Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  Felix found Roman musical life severely lacking. Supporting the concerts of the Accademia Filarmonica, which made Felix an honorary member, 58 was a piano, not an orchestra, and the thirty-two aging members of the Papal Choir were almost “completely unmusical.” With no prospect of a public Roman debut, Felix appeared in private gatherings. At Bunsen’s, after the papal singers had rendered a grave work of Palestrina, the brutissimo tedesco improvised, and there was an awkward moment when he searched for an apt subject, as “a brilliant piece would have been unsuitable, and there had been more than enough of serious music.” 59 But the musicians applauded and dubbed him l’insuperabile professorone . 60

  Felix spent his free time in the company of German artists who had congregated in Rome, including the young Eduard Bendemann, Theodor Hildebrandt, and Carl Ferdinand Sohn from Düsseldorf, and Julius Hübner from Berlin. Understandably Felix was curious about the Nazarene brotherhood that in 1816 and 1817 had executed the frescos for the drawing room of his uncle Jacob Bartholdy. There was the familial bond with Philipp Veit, son of Dorothea Schlegel, and Felix found the aesthetic judgments of Wilhelm von Schadow sensible and to his liking. But a few meetings with J. F. Overbeck, a founding Nazarene member, instilled in Felix “a particular aversion to this brood.” 61 Seeking to revive medieval Christian art by uniting “Latin beauty and German inwardness,” 62 the majority of the society had embraced Catholicism and wore their hair and beards conspicuously long. They spoke condescendingly of Titian, and painted “sickly Madonnas, feeble saints, and milk-sop heroes.” 63 The last straw for Felix came in February and March 1831, when the Nazarenes abruptly altered their external appearance. Fearing political unrest in the Papal States and the ire of the Roman populace, they shaved their beards and mustaches but intended to readopt their Christlike trappings once the danger had passed. Felix found the tonsorial adjustments hypocritical. As for the frescos in the Casa Bartholdy, he was able to view them at the end of January 1831 but under less than ideal conditions. The drawing room was now the bedroom of English ladies, detracting considerably from the Old Testament scenes of Joseph and his brothers, the interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dreams, and the lunettes by Veit and Overbeck of the years of plenty and famine. In the middle of the room stood a four-post bed, which could do little more than allude to Veit’s panel depicting Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Still, Felix found the frescos a “noble, regal idea.” 64

  He was dutifully impressed with the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, celebrated for the Alexander frieze symbolizing Napoleon’s triumphant entry into Rome (1812). Felix went weekly to the Quirinal Palace to study the panels depicting the vanquished Babylonians bringing tribute to Alexander, the whole a glorification of classical antiquity. Felix visited the artist’s studio and offered piano improvisations while the leonine sculptor molded a figure in brown clay. It was a model of the Byron monument for Trinity College, Cambridge (1831), with the philhellene poet, “sufficiently gloomy and elegiac,” seeking inspiration amid classical ruins, his feet resting upon the capital of a broken column. 65

  Another expatriate, Horace Vernet, enjoyed warm relations with Felix. The director of the French Academy in Rome since 1828, Vernet was known for rousing battle paintings glorifying the Revolution and Empire. But when Charles X forbade an official exhibition of Vernet’s work, the flamboyant artist converted his Parisian atelier into a museum, transformed a crepe-covered table into a Napoleonic tombeau , and admitted pilgrims from “the debris of the grande armée .” 66 In January 1831 Felix met Vernet at the French Academy, the Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill, and on learning of his admiration of Mozart’s Don Giovanni , contrived to work its themes into an improvisation, so delighting the Frenchman that he painted Felix’s portrait. It shows a young German gentleman wearing a black cravat and starched collar, with wavy dark locks and a somewhat bemused expression. Felix thought he appeared cross-eyed and that the portrait did not resemble him at all. 67 The same evening there was dancing, and Vernet’s daughter took up a tambourine in the middle of a saltarello. “I wished I had been a painter,” Felix reminisced, “for what a superb picture she would have made.” 68 Instead, he incorporated the whirling leaps of the dance into the finale of a new work forming in his head, the Italian Symphony.

