Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  According to Moscheles, in rehearsals the Philharmonic overplayed, so that Felix suggested lowering the dynamics a degree. Still, the overture received only a lukewarm premiere, attended by Klingemann, who complained about Moscheles’s stodgy tempo. Little surprise, then, that the hypercritical Felix subjected the work to thorough revision during the fall of 1835 before it finally appeared as Op. 32 in 1836. 117 Among its early admirers was Robert Schumann, who commented on the pianissimo B ♭ in the trumpets near the beginning, “a tone out of the distant past.” 118 But when Schumann read into the work images of pearls and magic deep-sea castles, Felix rejected the review as too fanciful. Asked about the meaning of his composition, he mused, “Hmm, a mésalliance .” 119

  VII

  In the Melusine legend, Raimund loses his bride when he breaks a vow and espies her changing into mermaid form. During the Düssseldorf period, amorous loss plagued Felix, who remained an eminently eligible bachelor. In September 1833 his old flame, Delphine von Schauroth, married the English clergyman Edwin Hill Handley, prompting Fanny Horsley to gossip to her aunt, “Mamma and Mary think Mendelssohn will never marry. I do, that is if he does not plague his mistress to death before the day arrives.” 120 Though Fanny Hensel pressed for news about her brother’s amours , Felix frustrated her with his characteristic reticence and alluded to an unnamed American with whom he had flirted and an Englishwoman who had lent him an English bible. 121 Still, he flew into a rage during a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Egmont in January, when the musicians bungled the passage in Clärchen’s Lied, Glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt (“happy alone is the soul who loves”), and in April he admitted to Charlotte Moscheles he was still a “warm admirer” of Delphine, whom he likened next to her husband to a white mouse before a black tomcat, and vanilla ice next to roast beef. 122 Around this time Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy announced his intention to marry Albertine Heine, to whom he was secretly engaged; the idea met stiff resistance from Abraham, who had quarreled with her father, a Berlin banker. Undoubtedly the prospect of the younger Paul’s marriage (the lovers did wed, on May 27, 1835) impressed upon Felix the relative solitude of his bachelor existence. But a more dramatic reminder came in April 1834 with the sensational news of K. A. Varnhagen von Ense’s engagement to Marianne Saaling, less than a year after the widower feuilletoniste had lost his wife, Rahel. The scandal shocked Berlin society and distressed Marianne’s cousin Lea, who suffered bouts of tachycardia and hypochondria. To her relief, within a few weeks the engagement was broken. 123

  Felix seems to have expressed his own feelings through music. When an anonymous poem urging him to marry arrived in January 1834, he improvised on a “Bachelor’s Song,” into which he introduced “Mir ist so wunderbar” from Beethoven’s Fidelio . 124 A few days later, he composed three part-songs, ostensibly for Eduard Devrient’s birthday, on love poems of Heine. 125 When they eventually appeared in the Sechs Lieder , Op. 41 of 1838 (Nos. 2–4), Felix combined them as three Volkslieder . The first invokes a lover to “flee with me and be my wife.” In the second, an illfated elopement is like a spring frost that wilts flowers. And in the third, a lad rests by the grave of his beloved beneath a linden tree (a reworking of imagery in Wilhelm Müller’s Der Lindenbaum in the cycle Winterreise ). Then, in May 1834, Felix crafted four solo Lieder, of which one, published as Op. 34 No. 1, sings of a “tender maiden” whose eyes are brighter than the sun. Identified in the autograph as a Mailied , the song precedes an unpublished Andres Mailied that projects a more jaded outlook: “I know a fine and pretty maiden. Beware!” 126 The third setting (Jagdlied , released posthumously as Op. 84 No. 3) compares the hunter’s game, three birds, to maidens. And the fourth, a wistful, incomplete setting of Heine’s “Warum sind denn die Rosen so blaß,” revisits the imagery of its predecessors: why, the protagonist asks his lover, are the roses so faded, the violets so mute, and the lark’s song so pitiful?

