Mendelssohn: A Life in Music
Page 21
By the time of the Restoration, the stretch of Leipzigerstrasse between Leipzigerplatz and Wilhelmstrasse was still a relatively quiet, if fashionable residential area. As a young man Felix wagered he could stroll down the street with a rosary on his head and did so without encountering anyone. 7 On the north side were sixteen houses but on the south, only six, more spacious properties, including No. 3. No. 2 was owned by the Prussian emissary to Constantinople; and No. 4 was the site of the royal porcelain factory, established by Gotskowsky during the reign of Frederick the Great. The two-story residence of No. 3, the breadth of which accommodated nineteen windows (plate 8 ), faced the street. One interior room on the ground level opened “by means of three arches into an adjoining apartment,” and became Lea’s spacious sitting room, the site of family entertainments. Behind the principal structure, on either side, were symmetrical wings (Felix’s room was in the left wing, on a mezzanine level 8 ), with a carriage house and stables. At the back of the mansion an elegant Gartenhaus adjoined the wings, so that the entire rectangular configuration enclosed an interior courtyard of half an acre. The south side of the Gartenhaus looked out onto a park of about seven acres that bordered the lush gardens of Prince Albrecht.
The Mendelssohns moved to Leipzigerstrasse around the middle of 1825; on July 11, Felix was still able to record a view from his old room in Neue Promenade No. 7. 9 Because renovations were necessary, they initially lived in the Gartenhaus and delayed occupying the main residence until mid-December. Encompassing sixteen rooms and three kitchens, the Gartenhaus was arranged around a commodious Gartensaal, 14 by 7.5 meters, with a height of about eight meters and thus “too large to be called a drawing-room.” Sebastian Hensel informs us that the ceiling, “covered with fantastic fresco-paintings,” had a shallow cupola, and that the room could accommodate several hundred during Sunday musicales. Here he may have exaggerated, unless we consider an unusual architectural feature: the south side, terraced to command a view of the gardens, had movable glass panels, separated by Doric columns, “so that the hall could be transformed into an open portico.” 10 The Gartenhaus afforded Felix a private, romantic space where his genius fully blossomed and where, some one hundred yards from Leipzigerstrasse, he discovered the “deepest loneliness of a forest.” 11
To realize a return on their investment, Abraham and Lea considered adding to the mansion a third floor to rent out; to that end, the young architect C. T. Ottmer drew up plans to convert the baroque facade into a classical design. 12 Because of prohibitive costs they abandoned the plan, though they did rent eleven rooms on the second floor (Beletage ) to the Hanoverian emissary, Baron von Reden, annually for 2000 thalers. In 1826 Abraham and Lea welcomed as a new tenant Karl Klingemann, then an “extraordinary clerk” of the legation. Other residents later included Eduard and Therese Devrient (from 1829 to 1830); the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (from 1832 to 1845), who married Felix’s sister Rebecka in 1832; and the classicist August Böckh (from 1840 to 1846). When Wilhelm Hensel married Fanny in 1829, the newlyweds moved into rooms adjacent to the Gartensaal; in 1830, Abraham added northern windows to refine the lighting of the artist’s atelier .
Leipzigerstrasse No. 3 came to symbolize the comfortable existence of the Mendelssohns, a point stressed by Sebastian Hensel, who spared little effort to depict his relatives as successfully assimilated, upstanding Prussian citizens of the Vormärz. Somewhat smugly, Lea reported to Henriette von Pereira Arnstein that the residence was only one of three private Berlin estates with a park not already purchased by the king. 13 Here Abraham, Lea, and Fanny lived until their deaths, and Felix’s widow, Cécile, and their children resided there from 1848 until June 1851, when the only other family member on the estate was the widower Wilhelm Hensel. That year Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy sold the property for 100,000 thalers to the state, which converted it into the Upper House (Herrenhaus) of the new Prussian Parliament, formed after the revolutionary tremors of March 1848. The main residence became assembly rooms; the Gartenhaus was demolished for additional space. For decades, Leipzigerstrasse No. 3 retained its political function before its razing in 1898, when its memories of the Mendelssohns, of music, painting, culture, and of politics, were lost.
