer finished in its first form -the concerto which to this day stands with the violin concertos of -Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky as the most enduring of the -repertoire. For the various technical problems of the solo part and even -of the orchestration David was constantly at the disposal of his friend. -He offered numberless hints of the utmost value and is even believed to -have shaped the cadenza in the first movement as we know it. Even after -the score was presumably complete David advised further changes and -improvements, so that the work did not acquire its conclusive aspect -till February, 1845. On the following March 13 it was performed by David -at a Gewandhaus concert. Not under the composer’s direction, however. -The latter was in Frankfort, in poor health and greatly worn out, and -had no stomach for the excitements of another premiere. The conductor -was his Danish friend, Niels W. Gade. It was not till two weeks later -that David apologized by letter for his delay in describing the triumph -of the concerto. “The work pleased extraordinarily well and was -unanimously declared to be one of the most beautiful compositions of its -kind”. In more than a century there has been no reason to alter this -verdict. - -Mendelssohn’s constitution may have been resilient and his recuperative -powers as remarkable as his friends imagined, but it should have been -clear to the more far-sighted among them that sooner or later these -incessant journeys, this interminable business of composing, conducting, -playing, teaching, organizing must exact a stern penalty. It is not -surprising that, at the time the violin concerto was given in Leipzig, -he preferred to remain in Frankfort with his wife and the children (who -had gone through quite a siege of juvenile illnesses) and make a serious -effort to rest. But truly efficacious rest is a habit that must be -systematically cultivated. Felix did not possess it in his earlier -years, nor could he acquire it now when overwork promised to consume the -sensitive fibre of his being. - -Yet in the summer of 1845 he was approached once more with a scheme of -major dimensions. The Birmingham Festival Committee offered him the -direction of a festival planned for August, 1846, and asked him to -“compose a performance”—in this case, a new oratorio. He was sensible -enough to refuse to conduct the whole festival but he was willing to -produce such an oratorio, even if only ten months remained to compose -most of the score and rehearse the performance. - -The prophet Elijah had engrossed his imagination as an oratorio subject -ever since he had completed “St. Paul” and discussed the new work with -his friend Klingemann. In 1839 he had corresponded with Pastor Schubring -about a text and he had even made rudimentary sketches for the music. -Other obligations crowded it out of his mind. Now, six years later, he -returned to it. He realized that the time was short but his heart was -set on “Elijah”, although he was prudent enough to suggest some other -work if the oratorio should by any chance strike a snag. - -Mendelssohn could write fast—too fast, perhaps, for his artistic good. -Still, “Elijah” was a heart-breaking assignment. It is only just to say -that he realized certain inadequacies of the first version and revised -not a little of the score after hearing it. His labours were complicated -by the lengthy correspondence he was obliged to carry on with William -Bartholomew, the translator. Mendelssohn insisted on a close adherence -to the King James version of the Bible, with the result that the English -words often conform neither to the accent nor the sense of the German -originals. The choice of a soprano offered another problem. The composer -wanted Jenny Lind, whom he admired extravagantly (he loved her F sharp -and the note seems to have haunted his mind when he wrote the air, “Hear -Ye, Israel”). But Jenny Lind was unavailable and he had to be satisfied -with a Maria Caradori-Allan, whom he disliked and whose singing he -afterwards described as “so pretty, so pleasing, so elegant and at the -same time so flat, so unintelligent, so soulless that the music acquired -a sort of amiable expression about which I could go mad”. Be all of -which as it may, Caradori-Allan was paid as much for singing in the -first “Elijah” as Mendelssohn was for composing it! The precious -creature actually told him at a rehearsal that “Hear Ye, Israel” was -“not a lady’s song,” and asked him to have it transposed and otherwise -altered. - -However, the first performance in Birmingham, Aug. 26, 1846, was a -triumph for the composer though, to be candid, the uncritical adulation -of the audience had settled the verdict in advance. The report of -Mendelssohn’s boyhood friend, Julius Benedict, is typical: “The noble -Town Hall was crowded at an early hour of that forenoon with a brilliant -and eagerly expectant audience.... Every eye had long been directed -toward the conductor’s desk, when, at half-past eleven o’clock, a -deafening shout from the band and chorus announced the approach of the -great composer. The reception he met from the assembled thousands ... -was absolutely overwhelming; whilst the sun, emerging at that moment, -seemed to illumine the vast edifice in honour of the bright and pure -being who stood there, the idol of all beholders”! - -It enhances one’s respect for the artistic probity of Mendelssohn that -he preserved his balance. He evaluated his work critically, carefully -modified or enlarged it and obliged Bartholomew to make a quantity of -changes in the English text. On April 16, 1847, he conducted the revised -version in the first of four performances by the Sacred Harmonic Society -in Exeter Hall, London. On April 23 the Queen and the Prince Consort -heard the work. Albert wrote in the book of words and sent to -Mendelssohn a dedication: “To the Noble Artist who, surrounded by the -Baal-worship of debased art, has been able by his genius and science to -preserve faithfully, like another Elijah, the Worship of True Art, and -once more to accustom our ears, amid the whirl of empty frivolous -sounds, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and legitimate harmony: -to the Great Master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his -conception, through the whole maze of his creation, from the soft -whispering to the mighty raging of the elements. Inscribed in grateful -remembrance by - - Albert” - -It was a fitting climax to Mendelssohn’s tenth visit to England—in some -ways his most memorable, in any case his last. - -Before Mendelssohn left London he paid a farewell visit to Buckingham -Palace. He had a mysterious presentiment that he must leave hurriedly. -Friends pressed him to remain in England a little longer. “Ah! I wish I -may not already have stayed too long here! One more week of this -unremitting fatigue and I should be killed outright”. He was manifestly -ill. Fate caught up with him at Frankfort. Scarcely had he arrived in a -state of prostration when he abruptly learned that his sister, Fanny -Hensel, had died while at the piano conducting a choir rehearsal. With a -shriek, Felix collapsed. The shock of the news and the violence of his -fall on hearing it brought about a rupture of one of those delicate -cerebral blood vessels which had caused so many deaths in the -Mendelssohn family. - -In a measure he recovered. He went to Baden-Baden and later to -Switzerland. He wrote letters, sketched and still composed. He greeted -friends from England, he learned that London and Liverpool wanted new -symphonies and cantatas. This time he did nothing about it. When he, -finally, returned in September to Leipzig, he seemed to feel better, -though Moscheles, meeting him, was frightened to see how he had aged and -changed. On Oct. 9, while visiting his friend, the singer Livia Frege, -in connection with some Lieder he planned to publish, he was seized with -a chill. He hurried home and was put to bed, tortured by violent -headaches. He had planned to go to Vienna late in the month to conduct -“Elijah” with Jenny Lind as the soprano. Of this there could now be no -question. On Nov. 3, 1847 he suffered another stroke and lay, it is -claimed, unconscious, though Ferdinand David says that, till ten in the -evening, “he screamed frightfully, then made noises as if he heard the -sounds of drums and trumpets.... During the following day the pains -seemed to cease, but his face was that of a dying man”. Some time -between 9:15 and 9:30 in the evening he ceased to breathe. He was -exactly three months short of 39 years old. Grouped about the bed were -his wife, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz and Moscheles. “Through -Fanny’s death our family was destroyed”, wrote Paul Mendelssohn to -Klingemann; “through Felix’s, it is annihilated”! Leipzig was stunned by -the news. “It is lovely weather here”, wrote a young English music -student, “but an awful stillness prevails; we feel as if the king were -dead....” - -Posthumously, Mendelssohn’s fate seemed like a strange reversal of his -supreme idol’s, Bach. Bach passed into long eclipse, then, largely -through Mendelssohn’s heroic efforts, underwent a miracle of -resurrection which has grown more overpowering clear down to our own -time. Mendelssohn, almost preposterously famous at his death, was before -very long pronounced outmoded, overrated, virtually negligible. The -whole history of music scarcely shows a more violent backswing of the -pendulum. To take pleasure in any but a handful of Mendelssohn’s works -was for decades to lose caste, if not to invite ignominy. By 1910—just -about the centenary of his birth—the low water-mark of derogation had -been reached. - -Now, a hundred years after his death, a most definite reaction is in -progress. Is it not, rather, a salutary readjustment than a mere -reaction? If Mendelssohn’s poorer works have not endured is it not -better so? Struggle and suffering might, indeed, have lent a deeper -undertone to his songs or enabled his adagios, in old Sir George Grove’s -words, “to draw tears where now they only give a saddened pleasure. But -let us take a man as we have him. Surely there is enough conflict and -violence in life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy we can turn -to others. It is well in these agitated modern days to be able to point -to one perfectly balanced nature in whose life, whose letters and whose -music alike all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant -and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may -well forego for once the depths of misery and sorrow”. - -And Grove’s words taken on an added poignancy precisely because they -were _not_ spoken of an epoch as grievous as our own! - - [Illustration: Family Group. Sketch by Mendelssohn, Soden, 1844.] - - - COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS - _by_ - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - OF NEW YORK - - - COLUMBIA RECORDS - - _Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_ - - Barber—Symphony No. 1 - Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolph - Serkin, piano) - Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”) - Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor - Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F Major - Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir) - Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1 - Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano) - Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin) - Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein) - Mozart—Cosi Fan Tutte—Overture - Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551 - Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major - Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”) - Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”) - Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz - - _Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_ - - Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III) - Bizet—Symphony in C major - Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator) - Gershwin—American in Paris - Ibert—“Escales” (Ports of Call) - Liszt—Mephisto Waltz - Moussorgsky—Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski) - Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition - Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5, Op. 100 - Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor) - Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor - Saint-Saens—Concerto No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus) - Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor - Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana” - Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”) - Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2) (with Helen - Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor) - Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano) - Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and - Herbert Janssen, baritone) - Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture - - _Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_ - - Stravinsky—Firebird Suite - Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice) - Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods - Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring) - Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet - Stravinsky—Suite from Petrouchka - Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements - - _Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_ - - Herold—Zampa—Overture - Khatchaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite - Wieniawski—Violin Concerto (with Isaac Stern) - - _Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud_ - - Milhaud—Suite Francaise - - _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_ - - Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”) - Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture - Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major - Brahms—Academic Festival Overture - Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin) - Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet) - Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet - Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano) - Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 - Ravel—La Valse - Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol - Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor - Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major - Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture - Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G) - - _Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_ - - Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”) - Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”) - Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major - Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien - - _Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_ - - Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant, piano) - - - VICTOR RECORDS - - _Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_ - - Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major - Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn - Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits - Haydn—Symphony No. 4, in D major (The Clock) - Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo - Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385) - Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture - Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture - Rossini—Semiramide—Overture - Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and III - Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Gotterdammerung—Siegfried Idyll - - _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_ - - Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2) - Purcell—Suite for Strings with Four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn - Respighi—Fountains of Rome - Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the - Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York) - Schubert—Symphony No. 4, in C minor (Tragic) - Schumann—Concerto in D minor, (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin) - Tschaikowsky—Francesca de Rimini—Fantasia - - _Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_ - - J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major - J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra) - Beethoven—Egmont Overture - Handel—Alcina Suite - Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia) - Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March - Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel) - Schelling—Victory Ball - Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture - Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben) - - - Special Booklets published for - RADIO MEMBERS - of - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - OF NEW YORK - - POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. - Schirmer’s) - BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn - BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn - MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser - WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar - TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli - JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. - Peyser - SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser - -These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the -limited supply lasts. - - - - - The immortal music of Mendelssohn - is available in magnificent performances by the - PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY - ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK - - Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 (“Italian”). - Conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. - Set M-MM-538 - $5.00[*] - - Concerto in E minor for Violin & Orch. Op. 64 (with Nathan Milstein, - violin) - Conducted by Bruno Walter. - Set M-MM-577 - $5.00[*] - - Scherzo (from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”). - Conducted by Bruno Walter. - 12145-D (in set M-577) - $1.00[*] - - [*]_Prices shown are exclusive of taxes_ - - - COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS RECORDS - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - ---A few palpable typos were silently corrected. - ---Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break. - ---Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not - renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.) - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks, by -Herbert F. Peyser - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENDELSSOHN, CERTAIN MASTERWORKS *** - -***** This file should be named 50258-0.txt or 50258-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/2/5/50258/ - -Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/50258-0.zip b/old/50258-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index e90e1e8..0000000 --- a/old/50258-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/50258-8.txt b/old/50258-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 78d3c5c..0000000 --- a/old/50258-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1861 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks, by Herbert F. Peyser - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks - -Author: Herbert F. Peyser - -Release Date: October 19, 2015 [EBook #50258] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENDELSSOHN, CERTAIN MASTERWORKS *** - - - - -Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - HERBERT F. PEYSER - - - - - MENDELSSOHN - and - Certain Masterworks - - - [Illustration: Logo] - - Written for and dedicated to - the - RADIO MEMBERS - of - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - of NEW YORK - - Copyright 1947 by - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - of NEW YORK - 113 West 57th Street - New York 19, N. Y. - - [Illustration: Mendelssohn. - Sketch by Carl Mueller, 1842.] - - - - - FOREWORD - - -In the compass of the present pamphlet it is impossible to give more -than a cursory survey of Mendelssohn's happy but extraordinarily crowded -life. He was only slightly less prolific a composer than such masters as -Bach, Mozart or Schubert, even if he did not reach the altitude of their -supreme heights. But irrespective of the quality of much of his output, -the sheer mass of it is astounding, the more so when we consider the -extent of his travels and the unceasing continuity of his professional -and social activities, which immensely exceeded anything of the kind in -the career of Schubert or Bach. In these few pages it has not been -feasible to mention more than a handful of his more familiar -compositions which happen, incidentally, to rank among his best. The -reader will find here neither a detailed record of Mendelssohn's endless -comings and goings nor any originality of approach or appraisal in the -necessarily casual comments on a few works. If the booklet encourages -him to listen with perhaps a fresh interest to certain long familiar -scores, now that a full century has passed since the composer's death, -its object will have been achieved. - - H. F. P. - - - - - Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks - - - _By_ - HERBERT F. PEYSER - -In 1729--the year of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"--a humble Jew of -Dessau on the Elbe, Mendel by name, became the father of a boy whom he -called Moses. Mendel was something of a scholar as the times went, but -desperately poor. He kept body and soul together by running a small -Hebrew day-school and transcribing the Pentateuch. His infant son might -know the pangs of hunger but he should have the boon of a sound -education. The training was begun almost before the child could walk. -Mendel would rout him out of bed at three or four on winter mornings, -fortify him with a cup of tea and carry him, wrapped in a shawl, to a -public seminary where he was put in charge of the learned Rabbi David -Frankel. - -Moses showed himself an extraordinarily gifted pupil. For one thing, he -was consumed by a restless spirit of inquiry. He set about making an -exhaustive study of the Scriptures, read voraciously, acquired languages -with uncanny facility and, before he was ten, composed Hebrew verses. -Nothing influenced him so deeply as Maimonides' "The Guide of the -Perplexed". But the intensity of his intellectual occupation was such -that he fell prey to a nervous malady which deformed his spine for life. -He bore his ailment with the patience of Job and was never heard to -complain. "If Maimonides weakened my body", he had a habit of saying, -"has he not made ample atonement by invigorating my soul with his -sublime instructions?" - -According to a traditional Jewish manner of forming a surname Moses -called himself "Son of Mendel"--in German, "Mendels Sohn"--albeit he -long alluded to himself as "Moses Dessauer". When Rabbi Frankel -transferred his activities to Berlin his disciple, though only fourteen, -followed him on foot. Hunger, sickness, deprivations, bitter -antagonisms, far from breaking the youth's spirit, deepened his -perceptions and broadened his vision. He wrote and studied with fanatic -zeal and in the fullness of time developed into one of the greatest -scholars and philosophers of the age. The poet Lessing was one of his -intimates. His work, "Phaedon, or the Immortality of the Soul", gained -such currency that it was translated into every language of Europe. - -Moses Mendelssohn endured without a murmur the numberless hardships and -disabilities to which the German Jews of the period of Frederick the -Great and his tyrannical father were subjected. One of the most -preposterous of these regulations obliged every Jew when he married to -buy a certain amount of chinaware from the royal porcelain factory in -Berlin, whether he needed it or not. Not even the choice of articles was -left to him, so long as the factory manager decided the place was -overstocked. In this way Moses Mendelssohn when in 1762 he took to wife -Fromet, daughter of Abraham Gugenheim, of Hamburg, acquired twenty -life-sized china apes which had been found unsaleable. Much later the -apes became valued family heirlooms. - -The domestic happiness and tranquility he had never known in his youth -were at last to be the philosopher's portion. Moses