  Perhaps the most compelling evidence that bachelorhood weighed heavily upon Felix was a comic opera he contemplated composing on Kotzebue’s play Pervonte , based on a Wieland poem about a love affair between a commoner and a princess. As early as August 1833 Felix broached the subject with Klingemann and, during the spring of 1834, exchanged ideas before Klingemann began drafting the libretto. Their correspondence through January 1835 127 details several alterations; then, in a familiar pattern, Felix abandoned the project. In Kotzebue’s comedy Princess Vastola, daughter of Prince Pumpapump, is a shrew who rejects all suitors. “Maidens rarely know what they want, and why they scold one day, and pout the next,” opines a seneschal. But through a magic spell, she falls in love with Pervonte, transformed from an unassuming woodsman into a handsome youth. Eager to win her true love, he eventually renounces the spell.

  Felix examined the character development through various scenarios. In one, Vastola’s stubbornness is tamed; in another, a rival suitor, Astolfo, emerges to complicate the plot. Because he falls beneath her rank, Vastola’s father bitterly opposes the match (echoes of Lea’s and Abraham’s opposition to their children’s spouses?). Able to attract Vastola’s love only through a spell, Pervonte renounces its potency, and she returns to Astolfo. In Felix’s final version, Astolfo is lacking, Vastola again plays the shrew and Pervonte (Felix?) a simple woodsman uninterested in marriage. Through a fairies’ spell the two fall in love; ultimately, Pervonte asks the spell be removed so the two can test their love. Framing the entire draft are scenes for the fairies, which, like the motto chords of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, might well have inspired from Felix evanescent Feenmusik and a delightful, Shakespearean confusion.

  While Felix was pondering romantic relationships and the loss of Delphine, Mary Alexander was pining for him in England. Dutifully she studied German in order to correspond in his native tongue. Then, she translated three poems from Heine’s Heimkehr into English for his review. He did not answer, though Fanny set the verses in March 1834. The first begins, suggestively, “Once o’er my dark and troubled life/There shone a ray of light;/But now that cheering ray’s withdrawn,/Around me all is night.” 128 Failing to elicit Felix’s reply, Mary sent more urgent letters. Finally, in July, only weeks after Felix resumed their correspondence, she disclosed the news of her betrothal to a Yorkshire gentleman, an arranged marriage that secured her family’s social standing but left her feelings for Felix painfully unresolved. Not until 1844 would she see him again.

  VIII

  Another, pressing family issue distracted Felix from his love life. Late in 1833 the Goethe-Zelter correspondence began appearing in installments, barely one year after their deaths. The editor was the classicist F. W. Riemer, whom in 1825 Felix had found corpulent and prelatelike in Weimar. The tactless Riemer failed to strike indelicate passages, including several that offended the Mendelssohns. “May God preserve us from our friends,” was the reaction of Henriette (Hinni) Mendelssohn, who labeled some of Zelter’s aperçus malicious (hämisch ). 129 Because Abraham was suffering from cataracts, the family read aloud the correspondence to him and collectively experienced what Fanny described as at best “an unpleasantly awkward way of thinking,” at worst the “trappings of self-interest, egotism, a disgusting idolizing of Goethe without a true, reasoned appraisal, and the most indiscreet exposing of everyone else.” 130 Counting the indexed entries, Fanny found Felix was mentioned fifty-eight times; admittedly, many were laudatory, but there were also provocative comments, e.g., that Felix was the son of a Jew, but no Jew (here, the Mendelssohns read Riemer’s doctored text, since Zelter’s original letter had informed Goethe that Felix was uncircumcised; see p. 30). Zelter now emerged posthumously for the Mendelssohns as a pedestrian sycophant: “one of the numerous instances of Zelter’s unbelievable lack of knowledge is found when Zelter asks Goethe what Byzantium is and then receives his answer. And for that one corresponds with Goethe!” 131

  Though Felix struggled to remain unruffled about the slights to his family, Zelter’s and Goethe’s “arrogant” criticism
s of Reichardt threw him into such a rage that he planned to perform that composer’s Morgengesang and vowed to get even with Riemer, whom he viewed as the culprit in publishing material intended for Goethe’s eyes only. 132 Abraham, it seems, took umbrage at Goethe’s criticism of Hensel’s early paintings for tending toward the Nazarene style (see p. 120). At least, that is what Riemer believed, for he claimed to have received in 1834 an anonymous letter, which he attributed to Abraham, demanding a retraction of the passage. This sad affair had an even sadder postscript: in 1841, six years after Abraham’s death, Riemer crudely attacked his memory: “Meanwhile may the good father-in-law [of Hensel] have obtained his revenge from what Heine and Börne poured out about G[oethe] before all of Germany, or, as one might also say, have recognized his smell!” 133 (Ironically, Abraham numbered among Heine’s most fervent detractors. 134 ) Though Goethe in 1822 had promised never to throw his spear at Felix, as Saul had at David, Zelter’s letters now bristled with barbs that severely wounded Felix’s memory of his teacher.

