Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  In the closing months of 1820, Felix began to study the organ, an instrument he perhaps first played in the Rochuskapelle just west of Bingen, during a family visit to the Rhine in August. 29 Ironically enough, his Berlin instructor was August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869), a pedagogue sometimes mistakenly assumed a relation of the Thomaskantor. 30 A member of the Singakademie and pupil of Berger, A. W. Bach had ample occasions to witness Felix’s precocity. In 1819 and 1820 Bach had worked with the organist M. G. Fischer, a disciple of J. C. Kittel (a former J. S. Bach pupil). A. W. Bach edited his namesake’s organ works and mounted the first complete performance of the B-minor Mass in 1834. Described as a “very thorough and scientific musician” and a “capable maker of fugues,” 31 he was also envious of his young pupil and susceptible to anti-Semitic sentiments. When Felix desired to examine a prelude of J. S. Bach from A. W. Bach’s library, he observed to another student, “Why does the young Jew need to have everything? He has enough anyway; don’t give him the fugue.” 32 Somehow, Bach marshaled sufficient “tolerance” to instruct Felix from late 1820 to 1822. Fanny was permitted to observe her brother’s lessons at the Marienkirche, 33 where Bach held the organist’s post; but, unlike her brother, she did not compose fluently for the instrument. From Felix’s hand in 1820 and 1821 we have an austere Praeludium in D minor, some academic three-part fugues (adapted from fugues for violin and piano in the Oxford exercise book), and the beginning of a florid, toccata-like piece in baroque style. 34

  In 1820 he also tested his mettle in chamber music. That year the young protégé of Pierre Rode, Eduard Rietz, who had met the Mendelssohns in 1816, 35 replaced Henning as Felix’s violin instructor. Apart from small pieces for violin and piano 36 and the Violin Sonata in F major, Felix essayed three more substantial chamber works: a Recitativo in D minor for piano and strings, Trio in C minor for violin, viola, and piano, and Piano Quartet in D minor. 37 Begun on March 7, 1820, the sixty-three-bar Recitativo has three sections: a fantasia-like accompanied recitative marked Largo, a compact Allegro, and an abridged return of the Largo. The instrumental recitative and harmonic freedom of the opening recall the eighteenth-century fantasies of C. P. E. Bach, whose telltale jagged melodic lines left their mark on this youthful effort. But the score contains several Tutti and Solo cues, and the hint of a piano cadenza, as if Felix had in mind a miniature piano concerto, and the string parts are identified in the plural as Violini , Viole , and Bassi , as if the accompaniment was a string orchestra rather than quartet.

  In contrast, the Trio and Quartet are unambiguous about their generic identity. The substitution of the viola for a cello in the Trio is unusual but not unprecedented: Mozart had used a viola in his “Kegelstadt” Trio K. 498 (1786). The opening theme of Felix’s Trio revives a stock baroque fugal subject, even though subsequently he does not employ fugal procedures. But Felix does invoke an antiquated baroque style in the slow movement, which begins with repetitions of a basso ostinato figure. Quite anomalous is the third movement in G minor, sempre staccato e pianissimo , and filled with light string work adumbrating the elfin world of Felix’s mature scherzi. Still, unable to conceal his training, Felix introduces here a scalelike figure pursued by all three instruments in imitation.

  More substantial is the undated three-movement Piano Quartet in D minor, almost certainly from 1821. When the young Jules Benedict visited Berlin in June 1821, he found Felix putting the finishing touches on a “new Quartet for piano and stringed instruments.” 38 Of its three movements, the first is among Felix’s earliest sonata-form trials with a contrasting second theme. The ternary-form Andante juxtaposes a lyrical opening in B ♭ major with a turbulent G-minor middle section. The finale offers a homespun, rustic rondo. Models for the Quartet are easy to discern, for the genre was among the more specialized examples of chamber music. Surely Felix was well acquainted with Mozart’s piano quartets (K. 478 and 493), although another source may have been two quartets Prince Louis Ferdinand composed in 1806. 39 A friend of Beethoven, pupil of Dussek, and pianist fêted for his improvisations, the gallant prince died at the Battle of Saalfeld in 1806. His best-known work was his last, the Piano Quartet in F minor Op. 6; Felix may have had its somber hues in mind when, in 1823, he composed the Piano Quartet Op. 2, also in F minor.

