In Potsdam Felix was “commanded” to hear Taubert’s music for Medea but found the score boring, the foundation “rotten.” 54 Instead, he reapplied himself to his own music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Athalie . By early September, both were essentially finished except the overture to the latter. Having returned to Leipzig on August 9, Felix completed a minor diversion, a Capriccio for string quartet in E minor, which paired a melancholy, Lied ohne Worte- like Andante with a studious mirror-inversion fugue (it appeared after his death as Op. 81 No. 3). 55 Felix enjoyed billiards with Robert Schumann, and appeared with Clara on a concert of the soprano Pauline Viardot, sister of Malibran (August 19). The same event featured the twelve-year-old prodigy Joseph Joachim, 56 already possessing a fully developed violin technique (Felix took the boy under his wing and dubbed him alternately Posaunenengel , “trombone cherub,” and Teufelsbraten , “devil” 57 ). A few weeks later, Felix celebrated Clara’s twenty-fourth birthday by playing the so-called Frühlingslied , Op. 62 No. 6 (dedicated to her when the entire opus appeared the following year). The occasion reunited Felix with the musician Heinrich Dorn. After a thirteen-year separation, Dorn witnessed an extraordinary demonstration of Felix’s memory. When Dorn performed some “new” Lieder, Felix announced he already knew one and played derivative passages from an unpublished melodrama Dorn had composed in 1827. Felix then observed to the astonished Dorn, “It is only good melodies we should endeavor to retain.” 58
Ex. 14.5 : Mendelssohn, Herr Gott dich loben wir (1843)
After the Prussian king had approved the terms of Felix’s position, he began to plan his family’s second move. First, though, he hastened to Berlin for a command performance of Antigone on September 19 (changes in the king’s travel plans caused the postponement of Oedipus at Colonos and Athalie ). 59 Then, only a week before rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Felix returned to Leipzig to greet his deputy Ferdinand Hiller, who inaugurated the new Gewandhaus season on October 1, with assistance: Felix performed his First Piano Concerto and some Lieder ohne Worte and, to the audience’s delight, wove together into a free improvisation themes from works heard on the concert. 60 The same day Felix finally met Niels Gade, who had traveled to Leipzig to direct his First Symphony. After endorsing a petition to improve working conditions of the orchestral personnel, Felix departed for Berlin on October 4 61 and began eleven grueling rehearsals for the new Shakespeare production.
The premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , in celebration of the king’s birthday, occurred on October 14, 1843, at the theater of the Neues Palais in Potsdam. Several sold-out public performances followed at the Berlin Schauspielhaus. Among the audiences were the aging Sarah Levy, Fanny, Paul, Anton Schindler, 62 and several musicians from Leipzig, including Hiller, David, the young Joachim, and Gade. (Fanny invited the Dane to Leipzigerstrasse No. 3, where he became acquainted with her music and noticed the telling stylistic similarities between the two siblings. 63 ) Three accounts of the production survive from Eduard Devrient (who played Lysander), Hiller, and Fanny. 64 Unlike the earlier collaboration on Antigone , Felix and Tieck now worked independently, so that while Felix composed music for the Schlegel translation, which retained Shakespeare’s five acts, Tieck compressed the comedy into three, by conjoining acts 2–4, all set in the forest near Athens. As a result, two of Felix’s entr’actes, Nos. 5 and 7 (falling between the second, third, and fourth acts) were heard with the curtain raised, forcing the use of a dramatic expedient to introduce the pieces without dropping the curtain. “This could be done,” Devrient recalled, “with the agitato in A minor (No. 5), to accompany Hermia’s seeking after her lover, especially if filled by the actress with grace and variety; but with the notturno in E major (No. 7), the long contemplation of the sleeping lovers was rather a painful effort, and Tieck’s escape from the dilemma, by pushing forward some pieces of scenery to screen the lovers, was rather coarse and stagy, and of doubtful effect.” 65