and Fromet had a -considerable family, though only six of the children--three sons and -three daughters--survived to maturity. Moses himself died in Berlin at -57. Longevity, as it proved, was not to be a trait of the Mendelssohns. - -Of the three sons the second, Abraham, was destined to play a role in -musical history. True, he was not himself a trained musician although he -had very sensitive artistic instincts; and he labored under a mild sense -of inferiority, which used to find expression in his whimsical phrase: -"Formerly I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son". In -any case he had not to endure anything like the paternal struggles and -poverty. Of his boyhood not much is known. But in his twenties he was -sent to Paris and worked for a time as cashier in the bank of M. Fould. -When he returned to Germany he entered a banking business founded in -Berlin and Hamburg by his brother, Joseph. It was possibly on his trip -home that he met his future wife, Leah Salomon. If marriages are made in -heaven this match assuredly could boast a celestial origin! Leah Salomon -was an wholly unusual woman. She came of a Berlin family of wealth and -position, she was exquisitely sensitive and cultured and, although she -strictly limited her singing and playing to the home circle, was a -musician of gifts quite out of the ordinary. Moreover, she drew, was an -accomplished linguist (she even read Homer in Greek, though only in the -privacy of her boudoir, lest anyone suspect her of "immodesty"), and -dressed with studied simplicity. Among Leah's elaborate virtues was her -tireless devotion to her mother. She kept house for her and granted her -a substantial income. - -Small wonder that such a union was blessed with exceptional offspring. -Of the four children of Abraham and Leah Mendelssohn, Fanny Ccilie, -Jakob Ludwig Felix and Rebecka saw the light at Hamburg, in the order -named. The youngest, Paul, came not long after the family had removed to -Berlin. It may not be inappropriate to call briefly into the picture at -this point Leah's brother, Jacob Salomon Bartholdy, if for no other -reason than to account for a surname which formed an adjunct to part of -the Mendelssohn family, including the composer. Salomon, a distinguished -art critic who spent his later years in Rome as Prussian consul-general, -had embraced Protestantism (despite a traditional curse launched by his -mother) and adopted the name "Bartholdy" after "the former proprietor of -a garden belonging to the family"--a garden which subsequently passed -into the hands of Abraham Mendelssohn. It was Salomon Bartholdy who at -length persuaded his brother-in-law to procure for his children what -Heinrich Heine had called "a ticket of admission to European -culture"--in short, conversion to the Christian faith. To distinguish -between the converted members of the family and those who clung to their -old belief "Bartholdy" was henceforth affixed to "Mendelssohn". In time, -Abraham and Leah followed their children into the Lutheran faith, Leah -adding to her own name those of Felicia and Paulina, in allusion to her -sons. - -Felix was born on Friday, Feb. 3, 1809, at 14 Grosse Michaelisstrasse, -Hamburg. Long afterwards the place was marked by a commemorative tablet -above the entrance, a tribute from Jenny Lind and her husband. Curiously -enough, the violinist Ferdinand David, Felix's friend and associate of -later days, was born under the same roof scarcely a year after. Hamburg -became an unpleasant place during the occupation by Napoleon's troops -and in 1811, soon after the birth of Rebecka, the family escaped in -disguise to Berlin where Abraham, at his own expense, outfitted a -company of volunteers. The Mendelssohns took up residence in a house -belonging to the widow Fromet. It was situated in what was then an -attractive quarter of north-eastern Berlin, on a street called the Neue -Promenade that had houses on one side and a tree-bordered canal on the -other. It offered a spacious playground for the children and the singer, -Eduard Devrient, recalled seeing Felix play marbles or touch-and-run -with his comrades. - - [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN'S BIRTHPLACE IN HAMBURG] - -Abraham Mendelssohn, having severed the partnership with his brother, -started a banking business of his own which soon prospered famously. -Somehow even the myriad cares of running a bank did not prevent the -father from scrupulously overseeing the education of his sons and -daughters. If the young people were virtually bedded on roses, Abraham -was of too strong a character and, indeed, too much of a martinet not to -subject them to the discipline of a carefully ordered routine. Wealth -and ease did not cause him to forget the privations and the conflicts -which helped to forge the greatness of his own father's soul. His -children need not hunger, they need not be denied opportunities to -develop what talents nature had bestowed on them. But given such -opportunities they must labor unremittingly to make the most of them. -They had to be up and about at five in the morning and, shortly after, -repair to their lessons. Felix always looked forward to Sundays when he -could sleep late! In some ways one is reminded of the manner Leopold -Mozart supervised the training of Wolfgang and Nannerl. If Abraham -Mendelssohn was not, like Father Mozart, a practising musician, he had -an artistic insight which nobody valued higher than Felix himself. "I am -often unable to understand", he wrote his father when he was already a -world celebrity, "how it is possible to have so accurate a judgment -about music without being a technical musician and if I could only say -what I feel in the same clear and intelligent manner that you always do, -I should certainly never make another confused speech as long as I -live". It is easy to believe that some of the adoration Felix felt for -his father above all others grew out of his unbounded respect for the -older man's intellectual superiority. - -Business connected with war indemnities associated with the Napoleonic -conflicts obliged Abraham in 1816 to go to Paris and on this journey he -took his family with him. Felix and Fanny were placed for piano -instruction under a Madame Marie Bigot de Morogues and both appear to -have profited. Their first piano lessons had been given them at home by -their mother who, in the beginning restricted them to five minute -periods so that they ran no risk of growing weary or restive. Fanny no -less than her brother disclosed an unusual feeling for the keyboard at -an early age and even when she was born Leah noted that the infant -seemed to have "Bach fugue fingers". - -When the Mendelssohns returned to Berlin the young people's education -was begun systematically. General tuition was administered by Karl -Heyse, father of the novelist; the painter, Rsel, taught drawing, for -which Felix exhibited a natural aptitude from the first; Ludwig Berger, -a pupil of Clementi's, developed the boy's piano talents, Carl Wilhelm -Henning gave him violin lessons and Goethe's friend, Carl Zelter, taught -thorough-bass and composition. Nor were the social graces neglected. -Felix learned to swim, to ride, to fence, to dance. Dancing, indeed, was -one of his passions all his life. Father Mendelssohn always found time -to supervise his children's studies and to guide their accomplishments. -For that matter he never considered his sons and daughters--even when -they grew up--too old for his discipline; and, certainly, Felix welcomed -rather than resented it. - -On Oct. 28, 1818, the boy made his first public appearance as pianist. -The occasion was a concert given by a horn virtuoso, Joseph Gugel. Felix -collaborated in a trio for piano and two horns, by Joseph Wlfl. He -earned, we are told, "much applause". But Abraham, though pleased, was -not the man to have his head turned by displays of precocity, shallow -compliments or noisy acclamations. Neither did Zelter flatter his pupil -on his never-failing facility. No problem seemed excessive for the boy, -who could read orchestral scores, transpose, improvise--what you will. -"Come, come", Zelter would grumble contemptuously, as if these feats -were the most natural thing in the world, "genius ought to be able to -dress the hair of a sow and make curls of it!" Yet to Goethe he made no -effort to conceal his satisfaction. "Felix is a good and handsome boy, -merry and obedient", he confided in a letter; "his father has brought -him up the proper way.... He plays piano like a real devil and is not in -the least backward on string instruments...". And the crusty -contrapuntist saw to it that the ten-year-old genius entered the -Singakademie and sang among the altos where he could learn to know, -inside and out, works by Palestrina, Bach, Handel and lesser masters, -distinguish between styles and observe the minutest technicalities of -fugal construction. - -It was only natural that Felix should, at this stage, have tried his own -hand at composition. He wrote to his father, in Paris, asking for music -paper. Abraham took the request as the text for a mild sermon: "You, my -dear Felix", he admonished his son, "must state exactly what kind of -music paper you wish to have--ruled or not ruled; and if the former you -must say distinctly _how_ it is to be ruled. When I went into the shop -the other day to buy some, I found that I did not know myself what I -wanted to have. Read over your letter before you send it off and -ascertain whether, if addressed to yourself, you could execute the -commission contained in it". Sooner or later he must have gotten his -music paper for in 1820, when Felix began to compose, it is figured that -he wrote fifty or sixty movements of one sort or another, solo and part -songs, a cantata and a comedy. In every instance his methodical training -caused him to inscribe the work with the exact date and place of its -composition--a practice which saved no end of doubt and conjecture in -later years, the more so as Felix remained quite as systematic his life -long. These scores (of which he kept a painstaking catalogue) are headed -in many cases with the mysterious formula "L.v.g.G." or "H.d.m.", which -though never satisfactorily deciphered, reappears again and again in his -output. - -Some of these compositions, together with several by Fanny were -dispatched to Abraham in Paris. The father was particularly pleased with -a fugue and wrote home: "I like it well; it is a great thing. I should -not have expected him to set to work in such good earnest so soon, for -such a fugue requires reflection and perseverance". He was perturbed -over his daughter's composing, though he appreciated her talent. It was -well enough, he declared, for Felix to take up music as a profession but -Fanny must bear in mind that a woman's place is in the home. As a -warning example he points to the sad end of Madame Bigot, who busied -herself professionally with music and now is dead of consumption! - - [Illustration: Mendelssohn at the age of eleven. - Sketch by an unknown artist.] - -In 1821 there took place in Berlin an event which stirred the musical -world of Germany to its depths--the first performance of Weber's "Der -Freischtz". The composer, who supervised the rehearsals, was generally -accompanied by his young friend and pupil, Julius Benedict. One day -while escorting his master to the theatre, Benedict noticed a boy of -about eleven or twelve running toward them with gestures of hearty -greeting. "'Tis Felix Mendelssohn!" exclaimed Weber delightedly, and he -at once introduced the lad to Benedict, who had heard of the remarkable -talents of the little musician even before coming to Berlin. "I shall -never forget the impression of that day on beholding that beautiful -youth, with the auburn hair clustering in ringlets round his shoulders, -the look of his brilliant, clear eyes and the smile of innocence and -candour on his lips", wrote Benedict much later in his "Sketch of the -Life and Works of the late Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy". Felix wanted -the pair to visit the Mendelssohn home at once, but as Weber was -expected at the opera house he asked Benedict to go in his stead. "Felix -took me by the hand and made me run a race till we reached his house. Up -he went briskly to the drawing-room where, finding his mother, he -exclaimed: 'Here is a pupil of Weber's, who knows a great deal of his -music of the new opera. Pray, mamma, ask him to play it for us'; and so, -with an irresistible impetuosity, he pushed me to the pianoforte and -made me remain there until I had exhausted all the store of my -recollections". - -A more spectacular event in Felix's young life was his first visit to -Goethe, in Weimar, the same year. It was Zelter who, anxious to acquaint -the poet with his prodigious young pupil, had engineered the meeting. -Felix had never gone anywhere without his parents and the family was not -a little concerned about this expedition. He was plied with no end of -advice before setting out, told how to behave at table, how to eat, how -to talk, how to listen. "When you are with Goethe, I advise you to open -your eyes and ears wide", admonished Fanny; "and after you come home, if -you can't repeat every word that fell from his mouth, I will have -nothing more to do with you!" His mother, for her part, wrote to Aunt -Henrietta (the celebrated family spinster, "Tante Jette"): "Just fancy -that the little wretch is to have the good luck of going to Weimar with -Zelter for a short time. You can imagine what it costs me to part from -the dear child even for a few weeks. But I consider it such an advantage -for him to be introduced to Goethe, to live under the same roof with him -and receive the blessing of so great a man! I am also glad of this -little journey as a change for him; for his impulsiveness sometimes -makes him work harder than he ought to at his age." - -The Mendelssohns need not have worried. The old poet took the boy to his -heart from the first. Nor was Felix remiss about communicating his -impressions. "Now, stop and listen, all of you", he writes home in an -early missive which forms part of one of the finest series of letters -any of the great composers has left posterity. "Today is Tuesday. On -Saturday the Sun of Weimar, Goethe, arrived. We went to church in the -morning and heard half of Handel's 100th Psalm. After this I went to the -'Elephant', where I sketched the house of Lucas Cranach. Two hours -afterwards, Professor Zelter came and said: 'Goethe has come--the old -gentleman's come!' and in a minute we were down the steps and in -Goethe's house. He was in the garden and was just coming around a -corner. Isn't it strange, dear father, that was exactly how you met him! -He is very kind, but I don't think any of the pictures are like him.... - -"Every morning I get a kiss from the author of 'Faust' and 'Werther' and -every afternoon two kisses from my friend and father Goethe. Think of -that! It does not strike me that his figure is imposing; he is not much -taller than father; but his look, his language, his name--they are -imposing. The amount of sound in his voice is wonderful and he can shout -like ten thousand warriors. His hair is not yet white, his step is firm, -his way of speaking mild...." - -Felix made much music for the poet's enjoyment. Every day he played him -something of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or compositions of his own (he had -even brought some of Fanny's songs for Goethe's daughter-in-law, who had -a pretty voice). "Every afternoon", wrote Felix, "Goethe opens the -Streicher piano with the words: 'I haven't heard you at all today; make -a little noise for me'; then he sits beside me and when I am finished (I -usually improvise), I beg him for a kiss or else I just take it!" Once -Felix played a Bach fugue and suffered a slip of memory. Nothing daunted -he went on improvising at considering length. The poet noticed nothing! -At other times he would sit by the window listening, the image of a -Jupiter Tonans, his old eyes flashing. And when the boy finally left -Weimar Goethe missed him sorely. "Since your departure", he lamented, -"my piano is silent. A solitary attempt to waken it to life was a -failure. I hear, indeed, much talk about music but that is only a sorry -diversion". A certain classical symmetry and a halcyon beauty in the -boy's music and in his performances seem to have appealed to a -deep-seated element of the poet's nature. When some time afterwards -Felix dedicated a quartet to him, Goethe accepted it with a letter of -fulsome praise. Yet when poor Schubert about the same period sent him a -number of his finest Goethe settings the Olympian did not even deign to -acknowledge them! - -Leah Mendelssohn, delighted with the letters Felix was writing from -Weimar, proudly forwarded them to Aunt Jette, in Paris. "If God spare -him", replied that worthy person, "his letters will in long years to -come create the deepest interest. Take care of them as of a holy relic; -indeed, they are already sacred as the effusion of so pure and -child-like a mind. You are a happy mother and you must thank Providence -for giving you such a son. He is an artist in the highest sense, rare -talents combined with the noblest, tenderest heart...." The good woman -spoke prophetically! Not all of Mendelssohn's letters have been -preserved and some of them were withheld out of scruples which today are -rather difficult to appreciate. Whether the anti-Semitic excesses of the -Nazi regime spared those portions of the correspondence not previously -given to the world is still unknown. Perhaps we shall never read it in -all its inundating fullness. There were times in his short life when he -wrote as many as thirty-five letters in one day! At any rate, those we -have are precious. - -It must not be imagined that Felix's numerous boyhood compositions -served student ends primarily. This early spate of symphonies, -concertos, songs, piano and organ pieces, chamber music and what not -furnished matter for regular family musicales. The Mendelssohns had for -some time been in the habit of holding miscellaneous concerts on -alternate Sunday mornings in the big dining room of the house on the -Neue Promenade. In these the young people participated and invariably -some work or other by Felix made up a part of the program. Felix and -Fanny usually played piano, Rebecka sang, Paul played cello. Felix also -conducted and had at first to be placed on a stool so that his small -figure could be seen. Little operas and operettas varied the programs, -the boy being the author of four of them. These "operas" were not given -in costume or with any attempt at dramatic, action. The characters were -duly assigned and sung, but the dialogue was read and the chorus sat -grouped around a table. The listeners offered their opinions freely, -Zelter (who never missed one of these events) commending or criticising, -as the case might be. - -On Felix's fifteenth birthday, Zelter suddenly rose and, "in masonic -phraseology", promoted his pupil from the grade of "apprentice" to that -of "assistant", adding that he welcomed him to this new rank "in the -name of Mozart, of Haydn and of old Bach". This last name was -significant. For a little earlier the boy had received as a Christmas -present a score of the "St. Matthew Passion" transcribed by Zelter's -express permission from a manuscript preserved in the Singakademie. -Henceforth the "assistant" was to immerse himself in this music and it -was the exhaustive study of the treasurous score which resulted a few -years later in the historic revival of the work an exact century after -its first production under Bach's own direction. - -The summer of 1824 Felix for the first time saw the sea. His father took -him and Rebecka to Dobberan, on the Baltic, a bathing resort in the -neighborhood of Rostock. Here he received those first marine impressions -which in due course were to shape themselves musically in the "Calm Sea -and Prosperous Voyage" and "Fingal's Cave" Overtures. For the moment, -the scope of this inspiration was less ambitious. He wrote for the -military band at the local casino an overture for wind instruments -("Harmoniemusik"), which stands in his output as Op. 24. It is sweetly -romantic music, with a dulcet _andante con moto_ introduction that has a -kind of family resemblance to the softer phraseology of Weber, a -spirited, vivacious _allegro_ forming the main body of the piece. - -But the "Harmoniemusik" Overture was only an incident of the creative -activity marking the year 1824. The chief composition of the time was -the Symphony in C minor, which ranks as Mendelssohn's First. Actually, -it is his thirteenth in order of writing, though for conventional -purposes the preceding twelve (for strings) may pass for juvenile -efforts. We may as well record here that, irrespective of the dates of -the composition, the official order of Mendelssohn's symphonies is as -follows: The Symphony-Cantata in B flat (the so-called "Hymn of Praise", -dated 1840) stands as No. 2, the A minor ("Scotch"), written between -1830 and 1842, as No. 3, the A major ("Italian"), composed in 1833, as -No. 4, and the "occasional" one in D minor, known as the "Reformation -Symphony" (1830-32), as No. 5. - -The Mendelssohn family was outgrowing the old home on the Neue Promenade -and late in the summer of 1825 Abraham bought that house on Leipziger -Strasse which was henceforth to be inalienably associated with the -composer. If it had its drawbacks in winter the spacious edifice with -its superb garden (once a part of the Tiergarten) was ideal at all other -seasons. The so-called "Garden House" was one of its most attractive -features and became the scene of those unforgettable Sunday concerts -where a number of new-minted masterpieces were first brought to a -hearing. The young people published a household newspaper, in summer -called the "Garden Times", in winter the "Tea and Snow Times". Pen, ink -and paper were conveniently placed and every guest was encouraged to -write whatever occurred to him and deposit it in a box, the -contributions being duly printed in the little sheet. These guests -included the cream of the intellectual, social and artistic life of -Europe who chanced to be in Berlin. It was a point of honor to be -invited to the Mendelssohn residence. - -To this period belongs Felix's operatic effort "Die Hochzeit des -Camacho" ("Camacho's Wedding"). The text, by Karl Klingemann, a -Hanoverian diplomat who played a not inconsiderable role in -Mendelssohn's life, was based on an episode from "Don Quixote". The -story has to do with the mock suicide of the student, Basilio, to rescue -his beloved from the wealthy Camacho. Possibly the little work would -never have been written but for the ambitions of Leah Mendelssohn to see -her son take his place among the successful opera composers of the day. -Having embarked upon the scheme Felix went about it with his usual zeal. -But the piece was played exactly once, and in a small playhouse, not at -the big opera. Although there were many calls for the composer he seems -to have sensed a defeat and left the theatre early. It was not long -before he lost interest in the work altogether. - -However, better things were at hand to obliterate the memory of the -check suffered by "Camacho's Wedding". For we are now on the threshold -of the composer's first mature masterworks. It must be understood that -there was really no relation between Mendelssohn's years and the -extraordinary creations of his adolescence. In point of fact, his -creative mastery at the age of sixteen and seventeen is maturity arrived -at before its time. That preternatural development, as remarkable in its -way as Mozart's, is the true answer to the problem why the later -creations of Mendelssohn show relatively so little advance over the -early ones. We can hardly believe, for instance, that the F sharp minor -Capriccio for piano or the Octet could have been finer if written twenty -years after they were. How many not familiar with the respective dates -of composition could gather from the music itself that the incidental -pieces fashioned for the "Midsummer Night's Dream" by royal command came -fully seventeen years after the immortal Overture? The whole might have -been created at one sitting, so undiscoverable is any sign of cleavage. - -The Octet for strings, finished in the autumn of 1825 