Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  Ex. 8.8 : Mendelssohn, Psalm 115 (Non nobis Domine ), Op. 31 (1830), Third Movement

  Felix’s visit to the timeless city thus facilitated an immersion into sacred Catholic music, yet confirmed his identity as a Protestant German composer. But as he studied Gregorian chant in St. Peter’s and admired Palestrina’s mellifluous polyphony, Felix also took up several major works of a decidedly romantic and modern stance. He made progress on the Scottish Symphony, though the eruption of spring in March banished his “misty Scotch mood,” and instead he took up the brightly hued Italian Symphony, of which he evidently sketched three movements in Rome. And, he began to compose the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht and conjured up vivid musical imagery for the clashes in Goethe’s ballade between the early Christians and Druids on the Brocken. For Rebecka Felix drafted a wistful Lied ohne Worte in A minor, later subsumed into the first published set as Op. 19b No. 2. But the most significant accomplishment was the first draft of the Hebrides Overture, finished on Abraham’s birthday, December 11, 1830. For some time Felix had struggled with the title, which he renamed Ouverture zur einsamen Insel (Overture to the Solitary Island ). 89 He left no clues about the meaning of this revision: perhaps he was recollecting the bleak image of the tiny, windswept Staffa buffeted by the ocean; perhaps he was recalling the Ossianic poems, where Fingal’s fleet is labeled “the ships of the lonely isles”; or perhaps he was alluding to the second canto of Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake , which describes Ellen’s refuge as “the lonely isle.” 90 By December 16 Felix completed a second score of the overture that reverted to the original title, Die Hebriden . 91 Like Die einsame Insel , Die Hebriden was longer than the final, published version. 92 The hypercritical Felix was still not content and wrote Fanny that the noisy end of the exposition was lifted from the Reformation Symphony. 93 Temporarily banishing the seascapes of Die Hebriden from his mind, he instead prepared to visit the sun-drenched coast of Naples.

  IV

  In the company of German painters, Felix departed Rome on April 10, 1831, and followed the Appian Way south. Rapidly crossing the malariainfested Pontine Marshes, they paused in Gaeta, where Grillparzer had written the poem that inspired Fanny’s Italien . Recalling his sister’s Lied, Felix now surrendered to sensual landscapes of fragrant lemon and orange groves, with Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the distance. On April 12 he stood on a balcony in Naples and could survey more clearly the dormant volcano, the islands of Ischia and Procida, and off the Sorrentine coast, the enchanting Capri. Though he renewed his friendship with Julius Benedict, conductor of Neapolitan opera, there were some disappointments. Felix regretted not finding smoke rising from Vesuvius and, at Abraham’s bidding, abandoned a plan to emulate Goethe’s itinerary by visiting Sicily. For nearly two months Felix indulged in a Neapolitan lassitude: he sketched the indescribable scenery, worked on his cantata, and read Sterne, Fielding, and his grandfather’s Phaedon . He was critical of the social polarization he found: a sprawling underclass of desperate beggars and thieves, and a dissolute upper class. Felix felt keenly the lack of a prosperous middle class. The balmy atmosphere was “suitable for grandees who rise late, … then eat ice, and drive to the theater at night, where again they do not find anything to think about”; but also suitable for “a fellow in a shirt, with naked legs and arms, who also has no occasion to move about—begging for a few grani when he has literally nothing left to live on.” 94

  Nor did Neapolitan musical life satisfy Felix. He compared the orchestra and chorus to those of provincial German towns and was annoyed to observe the first violinist at the opera beating time on a tin candlestick, the metallic tapping sounding “somewhat like obbligati castanets, only louder.” 95 He deplored the quality of singing, for the best Italian soloists had left for London and Paris; only the fiorituri of the French soprano Joséphine Fodor, whom he heard in private, were taste ful. For several weeks the theaters were closed in honor of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples, whose blood, preserved in a reliquary, was expected to liquefy in May. 96 Consequently, Felix left no description of the renowned Teatro San Carlo, although he did meet Donizetti, who had filled the vacuum caused by Rossini’s departure in 1822 and was busily churning out operas, sometimes, Felix reported, in the space of ten days. If Donizetti’s reputation fell into jeopardy, he might devote as much as three weeks to an opera, “bestowing considerable pains on a couple of arias in it, so that they may please the public, and then he can afford once more to … write trash.” 97 (A few years later Felix reassessed this opinion and committed to memory much of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and La Favorite .) But Donizetti’s lack of industry seems to have infected the critic as well: Jules Cottrau, son of the leading Neapolitan music publisher, reported that Felix was now “seized by idleness and somewhat abandoned music.” 98

