Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

The three organ compositions of 1823 25 mark the zenith of Felix’s studies with A. W. Bach. In a lyrical Andante in D major, Felix approaches his teacher’s melodious, accessible style. Considerably more ambitious are the chorale variations on Wie groß ist des Allmächt’gen Güte , possibly inspired by Felix’s meeting in 1822 the Darmstadt organist J. C. H. Rinck, who had included a similar set in his Praktische Orgel-Schule (1821). Inevitably, the genre led Felix to ruminate about J. S. Bach’s organ music.

  Ex. 4.3 : Mendelssohn, “Ich denke dein” (1823)

  In the first variation, the chorale phrases intermittently appear cantusfirmus-like in the pedal, and in the second variation Felix subjects the melody to a variety of Bachian canons. A more specific debt is evident in Felix’s most substantial early organ work, an untitled Passacaglia in C minor, which presents twenty-two variations on a repeated eight-bar ground bass, a neo-baroque edifice unabashedly inspired by Bach’s monumental passacaglia in the same key (BWV 582). Like Bach, Felix arranges the variations into three groups, with the ground entrenched in the bass, then inverted to the upper voices for several “free” variations before it returns to the bass in the closing section. Nowhere does Felix seriously challenge the model, though his passacaglia is among the earliest nineteenth-century revivals of the genre, and as such it stands alone for several decades before the historicist experiments of Brahms in the Haydn Variations (1874) and Fourth Symphony (1886), and of Joseph Rheinberger in the Eighth Organ Sonata (1882).

  A historicist impulse lies too behind Felix’s a cappella Kyrie in C minor, composed in five days in November 1823 for Schelble’s Cäcilienverein, which performed it in 1825. 26 Like the earlier Jube Domine , the Kyrie requires two four-part choirs, from which Felix extracts soloists to explore various textures: the entire eight-part ensemble, the two choirs in alternation, the soloists alone (as in the midpoint, “Christe eleison”), and the soloists supported by one of the choirs. And, like Jube Domine , the Kyrie reflects the seventeenth-century polychoral tradition, which Zelter and Schelble had endeavored to sustain at their institutions. However, in much of the Kyrie the earlier ideal of Doppelchörigkeit —the alternation of discrete, four-part choirs—yields to eight-part writing and succumbs to Felix’s tendency toward dense part-writing. 27 Only in the final section, the return of the text “Kyrie eleison,” does Felix temporarily reduce the texture to four parts, to accommodate a double fugue, a new layer of contrapuntal complexity in this richly hued, expressive composition.

  Notwithstanding Beethoven’s increasing influence, Felix firmly grounded the three chamber works of 1823 in the classical tradition. The String Quartet in E ♭ major, his first full-length quartet, required only eleven days to compose. 28 Its four movements include a Mozartean Allegro moderato with two contrasting thematic groups; a brooding Adagio in C minor that occasionally anticipates the slow movement of the Octet; a Haydnesque minuet and trio; and a learned double fugue that draws upon the finales of Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 20 and Mozart’s String Quartet K. 387. The Violin Sonata in F minor, Op. 4, conceived between May 21 and June 3 and dedicated to Eduard Rietz, 29 opens with a free recitative for solo violin that pauses on a descending sighing gesture, subsumed by the piano into the principal theme. As a reviewer noticed, Haydn could have composed the beginning of the slow movement, though later Felix conjures up a romantic “mist of feelings” (Empfindungsnebel ). 30 Toward the end of the finale, the violin again breaks into recitative, before an explosive Beethovenian coda. The work ends pianissimo with two descending sighs that link the outer movements.

  Similar in mood is Felix’s most substantial chamber work of 1823, the second Piano Quartet Op. 2, published in 1824 and dedicated to Zelter. If Op. 1 invokes Mozart, Op. 2 embraces Beethoven. The first movement alone contains several clear signs: a sonata form with pronounced and expanded bridge, closing sections, and coda, a second theme indebted to the Waldstein Sonata, and a tumultuous conclusion for which Felix specifies the extreme dynamic level of fff . The expressive slow movement, in D ♭ major, explores an enharmonic palette that includes several sharp keys. The lightly scored Allegro moderato , the first movement Felix labeled Intermezzo, provides a diversion from the more weighty Adagio and explosive finale, which erupts with a rocketlike theme, propelled by a rising chromatic bass line ( ex. 4.4 ). Its parallel statements on F minor and G ♭ major betray Felix’s fascination with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata Op. 57, which also stimulated Fanny’s imagination at this time. 31

