Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  On December 26 the children presented gifts to their parents, including a porcelain vase from the royal factory, ornamented by Hensel, and a silver goblet from Felix. In the evening, before one hundred guests, Felix directed Fanny’s Festspiel and the Liederspiel. To underscore the “private” nature of the celebration, he restricted the size of the orchestra by limiting the first violins and cellos to two each (Eduard Rietz, Adolf and Moritz Ganz, and Paul), and lending the entertainment the intimate quality of chamber music. The subject of the returning prodigal son personalized the domestic music making, as did Kauz’s tantalizingly brief references to Scottish bagpipes in No. 4.

  The majority of the fourteen numbers are strophic Lieder (one, No. 12, was composed by Klingemann and scored by Felix 115 ), but their simplicity does not conceal the composer’s sureness in dramatic technique. Most ingratiating is No. 8, where Hermann serenades Lisbeth, only to be interrupted by Kauz masquerading as the night-watchman (in 1849 the Lied inspired a paraphrase-like homage by the French pianist Stephen Heller 116 ). The text conjures up midnight as the domain of mischievous spirits, and Felix obliges with delicate textures of pizzicato strings and flutes ( ex. 7.4 ). Three times Kauz cuts short Hermann’s puckish G-minor strophes (retouched with delicate nuances in scoring) with the watchman’s call in B ♭ . When, in No. 9, Hermann turns the tables by impersonating the real watchman, Kauz’s B ♭ yields to Hermann’s cross-cutting B ♮ , a delightful dissonance that curiously anticipates Wagner’s similar treatment in the night-watchman scene of Die Meistersinger (Act 2).

  By incorporating musical self-references into his score Felix further reinforced the autobiographical elements of Heimkehr aus der Fremde . The A-major overture captures the buoyancy of Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage ; its principal theme seems derived from a transitional subject in Prosperous Voyage , 117 and the concluding plagal cadence of the Liederspiel alludes also to the earlier overture—the security of the harbor is replaced, as it were, by that of the Mendelssohn home; Hermann’s (Felix’s) journey has been prosperous. In No. 5 (“Wenn die Abendglocken läuten”), Hermann contrasts the peaceful evening bells of his village with the soldier’s life abroad, and again, the imagery is clear: pizzicato strings, horn pedal points, and drones to create a pastoral village, and militant B-minor fanfares for the soldier on his forlorn sentry post—the very fanfares Felix would employ in the Hebrides Overture, the sketch of which he now shared with his family ( ex. 7.5a, b ).

  Ex. 7.4 : Mendelssohn, Heimkehr aus der Fremde , Op. 89 (1829), No. 8

  Ex. 7.5a: Mendelssohn, Heimkehr aus der Fremde , Op. 89 (1829), No. 5

  Ex. 7.5b: Mendelssohn, Hebrides Overture, Op. 26 (1830)

  After the performance Felix sent a copy of the score to Klingemann, gave the piano-vocal score to Therese Devrient, and made copies of No. 5 for Mantius and Betty Pistor. But despite the care lavished on the work—and despite Lea’s urging—Felix cherished no thought of a public production. The score was unpublished until 1851, when, four years after the composer’s death, it finally appeared as Op. 89 and reached the Leipzig stage, to be withdrawn after only two performances. At mid-century, the innocence of Felix’s youthful musical play had been lost; what the theorist Moritz Hauptmann described as harmlose Musik and Eduard Devrient a “delicate little work” 118 had no chance against Wagner’s weighty music dramas and politicized musical agendum after the Revolution of 1848. 119 But in the relatively halcyon 1829, Heimkehr aus der Fremde stood as an emblem of domestic happiness and security at Leipzigerstrasse No. 3.

  Chapter 8

  1830–1832

  Wanderlust

  I can hardly await the time when the boy will … get to Italy, …. There the very stones have ears, while here they eat lentils and pig’s ears.

  —Zelter 1

  Succumbing to Wanderlust, Felix yearned to depart for Italy, though he first celebrated his twenty-first birthday with panache: a military band serenaded him, and Heinrich Beer presented a Mozart autograph sketchbook. 2 But some professional concerns intruded. At the beginning of 1830, the University of Berlin created a new professorship in music for Felix. 3 Declining the honor, he advocated for Marx, who won the position later that year; Felix also refused an invitation to conduct again the St. Matthew Passion.