There were other difficulties. Fanny was unconvinced by Tieck’s costumes in seventeenth-century Spanish style, and during the Mechanicals’ performance of Pyramis and Thisbe in the final act, a dog bit Lion. More disturbing, Felix was unable to realize his vision of a unified production, uninterrupted from the four chords of the opening of the overture to their recall at the very end of the finale. The king’s retinue required a grand pause, “to offer all kinds of refreshments to the people in the front rows belonging to the Court, so that a full half-hour was taken up with loud talking and moving about, while the rest of the audience … had to beguile the time as best they could.” 66
Shakespeare’s play mirrored the political/cultural reality of Potsdam/Berlin, with its divide between the private and public, the court and the general populace. In the concluding act Frederick William would have identified with Theseus, who deigns to hear the Mechanicals’ uncouth adaptation of Pyramis and Thisbe —the play within the play, which unfolds as a humorous clash between high- and lowbrow culture. Endeavoring, like Theseus, to perceive the “concord of this discord,” Felix designed two different kinds of music. Framing the complex was the celebrated Wedding March in C major, in regal, ceremonial style with dotted rhythms befitting Theseus and Hippolyta. The march functions as entr’acte between the concluding acts and returns in No. 12 as a recessional for the court, retiring at midnight and making way for the elves, who bless the house in the finale. Between the stately appearances of the march occur three short pieces for the bumptious Mechanicals (Nos. 10a, 10b, and 11), in a decidedly rough-hewn style. First we hear a flourish of trumpets and drums, in which the timpani enter one measure late, to introduce the Ovidian playlet. Then, in the Dead March for Pyramis, the winds commit parallel fifths in a flagrant violation of voice-leading rules (Fanny found the morsel a caricature, like the “mock preludes” Felix played when one could not “get him to be serious”). 67 And finally, in the Dance of Clowns Felix revives the colorful ninths from the Overture to depict Bottom’s ungainly braying.
Sprinkled throughout the incidental music, like drops of Puck’s magical juice, are persistent reminiscences of the overture. After a fermata of seventeen years, the mature master successfully reharnessed the inspiration of his adolescence. In particular, the tetrachordal motive, unifying idea of the overture (see p. 163), resurfaces in many movements. To trace its peregrinations is to marvel at a kaleidoscope of variations on a common idea ( ex. 14.6 ). Thus in the breathless Scherzo (No. 1) that transports us to the second act and introduces Puck, that “merry wanderer of the night,” an ascending chromatic scale assimilates the tetrachord (14. 6a ), while in the Fairies’ March (No. 2) the descending pizzicato strings retrace its descending form in the key of the overture (14. 6b ). Prefacing the second strophe of “You spotted snakes” (No. 3)—the “roundel” Titania requests as a musical sedative—is a descending tetrachord. And in the ensuing melodrama (No. 4), when Oberon administers the juice to Titania, Felix reduces the music to little more than bare ascending tetrachords (14. 6c ), later answered by descending tetrachords in the mirroring counterpart (No. 8), when Oberon releases the queen from the spell (14. 6d ). The Intermezzo in A minor (No. 5), depicting Hermia’s errant pining for Lysander, couples a fractured theme, divided between the winds and violins, with a descending chromatic scale (14. 6e ).
At the midpoint of the score (No. 6), a descending tetrachord languidly unfolds in the winds (14. 6f ); and as the entranced Titania encounters the transformed Bottom, Felix revives the motto chords of the overture and their latent tetrachord in a droll reharmonization (14. 6g ). A few bars later we hear a more accurate quotation from the close of the overture; then, in the serene Nocturne (No. 7) between the third and fourth acts, Felix begins the calming horn melody with the fourth B–E (14. 6h ), thus reviving the interval of the original tetrachord (in the closing bars, it is filled in by pizzicato violins, in the form E–D#–C#–C ♮ –B; 14. 6i ). No. 8 contains two quotations from the overture: the nimble elves’ music in E minor and, announcing the
arrival of Theseus’s hunting party, the fanfares from the end of the exposition. We reach the entr’acte to the fifth act, the Wedding March, and the ensuing numbers that transfer us to the Athenian court.