represents, -perhaps, the finest thing Mendelssohn had written up to that point. It -is a masterpiece of glistening tone painting, exquisite in its mercurial -grace and color, imaginative delicacy and elfin lightness. The unity of -the whole is a marvel. But the pearl of the work is the Scherzo in G -minor, a page as airy and filamentous as Mendelssohn--whose scherzos -are, perhaps, his most matchless achievements--was ever to write. Not -even the most fairylike passages in the "Midsummer Night's Dream" excel -it. - -Before passing on to the last-named, however, we must not fail to -signalize the "Trumpet" Overture, composed about the same time (which -Abraham Mendelssohn liked so much that he said he should like to hear it -on his deathbed); the Quintet, Op. 18, the Sonata, Op. 6, the songs of -Op. 8 and 9, the unfailingly popular Prelude and Fugue in E minor, of -Op. 35. Let us not be confused, incidentally, by opus numbers in -Mendelssohn which have as little to do with priority of composition as -they have in the case of Schubert. - -Felix and Fanny read Shakespeare in translations of Schlegel and Tieck. -Their particular favorite was the "Midsummer Night's Dream". In August -1826, in the delightful garden of the Leipziger Strasse home the youth -of seventeen signed the score of an Overture to the fantastic comedy -which, as much as anything he was to write, immortalized his name. The -famous friend of the family, Adolph Bernhard Marx, claimed to have given -Felix certain musical suggestions. Be this as it may, the Overture was -something new under the sun and not a measure of it has tarnished in the -course of an odd 130 years. It was first performed as a piano duet and -shortly afterwards played by an orchestra at one of the Sunday concerts -in the garden house. - -Felix entered the University of Berlin in 1826 and offered as his -matriculation essay a translation in verse of Terence's "Andria". -Nevertheless, he seems to have had no time to bother about a degree. -Music was absorbing him completely, especially his weekly rehearsals of -Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" with a small choir. The more intimately he -penetrated into this mighty work the keener became his desire to produce -it at the Singakademie. Together with his friend, Eduard Devrient, he -divulged his scheme to Zelter, only to be rebuffed. Spurred by the -energetic Devrient he returned again and again to the attack, till -Zelter finally weakened. Having carried the day Mendelssohn left the -Singakademie jubilantly exclaiming to the elated Devrient: "To think -that it should be an actor and a Jew, to give this great Christian work -back to the world!" It was the only recorded occasion on which -Mendelssohn alluded to his Hebraic origin. - -Three performances were given of the "St. Matthew Passion" at the -Singakademie--the first on March 11, 1829, a century almost to a day -since the original production in the Leipzig Thomaskirche. Mendelssohn -conducted the first two. It was the real awakening of the world to the -grandeur of Bach, the true beginning of a movement which has continued -undiminished right up to the present. Fanny spoke more truly than -perhaps she realized when she declared that "the year 1829 is likely to -form an epoch in the annals of music". - -Scarcely had Mendelssohn restored the "St. Matthew Passion" to the world -than he left Berlin for the first of those ten trips he was to take to -the country that was to become his true spiritual home. Abraham -Mendelssohn having finally decided his son might safely adopt music as a -means of livelihood resolved to let him travel for three years in order -to gain experience, extend his artistic reputation and settle on the -scene of his activities. Felix was not averse to the idea. Already he -was feeling some of those pin-pricks of hostility which Berlin, for -reasons of jealousy or latent anti-Semitism was to direct against him in -years to come. It was Moscheles who counseled a visit to London, where -another friend, Klingemann, filled a diplomatic post. - -Mendelssohn's first Channel crossing was not calculated to put him in a -pleasant frame of mind. He was seasick, he had fainting fits, he -quarrelled with the steward and solemnly cursed that "Calm Sea and -Prosperous Voyage" Overture he had composed scarcely a year earlier. The -boat trip lasted almost three days! Luckily his friends had found him -comfortable quarters in London, at 103 Great Portland Street. At once it -developed that he and London were predestined for each other. The -metropolis both appalled and enchanted him. "It is fearful! It is -maddening!", he wrote home; "I am quite giddy and confused. London is -the grandest and most complicated monster on the face of the earth. How -can I compress into a letter what I have been three days seeing? I -hardly remember the chief events and yet I must not keep a diary, for -then I should see less of life.... Things roll and whirl round me and -carry me along as in a vortex". - -He had arrived at the height of the season. The wife of Moscheles took -him about in a carriage ("me in my new suit, of course!") He went to the -opera and to the theatre, saw Kemble in "Hamlet" and was incensed at the -way Shakespeare was cut. Still "the people here like me for the sake of -my music and respect me for it and this delights me immensely". He made -his first London appearance with the Philharmonic on May 25, 1829, and -even at the rehearsal found two hundred listeners on hand, "chiefly -ladies". The program contained his C minor Symphony, though later an -orchestrated version of the scherzo from the Octet was substituted for -the original minuet. J. B. Cramer led Mendelssohn to the stage "as if I -were a young lady". "Immense applause" greeted him. This was soon to be -an old story. When people spied him in the audience at a concert someone -was sure to shout: "There is Mendelssohn!"; whereupon others would -applaud and exclaim: "Welcome to him!" In the end Felix found no other -way to restore quiet than to mount the stage and bow. - -He played piano for the first time in London at the Argyll Rooms on May -30. His offering was Weber's "Concertstck" and he caused a stir by -performing it without notes. One might say he was heard _before_ the -concert--for he had gone to the hall to try a new instrument several -hours earlier but, finding it locked, seated himself at an old one and -improvised for a long time to be suddenly roused from his revery by the -noise of the arriving audience. Whereupon he dashed off to dress for the -matinee in "very long white trousers, brown silk waistcoat, black -necktie and blue dress coat". Not long afterwards he gave concerts with -Moscheles and with the singer, Henrietta Sontag. The Argyll Rooms were -so crowded that "ladies might be seen among the double basses, between -bassoons and horns and even seated on a kettle drum". - -London life, for that matter, seemed made to order for Felix, the more -so as he was received with open arms by those influential personages to -whom he brought letters of introduction. Yet the whole spirit of London -was vastly to his taste. Writing later from Italy he confided to his -sister that, for all the luminous atmosphere of Naples, "London, that -smoky nest, is fated to be now and ever my favorite residence. My heart -swells when I even think of it"! - -The admiration was mutual! England of that age (and for years to come) -adored Mendelssohn quite as it had Handel a century earlier and -peradventure even more than it did Haydn and Weber. Musically, the -nation made itself over in his image. And Felix loved the rest of the -country as he loved its metropolis. The London season ended, he went on -a vacation in July, 1829, to Scotland, accompanied by Klingemann. The -travelers stopped first at Edinburgh, where they heard the Highland -Pipers and visited Holyrood Palace. Like any conventional tourist Felix -saw the apartments where Mary Stuart lived and Rizzio was murdered, -inspected the chapel in which Mary was crowned but now "open to the sky -and ... everything ruined and decayed; I think I found there the -beginning of my 'Scotch' Symphony". And he set down sixteen bars of what -became the slow introduction in A minor. It was to be some time, -however, before the symphony took its conclusive shape. If Holyrood -quickened his fancy "one of the Hebrides" (which he saw a few days -later) struck even brighter sparks from his imagination. A rowboat trip -to Fingal's Cave inspired him to twenty bars of music "to show how -extraordinarily the place affected me", as he wrote to his family. He -elaborated the overture--than which he did nothing greater--in his own -good time and recast it before it satisfied him. For in the first form -of this marine mood picture, he missed "train oil, salt fish and -seagulls". Yet the twenty bars he set down on the spot form its main -subject. - -Back in London his mind was occupied with numerous compositions, among -them the first stirrings of the "Scotch" and "Reformation" Symphonies -and the "Hebrides" Overture. But before developing these he wanted to -write an organ piece for Fanny's marriage to the painter, Wilhelm Hensel -(whom Leah Mendelssohn had put on a five years' "probation" before she -consented to give him her daughter's hand!); and a household operetta -for the approaching silver wedding of his parents. Klingemann wrote the -libretto of this piece ("Heimkehr aus der Fremde", which the critic -Chorley in 1851 Englished as "Son and Stranger"). It contained special -roles for Fanny, Rebecka, Devrient and Hensel--the last-named limited to -one incessantly repeated note, because he was so desperately unmusical. - - _Hebrides, August 7, 1829._ - - _... in order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides - affected me, the following came into my mind there:_ - - [Illustration: Musical Manuscript] - -Felix returned to Berlin for the parental festivities. But Fanny's -wedding he missed, having injured his leg in a carriage accident and -being laid up for two months. He might, had he chosen, have accepted a -chair of music at the Berlin University in 1830, but he preferred to -continue his travels. It seemed almost a matter of routine that he -should stop off at Weimar to greet Goethe once more. He may or may not -have suspected that he was never to see the poet again. Another friend -he visited was Julius Schubring, rector of St. George's Church in -Dessau. Nrnberg, Munich, Salzburg, the Salzkammergut and Linz were -stations on the way to Vienna, where his enjoyment was poisoned by the -depressing level of musical life and the shocking popular neglect of -masters like Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He made a side trip to -nearby Pressburg to witness the coronation of the Austrian crown prince -as King of Hungary. The most exciting incident of the day was the -smashing of Mendelssohn's high hat by a spectator whose view it -obstructed! - -Italy was another story. "The whole country had such a festive air", he -wrote in one of the first of those Italian letters which are among the -gems of his correspondence, "that I seemed to feel as if I were myself a -prince making his grand entry". To be sure, there was not much music -worth listening to and he was horrified by some of the things he heard -in the churches. But there were the great masters of painting, there was -the beauty of the countryside, the unnumbered attractions of Venice, -Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, the fascination of Italian life and the -charm of the Italian people. He heard the Holy Week musical services in -the Sistine Chapel with works of Palestrina, Allegri and lesser men; -wrote long and detailed letters to Zelter about the technical aspects of -church singing in Rome, composed industriously, saw his boyhood playmate -Julius Benedict and became acquainted with a wildly eccentric young -French musician named Berlioz. On his way northward, in Milan, Felix met -Beethoven's friend, Dorothea von Ertmann; also, Karl Mozart, whom he -delighted by playing some of his father's music. - -With his incredible dispatch he had managed to accomplish a great amount -of creative work in Italy, despite his social and sight-seeing -activities. He had finished a version of the "Hebrides" Overture, had -made progress with his "Scotch" and "Italian" Symphonies, written a -Psalm, several motets, the "First Walpurgis Night" (later recast), piano -pieces, songs. Returning to Germany via Switzerland he stopped off in -Munich and gave a benefit concert on Oct. 17, 1831. It was for this -event that he composed his G minor Piano Concerto. In a letter to his -father Felix referred to it, somewhat contemptuously, as "a thing -rapidly thrown off". It has been assumed that Mendelssohn may have had -Paris in mind composing this concerto. At any rate, the first three -months of 1832 found him once more in the French capital, where he made -new musical acquaintances. One of these was the conductor, Habeneck; -others, Chopin, Liszt, Ole Bull, Franchomme. Yet Mendelssohn found it -difficult, even as he had earlier, to adjust himself to some musical -insensibilities of Paris. He was appalled on one occasion to learn that -his own Octet was given in a church at a funeral mass commemorating -Beethoven. "I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd than a priest at -the altar and my Scherzo going on", he wrote his parents. Habeneck, who -had him play at one of the Conservatoire concerts, wanted to produce at -one of them the "Reformation" Symphony, which Felix had composed in 1830 -for the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession. The performance never -took place; the orchestra disliked the work, finding it "too learned, -too much fugato, too little melody". - -Were these objections wholly unfounded? Irrespective of what passed in -those days for excessive "learning" the "Reformation Symphony" is, in -good truth, a stodgy work, far more willed than inspired. The most -engaging thing in it is the citation in the first movement of that -"Dresden Amen" formula, which half a century later Wagner was to employ -in "Parsifal". Strangely enough, some pages of the symphony sound like -Schumann without the latter's melodic invention. It is only just to -point out that the composer himself came to detest it, declared it was -the one work of his he would gladly burn and refused to permit its -publication. - -Zelter died not long after Goethe and the Singakademie found itself -without a head. Mendelssohn seemed his old teacher's logical successor -and he would gladly have accepted the post. But many of the old ladies -of the chorus did not take kindly to the idea of "singing under a Jewish -boy". When it came to a vote Felix was defeated by a large majority and -one Karl Rungenhagen installed as Zelter's successor. Rather tactlessly -the Mendelssohns resigned their membership in a body. Felix's popularity -in Berlin was not improved by the situation, despite the family's wealth -and influence. He said little but the wound rankled, somewhat as -happened earlier over Berlin's rejection of "Camacho's Wedding". - -The Ccilienverein, of Frankfort, asked the composer to write an -oratorio based on St. Paul. But if Mendelssohn was unable to oblige at -once, the seed was planted and, in proper season, was to take root. Late -in 1832 a different kind of offer came from another quarter. The Lower -Rhine Festival was to be given in Dsseldorf the spring of 1833. Would -Felix conduct it? - -The Dsseldorf commission was accepted and as soon as preliminaries were -arranged Felix was off to his "smoky nest" once more. He had now -completed his "Italian" Symphony and placed it, along with his "Calm Sea -and Prosperous Voyage" and "Trumpet" Overtures at the disposal of the -London Philharmonic. The Symphony was produced on May 13, 1833. To this -day it remains one of the most translucent, gracious and limpid -creations imaginable--"kid glove music", as some have called it, but no -less inspired for its gentility. Is it really Italian, despite the -Neapolitan frenzy of its "Saltarello" finale? Is it not rather Grecian, -like so much else in Mendelssohn's art, with its incorruptible symmetry -and its Mediterranean _limpidezza_? Where has Mendelssohn instrumented -with more luminous clarity than in the first three movements? The second -one, a kind of Pilgrims' March, has none of the sentimentality which -wearies in some of the composer's _adagios_. The third, in its weaving -grace is, one might say, Mendelssohnian in the loveliest sense. - -"Mr. Felix", as he was freely called, returned to Germany for the -Dsseldorf festival, which began on May 26 (Whitsuntide), 1833. Abraham -Mendelssohn came from Berlin to witness his son's triumph. The -Dsseldorf directorate was so pleased with everything that Mendelssohn -was asked to take charge "of all the public and private musical -establishments of the town" for a period of three years. He was to have -a three months' leave of absence each summer. "One thing I especially -like about Felix's position is that, while so many have titles without -an office he will have a real office without a title", declared the -father. - -Meanwhile, the projected "St. Paul" oratorio was more and more filling -its composer's mind and probably a large part of it had already taken -shape. As a matter of fact, he looked upon his appointment at Dsseldorf -less as a lucrative engagement than as furnishing him an opportunity -"for securing quiet and leisure for composition". Still, he gave much -attention to his duties, particularly those in connection with church -music "for which no appropriate epithet exists for that hitherto given -here". In an evil hour he had lightly agreed to take charge of the -activities at the theatre. It was not long before he regretted it. Felix -was never made to cope with the intrigues and irritations of an opera -house. On the opening night, at a performance of "Don Giovanni", there -was a riot in the theatre and the curtain had to be lowered four times -before the middle of the first act. Associated with him was Karl -Immermann, with whom he had previously negotiated about an opera book -based on Shakespeare's "Tempest". In Dsseldorf their relations became -strained and eventually Felix, in disgust, gave up his theatrical -labours and the salary that went with them. - -"St. Paul" was not so swiftly completed as the composer may have hoped -from his Dsseldorf "leisure" (actually, it was finished only in 1836). -But he could not, from a creative standpoint, have been called an idler. -To the Dsseldorf period of 1833-34 belong the Overture "The Beautiful -Melusine", the "Rondo Brillant" in E flat, for piano and orchestra, the -A minor Capriccio for piano, the concert aria, "Infelice", a revision of -the "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage" Overture and not a little else. The -"Melusine" is one of his most poetic and mellifluous inspirations, with -its lovely "wave figure" based on the arpeggiated form of the F major -chord and so intimately related to one of the Rhine motives in Wagner's -"Ring". How Mendelssohn managed to accomplish so much without slighting -in any way his social obligations, his watercolor painting, his -excursions here and there is hard to grasp. - -In good truth, the enormous productivity which his unremitting facility -encouraged, his piano playing and conducting, his incessant travels were -subtly undermining his system. The effects did not make themselves felt -at once but they contributed, bit by bit, to a nervous irritation that -grew on him. Whether or not he appreciated that he came from a stock -which, though healthy, bore in itself the seeds of an early death he -made no effort to spare himself and never hesitated to burn the candle -at both ends. The Mendelssohns had delicate blood vessels, they were -predisposed to apoplexy. Abraham may or may not have been forewarned -when, on returning to Berlin from Dsseldorf with his wife and Felix, he -fell ill at Cassel. For a time his sight had been failing and he was -becoming an outright hypochondriac. The more difficult he grew the more -intense was the filial devotion Felix lavished on him. - -Early in 1835 the composer received from Dr. Conrad Schleinitz a -communication which showed that his good fortunes were to remain -constant. It was nothing less than an invitation to accept the post of -conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was -flattered but experience had made him canny. Before giving his reply he -demanded categorical answers to a number of questions touching artistic -and business matters. Everything was settled to his satisfaction and, -with his parents, his sisters and their husbands, he returned to the -Rhineland to conduct another Lower Rhine Festival, this time to be held -in Cologne. - -If there was one place which promised to provide as happy a home for -Felix as London did it was Leipzig. The atmosphere of the town was a -spiritual balm after the hectic life of Dsseldorf. Who shall say that -it was not with symbolic intent that the newcomer led off his activities -with his own "Calm Sea" Overture and Beethoven's serene Fourth Symphony? -And although Felix's circle of musical friendships sometimes appeared -boundless he now came into intimate contact with certain choice and -master spirits of the age whom he might otherwise have known only -casually. An early visitor at Mendelssohn's new home was Chopin and in a -letter to his parents in Berlin he writes of his pleasure in being able -to associate once more with a thorough musician. One of those to whom -Felix introduced Chopin was Clara Wieck, then only sixteen. On October -3--a historic date, as it proved--another stepped into the charmed -circle, Robert Schumann, to whom Mendelssohn was to become a god. "Felix -Meritis entered", wrote Schumann describing in his best Florestan vein -the first Gewandhaus concert. "In a moment a hundred hearts flew to -him!" - -Light-heartedly Felix accompanied his sister, Rebecka, and her husband -on a trip to the family homestead in Berlin. There seemed to be even -more gayety than usual and a greater amount of extempore music-making -for the entertainment of the father. A short time after he had returned -to Leipzig in great good humor he was shocked by the entrance of his -brother-in-law, Hensel, with the news that Abraham Mendelssohn had died -in his sleep on Nov. 19, 1835. The blow was heavy but Felix, once he -regained control of himself, endured it with fortitude. Yet the loss of -the father whom, to the last, he idolized marked the first great sorrow -of his life. To Pastor Schubring he wrote: "The only thing now is to do -one's duty". It sounds like a copy-book maxim but it was undoubtedly -sincere. His specific "duty" in this case was to complete the still -unfinished "St. Paul", about which Abraham had been ceaselessly -inquiring. - -Logically the oratorio should have been given by the Ccilienverein, in -Frankfort, which had originally commissioned it. But Schelble, the -director of the Society, was ill. So the premiere took place at the -Dsseldorf Festival of 1836. Klingemann, who sent an account of it to -the London "Musical News", said that the performance was "glorious", -that he "had never heard such choral singing". The composer himself was -more restrained. "Many things gave me great pleasure, but on the whole I -learned a great deal". He had come to the conclusion that the work, like -so many of his others, would benefit by a careful overhauling. And in -due course he set about recasting and improving. He had grounds for -satisfaction. If "St. Paul" does not reach some of the prouder dramatic -heights of the later "Elijah" it is a woeful error to underrate it. - -Mendelssohn felt he owed it to his old friend, Schelble, to take over -the direction of the Ccilienverein; so he cancelled a Swiss vacation he -had planned and went to Frankfort. He hobnobbed with the Hiller family -and with Rossini, who happened to be in Germany for a few days. But more -important, he made the acquaintance of Ccile Charlotte Sophie -Jeanrenaud, daughter of a clergyman of the French Reformed Church. -Ccile's widowed mother was herself still so young and attractive that -for a time people thought that she, rather than the 17 year-old girl, -was the cause of Felix's frequent visits. Fanny Hensel had latterly been -urging her brother to marry, alarmed by his somewhat morbid state of -mind. Ccile