By this time Felix was preoccupied with the final choruses of Paulus ; he also crafted another example of his whimsical, tripping elfin style, the Scherzo a capriccio in F# minor, 23 dispatched to Paris early in November for a new piano album. Then tragedy struck. On November 15 Abraham had a heated discussion with Varnhagen von Ense about the Junges Deutschland movement, whose adherents, a loosely knit group of young writers associated with the emigré Heine, were about to face prosecution in Prussia for alleged blasphemy and immorality. Varnhagen made the mistake of defending them and deprecating Lessing, venerated by Abraham as his father’s constant friend. In a letter begun the next day, after likening Lessing to a “sun in which dark spots may be seen through smoked glasses,” Abraham questioned Varnhagen’s decision to champion “men who as yet have only shown spots, behind which we are allowed to suppose a sun.” 24 Two nights later, after listening to his family reading Rousseau’s Émile , Abraham fell ill. Though doctors found no cause for alarm, the next morning, at 10:30 A.M ., death “in its most peaceful, beautiful aspect” 25 visited Abraham; to Schubring Felix reported that his father slipped away serenely, as had Moses Mendelssohn. 26 Luise Hensel had lost her mother only weeks before and had a premonition of Abraham’s passing; to Clemens Brentano she regretted not converting him to Catholicism. She believed that despite his embrace of Protestantism, he had died, like his father, a deist. 27
The afternoon of Abraham’s death, Wilhelm Hensel journeyed to Leipzig to break the news to Felix. Securing a deputy for the impending concerts, Felix returned home the morning of November 21. Devastated by the loss, he was initially unable to grieve. At the funeral (November 23) he found the violinist Ferdinand David, just arrived from Estonia, whom Abraham had taken under his wing when the young David had mourned his own parents’ deaths. 28 David agreed to apply for the post of Gewandhaus concertmaster, newly vacated by Matthäi’s death. The two friends proceeded together to Leipzig, where with a heavy heart Felix directed three more concerts, the last of which (December 17) again featured Clara Wieck. In the audience that night were Paul and Albertine Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who escorted Felix to Berlin on December 22. During the Christmas holidays, an “inexpressibly wretched,” “purposeless” 29 Felix reviewed his parents’ will and comforted Lea. The closing days of the year found him in Leipzig revising the Fugue in F minor, Op. 35 No. 5, for Clara Wieck, 30 while from Berlin, Fanny rued that her family was now in its seventh year of separation. 31
I
Felix had lost his “instructor in art and in life,” 32 who had followed keenly the progress of the oratorio, and, like a conscience, urged Felix to finish it. Now, in the New Year, suffering from insomnia and avoiding society, Felix redoubled his efforts, even as Fanny, who perused the work in Berlin on Felix’s twenty-seventh birthday, caviled about some recitatives she found “really pointless or too modern.” 33 He had intended to premiere Paulus with the Frankfurt Cäcilienverein, but Schelble’s debilitating illness rendered the plan impractical. An alternative venue emerged in January, 34 when Felix received an invitation to direct the oratorio at the eighteenth Lower Rhine Music Festival, scheduled for Düsseldorf in May 1836. By the end of February he was pressing to finish the pianovocal score, so that Simrock, who bought the German rights for 60 Louis d’Or, could prepare choral parts for rehearsals under Julius Rietz. Felix dispatched the first half on February 27 and half of the second on March 12, the same day he agreed to direct the festival. The remainder followed on April 2. 35 Concurrently, the composer labored over the full score and was able to date its two parts on April 8 and April 18, 36 and thus brought to closure, or so it seemed, a prolonged, two-year effort.
The scores Felix released to Simrock had already undergone extensive revisions, for in assembling the draft the composer had deleted at least ten numbers. Happily, they have survived in volume 28 of the Berlin Nachlass . Four years after the 1836 premiere, Felix played through the rejected movements for Moscheles, who, noting their conspicuously dramatic treatment, judged them as “perhaps more adapted for isolated pieces in the concert-room than to be heard in connection with the oratorio itself.” 37 Still unpublished, these movements were included in a 1998 commercial recording of the oratorio 38 that opened a new window into the tangled evolution of the work that catapulted Felix to the forefront of German music.
