Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  In contrast are instrumental works exhibiting the influences of Weber and Beethoven. Weber’s bubbly virtuoso style surfaces in the Piano Sextet in D major, composed between April 28 and May 10, 1824, 111 and published in 1868 as Op. 110. Stretches of its outer movements contain sprightly runs in the high treble against bass chords (the work’s scoring, for piano, violin, two violas, cello, and double bass, may owe a debt as well to Hummel’s Piano Septet in D minor, Op. 74, for piano, flute, oboe, horn, viola, cello, and double bass). Several compositions Weber wrote for the clarinetist Heinrich Baermann may have encouraged Felix to compose the Clarinet Sonata in E ♭ major, probably completed in April 1824 for the Baron Karl von Kaskel, a Dresden art patron. 112 While the outer movements offer conventional treatments of sonata form, the middle movement invokes folksong in a melody unfolding in three expanding strophes articulated by piano cadenzas. Its G-minor strains recall Osmin’s rustic Lied “Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden” from Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail , but the lilting rhythms also conjure up a siciliano, a dance favored by Weber. Finally, the unpublished, two-piano Fantasia in D minor, a composite work in four connected movements completed during the early hours of March 15, 113 utilizes an explosive subject reminiscent of the Overture to Weber’s Euryanthe (1823; ex. 4.6a, b ).

  Beethoven’s dramatic style erupts with special force in the music of 1824. Thus, the Capriccio in E ♭ minor for piano, written for Felix’s friend Louis Heydemann, borrows from the “Moonlight” and “Tempest” Sonatas. 114 The last two movements of the Piano Sextet betray Felix’s immersion in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and its technique of thematic recall. Though labeled Menuetto , Felix’s third movement (Agitato , in meter) suggests a demonic scherzo. In the finale, the glittery, D-major recapitulation culminates in a massive fff passage on the dominant that spills over into a surprise return of the scherzo (in the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven reincarnates his macabre third movement just before the recapitulation of the finale). Then, in the stretto-like coda, the original theme of Felix’s finale appears, transposed into the minor mode of the Menuetto before a brusque ending in the major. About a year later, Felix would revisit this stratagem of interrupting and linking disparate movements in the Octet.

  Ex. 4.6a: Weber, Euryanthe (1823), Overture

  Ex. 4.6b: Mendelssohn, Fantasia in D minor for two pianos (1824)

  The Viola Sonata in C minor, composed between November 1823 and February 1824 but unpublished until 1966, 115 also evinces a Beethovenian persuasion. The work begins with a pensive first movement ending pianissimo , and a Menuetto Felix reused in the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11. Dwarfing these two movements is the finale, a weighty theme-and-variations set that decidedly shifts the structural balance to the third movement. Felix begins with a classical binary theme articulated in four phrases. Most of the ensuing variations respect the theme’s integrity, but in the second half of the sixth and seventh, he deviates from the original melodic course. The extended eighth, in C major, begins as a piano solo, taking us farther afield from the theme with melodic arabesques recalling the free variations in the finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 111. Reduced to a few laconic comments, the viola now outlines only vestigial traces of the theme. A free recitative then ushers in a dramatic coda in C minor.

  The most impressive work of 1824 is Symphony No. 1 in C minor, the only composition of the year Felix later published. The autograph bears the title Sinfonia XIII , 116 as if he were continuing his string sinfonie . But Op. 11 marks a definitive break from the student symphonies: he conceived it for full orchestra and limited the academic display of counterpoint to a brief fugato in the finale. Moreover, the principal influences are no longer J. S. and C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart, but the Beethoven of the Fifth Symphony and Weber of Der Freischütz . The C-minor tonality is one of several links to these two compositions. Others include the heightened dissonance level of the first movement, the Weberian élan of the closing theme in the first movement, the transition from the Trio of the third movement to the Da capo of the minuet (scored to allude to the third movement of the Fifth), 117 and the triumphant, stretto-like conclusion of the C-major finale that revisits the brightly lit conclusions of the Fifth and Der Freischütz , where a C-major chorus vanquishes the diabolical C-minor power of Samiel.

