Mendelssohn: A Life in Music
Page 40
Flushed with triumph, Felix departed with Abraham for London, where they arrived on June 5. Now it was the father’s opportunity to marvel at St. Paul’s looming from the foggy metropolis of nearly one and a half million and to experience English weather: “This morning … the sun was just powerful enough to give a yellow tinge to the mist, and the air was just like the smoke of a great fire. ‘A very fine morning!’ said my barber…. ‘Is it?’ asked I. ‘Yes, a very fine morning!’ and so I learned what a fine summer morning here is like.” 76 Abraham joined Felix in musical society and witnessed his son’s improvisations and performances of Bach at St. Paul’s and the eighth concert of the Philharmonic on June 10, when the Trumpet Overture, now expressly composed for the Society, was played. The next day Felix visited Alfred Novello and received royalties of £4 16s for the meager forty-eight copies of Op. 19b sold the previous year (deflating Felix’s jesting boast that the proceeds would enable him to purchase a seat in the House of Commons and “become a Radical by profession”). 77 In March Felix had composed an organ fugue in D minor (later subsumed in the third Prelude and Fugue of Op. 37) for Alfred’s father, Vincent, and in July sketched in his album a chromatic, Bachian organ prelude. 78 But not until 1836 did the firm become Felix’s principal English publisher, though within a few years, the relationship would sour.
On June 15 Felix stood as godfather at the christening of his namesake, Felix Moscheles, for whom the composer wrote the lullaby Bei der Wiege , later published as Op. 47 No. 6, on a text by Klingemann. 79 A few days later Felix again inspected Brunel’s tunnel, presumably in Abraham’s company. Felix’s diary also records an excursion to Greenwich, where father and son visited the Royal Observatory and where a “thousand subjects for marine paintings”—the interminable commerce on the Thames—“followed each other.” 80 At Somerset House, Abraham contemplated an exhibition of “living artists” but disagreed sharply with Felix about a canvas of David Wilkie depicting a young Capuchin at confession; in the father’s view, the monk “must have taken an emetic for the occasion.” 81
At the beginning of July Felix and Abraham visited Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. But while viewing English men-of-war at the Portsmouth naval dockyards, 82 Abraham injured his leg, and after only a day at Ryde on the Isle of Wight they returned to London. For weeks the invalid underwent a “therapy” of Bach fugues at 103 Great Portland Street from his doting son and Moscheles. Although Abraham’s activities were restricted, he was able to attend a soirée featuring the ravishing mezzosoprano Maria Malibran. 83 After performing a medley of Spanish songs, an English sea-song, and French tambour-ditty, she approached Felix: “Now, Mr. Mendelssohn, I never do nothing for nothing :—I have sung to please you—will you not play to please me?” Felix dexterously wove ideas from Malibran’s songs into a quodlibet- like improvisation, impelling an incredulous Vincent Novello to exclaim, “He has done some things that seem to me to be impossible, even after I have heard them done.” 84
During the fourth London sojourn, Felix attended further sessions of Parliament. On July 23, he reported the passage in the House of Commons of the Jewish Civil Disabilities Act, which removed lingering policies of discrimination by permitting English Jews to vote and serve in public office. Ironically, just a few days before, Felix had read in the London Times about the Posen statutes, by which Frederick William III, “the new lawgiver of the Jews, with probably no chance of being reckoned their second Moses,” had placed new restrictions on Polish Jews residing in the Prussian duchy of Poznań. 85 To his family Felix reacted to these events: “This morning they emancipated the Jews, which greatly amuses me, especially since a few days ago your wretched Posen statutes were rightly and justly put down.” 86 As Jeffrey Sposato has shown, Felix’s comments were retouched by Eric Werner, who cited the letter in 1955 and 1963 and then in the 1980 German edition of his biography. 87 Werner doctored the text, by replacing “which greatly amuses me” (das amusirt mich prächtig ) with “which makes me proud” (das macht mich stolz ), and, in a subsequent passage, extending Felix’s summary, “This is totally noble and beautiful,” to “This is quite noble and fills me with gratitude to Heaven.” Werner appears to have fabricated evidence to strengthen Felix’s identification with his Jewish heritage, whereas Felix’s sense of “amusement” suggests a detached spectator, notwithstanding his clear concern for the plight of the Posen Jews. In 1833, as he began work on the libretto of St. Paul , Felix remained a devout Neuchrist , as if to confirm Devrient’s observation that his friend usually “avoided all reference to his Jewish descent.” 88 But Felix’s father was considerably closer to the issue of emancipation and made this assessment to Lea: “at present there are only 27,000 Jews [in England], among them many rich, still more who are prosperous, and nearly all self-supporting, in a population of nearly 24,000,000, which admittedly permits a different action than do the Prussians in Posen.” Abraham predicted that if the law passed the Upper House of Parliament, England would become the haven of Jews, who “since the birth of Christ have never experienced anywhere such a complete emancipation.” 89