Only when Theseus’s party retires to attenuated strains of the march does the elves’ diminutive motive reappear, to prepare the finale. Like a miniature re-enactment of the overture, the finale begins and ends with the motto chords and borrows its material from the dainty elves’ figure and quiescent closing bars of the overture. But here a chorus of elves obeys Oberon’s and Titania’s directive to bless Theseus’s house and thus gives verbal substance to the familiar music (14. 6j ). At the end, Puck muses about “this weak and idle theme, no more yielding than a dream”; his final seven lines are apportioned between the motto chords. The last sonority stands alone, as it must, our final passage from fairyland. It is, of course, the E-major chord, with a slight swell and diminuendo, the same inflection Felix specified for its first appearance in the fourth bar of the overture. With a fine ear for nuance, Felix has retouched the scoring, adding low trumpets, horns, strings, and a timpani roll. Thus the chords continue to metamorphose 68 and capture that fleeting, dreamlike state essential to the play. When Robert Schumann reviewed an 1844 performance, 69 he thought that perhaps Felix had overstated the “fairy parts” (Feenparthien ) and by recalling the overture had missed an opportunity to create something new. But Felix viewed play and overture as interdependent, and the incidental music as organically connected—its characteristic thematicism and coloration derive from the elves. The incidental music thus elaborates Felix’s earlier reading of the play in the overture. Devrient was so bold to conclude, “The originality of his portrayal of fairy life has become typical; all later composers have, in similar subjects, followed in his footsteps.” 70
Ex. 14.6a: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 1
Ex. 14.6b: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 2
Ex. 14.6c: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 4
Ex. 14.6d: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 8
Ex. 14.6e: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 5
Ex. 14.6f: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 6
Ex. 14.6g: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 6
Ex. 14.6h: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 7
Ex. 14.6i: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), No. 7
Ex. 14.6j: Mendelssohn, Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Op. 61 (1843), Finale
III
In her brother’s shadow, Fanny too had composed music for elves but of a less mischievous sort. On October 29, 1843, after a lapse of a year and a half, she resumed her fortnightly Sunday musicales and premiered her music for Goethe’s Faust , Part 2. 71 She set only the opening lines of the first act, in which Ariel, appropriated from Shakespeare’s Tempest , instructs a “circle” of “charming little creatures” (anmutige kleine Gestalten ) to lull to sleep Faust, tormented by memories of Gretchen’s death at the end of Part I. For soprano solo, women’s chorus, and piano, the score has four sections linked by piano interludes and employs Felix’s preferred elfin keys, E major and minor. But whether Fanny’s music, composed in March, benefited from any knowledge of Felix’s incidental music is unclear.
During the fall of 1843 she also composed a substantial Piano Sonata in G minor. 72 Its four linked movements (G minor/major–B minor–D major–G major) mirror and invert the key scheme of Felix’s contemporaneous Cello Sonata Op. 58 (D major–B minor–G major–D major), which also inserts a scherzo and slow movement between weightier endpoints in sonata and rondo forms. The exuberance of Felix’s Op. 58 washes over Fanny’s finale, which features thickened “three-hand” textures, typically with the right hand divided between a descant theme and busy figuration, while the left provides a bass line and chordal support. Though Fanny does not seem at ease with the sonata principle—thus, in the first movement she avoids securing the contrasting second theme in the contrasting relative major key—the work contains impressive music worthy of revival: the plaintive scherzo has a contrasting trio with shimmering tremolos in the high soprano, and the Adagio impresses as a warm Italianate serenade reminiscent of Juni in Das Jahr .