  Through Vernet, Felix met a no less colorful personality, Hector Berlioz, who, having finally won the coveted Prix de Rome, arrived at the Academy on March 11, 1831. Since Berlioz’s matriculation at the Paris Conservatoire in 1827, his unconventional scores had earned him the reputation of a hardened musical iconoclast. Three times he had competed for the prize and unsuccessfully submitted the required cantatas and stilted academic fugues. For the 1830 concours d’essai , the assigned text was La Mort de Sardanapale , treated by Byron and Delacroix, about the destruction of Nineveh and the debauched Assyrian king Sardanapalus. Here art approached life, for as Berlioz was finishing his score, the July Revolution erupted outside the Conservatoire and toppled the venal monarchy of Charles X. But by the time Berlioz found his hunting pistols, he was too late to join the uprising, which had transpired in three “glorious days.” On August 25, a few days after the jury awarded the Prix de Rome, Ferdinand Hiller introduced Berlioz to Felix’s father, who found the Frenchman “agreeable and interesting, and a great deal more sensible than his music.” Abraham reported Berlioz’s intention to seek permission to remain in Paris and forgo the five-year scholarship: “in all classes and trades here young people’s brains are in a state of fermentation: they smell regeneration, liberty, novelty, and want to have their share of it.” 69

  For a few short weeks in Rome Felix and Berlioz enjoyed almost daily contacts, discussed art and music, and explored the city and its environs together. Berlioz recognized in Felix one of the most formidable musical talents of the period. They visited Tasso’s tomb at the convent of San’Onofrio, 70 and at the baths of Caracalla, the conversation turned to religion. According to Berlioz, Felix believed “firmly in his Lutheran faith.” 71 When Berlioz contradicted Felix’s piety with “outrageous” views, Felix slipped and fell on some ruins. “Look at that for an example of divine justice,” Berlioz exclaimed, “I blaspheme, you fall.” 72 While riding in the Campagna, they discussed the Queen Mab scene from Romeo and Juliet as a potential scherzo. Years later, Berlioz incorporated a “double attempt,” a vocal scherzetto and orchestral scherzo, into his dramatic symphony on Shakespeare’s play, but he dreaded that the composer of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture had already preempted the subject. 73

  Felix’s opinion of Berlioz mirrored that of Abraham. Personally Felix found Berlioz likable, a skilled conversationalist with stimulating ideas. The two shared an enthusiasm for Gluck, and they escaped the oppressive sirocco by reading arias from Iphigénie en Tauride , with Felix accompanying Berlioz’s singing. Felix played Beethoven sonatas and shared a recently completed, “fine-spun yet richly colored work,” 74 the Hebrides Overture. But Felix could not abide the quirky, temperamental qualities of Berlioz’s musical style. At their first meeting, Felix had declared the opening of Sardanapalus “pretty awful.” He examined two Shakespearean works, the Overture to King Lear and the Fantasy on The Tempest , later redeployed as the finale of Lélio , sequel to the Symphonie fantastique . But Felix reserved his most acerbic comments for the finale of the symphony, the Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath (Ronde du sabbat ), with its extraordinary mixture of literary program, autobiography, and revolutionary orchestral devices. In a letter to Berlin he decried the “cold passion represented by all possible means: four timpani, two pianos for four hands, which are supposed to imitate bells, two harps, many large drums, violins divided into eight different parts, two different parts for the double basses which play solo passages, and all these means (which would be fine if they were properly used) express nothing but complete sterility and indifference, mere grunting, screaming, screeching here and there.” 75 Felix found the intrusion of autobiography—here Berlioz caricatures his idée fixe , the Shakespearean act
ress Harriet Smithson, as a harlot—unseemly and demeaning. Felix was quite aware of Berlioz’s emotional instability at this time in his life. When Lea hazarded the opinion that Berlioz’s hyperbolic musical effects must have some purpose, Felix answered, “I believe he wishes to be married…. I really cannot stand his obtrusive enthusiasm, and the gloomy despondency he assumes before ladies,—this stereotyped genius in black and white….” 76 In point of fact, Berlioz was desperate for news from his lover, the pianist Camille Moke. Upon learning of her infidelity, he left the Academy at the end of March and resolved to return to Paris to murder Camille, her new lover, and himself. By the time he abandoned the plot Felix had left for Naples. Upon his return in June, the two briefly renewed their friendship; not until 1843 did they cross paths again.

