Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  The new, one-act Singspiel was promptly scheduled for production at the Mendelssohn residence in March. But after a dress rehearsal, misfortune struck. On the evening of March 8, Felix appeared in a children’s play. His role required him to brandish a rapier, and when he drew the rusty weapon, he lacerated his thumb. Concealing his bleeding hand in a pocket, he persevered, but after the performance found a half-inch wound that required stitches. 51 The premiere was postponed until April, when the opera was given with Die beiden Pädagogen ; 52 among the cast were Eduard Devrient, Stümer, and Henning, and probably the librettist, Dr. Casper. 53

  The libretto for Die wandernden Komödianten (The Wandering Players ) survives in Oxford, while Felix’s unpublished score of nearly two hundred pages in meticulous calligraphy is in Berlin. 54 The plot turns again on mistaken identities. 55 Three itinerant actors, Fröhlich (Cheerful), Hasenfuß (Chicken-Hearted), and Fixfinger (Nimble Finger), have played in Krähwinkel, a fictitious cultural backwater, where their director, Flink (Nimble), has run afoul of the magistrate, Schwarzauge (Blackeye), engaged to Mme. Germain. Flink is her former lover, and she warns him that Schwarzauge has allied himself with Holzbein (Pegleg), magistrate of Schilda. After Mme. Germain rebuffs Schwarzauge’s advances, Flink pretends to be Holzbein; then, when Holzbein arrives, he masquerades as Schwarzauge. A trumpet fanfare announces the troupe’s performance before the prince, but the play within the play is amended when the bumbling magistrate attempts to arrest Flink, initially impersonated by Hasenfuß, and then by Fröhlich. Just as Schwarzauge is about to apprehend Flink, Fixfinger announces that the prince has appointed the actors Hofkomödianten , and the opera draws to a happy conclusion.

  For dramatic pacing Die wandernden Komödianten relies upon a brisk succession of ensembles; only two of its twelve numbers are solo arias. As a result, the characters are not as sharply drawn as in Felix’s earlier Singspiele but materialize through contrasting groups. The deftly scored Overture in A major, an energetic if circumspect application of classical sonata form, again employs a moderately sized orchestra of strings and double winds. The bustling opening figure, accompanied by string tremolos, is reused in No. 3. The most impressive stretch of the work is the finale (No. 12), prefaced by a rustic, on-stage orchestral overture (No. 11), designed to caricature “the fairly threadbare musical manner that must have characterized most Wandertruppen.” 56 After the strings tune in a descending succession of fifths, the overture commences with a simple motive accompanied by plain harmonies ( ex. 3.3 ), including later on some questionable fifths. Farther on in the mock overture, the second oboe staggers one eighth-note behind the first, recalling a similar conceit in the “Merry Gathering of the Peasants” of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, where a bassoon enters “late.” Unlike the formal overture, the mock overture offers a rudimentary version of sonata form; the development, for example, reduces to little more than an ascending unison scale on the dominant. Felix seems intent upon parodying lowbrow musical culture, a compositional challenge he would revisit some twenty years later in the incidental music to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream . There, too, a play within a play inspired well-worn, tattered music—the Mechanicals’ Funeral March in C minor.

  Ex. 3.3 : Mendelssohn, Die wandernden Komödianten (1822), No. 11

  “Well-behaved and diligent” (brav und fleißig ) was how Zelter described Felix in March 1822. 57 Since returning from Weimar, Felix had finished the opera and a Gloria, and had begun a concerto for Fanny and Magnificat . Though still little known—the Gloria and Magnificat were published near the end of the twentieth century—these compositions rank among his most impressive achievements of 1822. Felix’s first large-scale choral work with orchestra, the Gloria in E ♭ major was probably written during January and February 1822, and in any event finished by March 17. 58 It dwarfs another work not mentioned by Zelter, a modest setting of verses from Psalm 66 for female chorus and continuo, finished on March 8. 59 The autograph of the Gloria betrays signs of haste—numerous corrections, unemended errors in part writing, and some awkward text underlay. 60 Felix set the text of the Ordinary as a cantata in six movements, with a mixture of choral and solo movements, arranged in a tonal plan orbiting around E ♭ major (E ♭ –B ♭ –c–A ♭ –E ♭ –E ♭ ). The variety of textures is impressive, including homophonic and imitative writing a 4 , a cappella writing a 5 (Gratias agimus tibi ), and an ensemble scored for alto and tenor, chorus, bassoons, and strings without violins (Domine Deus ). There are, too, traditional displays of counterpoint associated with Laudamus te and Cum sancto spiritu , for which Felix generated double fugues brimming with learned devices.

