Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  For a week he enjoyed shopping with Charlotte Moscheles and visited the Alexanders, who showed him a portrait Hensel had drawn of his father. Unusually, Felix transacted little professional business. To Novello he sold the English rights to the Lobgesang , and from an eccentric pupil of Moscheles, C. B. Broadley, Felix accepted a commission for an anthem based on Psalm 13. His friend H. J. Gauntlett again led Felix to the organ at Christ Church, Newgate Street, with its expanded compass and pedal board, and on September 30 he tried out an instrument at St. Peter’s Church, Cornhill. The organ, installed under Gauntlett’s supervision, also had the German C-compass; the black keys had inlaid tortoiseshell, and the stop knobs, mother-of-pearl rosettes. On this instrument Felix played his own Prelude and Fugue in C minor, Op. 37 No. 1, and the Fugue in F minor, a Bach prelude and fugue in E minor, and the Passacaglia. The organist of the church was the talented young woman Elizabeth Mounsey (1819–1905); although too shy to play for the visiting celebrity, she became a devoted Mendelssohnian. 78

  Accompanied by Chorley and Moscheles, Felix left London in early October. At Aix-la-Chapelle they encountered a gaunt, Don Quixote-like figure, Anton Schindler, whose greeting Felix returned with “some mental reserve.” 79 Arriving in Leipzig late on October 9, the two pianists enjoyed ten days of robust music making and companionship. Having missed the first concert of the new season, for which David had deputized, Felix now had only a day to prepare for the second (October 11), which featured Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. For a week the Gewandhaus directors urged Moscheles to perform publicly, but he relished instead the small, private gatherings with Felix and Cécile, whom he found “very unassuming and childlike,” 80 and their circle, including the newlyweds Robert and Clara Schumann. Finally, Moscheles relented and on October 19 he and Felix gave a private concert for an audience of three hundred. Felix directed the Hebrides Overture, Psalm 42, and the first two Leonore Overtures of Beethoven, and performed with his friend the duet Hommage à Handel . Moscheles offered some studies and his Concerto in G minor; then, with Clara Schumann, the three pianists played the Bach Triple Concerto in D minor.

  The concerts featured two singers engaged for the new season, Elise List and Sophie Schloss, and two visiting violinists. The first was the Russian A. F. L’vov, Generaladjutant of Nicholas I and composer of the Russian anthem “God save the Tsar” (1833). Because of L’vov’s high rank, he did not perform publicly; instead, Felix arranged an “extraordinary” morning concert on November 8 and invited a select audience. 81 Social protocol did not limit the audience of the sensationally popular violinist Ole Bull, who appeared with Felix at the Gewandhaus on November 30 and performed a concerto, a Mozart Adagio, and some variations on a Bellini aria. 82 In Paris, where Felix had first met him, the Norwegian had introduced the Hardanger folk fiddle and adapted its relatively flat bridge and heavy, long bow to his modern violin, which enabled him to dispatch challenging passages rivaling the feats of Paganini.

  Felix complemented his arduous conducting schedule with solo appearances in piano trios by Haydn and Beethoven, and Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478, at David’s chamber music series (November 14 and December 12). A score from Felix’s library, possibly used for the Mozart, has survived, with markings that may divulge clues about how he performed this masterwork. 83 The edition Felix owned was the Oeuvres complètes of Mozart, issued by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1824 and 1840. Lacking fingerings and spare in articulation markings (phrasings, dynamics, and the like), Felix’s score encouraged him to pencil in liberal markings. For the most part his fingerings tend to facilitate a legato style of playing, but there are also some surprises, including the dramatic final thirteen bars of the first movement, marked forte in the edition, but vividly articulated by Felix into four segments: a forte , then two crescendi from piano to forte leading to a climactic fortissimo .

  During the closing months of 1840, the magnet of Leipzig continued to attract celebrities. On November 11 a young Danish writer attended the Gewandhaus rehearsal of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, scheduled for performance the following evening. 84 A few years before, Hans Christian Andersen had begun defining a new literary genre—original fairy tales for children—in such stories as “The Princess and the Pea,” “Thumbelina,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” But Felix knew him principally as a novelist. During his recent illness, he had read Andersen’s third novel, Only a Fiddler (1837), and Felix now made a point of discussing it with the author. Exploring deeply felt issues of alienation, it concerns two childhood playmates, Christian and Naomi, both outsiders—Christian (i.e., Andersen) is a gifted but insecure violinist, while Naomi is a Jewess who confronts issues of sexual identity. Christian dies a pauper, while Naomi acquires wealth through marriage, but both remain rootless in a modern world. Unable to spend much time with Felix, Andersen exchanged album entries (Felix offered a rather severe two-part canon in C minor). The two would meet again in 1841 and 1846.