  Indeed, he devoted much time to tourism and the “tragedy” of the Present and the Past, by contrasting the colorful if grim reality of Naples with the constant reminders of Roman and Greek antiquity—Virgil’s grave at Posillipo; the eerily preserved ruins of Pompeii (“as if the inhabitants had just gone out” 99 ); the terraced villas and thermal baths of Baia, where Odysseus moored; the Sibyl’s cave at Cumae and nearby Lake Avernus, entrance to the classical underworld; and, at the most southern point of Felix’s tour, the majestic temples of Paestum. There were limitless opportunities for drawing with his companions, Wilhelm von Schadow, Theodor Hildebrandt, Eduard Bendemann, and Carl Sohn. Along the Gulf of Salerno Felix recorded a breathtaking view of Amalfi, later worked up into a vibrant water color (see p. 329): in the foreground, a languid fountain reflecting ruined columns; beyond, a dramatic drop to the medieval maritime town, its bleached buildings perched on the jutting cliffs of the gulf (plate 11 ). The islands, fabled in antiquity and modernity as sybaritic resorts, did not fail to entice Felix and his companions, though on Procida they found women wearing Greek dress, who did “not look at all prettier for doing so.” 100 On Ischia, they ascended on mules the extinct volcano Monte Epomeo, and on the acacia-scented Capri they climbed in blistering heat five-hundred-and-thirty-seven steps to Anacapri, where Felix surveyed mosquelike churches with rounded domes. Above all, he yielded to the allure of the Blue Grotto, “rediscovered” only in 1826. Rather than a concert overture, the visit inspired a vivid description. The water resembled panes of opal glass; through the narrow aperture of the entrance the sun filled the cavern with refracting light, producing magical aquamarines on the dome of the cave. It was as if one “were actually living under the water for a time.” 101

  On June 5 Felix began winding up his affairs in Rome. Writing to Thomas Attwood in polished English, Felix disclosed he had “finished” a new symphony, from which we might infer that his sketch of the Italian Symphony was completed during the Neapolitan sojourn. Still, he continued to lament the state of Italian music: “The fortunate circumstances which formerly made this country a country of arts seem to have ceased and arts with them.” 102 He discussed with Berlioz the musical scene in Paris 103 and in letters home broached the possibility of returning to London, “that smoky place” fated to be his “favorite residence,” 104 where he intended to meet Paul, about to leave the parental nest to join a London banking firm. To Felix’s concern, the family dynamic had been strained in February, when Rebecka revealed her desire to marry Dirichlet. Again Lea opposed the match, presumably because the young mathematician did not have sufficient means; not until November 5 was the engagement official. 105 Fanny endeavored to comfort her sister but also found joy in completing a cantata, Lobgesang , for Sebastian’s first birthday. Based largely on scriptural texts, the composition celebrates childbirth and reaffirms Fanny’s difficult pregnancy by drawing on John 16:21: “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” The work opens with a Handelian pastoral for orchestra and contains a graceful soprano aria; still, Felix d
etected several infelicities in the orchestration and was unconvinced by the selection of texts, for “not everything in the Bible” is “suggestive of music.” 106