  Meanwhile the Zwölf Lieder , Op. 9, and Reformation Symphony occupied his creative energies. Fanny had begun assembling Felix’s second song collection while he was in Scotland, and by February he was composing the last few Lieder. Like Op. 8, Op. 9 appeared in two Hefte of six songs each, now bearing titles, Der Jüngling (The Youth ) and Das Mädchen (The Maiden ), which superimposed on the opus a topical organization, though the texts sprang from several poets, including Heine and Uhland, and the composer’s friends Devrient, Droysen, and Klingemann. Felix expended some effort on the musical coherence of the opus. Thus, Geständniss (Confession , No. 2) begins by glossing the opening bars of Frage (No. 1) in the same key, A major ( ex. 8.1 and p. 176, ex. 6.7 ). Nos. 3 and 4 (Wartend and Im Frühling ) move to B minor and D major, but retain the motivic kernel of Nos. 1 and 2, now rearranged and rhythmically modified. The six Lieder of Der Jüngling , all in sharp keys, reflect a male perspective: in Nos. 1 and 2, the protagonist addresses his lover; in Nos. 4 and 5, springtime and autumn arouse and subdue his passions; and in the barcarolle-like No. 6, he departs from the land of youth and its painful memories. Here the composer’s persona asserts itself, as Felix, about to set out on life’s journey, begins his song by alluding in the bass to the submerged opening of Meeresstille ( ex. 8.2 and p. 189).

  Ex. 8.1 : Mendelssohn, Geständniss , Op. 9 No. 2 (1830)

  If Felix is the youth, then the romanticized maiden of the second Heft is Fanny. Not coincidentally, three of her Lieder appear here, again without attribution: Sehnsucht (No. 7), the female counterpart to the male longing in the first half; Verlust (No. 10), in which the maiden’s lover breaks her heart (Fanny depicts the loss by ending with an inconclusive half cadence); and Die Nonne (No. 12), in which a maiden, mourning her paramour’s death, expires in a convent garden before an image of Mary. For the remaining Lieder Felix assumes the feminine perspective: No. 8, a spring song, is a counterpart to No. 4, while No. 11, Entsagung (Renunciation ), set to pious verses of Droysen, was inspired by his sister’s confirmation. No. 9 (Ferne , Distance ), also on a poem of Droysen, refers to a separation and reunion; indeed, near the end, the song pauses on the phrase, wenn du heimkehrst (“when you return home”), again linking the cycle to recent events in the siblings’ lives.

  Ex. 8.2 : Mendelssohn, Scheidend , Op. 9 No. 6 (1830)

  In contrast, Felix composed the Reformation Symphony for a public event, the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession (June 25, 1530), at which Melanchthon had presented Charles V a summary of the new Lutheran faith. Three hundred years later Frederick William III appropriated the Confession to advance the union of Prussian Lutherans and Calvinists into an Evangelical Church. 4 Quite likely Felix conceived his symphony in 1829 for the anniversary, but for reasons unclear its premiere did not occur until 1832, and in 1838 he renounced it as “youthful juvenilia .” 5 Thirty years later, in 1868, it appeared as Op. 107, and like Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, published the year before, entered the canon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.

  Felix described the work as his Kirchensinfonie ; indeed, its programmatic narrative, culminating in the triumph of the Reformation, is not difficult to decipher. Thus, the introduction to the first movement simulates Catholic polyphony through imitative counterpoint based upon the “Jupiter” motive, in its pre-Mozartean incarnation as a psalm intonation ( ex. 8.3a ). The rising entries form a point of imitation in Palestrinian stile antico . Chordal wind fanfares, the first suggestion of conflict, answer the counterpoint, but then Felix inserts a second telltale motive—the “Dresden Amen,” a response used in Catholic regions of Germany and associated with the Holy Spirit ( ex. 8.3b ). The simple, scalelike ascent in high, ethereal strings later figu
red in Wagner’s Parsifal and precipitated a controversy in 1888 when the American musician Percy Goetschius asserted Wagner derived the idea from Mendelssohn. How Felix happened upon the response in 1830 remains a mystery, though he knew at least two composers who had employed it, Carl Loewe and Louis Spohr. 6