I
For Felix, 1825 began auspiciously enough. On January 18, he put the finishing touches on the Piano Quartet in B minor, published later that year as Op. 3, and on February 12 began the Overture to Die Hochzeit des Camacho , having finished the first act of the opera in December 1824. But a family obligation interrupted progress on the second act begun in March; Felix accompanied his father to Paris to escort back to Berlin the recently pensioned Henriette Mendelssohn. En route the two spent a weekend in Weimar, 14 where they found Goethe laboring over the second part of Faust . One member of Goethe’s circle now judged Felix’s improvisations more soulful than the virtuoso displays of his earlier visits. 15 For his efforts, Felix received a medallion of the poet by the Frenchman Antoine Bovy.
Proceeding through Frankfurt, father and son reached Paris on March 22, after Felix had raised a sensitive issue, as Abraham later recalled in 1829:
On our journey to Paris after that neck-breaking night, you asked me the reasons why our name was changed…. A Christian Mendelssohn is an impossibility. A Christian Mendelssohn the world would never recognize. Nor should there be a Christian Mendelssohn; for my father himself did not want to be a Christian. “Mendelssohn” does and always will stand for a Judaism in transition, when Judaism, just because it is seeking to transmute itself spiritually, clings to its ancient form all the more stubbornly and tenaciously, by way of protest against the novel form that so arrogantly and tyrannically declared itself to be the one and only path to the good. 16
Because a Christian Mendelssohn was no more plausible than a Jewish Confucius, Abraham, upon arriving in Paris, had calling cards engraved “Felix M. Bartholdy,” for his son “was about to step into the world and make a name for [himself].” But curiously enough, the Piano Quartet Op. 1 had already appeared in 1823 as the work of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, setting a precedent the composer observed for the rest of his career. 17 Did Abraham allow the use of both surnames for his son’s compositional debut, or did Schlesinger attempt to increase sales by linking Felix to his illustrious grandfather?
Felix’s choice of profession weighed no less heavily than his religious identity on Abraham. Jacob Bartholdy, for one, was not convinced that Felix should pursue music. “In the beginning you are just as far as at the end,” Jacob opined, and he recommended a career in law or banking, with music remaining his “friend and companion.” 18 Happily, Abraham did not follow his brother-in-law’s advice, and instead made use of the Parisian sojourn to seek counsel about Felix’s prospects.
Through a new residential section, the faubourg St. Lazare, Abraham and Felix entered a metropolis of nearly 800,000 at the height of the Restoration. They found the haute bourgeoisie enjoying la grande cuisine and strolling in arcades lined with opulent shops. Portions of the city, including the Opéra and arcades, “as loud and bright” as “a great celebration in Berlin,” 19 were illuminated by coal gas, by which one could read comfortably at night. After Napoleon’s fall, Louis XVIII had pursued a middle-of-the-road policy, keeping in check the liberals and ultraroyalists. In 1820 a fanatic assassinated the king’s nephew on the steps of the Opéra, and when Louis XVIII died in December 1824, his brother acceded to the throne as Charles X and began pursuing regressive policies. He resuscitated the ancient right of divine rule, strengthened ties to the Catholic Church, and sought to compensate the nobility for losses during the Revolution. During the Mendelssohns’ visit (March 22 to May 13), preparations were underway for Charles’ coronation, which took place at Rheims on May 29. At the cathedral the new king was solemnly anointed with holy oil—miraculously preserved from the ravages of war—that for centuries had ordained dozens of previous monarchs.
