During Pentecost in early June 1827, Felix spent idyllic days in Sakrow near Potsdam with a fellow student, Albert Magnus, and composed there the “impromptu” song Frage (Question ). According to Sebastian Hensel, Felix himself crafted the amorous verses, though in 1902 Droysen’s son claimed his father as its author (the song appeared in 1830 as Op. 9 No. 1, with an attribution to J. N. Voss, Gustav Droysen’s pseudonym). 54 Is it true, poet and composer wonder, pausing longingly on a dissonant harmony ( ex. 6.7 ), that a secret admirer asks the moon and stars about him? Only she who shares his feelings and remains faithful can grasp his emotions. Now if Felix actually wrote the poem, who was the object of his affection? A likely candidate is Betty Pistor (1808–1887), who sang in the select Singakademie group Zelter directed on Fridays, when Felix accompanied at the piano. Betty became an intimate of the Mendelssohn children and stirred the younger Felix’s adolescent passion. Frage , in turn, inspired his String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, the first movement of which he completed, again at Sakrow, on July 28. 55 Did the quartet, which quotes the Lied, symbolize their relationship? The idea does not seem far-fetched, for in 1830 Felix would add a secret dedication to Betty on the manuscript of his next string quartet, Op. 12 in E ♭ major. 56
Ex. 6.7 : Mendelssohn, Frage , Op. 9 No. 1 (1827)
Late in August, at the end of the summer term, Felix joined one of the Magnus brothers, 57 the law student Louis Heydemann, and Eduard Rietz for a holiday. Playfully simulating Ritter’s lectures, they analyzed the geography of the Harz Mountains but lost their way climbing the Brocken. In Wernigerode, Felix made good on a promise to visit the vacationing Betty Pistor. Living a carefree, students’ existence, the friends continued through Franconia and Bavaria, and on September 8 they reached Stuttgart, where Felix met a musician he later hailed as the finest conductor in Germany, P. J. von Lindpaintner. 58 Pausing in Baden-Baden, Felix encountered Ludwig and Friederike Robert, the diplomat Benjamin Constant, and an enthusiastic Frenchman who offered a half-finished opera libretto on the subject of Alfred the Great. Now well advanced into Op. 13, Felix wrote Fanny to ask whether he should incorporate Frage into the work’s conclusion. 59
By September 19 he reached Heidelberg, where he spent several hours with the jurist A. F. J. Thibaut (1772–1840), who in 1814 had argued for codifying German law. When the “Hep-Hep” Riots erupted in 1819, he led his students in defending Jews from attacks. 60 In 1802 Thibaut had begun to collect sacred music and by 1811 was directing an amateur chorus. For Thibaut, ignorance of the musical past, neglect of figured bass, and blending of sacred and secular styles of expression had corrupted music. In Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (On Purity in Music , 1825), he advocated a return to the “pure” style of Palestrina but was less certain about the complex music of J. S. Bach, who had not considered the “needs of ordinary people.” 61 Thibaut’s monograph impressed Felix, but the principal reason for the visit was to consult Thibaut’s library, rich in Italian sacred polyphony of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Just then Felix was beginning to compose the motet Tu es Petrus ; without asking his name Thibaut graciously lent him a setting by the Venetian Antonio Lotti. While Thibaut revealed “the merits of old Italian music,” Felix argued for J. S. Bach’s position as the “fountainhead” in music, and when they parted company Thibaut proposed they build their friendship on Bach and Palestrina, “like two lovers who promise each other to look at the moon, and then fancy they are near each other.” 62
From Heidelberg Felix and friends continued to Darmstadt, where he found the “minister of war for musical affairs,” the theorist Gottfried Weber, who committed a faux pas by labeling Beethoven “half again as crazy as he ever was divine,” so that Felix demoted Weber to a “horse-doctor-like scoundrel.” 63 In Frankfurt Felix stayed with Schelble and saw Hiller, who accompanied the students on an excursion on the Rhine to Cologne. At Horchheim, near Coblenz, Felix, Magnus, and Heydemann disembarked to visit Felix’s uncle Joseph, who owned a substantial estate and vineyards overlooking the river. Felix stayed behind to celebrate the annual vintage and then, with Joseph and his wife, Hinni, traveled to Frankfurt to hear Schelble direct a Handel oratorio. By mid-October, Felix had returned to Berlin, where he spent his first evening in Betty Pistor’s company. 64
On October 27 Felix inscribed the title page to his new string quartet, Op. 13, and a few days later finished a Fugue in E ♭ major for the same scoring, 65 on a subject elaborated from the “Jupiter” motive. If the latter, posthumously published as Op. 81 No. 4, impresses as a student exercise, Op. 13 effects a worthy rapprochement with Beethoven’s late quartets, which preoccupied Felix during 1827. 66 Thus, the outer movements—centered largely on A minor—recall textures from those of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. Beethoven’s late style especially impresses itself on the second movement, a heartfelt Adagio with at least three allusions. The opening is similar to the Cavatina of Beethoven’s Op. 130, which Felix nearly quotes in one passage. The center of the Adagio, a chromatic fugue, invokes the second movement of Beethoven’s Serioso Quartet, Op. 95, and the end of the Adagio revives the high-pitched, ethereal sonority concluding the Heiliger Dankgesang of Beethoven’s Op. 132.