  The first movement proceeds with a fiery Allegro in D minor rent by militant fanfares to suggest the spiritual strife. The extramusical significance of the second movement, a light Scherzo in B ♭ major, remains unclear, 7 though the introversion of the Andante in G minor would seem to owe its inspiration to Felix’s Dürer Cantata of 1828 (see p. 186) and probably does not suggest, as Paul Jourdan has hypothesized, a “rare reflection by Mendelssohn on his Jewish ancestry.” 8 The finale is a symphonic fantasy on the Lutheran chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A mighty fortress is our God”). Introduced by a solo flute, the melody is soon buttressed by winds and brass, symbolizing collective, congregational worship. A transition leads to an Allegro that revisits the idea of spiritual division through a dissonant fugato. Ultimately the symphony concludes with triumphant chorale strains for the entire orchestra.

  Ex. 8.3a: Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 5 (Reformation , Op. 107, 1830), First Movement

  Ex. 8.3b: Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 5 (Reformation , Op. 107, 1830), First Movement

  In 1830 Felix was still under the sway of A. B. Marx: essentially, the symphony was an attempt to render the Reformation as a Marxian Grundidee by resorting to Beethovenian models. The sharply differentiated music for the two faiths—Catholic polyphony versus the Protestant chorale—betrays the influence of one of Marx’s favorite scores, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory , with its musical opposition of French and English forces. There is compelling evidence Felix was also responding to the Ninth Symphony, which, like the Reformation , has outer movements in D minor and D major. Felix’s autograph reveals that his finale originally began with a flute recitative leading to the “discovery” of the chorale. 9 Felix deleted the recitative as perhaps too obvious an allusion, but the emergence of the chorale as the goal of a spiritual quest surely owes much to Beethoven’s final symphonic odyssey.

  According to Devrient, Felix attempted an unusual experiment in the first movement: notating the score vertically one measure at a time, instead of sketching melodic and bass lines and then filling in the missing parts. Devrient watched the serried movement progress “like an immense mosaic.” 10 By late March 1830 Felix had reached the third movement but was distracted when Rebecka contracted the measles. Even though she was quarantined, Felix too fell ill and postponed his journey. By April 9 he was well enough to begin the finale; then, on May 1, he paused to compose a small cycle of four Lieder. 11 Their poet remains unknown, but their subject—the journey from childhood to manhood—recalls Op. 9 No. 6, as if Droysen had a hand in crafting the verses. The overarching theme of lovers separated and reunited revives somewhat the sentimental program of Carl Maria von Weber’s Konzertstück (see p. 80), but now from a masculine point of view. In Der Tag , the innocent child becomes a youth and falls in love; after an arduous ride on his steed (Reiterlied ), he arrives at a castle and searches for his lover in the woods. Summoned to serve his country, he bids her farewell in Abschied , and then, after returning from the ravages of war a common beggar (Der Bettler ), seeks reunion with her. “Recognize me,” he entreats her, and Felix’s music responds with the ending of Der Tag , unifying the Lieder and hinting at what he might have achieved in a more ambitious song cycle.

  I

  On May 13, having dated the autograph of the Reformation Symphony the previous day, Felix departed with his father. In Dessau he saw Wilhelm Müller’s widow and visited the Kapellmeister J. F. Schneider. Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt was “wildly” rehearsed, and at a party Felix played trios with Schubring and W. K. Rust and improvised on the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 12 In Leipzig Felix established ties with the leading music houses, Breitkopf & Härtel and F. Hofmeister, while Abraham returned to Berlin. Through Heinrich Marschner, immersed in an opera on Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe , Felix sold the String Quartet, Op. 13, to Breitkopf & Härtel; its sibling, Op. 12, to Hofmeister, who informed the astonished composer that a pirated edition of the First Symphony, Op. 11, was already circulating in Leipzig. 13 But in a precopyright age, Felix was powerless to stop the theft and instead laid plans with Heinrich Dorn, director of the Leipzig opera, to premiere the Reformation Symphony on June 1. Felix also examined Bach manuscripts before traveling to Weimar on May 21.