  Various distractions in Düsseldorf assuaged his splenetic moods. Felix purchased a horse from his cousin Benni and pursued equestrian pastimes. He accepted some students, including a “pretty girl” from Aixla-Chapelle 135 and Hermann Franck’s brother Eduard, with whom Felix probed the sublime mysteries of J. S. Bach’s Art of Fugue . 136 And there was the companionship of the Academy painters, of whom several sang in Felix’s chorus. He resided in the same house as Wilhelm Schadow, the former Nazarene, contributor to the frescos of the Casa Bartholdy in Rome, and since 1826 director of the Academy. For Felix’s twenty-fifth birthday, in February 1834, Schadow arranged an evening ball during which a military band serenaded the composer with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony; a few months later, Schadow sketched Felix’s portrait, capturing the young musician at the height of his Düsseldorf career (see frontispiece). Among Schadow’s pupils who had followed the artist from Berlin to Düsseldorf were C. F. Sohn, Theodor Hildebrandt, Julius Hübner, and Eduard Bendemann; together with Schadow, “like a prophet among his disciples,” 137 all numbered among Felix’s close friends. Elise Polko relates that during the Düsseldorf years Felix orchestrated movements of Beethoven’s sonatas for performance with tableaux vivants, designed by the painters. 138 Thus, for a representation in the Stadttheater on December 8, 1834, Felix scored the Andante and Funeral March from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A ♭ , Op. 26, to accompany tableaux vivants designed by Sohn and Hildebrandt. 139 A more regular relationship developed with J. W. Schirmer, who specialized in landscape; on Sundays, Schirmer instructed Felix in watercolors and how to paint sunlight and use purple to suggest distance.

  There was also the diversion of Felix’s creative work. In February he succumbed again to revision mania and wrote out a new score of Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt ; 140 in April, he mused about the still unrealized Scottish Symphony; and in June he reworked the last three movements of the Italian . Among his new compositions were the Rondo brillant for piano and orchestra, Op. 29, finished on January 29, 1834, dedicated to Moscheles and premiered by the pianist in London in May, and the concert scene and aria Infelice , dated on May 3 and dispatched as the final installment of the Philharmonic commission. The Rondo brillant was an attempt to overcome what Felix described as his “poverty in shaping new forms” for the piano. 141 Though a premiere pianist of his age, Felix was conflicted about the encroachment of virtuosity on musical form; ultimately, keyboard acrobatics did not matter to him as much as the integrity of the composition. The Rondo brillant , cast in sonata-rondo form, betrays in its glittery passagework the influence of Carl Maria von Weber, especially in the vivacious, arpeggiated opening theme. Unfortunately, the contrasting second theme falls into square, predictable phrases and shows signs of the very “poverty” Felix lamented, only partially ameliorated by a third subject, an octave passage in mock counterpoint. Why Felix did not provide a slow introduction remains a mystery. Unlike the two-movement Rondo capriccioso and Capriccio brillant , the Rondo brillant commences with fanfares on the dominant, as if announcing a transition to a finale and encouraging us to imagine that Felix himself improvised an introduction when he performed this spirited, bravura piece. 142

  Less well-known is the concert aria Infelice , on texts cobbled together from four libretti of Metastasio to yield the “most beautiful nonsense” (allerschönster Unsinn ). 143 The subject of a woman abandoned by her lover had a long ancestry in Italian opera, as evidenced by countless treatments of Dido and Aeneas (Didone abbandonata ) and Beethoven’s scene and aria Ah! Perfido , Op. 65, which may have offered a model for Felix. In Infelice , the unidentified betrayed enters with an agitated recitative (Infelice! Già dal mio sguardo si diliguo! “Unfortunate one! Already he has escaped my glance!”). The aria proper, introduced and accompanied by a sinuous violin solo (Andante sostenuto , ex. 9.13 ), is a plea for the return of a golden age (Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro ). A third, contrasting section (Allegro vivace ) reminds the abandoned of her present torment; near the end, the solo violin briefly revives the Andante.