Jeanrenaud, according to Wilhelm Hensel, complemented Felix -most harmoniously; still, "she was not conspicuously clever, witty, -learned, profound or talented, though restful and refreshing". -Mendelssohn was not the man to let his affections stampede him into -marriage. So before an engagement might be announced he accompanied his -friend, the painter Schadow, on a month's journey to the Dutch seaside -resort, Scheveningen, there to take long walks on the beach, think -things over and come to an understanding with himself. Only then did he -settle definitely upon the step. - -The marriage took place in Frankfort on March 28, 1837, and the couple -went for a honeymoon to Freiburg and the Black Forest. The wedding trip -was followed by a seemingly unending round of social obligations. -Nevertheless, Mendelssohn found time for considerable work. Then a -summons to England, to produce "St. Paul" at the Birmingham Festival -(the oratorio had already been given in Liverpool and by the Sacred -Harmonic Society in London). If only "St. Paul" had been the whole -story! But Mendelssohn had enormous miscellaneous programs to conduct, -he played the organ, he was soloist in his own D minor Piano Concerto. -Back in Leipzig he settled with his wife in a house in Lurgenstein's -Garden, welcomed Fanny, who saw for the first time those "beautiful -eyes" of Ccile, about which she had heard so much, and greeted the -arrival of a son, named Carl Wolfgang Paul. The Gewandhaus concerts -flourished as never before. Felix produced much Bach, Handel and -Beethoven; also he had many of those typical German "prize-crowned" -scores of sickening mediocrity to perform. Musical friends came and -went--Schumann, Clara Wieck, Liszt, Berlioz, and a young Englishman, -Sterndale Bennet, whom both Mendelssohn and Schumann praised to a degree -which we, today, can scarcely grasp. Small wonder that, amidst all this -unmerciful and never-ending ferment Felix occasionally became worried -about his health. "I am again suffering from deafness in one ear, pains -in my throat, headaches and so on", he wrote to Hiller. Occasionally his -friends made fun of his intense love of sleep. One can only regret that -he did not yield to it more often! - -We must pass over Mendelssohn's unending labours in Leipzig, at a number -of German festivals and in England (where his new "symphony-cantata", -the "Hymn of Praise", was featured) to follow him once more to Berlin. -In 1840 Frederick William IV had become King of Prussia. One of the pet -cultural schemes of the monarch was an Academy of Arts, to be divided -into classes of painting, sculpture, architecture and music. For the -direction of the last department the king wanted none but Mendelssohn. -Hence much correspondence passed between Mendelssohn and the bureaucrats -concerning the royal scheme. Time had not softened his hostility toward -officialdom, particularly of the Berlin brand. However, he bound himself -for a year, took up residence on the Leipziger Strasse once more, -submitted his scheme for the Musical Academy and received the title -"Kapellmeister to the King of Prussia" along with a very tolerable -salary. Frederick William wished, among other things, to revive certain -antique Greek tragedies, beginning with Sophocles' "Antigone". The -scheme led to exhaustive discussions between Mendelssohn and the poet, -Tieck, touching the nature of the music to be written. In due course -there followed "Oedipus at Colonos". The kind of music needed was, as it -will probably remain forever, a problem defying solution. What -Mendelssohn finally wrote turned out, by and large, to be adequate -Mendelssohnian commonplace. - -Greek tragedy was not the only sort of dramatic entertainment projected -by the King of Prussia. Racine's "Athalie", Shakespeare's "Tempest" and -"Midsummer Night's Dream" likewise took their place on the royal -schedule. Nothing came of "The Tempest" so far as Mendelssohn was -concerned. But he fashioned some excellent music for Racine's play and -enriched the "Midsummer Night's Dream" with an incidental score which -may well be inseparably associated with the immortal fantasy to the end -of time. There was, to be sure, no need for a new overture, Felix having -written the most perfect conceivable one in his boyhood. But a dozen -other numbers, long or short, were called for and, with the most -consummate ease and soaring inspiration, Mendelssohn produced them. They -are exquisitely delicate settings of Shakespeare's elfin songs and -choruses, a "funeral march" of extravagant grotesqueness, clownish dance -music, a flashing Intermezzo, depicting the pursuit of the lovers -through the wood, and other "background" pieces. The memorable concert -numbers, however, are the incomparable Scherzo--perhaps the most -priceless of all the famous scherzi the composer wrote; the romantic -Nocturne, with its rapturous horn revery, and the triumphant Wedding -March, a ringing processional which, in reality, belongs to all mankind -rather than to Shakespeare's stage lovers. - -The royal scheme for the Academy was not advancing and presently the -plans began to gather dust in official pigeon holes. Frederick William, -seeing the turn things were taking, appointed his Kapellmeister the head -of the music performed in the Dom. The Singakademie, conscience-stricken -over its earlier treatment of the composer, now made him an honorary -member. For all that, Mendelssohn was not fundamentally happier in -Berlin than he had been previously. Fortunately he had not resigned his -Gewandhaus post when he left Leipzig and it had again become more -desirable to him than all the royal distinctions Berlin could confer. He -had added greatly to his creative output during this period (for one -thing he had rewritten the "Walpurgisnacht" and finished the "Scotch" -Symphony) and now he was occupied with plans for a new music school in -Leipzig--the famous Conservatory, first domiciled in the Gewandhaus. In -January, 1843, its prospectus was issued. The faculty was to include men -like the theorist Moritz Hauptmann, the violinist, Ferdinand David, the -organist, Carl Becker and finally, as professors of composition and -piano, Schumann and Mendelssohn. Felix was not really overjoyed at the -prospect of pedagogical drudgery; yet to Hiller he wrote "I shall have -to go ... three or four times a week and talk about 6-4 chords ... I am -quite willing to do this for the love of the cause, because I believe it -to be a good cause". - -Quite as peacefully as her husband, Leah Mendelssohn died shortly before -Christmas, 1842. Felix grieved, if he was perhaps less stricken than by -the passing of his father. Doubtless he felt once more that nothing -remained but "to do his duty"--and these duties were unsparing and -seemed to grow more numerous and complex as the years went by. One -sometimes questions if, truly, the labors of a Bach, a Haydn and a -Mozart were more ramified and unending than Mendelssohn's--even if he -had no need to toil in order to keep the wolf from the door! - -As time passed the Mendelssohn craze in England grew steadily by what it -fed on and it was only natural that Felix should find himself repeatedly -in London. He alluded to his successes and to the intensity of his -welcome by his British friends as "scandalous", and declared himself -completely stunned by it all. "I think I must have been applauded for -ten minutes and, after the first concert, almost trampled upon!" The -young Queen Victoria was quite as effusive as her subjects. She invited -the composer to Buckingham Palace and was graciousness itself. He played -her seven of his "Songs Without Words", then the "Serenade", then -Fantasies on "Rule Brittania", "Ltzows Wilde Jagd" and "Gaudeamus -Igitur". It was by no means the only time British royalty was to show -him favor. Up to the year of his death Victoria and Albert were to -shower distinctions upon him, to treat him, as it were, like one of the -family. - -Doubtless this is as good an opportunity as another to particularize. On -one memorable occasion the Queen sang to his accompaniment and both she -and her Consort scrambled to pick up sheets of music that had fallen off -the piano. On another, the sovereign asked if there were "anything she -could do to please Dr. Mendelssohn!". There was, indeed! Could Her -Majesty let him for a few moments visit the royal nursery? Nothing Dr. -Mendelssohn could have wished would have delighted Victoria more! -Unceremoniously leading the way she showed him all the mysteries of the -place, opened closets, wardrobes and cupboards and in a few minutes the -two were deep in a discussion of infants' underwear, illnesses and -diets. Mendelssohn and Ccile's own family was growing by this time and -might easily profit by the example of Buckingham Palace. - -The Queen found so much delight in the "Scotch" Symphony that the -composer promptly dedicated it to her. But for that matter, England -could scarcely hear enough of it. Whether or not one ranks it as high as -the "Italian" the A minor unquestionably represents the other half of -Mendelssohn's chief symphonic accomplishment. The question to what -degree it embodies Scottish elements or any appreciable degree of local -colour is less important than the fact that it is strong, impassioned -music, informed with a ruggedness and conflict unlike the sunnier A -major. There is a mood of tumult and drama in the first movement, whose -closing subject is a definite prefigurement of the songful theme in the -opening _allegro_ of Brahms' Second Symphony. The Scherzo begins with a -sort of jubilant extension of the Irish folksong "The Minstrel Boy" and -the buoyant movement, as a whole, is full of tingling life. On the other -hand, the _Adagio_ undoubtedly displays a weakness characterizing so -many of Mendelssohn's slow movements--it is sentimental rather than -searching or personal, since with Mendelssohn grief is "only a -recollection of former joys". Yet the _finale_ is superbly vital and the -sonorous coda with which it concludes has a regal stateliness and a -bardic ring. - -Whatever honours, labours, irritations and unending travels and fatigues -were his portion on the Continent (and they seemed steadily to increase) -it was to England that Mendelssohn continually turned to refresh his -spirit. Not that his toil there was lighter or his welcome less hectic! -But there was something about it all that filled his soul. People -presented him with medals, commemorative addresses, they organized -torchlight processions, sang serenades--and almost killed him with -kindness. Yet we are told that "he never enjoyed himself more than when -in the midst of society, music, fun and excitement". "A mad, most -extraordinary mad time ... never in bed till half-past one ... for three -weeks together not a single hour to myself in any one day ... I have -made more music in these two months than elsewhere in two years". He -ordered a huge "Baum Kuchen" from Berlin (though usually, Grove informs -us, he made no great ado over "the products of the kitchen", his chief -enjoyments being milk rice and cherry pie). His power of recovery after -fatigue was said to be "as great as his powers of enjoyment". With it -all "he was never dissipated"; the only stimulants he indulged in were -"music, society and boundless good spirits". Seemingly it never occurred -to him that even a strong constitution can have too much of these. - -When Mendelssohn became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra he -appointed as his concertmaster his old friend, the violinist Ferdinand -David, who it will be recalled was born in the same house at Hamburg. As -early as 1838 Felix had written to David: "I should like to write a -violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head -the beginning of which gives me no peace". Actually, he had tried his -hand at a violin concerto accompanied by a string orchestra during his -boyhood though this was only a kind of student effort. But David took -the promise seriously and when nothing came of it for a time determined -not to let Mendelssohn forget it. - -Fully five years elapsed before the composer finished in its first form -the concerto which to this day stands with the violin concertos of -Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky as the most enduring of the -repertoire. For the various technical problems of the solo part and even -of the orchestration David was constantly at the disposal of his friend. -He offered numberless hints of the utmost value and is even believed to -have shaped the cadenza in the first movement as we know it. Even after -the score was presumably complete David advised further changes and -improvements, so that the work did not acquire its conclusive aspect -till February, 1845. On the following March 13 it was performed by David -at a Gewandhaus concert. Not under the composer's direction, however. -The latter was in Frankfort, in poor health and greatly worn out, and -had no stomach for the excitements of another premiere. The conductor -was his Danish friend, Niels W. Gade. It was not till two weeks later -that David apologized by letter for his delay in describing the triumph -of the concerto. "The work pleased extraordinarily well and was -unanimously declared to be one of the most beautiful compositions of its -kind". In more than a century there has been no reason to alter this -verdict. - -Mendelssohn's constitution may have been resilient and his recuperative -powers as remarkable as his friends imagined, but it should have been -clear to the more far-sighted among them that sooner or later these -incessant journeys, this interminable business of composing, conducting, -playing, teaching, organizing must exact a stern penalty. It is not -surprising that, at the time the violin concerto was given in Leipzig, -he preferred to remain in Frankfort with his wife and the children (who -had gone through quite a siege of juvenile illnesses) and make a serious -effort to rest. But truly efficacious rest is a habit that must be -systematically cultivated. Felix did not possess it in his earlier -years, nor could he acquire it now when overwork promised to consume the -sensitive fibre of his being. - -Yet in the summer of 1845 he was approached once more with a scheme of -major dimensions. The Birmingham Festival Committee offered him the -direction of a festival planned for August, 1846, and asked him to -"compose a performance"--in this case, a new oratorio. He was sensible -enough to refuse to conduct the whole festival but he was willing to -produce such an oratorio, even if only ten months remained to compose -most of the score and rehearse the performance. - -The prophet Elijah had engrossed his imagination as an oratorio subject -ever since he had completed "St. Paul" and discussed the new work with -his friend Klingemann. In 1839 he had corresponded with Pastor Schubring -about a text and he had even made rudimentary sketches for the music. -Other obligations crowded it out of his mind. Now, six years later, he -returned to it. He realized that the time was short but his heart was -set on "Elijah", although he was prudent enough to suggest some other -work if the oratorio should by any chance strike a snag. - -Mendelssohn could write fast--too fast, perhaps, for his artistic good. -Still, "Elijah" was a heart-breaking assignment. It is only just to say -that he realized certain inadequacies of the first version and revised -not a little of the score after hearing it. His labours were complicated -by the lengthy correspondence he was obliged to carry on with William -Bartholomew, the translator. Mendelssohn insisted on a close adherence -to the King James version of the Bible, with the result that the English -words often conform neither to the accent nor the sense of the German -originals. The choice of a soprano offered another problem. The composer -wanted Jenny Lind, whom he admired extravagantly (he loved her F sharp -and the note seems to have haunted his mind when he wrote the air, "Hear -Ye, Israel"). But Jenny Lind was unavailable and he had to be satisfied -with a Maria Caradori-Allan, whom he disliked and whose singing he -afterwards described as "so pretty, so pleasing, so elegant and at the -same time so flat, so unintelligent, so soulless that the music acquired -a sort of amiable expression about which I could go mad". Be all of -which as it may, Caradori-Allan was paid as much for singing in the -first "Elijah" as Mendelssohn was for composing it! The precious -creature actually told him at a rehearsal that "Hear Ye, Israel" was -"not a lady's song," and asked him to have it transposed and otherwise -altered. - -However, the first performance in Birmingham, Aug. 26, 1846, was a -triumph for the composer though, to be candid, the uncritical adulation -of the audience had settled the verdict in advance. The report of -Mendelssohn's boyhood friend, Julius Benedict, is typical: "The noble -Town Hall was crowded at an early hour of that forenoon with a brilliant -and eagerly expectant audience.... Every eye had long been directed -toward the conductor's desk, when, at half-past eleven o'clock, a -deafening shout from the band and chorus announced the approach of the -great composer. The reception he met from the assembled thousands ... -was absolutely overwhelming; whilst the sun, emerging at that moment, -seemed to illumine the vast edifice in honour of the bright and pure -being who stood there, the idol of all beholders"! - -It enhances one's respect for the artistic probity of Mendelssohn that -he preserved his balance. He evaluated his work critically, carefully -modified or enlarged it and obliged Bartholomew to make a quantity of -changes in the English text. On April 16, 1847, he conducted the revised -version in the first of four performances by the Sacred Harmonic Society -in Exeter Hall, London. On April 23 the Queen and the Prince Consort -heard the work. Albert wrote in the book of words and sent to -Mendelssohn a dedication: "To the Noble Artist who, surrounded by the -Baal-worship of debased art, has been able by his genius and science to -preserve faithfully, like another Elijah, the Worship of True Art, and -once more to accustom our ears, amid the whirl of empty frivolous -sounds, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and legitimate harmony: -to the Great Master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his -conception, through the whole maze of his creation, from the soft -whispering to the mighty raging of the elements. Inscribed in grateful -remembrance by - - Albert" - -It was a fitting climax to Mendelssohn's tenth visit to England--in some -ways his most memorable, in any case his last. - -Before Mendelssohn left London he paid a farewell visit to Buckingham -Palace. He had a mysterious presentiment that he must leave hurriedly. -Friends pressed him to remain in England a little longer. "Ah! I wish I -may not already have stayed too long here! One more week of this -unremitting fatigue and I should be killed outright". He was manifestly -ill. Fate caught up with him at Frankfort. Scarcely had he arrived in a -state of prostration when he abruptly learned that his sister, Fanny -Hensel, had died while at the piano conducting a choir rehearsal. With a -shriek, Felix collapsed. The shock of the news and the violence of his -fall on hearing it brought about a rupture of one of those delicate -cerebral blood vessels which had caused so many deaths in the -Mendelssohn family. - -In a measure he recovered. He went to Baden-Baden and later to -Switzerland. He wrote letters, sketched and still composed. He greeted -friends from England, he learned that London and Liverpool wanted new -symphonies and cantatas. This time he did nothing about it. When he, -finally, returned in September to Leipzig, he seemed to feel better, -though Moscheles, meeting him, was frightened to see how he had aged and -changed. On Oct. 9, while visiting his friend, the singer Livia Frege, -in connection with some Lieder he planned to publish, he was seized with -a chill. He hurried home and was put to bed, tortured by violent -headaches. He had planned to go to Vienna late in the month to conduct -"Elijah" with Jenny Lind as the soprano. Of this there could now be no -question. On Nov. 3, 1847 he suffered another stroke and lay, it is -claimed, unconscious, though Ferdinand David says that, till ten in the -evening, "he screamed frightfully, then made noises as if he heard the -sounds of drums and trumpets.... During the following day the pains -seemed to cease, but his face was that of a dying man". Some time -between 9:15 and 9:30 in the evening he ceased to breathe. He was -exactly three months short of 39 years old. Grouped about the bed were -his wife, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz and Moscheles. "Through -Fanny's death our family was destroyed", wrote Paul Mendelssohn to -Klingemann; "through Felix's, it is annihilated"! Leipzig was stunned by -the news. "It is lovely weather here", wrote a young English music -student, "but an awful stillness prevails; we feel as if the king were -dead...." - -Posthumously, Mendelssohn's fate seemed like a strange reversal of his -supreme idol's, Bach. Bach passed into long eclipse, then, largely -through Mendelssohn's heroic efforts, underwent a miracle of -resurrection which has grown more overpowering clear down to our own -time. Mendelssohn, almost preposterously famous at his death, was before -very long pronounced outmoded, overrated, virtually negligible. The -whole history of music scarcely shows a more violent backswing of the -pendulum. To take pleasure in any but a handful of Mendelssohn's works -was for decades to lose caste, if not to invite ignominy. By 1910--just -about the centenary of his birth--the low water-mark of derogation had -been reached. - -Now, a hundred years after his death, a most definite reaction is in -progress. Is it not, rather, a salutary readjustment than a mere -reaction? If Mendelssohn's poorer works have not endured is it not -better so? Struggle and suffering might, indeed, have lent a deeper -undertone to his songs or enabled his adagios, in old Sir George Grove's -words, "to draw tears where now they only give a saddened pleasure. But -let us take a man as we have him. Surely there is enough conflict and -violence in life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy we can turn -to others. It is well in these agitated modern days to be able to point -to one perfectly balanced nature in whose life, whose letters and whose -music alike all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant -and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may -well forego for once the depths of misery and sorrow". - -And Grove's words taken on an added poignancy precisely because they -were _not_ spoken of an epoch as grievous as our own! - - [Illustration: Family Group. Sketch by Mendelssohn, Soden, 1844.] - - - COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS - _by_ - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - OF NEW YORK - - - COLUMBIA RECORDS - - _Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_ - - Barber--Symphony No. 1 - Beethoven--Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major ("Emperor") (with Rudolph - Serkin, piano) - Beethoven--Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major ("Eroica") - Beethoven--Symphony No. 5 in C minor - Beethoven--Symphony No. 8 in F Major - Brahms--Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir) - Dvorak--Slavonic Dance No. 1 - Mahler--Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano) - Mendelssohn--Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin) - Mendelssohn--Midsummer Night's Dream--Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein) - Mozart--Cosi Fan Tutte--Overture - Mozart--Symphony No. 41 in C major ("Jupiter"), K. 551 - Schubert--Symphony No. 7 in C major - Schumann, R.--Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major ("Rhenish") - Smetana--The Moldau ("Vltava") - Strauss, J.