  IV

  For most of 1824 the Mendelssohns remained in Berlin; in July Felix accompanied his father to Bad Doberan, near Rostock and the Baltic, where Felix swam in the ocean for the first time. Resisting the resort’s leisure, he sketched the thirteenth-century cathedral, 118 read Cicero and Homer, played the piano at the summer court of the grand duke of Mecklenburg, worked on Die Hochzeit des Camacho , and solved a musical riddle from Zelter. Likening himself to the wise centaur Chiron and his pupil to Achilles, the gruff Bachian had chosen two countersubjects from a fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier , hidden them through transpositions into different keys, and then asked Felix to discover the missing subject. 119 The resort’s wind band intrigued Felix. Its personnel included a flute, paired clarinets, oboes, bassoons, French horns, a trumpet, and a bass-horn. The last named, a novelty of English provenance, prompted Felix to send a description to Berlin. Related to the ancient serpent, it possessed a “lovely, deep tone” and resembled “a watering can or a syringe.” 120 For this ensemble Felix composed the insouciant Notturno in C major, 121 later revised for a larger wind ensemble as the Ouvertüre für Harmoniemusik , Op. 24 (1839). Bipartite, it joins a softly illuminated Andante linked to a vivacious sonata-form movement. The principal theme seemingly recalls Weber’s Preciosa Overture (premiered in Berlin in 1821), in which a wind band presents a C-major gypsy march. The closing bars of Felix’s work contain a phrase reused nearly verbatim in the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture of 1826.

  According to Eric Werner, an ugly anti-Semitic incident disturbed the idyllic visit to Bad Doberan:

  … both Felix and his beloved sister Fanny were insulted by street urchins, who shouted “Jew-boy” and similar epithets and finally threw stones at them. Felix defended his sister vigorously and staunchly, but seems to have collapsed afterwards. His tutor J. [recte C.] L. Heyse writes tersely about the incident: “Felix behaved like a man, but after he had returned home could not conceal his fury about the humiliation, which in the evening broke out in a flood of tears and wild accusations.” 122

  Werner gave as his source the unpublished diary of Dr. Heyse, owned by a great-grandson of Felix, Joachim Wach (1898–1955). The elusive source, however, is not in the Wach papers, now at the University of Chicago, leading Jeffrey Sposato to doubt Werner’s reliability. 123 Additionally, Heyse and Fanny were not even present in Doberan but in Berlin, as Felix’s letters from the resort make clear. Indeed, Fanny expressed her anxiety over her brother’s departures in two compositions of July 1824. Das Heimweh (Homesickness ), finished on July 19, 124 projects onto the traveling Felix an intense longing for home; Felix later revised and published the song as his Op. 8 No. 2. Fanny also wrote a poignant Piano Sonata in C minor, inscribed “For Felix, in his absence.” 125 This work shows a considerable advance in her treatment of sonata form and of motivic and thematic development. The expressive slow movement plays on the theme of separation by alluding to Weber’s Konzertstück , well known to Fanny and Felix, which of course portrays a damsel pining for her crusading knight ( ex. 4.7a, b ).

  Returning to Berlin, Felix nurtured his relationship with Fanny by embarking on his second double piano concerto, composed between September 5 and November 12. Like its sibling, the A ♭ major Concerto contains reductions of the orchestral tutti for the solo parts, further evidence of the strength of the col basso tradition in Berlin during the 1820s. The autograph reveals another striking link to the eighteenth century. Here Felix began to alter his clefs (see plate 7 )—reversing the bass clef to a “C” clef, and refashioning the treble to produce a “G” clef with a loop around the fourth space and fifth line, characteristic of J. S. Bach’s autographs—and from 1824 an
identifying feature of Felix’s autographs. These notational changes may reflect his Bachian pursuits. Indeed, the manuscript of a contemporaneous Fugue in G minor (September 11, 1824) also exhibits the new clefs; in this double fugue, Felix altered the clefs midway, as if to strengthen the Bachian reverberations by emulating the Thomaskantor’s calligraphy. 126

  Ex. 4.7a: Weber, Konzertstück in F minor (1821), First Movement

  Ex. 4.7b: Fanny Mendelssohn, Piano Sonata in C minor (1824), Second Movement

  The Double Piano Concerto in A ♭ contains little to suggest the cerebral counterpoint of Bach, with the exception of a fugato in the finale, revived in mirror inversion toward the end of the work. For the most part, the concerto celebrates the piano virtuosity of the day. The work’s massive proportions (the first movement alone runs to 600 measures) suggest again Beethoven’s influence; indeed, the key scheme of the movements—A ♭ –E–A ♭ —replicates through transposition the plan of the Emperor Concerto (E ♭ –B–E ♭ ). There are other allusions to Beethoven: in the first movement, the characteristic motive of the Fifth Symphony insistently appears, 127 and in the finale, Felix resorts to a distinctive harmonic relationship (A ♭ –G ♭ , or tonic to lowered leading-tone) pioneered by Beethoven in several instrumental works. 128