To Lindblad Felix revealed his immersion in Beethoven’s late quartets, which offered a guiding principle for Felix’s own work, “the relation of all 4 or 3 or 2 or 1 movements of a sonata to each other and their respective parts, so that … one already knows the mystery that must be in music.” 67 Linking the movements of Op. 13 are references to Frage , the “theme” of the entire quartet: “You will hear its notes resound in the first and last movements, and sense its feeling in all four.” 68 Thus, Felix incorporated explicit quotations from the song in the outer movements but left more subtle traces in the inner movements. The Quartet begins by reviving the plagal cadences from the end of the Lied before citing its characteristic dotted-rhythmic motive. Reworked at the beginning of the second movement, this figure is present as well in the ingratiating Intermezzo, where the meter shifts from the of the Lied to ( ex. 6.8a ). The scherzo-like center of the Intermezzo delicately outlines the second phrase of the Lied ( ex. 6.8b ). The impassioned finale, which erupts with a free recitative, assimilates a dotted figure into its primary theme but subsequently recalls material from the first two movements. Eventually, Felix returns to the A-major Adagio with which the composition began and now cites the final thirteen bars of the Lied, completing the thematic circle. The dramatic, questioning recitatives (the first movement ends with a recitative-like gesture, the second movement employs a recitative after the fugue, and the finale has several recitatives) challenge the thematic contents of the composition and lead us inexorably back to the Lied, a technique of recall and denial seemingly related to the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Ex. 6.8a: Mendelssohn, String Quartet in A major, Op. 13 (1827), Intermezzo
Ex. 6.8b: Mendelssohn, String Quartet in A major, Op. 13 (1827), Intermezzo
The lyricism of the Quartet broaches a second issue—the extent to which absolute instrumental music can express extramusical ideas. In 1828 Felix began to compose what he later termed Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words ), textless piano miniatures that imitate features of art song. Op. 13 anticipated these “piano songs” by transplanting “Ist es wahr?” into the realm of absolute chamber music. Felix’s experiment is not unlike Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, D810 (1824), in which his Lied Death and the Maiden appears in the slow, theme-and-variations movement and imbues the surrounding movements as well. Though Felix could not have known this masterpiece (published in 1831), the two quartets dismantle in similar ways the boundaries between art song and string quartet. Felix’s frequent recitatives, as if beckoning for a text, remind us again that a vocal model was the direct inspiration for his composition.