--Emperor Waltz - - _Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_ - - Bizet--Carmen--Entr'acte (Prelude to Act III) - Bizet--Symphony in C major - Copland--A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator) - Gershwin--American in Paris - Ibert--"Escales" (Ports of Call) - Liszt--Mephisto Waltz - Moussorgsky--Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski) - Moussorgsky-Ravel--Pictures at an Exhibition - Prokofieff--Symphony No. 5, Op. 100 - Rachmaninoff--Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor) - Rachmaninoff--Symphony No. 2 in E minor - Saint-Saens--Concerto No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus) - Sibelius--Symphony No. 4 in A minor - Tschaikowsky--Suite "Mozartiana" - Tschaikowsky--Symphony No. 6 in B minor ("Pathtique") - Wagner--Lohengrin--Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III--Scene 2) (with Helen - Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor) - Wagner--Tristan und Isolde--Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano) - Wagner--Die Walkure--Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano - and Herbert Janssen, baritone) - Wolf-Ferrari--"Secret of Suzanne", Overture - - _Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_ - - Stravinsky--Firebird Suite - Stravinsky--Fireworks (Feu d'Artifice) - Stravinsky--Four Norwegian Moods - Stravinsky--Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring) - Stravinsky--Scenes de Ballet - Stravinsky--Suite from Petrouchka - Stravinsky--Symphony in Three Movements - - _Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_ - - Herold--Zampa--Overture - Khatchaturian--Gayne--Ballet Suite - Wieniawski--Violin Concerto (with Isaac Stern) - - _Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud_ - - Milhaud--Suite Francaise - - _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_ - - Bach-Barbirolli--Sheep May Safely Graze (from the "Birthday Cantata") - Berlioz--Roman Carnival Overture - Brahms--Symphony No. 2, in D major - Brahms--Academic Festival Overture - Bruch--Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin) - Debussy--First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet) - Debussy--Petite Suite: Ballet - Mozart--Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano) - Mozart--Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 - Ravel--La Valse - Rimsky-Korsakov--Capriccio Espagnol - Sibelius--Symphony No. 1, in E minor - Sibelius--Symphony No. 2, in D major - Smetana--The Bartered Bride--Overture - Tschaikowsky--Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G) - - _Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_ - - Mendelssohn--Symphony No. 4, in A major ("Italian") - Sibelius--Melisande (from "Pelleas and Melisande") - Sibelius--Symphony No. 7 in C major - Tschaikowsky--Capriccio Italien - - _Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_ - - Gershwin--Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant, piano) - - - VICTOR RECORDS - - _Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_ - - Beethoven--Symphony No. 7 in A major - Brahms--Variations on a Theme by Haydn - Dukas--The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Gluck--Orfeo ed Euridice--Dance of the Spirits - Haydn--Symphony No. 4, in D major (The Clock) - Mendelssohn--Midsummer Night's Dream--Scherzo - Mozart--Symphony in D major (K. 385) - Rossini--Barber of Seville--Overture - Rossini--Italians in Algiers--Overture - Rossini--Semiramide--Overture - Verdi--Traviata--Preludes to Acts I and III - Wagner--Excerpts--Lohengrin--Die Gotterdammerung--Siegfried Idyll - - _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_ - - Debussy--Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2) - Purcell--Suite for Strings with Four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn - Respighi--Fountains of Rome - Respighi--Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the - Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York) - Schubert--Symphony No. 4, in C minor (Tragic) - Schumann--Concerto in D minor, (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin) - Tschaikowsky--Francesca de Rimini--Fantasia - - _Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_ - - J. C. Bach--Arr. Stein--Sinfonia in B-flat major - J. S. Bach--Arr. Mahler--Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra) - Beethoven--Egmont Overture - Handel--Alcina Suite - Mendelssohn--War March of the Priests (from Athalia) - Meyerbeer--Prophete--Coronation March - Saint-Saens--Rouet d'Omphale (Omphale's Spinning Wheel) - Schelling--Victory Ball - Wagner--Flying Dutchman--Overture - Wagner--Siegfried--Forest Murmurs (Waldweben) - - - Special Booklets published for - RADIO MEMBERS - of - THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY - OF NEW YORK - - POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. - Schirmer's) - BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn - BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn - MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser - WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar - TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli - JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. - Peyser - SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser - -These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the -limited supply lasts. - - - - - The immortal music of Mendelssohn - is available in magnificent performances by the - PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY - ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK - - Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 ("Italian"). - Conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. - Set M-MM-538 - $5.00[*] - - Concerto in E minor for Violin & Orch. Op. 64 (with Nathan Milstein, - violin) - Conducted by Bruno Walter. - Set M-MM-577 - $5.00[*] - - Scherzo (from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"). - Conducted by Bruno Walter. - 12145-D (in set M-577) - $1.00[*] - - [*]_Prices shown are exclusive of taxes_ - - - COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS RECORDS - - - - - Transcriber's Notes - - ---A few palpable typos were silently corrected. - ---Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break. - ---Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. 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margin-left:3em; text-align:justify; font-size:90%; } -.clear { clear:both; } -p.book { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; } -p.review { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; font-size:80%; } -p.dialog { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-1em; } - -div.trump p { text-indent:1em; } -div.verse p { text-indent:-3em; } -div.trump dl.toc dt { text-align:left; } -div.trump dl.toc dt a { width: 4.5em; text-align:right; display:inline-block; margin-right:.7em; }</style> -</head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -Project Gutenberg's Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks, by Herbert F. Peyser - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks - -Author: Herbert F. Peyser - -Release Date: October 19, 2015 [EBook #50258] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENDELSSOHN, CERTAIN MASTERWORKS *** - - - - -Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div id="cover" class="img"> -<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks" width="500" height="761" /> -</div> -<div class="box"> -<p class="center"><b>HERBERT F. PEYSER</b></p> -<h1><span class="larger">MENDELSSOHN</span> -<br />and -<br />Certain Masterworks</h1> -<div class="img"> -<img src="images/img000.jpg" alt="Logo" width="129" height="122" /> -</div> -<p class="center">Written for and dedicated to -<br />the -<br />RADIO MEMBERS -<br />of -<br />THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY -<br />of NEW YORK</p> -<p class="center small">Copyright 1947 by -<br />THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY -<br />of NEW YORK -<br />113 West 57th Street -<br />New York 19, N. Y.</p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_2">2</div> -<div class="img" id="fig1"> -<img src="images/img000a.jpg" alt="" width="438" height="701" /> -<p class="caption">Mendelssohn.<br />Sketch by Carl Mueller, 1842.</p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_3">3</div> -<h2>FOREWORD</h2> -<p>In the compass of the present pamphlet it is impossible -to give more than a cursory survey of Mendelssohn’s -happy but extraordinarily crowded life. He was -only slightly less prolific a composer than such masters -as Bach, Mozart or Schubert, even if he did not reach -the altitude of their supreme heights. But irrespective of -the quality of much of his output, the sheer mass of it is -astounding, the more so when we consider the extent of his -travels and the unceasing continuity of his professional -and social activities, which immensely exceeded anything -of the kind in the career of Schubert or Bach. In -these few pages it has not been feasible to mention -more than a handful of his more familiar compositions -which happen, incidentally, to rank among his best. The -reader will find here neither a detailed record of Mendelssohn’s -endless comings and goings nor any originality -of approach or appraisal in the necessarily casual comments -on a few works. If the booklet encourages him to -listen with perhaps a fresh interest to certain long familiar -scores, now that a full century has passed since the -composer’s death, its object will have been achieved.</p> -<p><span class="lr">H. F. P.</span></p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_4">4</div> -<h1 title="">Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks</h1> -<p class="center"><i>By</i> -<br />HERBERT F. PEYSER</p> -<p>In 1729—the year of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”—a -humble Jew of Dessau on the Elbe, Mendel by name, -became the father of a boy whom he called Moses. -Mendel was something of a scholar as the times went, -but desperately poor. He kept body and soul together by -running a small Hebrew day-school and transcribing the -Pentateuch. His infant son might know the pangs of -hunger but he should have the boon of a sound education. -The training was begun almost before the child -could walk. Mendel would rout him out of bed at three -or four on winter mornings, fortify him with a cup of -tea and carry him, wrapped in a shawl, to a public -seminary where he was put in charge of the learned -Rabbi David Frankel.</p> -<p>Moses showed himself an extraordinarily gifted pupil. -For one thing, he was consumed by a restless spirit of -inquiry. He set about making an exhaustive study of the -Scriptures, read voraciously, acquired languages with uncanny -facility and, before he was ten, composed Hebrew -verses. Nothing influenced him so deeply as Maimonides’ -“The Guide of the Perplexed”. But the intensity of his -intellectual occupation was such that he fell prey to a -nervous malady which deformed his spine for life. He -bore his ailment with the patience of Job and was never -heard to complain. “If Maimonides weakened my body”, -he had a habit of saying, “has he not made ample atonement -by invigorating my soul with his sublime instructions?”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_5">5</div> -<p>According to a traditional Jewish manner of forming -a surname Moses called himself “Son of Mendel”—in -German, “Mendels Sohn”—albeit he long alluded to -himself as “Moses Dessauer”. When Rabbi Frankel transferred -his activities to Berlin his disciple, though only -fourteen, followed him on foot. Hunger, sickness, deprivations, -bitter antagonisms, far from breaking the youth’s -spirit, deepened his perceptions and broadened his vision. -He wrote and studied with fanatic zeal and in the fullness -of time developed into one of the greatest scholars -and philosophers of the age. The poet Lessing was one -of his intimates. His work, “Phaedon, or the Immortality -of the Soul”, gained such currency that it was translated -into every language of Europe.</p> -<p>Moses Mendelssohn endured without a murmur the -numberless hardships and disabilities to which the German -Jews of the period of Frederick the Great and his -tyrannical father were subjected. One of the most preposterous -of these regulations obliged every Jew when -he married to buy a certain amount of chinaware from -the royal porcelain factory in Berlin, whether he needed -it or not. Not even the choice of articles was left to him, -so long as the factory manager decided the place was -overstocked. In this way Moses Mendelssohn when in -1762 he took to wife Fromet, daughter of Abraham Gugenheim, -of Hamburg, acquired twenty life-sized china -apes which had been found unsaleable. Much later the -apes became valued family heirlooms.</p> -<p>The domestic happiness and tranquility he had never -known in his youth were at last to be the philosopher’s -portion. Moses and Fromet had a considerable family, -though only six of the children—three sons and three -daughters—survived to maturity. Moses himself died in -Berlin at 57. Longevity, as it proved, was not to be a -trait of the Mendelssohns.</p> -<p>Of the three sons the second, Abraham, was destined -to play a role in musical history. True, he was not himself -a trained musician although he had very sensitive -artistic instincts; and he labored under a mild sense of -<span class="pb" id="Page_6">6</span> -inferiority, which used to find expression in his whimsical -phrase: “Formerly I was the son of my father, now I -am the father of my son”. In any case he had not to -endure anything like the paternal struggles and poverty. -Of his boyhood not much is known. But in his twenties -he was sent to Paris and worked for a time as cashier in -the bank of M. Fould. When he returned to Germany he -entered a banking business founded in Berlin and Hamburg -by his brother, Joseph. It was possibly on his trip -home that he met his future wife, Leah Salomon. If -marriages are made in heaven this match assuredly could -boast a celestial origin! Leah Salomon was an wholly -unusual woman. She came of a Berlin family of wealth -and position, she was exquisitely sensitive and cultured -and, although she strictly limited her singing and playing -to the home circle, was a musician of gifts quite out of -the ordinary. Moreover, she drew, was an accomplished -linguist (she even read Homer in Greek, though only in -the privacy of her boudoir, lest anyone suspect her of -“immodesty”), and dressed with studied simplicity. -Among Leah’s elaborate virtues was her tireless devotion -to her mother. She kept house for her and granted her -a substantial income.</p> -<p>Small wonder that such a union was blessed with exceptional -offspring. Of the four children of Abraham -and Leah Mendelssohn, Fanny Cäcilie, Jakob Ludwig -Felix and Rebecka saw the light at Hamburg, in the -order named. The youngest, Paul, came not long after -the family had removed to Berlin. It may not be inappropriate -to call briefly into the picture at this point Leah’s -brother, Jacob Salomon Bartholdy, if for no other reason -than to account for a surname which formed an adjunct -to part of the Mendelssohn family, including the -composer. Salomon, a distinguished art critic who spent -his later years in Rome as Prussian consul-general, had -embraced Protestantism (despite a traditional curse -launched by his mother) and adopted the name “Bartholdy” -after “the former proprietor of a garden belonging -to the family”—a garden which subsequently passed -<span class="pb" id="Page_7">7</span> -into the hands of Abraham Mendelssohn. It was Salomon -Bartholdy who at length persuaded his brother-in-law -to procure for his children what Heinrich Heine -had called “a ticket of admission to European culture”—in -short, conversion to the Christian faith. To distinguish -between the converted members of the family and those -who clung to their old belief “Bartholdy” was henceforth -affixed to “Mendelssohn”. In time, Abraham and -Leah followed their children into the Lutheran faith, -Leah adding to her own name those of Felicia and -Paulina, in allusion to her sons.</p> -<p>Felix was born on Friday, Feb. 3, 1809, at 14 Grosse -Michaelisstrasse, Hamburg. Long afterwards the place -was marked by a commemorative tablet above the entrance, -a tribute from Jenny Lind and her husband. -Curiously enough, the violinist Ferdinand David, Felix’s -friend and associate of later days, was born under the -same roof scarcely a year after. Hamburg became an -unpleasant place during the occupation by Napoleon’s -troops and in 1811, soon after the birth of Rebecka, the -family escaped in disguise to Berlin where Abraham, at -his own expense, outfitted a company of volunteers. The -Mendelssohns took up residence in a house belonging to -the widow Fromet. It was situated in what was then an -attractive quarter of north-eastern Berlin, on a street -called the Neue Promenade that had houses on one side -and a tree-bordered canal on the other. It offered a -spacious playground for the children and the singer, -Eduard Devrient, recalled seeing Felix play marbles or -touch-and-run with his comrades.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_8">8</div> -<div class="img" id="fig2"> -<img src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="681" /> -<p class="caption">MENDELSSOHN’S BIRTHPLACE IN HAMBURG</p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_9">9</div> -<p>Abraham Mendelssohn, having severed the partnership -with his brother, started a banking business of his own -which soon prospered famously. Somehow even the -myriad cares of running a bank did not prevent the -father from scrupulously overseeing the education of his -sons and daughters. If the young people were virtually -bedded on roses, Abraham was of too strong a character -and, indeed, too much of a martinet not to subject them -to the discipline of a carefully ordered routine. Wealth -and ease did not cause him to forget the privations and -the conflicts which helped to forge the greatness of his -own father’s soul. His children need not hunger, they -need not be denied opportunities to develop what talents -nature had bestowed on them. But given such opportunities -they must labor unremittingly to make the most -of them. They had to be up and about at five in the -morning and, shortly after, repair to their lessons. Felix -always looked forward to Sundays when he could sleep -late! In some ways one is reminded of the manner -Leopold Mozart supervised the training of Wolfgang and -Nannerl. If Abraham Mendelssohn was not, like Father -Mozart, a practising musician, he had an artistic insight -which nobody valued higher than Felix himself. “I am -often unable to understand”, he wrote his father when -he was already a world celebrity, “how it is possible to -have so accurate a judgment about music without being -a technical musician and if I could only say what I -feel in the same clear and intelligent manner that you -always do, I should certainly never make another confused -speech as long as I live”. It is easy to believe that -some of the adoration Felix felt for his father above all -others grew out of his unbounded respect for the older -man’s intellectual superiority.</p> -<p>Business connected with war indemnities associated -with the Napoleonic conflicts obliged Abraham in 1816 -to go to Paris and on this journey he took his family -with him. Felix and Fanny were placed for piano instruction -under a Madame Marie Bigot de Morogues and both -appear to have profited. Their first piano lessons had been -given them at home by their mother who, in the beginning -restricted them to five minute periods so that they ran -no risk of growing weary or restive. Fanny no less than -her brother disclosed an unusual feeling for the keyboard -at an early age and even when she was born Leah noted -that the infant seemed to have “Bach fugue fingers”.</p> -<p>When the Mendelssohns returned to Berlin the young -people’s education was begun systematically. General -tuition was administered by Karl Heyse, father of the -<span class="pb" id="Page_10">10</span> -novelist; the painter, Rösel, taught drawing, for which -Felix exhibited a natural aptitude from the first; Ludwig -Berger, a pupil of Clementi’s, developed the boy’s piano -talents, Carl Wilhelm Henning gave him violin lessons -and Goethe’s friend, Carl Zelter, taught thorough-bass -and composition. Nor were the social graces neglected. -Felix learned to swim, to ride, to fence, to dance. Dancing, -indeed, was one of his passions all his life. Father Mendelssohn -always found time to supervise his children’s -studies and to guide their accomplishments. For that -matter he never considered his sons and daughters—even -when they grew up—too old for his discipline; and, -certainly, Felix welcomed rather than resented it.</p> -<p>On Oct. 28, 1818, the boy made his first public appearance -as pianist. The occasion was a concert given by a -horn virtuoso, Joseph Gugel. Felix collaborated in a trio -for piano and two horns, by Joseph Wölfl. He earned, -we are told, “much applause”. But Abraham, though -pleased, was not the man to have his head turned by -displays of precocity, shallow compliments or noisy acclamations. -Neither did Zelter flatter his pupil on his -never-failing facility. No problem seemed excessive for -the boy, who could read orchestral scores, transpose, -improvise—what you will. “Come, come”, Zelter would -grumble contemptuously, as if these feats were the most -natural thing in the world, “genius ought to be able to -dress the hair of a sow and make curls of it!” Yet to -Goethe he made no effort to conceal his satisfaction. -“Felix is a good and handsome boy, merry and obedient”, -he confided in a letter; “his father has brought him up -the proper way.... He plays piano like a real devil and -is not in the least backward on string instruments...”. -And the crusty contrapuntist saw to it that the ten-year-old -genius entered the Singakademie and sang among the -altos where he could learn to know, inside and out, works -by Palestrina, Bach, Handel and lesser masters, distinguish -between styles and observe the minutest technicalities of -fugal construction.</p> -<p>It was only natural that Felix should, at this stage, -<span class="pb" id="Page_11">11</span> -have tried his own hand at composition. He wrote to his -father, in Paris, asking for music paper. Abraham took -the request as the text for a mild sermon: “You, my dear -Felix”, he admonished his son, “must state exactly what -kind of music paper you wish to have—ruled or not -ruled; and if the former you must say distinctly <i>how</i> it is -to be ruled. When I went into the shop the other day -to buy some, I found that I did not know myself what -I wanted to have. Read over your letter before you send -it off and ascertain whether, if addressed to yourself, -you could execute the commission contained in it”. -Sooner or later he must have gotten his music paper for -in 1820, when Felix began to compose, it is figured that -he wrote fifty or sixty movements of one sort or another, -solo and part songs, a cantata and a comedy. -In every instance his methodical training caused him to -inscribe the work with the exact date and place of its -composition—a practice which saved no end of doubt -and conjecture in later years, the more so as Felix -remained quite as systematic his life long. These scores -(of which he kept a painstaking catalogue) are headed -in many cases with the mysterious formula “L.v.g.G.” or -“H.d.m.”, which though never satisfactorily deciphered, -reappears again and again in his output.</p> -<p>Some of these compositions, together with several by -Fanny were dispatched to Abraham in Paris. The father -was particularly pleased with a fugue and wrote home: -“I like it well; it is a great thing. I should not have -expected him to set to work in such good earnest so -soon, for such a fugue requires reflection and perseverance”. -He was perturbed over his daughter’s composing, -though he appreciated her talent. It was well enough, -he declared, for Felix to take up music as a profession -but Fanny must bear in mind that a woman’s place is in -the home. As a warning example he points to the sad -end of Madame Bigot, who busied herself professionally -with music and now is dead of consumption!</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_12">12</div> -<div class="img" id="fig3"> -<img src="images/img002.jpg" alt="" width="403" height="701" /> -<p class="caption">Mendelssohn at the age of eleven.<br />Sketch by an unknown artist.