For the event, the Italian Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) crafted a resplen
dent Mass. Twenty-five years before, Abraham had admired him as a composer of dramatic rescue operas such as Lodoïska (1791), which captured the revolutionary fervor of the time by ending with the destruction of a palace. Cherubini himself had survived harrowing adventures during the Revolution; his music never fully found favor with Napoleon, who preferred the tuneful fare of Paisiello. But Cherubini was highly regarded in musical circles: Haydn had given him the autograph of his Drum-Roll Symphony, and Beethoven admired a musical clock that performed two favorite operatic excerpts, a trio from Fidelio and the Overture to Cherubini’s Médée . Around 1807 Cherubini withdrew from composition to take up painting and botany. When his inspiration returned in 1808, he abandoned opera for Catholic polyphony. His most ambitious work, the Mass in D minor (1811), may still stand as the longest Mass ever composed: its sesquipedalian girth extends to 2,563 measures, surpassing Beethoven’s Missa solemnis by more than 600. The abrupt stylistic shift in Cherubini’s music served him well: he became musical arbiter of the Restoration and embraced conservative Bourbon values. As surintendant de la musique du roi , he composed motets, a Requiem to commemorate the execution of Louis XVI, and coronation Masses for Louis XVIII and Charles X. At the height of his fame, Cherubini was installed as director of the Conservatoire, where he produced students who scored successes at the Opéra, including Auber, Halévy, and Boieldieu.
In the view of Edward Bellasis, Cherubini was a musical genius who “restrained mediocrity” at the Conservatoire. 20 For some, however, his eccentric habits bordered on pedantry. Probably with some apprehension, Abraham submitted Felix to the Italian’s judgment. The two met at the firm of the piano manufacturer Sébastien Erard, and later at a musical soirée on March 31, when Felix joined the orchestra as a violinist to perform Mozart’s Requiem. 21 Against all expectations, Cherubini was on his best behavior; his prickly demeanor, attributed by Felix to his status as a henpecked husband, softened, and Felix was allowed to hear one of Cherubini’s Masses in the Chapelle royale . Then, on April 4, Felix presented his Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 3. The performance was marred by an auditor who comforted herself with a noisy, tinsel-adorned fan; still, the usually taciturn Cherubini dumbfounded his colleagues with the prolix assessment, Ce garçon est riche, il fera bien; il fait même déjà bien ; mais il dépense trop de son argent, il met trop d’étoffe dans son habit.… Je lui parlerai alors il fera bien! (“This lad is rich; he will do well. He already has done well, but he spends too much of his money, and he puts too much fabric into his clothes … I shall speak to him—he will do well”). 22 The “extinct volcano,” as Felix likened him, could still spew some cinders.
At Abraham’s request, Cherubini devised a special challenge for Felix: to compose a Kyrie for fivepart chorus and orchestra. Undaunted, he dispatched the task in a few days and dated the score on May 6. According to Zelter, Felix cast the work in Cherubini’s style, either to emulate or surpass the elder musician. 23 Cherubini was so impressed that he offered to accept Felix as a student and advised Abraham to leave his son in Paris to complete his musical education. 24 Abraham declined and departed for Berlin with Felix and Henriette around the middle of May. Henriette found a “refined, cultivated young man” in place of the “wild lad” she had known ten years before. 25
The composition that won Cherubini’s praise, the Kyrie in D minor, remains among Felix’s least known choral works. 26 The thickened, five-part choral textures and orchestra augmented by three trombones imbue the score with solemn, dark hues. Several stylistic idiosyncrasies reveal that Felix was familiar with Cherubini’s magisterial Mass in the same key (1811). Among them is the final cadence with raised third, supported by somber invocations of the subdominant G minor, and especially telling is a fugato modeled on the artful fugue from Cherubini’s Kyrie ( ex. 5.1a, b ). Like Cherubini, Felix treats the subject in mirror inversion and combines the two forms in an impressive contrapuntal exhibition.
As if to link Cherubini’s Mass to an older, eighteenth-century tradition, Felix’s Kyrie invokes a second sacred work, Mozart’s Requiem. The inversion of Cherubini’s fugal subject simulates the bassoon solo that opens Mozart’s Requiem ( ex. 5.2a, b ); not surprisingly, Felix begins his Kyrie by incorporating in the second bassoon the first few notes of Mozart’s bassoon part. There are other Mozartean features, including exchanges between major and minor harmonies, and intensely chromatic part writing. All in all, the Kyrie is a richly expressive work that affords a rewarding glimpse at how Felix might have approached setting the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass.