  He may have set the Gloria aside to take up the more ambitious Magnificat in D major, begun in March and finished at the end of May. 61 In 1930 Rudolf Werner found its treatment of the Marian text scarcely less masterful than that yardstick of the composer’s genius, the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture of 1826. 62 Werner believed Felix emulated the “most splendid of all Magnificat creations,” by J. S. Bach (BWV 243a), composed in 1731 in E ♭ major but reworked in a D-major version (BWV 243). Georg Pölchau, who published the original version in 1811, could have placed it at Felix’s disposal in 1822 (Felix acquired a copy for his own library in 1824 63 ). Werner pointed to similar figurations in the opening movements, and to Bach’s expressively drooping Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae (“For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden”), which Felix indeed appears to have imitated.

  But several features distinguish Felix’s score from Bach’s masterpiece and render the issue of stylistic indebtedness more complex. Bach writes for five-part chorus; Felix, four-part. Bach specifies among the winds three trumpets and timpani; Felix, two trumpets, two horns, and timpani. Bach apportions the canticle into twelve compact movements, teeming with word paintings; the chorus Omnes generationes (“all generations shall call me blessed”), to cite one, contains florid melismas to depict the coming together of “all generations.” Felix’s setting, in contrast, requires only six movements, and omnes generationes does not inspire specific musical imagery.

  As Ralf Wehner has demonstrated, 64 Felix would have known another Magnificat , composed for Berlin in 1749 by C. P. E. Bach and available through the Singakademie library. This work is also in D major, employs four-part chorus, supplements the three trumpets with two horns, and fits the text into nine movements, a compromise between the grandiloquence of J. S. Bach’s twelve and the compression of Felix’s six. Emanuel Bach’s Magnificat recalls, yet is stylistically removed from, his father’s high-baroque splendor. Thus, in Quia respexit , again in B minor, Emanuel avoids a choral outburst for omnes generationes .

  A compelling resemblance between Emanuel’s and Felix’s compositions lies in the concluding Gloria patri . After a pause on the dominant, Emanuel unfurls a stunning double fugue on Sicut erat . Not to be out-done, Felix too reaches a caesura and introduces a fugue, with a subject patently derived from Emanuel’s ( ex. 3.4a –b ). Within two bars Felix superimposes a fresh subject for Et nunc, et semper ( ex. 3.4c ), so that his finale begins with two subjects (in contrast, Emanuel’s second subject enters some sixty bars into his fugue). Then, for et in saecula saeculorum and the Amen , a third and fourth subject enrich the polyphonic tapestry ( exs. 3.4d –e ). Felix’s quadruple fugue at once surpasses Emanuel Bach’s double fugue and attains a complexity of part-writing rarely seen since J. S. Bach.

  Ex. 3.4a: C. P. E. Bach, Magnificat (1749), “Sicut erat”

  Ex. 3.4b–e: Mendelssohn, Magnificat (1822), “Sicut erat”

  Whether Zelter performed the Gloria or Magnificat at the Singakademie is unknown. They were heard in 1822 on a Sunday concert at the Mendelssohn residence, but with unsatisfactory results; Felix lamented that anxiety caused him to imagine heavenly angels replacing the “piping” sopranos, and that a Miserere would have been more appropriate. 65 Nevertheless, the concerts, which had begun in the latter part of 1821, now became a regular institution,
with frequent readings of Felix’s choral and orchestral works before patrician guests. One of the earliest documented musicales occurred on March 24, 1822, 66 before a brother-in-law of the king, Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwill, to whom Beethoven later dedicated his Namensfeier Overture, Op. 115. For the musicale the Frankfurt pianist Aloys Schmitt performed, and Fanny played a piano concerto by Hummel. Then, the prince asked Felix to improvise on the subject of Mozart’s Fugue in C minor for two pianos (K. 426). An amateur cellist and composer, Radziwill was the governor of the Polish grand duchy of Poznań, where he maintained an opulent musical establishment and participated in readings of Beethoven’s string quartets. The Mozart fugal subject bore special meaning, since the prince had used it in his music for Goethe’s Faust , on which he labored for some twenty years.