  Ex. 4.4 : Mendelssohn, Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 2 (1823), Finale

  In 1823 Felix’s principal musical outlet remained the private musicales of high society, including the fortnightly gatherings at his residence, a proving ground where he developed into a virtuoso of the first rank. The proud Lea, enjoying her role as a Musenmama , reported that Felix and Fanny were transcribing at sight full opera scores into piano duets. (Lea solicited from her cousin Amalia Beer scores by her son, Giacomo Meyerbeer, with which the siblings regaled their guests. 32 ) In December Felix and Fanny met the French virtuoso Frédéric Kalkbrenner, then concertizing in Berlin. According to Fanny, after hearing Felix’s compositions, Kalkbrenner “praised with taste, and blamed candidly and amiably.” 33 There is little evidence that the gaudy virtuosity of the Frenchman, who placed his lucrative relationship with the Parisian piano firm of Pleyel ahead of purely musical concerns, impressed Felix. Still, Fanny found “precision, clearness, expression, the greatest facility, and most untiring power and energy” in Kalkbrenner’s playing, and composed piano pieces “alla K,” including an etude featuring left-hand octaves, the pianist’s trademark. 34

  Inevitably, Felix’s growing fame brought public scrutiny. While Fanny was shielded from this exposure, Felix now participated more frequently in public concerts, at least three of which are documented for 1823. On March 3 he appeared with the tenor J. D. H. Stümer to perform an amorous romance of Felice Blangini, a voice professor at the Paris Conservatoire. 35 More notably, Felix’s string symphonies now piqued Spontini’s curiosity, and on his incentive, 36 Karl Möser, concertmaster of the court orchestra, performed one in April. From Lea’s disclosure that it was in four movements and for full orchestra, we can identify it as No. 8 in D major. Lea feared its length (and fugal seriousness) would not impress the “frivolous” Berlin audience, but the performance scored a success. 37 Finally, on July 3 Felix and Eduard Rietz performed the Double Concerto in D minor at the Schauspielhaus, but other opportunities were declined—Lea remained mindful of the advice of the French flutist Louis Drouet not to exhaust one’s audience (il ne faut pas fatiguer le public ).

  II

  Felix’s emergence into the Berlin limelight contrasted starkly with Fanny’s musical reality. In 1822 she had courageously attempted her first large work, the Piano Quartet in A ♭ major, but there had been no recognition of her precocity before Goethe, no publication of an opus primum . Instead, she mused wistfully, “I have watched the progress of [Felix’s] talent step by step, and may say I have contributed to his development. I have always been his only musical adviser, and he never writes down a thought before submitting it to my judgment.” 38 But this vicarious coping strategy was now complicated by her relationship with Hensel.

  On Christmas Eve 1822 Hensel had given Fanny a volume of Müller’s poetry. In 1823 Fanny responded by setting no fewer than eight poems. Almost certainly, she shared them with the poet, who socialized in July at the Mendelssohn residence, where he found everything musical. 39 Fanny’s first three Lieder, from Die schöne Müllerin , date from January 1823. They include Die liebe Farbe (The Lovely Color ), in which the despondent miller lad requests a burial in green, the maid’s preferred color. Fanny chose the bright key of E major for her song, introduced by horn calls in the piano introduction, but had second thoughts and judged Ludwig Berger’s rendition superior. 40 She also selected two more optimistic poems from the cycle. In Der Neugierige (The Curious One ), the lad asks the brook if the maid loves him, and
in Des Müllers Blumen (The Miller’s Flowers ), he associates the blue hue of his beloved’s eyes with flowers beneath her window.

  Fanny’s remaining Müller settings were inspired by two other sections of the poet’s anthology. From the Reiselieder (Songs of Traveling ) she excerpted poems about separation, Seefahrers Abschied (Sailor’s Departure ), Einsamkeit (Solitude ), and Abendreih’n (Evening Rounds ), in which a wanderer asks the moon for a message from his lover. These Lieder provided an outlet for her feelings about Wilhelm’s imminent departure to Italy, where the Berlin Academy of Art sent him in 1823 to further his studies. Fanny also set two poems from Johannes und Esther , a minicycle about a relationship between a young Christian and a Jewess. In Vereinigung (Union , November 1823), she pondered these verses:

  Here, Johannes addresses Esther. The “secret horror” is the separation forced upon the lovers by their differing faiths. Of course, several years before meeting Wilhelm, Fanny had been baptized, thereby removing, or so it seemed, a potential objection to their relationship. But in 1823 another “geheimes Grauen ” threatened their happiness, as Wilhelm explained in a heartfelt letter from Rome to his sister. 41 For some time, Wilhelm had been drawn increasingly to Catholicism and intended to follow the example of his sister Luise, who, swayed by Clemens Brentano, had converted in 1818.