Of new music, Felix finished relatively little during the summer of 1833. The exception is a graceful, through-composed setting of Byron’s love poem “There be none of beauty’s daughters,” drafted on August 3, possibly for one of the Horsley daughters. 90 By this time, the Overture to the Fair Melusine was sufficiently advanced for Felix to render it at the piano, and he agreed to prepare a piano duet arrangement for Mary and Sophy. 91 A third, gestating composition was the Rondo brillant , Op. 29, for piano and orchestra, which Felix offered Breitkopf & Härtel on August 9, and tried out for the Horsleys later that month. 92 Meanwhile, at Great Portland Street, the convalescing Abraham received several English acquaintances. When the Horsleys arrived on July 20, the second daughter, Fanny, found a lachrymose, frenzied Felix rushing about Abraham’s room (“But most geniuses are the same,” she reflected, and “at any rate he is always delightful for he is always original”). 93 Abraham was especially grateful to the family of Claud Alexander, a Scottish laird who had made his fortune in the East India Company and cotton industry. In London, the Alexanders resided in fashionable Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, near Great Portland Street, where the unmarried daughters, garbed in black like the three ladies in Mozart’s Magic Flute , arrived bearing gifts of arrowroot, port wine, and marmalade. Though Margaret, Anna-Joanna, and Mary were all older than Felix, he appears to have flirted with Mary, who, musically inclined and attractive, became infatuated with him. 94 Felix gave her a piano piece or song as a memento of their friendship, and shortly before he left London with Abraham, she reciprocated by sending a seal for use in his future correspondence. It bore a running hound and the prophetic words, Je reviens ; in a note, Mary hinted that the short weeks since their meeting “made us better known to each other than years could have done passed in the usual frigid atmosphere of fashions.” 95
Eager to return to Germany, Felix and Abraham departed on August 25 and crossed the Channel to Rotterdam. Abraham longed to see his new grandson, Walter Dirichlet, born to Rebecka and Gustav on July 2, and to examine Hensel’s imposing new canvas, Christus vor Pilatus (Christ before Pilate ), about to be exhibited in Berlin. Concealing that Felix was accompanying him, Abraham notified his family he was traveling with a young painter named Alphonse Lovie. 96 When the two paused in Düsseldorf, Felix conferred with Immermann, who promoted his idea for a new municipal theater and won Felix’s participation in a planning committee. Then, proceeding up the Rhine, Abraham and Felix visited Joseph Mendelssohn in Horchheim. Here, misfortune struck again: accidentally stepping on a nail, Abraham was laid up with a new foot injury. Not until September 13 did the two reach Berlin and unmask Alphonse Lovie as Felix.
The reunion was joyful but brief. On September 15, Felix performed his Piano Concerto No. 1 and J. S. Bach’s Concerto in D minor at Fanny’s Sunday musicale, then left the next morning for Leipzig. As he observed to Rosen, other than his family, h
e now had nothing to do with Berliners or Berlin. 97 Even his nomination to the Prussian Academy of Arts, along with Meyerbeer and Rungenhagen, had filled Felix with misgivings. When news of that honor had leaked in May, Meyerbeer wrote to his wife that the king might rescind the nomination because of his Jewish faith; 98 Felix was also potentially susceptible to this discrimination. The nomination went forward, though not until December, with prodding from Abraham, did Felix send his acceptance. 99
Arriving in mid-September in Leipzig, Felix stayed with Franz Hauser; in pursuit of Bachiana, the two visited the Thomaskantor C. T. Weinlig, who two years before had instructed Richard Wagner in counterpoint. Felix also corrected proofs for the piano-duet arrangement of the Hebrides Overture, about to appear from Breitkopf & Härtel with the bilingual title Ouverture aux Hébrides (Fingals Höhle ), the first public association of the work with Fingal’s Cave. Through Hauser Felix met the deaf illustrator/musician J. P. Lyser (1803–1870), a member of Robert Schumann’s new League of David, that artistic assemblage about to do battle with philistinism. Lyser had attended a reading of the overture and somehow perceived the “original” qualities of its ending, 100 though the effort cost him two days of headaches afterward. Deeply touched, Felix gave Lyser the proofs, in order to facilitate his acquaintance with the score.