Ex. 5.1a: Cherubini, Mass in D minor (1811), Kyrie
Ex. 5.1b: Mendelssohn, Kyrie in D minor (1825)
Felix gave no public performances in Paris but participated in the private salons of high society, where he introduced his piano quartets, 27 including the newly completed Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 3. Supporting him were Pierre Baillot’s colleagues, of whom the most peculiar was the violist Chrétien Urhan, a spiritual ascetic who demurred from ogling ballet dancers from his chair in the orchestra of the Opéra, observed a regimen of radishes and bread to banish evil thoughts, and experimented with scordatura retunings of his instrument. 28 At the time few Parisians were producing worthy chamber music, although an exception was Georges Onslow (1784–1853), who wrote dozens of string quartets and quintets in the tradition of Viennese classicism. From an aristocratic English family tainted by scandal, 29 Onslow resided in a château in Auvergne and wintered in Paris, where he introduced his new works. Felix found Onslow’s String Quartet in E minor reasonably attractive—on a galoppé un quatuor , Onslow mused after a performance—but was shocked at the musician’s ignorance of Beethoven’s Fidelio , modeled on the genre of the French rescue opera.
Ex. 5.2a: Mozart, Requiem, K. 626 (1791), Introit
Ex. 5.2b: Mendelssohn, Kyrie in D minor (1825)
When not attending soirées and public concerts or translating Tacitus with Halévy’s brother, Felix sent penetrating reports about French musical taste to Berlin. Like a magnet, Paris attracted illustrious musicians, native and foreign. Of pianists, Felix numbered among Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, Pixis, the Herz brothers, fourteen-year-old Franz Liszt, and Hummel, who concertized at the piano firm of the frères Erard . Among the French musicians were the violinists Baillot, Lafont, Rodolphe Kreutzer, Boucher, and Pierre Rode, who had grown old but still “spat fire.” At the Conservatoire Cherubini was joined by the composer-theorist Anton Reicha, author of an early definition of sonata form and creator of unorthodox fugues, and at the musical salons one encountered the pianists and piano manufacturers Ignaz and Camille Pleyel, the composer Lesueur, conductor Habeneck, and the widely traveled composer Sigismund Neukomm, who had returned from Brazil to enjoy the patronage of the Duke of Orléans, the future King Louis-Philippe. In 1825, opera remained the dominant musical form in the French capitol, despite thriving public concert series, including the Concert spirituel and Concert de la Loge Olympique , founded in the eighteenth century, effaced by the Revolution, and then reinvented in time for the Restoration. At the Théâtre-Italien, Parisians were gripped by a Rossini manie , while at the Opéra, the French operas of Cherubini and his pupils ruled the stage.
Felix’s letters teem with unflattering vignettes of Parisian musical life. He found a Stabat mater hackneyed and proposed to rename its composer, Neukomm (“newcomer”), Altkomm (“old-timer”). The eccentric Anton Reicha, professor of counterpoint at the Conservatoire, was feared “as the wild huntsman (he hunts parallel fifths).” Felix directed his most scathing criticism at Camille Pleyel, who took unconscionable liberties with Mozart: “He made two cadenzas longer than the entire concerto, and decorated the entire piece with coquettish affectations, at best appropriate for Rossini; now he played above, now below, here a trill, there a run, here a double appoggiatura, there a suspended ninth, in short, a concerto by Mozart revised and corrected by C. Pleyel.” 30
Even Gioachino Rossini, the new director of the Théâtre-Italien, fared no bette
r. If Stendhal found in Rossini a “smile of pleasure at every bar” that banished all “those grave, half conscious musings” of Mozart, 31 Felix dubbed Rossini the “Great Maestro Windbag,” a “mixture of roguishness, superficiality, and ennui, with long sideburns, wide as a church door, elegantly dressed, surrounded by all the ladies.” At a soirée of the Countess of Rumford, Rossini introduced into the piano accompaniment of Mozart’s Ave verum all manner of dissonant suspensions, “for the benefit and enlightenment of all his listeners, or rather non-listeners,” so that his audience was obliged to call out charmant and délicieux —thus one savored “the joys of music” in Paris. 32 And finally, the young Liszt’s glittery improvisations were “wretched,” inflated with vapid scales; Franzi possessed many fingers but meager mental faculties (er hat viel Finger, aber wenig Kopf ). 33