  Still, Felix’s concerto raises suspicions about other models, if for no other reason than its unusual key. The search leads to the Second Piano Concerto in A ♭ major of John Field, who, like Ludwig Berger, had followed Muzio Clementi to Russia. Published in 1816, Field’s concerto was performed in Berlin by Carol Lithander on February 26, 1823. 129 Stylistic contacts between the two concerti are especially striking in the orchestral openings. Both begin piano with two statements of similar first themes, built upon symmetrical eight-bar periods ( ex. 4.8a, b ) and follow a similar course of events in their orchestral tutti . Felix expanded Field’s tutti of 84 bars to 109 by enlarging the transitions, where he introduced the motive from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, as if to inject a symphonic dimension into the serene, Field-like character of the concerto. But elsewhere, the Irishman’s gentle lyricism prevails, as in the nocturne-like slow movement, characterized by infrequent harmonic changes and liquescent arpeggiations.

  While Felix was completing his concerto, the arrival on October 31 of Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) stimulated Berlin musical life. Raised in Prague, the pianist had participated in the Viennese salon of the Baroness Eskeles, Felix’s great aunt. Moscheles’s principal composition teacher had been Salieri, who, on his deathbed in 1823, implored his former pupil to refute the “malicious” charge of having poisoned Mozart in 1791. 130 Moscheles’s idol was Beethoven, under whose supervision he arranged the piano-vocal score of Fidelio in 1814. When Moscheles recorded at the end “Finished with God’s help,” Beethoven, self-reliant but nearly completely deaf, commented, “O man, help yourself.” 131 Beethoven also supported Moscheles in 1823, when the Bohemian gave a highly publicized concert, alternating between a Viennese Graf piano and Beethoven’s English Broadwood. The Broadwood, seriously damaged from the aging composer’s “pitiless thumping,” failed to impress the audience, and the Graf won the day with the partisan audience.

  Ex. 4.8a: Field, Piano Concerto No. 2 in A ♭ major (1816), First Movement

  Ex. 4.8b: Mendelssohn, Double Piano Concerto in A ♭ major (1824), First Movement

  As a composer, Moscheles attracted attention during the Congress of Vienna, with some bravura variations for piano and orchestra on a military theme of Tsar Alexander (La marche d’Alexandre , Op. 32). But Moscheles expended much of his subsequent compositional energy on technically less demanding rondos, fantasias, and variations, typically fitted with fanciful titles (e.g., Les charmes de Paris ) and described by his great-great-grandson as “ephemeral music intended for salons or for the newly expanding amateur market.” 132 Catapulted into the front ranks of pianists, Moscheles became an itinerant virtuoso, appearing in Paris, London, and throughout Germany, before marrying Charlotte Embden in 1825 and settling in England. In 1824, one of his tours finally led him to Berlin and to the Mendelssohns.

  During a six-week stay Moscheles made several appearances, including three concerts (November 11 and 18, and December 6) featuring as many of his concerti and a variety of solo piano works. A reviewer praised the “almost wondrous elasticity” of his playing and his incomparable execution of rapid thirds, octaves, and trills. 133 Zelter ranked his compositions just below those of Hummel but compared the experience of hearing Moscheles to imbibing the intoxicating waters of Lethe, so that one simply forgot the pianist’s predecessors. 134 Between performances, Moscheles attended the Mendelssohns’ Sunday musicales, dined with the family, and visited the households of Zelter and Joseph Mendelssohn.

  According to Elise Polko, who in 1869 penned a sentimental, half-literary account of Felix, 135 Abraham and Lea hosted a dinner party for Moscheles, Hummel, Zelter, Ludwig Berger, Bernhard Klein, and the poet Ludwig Robert, after which the sensitive Felix declined to play before the virtuosi. There is no firm documentation for this scene, which we may safely relegate to Polko’s fictive embroidery, although her other claim, that Felix’s rendition of Moscheles’s Piano Concerto in E ♭ from the manuscript brought tears to his eyes, is probably not far from the truth. Moscheles witnessed the Sunday musicale for Fanny’s birthday on November 14, at which Felix performed one of his symphonies, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, and (presumably with Fanny) the Double Concerto in E major. 136 The following day Moscheles may have attended a public concert of the pianist Carl Arnold, the crown of which, according to A. B. Marx, was a performance of Felix’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor (whether he conducted the work is not clear). 137 A few days later, Lea was writing the prince des pianistes to request lessons for Felix and Fanny. 138 Initially Moscheles demurred, but filled his diary with notes about their precocity:

  This is a family the like of which I have never known. Felix, a boy of fifteen, is a phenomenon. What are all prodigies as compared with him? Gifted children, but nothing else. This Felix Mendelssohn is already a mature artist, and yet but fifteen years old! … His elder sister Fanny, also extraordinarily gifted, played by heart, and with admirable precision, Fugues and Passacailles by Bach. I think one may well call her a thorough “Mus. Doc.” 139

  On November 22 Lea repeated her request, and that day lessons began, continuing every other day, without Moscheles losing sight he “was sitting next to a master, not a pupil.” 140 Moscheles’s role was to provide finishing lessons for Felix and reassure the pragmatic parents that Felix’s gifts would “lead to a noble and truly great career.” Felix showed his newest compositions and probably shared the first movement of the Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 3, begun only a few weeks before Moscheles’s arrival, 141 and the Double Piano Concerto in A ♭ . On Sunday, November 28 he heard the Piano Quartet Op. 1, Sinfonia No. 8 in D major, a Bach concerto, and a piano duet composed by the visiting pianist Carl Arnold. The attending violinist Wilhelm Speyer wrote Spohr that Felix was a “phenomenon such as nature produced only rarely.” 142 At the Singakademie Fanny and Felix played music of J. S. Bach, and at Zelter’s residence on December 3 an astonished Moscheles heard Fanny read through a Bach concerto from a manuscript. Only two days later, for Privy Councilor Crelle, Felix was leading a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, on the anniversary of the composer’s death, and supplying the orchestral accompaniment from a piano. At the next Sunday musicale (December 12), Felix and Moscheles performed the latter’s duet, Hommage à Handel , a sprightly Allegro prefaced by a slow introduction in the style of a French overture. After his own farewell concert in the middle of the month, Moscheles departed. He would return to Berlin in 1826 and again sit next to a “master.”

  Chapter 5

  1825–1826

  The Prodigy’s Voice

  For unto whomsoever much is given,

  Of him shall much be required.

  —Luke 12:48

  On March 9, 1824, the matriarch o
f the Itzig family, Bella Salomon, died. Examining the will, the bereaved Lea and Abraham made a discovery: Bella’s fortune—the residence at Neue Promenade No. 7, the old Meierei , and other assets, valued at more than 150,000 thalers—was bequeathed equally to her son Jacob Bartholdy, the children of her granddaughters Josephine Benedicks and Marianne Mendelssohn (wife of Joseph Mendelssohn’s son Alexander), 1 and Lea’s unborn grandchildren. Unlike Jacob, cursed by Bella upon his baptism in 1805 but reconciled by Fanny’s intervention years later, the daughter and son-in-law were thus “completely disinherited” (völlig enterbt ). 2

  Had Bella discovered Lea’s and Abraham’s clandestine conversion to Protestantism, or that of their children? We can only speculate about Bella’s motivation, 3 but the action was decisive, for the Mendelssohns now could remain in Neue Promenade No. 7 only by purchasing or renting it. Neither option was desirable, and Abraham began the search for a new residence. By the end of 1824, he found it in a dilapidated mansion at Leipzigerstrasse No. 3, just off the Leipzigerplatz. 4

  Part of the Friedrichstadt, Leipzigerstrasse had been developed during the 1730s by the “soldier-king,” Frederick William I, who, when not preoccupied with military campaigns, indulged in Baulust . In 1735 the monarch had authorized a Lieutenant von der Groeben to build a house at No. 3, described as a “slender towel” (schmales Handtuch )—that is, a lot 59 by 380 meters. During the next few decades the property was the site of a silk mill; James Boswell described one of its owners, J. E. Gotskowsky, as “a gallant German, stupid, comely, cordial,” and his wife, a “stout, good looking Frow.” 5 Through mutual business interests Gotskowsky had dealings with Moses Mendelssohn. When Gotskowsky died impoverished in 1775, Leipzigerstrasse No. 3 was sold for 14,000 thalers. The new owner, Baron K. F. L. von der Reck, was a minor nobleman whose titles included “maitre des plaisirs” and “directeur des spectacles ”—that is, he directed royal entertainments and the opera houses. During the French occupation, he relinquished his silverware to help satiate Napoleon’s demands following the Peace of Tilsit, and after the decisive Battle of Leipzig his gardens were the scene of a joyous festivity celebrating the victory of Blücher’s Prussian army (around this time the octagonal baroque square near the house was renamed Leipzigerplatz). By then the estate had begun to fall, according to Lea, into “that state of decay and neglect that will always arise from there being many owners,” 6 and on February 18, 1825, Reck’s son-in-law, Major von Podewils, deeded it to Abraham for 56,000 thalers.