  Departing Rome on June 18, 1831, Felix traveled via Terni and Arezzo to Florence, and again imbibed freely of the surfeit of art in the Uffizi. The Tribune Room became his observation post; with a few glances he could survey the Venus de Medici and masterpieces by Raphael, Perugino, and his preferred Titian. Later, in the 1870s, Samuel Butler targeted Felix’s effusive description of these treasures. In Butler’s scathing indictment of Victorian society, The Way of All Flesh , the Englishman George Pontifex, in the midst of a grand tour, endured three hours in the Uffizi succumbing to “genteel paroxysms of admiration.” Felix claimed to have spent two hours in the Tribune Room and innocently provided grist for Butler’s mill: “I wonder how many chalks Mendelssohn gave himself for having sat two hours on that chair. I wonder how often he looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up…. But perhaps if the truth were known his two hours was [sic ] not quite two hours.” 107

  Passing through Genoa, Felix reached Milan, capitol of Austrian Lombardy, in early July. At the Brera, he admired Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin (Sposalizio ), later the inspiration for Franz Liszt’s impressionistic piano piece. Felix finished a draft of Die erste Walpurgisnacht and pondered whether to add a “symphonic” overture or short introduction “breathing of spring.” He met several foreign musicians, including the Russian composer M. I. Glinka, accompanied by the tenor Nicola Ivanov. 108 Then there was Carl Thomas Mozart (1784–1858), the elder surviving son of the composer, for whom Felix rendered the overtures to Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute . Mozart was among the very first to hear portions of Die erste Walpurgisnacht . And finally, Felix met the Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, an accomplished pianist to whom Beethoven had dedicated the Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 101. Felix and the Baroness played sonatas for each other, and she regaled him with anecdotes about Beethoven, how he used a candlesnuffer as a toothpick, and how, when she lost her last child, he comforted her by “speaking” in tones at the piano for over an hour. 109

  In Milan Felix took stock of Italy. To Devrient’s insistence he write opera, Felix replied he would find a worthy libretto in Munich on his return journey, and that in Italy he had composed sacred music from inner necessity. He remained unrelenting in his criticism of Italian musical culture: a Bavarian barmaid, he opined, sang better than musicians trained in Italy, who “ape the little originalities, naughtinesses, and exaggeration of the great singers, and call that method.” Italy was a “land of art, because it is a chosen land of nature, where there is life and beauty everywhere.” 110 But the “land of the artist” remained Germany, and Felix now considered whether he should strengthen ties to London, Paris, and Munich, or return to the “stationary, unperturbed” life in Berlin. There, Felix acknowledged, after the revival of the St. Matthew Passion, he had been offered the directorship of the Singakademie. But after his return from England, there had been no further discussion; now, in order to accept it honorably, he felt compelled to stage another public event in Berlin, several concerts of his own music. 111

  V

  Meanwhile, the Alps loomed before him. In the waning days of July he reached the Borromean Islands, of which Fanny had dreamed in 1822. At the baroque palazzo on the Isola Bella, he found lush gardens with recurring hedges of lemons, oranges, and aloes, “as if, at the end of a piece, the beginning were to be repeated,” a technique of which Felix was fond. 112 He entered Switzerland via the Simplon Pass and, having made a diversion after Martigny to Chamonix to admire again Mont Blanc, reached Geneva on August 1. There he learned Abraham had sustained serious losses in a failed Hamburg bank. 113 But of immediate concern was the weather; as Felix began to retrace in reverse part of the 1822 Swiss holiday, from Vevay to Interlaken, the heavens opened up, flooding much of the countryside. Traveling became laborious or impossible; roads and bridges were washed out, and Felix often ventured forth on foot. Near Interlaken, on August 10, he worked on two Lieder, a setting of Goethe’s Die Liebende schreibt (The Lover Writes ), published posthumously as Op. 86 No. 3, and an unfinished Reiselied on verses of Uhland ( ex. 8.9 ). 114 The texts poeticize Felix’s separation from a beloved (Delphine?) and his identity as a romantic wanderer. Goethe’s poem inspired a gentle series of pedal points in the accompaniment and avoidance of a stable tonic sonority until the end, where the female persona asks for a sign from her lover. Uhland’s verses, about a traveler riding into a moonless, starless land beset by raging winds, prompted more insistent pedal points, as if Felix sought to recapture the mood of Schubert’s Erlkönig , with its celebrated nocturnal ride. The choice of key, A minor, seems calculated to underscore the distance from Munich and Delphine, whose lyrical voice in Die Liebende schreibt sings in E ♭ major.