  The prospect of the Protestant Fanny marrying a Catholic provoked a family crisis in 1823. But the drama took an unusual course when Wilhelm, with Fanny’s approval, spoke to her parents about their engagement; they did not broach the matter of religion, and Wilhelm interpreted their silence as acquiescence. Lea and Abraham made only one stipulation, that the engagement remain secret, because they did not wish to disturb Lea’s mother, the elderly Bella Salomon, an Orthodox Jew still unaware that Lea, Abraham, and their children were Protestants. Wilhelm willingly agreed and enjoyed a period of happiness, until one evening,

  when her mother unexpectedly asked me what my views about religion were and whether it was true, as she had heard, that I desired to convert to the Catholic faith. I replied that she would have known that for a long time, since I had declared it to her daughter before professing my love. And now it was revealed that Fanny, in order not to turn her parents against me and to preserve the domestic peace, had not dared to tell them. Now the mother’s wrath turned against the daughter, and she declared that, had she known this, she never would have given her permission, since it did not at all accord with her views to have a Catholic son-in-law, for Catholicism always led to fanaticism and hypocrisy…. The father, though he agreed with his wife, intervened, and the upshot was this: she did not wish to be tyrannical, and if her daughter did not change her feelings, the mother would not separate us by force, though she admitted to me freely, that if I converted she would do all in her power to convince her daughter to break off the engagement. Further, if I did not bind myself to remain true to the Protestant church, she must for the time being forbid any lengthy private meetings with Fanny and any correspondence. I stood firm, and said I could not restrict my conscience; I only promised not to take the step without deliberate reflection, and if it happened, to tell them in good conscience. 42

  The tempestuous scene ended in stalemate, with Wilhelm unyielding and Lea, suffering severe nosebleeds from the stress, forbidding the lovers to meet. Still, Fanny reaffirmed her loyalty to Wilhelm. In July 1823 he left for Rome. Accompanied by the actors P. A. Wolff 43 and Eduard Devrient, Wilhelm stopped in Marienbad, where he sketched Goethe’s portrait; but the poet found the artist “stuck in the shallow dilettantism of the time,” and obsessed with a false piety (Frömmelei ) and the art of antiquity. 44 Safely in Rome, Hensel took up a time-honored pursuit—replicating the treasures of the Italian Renaissance—and began copying Raphael’s monumental Transfiguration for the Prussian king. The project took nearly four years and began with a cleaning of the original, exposing “a quantity of details hidden under the crust of the dirt of centuries.” 45 Hensel’s copy later hung in Sans souci in Potsdam.

  Barred from corresponding with Fanny, Wilhelm sent ingratiating portraits of the Mendelssohns and their friends to Berlin. Many of his subjects were idealized beyond recognition; thus, Lili Klein (née Parthey), who had sung in Zelter’s Singakademie and knew the Mendelssohns well, reported Wilhelm often had to reveal the identities of his portraits. 46 Surprisingly, Lea and Abraham kept a regular correspondence with Wilhelm. Though Lea found that his renderings represented her children “as they were,” she was quite taken by his drawing of four angels watched over by Cecilia; indeed, Wilhelm Schadow was astute enough to recognize Lea as the “original” of the saintly organist. 47 Meanwhile, Abraham arranged for honoraria to be sent to Rome. After the death of Fanny’s uncle Jacob Bartholdy in July 1825, Wilhelm reciprocated by settling the deceased’s affairs in Rome and offered to ship the frescoes of the Casa Bartholdy to Berlin. Abraham and Lea maintained an almost parental interest in Wilhelm’s progress: in January 1826 they urged him to exhibit work in Berlin and chided him that in two years he had not completed anything substantial. 48