  Among Felix’s most impressive accomplishments of the early 1820s are the thirteen string sinfonie , of which he finished six by October 19, 1821. On that date Lea described them as “in the old manner, without wind instruments.” 40 According to the theorists A. B. Marx and Heinrich Dorn, members of the elite royal orchestra performed these works during Sunday musicales at the Mendelssohn residence. 41 Felix led the ensemble from a piano, where he provided a continuo part by playing the bass line and improvising a harmonic accompaniment above, to substitute for the missing winds. The archaic genre of the string symphony, use of the obsolescent continuo, reliance on monothematic sonata form and baroque “spinning out” of the thematic material all reflect Zelter’s conservative guidance. And the eighteenth-century antecedents of the sinfonie —admixtures of C. P. E. and J. S. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn—also betray the teacher’s tastes.

  Most striking in the sinfonie are their stylistic discontinuities recalling C. P. E. Bach’s mannered style known as empfindsam (roughly, “ultraemotional”), characterized by strong unison openings, wide leaps, sudden interruptions, and abrupt shifts in dynamics—all common to six sinfonie of Bach (1773, W. 182) performed by Zelter at the Ripienschule. 42 Thus, the energetic opening of No. 5 brings to mind the second of Bach’s set, which shares the key of B ♭ major and plummeting descending scale ( ex. 2.4a, b ). A proponent of Emanuel Bach’s music, Zelter took exception when the historian J. N. Forkel suggested Emanuel lacked his father’s originality. 43 For Zelter a “great genius” who bore “not the slightest resemblance” to his father, the Hamburg Bach had revitalized instrumental music and prepared the Viennese classicism of Mozart and Haydn. 44

  Ex. 2.4a: Mendelssohn, Sinfonia No. 5 (1821)

  Ex. 2.4b: C. P. E. Bach, Sinfonia in B ♭ (W. 182, 1773)

  Hardly less pronounced in Felix’s sinfonie is J. S. Bach’s influence, evident in any number of contrapuntal exhibits. The finales of Nos. 5 and 6 bristle with fugatos, but a more erudite display occurs in the slow movement of No. 2. Conceived as a baroque trio sonata, the Andante weaves together two melodic strands in canon that later reappear in mirror inversion against each other. Occasionally the sinfonie explore more contemporary styles, as in the Andante of No. 4, where an expressively arching melody in the violins unfolds against lush arpeggiations. The romantic Andante contrasts starkly with the first movement, which begins as a baroque French overture with ceremonial dotted notes. In the second movement of No. 6, in E ♭ major, an eclectic stylistic juxtaposition produces an innovative result. Here Felix uses a compact, Haydnesque motive to construct a classical minuet. The Trio, in the unusual key of B major, recalls too Haydn’s occasional experiments with submediant (lower-third) relationships. But Felix springs a surprise by adding a second trio in B ♭ major, with a prominent chorale-like melody, articulated by interludes between its phrases, that seemingly reenacts O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden , though it soon diverges into another example of a freely composed chorale. The interludes imitate a performance practice documented in A. W. Bach’s treatises: the custom of organists improvising interludes between the phrases of congregational chorales. In Felix’s Minuet the chorale and organ music thus penetrate Viennese classicism, yielding a distinctive hybrid experiment.

  Conspicuously neglected by Felix in 1820 and 1821 was Fanny’s preferred medium of the Lied. The early manuscripts reveal only four solo songs and two part-songs for male choir, compared to Fanny’s nearly thirty songs from the same period. 45 Two of Felix’s Lieder have familiar texts: Adam Storck’s translations of songs from Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake , “Raste, Krieger, Krieg ist aus!” (“Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er”) and the well-known Ave Maria . Published in 1810, Scott’s Hig
hland poem inspired a European craze for Scottish history and culture, and transformed into a tourist attraction the rugged terrain of the Trossachs, which Felix would visit in 1829. Scott illustrations were in great demand, as were operas, among them Rossini’s La Donna del lago (Naples, 1819). In 1820, both Felix and Fanny set Ave Maria , and afforded another comparison between the siblings.

  Conjuring up the romantic wilds of Scotland—a challenge Felix admirably met later in the Hebrides Overture—the eleven-year-old was no match for his sister. Felix imagined a sacred aria, taking as his models J. S. Bach and Handel. 46 Supporting the vocal part is a “walking” bass line and chords, like a figured-bass realization ( ex. 2.5a ). But this baroque affect fails to transport us to Loch Katrine, where Ellen and her father, outcasts from the court of James V of Scotland, seek refuge on an island:

  Ex. 2.5a: Mendelssohn, Ave Maria (1820)

  Ex. 2.5b: Fanny Mendelssohn, Ave Maria (1820)

  Ave Maria ! Maiden mild!