In several cases, he revised or replaced the rejected numbers. For example, following the opening chorus there was originally a three-fold statement of the chorale Ach bleib mit deiner Gnade bei uns, Herr Jesu Christ (“Ah, remain with us in Thy mercy, Lord Jesus Christ”), with an embellished tenor line woven into its second verse. Instead, Felix substituted a simple setting of the chorale Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr , as if respecting Abraham’s view about so-called figured chorales: “No liberties ought ever assuredly to be taken with a chorale. Its highest purpose is, that the congregation should sing it in all its purity to the accompaniment of the organ; all else seems to me idle and inappropriate for a church.” 39
Another discarded draft, “Herr Gott, dess die Rache ist,” was Saul’s original entrance aria in Part 1. Drawing upon Psalms 94 and 18 (“O Lord, you God of vengeance, shine forth!”), Felix drafted a solo for Saul in an agitated, though subdued C minor, with supporting interjections from a male chorus ( ex. 10.1 ). But this attempt yielded to a much more compelling rage aria for Saul in B minor (No. 12, 40 “Vertilge sie, Herr Zebaoth,” Psalm 59:13), preceded by a short recitative (Acts 8:3, “But Saul was ravaging the Church”) that focused attention on Saul as persecutor of the early Christians.
Part 2 contained several movements Felix excised but did not replace. A recitative early in the second part, “Die unter Euch Gott fürchten,” delivered part of Paul’s sermon at Antioch (Acts 13), including verse 39, “by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses,” and followed by a setting of the staple Lutheran chorale Ein’ feste Burg (“A mighty fortress”). But Felix removed the dramatic presentation of the sermon and let stand alone the concise, third-person recitative (“So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord,” Acts 9:28). A complex of discarded movements originally enhanced the scene at Lystra, in which the gentiles worship Barnabas and Paul as Jupiter and Mercury. Among three rejected “Gentile choruses” was a female chorus in G with swaying, siciliano-like rhythms (Psalm 147, “Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving”), a full, robust chorus in D on the unidentified text “Danket den Göttern” (“Thanks to the gods”), and a “merry F#-minor chorus of pagans” 41 (“Lobt ihn mit Pfeifen,” on verses from Psalms 150, 148, and 146), which erupts with clamorous woodwind trills and brass tremolos ( ex. 10.2 ). Alternating between the chorus and soloists, the movement approaches stylistically the Druid choruses in Die erste Walpurgisnacht . Probably sensing he had given disproportionate weight to the Greek pagans, Felix sacrificed all three choruses (later Fanny would argue in vain for the reinstatement of “Lobt ihn mit Pfeifen”). 42
Ex. 10.1 : Mendelssohn, “Herr Gott, dess die Rache ist, erscheine,” rejected movement for Paulus
Ex. 10.2 : Mendelssohn, “Lobt ihn mit Pfeifen,” rejected movement in Paulus
Finally, one other scene from Acts, the imprisonment at Philippi of Paul and Silas, also originally figured in the oratorio. To that end, Felix composed a duet in E for the two, “Gelobet sei Gott” (“Praise be to God,” 2 Corinthians 1), and a recitative, “Suddenly there was an earthquake” (Acts 16:26), to narrate their miraculous release. The chorale O treuer Heiland, Jesu Christ was to have rounded out this complex, but again, all three fell by the wayside by the time of the première.
While hastening to finish his score, 43 Felix dispatched his duties at the Gewandhaus. The year 1836 began with a festive concert featuring Handel’s anthem Zadok the Priest , for which Felix provided new wind parts. The final concert (March 17) included works by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber. Typically in two parts, programs
opened with a symphony or overture, and concluded with a symphony or operatic finale. Between these substantial offerings Felix inserted solo concerti, Lieder, or arias. Among the soloists of the 1835–1836 season were the violinists Ferdinand David and Léon de Saint-Lubin (rivals for the concertmaster vacancy), Viennese cellist Joseph Merk, and soprano Henriette Grabau, with whom Felix read Schubert’s ballade Erlkönig and Ungeduld from Die schöne Müllerin . 44 Felix’s own performance on January 28 of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, caused a sensation. Among the orchestral personnel was an elderly violinist who had heard Mozart render the same concerto in the Gewandhaus and averred that Felix’s cadenzas rivaled Mozart’s. 45 Departing from the license of the time, which emboldened soloists to admit into cadenzas all manners of extraneous virtuosity, Felix treated the improvised passage instead as a miniature composition thematically and harmonically integrated into the work, a “concerto within the concerto.” 46 Thus, the cadenza for the first movement recalled Mozart’s opening piano solo with its expressive octave leap, extracted Mozart’s descending, sighlike figure, repeated the figure through a series of rhythmic accelerations, and then allowed it to dissolve into a series of dramatic trills.