VI
Days before his appointment began in October, Felix reached Düsseldorf. To Schubring he confided his purpose in moving there was to secure “quiet and leisure for composition,” 101 while to the authorities he announced his desire to revitalize the municipal musical life. In the early months of the new post, he endeavored to do both. His first official appearance was to conduct a Haydn Mass on October 13, the name day of the emperor Maximilian. For the occasion, Felix composed a processional march in E ♭ , which went awry when half the ensemble failed to repeat the first strain; still, the resulting cacophony was “of no consequence in the open air.” 102 He uncovered more serious shortcomings in the library of the local choral Verein, limited to Masses in “modern dress.” Recalling Thibaut’s zeal for the “pure” a cappella style, Felix rummaged through the archives of neighboring Elberfeld, Bonn, and Cologne for sixteenth-century masses and motets by Palestrina and Lasso, including the Improperia , which Felix had heard in Rome during Holy Week. He also discovered seventeenth and eighteenth-century motets and settings of the Miserere and happened upon Handel’s Alexander’s Feast . Expediting his research in Elberfeld was the journalist A. J. Becher, 103 in Bonn the choral director and music scholar H. C. Breidenstein, and in Cologne the Intendant of cathedral music, E. H. W. Verkenius. 104 Felix made good use of what surely struck Düsseldorfers as museum curiosities: he performed Lasso’s Popule meus on All Saint’s Day (November 1, 1833), and Palestrina’s setting of the Seven Last Words on Good Friday (March 28, 1834).
Laden with historical treasures, Felix returned to Düsseldorf, where preparations were underway for the visit of the crown prince, the future Frederick William IV. When the prince regretted Felix’s decision to leave Berlin, he boasted to his family, “you see I am thought infinitely more precious when I am a little way from home.” 105 Just how precious became evident on October 22, when Felix participated in a sumptuous multimedia fête at the Academy of Art before four hundred guests. 106 This private entertainment blended poetry, music, illuminations, and tableaux vivants in a three-part program introduced by verses of Robert Reinick, who appeared in medieval dress. In the first part, the royal visitor viewed three transparencies after Dürer and Raphael, while a concealed chorus performed works by Lotti and Carl Maria von Weber. In the second, Felix directed choruses from Handel’s Israel in Egypt , behind which three tableaux designed by Eduard Bendemann and Julius Hübner appeared on a stage: the Children of Israel in bondage, Moses leading the exodus, and Miriam’s song. A fourth tableau, designed by Schadow, depicted Lorenzo de Medici surrounded by Dante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, and this one concluded with a Haydn chorus. The third part featured illustrations by Academy painters of scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream .
Unifying these disparate subjects was the implied homage to the prince, celebrated as patron of the arts (hence the allusions to Lorenzo de Medici and Theseus, Prince of Athens) and as a modern Moses preparing to lead the German Volk toward spiritual self-awareness. Though remembered today as the hapless monarch unable to withstand the revolutionary upheaval of 1848, in 1833 Frederick William entertained grandiose visions of completing Cologne cathedral, uniting the arts, and instilling in his future subjects a yearning for an idealized Gothic past.
From Felix’s perspective, the fête underscored the interdependence of the musical and visual, especially in the third tableau, staged with the final number of Handel’s oratorio (Miriam’s solo, “Sing ye to the Lord,” and the culminating choral fugue, “For He hath triumphed gloriously”): “—Miriam, with a silver timbrel, sounding praises to the Lord, and other maidens with harps and citterns, and in the background four men with trombones, pointing in different directions.” Miriam’s solo was sung “behind the scene, as if proceeding from the picture.” Then, when the chorus broke in, real trumpets, trombones, and timpani appeared on stage and “burst in like a thunder-clap,” 107 effectively merging the musical and visual planes. Image thus became sound: the musical references of the tableau were realized by live music on stage; Handel’s word paintings, mirrored by the imagery of the tableau.