  Listen to a maiden’s prayer!

  Thou canst hear though from the wild,

  Thou canst save amid despair. 47

  In Scott’s poem the enchanting “harp of Allan-bane” accompanies Ellen’s “melting voice.” Fanny begins with harplike preluding in the piano ( ex. 2.5b ), an image missed by her brother (though not by Schubert in his masterful setting from 1825, D839). And she concludes with a murmuring piano postlude, as if capturing the next line in Scott’s epic, “Died on the harp the closing hymn.” At fifteen, Fanny showed greater sensitivity to the text than Felix; indeed, the Scottish musician John Thomson later issued her song in 1832—the first publication with her authorship identified. 48

  III

  An inveterate opera lover, Abraham longed to see his son compose for the stage, and at eleven and twelve—the age when Mozart turned to opera—Felix obliged by writing small-scale dramatic pieces and two substantial Singspiele. Sometime between March 7 and April 1, 1820, he finished a short French scene for soprano, tenor, winds, and strings, “Quel bonheur pour mon coeur de toujours aimer” (“What happiness, my heart always to love”). 49 The occasion for this idealized musical amour is unknown, though it may have been Lea’s birthday, which fell on March 26. His next attempt, confidently titled Lustspiel in 3 Szenen , drolly explores the relationship between Abraham and his older brother Joseph. 50 The undated Lustspiel falls in the autograph volume from 1820 and was probably written for one of the brothers’ birthdays; a reasonable choice would be Joseph’s fiftieth, on August 8, 1820 (for Abraham’s birthday, December 11, Felix surprised his father with the Singspiel Die Soldatenliebschaft ).

  Felix planned at least two scenes for the Lustspiel , although he finished only the first. Joseph (tenor) and Abraham (bass) pledge their eternal fraternal affection, only to fall into a heated debate about Gasparo Spontini’s opera Olympia . In May 1820 Spontini arrived in Berlin as the Prussian monarch’s Generalmusikdirector. Olympia reached the stage in May 1821 but was overshadowed a few weeks later by Weber’s “romantic” opera Der Freischütz . The two operas galvanized critical opinion, humorously anticipated in Felix’s Lustspiel , when Abraham dismisses Olympia as totally wretched, while Joseph defends it as very beautiful. Their altercation disturbs an accountant, unable to finish his work in the family’s banking firm. Next, an opera singer seeking the Mendelssohns’ patronage arrives; rejected, he turns his obsequious coloratura passagework into a rage aria, all cleverly designed to caricature the Berlin stage. The second scene, set within the bank, was to have begun with a chorus of clerks. Felix drafted only a few pages before breaking off work. The reason is not difficult to discern: his inspiration flagged, compelling him to borrow heavily from Mozart’s Don Giovanni . 51

  The cantata “In rührend feierlichen Tönen” (“In sweet ceremonial tones”), finished on June 13, 1821, almost certainly was for the wedding the following day of Lea’s niece Marianne Seeligman and Alexander Mendelssohn, second son of Joseph. 52 Unpublished, the cantata includes two a cappella choruses, of which the first returns at the end to round out the work; there are also two recitatives and a somewhat saccharine soprano duet with a piano part. Felix rendered the textual image of the felicitous union of two souls by having the soloists sing separately and then together. Just as two vines become entwined, two brooks flow together, and two dewdrops form one, so do two souls fuse into one tender flame.

  Felix’s one-act Singspiel, Die Soldatenliebschaft (Soldiers’ Love Affairs ), had an unusual gestation. The librettist was the forensic pathologist Johann Ludwig Casper (1796–1864), who spent the summer of 1820 with Abraham in Paris. There he visited Henriette Mendelssohn and attended vaudeville comedies, from which he probably cobbled the text for Felix’s Sing-spiel. By August Felix was envisioning music for the libretto; composition began at the end of September but, according to Abraham’s stipulation “not to show parts of the work to anyone before all was completed,” other than Fanny “no one saw a single note until the work was rehearsed.” 53 Casper himself played the two bass parts, “in order to keep everything strictly incognito .” Felix thus created the work in artistic isolation, producing an overture and eleven numbers in orchestral score with little advice from family or friends—and, evidently, without Zelter’s direct supervision. Felix accomplished this extraordinary feat in about ten weeks, and the work was performed with piano accompaniment on Abraham’s birthday, December 11. 54