  Which Hummel piano concerto Fanny presented is unknown, but it may have been the second, in A minor (Op. 85), performed by Hummel in Berlin in 1821. At the end of March Felix made his second “public” appearance, in a concert of Aloys Schmitt 67 that featured Dussek’s Grande symphonie concertante , Op. 63, a double piano concerto with an unusual history. The musical confidant of Prince Louis Ferdinand, Dussek had composed this work in 1806; the prince performed it on October 9, the night before he fell at the Battle of Saalfeld. 68 If in 1822 Dussek’s concerto still resonated in the Prussian musical consciousness, Hummel’s Piano Concerto in A minor thoroughly captivated Felix, then composing his first piano concerto in the same key and scored with string orchestra for Fanny. The resemblances between the two concerti are numerous and have inspired an elucidating study by Wolfgang Dinglinger. 69 Thus, we find similar three-movement plans: a sonata-form first movement with a double exposition for orchestra and soloist, and a slow movement that proceeds without pause into a rondo finale, culminating with a stretto-like coda.

  The opening theme of Felix’s concerto unabashedly reveals its parentage ( ex. 3.5a, b ), as do any number of piano figurations, including extended double trills and interleaved percussive chords, a technique in Hummel’s concerto that one English reviewer described as a “weaving passage.” 70 Like Hummel, Felix allows the pianist to begin the first solo as if in search of a theme; the effect is like a miniature improvisation, a device Hummel had inherited from his teacher Mozart. Stretches of Felix’s first movement refract the poignant subtleties of Mozart’s concerti through the prism of Hummel’s effulgent passagework. But Felix is no slavish follower; his early concerto reveals signs of independence, including a martellato passage later pressed again into service in the First Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 25, of 1831 ( ex. 3.6a, b ).

  The sensitively scored slow movement in E major evinces startling evidence of stylistic maturation. Against a noble, hymnlike theme in the muted strings, the pianist responds with a recitative-like commentary. Was Felix pondering the Andante con moto of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58, also for piano and strings? The comparison is inviting enough, even with its obvious differences: there a plaintive piano melody in chordal style interrupts an orchestral recitative. All in all, the 1822 Concerto in A minor marks an impressive achievement of an apprentice, who anticipated elements of his own mature style while he assimilated the legacy of Mozart’s concerti and tested Hummel’s innovations in piano technique.

  Ex. 3.5a: Hummel, Piano Concerto in A minor (ca. 1816)

  Ex. 3.5b: Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto in A minor (1822)

  Ex. 3.6a: Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto in A minor (1822), First Movement

  Ex. 3.6b: Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 25 (1831), Finale

  Fanny was not the only musician honored by Felix in 1822 with a concerto. That same year he composed for Eduard Rietz the Violin Concerto in D minor, 71 also in three movements (with the second movement again linked to the finale) and scored for string orchestra. Two autograph versions survive, of which the first transmits the first two movements, while the second (a revised version reflecting Rietz’s suggestions) includes all three. Some prominent musicians have been associated with these manuscripts. In 1853 Felix’s widow Cécile presented the first version to the violinist Ferdinand David, and in the twentieth century Yehudi Menuhin, who published the first edition of the composition in 1952, owned the autograph. In the 1890s the second version belonged to Clara Schumann before its incorporation into the Mendelssohn Nachlaß in Berlin. 72

  Ex. 3.7 : Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in D minor (1822)

  Two influences converging on this work again tap eighteenth-century stylistic roots. The first is the French violin concerto, represented by G. B. Viotti and his Parisian followers, including Rode, Baillot (Felix’s instructor in 1816 and 1817), and Kreutzer (whose etudes Felix was practicing in 1821). The second is the North German keyboard concerto, exemplified by musicians active at the court of Frederick the Great and J. S. Bach pupils such as C. P. E. Bach, Christoph Nichelmann, and J. G. Müthel. Rode had popularized in Berlin several features of Viotti’s technique, including a cantabile style with seamless legato, bold treatment of the resonant G string (especially in its upper positions), and varieties of bowings, often in quick succession, a distinctive feature that impressed itself upon Felix’s concerto ( ex. 3.7 ).