  Why did Lea so strenuously object to Fanny’s engagement? The parents’ own recent baptism in 1822 had symbolically completed the family’s assimilation into upper-class Berlin society and the dominant culture of Protestant Prussia. Wilhelm’s plan to embrace Catholicism—especially problematic because he was the son of a Protestant minister—threatened the stability of Fanny’s social position. Lea surely had in mind the scandalous precedent of Abraham’s sister Brendel, now the Catholic Dorothea Schlegel after her earlier flirtation with Protestantism. Finally, Lea was unimpressed by Wilhelm’s modest career prospects. His opportunity to secure a court position in Berlin, and thereby provide a respectable livelihood for Fanny, was in jeopardy should he convert. As Wilhelm reported to his sister Luise, Lea was especially concerned about social standing, 49 and indeed, she made herself clear on this point:

  You are at the commencement of your career, and under beautiful auspices; …, rest assured that we will not be against you, when, at the end of your studies, you can satisfy us about your position. Above all, do not call me selfish or avaricious, my gentle tyrant! Otherwise I must remind you that I married my husband before he had a penny of his own. But he was earning a certain although very moderate income at Fould’s in Paris, and I knew he would be able to turn my dowry to good account. 50

  For five years, Wilhelm sent drawings to Berlin instead of love letters. Somehow, throughout the Roman sojourn he remained a Protestant, and when he returned to Berlin in 1828 Fanny was still eligible. They married in 1829.

  Shortly after Wilhelm departed for Italy, Felix left Berlin with his father, brother, and Heyse for Bad Reinerz in Lower Silesia, where they visited Abraham’s younger brother, Nathan. Felix’s letters home, his first to include Greek quotations, reveal that studies with Heyse had advanced well into Homer (according to Eduard Devrient, Felix shared Greek lessons with his sister Rebecka, “in order to make the study more attractive to him” 51 ). En route they saw Felix’s great-uncle B. D. Itzig (1756–1833) in Frankfurt an der Oder, before proceeding to Breslau (Wrocl-aw), where on August 9, 1823, Felix met Zelter’s colleague F. W. Berner (1780–1827), organist of the St. Elisabeth Church. In 1806 Berner’s intervention had probably saved the life of Carl Maria von Weber, who had fallen unconscious after imbibing engraver’s ink carelessly left in a wine bottle. Berner’s celebrated improvisations resonated with Bach. At the church, Berner launched an elaborate organ fantasy on a theme chosen by Felix, first in the manual, and then—to Felix’s surprise, because the theme contained sixteenth notes—in the pedals, before harnessing it to augmentation and adding a countersubject. Fortifying himself with wine, Berner next produced droll variations on “God save the King” in the obsolete phrygian and aeolian church modes. But the pièce de résistance was his treatment of the chorale Vom Himmel hoch , into which he contrived to introduce the melody in diminution as a fugal subject, though the exertion “tired him very muc
h, so that he had to take two or three glasses of wine.” 52

  Berner’s erudition contrasted sharply with Felix’s musical experiences in the spa town of Bad Reinerz, where he arrived in the middle of August. A “favorite watering-place, with alkaline springs, … efficacious in nervous disorders, poverty of blood, and the like,” 53 the region also contained sizable deposits of iron ore. Here, supported by his brother Joseph, Nathan Mendelssohn constructed in 1822 a smelting furnace and, on the slope of a hill, a house with a quaint turret that “resembled a modest little castle.” 54 In 1823 he established an iron foundry, and on August 18 Nathan and Abraham laid the cornerstone of a new furnace. Fifty thalers were distributed to the poor, and six days later the brothers hosted a banquet for the workers, whom Felix entertained.

  Two accounts of this event have survived. According to Sebastian Hensel, Felix chose a Mozart piano concerto, but since the bedraggled orchestra could not keep time, Felix instead improvised on themes of Mozart and Weber. 55 A more engaging story comes from Paul Dengler, Bürgermeister of the resort from 1867. 56 The orchestra mustered only the seven musicians of the spa’s wind band (Harmoniemusik ) and some amateurs. When the ensemble could not maintain the tempo, the first movement of the concerto lapsed into a snail’s pace. But Felix

  knew how to help. While the orchestra continued to play in a Comodo [comfortable tempo], he filled out his piano part, in effect composing in a double tempo [Doppeltakt ]; thus, for each measure the worthy musicians played, he doubled the number of notes in the piano part, thereby transforming it into a cheerful Allegro… Only a genius could have accomplished that. 57