  So that Felix could hear the opera with an orchestra, the parents underwrote a production in their residence for his twelfth birthday, February 3, 1821. A little-known account of the proud mother reports the event:

  In the spacious hall … a most charming, ample theater was constructed. The orchestra, selected from the best members of the royal Kapelle , occupied the middle area; Felix sat in their midst at the piano; and the area behind was raised and filled with the audience. Before [the Singspiel] a French farce was given, … called L’homme automate [The Human Automaton ] and … truly delightful. Fränkel played an innkeeper and Dr. Casper the automaton most splendidly. Felix wrote an overture for it, into which he wove popular folksongs according to French taste…. The character of [Die Soldatenliebschaft ] is alternately cheerful and full of feeling, as the text requires. The ensembles reveal a knowledge of contrapuntal writing, but above all the orchestration an insight that for a first attempt borders on the incredible. The instrumental rehearsals were on this account very interesting; it seemed to me impossible that a child could be so confident writing for each section of the orchestra—not even twenty errors occurred—and that many found his score not unplayable, when one considers that no expert had seen even one line of it, let alone retouched it. The old musicians were most surprised to find everything fluent, correct and appropriate to the character of each instrument…. After the conclusion he was called, and when he refused to appear, Stümer and Casper overcame his resistance and carried him out…. It was a uniquely lovely moment for the parents’ hearts, to see their beautiful child with Raphael-like locks sitting among all the artists, his eyes always enlivened by the music, radiant and flashing with uncommon energy, and above the child’s features streamed an expression of bliss and coyness, … And so his calling appears to have been determined, dear Jette! May heaven grant that he remains happy. These days the career of an artist is really full of thorns! 55

  The soprano soloists were Fanny and Friederike Robert, wife of the poet Ludwig Robert; the tenors, J. D. H. Stümer from the Berlin royal opera and Heinrich Beer, brother of Meyerbeer. Although L’homme automate is lost, Die Soldatenliebschaft has survived, along with its spoken dialogue, rediscovered in Oxford in 1960. But despite some attention 56 and a 1962 revival in the German Democratic Republic, which touted the work as an indictment of bourgeois society, the Singspiel remains unpublished.

  Set in Spain during the Napoleonic occupation, the plot concerns two pairs of lovers separated by class. Felix, colonel of the French hussars, courts the Spanish Countess Elvire. Her maid, Zerbine, is in love wit
h the sergeant Victor but is pursued by Tonio, overseer of the countess’s castle.

  To the young Felix, the parallels between Casper’s libretto and Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni , also set in Spain and treating commoners’ relationships with nobility, were obvious enough. The stage for Die Soldatenliebschaft is set with a brisk overture on a scurrying theme foreshadowing the intrigues to come. Felix delineates his characters with music alternating in mood between heiter and gefühlvoll , thus bearing out Lea’s observation. Tonio, Victor, and Zerbine sing strophic songs in folksonglike idioms, vivified with deft touches of instrumental color—for instance, horn calls for Victor’s celebration of the soldier’s rustic life (No. 5), and a cello solo for Zerbine’s tender Ariette (No. 7). Especially effective is the Rondo (No. 4), in which Tonio conceals alarm bells to foil a mysterious suitor, to a distinctive accompaniment of pizzicato strings, horns, bassoon, and piccolo ( ex. 2.6a ). In stark contrast is the Countess’s music. Her cavatina (No. 11), “Still und freundlich ist die Nacht,” strikes a more serious, noble tone reminiscent of Barbarina’s cavatina in Act 4 of Figaro ( ex. 2.6b ). Enriching the neutral shades of the string background are echoes in the oboe and bassoon, which also perform a duet in the postlude. Here Felix produced poignant music well beyond his years. To be sure, Die Soldatenliebschaft relies upon stock roles from comic opera: the countess and Victor are serious lovers, and Tonio a comic bass recalling Osmin in Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail , while Zerbine plays a soubrette . The score contains too some stereotypical musical gestures, though it projects a remarkable buoyancy and vitality. Die Soldatenliebschaft remained a favorite of Felix’s parents, and in 1829 the nostalgic composer considered reviving it for their silver wedding anniversary. 57