  Ex. 8.9a: Mendelssohn, Die Liebende schreibt , Op. 86 No. 3 (1831)

  Ex. 8.9b: Mendelssohn, Reiselied (1831)

  In Engelberg, Felix visited the twelfth-century Benedictine Abbey and, a “very Saul among the prophets,” 115 participated in a Mass at the organ. At the end of August he ascended the Rigi and again witnessed a sublime dawn on the summit, before persevering through the inundations to Appenzell and St. Gallen. He left Switzerland a practiced yodeler and on September 5 crossed the Rhine to Bavarian Lindau. Finding an organ, he played J. S. Bach’s hauntingly beautiful chorale setting of Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele to his heart’s content. The shabby, rainsoaked pedestrian now changed into a “town gentleman, with visiting-cards, fine linen, and a black coat.” 116

  He completed that transformation in Munich, but not before reading newspaper accounts of the advancing Asiatic cholera and longing to see his family. But Abraham insisted Felix adhere to his plan, and so he gave a concert of his own music on October 17 at the Odeon Hall. Once again he raised his English baton to direct the Symphony in C minor and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , premiered the Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, and, at the king’s request, improvised on “Non più andrai” from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro . A few days before there was a private performance for the queen, who commented that Felix’s extemporizing had transported the rapt royal audience, whereupon Felix “begged to apologize for carrying away Her Majesty, etc.” 117 He enjoyed casual music making with several Munich acquaintances—the gregarious clarinetist Baermann, the diffident virtuoso pianist Adolf Henselt, and, of course, Josephine Lang and Delphine von Schauroth. In the year before his return to Munich, Josephine had made great strides in composition—her newest Lieder contained “unalloyed musical delight”; Felix offered daily lessons in counterpoint and recommended she study with Zelter and Fanny in Berlin. 118

  Delphine’s musicianship too had improved; her playing displayed ease of execution and “sparkled with fire”—and she had become “very pretty,” resembling a papoose (Steckkissen ). But when King Ludwig played matchmaker and urged Felix to marry her, the flustered composer chose to sustain their relationship through piano music. On September 18 he finished a virtuoso solo piece in two movements, a lyrical Andante in B major joined to an impetuous Allegro in B minor. 119 Reminiscent of the Rondo capriccioso , the composition later appeared with orchestral accompaniment as the Capriccio brillant , Op. 22. Felix also completed and dedicated to Delphine the Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25. Though Felix’s Italian letters refer to ideas for the new concerto, he drafted most of the work and scored it hastily in Munich. One clear sign is that the autograph full score 120 does not contain the piano part, which Felix presumably performed from memory. Another is that on October 6, less than two weeks before the premiere, Delphine herself contributed a “deafening” passage, 121 presumably one of the noisy octave or arpeggiation passages in the first movement.

  In three connected movements, Op. 25 is Felix’s first concerto to observe the telescoped formal plan of Weber’s Konzertstück . Thus, in the first movement he truncates the traditional opening orchestral tutti and en
ables the soloist to appear dramatically after a terse, crescendo-like introduction. The piano entrance resembles more a cadenza than a thematic utterance, and elsewhere too the music expresses a certain thematic freedom and formal spontaneity. For example, the second theme swerves from the expected mediant key, B ♭ , to the remote key of D=. The luminous, nocturne-like Andante explores the sharp key of E, an unusual choice after G minor but not coincidentally the key of the Rondo capriccioso and Delphine’s Lied ohne Worte for Felix. The effervescent finale erupts in a bright G major and, like the finale of Weber’s Konzertstück , exploits two thematic ideas, the first doubled in octaves, the second a turning figure concealed in glittery virtuoso passagework. To tie the composition together, Felix recalls material from the first movement just before the jubilant coda. Popular through much of the nineteenth century, Op. 25 was gently caricatured in Berlioz’s Evenings with the Orchestra , where thirty-one competing pianists perform it on an Erard, causing the instrument to ignite in a spontaneous Da capo , “flinging out turns and trills like rockets.” 122