  On November 30, 1830, Pope Pius VIII died after a brief reactionary reign. The day before Felix’s twenty-second birthday, the conclave of cardinals elected Gregory XVI. Because much of the winter was devoted to the funeral rites of Pius and the enthronement of the new pope, “all music … and large parties” came to an end, and Felix turned his critical gaze to the ceremonies of the Church. He described how the construction of the hundred-foot-high catafalque drowned out masses offered for Pius, and how the conclave inspired satires about the cardinals’ vices. From the farthest corner of St. Peter’s Felix viewed the bier in diminished perspective through the spiraling columns of St. Peter’s throne, as high as the palace in Berlin, and listened to the solemn chanting of the absolutions: “When the music commences, the sounds do not reach the other end for a long time, but echo and float in the vast space, so that the most singular and vague harmonies are borne towards you.” 77 The elevation of the new pope coincided with the arrival of the Roman Carnival, and Felix now indulged in the liberating frivolity and commingling of the classes—the motley masks, horse racing on the Corso, and throwing of confetti, a carefree explosion of humanity when Romans threw “dignity and prudence to the winds.” 78 The supplication of the Jews “to be suffered to remain in the Sacred City for another year” put Felix in a “bad humor,” for he could understand neither the Jewish oration nor the Christian response. A week later, on February 12, he joined a horseback excursion around the walls of Rome, but on his return he found soldiers with loaded arms occupying the piazzas and no signs of merriment. 79 The July Revolution had triggered revolts in Modena and Parma (Paris was then the locus of the carbonari , the Italian revolutionary society), and sympathetic disturbances in the Papal States had prompted the suspension of the carnival.

  There ensued some uneasy weeks while Felix assured his family of his safety. In March the Austrians suppressed the uprisings, and Felix decided to remain in Rome to witness Holy Week. He described services in St. Peter’s and the Quirinal: the pope distributing twisted palms to the cardinals arrayed in a quadrangle on Palm Sunday; the psalmody alternating between two choirs during nocturns on Wednesday, culminating with the pope kneeling before the altar and the Miserere ; the washing of the pilgrims’ feet on Thursday; the adorning of the cross by the shoeless pontiff on Good Friday; the symbolic baptism of a child, representing Jews and Moslems, on Saturday at St. John Lateran; and the pope’s High Mass on Sunday. In addition to the constant chanting (Felix detected eight different formulae for the psalms but found the Gregorian monophony a “mechanical monotony” 80 ), there was sacred polyphony—Palestrina’s Improperia (Reproaches) for the Adoration of the Cross and Victoria’s St. John Passion (1585). Felix judged the latter, in which chant alternated with choruses for the turba scenes, abstract and unconvincing when compared to the dramatic cogency of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; Victoria offered neither “a simple narrative, nor yet a grand, solemn, dramatic truth.” 81 Instead, the chorus (“very tame Jews indeed!” Felix observed) sang the same music for et in terra pax and Barabbas , and no musical distinction was drawn between Pilate and the Evangelist.

  The legendary Miserere of Gregorio Allegri, a setting of Psalm 51 sung by the Papal Choir during Holy Week since the seventeenth century, especially piqued Felix’s interest. A papal ban on copying this work had magnified its allure over the decades; when the fourteen-year-old Mozart visited St. Peter’s in 1770, he summoned his prodigious memory to prepare his own copy. In 1831 Felix partially replicated this feat by recording some passages in letters to Berlin, including one striking refrain, in which the soprano part soared to an elevated C, transforming the male voices into “angels from on high.” Perceptively, Felix surmised that underlying this sublime effect were elementary harmonic sequences, to which various embellishments had accrued over time, so that the work’s beauty was fundamentally “earthly and comprehensible.” 82

  III

  During the Roman sojourn Felix composed a great deal of sacred music, alternating between Catholic and Lutheran texts that seemingly relived the narrative of the Reformation Symphony. He visited the Roman monastery where Luther had arrived a priest in 1511 and left a reformer. In the end, Felix remained a devout Protestant. Hauser’s gift of Lutheran hymns proved a wellspring of inspiration. Felix’s first setting, finished on November 20, was Mitten wir im Leben sind , based on the Reformer’s reworking of a ninth-century antiphon. This powerful, stark composition—Felix wrote that it growled angrily or whistled darkly 83 —unfolds in three strophes, each concluding with “Kyrie eleison.” Felix’s music employs only the first two phrases of the chorale. Several choral techniques capture the grim images of mankind, encircled by the fires of hell, appealing to the Lord for salvation: dividing the eight-part ensemble into its male and female parts, combining the two for expressive homophony, and injecting compact imitative motives into the texture. A gem among Felix’s sacred music (Johannes Brahms later prized the autograph), the motet is conspicuously un-Bachian, as if Felix temporarily ignored his penchant for complex linear counterpoint.