On St. Cecilia’s Day (November 22), Felix gave at his first public concert his Piano Concerto No. 1, Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, and, appropriately, Handel’s setting of Dryden’s Ode to St. Cecilia, Alexander’s Feast , or the Power of Music . At Felix’s disposal were a choral Musikverein with one hundred and thirteen amateur singers and an orchestra of about thirty, 108 some of whom were Prussian military officers from the local garrison. Felix lavished special care on Handel’s ode; unconvinced by K. W. Ramler’s 1766 German rendering of the line “So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause” (Heil, Liebe, dir! Der Tonkunst Ehr’ und Dank , or “Hail to thee, Love! Honor and thanks to music”), he revised the entire translation. 109 Meanwhile, in Berlin, Fanny Cäcilie also celebrated the feast day. In two days she composed a verset from the saint’s Mass for soprano solo, chorus, and piano, and performed it with a tableau vivant and sets, designed by Hensel, with mock organ pipes to simulate Cecilia’s preferred instrument. Pauline Decker, attired as Raphael’s Caecilia , sang the solo, first concealed behind the scene and then joining the tableau, in imitation of Felix’s rendition of Miriam for the Crown Prince. 110
Felix now decided to support Immermann’s “master” productions by mounting Mozart’s Don Giovanni . Rehearsals began at the end of November but with a “thoroughly unmasterful cast”; according to Immermann, the conductor was still too young to win respect, and during the twenty rehearsals the cast began to bicker. 111 At the premiere (December 19) a scandal ensued when part of the audience protested the decision of the theater lessee to raise ticket prices. In the first act, the curtain fell three times, and catcalls that drowned out the opening duet of the second act nearly prompted Felix to lay down his baton. He maintained his composure, finished the opera, and then, after conferring with a dismayed Immermann, refused to direct another until apologies were received from the opposition, consisting “mainly of beerhouse keepers and waiters.” 112 For three days the Düsseldorfer Zeitung ran articles about the affair, and a manifesto appeared from concerned members of the Musikverein voicing their support for Felix. 113 On December 23 he led a second, successful performance without incident and acknowledged fanfares from the orchestra. Having survived his first public performance of an opera, 114 Felix left for Bonn to spend Christmas with his cousin, the geographer Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn. From there Felix noted, “the singers who at first … were prejudiced against me personally, as well as against these classical performances, now say they would go to the death for me ….” 115
Ex. 9.12a: Mendelssohn, Fair Melusine Overture, Op. 34 (1833)
Ex. 9.12c: Mendelssohn, Fair Melusine Overture, Op. 34 (1833)
Offsetting the scandal was the stimulation of creative composition. At the end of November he retouched yet again the Hebrides Overture and announced his intention to release it to the world. 116 But the major new work of the season was the Ouvertüre zum Märchen von der schönen Melusine , finished for Fanny’s birthday and dispatched to London early in 1834. The fairy tale of Melusine, who must leave her knightly lover Raimund and human form once a week to change into a mermaid, inspired a finely wrought, delicate score. Concerned that his English audience would not know the German legend, Felix struggled over the title. When Moscheles premiered the overture at the Philharmonic on April 7, 1834, it appeared as Melusine, or the Mermaid and the Knight , hinting at the work’s binary division between supernatural and real worlds. In brief, Felix adapted sonata form to accommodate a double exposition, double development, and double recapitulation. Thus, the first exposition introduces the mermaid’s aqueous music in the winds ( ex. 9.12a ), based upon an ascending motive later adapted by Wagner to depict the Rhine in Das Rheingold . The meter and hypnotic, trochaic rhythms in the accompaniment invoke a ballad-like opening of “once upon a time.” In contrast, the second exposition introduces the masculine world of Raimund, with an energetic theme descending through an F-minor triad ( ex. 9.12b ), and associated with its own distinctive rhythm . A second, lyrical theme in A ♭ ( ex. 9.12c ), accompanied by watery string tremolos, intimates the lovers or, perhaps, Melusine’s human form. Like the dual exposition, the development and reprise alternate between music for the mermaid and the lovers, with the added feature that in the second reprise the two themes are reversed. A coda effects Melusine’s final mermaid transformation, as the work returns to its fluid origins. Once again Felix bends a conventional sonata form to the needs of his subject to produce a circular, symmetrical design.