By late October 1843, Felix had returned to Leipzig and was intent upon enjoying a few weeks of music making before moving to Berlin. On October 26, he directed the fourth Gewandhaus concert, where he performed Gade’s First Symphony and introduced the Chevy Chace Overture of George Macfarren. Then, at a benefit concert for the orchestral pension fund (October 30), Felix participated in the Bach Triple Concerto with Hiller and Clara Schumann. In November Felix arranged a concert in honor of the Grand Duchess Hélène of Russia, and at the first Abendunterhaltung of the season (November 18) he took up a violin part in his Octet. Around this time Felix met the young German composer Carl Reinecke, who submitted a sheaf of manuscripts, among them a string quartet. When Reinecke returned the next day, Felix astonished him by playing from memory passages of the quartet. Flustered, he returned to his room and recorded every word—as good as gold, he noted—Felix had uttered. 73
After a farewell party with the Schumanns, Felix traveled on November 25 with his family to Berlin. Four days later he directed the first orchestral soirée at the Singakademie, which featured Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, a Haydn symphony, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and the Emperor Concerto, with Taubert as soloist. Further appearances followed at the second and third soirées (December 6 and 20), at which Felix directed symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven and a Weber overture, and played his First Piano Concerto, 74 and at a chamber music concert of the violinist Bernhard Molique, with whom Felix performed Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. Ludwig Rellstab found the orchestral concerts nearly on the level of the Paris Conservatoire, a view not shared by Felix, who caviled, “unless they improve very much they will never be worth anything.” 75 For a moment, an escape seemed at hand: on behalf of the Philharmonic Society Sterndale Bennett offered Felix lucrative terms to direct the entire 1844 season in London, 76 but Felix hesitated to accept, discouraged by the prospect of prolonged separation from his family.
At long last, in December, Felix appeared as the new director of sacred music. But when the revised liturgy was introduced in the cathedral, confusion reigned. Varnhagen von Ense, who worshiped on December 10, struggled to apprehend the many Kyries and Amens apportioned between clergy and laity, and reported, “the people were dumbstruck.” 77 In preparation, Felix had received from the cathedral officialdom a list of psalms for the principal liturgical days between Advent and the first Sunday of Lent. 78 The goal was to revive the Genevan (Huguenot) Psalter, translated into German by the humanist Ambrosius Lobwasser in 1565. In 1843 the Lobwasser revival was part of the king’s strategy to unite the Reformed and Lutheran divisions of German Protestantism. By November 13 Felix had drafted simple harmonizations of seven psalms, including Psalm 24 for Advent, 79 but there is no evidence he ever used them.
Instead, he focused attention on new music for Christmas and New Year’s Day. 80 For the Christmas Introit he composed Psalm 2, for double chorus and organ, 81 paired not with the Lesser Doxology but with “For unto us a child is born” from Handel’s Messiah , for which Felix prepared an organ part. 82 Before the Alleluia the congregation heard the a cappella verse “Frohlocket ihr Völker” (“Rejoice, ye people”), posthumously published in 1849 as the first of the six Sprüche , or “proverbs,” Op. 79. Also used were new harmonizations of the chorales Vom Himmel hoch and Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr , and the German Te Deum , for which Felix presumably pressed into service his setting from the previous summer. If the compact verse shows
signs of haste—its opening mimics that of the Overture to Athalie —Psalm 2, revised in 1845 and published posthumously in an a cappella version as Op. 78 No. 1, fully tests the expressive range of the eight-part double choir. First, the two choirs answer each other and mass together in tight formations to depict the raging of the nations. For “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill” (verse 6), the texture changes to alternating trios of soloists, while at “You shall break them with a rod of iron” (verse 9), the dramatic antiphonal effects of the two choirs resume. At the other extreme, subdued voices in unison admonish the kings to “be wise” (verse 10); in the final section, turning from G minor to a translucent G major, soloists appear against the choir, which hovers on a chantlike figure for “his wrath is quickly kindled.” The full choir then comes together for the comforting final cadence, “happy are all who take refuge in him.” Fanny found the effect “very Gregorian, and reminding one of the Sistine.” 83
Mendelssohn: A Life in Music Page 63