</p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_13">13</div> -<p>In 1821 there took place in Berlin an event which -stirred the musical world of Germany to its depths—the -first performance of Weber’s “Der Freischütz”. The -composer, who supervised the rehearsals, was generally -accompanied by his young friend and pupil, Julius -Benedict. One day while escorting his master to the -theatre, Benedict noticed a boy of about eleven or twelve -running toward them with gestures of hearty greeting. -“’Tis Felix Mendelssohn!” exclaimed Weber delightedly, -and he at once introduced the lad to Benedict, who had -heard of the remarkable talents of the little musician -even before coming to Berlin. “I shall never forget the -impression of that day on beholding that beautiful youth, -with the auburn hair clustering in ringlets round his -shoulders, the look of his brilliant, clear eyes and the -smile of innocence and candour on his lips”, wrote -Benedict much later in his “Sketch of the Life and Works -of the late Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy”. Felix wanted -the pair to visit the Mendelssohn home at once, but as -Weber was expected at the opera house he asked Benedict -to go in his stead. “Felix took me by the hand and -made me run a race till we reached his house. Up he -went briskly to the drawing-room where, finding his -mother, he exclaimed: ‘Here is a pupil of Weber’s, who -knows a great deal of his music of the new opera. Pray, -mamma, ask him to play it for us’; and so, with an -irresistible impetuosity, he pushed me to the pianoforte -and made me remain there until I had exhausted all the -store of my recollections”.</p> -<p>A more spectacular event in Felix’s young life was -his first visit to Goethe, in Weimar, the same year. It -was Zelter who, anxious to acquaint the poet with his -prodigious young pupil, had engineered the meeting. -Felix had never gone anywhere without his parents and -the family was not a little concerned about this expedition. -He was plied with no end of advice before setting -out, told how to behave at table, how to eat, how to talk, -how to listen. “When you are with Goethe, I advise you -to open your eyes and ears wide”, admonished Fanny; -“and after you come home, if you can’t repeat every -word that fell from his mouth, I will have nothing more -<span class="pb" id="Page_14">14</span> -to do with you!” His mother, for her part, wrote to Aunt -Henrietta (the celebrated family spinster, “Tante Jette”): -“Just fancy that the little wretch is to have the good luck -of going to Weimar with Zelter for a short time. You -can imagine what it costs me to part from the dear child -even for a few weeks. But I consider it such an advantage -for him to be introduced to Goethe, to live under the -same roof with him and receive the blessing of so great -a man! I am also glad of this little journey as a change -for him; for his impulsiveness sometimes makes him work -harder than he ought to at his age.”</p> -<p>The Mendelssohns need not have worried. The old -poet took the boy to his heart from the first. Nor was -Felix remiss about communicating his impressions. “Now, -stop and listen, all of you”, he writes home in an early -missive which forms part of one of the finest series of -letters any of the great composers has left posterity. -“Today is Tuesday. On Saturday the Sun of Weimar, -Goethe, arrived. We went to church in the morning and -heard half of Handel’s 100th Psalm. After this I went -to the ‘Elephant’, where I sketched the house of Lucas -Cranach. Two hours afterwards, Professor Zelter came -and said: ‘Goethe has come—the old gentleman’s come!’ -and in a minute we were down the steps and in Goethe’s -house. He was in the garden and was just coming around -a corner. Isn’t it strange, dear father, that was exactly -how you met him! He is very kind, but I don’t think -any of the pictures are like him....</p> -<p>“Every morning I get a kiss from the author of ‘Faust’ -and ‘Werther’ and every afternoon two kisses from my -friend and father Goethe. Think of that! It does not -strike me that his figure is imposing; he is not much -taller than father; but his look, his language, his name—they -are imposing. The amount of sound in his voice is -wonderful and he can shout like ten thousand warriors. -His hair is not yet white, his step is firm, his way of speaking -mild....”</p> -<p>Felix made much music for the poet’s enjoyment. -Every day he played him something of Bach, Mozart, -<span class="pb" id="Page_15">15</span> -Beethoven or compositions of his own (he had even -brought some of Fanny’s songs for Goethe’s daughter-in-law, -who had a pretty voice). “Every afternoon”, wrote -Felix, “Goethe opens the Streicher piano with the words: -‘I haven’t heard you at all today; make a little noise for -me’; then he sits beside me and when I am finished (I -usually improvise), I beg him for a kiss or else I just take -it!” Once Felix played a Bach fugue and suffered a slip -of memory. Nothing daunted he went on improvising at -considering length. The poet noticed nothing! At other -times he would sit by the window listening, the image of -a Jupiter Tonans, his old eyes flashing. And when the -boy finally left Weimar Goethe missed him sorely. “Since -your departure”, he lamented, “my piano is silent. A -solitary attempt to waken it to life was a failure. I hear, -indeed, much talk about music but that is only a sorry -diversion”. A certain classical symmetry and a halcyon -beauty in the boy’s music and in his performances seem -to have appealed to a deep-seated element of the poet’s -nature. When some time afterwards Felix dedicated a -quartet to him, Goethe accepted it with a letter of fulsome -praise. Yet when poor Schubert about the same -period sent him a number of his finest Goethe settings -the Olympian did not even deign to acknowledge them!</p> -<p>Leah Mendelssohn, delighted with the letters Felix was -writing from Weimar, proudly forwarded them to Aunt -Jette, in Paris. “If God spare him”, replied that worthy -person, “his letters will in long years to come create the -deepest interest. Take care of them as of a holy relic; -indeed, they are already sacred as the effusion of so pure -and child-like a mind. You are a happy mother and you -must thank Providence for giving you such a son. He is -an artist in the highest sense, rare talents combined with -the noblest, tenderest heart....” The good woman spoke -prophetically! Not all of Mendelssohn’s letters have been -preserved and some of them were withheld out of scruples -which today are rather difficult to appreciate. Whether -the anti-Semitic excesses of the Nazi regime spared those -portions of the correspondence not previously given to -<span class="pb" id="Page_16">16</span> -the world is still unknown. Perhaps we shall never read -it in all its inundating fullness. There were times in his -short life when he wrote as many as thirty-five letters in -one day! At any rate, those we have are precious.</p> -<p>It must not be imagined that Felix’s numerous boyhood -compositions served student ends primarily. This -early spate of symphonies, concertos, songs, piano and -organ pieces, chamber music and what not furnished matter -for regular family musicales. The Mendelssohns had -for some time been in the habit of holding miscellaneous -concerts on alternate Sunday mornings in the big dining -room of the house on the Neue Promenade. In these the -young people participated and invariably some work or -other by Felix made up a part of the program. Felix and -Fanny usually played piano, Rebecka sang, Paul played -cello. Felix also conducted and had at first to be placed -on a stool so that his small figure could be seen. Little -operas and operettas varied the programs, the boy being -the author of four of them. These “operas” were not -given in costume or with any attempt at dramatic, -action. The characters were duly assigned and sung, but -the dialogue was read and the chorus sat grouped around -a table. The listeners offered their opinions freely, Zelter -(who never missed one of these events) commending or -criticising, as the case might be.</p> -<p>On Felix’s fifteenth birthday, Zelter suddenly rose and, -“in masonic phraseology”, promoted his pupil from the -grade of “apprentice” to that of “assistant”, adding that -he welcomed him to this new rank “in the name of Mozart, -of Haydn and of old Bach”. This last name was significant. -For a little earlier the boy had received as a Christmas -present a score of the “St. Matthew Passion” transcribed -by Zelter’s express permission from a manuscript -preserved in the Singakademie. Henceforth the “assistant” -was to immerse himself in this music and it was the exhaustive -study of the treasurous score which resulted a -few years later in the historic revival of the work an -exact century after its first production under Bach’s own -direction.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_17">17</div> -<p>The summer of 1824 Felix for the first time saw the -sea. His father took him and Rebecka to Dobberan, on -the Baltic, a bathing resort in the neighborhood of Rostock. -Here he received those first marine impressions -which in due course were to shape themselves musically -in the “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” and “Fingal’s -Cave” Overtures. For the moment, the scope of this inspiration -was less ambitious. He wrote for the military -band at the local casino an overture for wind instruments -(“Harmoniemusik”), which stands in his output as Op. -24. It is sweetly romantic music, with a dulcet <i>andante -con moto</i> introduction that has a kind of family resemblance -to the softer phraseology of Weber, a spirited, -vivacious <i>allegro</i> forming the main body of the piece.</p> -<p>But the “Harmoniemusik” Overture was only an incident -of the creative activity marking the year 1824. The -chief composition of the time was the Symphony in C -minor, which ranks as Mendelssohn’s First. Actually, -it is his thirteenth in order of writing, though for -conventional purposes the preceding twelve (for strings) -may pass for juvenile efforts. We may as well record -here that, irrespective of the dates of the composition, -the official order of Mendelssohn’s symphonies is as -follows: The Symphony-Cantata in B flat (the so-called -“Hymn of Praise”, dated 1840) stands as No. 2, the -A minor (“Scotch”), written between 1830 and 1842, -as No. 3, the A major (“Italian”), composed in 1833, as -No. 4, and the “occasional” one in D minor, known as -the “Reformation Symphony” (1830-32), as No. 5.</p> -<p>The Mendelssohn family was outgrowing the old home -on the Neue Promenade and late in the summer of 1825 -Abraham bought that house on Leipziger Strasse which -was henceforth to be inalienably associated with the composer. -If it had its drawbacks in winter the spacious edifice -with its superb garden (once a part of the Tiergarten) -was ideal at all other seasons. The so-called “Garden -House” was one of its most attractive features and became -the scene of those unforgettable Sunday concerts -where a number of new-minted masterpieces were first -<span class="pb" id="Page_18">18</span> -brought to a hearing. The young people published a -household newspaper, in summer called the “Garden -Times”, in winter the “Tea and Snow Times”. Pen, ink -and paper were conveniently placed and every guest was -encouraged to write whatever occurred to him and -deposit it in a box, the contributions being duly printed -in the little sheet. These guests included the cream of the -intellectual, social and artistic life of Europe who -chanced to be in Berlin. It was a point of honor to be -invited to the Mendelssohn residence.</p> -<p>To this period belongs Felix’s operatic effort “Die -Hochzeit des Camacho” (“Camacho’s Wedding”). The -text, by Karl Klingemann, a Hanoverian diplomat who -played a not inconsiderable role in Mendelssohn’s life, -was based on an episode from “Don Quixote”. The -story has to do with the mock suicide of the student, -Basilio, to rescue his beloved from the wealthy Camacho. -Possibly the little work would never have been written -but for the ambitions of Leah Mendelssohn to see -her son take his place among the successful opera composers -of the day. Having embarked upon the scheme -Felix went about it with his usual zeal. But the piece -was played exactly once, and in a small playhouse, not -at the big opera. Although there were many calls for -the composer he seems to have sensed a defeat and left -the theatre early. It was not long before he lost interest -in the work altogether.</p> -<p>However, better things were at hand to obliterate the -memory of the check suffered by “Camacho’s Wedding”. -For we are now on the threshold of the composer’s first -mature masterworks. It must be understood that there was -really no relation between Mendelssohn’s years and the -extraordinary creations of his adolescence. In point of -fact, his creative mastery at the age of sixteen and -seventeen is maturity arrived at before its time. That -preternatural development, as remarkable in its way as -Mozart’s, is the true answer to the problem why the later -creations of Mendelssohn show relatively so little advance -over the early ones. We can hardly believe, for instance, -<span class="pb" id="Page_19">19</span> -that the F sharp minor Capriccio for piano or the Octet -could have been finer if written twenty years after -they were. How many not familiar with the respective -dates of composition could gather from the music itself -that the incidental pieces fashioned for the “Midsummer -Night’s Dream” by royal command came fully seventeen -years after the immortal Overture? The whole might -have been created at one sitting, so undiscoverable is any -sign of cleavage.</p> -<p>The Octet for strings, finished in the autumn of 1825 -represents, perhaps, the finest thing Mendelssohn had -written up to that point. It is a masterpiece of glistening -tone painting, exquisite in its mercurial grace and color, -imaginative delicacy and elfin lightness. The unity of -the whole is a marvel. But the pearl of the work is the -Scherzo in G minor, a page as airy and filamentous as -Mendelssohn—whose scherzos are, perhaps, his most -matchless achievements—was ever to write. Not even -the most fairylike passages in the “Midsummer Night’s -Dream” excel it.</p> -<p>Before passing on to the last-named, however, we must -not fail to signalize the “Trumpet” Overture, composed -about the same time (which Abraham Mendelssohn liked -so much that he said he should like to hear it on his deathbed); -the Quintet, Op. 18, the Sonata, Op. 6, the songs -of Op. 8 and 9, the unfailingly popular Prelude and -Fugue in E minor, of Op. 35. Let us not be confused, incidentally, -by opus numbers in Mendelssohn which have as -little to do with priority of composition as they have in -the case of Schubert.</p> -<p>Felix and Fanny read Shakespeare in translations of -Schlegel and Tieck. Their particular favorite was the -“Midsummer Night’s Dream”. In August 1826, in the -delightful garden of the Leipziger Strasse home the youth -of seventeen signed the score of an Overture to the fantastic -comedy which, as much as anything he was -to write, immortalized his name. The famous friend of -the family, Adolph Bernhard Marx, claimed to have -given Felix certain musical suggestions. Be this as it may, -<span class="pb" id="Page_20">20</span> -the Overture was something new under the sun and not a -measure of it has tarnished in the course of an odd 130 -years. It was first performed as a piano duet and shortly -afterwards played by an orchestra at one of the Sunday -concerts in the garden house.</p> -<p>Felix entered the University of Berlin in 1826 and -offered as his matriculation essay a translation in verse -of Terence’s “Andria”. Nevertheless, he seems to have -had no time to bother about a degree. Music was absorbing -him completely, especially his weekly rehearsals -of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” with a small choir. -The more intimately he penetrated into this mighty work -the keener became his desire to produce it at the Singakademie. -Together with his friend, Eduard Devrient, -he divulged his scheme to Zelter, only to be rebuffed. -Spurred by the energetic Devrient he returned again and -again to the attack, till Zelter finally weakened. Having -carried the day Mendelssohn left the Singakademie jubilantly -exclaiming to the elated Devrient: “To think that -it should be an actor and a Jew, to give this great Christian -work back to the world!” It was the only recorded -occasion on which Mendelssohn alluded to his Hebraic -origin.</p> -<p>Three performances were given of the “St. Matthew -Passion” at the Singakademie—the first on March 11, -1829, a century almost to a day since the original production -in the Leipzig Thomaskirche. Mendelssohn conducted -the first two. It was the real awakening of -the world to the grandeur of Bach, the true beginning of -a movement which has continued undiminished right up -to the present. Fanny spoke more truly than perhaps she -realized when she declared that “the year 1829 is likely -to form an epoch in the annals of music”.</p> -<p>Scarcely had Mendelssohn restored the “St. Matthew -Passion” to the world than he left Berlin for the first of -those ten trips he was to take to the country that was to -become his true spiritual home. Abraham Mendelssohn -having finally decided his son might safely adopt music -as a means of livelihood resolved to let him travel for -<span class="pb" id="Page_21">21</span> -three years in order to gain experience, extend his artistic -reputation and settle on the scene of his activities. Felix -was not averse to the idea. Already he was feeling some -of those pin-pricks of hostility which Berlin, for reasons -of jealousy or latent anti-Semitism was to direct against -him in years to come. It was Moscheles who counseled -a visit to London, where another friend, Klingemann, -filled a diplomatic post.</p> -<p>Mendelssohn’s first Channel crossing was not calculated -to put him in a pleasant frame of mind. He was seasick, -he had fainting fits, he quarrelled with the steward and -solemnly cursed that “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” -Overture he had composed scarcely a year earlier. The -boat trip lasted almost three days! Luckily his friends had -found him comfortable quarters in London, at 103 Great -Portland Street. At once it developed that he and London -were predestined for each other. The metropolis both -appalled and enchanted him. “It is fearful! It is maddening!”, -he wrote home; “I am quite giddy and confused. -London is the grandest and most complicated monster -on the face of the earth. How can I compress into a -letter what I have been three days seeing? I hardly remember -the chief events and yet I must not keep a diary, -for then I should see less of life.... Things roll and whirl -round me and carry me along as in a vortex”.</p> -<p>He had arrived at the height of the season. The wife -of Moscheles took him about in a carriage (“me in my -new suit, of course!”) He went to the opera and to -the theatre, saw Kemble in “Hamlet” and was incensed -at the way Shakespeare was cut. Still “the people here -like me for the sake of my music and respect me for it -and this delights me immensely”. He made his first London -appearance with the Philharmonic on May 25, 1829, -and even at the rehearsal found two hundred listeners -on hand, “chiefly ladies”. The program contained his -C minor Symphony, though later an orchestrated version -of the scherzo from the Octet was substituted for the -original minuet. J. B. Cramer led Mendelssohn to the -stage “as if I were a young lady”. “Immense applause” -<span class="pb" id="Page_22">22</span> -greeted him. This was soon to be an old story. When people -spied him in the audience at a concert someone was -sure to shout: “There is Mendelssohn!”; whereupon others -would applaud and exclaim: “Welcome to him!” In the -end Felix found no other way to restore quiet than to -mount the stage and bow.</p> -<p>He played piano for the first time in London at the -Argyll Rooms on May 30. His offering was Weber’s -“Concertstück” and he caused a stir by performing it -without notes. One might say he was heard <i>before</i> the -concert—for he had gone to the hall to try a new instrument -several hours earlier but, finding it locked, seated -himself at an old one and improvised for a long time to -be suddenly roused from his revery by the noise of the -arriving audience. Whereupon he dashed off to dress for -the matinee in “very long white trousers, brown silk -waistcoat, black necktie and blue dress coat”. Not long -afterwards he gave concerts with Moscheles and with the -singer, Henrietta Sontag. The Argyll Rooms were so -crowded that “ladies might be seen among the double -basses, between bassoons and horns and even seated on a -kettle drum”.</p> -<p>London life, for that matter, seemed made to order for -Felix, the more so as he was received with open arms by -those influential personages to whom he brought letters -of introduction. Yet the whole spirit of London was vastly -to his taste. Writing later from Italy he confided to -his sister that, for all the luminous atmosphere of -Naples, “London, that smoky nest, is fated to be now -and ever my favorite residence. My heart swells when -I even think of it”!</p> -<p>The admiration was mutual! England of that age -(and for years to come) adored Mendelssohn quite as -it had Handel a century earlier and peradventure even -more than it did Haydn and Weber. Musically, the nation -made itself over in his image. And Felix loved the rest -of the country as he loved its metropolis. The London -season ended, he went on a vacation in July, 1829, -to Scotland, accompanied by Klingemann. The travelers -<span class="pb" id="Page_23">23</span> -stopped first at Edinburgh, where they heard the Highland -Pipers and visited Holyrood Palace. Like any conventional -tourist Felix saw the apartments where Mary -Stuart lived and Rizzio was murdered, inspected the -chapel in which Mary was crowned but now “open to -the sky and ... everything ruined and decayed; I think -I found there the beginning of my ‘Scotch’ Symphony”. -And he set down sixteen bars of what became the slow -introduction in A minor. It was to be some time, however, -before the symphony took its conclusive shape. If Holyrood -quickened his fancy “one of the Hebrides” (which -he saw a few days later) struck even brighter sparks from -his imagination. A rowboat trip to Fingal’s Cave inspired -him to twenty bars of music “to show how extraordinarily -the place affected me”, as he wrote to his family. He -elaborated the overture—than which he did nothing -greater—in his own good time and recast it before -it satisfied him. For in the first form of this marine mood -picture, he missed “train oil, salt fish and seagulls”. -Yet the twenty bars he set down on the spot form its main -subject.</p> -<p>Back in London his mind was occupied with numerous -compositions, among them the first stirrings of the -“Scotch” and “Reformation” Symphonies and the -“Hebrides” Overture. But before developing these he -wanted to write an organ piece for Fanny’s marriage to -the painter, Wilhelm Hensel (whom Leah Mendelssohn -had put on a five years’ “probation” before she consented -to give him her daughter’s hand!); and a household -operetta for the approaching silver wedding of -his parents. Klingemann wrote the libretto of this piece -(“Heimkehr aus der Fremde”, which the critic Chorley -in 1851 Englished as “Son and Stranger”). It contained -special roles for Fanny, Rebecka, Devrient and Hensel—the -last-named limited to one incessantly repeated note, -because he was so desperately unmusical.</p> -<blockquote> -<div class="pb" id="Page_24">24</div> -<p><span class="lr"><i>Hebrides, August 7, 1829.</i></span></p> -<p><i>... in order to make you understand how extraordinarily the -Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there:</i></p> -</blockquote> -<div class="img"> -<img src="images/img003.jpg" alt="Musical Manuscript" width="800" height="393" /> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_25">25</div> -<p>Felix returned to Berlin for the parental festivities. -But Fanny’s wedding he missed, having injured his leg -in a carriage accident and being laid up for two months. -He might, had he chosen, have accepted a chair of music -at the Berlin University in 1830, but he preferred to continue -his travels. It seemed almost a matter of routine -that he should stop off at Weimar to greet Goethe once -more. He may or may not have suspected that he was -never to see the poet again. Another friend he visited -was Julius Schubring, rector of St. George’s Church in -Dessau. Nürnberg, Munich, Salzburg, the Salzkammergut -and Linz were stations on the way to Vienna, where -his enjoyment was poisoned by the depressing level of -musical life and the shocking popular neglect of masters -like Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He made a side -trip to nearby Pressburg to witness the coronation of -the Austrian crown prince as King of Hungary. The -most exciting incident of the day was the smashing of -Mendelssohn’s high hat by a spectator whose view it -obstructed!