During the closing months of 1827, Klingemann’s transfer to the Hanoverian legation in London diminished Felix’s circle. The friend’s absence was the subject
of a new, mock literary paper launched by the poet Holtei. The Thee- und Schneezeitung (Tea and Snow Journal ), of which eight issues coalesced between September and November, replaced the Gartenzeitung . 69 Lea reports, however, that Felix declined to contribute to the new undertaking. 70 Meanwhile, he enjoyed making new musical acquaintances. In December the clarinetists Heinrich Baermann and his son Carl appeared in Berlin, 71 and Felix himself participated in two public concerts on November 13 and December 25, when he performed Schubert’s ballade Erlkönig (likely his first exposure to that composer’s music) and Lieder of Mozart and Beethoven. 72 For Rebecka, Felix composed a toy symphony (lost; according to Sebastian Hensel, Felix modeled it on Haydn’s “Toy” Symphony, now known to be by Leopold Mozart) and during the winter months organized a small chorus that began to rehearse on Saturdays “rarely heard works,” including parts of the St. Matthew Passion. 73 Returning in earnest to sacred music, Felix completed rapidly the motet Tu es Petrus , Op. 111, and cantatas Christe, Du Lamm Gottes , presented to Fanny on Christmas Eve, and Jesu, meine Freude , finished on January 22, 1828. 74
The cantatas were the first in a series linked to Felix’s Bachian pursuits, including his study of the Passion and also his examination of W. F. Bach’s musical estate, acquired by Betty Pistor’s father, the astronomer K. P. H. Pistor, after a bidding war with Zelter. To Felix devolved the task of sorting through and organizing the manuscripts, among them thirteen cantatas of J. S. Bach; in exchange, Felix received a priceless gift, the autograph of Cantata No. 133 (Ich freue mich in Dir ) 75 and frequent contacts with Betty. But an incident early in 1828 damaged their budding relationship: upon arriving at the Pistor residence to study the collection, Felix was greeted with laughter from Betty’s friends. The hypersensitive composer took offense and refused to attend her birthday celebration on January 14. When, a few weeks later, Betty’s father forbade her to attend his birthday festivities, the Mendelssohns suspected the reason was anti-Semitism, for some of Betty’s relatives had mocked her as “the music-and Jew-loving cousin.” 76 Eventually the families reconciled, but Felix never again visited the Pistor residence.
Christe, Du Lamm Gottes and Jesu, meine Freude follow closely Bachian prototypes, as if bearing out Berlioz’s observation that Felix studied the music of the dead too closely. 77 Both are in one movement and suspend the chorale melodies in the soprano above a web of imitative counterpoint. Orchestral passages frame the movements and separate the chorale strains. In Christe, Du Lamm Gottes , the Lutheran Agnus Dei appears three times in F major, with the second statement skillfully worked into a jagged, chromatic fugato in F minor. Similarly, Jesu, meine Freude relies upon a minor-major exchange: two-thirds through the composition, the initial E minor shifts to a serene E major for “Gottes Lamm, mein Bräutigam” (“Lamb of God, my bridegroom”), where Johannes Crüger’s chorale melody unfolds against a fresh harmonic coloration.
Initially Felix viewed Tu es Petrus , composed for Fanny’s birthday (November 14, 1827) but not published until 1868 as Op.111, as among his most successful works. 78 In setting this fundamental Catholic text (“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,” Matthew 16:18), Felix invoked not the Lutheran cantatas of Bach but the Italian stile antico , which ultimately traced its roots to Palestrina, the sixteenth-century foundation of Roman sacred polyphony. 79 According to Fanny, the score alarmed Felix’s friends, who “began to fear that he might have turned Roman Catholic.” 80 Whether he was able to consult in Thibaut’s library Palestrina’s two settings is unknown, but clearly Felix sought to emulate the Palestrinian ideal—lucid, imitative points of polyphony with carefully regulated dissonances—prized by Thibaut as the “pure” sacred style. Even the appearance of the score, ruled in the archaic meter of and filled with obsolete breves (double whole notes, =), bespeaks Felix’s fascination with a remote historical period. There is also in the motet a striving for monumentality. Felix specified a chorus in five parts, accompanied by an orchestra expanded to include trombones. Both Felix and Fanny referred to the work as 19 stimmig (in nineteen parts), and indeed Felix treated the orchestral parts as full participants in the contrapuntal tapestry. After a chordal exordium, the chorus introduces a falling figure in five-part imitation, subsequently magnified by entries in the strings, winds, brass, and even timpani—in all, fourteen entries that suffuse the music with the subject in texted and textless counterpoint, and thus erect a cathedral of sound upon motivic bedrock.
III
On January 9, 1828 an anonymous poem, Der neuen Zeit (To the New Time ), appeared in Marx’s journal, 81 with an unusual vision of the classical underworld: Ixion is no longer chained to his wheel, Sisyphus successfully rolls his boulder to the top of a mountain, and Tantalus slakes his thirst and tastes the fruit suspended above his head. The three judges of Hades ignore the “empty shades” clamoring to cross the river Styx and enter Elysium, but grant an audience to a youth (likened to Theseus and Hercules), who, reminded that the living have forgotten the great deeds of the departed, returns to the upper world, his soul inspired by the music he has heard in the underworld.