Another less conventional soloist who came to Leipzig in 1836 aroused Felix’s admiration. The Polish Jew M. J. Guzikow (1806–1837), a “phenomenon” “inferior to no virtuoso in the world,” 47 introduced a primitive version of the modern xylophone. Known as the Strohfiedel (“straw fiddle”), this instrument consisted of twenty-eight wooden bars arranged loosely in the shape of a trapezium and resting upon five rolls of straw. Fanny described how in Berlin the musician assembled the instrument before a bemused audience and then extracted sounds resembling Papageno’s flute in Mozart’s Magic Flute . 48 Gusikow’s repertoire included original compositions based on Polish themes and transcriptions of concertos by Weber, Paganini, and others. In dress and habits an Orthodox Jew, Gusikow arrived with a retinue of bearded Polish Jews, who absorbed every positive comment Felix offered. For his part, Felix seems to have distanced himself from the assembly, for he could “not speak for laughing, seeing the small room crammed full of these bearded fellows.” 49 Still, Moses Mendelssohn’s grandson must have regarded the musician, who had risen from the ghetto to win fame on European concert stages, with a sense of distant familiarity.
At the Gewandhaus Felix drew largely upon classic and early nineteenth-century German repertoire and thereby reinforced the canonization of an increasingly familiar musical tradition. Thus, during his first season, Beethoven’s music figured most prominently, with performances of the Violin Concerto, first finale of Fidelio , Consecration of the House and one of the Leonore Overtures, cantata Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt , concert scene Ah, Perfido , and Adelaide , and all the symphonies except the First. Also prominently represented were Weber (several overtures and arias, and the first finale of Oberon ), Mozart (last four symphonies, Piano Concerto, K. 466, and finales from Don Giovanni , Così fan tutte , and La clemenza di Tito ), and Haydn (four symphonies). Of contemporary composers Felix drew principally upon Spohr (Third Symphony, Violin Concerto No. 11), Cherubini (several overtures and excerpts from Ali-Baba ), and himself (Piano Concerto No. 1, and four overtures, Opp. 21, 26, 27, and 32).
In tandem with Felix, Ferdinand David, who held the post of concertmaster from February 1836 for thirty-seven years, instituted in January a series of chamber music concerts. Oversubscribed, the concerts were moved from the Vorsaal to the main hall of the Gewandhaus, to accommodate a second series of Quartettsoirées in February and March. The programming again underscored a distinctly German instrumental progression, with string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, supplemented by works of Spohr and Felix (the Octet, in which Felix participated, and his String Quartet in E ♭ , Op. 12). Among the most memorable offerings was the friends’ rendition of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, performed from memory with a freshness and energy that captivated Leipzigers.
While Felix was experiencing a wintry January in self-imposed solitude, 50 the directors of the Gewandhaus were endeavoring to retain him. Only some three months after his arrival, they pressed to renew his contract (Felix replied he would decide by Easter). By the end of January he was acknowledging to his mother that unlike the petty bickering that had plagued his tenure in Düsseldorf, he had not spent a single irksome (verdrießlich ) day in Leipzig. 51 In February came word that Frankfurt would offer him the directorship of the Cäcilienverein, which he interpreted as an unfortunate omen about Schelble’s health. But Leipzig now prepared to award him a signal honor: on March 8, the faculty of the university voted to confer an honorary doctorate, which occurred on March 20 in a ceremony witnessed by Fanny and Lea, who visited Felix for a few days. 52 The diploma (plate 12 ) cited him as a “most illustrious man” (vir clarissimus ) for his “contributions to the art of music.”