  Three features of the work invoke the eighteenth-century North German keyboard concerto. First, the accompaniment is limited to a string orchestra in four parts, an obsolete scoring for 1822. Second, the first movement does not strictly observe the template of the Mozartean concerto, with its synthesis of sonata form and the baroque ritornello principle. Thus, Felix’s contrasting second theme, presented by the violin during its first solo, fails to figure in the opening orchestral tutti ; and when the theme returns toward the end of the movement, it enters not in the expected tonic D minor but minor subdominant G minor. This oddity, along with the restatement of the opening tutti in different keys throughout the movement, suggests Felix was indebted here less to sonata form (as in the first movement of his Piano Concerto in A minor) than to the older ritornello principle, with its frequent alternation of orchestral and solo passages. Third, the turbulent opening thematic material ( ex. 3.8 ), marked by angular contours, interruptions, dynamic contrasts, and energetic tremolos, impresses as a revival of the quirky style of Emanuel Bach and his colleagues. Felix’s choice of D minor may have triggered this association, for a number of North German composers—including the Bachs and Müthel, composers favored by Zelter and Felix’s great-aunt Sarah Levy—had used that tonality in their keyboard concerti to explore the stronger emotional affects. 73

  Ex. 3.8 : Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in D minor (1822)

  III

  On July 6, 1822 a caravan of carriages departed Berlin for Potsdam, the beginning of a leisurely three-month journey to Switzerland. The passengers were Abraham and Lea, their children, the tutor Dr. Heyse, a Dr. Neuburg, and servants. Later, near Frankfurt, the charming Marianne and Julie Saaling joined them. Cousins of Lea through their father, the court jeweler Salomon Jacob Salomon, the sisters had taken the surname Saaling years before upon their conversion to Christianity. Marianne had already attained social recognition and, at the Congress of Vienna, earned the confidences of the aristocracy. Having imitated Dorothea Schlegel’s spiritual course by embracing Catholicism, she returned to Berlin to become active in charities. Many years before, the comparable beauty of Julie Saaling had been marred by a tragic mishap. During a smallpox epidemic, a superstitious grandmother had prevented her inoculation, and Julie became the only one of six siblings to contract the disease. A botched operation caused her to lose her right eye. Despite her disability, Julie’s endearing qualities impressed Heyse, and the two became secretly engaged during the Swiss holiday. 74

  Another member of the party, Fanny, also had reason to contemplate a clandestine romance, for Wilhelm Hensel had recently inscribed these verses for her:

  Sixteen years old, Fanny longed to reach Italy, to experience Goethe’s blooming, fragrant Arcadian realm. Meanwhile, Felix recorded his travel impressions in drawings executed
in situ. For some time, Felix had been studying drawing with J. G. S. Rösel (1768–1843), an instructor at the Berlin Bauschule and acquaintance of Goethe. 76 From this journey Felix would bring back to Rösel more than forty landscapes, generally drawn in pencil and then worked over in ink—the earliest, compelling documentation of Felix’s talent at draftsmanship. 77

  When Felix was inadvertently left behind at Potsdam, Heyse rode back to retrieve him, only to find the errant pupil trudging along the dusty road with a peasant girl. The first two days of the journey brought the tourists no farther than Brandenburg and Magdeburg, ninety miles west of Berlin. In the Harz, they elected not to ascend the Brocken but climbed less formidable mountains and spent an hour in the Baumann’s cave:

  One wanders among the strangest figures formed by the stalactites, here there is a monk, there a crucifix, here a baptismal font, there a Virgin Mary, here a flag—which is transparent —there an organ, a waterfall, a cow, and only God and the guide could know the huge multitude of forms which the unfathomable cave has created for itself. 78

  Traveling “like princes—poets, artists, and princes all in one,” 79 the party proceeded to Göttingen and Cassel, capital of the Electorate of Hesse. Bearing a letter from Zelter, they paused to visit the newly appointed Kapellmeister, the violinist-composer Louis Spohr (1784–1859), who had concertized in Berlin in 1819 when the Mendelssohns may have heard him.