As we know, Droysen was the poet of this dreamlike allegory 82 that celebrated Felix’s efforts to revive the music of the “eternally living dead.” In the Te Deum and Tu es Petrus he had already revived historical periods remote from Bach’s cantatas and the familiar corpus of Protestant chorales. In 1828, Felix continued these historical excavations in another “monumental” motet, Hora est , scored for four four-part choirs and organ continuo. Written for Fanny’s birthday, 83 it was heard at the Singakademie, probably at an early 1829 rehearsal of the St. Matthew Passion and then performed there privately in March 1829 and publicly in November 1829 and January 1830. 84 The inspiration for the motet was a work tied to the Singakademie—Fasch’s identically scored Mass (1786), based in turn upon a sixteen-part Mass by the seventeenth-century composer Orazio Benevoli. Its antiphonal effects, sculpted harmonic blocks, and contrapuntal density offered Fasch a model for his own ideal of sacred music, although he endeavored to improve upon the prototype by rejecting certain licenses of Benevoli, enriching his monochromatic selection of harmonies, and adhering scrupulously to the rule that each four-voice choir should be harmonically independent. Now, in 1828, Felix aspired toward the grandeur of Fasch’s Mass by renewing the techniques of the seventeenth-century polychoral style.
The texts, from the Catholic Office for Advent, comprise the antiphon Hora est and responsory Ecce apparebit . 85 The antiphon summons the faithful from their slumber to behold Christ resplendent in the heavens; the responsory proclaims the Lord will appear upon a white cloud with hosts of saints. For A. B. Marx, who reviewed Hora est , 86 the music explored the mysteries of the monastic rites of early Christendom. The composition projects an unusual tonal pairing, with the dark G minor of Hora est followed by the luminous A major of Ecce apparebit , a juxtaposition calculated to deemphasize the traditional tonic-dominant relationships of tonality in favor of the modal and prototonal colorings of Benevoli’s period. The minor-major contrast and ascending modulation by step underscore the idea of spiritual awakening and renewal. In the first part, priestlike male voices summon the faithful in austere textures that range from monody to four-part harmony. Then, in Ecce apparebit , the four choirs enter as separate harmonic masses. Gradually, they accumulate and spill over into a Più vivace in which all sixteen parts descend in a radiant spiral of imitative counterpoint ( ex. 6.9 ), a level of complexity Felix’s choral music never again attained.
In 1828 Felix enrolled for his second year at the university. During the summer semester he attended lectures by the physicist Paul Erman on light and heat; Ritter on the geography of Asia, Greece, and Italy; and Gans on legal history since the French Revolution. The winter semester, which ran into the early months of 1829, offered the continuation of Gans’s legal history and “natural law or the philosophy of law,” and Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics. 87 One might suppose that Hegel’s views of music p
iqued Felix’s curiosity, but the search for Hegelian influence on the composer is, in the main, a frustrating enterprise. Though Hegel enjoyed social exchanges with the Mendelssohns, he seems to have used his visits not so much to discuss music as to enjoy whist. 88
Ex. 6.9 : Mendelssohn, Hora est (1828)
In Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics, assembled after his death in 1831 and edited from student notes probably similar to those of Felix, 89 the philosopher elaborated a dialectical approach to the history of art with three principal eras, the archaic or symbolic, classic and romantic. 90 For Hegel art had achieved its most “adequate” representation in the classic period, in which the aesthetic Idea and its form were perfectly united in the idealized human body. But in the romantic (i.e., “Christian”) era, the noncorporeal art of music had distanced itself from classic art and receded into an “unending subjectivity.” Hegel’s sweeping view of art history appears to have elicited skepticism from both Zelter and Felix. Writing to Goethe in March 1829, Zelter observed: “This Hegel now says there is no real music; we have now progressed, but are still quite away from the goal. But that we know as well or not as he, if he could only explain to us in musical jargon whether or not he is on the right path.” 91 Felix too bridled at the Hegelian notion that art had somehow declined, or indeed ceased, “as if it could cease at all!” 92
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