</p> -<p>Italy was another story. “The whole country had -such a festive air”, he wrote in one of the first of -those Italian letters which are among the gems of his -correspondence, “that I seemed to feel as if I were myself -a prince making his grand entry”. To be sure, there -was not much music worth listening to and he was horrified -by some of the things he heard in the churches. But -there were the great masters of painting, there was the -beauty of the countryside, the unnumbered attractions of -Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, the fascination -of Italian life and the charm of the Italian people. -He heard the Holy Week musical services in the Sistine -Chapel with works of Palestrina, Allegri and lesser men; -wrote long and detailed letters to Zelter about the technical -aspects of church singing in Rome, composed -industriously, saw his boyhood playmate Julius Benedict -and became acquainted with a wildly eccentric young -French musician named Berlioz. On his way northward, -in Milan, Felix met Beethoven’s friend, Dorothea von -Ertmann; also, Karl Mozart, whom he delighted by -playing some of his father’s music.</p> -<p>With his incredible dispatch he had managed to accomplish -<span class="pb" id="Page_26">26</span> -a great amount of creative work in Italy, -despite his social and sight-seeing activities. He had -finished a version of the “Hebrides” Overture, had made -progress with his “Scotch” and “Italian” Symphonies, -written a Psalm, several motets, the “First Walpurgis -Night” (later recast), piano pieces, songs. Returning -to Germany via Switzerland he stopped off in Munich -and gave a benefit concert on Oct. 17, 1831. It was for -this event that he composed his G minor Piano Concerto. -In a letter to his father Felix referred to it, somewhat -contemptuously, as “a thing rapidly thrown off”. It -has been assumed that Mendelssohn may have had Paris -in mind composing this concerto. At any rate, the first -three months of 1832 found him once more in the -French capital, where he made new musical acquaintances. -One of these was the conductor, Habeneck; others, -Chopin, Liszt, Ole Bull, Franchomme. Yet Mendelssohn -found it difficult, even as he had earlier, to adjust himself -to some musical insensibilities of Paris. He was appalled -on one occasion to learn that his own Octet -was given in a church at a funeral mass commemorating -Beethoven. “I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd -than a priest at the altar and my Scherzo going on”, -he wrote his parents. Habeneck, who had him play at -one of the Conservatoire concerts, wanted to produce at -one of them the “Reformation” Symphony, which Felix -had composed in 1830 for the tercentenary of the -Augsburg Confession. The performance never took place; -the orchestra disliked the work, finding it “too learned, -too much fugato, too little melody”.</p> -<p>Were these objections wholly unfounded? Irrespective -of what passed in those days for excessive “learning” -the “Reformation Symphony” is, in good truth, a stodgy -work, far more willed than inspired. The most engaging -thing in it is the citation in the first movement of that -“Dresden Amen” formula, which half a century later -Wagner was to employ in “Parsifal”. Strangely enough, -some pages of the symphony sound like Schumann without -the latter’s melodic invention. It is only just to point -<span class="pb" id="Page_27">27</span> -out that the composer himself came to detest it, declared -it was the one work of his he would gladly burn and -refused to permit its publication.</p> -<p>Zelter died not long after Goethe and the Singakademie -found itself without a head. Mendelssohn seemed his -old teacher’s logical successor and he would gladly have -accepted the post. But many of the old ladies of the -chorus did not take kindly to the idea of “singing under -a Jewish boy”. When it came to a vote Felix was defeated -by a large majority and one Karl Rungenhagen -installed as Zelter’s successor. Rather tactlessly the Mendelssohns -resigned their membership in a body. Felix’s -popularity in Berlin was not improved by the situation, -despite the family’s wealth and influence. He said little -but the wound rankled, somewhat as happened earlier -over Berlin’s rejection of “Camacho’s Wedding”.</p> -<p>The Cäcilienverein, of Frankfort, asked the composer -to write an oratorio based on St. Paul. But if Mendelssohn -was unable to oblige at once, the seed was planted -and, in proper season, was to take root. Late in 1832 a -different kind of offer came from another quarter. The -Lower Rhine Festival was to be given in Düsseldorf the -spring of 1833. Would Felix conduct it?</p> -<p>The Düsseldorf commission was accepted and as soon -as preliminaries were arranged Felix was off to his -“smoky nest” once more. He had now completed his -“Italian” Symphony and placed it, along with his “Calm -Sea and Prosperous Voyage” and “Trumpet” Overtures -at the disposal of the London Philharmonic. The Symphony -was produced on May 13, 1833. To this day it -remains one of the most translucent, gracious and limpid -creations imaginable—“kid glove music”, as some have -called it, but no less inspired for its gentility. Is it really -Italian, despite the Neapolitan frenzy of its “Saltarello” -finale? Is it not rather Grecian, like so much else in -Mendelssohn’s art, with its incorruptible symmetry and -its Mediterranean <i>limpidezza</i>? Where has Mendelssohn -instrumented with more luminous clarity than in the first -three movements? The second one, a kind of Pilgrims’ -<span class="pb" id="Page_28">28</span> -March, has none of the sentimentality which wearies in -some of the composer’s <i>adagios</i>. The third, in its weaving -grace is, one might say, Mendelssohnian in the loveliest -sense.</p> -<p>“Mr. Felix”, as he was freely called, returned to Germany -for the Düsseldorf festival, which began on May -26 (Whitsuntide), 1833. Abraham Mendelssohn came -from Berlin to witness his son’s triumph. The Düsseldorf -directorate was so pleased with everything that Mendelssohn -was asked to take charge “of all the public and -private musical establishments of the town” for a period -of three years. He was to have a three months’ leave of -absence each summer. “One thing I especially like about -Felix’s position is that, while so many have titles without -an office he will have a real office without a title”, declared -the father.</p> -<p>Meanwhile, the projected “St. Paul” oratorio was more -and more filling its composer’s mind and probably a large -part of it had already taken shape. As a matter of fact, he -looked upon his appointment at Düsseldorf less as a lucrative -engagement than as furnishing him an opportunity -“for securing quiet and leisure for composition”. Still, -he gave much attention to his duties, particularly those -in connection with church music “for which no appropriate -epithet exists for that hitherto given here”. In an -evil hour he had lightly agreed to take charge of the activities -at the theatre. It was not long before he regretted it. -Felix was never made to cope with the intrigues and irritations -of an opera house. On the opening night, at a performance -of “Don Giovanni”, there was a riot in the -theatre and the curtain had to be lowered four times before -the middle of the first act. Associated with him was -Karl Immermann, with whom he had previously negotiated -about an opera book based on Shakespeare’s “Tempest”. -In Düsseldorf their relations became strained and -eventually Felix, in disgust, gave up his theatrical labours -and the salary that went with them.</p> -<p>“St. Paul” was not so swiftly completed as the composer -may have hoped from his Düsseldorf “leisure” -<span class="pb" id="Page_29">29</span> -(actually, it was finished only in 1836). But he could -not, from a creative standpoint, have been called an idler. -To the Düsseldorf period of 1833-34 belong the Overture -“The Beautiful Melusine”, the “Rondo Brillant” in -E flat, for piano and orchestra, the A minor Capriccio -for piano, the concert aria, “Infelice”, a revision of the -“Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” Overture and not -a little else. The “Melusine” is one of his most poetic -and mellifluous inspirations, with its lovely “wave figure” -based on the arpeggiated form of the F major chord and -so intimately related to one of the Rhine motives in -Wagner’s “Ring”. How Mendelssohn managed to accomplish -so much without slighting in any way his social -obligations, his watercolor painting, his excursions here -and there is hard to grasp.</p> -<p>In good truth, the enormous productivity which his -unremitting facility encouraged, his piano playing and -conducting, his incessant travels were subtly undermining -his system. The effects did not make themselves -felt at once but they contributed, bit by bit, to a nervous -irritation that grew on him. Whether or not he appreciated -that he came from a stock which, though healthy, -bore in itself the seeds of an early death he made no effort -to spare himself and never hesitated to burn the candle at -both ends. The Mendelssohns had delicate blood vessels, -they were predisposed to apoplexy. Abraham may or -may not have been forewarned when, on returning to -Berlin from Düsseldorf with his wife and Felix, he fell ill -at Cassel. For a time his sight had been failing and he -was becoming an outright hypochondriac. The more difficult -he grew the more intense was the filial devotion -Felix lavished on him.</p> -<p>Early in 1835 the composer received from Dr. Conrad -Schleinitz a communication which showed that his good -fortunes were to remain constant. It was nothing less -than an invitation to accept the post of conductor of the -Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was flattered -but experience had made him canny. Before giving -his reply he demanded categorical answers to a number -<span class="pb" id="Page_30">30</span> -of questions touching artistic and business matters. -Everything was settled to his satisfaction and, with his -parents, his sisters and their husbands, he returned to the -Rhineland to conduct another Lower Rhine Festival, this -time to be held in Cologne.</p> -<p>If there was one place which promised to provide as -happy a home for Felix as London did it was Leipzig. -The atmosphere of the town was a spiritual balm after -the hectic life of Düsseldorf. Who shall say that it was not -with symbolic intent that the newcomer led off his activities -with his own “Calm Sea” Overture and Beethoven’s -serene Fourth Symphony? And although Felix’s circle of -musical friendships sometimes appeared boundless he -now came into intimate contact with certain choice and -master spirits of the age whom he might otherwise have -known only casually. An early visitor at Mendelssohn’s -new home was Chopin and in a letter to his parents in -Berlin he writes of his pleasure in being able to associate -once more with a thorough musician. One of those to -whom Felix introduced Chopin was Clara Wieck, then -only sixteen. On October 3—a historic date, as it proved—another -stepped into the charmed circle, Robert Schumann, -to whom Mendelssohn was to become a god. -“Felix Meritis entered”, wrote Schumann describing in -his best Florestan vein the first Gewandhaus concert. “In -a moment a hundred hearts flew to him!”</p> -<p>Light-heartedly Felix accompanied his sister, Rebecka, -and her husband on a trip to the family homestead in -Berlin. There seemed to be even more gayety than usual -and a greater amount of extempore music-making for the -entertainment of the father. A short time after he had -returned to Leipzig in great good humor he was shocked -by the entrance of his brother-in-law, Hensel, with the -news that Abraham Mendelssohn had died in his sleep -on Nov. 19, 1835. The blow was heavy but Felix, once -he regained control of himself, endured it with fortitude. -Yet the loss of the father whom, to the last, he idolized -marked the first great sorrow of his life. To Pastor Schubring -he wrote: “The only thing now is to do one’s duty”. -<span class="pb" id="Page_31">31</span> -It sounds like a copy-book maxim but it was undoubtedly -sincere. His specific “duty” in this case was to complete -the still unfinished “St. Paul”, about which Abraham had -been ceaselessly inquiring.</p> -<p>Logically the oratorio should have been given by the -Cäcilienverein, in Frankfort, which had originally commissioned -it. But Schelble, the director of the Society, -was ill. So the premiere took place at the Düsseldorf -Festival of 1836. Klingemann, who sent an account of it -to the London “Musical News”, said that the performance -was “glorious”, that he “had never heard such -choral singing”. The composer himself was more restrained. -“Many things gave me great pleasure, but on -the whole I learned a great deal”. He had come to the -conclusion that the work, like so many of his others, -would benefit by a careful overhauling. And in due -course he set about recasting and improving. He had -grounds for satisfaction. If “St. Paul” does not reach -some of the prouder dramatic heights of the later “Elijah” -it is a woeful error to underrate it.</p> -<p>Mendelssohn felt he owed it to his old friend, Schelble, -to take over the direction of the Cäcilienverein; so he -cancelled a Swiss vacation he had planned and went to -Frankfort. He hobnobbed with the Hiller family and -with Rossini, who happened to be in Germany for a few -days. But more important, he made the acquaintance of -Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud, daughter of a clergyman -of the French Reformed Church. Cécile’s widowed -mother was herself still so young and attractive that for a -time people thought that she, rather than the 17 year-old -girl, was the cause of Felix’s frequent visits. Fanny Hensel -had latterly been urging her brother to marry, alarmed -by his somewhat morbid state of mind. Cécile Jeanrenaud, -according to Wilhelm Hensel, complemented Felix -most harmoniously; still, “she was not conspicuously -clever, witty, learned, profound or talented, though restful -and refreshing”. Mendelssohn was not the man to let -his affections stampede him into marriage. So before an -engagement might be announced he accompanied his -<span class="pb" id="Page_32">32</span> -friend, the painter Schadow, on a month’s journey to the -Dutch seaside resort, Scheveningen, there to take long -walks on the beach, think things over and come to an -understanding with himself. Only then did he settle -definitely upon the step.</p> -<p>The marriage took place in Frankfort on March 28, -1837, and the couple went for a honeymoon to Freiburg -and the Black Forest. The wedding trip was followed -by a seemingly unending round of social obligations. -Nevertheless, Mendelssohn found time for considerable -work. Then a summons to England, to produce “St. Paul” -at the Birmingham Festival (the oratorio had already -been given in Liverpool and by the Sacred Harmonic Society -in London). If only “St. Paul” had been the whole -story! But Mendelssohn had enormous miscellaneous -programs to conduct, he played the organ, he was soloist -in his own D minor Piano Concerto. Back in Leipzig he -settled with his wife in a house in Lurgenstein’s Garden, -welcomed Fanny, who saw for the first time those “beautiful -eyes” of Cécile, about which she had heard so much, -and greeted the arrival of a son, named Carl Wolfgang -Paul. The Gewandhaus concerts flourished as never -before. Felix produced much Bach, Handel and Beethoven; -also he had many of those typical German “prize-crowned” -scores of sickening mediocrity to perform. Musical -friends came and went—Schumann, Clara Wieck, -Liszt, Berlioz, and a young Englishman, Sterndale Bennet, -whom both Mendelssohn and Schumann praised to a -degree which we, today, can scarcely grasp. Small wonder -that, amidst all this unmerciful and never-ending ferment -Felix occasionally became worried about his health. -“I am again suffering from deafness in one ear, pains in -my throat, headaches and so on”, he wrote to Hiller. -Occasionally his friends made fun of his intense love of -sleep. One can only regret that he did not yield to it -more often!</p> -<p>We must pass over Mendelssohn’s unending labours in -Leipzig, at a number of German festivals and in England -(where his new “symphony-cantata”, the “Hymn of -<span class="pb" id="Page_33">33</span> -Praise”, was featured) to follow him once more to Berlin. -In 1840 Frederick William IV had become King of -Prussia. One of the pet cultural schemes of the monarch -was an Academy of Arts, to be divided into classes of -painting, sculpture, architecture and music. For the direction -of the last department the king wanted none -but Mendelssohn. Hence much correspondence passed -between Mendelssohn and the bureaucrats concerning the -royal scheme. Time had not softened his hostility toward -officialdom, particularly of the Berlin brand. However, he -bound himself for a year, took up residence on the Leipziger -Strasse once more, submitted his scheme for the -Musical Academy and received the title “Kapellmeister to -the King of Prussia” along with a very tolerable salary. -Frederick William wished, among other things, to revive -certain antique Greek tragedies, beginning with Sophocles’ -“Antigone”. The scheme led to exhaustive discussions -between Mendelssohn and the poet, Tieck, touching -the nature of the music to be written. In due course there -followed “Oedipus at Colonos”. The kind of music -needed was, as it will probably remain forever, a -problem defying solution. What Mendelssohn finally -wrote turned out, by and large, to be adequate Mendelssohnian -commonplace.</p> -<p>Greek tragedy was not the only sort of dramatic entertainment -projected by the King of Prussia. Racine’s -“Athalie”, Shakespeare’s “Tempest” and “Midsummer -Night’s Dream” likewise took their place on the royal -schedule. Nothing came of “The Tempest” so far as -Mendelssohn was concerned. But he fashioned some excellent -music for Racine’s play and enriched the “Midsummer -Night’s Dream” with an incidental score which -may well be inseparably associated with the immortal -fantasy to the end of time. There was, to be sure, no -need for a new overture, Felix having written the most -perfect conceivable one in his boyhood. But a dozen -other numbers, long or short, were called for and, with the -most consummate ease and soaring inspiration, Mendelssohn -produced them. They are exquisitely delicate settings -<span class="pb" id="Page_34">34</span> -of Shakespeare’s elfin songs and choruses, a “funeral -march” of extravagant grotesqueness, clownish dance -music, a flashing Intermezzo, depicting the pursuit of -the lovers through the wood, and other “background” -pieces. The memorable concert numbers, however, are -the incomparable Scherzo—perhaps the most priceless -of all the famous scherzi the composer wrote; the romantic -Nocturne, with its rapturous horn revery, and the -triumphant Wedding March, a ringing processional -which, in reality, belongs to all mankind rather than to -Shakespeare’s stage lovers.</p> -<p>The royal scheme for the Academy was not advancing -and presently the plans began to gather dust in official -pigeon holes. Frederick William, seeing the turn things -were taking, appointed his Kapellmeister the head of -the music performed in the Dom. The Singakademie, -conscience-stricken over its earlier treatment of the composer, -now made him an honorary member. For all that, -Mendelssohn was not fundamentally happier in Berlin -than he had been previously. Fortunately he had not -resigned his Gewandhaus post when he left Leipzig and -it had again become more desirable to him than all the -royal distinctions Berlin could confer. He had added -greatly to his creative output during this period (for one -thing he had rewritten the “Walpurgisnacht” and finished -the “Scotch” Symphony) and now he was occupied with -plans for a new music school in Leipzig—the famous -Conservatory, first domiciled in the Gewandhaus. In -January, 1843, its prospectus was issued. The faculty was -to include men like the theorist Moritz Hauptmann, the -violinist, Ferdinand David, the organist, Carl Becker and -finally, as professors of composition and piano, Schumann -and Mendelssohn. Felix was not really overjoyed at -the prospect of pedagogical drudgery; yet to Hiller he -wrote “I shall have to go ... three or four times a week -and talk about 6-4 chords ... I am quite willing to do -this for the love of the cause, because I believe it to be a -good cause”.</p> -<p>Quite as peacefully as her husband, Leah Mendelssohn -<span class="pb" id="Page_35">35</span> -died shortly before Christmas, 1842. Felix grieved, if he -was perhaps less stricken than by the passing of his -father. Doubtless he felt once more that nothing remained -but “to do his duty”—and these duties were unsparing -and seemed to grow more numerous and complex as the -years went by. One sometimes questions if, truly, the -labors of a Bach, a Haydn and a Mozart were more -ramified and unending than Mendelssohn’s—even if he -had no need to toil in order to keep the wolf from the -door!</p> -<p>As time passed the Mendelssohn craze in England grew -steadily by what it fed on and it was only natural that -Felix should find himself repeatedly in London. He alluded -to his successes and to the intensity of his welcome -by his British friends as “scandalous”, and declared himself -completely stunned by it all. “I think I must have been -applauded for ten minutes and, after the first concert, -almost trampled upon!” The young Queen Victoria was -quite as effusive as her subjects. She invited the composer -to Buckingham Palace and was graciousness itself. He -played her seven of his “Songs Without Words”, then the -“Serenade”, then Fantasies on “Rule Brittania”, “Lützows -Wilde Jagd” and “Gaudeamus Igitur”. It was by -no means the only time British royalty was to show him -favor. Up to the year of his death Victoria and Albert -were to shower distinctions upon him, to treat him, as -it were, like one of the family.</p> -<p>Doubtless this is as good an opportunity as another to -particularize. On one memorable occasion the Queen -sang to his accompaniment and both she and her Consort -scrambled to pick up sheets of music that had fallen off -the piano. On another, the sovereign asked if there were -“anything she could do to please Dr. Mendelssohn!”. -There was, indeed! Could Her Majesty let him for a -few moments visit the royal nursery? Nothing Dr. Mendelssohn -could have wished would have delighted Victoria -more! Unceremoniously leading the way she showed him -all the mysteries of the place, opened closets, wardrobes -and cupboards and in a few minutes the two were deep -<span class="pb" id="Page_36">36</span> -in a discussion of infants’ underwear, illnesses and diets. -Mendelssohn and Cécile’s own family was growing by -this time and might easily profit by the example of -Buckingham Palace.</p> -<p>The Queen found so much delight in the “Scotch” -Symphony that the composer promptly dedicated it to -her. But for that matter, England could scarcely hear -enough of it. Whether or not one ranks it as high as the -“Italian” the A minor unquestionably represents the -other half of Mendelssohn’s chief symphonic accomplishment. -The question to what degree it embodies Scottish -elements or any appreciable degree of local colour is less -important than the fact that it is strong, impassioned -music, informed with a ruggedness and conflict unlike the -sunnier A major. There is a mood of tumult and drama in -the first movement, whose closing subject is a definite -prefigurement of the songful theme in the opening <i>allegro</i> -of Brahms’ Second Symphony. The Scherzo begins with -a sort of jubilant extension of the Irish folksong “The -Minstrel Boy” and the buoyant movement, as a whole, is -full of tingling life. On the other hand, the <i>Adagio</i> undoubtedly -displays a weakness characterizing so many of -Mendelssohn’s slow movements—it is sentimental rather -than searching or personal, since with Mendelssohn grief -is “only a recollection of former joys”. Yet the <i>finale</i> is -superbly vital and the sonorous coda with which it concludes -has a regal stateliness and a bardic ring.