Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  From all reports, Felix’s progress was no less exceptional. If we are to believe a 1906 auction catalog, on November 14, 1817, he dedicated to the twelve-year-old Fanny his newly made piano arrangement of the Overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro . 66 The arrangement has not come to light, and the catalog entry strains credibility, unless we imagine an eight-year-old negotiating a complex Mozart orchestral score at the keyboard. But in 1818 Felix did make his public piano debut, accompanying on October 28 the horn virtuoso Heinrich Gugel and eleven-year-old son Rudolf in a Trio for two horns and piano by Joseph Wölfl. 67 During his ninth year Felix also appeared as soloist in the Concert militaire by J. L. Dussek, a now forgotten showpiece bristling with fanfares, arpeggiations, and scales in thirds and sixths; like his sister, the young pianist astonished his audiences by his phenomenal musical memory. 68

  In the review greeting his debut, Felix was identified as a pupil of Herr Berger. Both Felix and Fanny had already taken piano lessons with the Moravian Franz Lauska, 69 whose other pupils included Meyerbeer and members of the Prussian court. Around April 1817, the siblings began studying with the leading Berlin pedagogue, Ludwig Berger (1777–1839), and continued until a strain between Berger and their parents terminated instruction in 1822. 70 He has remained a shadowy figure in Mendelssohn biographies, owing to paucity of information about his early tutelage of Felix. Berger had been a colleague of the painter Philipp Otto Runge, who had conceived his masterpiece, Die Tageszeiten (The Times of Day ), for exhibit in a Gothic chapel accompanied by Berger’s music and Ludwig Tieck’s poetry. In 1804 Berger met the Italian piano virtuoso Muzio Clementi and the next year followed him to St. Petersburg. There Berger endeavored to establish a Russian market for Clementi’s pianos 71 and became a colleague of the Irish pianist John Field. When Berger’s wife died in childbirth, he began to suffer from hypochondria. Napoleon’s approach forced him to flee in 1812. After concertizing in England, where he was a founding member of the Philharmonic Society, he recommenced his career in Berlin and gave his last public concert in 1814. E. T. A. Hoffmann honored him in a madcap tale, “A New Year’s Eve Adventure” (Die Abendteuer einer Sylvesternacht ), where he improvises “hurricanes and roaring surf” at the keyboard. Forced to retire by an arm injury, Berger established himself as a piano instructor; along with Felix and Fanny, his students included musicians with whom Felix later associated, such as Wilhelm Taubert and Adolf Henselt.

  Berger composed not only piano sonatas and nondescript etudes reminiscent of Clementi but also nearly two hundred Lieder and male part-songs. Berger’s most celebrated songs were ten settings for the musical play Die schöne Müllerin , published in 1819, 72 four years before Schubert created his masterful cycle about the miller maid. Die schöne Müllerin brought Berger into contact with its poet, Wilhelm Müller, and also Müller’s friend Wilhelm Hensel, his sister (and amateur poetess) Luise Hensel, and the poet Clemens Brentano. These were the principals of a circle that met regularly in 1816 and 1817 at the Berlin salon of Elisabeth von Stägemann and her husband, privy councilor F. A. von Stägemann, 73 to perform a new form of domestic entertainment, the Liederspiel.

  Around 1800 Reichardt had created this popular Berlin genre as a hybrid of the Singspiel and Liederkreis, that is, a narrative play with interspersed lyrical songs. In an example of art imitating life, the play about the miller maid and her suitors mirrored a real drama that unfolded within the Stägemann circle, as the bachelors Müller, Brentano, and Ludwig Berger wooed the eighteen-year-old Luise Hensel in vain. The daughter of a Lutheran minister who had died when she was eleven, Luise found the “strength of her sensual impulses” something “to be fought with considerable desperation.” 74 In December 1818 she converted to Catholicism and pursued an ascetic life devoted to charities. Berger was crushed by the rejection. Felix was too young to appreciate fully this contretemps in his teacher’s life, though the potential of the Liederspiel was not lost upon him; in 1829 he would compose for his parents the Liederspiel with orchestral accompaniment, Heimkehr aus der Fremde (see p. 221).