In April Breitkopf & Härtel published the Trois Caprices for piano Op. 33, separately composed between 1833 and 1835. The release prompted reviews by Gottfried Fink in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and Schumann in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . 53 Each caprice comprises a sonata-form movement prefaced by an introduction, ranging from a few, sketchy chords in No. 2 (E major) to more elaborate Adagios in Nos. 1 and 3 (A and B ♭ minor) that bring the pieces into the realm of the fantasy (the beginning of No. 1, subdued arpeggiations over a descending chromatic bass, bears the label Adagio quasi fantasia ). Schumann discerned three different affects in the caprices: the first expressed a “gentle grief,” the second a seductive quality that could “make the most faithful of girls unfaithful for a few moments,” and the third a “speechless, restrained wrath” that burst its boundaries at the conclusion. Schumann’s favorite, the second, elicited a fanciful comparison to Jean Paul—its capricious turns and gossamer-like textures ( ex. 10.3 ) conjured up one of Walt’s “cross-country summer flights” in that madcap novel of adolescent awakening, Flegeljahre .
Ex. 10.3 : Mendelssohn, Caprice in E major, Op. 33 No. 2 (1835)
Another young composer also held Felix in high esteem. On April 11, 1836, the impecunious Richard Wagner, music director of a provincial theater in Magdeburg, sent Felix the score of a symphony in C major, 54 written in 1831 when Wagner was eighteen and performed at the Gewandhaus in 1833 by Felix’s predecessor, Pohlenz. Heavily influenced by Beethoven, Wagner’s youthful essay included as its centerpiece an Andante in A minor redolent of the soulful Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. By 1834 Wagner was assimilating Mendelssohnian features into his style. Thus, the E-major overture to his second opera, Die Feen (The Fairies ), opens with pianissimo chords reminiscent of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture. And in 1835, for his incidental music to Theodor Apel’s drama Columbus , Wagner produced an overture strikingly indebted to another musical voyage, Felix’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt , which Wagner had conducted in Magdeburg (in 1879 Wagner would admit that he was guilty of plagiarism). 55 His letter of April 1836 makes it clear that the symphony was a gift; all that he requested was that Felix read through the score and offer suggestions, so that the two might become closer. But curiously, Felix never acknowledged the gift, and the score disappeared. Years later, in 1874, Wagner maintained to Cosima that Felix had deliberately destroyed the manuscript, “perhaps because he detected in it a talent that was disagreeable to him.” 56 So began a strained musical relationship that would have profound consequences for German music and culture at mid-century.
II
Meanwhile, Felix made final preparations for the Lower Rhine Music Festival, scheduled for May 22 and 23, 1836. Because the concerts fell on Whitsuntide (Pentecost Sunday and Monday), the organizers had to petition the Prussian king for a special dispensation. While the premiere of Paulus formed the first concert, the repertoire for the second required more effort. Eventually Felix and the committee settled on Handel’s ninth Chandos Anthem (with additional wind parts provided by Julius Rietz), Mozart’s cantata Davidde penitent
e , K. 469, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the then unpublished Leonore Overture No. 1, Op. 138. Securing the parts of the overture proved nearly impossible: when Woringen requested a copy from Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s former amanuensis refused to lend the “holy relic” (Heiligtum ), even if Mendelssohn offered his new oratorio in exchange. 57 But Felix circumvented Schindler’s “rudeness” by appealing to the Viennese publisher Haslinger, who supplied parts by the middle of May, only days before the festival.
Departing Leipzig on May 1, Felix traveled first to Frankfurt, where he arrived the morning of May 4 to visit his cousin Philipp Veit and the ailing Schelble, for whom Felix had agreed to deputize that summer. His diary records meetings at the Cäcilienverein and with the Souchays, 58 a prosperous Frankfurt family to whom Felix gained an introduction from their cousin, the Leipzig attorney and amateur musician Fritz Schlemmer. One of the members of Schelble’s chorus was Cécile Jeanrenaud, daughter of Elisabeth Jeanrenaud (née Souchay). To Klingemann, Felix later reported his first meeting on May 4 with his future fiancée, 59 said to have “luxurious golden-brown hair,” a complexion of “transparent delicacy,” and the “most bewitching deep blue eyes,” with “dark eyelashes and eyebrows,” 60 a characterization supported by a family portrait of 1835 in the Frankfurt Historisches Museum, 61 and by a pencil portrait drawn by Felix’s Frankfurt cousin Philipp Veit (plate 13 ). But Felix could not have progressed much beyond initial impressions; on May 6 he left for Mainz and Cologne, before reaching Düsseldorf two days later.
Mendelssohn: A Life in Music Page 44