  Sensing he would not see the Nestor of poets again, Felix extended his stay to two weeks and asked Goethe to use the familiar du . There were discussions about Schiller, Scott, Hugo, Stendhal, and Hegel, and Goethe gave his friend a bifolio from the second part of Faust 14 and commissioned a crayon sketch of the composer, which Felix found “very like, but also rather sulky.” 15 Felix played almost daily on Goethe’s Viennese Streicher piano. During these structured sessions Felix presented compositions by “canonical” composers in chronological order. The octogenarian listened intently from a dark corner, his eyes occasionally “flashing fire” like a Jupiter tonans (“thundering Jupiter”). But when Felix approached modern times by playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Goethe reacted, “That causes no emotion; it is only astonishing and grandiose.” 16

  In Weimar Felix revised the Reformation Symphony and dispatched a copy to Leipzig—too late, for Dorn had already cancelled the performance. Felix also flirted with the ladies, composed for Ottilie von Goethe a tender Andante in A major, 17 and contributed to a new journal titled Chaos . Launched under Ottilie’s editorship in September 1829, Chaos was a weekly publication comprising madcap poems, letters, and riddles, appearing anonymously or with pseudonyms, solicited from Goethe’s circle. 18 Felix now took his place among Chamisso, Holtei, de la Motte Fouqué, Thomas Carlyle, and Thackeray. To the first series (1830) Felix contributed two letters. 19 One, signed “Felix,” purports to be by a visitor of the Rheinfall near Schaffhausen. The other, signed “Sophie Stbrn.,” caused much merriment in Weimar, where readers were unable to identify the author. Here a zealous aunt admonishes her niece against visiting the town, for it has been overrun by the Engländer John Knox, Rob Roy, and Jonathan Swift, all contemplating harmful deeds. Felix also exchanged humorous verses with his lady friends and composed Chaoslieder , including the folksonglike Lieblingsplätzchen (Op. 99 No.3), for which he disseminated the misinformation that the text was from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn . 20

  On June 6 Felix arrived in Munich. The capitol of Bavaria, created upon the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, was developing into a southern German arts center under its Wittelsbach king, Ludwig I. An ardent philhellene, Ludwig embarked upon a massive construction program: the Renaissance-styled Pinakothek to display Flemish and German art; Ludwigskirche, after Byzantine and Romanesque models; and Glyptothek, a marble temple finished in 1830, to exhibit Greek and Roman statuary. The king positioned triumphal arches around the city and recruited celebrated artists to support its rejuvenation. Among them were Peter Cornelius, who adorned the walls of the Glyptothek with murals of Greek mythology, and J. K. Stieler, who specialized in portraits of attractive models. Ludwig had tried unsuccessfully to bring Goethe to Munich; now Felix, armed with letters from the poet, mixed with members of the court, including J. N. Poissl, Intendant of the royal theater and opera. Felix tried the organs of the local churches, appeared with the clarinetist Carl Baermann, and introduced Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at soirées that prized Kalkbrenner and Field as “classic or learned music.” 21 Through Stieler, who escorted Felix to Munich art galleries, he met the talented fifteen-year-old Josephine Lang (1815–1880), the artist’s goddaughter, who sang Lieder. The encounter encouraged her to pursue composition; she later produced about one hundred and fifty, several of which won acclaim. When Felix departed from Munich, he inscribed a volume of Goethe’s poems with the gentle monition, “Do not read, always sing, and the e
ntire volume will be yours.” 22

  In Munich, Felix conceptualized the Scottish Symphony 23 and read Op. 11 with the royal orchestra. Instead of celebrating the Augsburg Confession with the Reformation Symphony, he observed colorful Corpus Christi processions in Catholic Munich. There was another distraction—the pianist prodigy Delphine von Schauroth (1814–1887). The two had met in Paris in 1825, where she had studied with Kalkbrenner. By 1830 she had blossomed into an attractive young woman of seventeen, of a noble but impecunious family. Felix’s pocket diary records frequent meetings. 24 To Rebecka he confided that Delphine was “slim, blond, blue-eyed, with white hands, and somewhat aristocratic”; she possessed a good English piano, which, along with her charms, seduced him into visiting her (Felix’s sisters considered her a potential sister-in-law, and Lea was concerned enough to make inquiries about the Schauroths). 25 They performed a Hummel duet and made a musical exchange.