  IV

  If Berger’s instruction of Felix and Fanny remains mysterious, their relationship with Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), who emerged in 1819 as Berger’s rival in composition instruction, is amply documented. A gruff man, Zelter was described by the socially refined Lea as not especially sensitive (kein empfindsamer Mensch ), 75 and by the actress Karoline Bauer as “bristly like a shoe-brush.” 76 The son of a Berlin mason, Zelter took up his father’s trade in 1774 and became a master mason in 1783. His early musical instruction was not rigorous, and when he submitted a cantata to Kirnberger, the highly respected music theorist was blunt in his judgment: “There is nothing more pitiable than an ordinary artist, of whom there are many; on the other hand a common craftsman, even one of modest talent, always remains a worthy person, … Do you wish to build houses and then compose, or do you wish to compose and then build houses?” 77 Undeterred, Zelter turned to C. F. C. Fasch (1736–1800), 78 who, after C. P. E. Bach departed for Hamburg in 1767, had served as Frederick the Great’s accompanist. Between 1784 and 1786 Zelter took 168 lessons from Fasch in theory and composition, all the while maintaining a double identity as a musician and stonemason. When during the summer Fasch followed the king to Potsdam, Zelter routinely rose early in the morning, trudged the dusty road to Potsdam for his lesson, and returned the same day to Berlin to resume work as a mason. Among his building projects were renovations to the Bartholdy Meierei , which brought him into contact with the Itzig family. He also frequented the family of Benjamin Veitel Ephraim, 79 through whom he met Moses Mendelssohn and his son Abraham.

  Zelter’s autobiography describes Fasch’s method of instruction, of interest because Zelter later followed a similar model in tutoring Felix and Fanny:

  For a long while I wrote four-part chorales before turning to five-part ones. Next we progressed to counterpoint and canon, which gave me intense joy, for during my lonely, sandy walks to Potsdam I would create little canonic hatchlings and became entirely proficient in the genre. Finally we got down to three-part composition… From here I turned to the so-called character piece and the French dances, and with that the method per se was finished and the fugue begun…. 80

  The progression from chorale to counterpoint and canon, and the treatment of four-part chorale writing as the norm are all features of Kirnberger’s Kunst des reinen Satzes and reflect his own study with J. S. Bach.

  Consigned today to the obscure annals of music history, Fasch was in his time a well-established composer. Our chief source about him remains a biographical essay by Zelter. 81 Here Fasch emerges as an eccentric bachelor contrapuntist with obsessive-compulsive routines. To test his readiness for creative work, he habitually multiplied complex series of figures. Any miscalculation would banish his musical inspiration for the day. He kept registers of sea-faring ships and constructed miniature houses out of playing cards. 82 One musical obsession shared with Kirnberger—and which Zelter in turn instilled in Felix—was the writing of learned canons. When Kirnberger enlisted Fasch’s aid in solving some intractable canons, Fasch hit upon a few solutions but noticed that some canons were irreparably flawed and did not admit realizations with strict imitation between the parts. Kirnberger was so flustered that he wrote fugues in penance. 83

  The abstract, mathematical beauty of high counterpoint fascinated Fasch. A central aspect of his musical legacy, handed down through Zelter to Felix, was an effort to revivify the splendor of baroque counterpoint and its most demanding forms—canon and fugue. Not surprisingly, Fasch’s primary creative thrust was in sacred choral music, traditionally associated with complex counterpoint. Among his choral works are cantata-like chorale and psalm settings, including one (for six-part chorus and organ continuo) of Psalm 30 (1794), using the translation of Moses Mendelssohn. But dwarfing these efforts was Fasch’s ornate Mass for sixteen-part chorus (in four four-part choirs) and organ continuo.