</p> -<p>Whatever honours, labours, irritations and unending -travels and fatigues were his portion on the Continent -(and they seemed steadily to increase) it was to England -that Mendelssohn continually turned to refresh his spirit. -Not that his toil there was lighter or his welcome less -hectic! But there was something about it all that filled -his soul. People presented him with medals, commemorative -addresses, they organized torchlight processions, -sang serenades—and almost killed him with kindness. -Yet we are told that “he never enjoyed himself more -than when in the midst of society, music, fun and excitement”. -“A mad, most extraordinary mad time ... -<span class="pb" id="Page_37">37</span> -never in bed till half-past one ... for three weeks together -not a single hour to myself in any one day ... I -have made more music in these two months than elsewhere -in two years”. He ordered a huge “Baum Kuchen” -from Berlin (though usually, Grove informs us, he -made no great ado over “the products of the kitchen”, -his chief enjoyments being milk rice and cherry pie). -His power of recovery after fatigue was said to be “as -great as his powers of enjoyment”. With it all “he was -never dissipated”; the only stimulants he indulged in -were “music, society and boundless good spirits”. Seemingly -it never occurred to him that even a strong constitution -can have too much of these.</p> -<p>When Mendelssohn became conductor of the Gewandhaus -Orchestra he appointed as his concertmaster his old -friend, the violinist Ferdinand David, who it will be recalled -was born in the same house at Hamburg. As early -as 1838 Felix had written to David: “I should like to -write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E -minor runs through my head the beginning of which -gives me no peace”. Actually, he had tried his hand at -a violin concerto accompanied by a string orchestra during -his boyhood though this was only a kind of student -effort. But David took the promise seriously and when -nothing came of it for a time determined not to let -Mendelssohn forget it.</p> -<p>Fully five years elapsed before the composer finished -in its first form the concerto which to this day stands -with the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms and -Tchaikovsky as the most enduring of the repertoire. For -the various technical problems of the solo part and even -of the orchestration David was constantly at the disposal -of his friend. He offered numberless hints of the utmost -value and is even believed to have shaped the cadenza -in the first movement as we know it. Even after the -score was presumably complete David advised further -changes and improvements, so that the work did not -acquire its conclusive aspect till February, 1845. On the -following March 13 it was performed by David at a -<span class="pb" id="Page_38">38</span> -Gewandhaus concert. Not under the composer’s direction, -however. The latter was in Frankfort, in poor health -and greatly worn out, and had no stomach for the excitements -of another premiere. The conductor was his -Danish friend, Niels W. Gade. It was not till two weeks -later that David apologized by letter for his delay in -describing the triumph of the concerto. “The work -pleased extraordinarily well and was unanimously declared -to be one of the most beautiful compositions of -its kind”. In more than a century there has been no -reason to alter this verdict.</p> -<p>Mendelssohn’s constitution may have been resilient -and his recuperative powers as remarkable as his friends -imagined, but it should have been clear to the more far-sighted -among them that sooner or later these incessant -journeys, this interminable business of composing, conducting, -playing, teaching, organizing must exact a stern -penalty. It is not surprising that, at the time the violin -concerto was given in Leipzig, he preferred to remain -in Frankfort with his wife and the children (who had -gone through quite a siege of juvenile illnesses) and -make a serious effort to rest. But truly efficacious rest is -a habit that must be systematically cultivated. Felix did -not possess it in his earlier years, nor could he acquire it -now when overwork promised to consume the sensitive -fibre of his being.</p> -<p>Yet in the summer of 1845 he was approached once -more with a scheme of major dimensions. The Birmingham -Festival Committee offered him the direction of a -festival planned for August, 1846, and asked him to “compose -a performance”—in this case, a new oratorio. He -was sensible enough to refuse to conduct the whole -festival but he was willing to produce such an oratorio, -even if only ten months remained to compose most of -the score and rehearse the performance.</p> -<p>The prophet Elijah had engrossed his imagination as -an oratorio subject ever since he had completed “St. -Paul” and discussed the new work with his friend Klingemann. -In 1839 he had corresponded with Pastor Schubring -<span class="pb" id="Page_39">39</span> -about a text and he had even made rudimentary -sketches for the music. Other obligations crowded it out -of his mind. Now, six years later, he returned to it. -He realized that the time was short but his heart was -set on “Elijah”, although he was prudent enough to -suggest some other work if the oratorio should by any -chance strike a snag.</p> -<p>Mendelssohn could write fast—too fast, perhaps, for -his artistic good. Still, “Elijah” was a heart-breaking -assignment. It is only just to say that he realized certain -inadequacies of the first version and revised not a little -of the score after hearing it. His labours were complicated -by the lengthy correspondence he was obliged to carry -on with William Bartholomew, the translator. Mendelssohn -insisted on a close adherence to the King James -version of the Bible, with the result that the English -words often conform neither to the accent nor the sense -of the German originals. The choice of a soprano offered -another problem. The composer wanted Jenny Lind, -whom he admired extravagantly (he loved her F sharp -and the note seems to have haunted his mind when he -wrote the air, “Hear Ye, Israel”). But Jenny Lind was -unavailable and he had to be satisfied with a Maria -Caradori-Allan, whom he disliked and whose singing he -afterwards described as “so pretty, so pleasing, so elegant -and at the same time so flat, so unintelligent, so -soulless that the music acquired a sort of amiable expression -about which I could go mad”. Be all of which -as it may, Caradori-Allan was paid as much for singing -in the first “Elijah” as Mendelssohn was for composing -it! The precious creature actually told him at a rehearsal -that “Hear Ye, Israel” was “not a lady’s song,” and asked -him to have it transposed and otherwise altered.</p> -<p>However, the first performance in Birmingham, Aug. -26, 1846, was a triumph for the composer though, to be -candid, the uncritical adulation of the audience had -settled the verdict in advance. The report of Mendelssohn’s -boyhood friend, Julius Benedict, is typical: “The -noble Town Hall was crowded at an early hour of that -<span class="pb" id="Page_40">40</span> -forenoon with a brilliant and eagerly expectant audience.... -Every eye had long been directed toward the conductor’s -desk, when, at half-past eleven o’clock, a -deafening shout from the band and chorus announced -the approach of the great composer. The reception he -met from the assembled thousands ... was absolutely -overwhelming; whilst the sun, emerging at that moment, -seemed to illumine the vast edifice in honour of the -bright and pure being who stood there, the idol of all -beholders”!</p> -<p>It enhances one’s respect for the artistic probity of -Mendelssohn that he preserved his balance. He evaluated -his work critically, carefully modified or enlarged it and -obliged Bartholomew to make a quantity of changes in -the English text. On April 16, 1847, he conducted the -revised version in the first of four performances by the -Sacred Harmonic Society in Exeter Hall, London. On -April 23 the Queen and the Prince Consort heard the -work. Albert wrote in the book of words and sent to -Mendelssohn a dedication: “To the Noble Artist who, -surrounded by the Baal-worship of debased art, has been -able by his genius and science to preserve faithfully, like -another Elijah, the Worship of True Art, and once more -to accustom our ears, amid the whirl of empty frivolous -sounds, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and -legitimate harmony: to the Great Master, who makes us -conscious of the unity of his conception, through the -whole maze of his creation, from the soft whispering to -the mighty raging of the elements. Inscribed in grateful -remembrance by</p> -<p><span class="lr">Albert”</span></p> -<p>It was a fitting climax to Mendelssohn’s tenth visit to -England—in some ways his most memorable, in any case -his last.</p> -<p>Before Mendelssohn left London he paid a farewell -visit to Buckingham Palace. He had a mysterious presentiment -that he must leave hurriedly. Friends pressed -him to remain in England a little longer. “Ah! I wish I -may not already have stayed too long here! One more -<span class="pb" id="Page_41">41</span> -week of this unremitting fatigue and I should be killed -outright”. He was manifestly ill. Fate caught up with him -at Frankfort. Scarcely had he arrived in a state of prostration -when he abruptly learned that his sister, Fanny -Hensel, had died while at the piano conducting a choir -rehearsal. With a shriek, Felix collapsed. The shock of -the news and the violence of his fall on hearing it -brought about a rupture of one of those delicate cerebral -blood vessels which had caused so many deaths in -the Mendelssohn family.</p> -<p>In a measure he recovered. He went to Baden-Baden -and later to Switzerland. He wrote letters, sketched and -still composed. He greeted friends from England, he -learned that London and Liverpool wanted new symphonies -and cantatas. This time he did nothing about it. -When he, finally, returned in September to Leipzig, he -seemed to feel better, though Moscheles, meeting him, -was frightened to see how he had aged and changed. -On Oct. 9, while visiting his friend, the singer Livia -Frege, in connection with some Lieder he planned to -publish, he was seized with a chill. He hurried home -and was put to bed, tortured by violent headaches. He -had planned to go to Vienna late in the month to -conduct “Elijah” with Jenny Lind as the soprano. Of -this there could now be no question. On Nov. 3, 1847 he -suffered another stroke and lay, it is claimed, unconscious, -though Ferdinand David says that, till ten in the evening, -“he screamed frightfully, then made noises as if he -heard the sounds of drums and trumpets.... During the -following day the pains seemed to cease, but his face -was that of a dying man”. Some time between 9:15 and -9:30 in the evening he ceased to breathe. He was exactly -three months short of 39 years old. Grouped about -the bed were his wife, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz -and Moscheles. “Through Fanny’s death our family was -destroyed”, wrote Paul Mendelssohn to Klingemann; -“through Felix’s, it is annihilated”! Leipzig was stunned -by the news. “It is lovely weather here”, wrote a young -<span class="pb" id="Page_42">42</span> -English music student, “but an awful stillness prevails; -we feel as if the king were dead....”</p> -<p>Posthumously, Mendelssohn’s fate seemed like a strange -reversal of his supreme idol’s, Bach. Bach passed into -long eclipse, then, largely through Mendelssohn’s heroic -efforts, underwent a miracle of resurrection which has -grown more overpowering clear down to our own time. -Mendelssohn, almost preposterously famous at his death, -was before very long pronounced outmoded, overrated, -virtually negligible. The whole history of music scarcely -shows a more violent backswing of the pendulum. To -take pleasure in any but a handful of Mendelssohn’s -works was for decades to lose caste, if not to invite -ignominy. By 1910—just about the centenary of his birth—the -low water-mark of derogation had been reached.</p> -<p>Now, a hundred years after his death, a most definite -reaction is in progress. Is it not, rather, a salutary readjustment -than a mere reaction? If Mendelssohn’s poorer -works have not endured is it not better so? Struggle -and suffering might, indeed, have lent a deeper undertone -to his songs or enabled his adagios, in old Sir George -Grove’s words, “to draw tears where now they only give -a saddened pleasure. But let us take a man as we have -him. Surely there is enough conflict and violence in -life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy -we can turn to others. It is well in these agitated modern -days to be able to point to one perfectly balanced nature -in whose life, whose letters and whose music alike all -is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant -and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of -goodness we may well forego for once the depths of -misery and sorrow”.</p> -<p>And Grove’s words taken on an added poignancy precisely -because they were <i>not</i> spoken of an epoch as -grievous as our own!</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_43">43</div> -<div class="img" id="fig4"> -<img src="images/img004.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="500" /> -<p class="caption">Family Group. Sketch by Mendelssohn, Soden, 1844.</p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_44">44</div> -<h4>COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS -<br /><i>by</i> -<br />THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY -<br />OF NEW YORK</h4> -<h4>COLUMBIA RECORDS</h4> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Bruno Walter</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Barber</span>—Symphony No. 1</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolph Serkin, piano)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Symphony No. 5 in C minor</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Symphony No. 8 in F Major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Brahms</span>—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Dvorak</span>—Slavonic Dance No. 1</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mahler</span>—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mendelssohn</span>—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mendelssohn</span>—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mozart</span>—Cosi Fan Tutte—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mozart</span>—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Schubert</span>—Symphony No. 7 in C major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Schumann, R.</span>—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Smetana</span>—The Moldau (“Vltava”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Strauss, J.</span>—Emperor Waltz</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Bizet</span>—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Bizet</span>—Symphony in C major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Copland</span>—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Gershwin</span>—American in Paris</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Ibert</span>—“Escales” (Ports of Call)</dt> -<dt class="pb" id="Page_45">45</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Liszt</span>—Mephisto Waltz</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Moussorgsky</span>—Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Moussorgsky-Ravel</span>—Pictures at an Exhibition</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Prokofieff</span>—Symphony No. 5, Op. 100</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rachmaninoff</span>—Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rachmaninoff</span>—Symphony No. 2 in E minor</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Saint-Saens</span>—Concerto No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Sibelius</span>—Symphony No. 4 in A minor</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Tschaikowsky</span>—Suite “Mozartiana”</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Tschaikowsky</span>—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wolf-Ferrari</span>—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Firebird Suite</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Four Norwegian Moods</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Scenes de Ballet</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Suite from Petrouchka</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Stravinsky</span>—Symphony in Three Movements</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Herold</span>—Zampa—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Khatchaturian</span>—Gayne—Ballet Suite</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wieniawski</span>—Violin Concerto (with Isaac Stern)</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Milhaud</span>—Suite Francaise</dt></dl> -<div class="pb" id="Page_46">46</div> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of John Barbirolli</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Bach-Barbirolli</span>—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Berlioz</span>—Roman Carnival Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Brahms</span>—Symphony No. 2, in D major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Brahms</span>—Academic Festival Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Bruch</span>—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Debussy</span>—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Debussy</span>—Petite Suite: Ballet</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mozart</span>—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mozart</span>—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Ravel</span>—La Valse</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rimsky-Korsakov</span>—Capriccio Espagnol</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Sibelius</span>—Symphony No. 1, in E minor</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Sibelius</span>—Symphony No. 2, in D major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Smetana</span>—The Bartered Bride—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Tschaikowsky</span>—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Mendelssohn</span>—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Sibelius</span>—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Sibelius</span>—Symphony No. 7 in C major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Tschaikowsky</span>—Capriccio Italien</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Gershwin</span>—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant, piano)</dt></dl> -<h4>VICTOR RECORDS</h4> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Symphony No. 7 in A major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Brahms</span>—Variations on a Theme by Haydn</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Dukas</span>—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Gluck</span>—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits</dt> -<dt class="pb" id="Page_47">47</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Haydn</span>—Symphony No. 4, in D major (The Clock)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mendelssohn</span>—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mozart</span>—Symphony in D major (K. 385)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rossini</span>—Barber of Seville—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rossini</span>—Italians in Algiers—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Rossini</span>—Semiramide—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Verdi</span>—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and III</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Gotterdammerung—Siegfried Idyll</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of John Barbirolli</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">Debussy</span>—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Purcell</span>—Suite for Strings with Four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Respighi</span>—Fountains of Rome</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Respighi</span>—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Schubert</span>—Symphony No. 4, in C minor (Tragic)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Schumann</span>—Concerto in D minor, (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Tschaikowsky</span>—Francesca de Rimini—Fantasia</dt></dl> -<h5><i>Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg</i></h5> -<dl class="undent"><dt><span class="sc">J. C. Bach</span>—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">J. S. Bach</span>—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Beethoven</span>—Egmont Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Handel</span>—Alcina Suite</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Mendelssohn</span>—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Meyerbeer</span>—Prophete—Coronation March</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Saint-Saens</span>—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Schelling</span>—Victory Ball</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Flying Dutchman—Overture</dt> -<dt><span class="sc">Wagner</span>—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)</dt></dl> -<hr /> -<h4>Special Booklets published for -<br />RADIO MEMBERS -<br />of -<br />THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY -<br />OF NEW YORK</h4> -<dl class="undent"><dt>POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. Schirmer’s)</dt> -<dt>BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn</dt> -<dt>BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn</dt> -<dt>MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser</dt> -<dt>WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar</dt> -<dt>TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli</dt> -<dt>JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. Peyser</dt> -<dt>SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser</dt></dl> -<p>These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c -each while the limited supply lasts.</p> -<div class="box"> -<p class="center"><b>The immortal music of Mendelssohn -<br />is available in magnificent performances by the -<br />PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY -<br />ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK</b></p> -<dl class="undent"><dt>Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 (“Italian”).</dt> -<dt>Conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.</dt> -<dt>Set M-MM-538<span class="jr"> $5.00<a class="fn" href="#end_1">[*]</a></span></dt></dl> -<dl class="undent"><dt>Concerto in E minor for Violin & Orch. Op. 64 (with Nathan Milstein, violin)</dt> -<dt>Conducted by Bruno Walter.</dt> -<dt>Set M-MM-577<span class="jr"> $5.00<a class="fn" href="#end_1">[*]</a></span></dt></dl> -<dl class="undent"><dt>Scherzo (from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”).</dt> -<dt>Conducted by Bruno Walter.</dt> -<dt>12145-D (in set M-577)<span class="jr"> $1.00<a class="fn" href="#end_1">[*]</a></span></dt></dl> -<p class="center"><a class="fn" id="end_1">[*]</a><i>Prices shown are exclusive of taxes</i></p> -<p class="tbcenter"><b class="large">COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS RECORDS</b></p> -</div> -<h2 id="c1">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> -<ul><li>A few palpable typos were silently corrected.</li> -<li>Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.</li> -<li>Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)</li></ul> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks, by -Herbert F. 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