  Far less imposing is Verleih’ uns Frieden , the Lutheran Da pacem Domine . Felix conceived this work as a canon (the duetlike cellos at the opening are a vestige of this plan) but again avoided a contrapuntal display in favor of three direct supplications for the basses, sopranos, and full choir. The orchestral accompaniment supports the gradual swelling of registers, with low strings for the first, and winds and violins for the second and third, as the gentle prayer for peace becomes more fervent. Robert Schumann treasured this expressive miniature; “Madonnas by Raphael and Murillo,” he mused, “cannot remain long from view.” 84

  Two other Lutheran chorales, Vom Himmel hoch and Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott , inspired full-scale cantatas that anticipated the grandeur of Felix’s first oratorio, St. Paul. Vom Himmel hoch , dated January 28, 1831, falls into six movements, with the celebrated Christmas hymn featured in the first, third, and sixth; the intervening movements offer freely composed arias and an arioso. The brightly scored first movement—the music bursts forth with a descending violin figure from “on high”—suggests a fantasy on the first two phrases of the chorale (not unlike the finale of the Reformation Symphony), before the entire melody emerges at the end of the movement. Felix again eschews the Bachian prototype of weaving a web of imitative counterpoint around one voice that intones the chorale. In the finale, he accompanies the chorale with sweeping string arpeggiations and festive wind fanfares that take us farther from Bach; indeed, Felix dispenses with the final phrase of the melody, to bring the work to a radiant conclusion in a freely composed coda.

  Similarly, much of Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott , finished in March 1831, employs only the first two phrases of the chorale, the Lutheran Credo. Respecting the tripartite division of the text, Felix apportioned his score into three movements, with successively faster rhythmic values: a walking bass line in quarter notes for the first, and eighth notes and triplets for the second and third. And, he coordinated the rhythmic crescendo with other means, bolstering the strings with winds and trombones for the last two movements, and setting off the imitative, fugal counterpoint of the first two with a forceful unison statement of the chorale in th
e last. Finally, in the closing pages he sprang one more surprise by supplementing the first two phrases of the chorale with his own, freely composed extension of the melody. 85

  Among the Catholic texts set in Rome are Felix’s motets for female choir and organ, composed on the last two days of 1830 but not released until 1838, as the Drei Motetten , Op. 39. They were inspired by the fifteenth-century French church atop the Spanish Steps, the Trinità dei monti, where Felix enjoyed commanding views of the city at dusk, and studied the expressive singing of cloistered French nuns. He resolved to write sacred pieces they might perform for the “barbaro Tedesco , whom they also never beheld.” 86 The motets include Veni Domine (No. 1), for the third Sunday in Advent, with barcarolle-like rhythms and responsorial singing. In 1837, Felix replaced O beata et benedicta , a short homophonic setting for the Feast of the Trinity, 87 by Laudate pueri (No. 2), a setting of verses from Psalms 113 and 128. Its euphonious melodic lines appear to recall the Kyrie of Palestrina’s Missa Assumpta est Maria , which Baini may have introduced to Felix. Surrexit pastor (No. 3), for the second Sunday after Easter, treats Christ the Good Shepherd. Here Felix enlarges the chorus from three to four parts, not to accommodate imitative polyphony but to reinforce the largely consonant, diatonic harmonies that characterize these motets.

  Arguably the most impressive of Felix’s Roman sacred works is Psalm 115, Non nobis Domine (“Not unto us, O Lord”), finished on November 15, 1830, and scored for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Felix had sketched the work in 1829 in England, 88 when he found inspiration examining the autograph of Handel’s Dixit Dominus (composed during that composer’s Roman sojourn of 1707). Here Felix discovered another cantata-like setting in G minor of a Vulgate text, Psalm 110. The two internal movements of Felix’s composition, a duet with chorus and baritone arioso, give full expression to a warm, Italianate lyricism; embedded in the arioso (“The Lord shall increase you more and more”) is the four-note psalm intonation familiar from the opening of the Reformation Symphony. The finale (“The dead praise not the Lord”) begins in the key of the arioso, E ♭ major, as an eight-part, a cappella chorus sings the last two psalm verses in stately block harmonies. Felix redirects the “final” cadence to G minor, and now, in a subdued postlude, the chorus revives the text of the first verse. A few measures later, the principal theme of the first movement reappears, metrically transformed from the original to time, an eerie reminiscence that unifies the whole ( ex. 8.8 ). For five years, Felix set aside the composition; when the Bonn firm of Simrock published it as Op. 31 in 1835, the Latin text appeared alongside a new German translation (“Nicht unserm Namen, Herr”), prepared by Felix himself, in order to render the Latin psalm marketable to German taste.