  The stimulus for this
magnum opus was a polychoral Mass a 16 by the seventeenth-century Italian composer Orazio Benevoli, 84 which Fasch had examined in 1783 but found deficient in part-writing and hackneyed in its modulations. Fasch approached the task of composition as if undertaking a series of mathematical calculations, dividing the ensemble now into four choirs, now into two eight-part ensembles, and occasionally resorting to the most intimidating texture, that of a sixteen-part fugue. As he lay on his deathbed, Fasch instructed Zelter to destroy all his compositions except the Mass. Instead, Zelter preserved the manuscripts and laid plans to publish a collected edition (delayed until 1839, seven years after Zelter’s death 85 ). There is striking evidence that Fasch’s revival of the monumental polychoral style piqued Felix’s curiosity: a copy of the Kyrie in Felix’s boyish hand survives, 86 and in 1828 he composed a sacred motet for sixteen-part chorus and organ continuo, Hora est (see p. 181). 87

  In 1789 Fasch began assembling his students to rehearse sacred choral music, including J. S. Bach’s motets. 88 From its modest beginnings the ensemble, known as the Singakademie, expanded rapidly from 55 members in 1793 to 148 in 1797. 89 A Berlin correspondent reported in 1799 that the chorus was made up primarily of dilettantes, though it could execute “the most difficult polyphonic vocal works with a purity and precision beyond all belief.” 90 As Fasch’s health declined, Zelter became increasingly involved with the ensemble and assumed its directorship upon Fasch’s death in 1800.

  Four years earlier, in 1796, Zelter published his first song collection; 91 among its settings appeared some of the celebrated Harper and Mignon texts from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren . Zelter dispatched the songs to Weimar but not until 1799 did he muster the courage to address the laureate of German letters. The reply was heartening: “… for if my Lieder,” Goethe wrote, “inspired you to write melodies, I can well say that your melodies have aroused in me many Lieder, and, if we lived closer to one another, I would surely feel transported to a lyrical mood more often than now.” 92 As a token of his esteem, Goethe enclosed the ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht and invited Zelter to set it. But, unable to conjure up music to capture Goethe’s Druids and their pagan rites, 93 Zelter left the task to his former student Felix, who in 1831 set the ballad as a large-scale cantata (see p. 247).

  For more than thirty years—Goethe and Zelter died within weeks of each other in 1832—the two corresponded about music, literature, and aesthetics, and exchanged nearly nine hundred letters but met only fourteen times. Their correspondence reveals the similarity of their views and depth of their friendship. When Zelter’s eldest stepson committed suicide in 1812, Goethe began addressing his friend with the familiar du , and Zelter observed that in place of a son he had gained a brother. 94 If Goethe remained the arbiter of all matters literary, Zelter became Goethe’s musical confidant. Both found Beethoven’s music difficult to approach, and both remained wary of the “excesses” of romanticism, which, in an often-cited remark, Goethe compared to a disease. Above all, Goethe found in Zelter the ideal writer of songs: “your compositions are identical to my poems; like a stream of gas, the music propels the balloon into the heavens.” 95

  Of Zelter’s approximately two hundred Lieder, fully more than one third are devoted to Goethe’s verses. Emulating the artful simplicity of folksong, Zelter favors strophic arrangements with undemanding piano accompaniments and syllabic vocal parts. Rarely does his music challenge the text; rather, the music typically recedes into the background: as in Goethe’s metaphor, the music elevates the poem into our consciousness. As one example, we may consider Zelter’s setting of the Harper song, “Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt” ( ex. 1.1a ), conspicuous for its severe economy of means to convey the Harper’s sense of alienation and of guilt about his incestuous relationship with Mignon:

  Forgoing a piano introduction, Zelter has the singer begin alone; not until later in the setting does the music achieve four-part harmony, where we encounter increasingly chromatic, dissonant passages to depict the Harper’s pain.

  Elsewhere, Zelter limits himself to two- and three-part writing, and even bare octave doublings (mm. 5–6) to express the abject journey toward self-negation. The haunting vocal line commences with an apparent allusion to the familiar chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten , as if the Harper invokes divine providence; indeed J. S. Bach’s harmonization of the chorale, which Zelter would have known, anticipates the opening of the song (see ex. 1.1b ). This striking reference enriches an otherwise stark, sparse setting. In decided contrast, Franz Schubert’s famous through-composed setting of the same text (D478b, 1816) celebrates the expressive power of the piano, with rolled chords and arpeggiations to simulate the Harper’s instrument, and a piano prelude and postlude that frame the poem. But Schubert’s vision of the German Lied as a union of music and text found no place in Goethe’s aesthetics, which championed instead the North German style of Zelter and his contemporaries Reichardt, Berger, and Bernhard Klein. When in 1816 Schubert posted to Weimar a volume of Goethe settings, including the treasures Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade , the poet simply returned them.