  Ex. 9.13 : Mendelssohn, Infelice , Op. 94, First Version (1834)

  The coupling of an obbligato solo with the vocal line was not unprecedented; Felix would have known, for example, Italian concert arias of Mozart that use the technique. But Felix’s duetlike scoring bore a hidden meaning, for he disclosed to Lea that the violin solo was tailored for the Belgian musician C.-A. de Bériot, the illicit lover of the internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Malibran. Art thus (roughly) approximated life. Still, when the work received its London premiere (May 1834), the soprano Maria Caradori-Allan, not Malibran, sang the solo. Less than two years later, Malibran and de Bériot wed in a clandestine ceremony. Tragically, within a few months, the young singer died. Felix withdrew the concert aria. In 1843 he would delete the violin solo and recast the work for the singer Sophie Schloss, who sang it at the Gewandhaus. Not until 1851 did this second version appear in print as Op. 94; the first version was forgotten until late in the twentieth century. 144

  Overshadowing these compositions and a handful of keyboard pieces 145 was Felix’s progress on his oratorio. In October 1833 Schubring had returned the composer’s second libretto draft with heavy annotations, 146 and he urged a division into two, not three parts, but approved Felix’s plan to alternate between narrative and dramatic modes, and to leave the work open-ended with Paul’s departure from the Ephesians. As for the issue of chorales, Schubring conceded they could not be used as in the St. Matthew Passion as signs of the collective, congregational awareness of the Passion. But Schubring also rejected Marx’s argument that chorales were anachronistic for the early Christian apostle, since “every musical form that we know arose later.” Indeed, Schubring advised that many choruses of the oratorio were choralmäßig and did not hesitate to recommend specific chorales.

  Felix began composing St. Paul in earnest in April 1834. By the middle of July, he attained the midpoint of the first part and by November was conceptualizing music for the second, including choruses for Paul’s first journey to Lystra, where the Gentiles mistake him as Mercury (Acts 14:12). 147 Around mid-November Felix paused to sketch the overture and hit upon the solution of coupling an instrumental chorale (Wachet auf ) with a fugue to symbolize Paul’s Christian awakening. Then, in December, he took up the music for the second part and responded to criticisms of his father, who had keenly followed the work, and awaited its premiere, scheduled for Schelble’s Frankfurt Cäcilienverein in December 1835. Abraham found Stephen’s defense too verbose and remarked about Saul’s absence at the martyr’s stoning. But Felix formulated worthy answers: he intended to compress Stephen’s monologue into a recitative that would occupy only two or three minutes; he could find no words from Acts for Saul to utter at Stephen’s martyrdom.

  IX

  Other than appearing in concerts of neighboring communities, 148 Felix remained in Düsseldorf through much of 1834. An exception was the sixteenth Lower Rhine Music Festival, which h
e attended in Aix-la-Chapelle in May 1834. For the occasion, conducted by the composer Ferdinand Ries, Ferdinand Hiller had arranged and translated Handel’s Deborah . While Felix made the eleven-hour coach journey from Düsseldorf, Hiller left Paris with Chopin, who had to sell a new waltz to Pleyel to afford the journey. Soon the three pianists were celebrating their reunion. But Felix’s dealings with Ries, with whom days before he had performed Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, were apparently less cordial. According to Fétis, the two had a falling out, owing to Felix’s “impolite” criticisms of Ries’s conducting. 149 Fétis’s account may have been colored by his own strained relationship with Felix, who still remembered the 1829 affair at St. Paul’s and now snubbed the Belgian critic at the festival by refusing to embrace him. After the festival, Felix, Hiller, and Chopin spent time together in Düsseldorf and Cologne. Felix’s friends were probably among the first to hear him render portions of St. Paul . Felix found Chopin “quite a second Paganini,” executing “all sorts of impossibilities which one never thought could be done.” 150