  Ex. 1.1a: Zelter, “Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt” (1796)

  Ex. 1.1b: Wer nur den lieben Gott läβt walten (J. S. Bach’s harmonization)

  Three editions with thirty-six Zelter Lieder appeared between 1796 and 1802; the fourth, announced as the inaugural volume of his collected songs, was delayed by the war until 1810. On entering Berlin in 1806, Napoleon’s first act had been to dismiss the municipal council and order the city’s burghers to elect seven chargés d’affaires . Among the chosen few, Zelter was selected to serve as the committee’s representative to the emperor, an honor Zelter was able to decline by pleading inability to converse in French. 96 Instead, during these years of privation, he contributed to Berlin musical life. The Singakademie resumed its rehearsals in 1807, and the same year Zelter established the Ripienschule, which met on Fridays to rehearse instrumental works. Originally comprising ten musicians, this ensemble quickly expanded to an orchestra of about fifty; 97 its exclusively eighteenth-century repertoire offered what Lea Mendelssohn later described as “the most serious things.” 98 The founding of the Ripienschule broadened the resources of the Singakademie and facilitated, for example, the Berlin premiere of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast in 1807. Meanwhile, the Singakademie continued to rehearse J. S. Bach’s motets and even took up parts of the B-minor Mass and St. John Passion. Yet another creative outlet emerged in 1809, when Zelter established a Liedertafel for the performance of male part-songs, to which he contributed about one hundred settings, many overtly patriotic in nature (the Prussian court was then exiled in Königsberg). In recognition of these activities, the Prussian monarch appointed Zelter a professor of music at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.

  V

  Though Zelter was respected in his day as a composer, his lasting contribution was as a teacher and music educator. In 1804 he submitted to Frederick William III a plan for transforming “music from a courtly decoration to an essential part of the cultivated person’s education.” 99 Zelter established choral schools in Königsberg, Dresden, and Berlin to promote clear diction and the natural, supple qualities of the German language, all with a view toward advancing the national Bildung . His students included several Berlin musicians of distinction: the opera composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Otto Nicolai; song composers Bernhard Klein and Carl Loewe; choral composer Eduard Grell (later director of the Singakademie); music theorist Adolf Bernhard Marx; and, of course, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. 100

  Not every student profited from Zelter’s instruction. After two years of study, Meyerbeer turned to the unconventional Abbé Vogler, whom Mozart had dismissed as a “trickster pure and simple.” For A. B. Marx, who completed only a few figured-bass exercises, Zelter was a pedant of the old school offering uninspired technical training. 101 But Zelter’s instruction of Felix stands in marked contrast. For some seven years, beginning in 1819, Zelter remained the dominant mu
sical influence on the boy and young man, and groomed him in the hallowed traditions of the eighteenth century.

  According to Eduard Devrient, a member of the Singakademie and Zelter pupil, when Felix’s lessons concluded in 1826, the prickly musician claimed Felix had “learned everything from him and not yet outgrown his guidance.” 102 Ludwig Berger and A. B. Marx held decidedly different views: in 1822, Berger claimed credit for influencing Felix’s compositional development, 103 while Marx likened Zelter’s role to that of observing a fish swim and then imagining he had somehow instructed the fish to swim. 104 Still, both Abraham and Felix acknowledged Zelter’s authority. Abraham wrote near the end of his life that Felix’s “musical existence and direction would have been entirely different without Zelter.” 105 And in 1829, during his first English sojourn, Felix paid this tribute to his teacher:

  I often have to laugh, when the musicians here ask me, whether I learned according to Marpurg or Kirnberger, or perhaps might prefer Fux, … to which I answered, how I have learned, I wouldn’t even know. I would only know that you taught me, and unfortunately would have read nothing at all, since you placed little value on that… Cramer still maintained that I definitely must have learned from a book, for without one, wasn’t it impossible? Then I laughed, as I said, and thought of you, and thank you, that you raised me not according to rigid, constricting theorems, but in true freedom, i.e ., in the knowledge of proper boundaries. 106