  In December Leipzig received a royal visitor, the music-loving Saxon king, Frederick Augustus II, who had ordered a special performance of the Lobgesang . After the Birmingham Festival, Felix continued to struggle over the score, which he finished revising on November 27. 85 One week later he performed the new version at a charity concert for pensioned musicians of the orchestra and on December 16 presented it before the king. The concert fell on a Wednesday, breaking the traditional Thursday venue for subscription concerts. On the first half of the program, after Felix and David performed Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata by royal request, the king deigned to receive Felix, who walked from his podium through the double rows of ladies to the king, and conversed at length with him about the music. But after the Lobgesang , the two exchanged roles: incredibly, the king processed through the audience to Felix’s podium, thanked the composer and musicians, who did their best to bow, and then left, causing a commotion in the hall Felix likened to Noah’s Ark. 86

  IV

  The successful command performance encouraged Felix to imagine Frederick Augustus would bestow the Blümner bequest on a new Leipzig conservatory; but just then another monarch was endeavoring to secure Felix’s services. On June 7, 1840, Frederick William III had died; his son Frederick William IV acceded to the throne with visions of transforming Berlin into a center for the arts. Convinced his monarchy was divinely ordained, the new king still struggled to respond to changes rapidly altering the Prussian social/political landscape—the quickening pace of industrialization, strengthening middle class, and increasing demands for a constitutional monarchy. In part Frederick William IV sought to reinforce his authority by creating what David Barclay has termed a “chivalric tradition”—appealing to pseudomedieval constructs (he founded a romantic Order of the Swan, dismissed by Fanny as sentimental nonsense 87 ) and projecting the monarchy as a sacred, Christian institution. 88 During the “honeymoon” months of his reign, the king enjoyed great popularity with his subjects. He made efforts to resolve tensions with Catholics in the Rhineland and vague promises of constitutional reform, emboldening the Jewish doctor Johann Jacoby (in the pamphlet Vier Fragen , Four Questions , February 1841) to assert the right of citizens to participate in the government. Felix privately endorsed its arguments and reflected that such a publication could not have appeared one year before. 89 In September 1840 some 60,000 Berliners delivered oaths of fealty before the enthroned monarch. Then, too, a wave of pan-German nationalism bolstered the king when France, responding to the secret Treaty of London (July 15), threatened to seize the Rhine. After the jurist Nikolaus Becker penned the jingoistic poem Der deutsche Rhein , a host of composers, including Robert Schumann, Kreutzer, and Marschner, scurried to set its vapid verses. 90 Felix found the whole affair childish and declined to compose music, even though Härtel estimated he could sell six thousand copies in two months. 91

  Soon after the king’s accession, his ministers began to consider reorganizing the Academy of Arts. Ludwig Tieck and Peter Cornelius were invite
d to direct the theater and painting, and the Grimm brothers, lately associated with the prosecuted group of liberals known as the Göttingen Seven, were “rehabilitated” by a summons to Berlin. By the end of October 1840 the king was conferring with C. K. J. Bunsen about attracting Felix to the capitol. From the beginning, defining his exact duties proved vexing, but Bunsen and the king shared the hope Felix would eventually direct a new musical institute, compose sacred music for the reformed Prussian liturgy, and perform oratorios as a branch of the theater. “Is that not enough for one man, one master?” Bunsen mused. “I believe it is rather too much for any one other than Felix Mendelssohn.” 92

  On November 23 Geheimrat Ludwig von Massow communicated the king’s desire for Felix to serve the fatherland by returning to Berlin and “raising music in all its scope.” 93 Paul traveled to Leipzig to deliver the letter. Another missive followed on December 11 with some particulars: Felix was to head the musical class of the academy, receive a generous salary of three thousand thalers, and direct concerts by royal command. Still not swayed, he diplomatically deferred a decision for a more exact definition of his duties; meanwhile, he confided his situation to Schleinitz and David. 94

  Massow’s second letter found Felix contemplating an intriguing proposal from Fanny—that he write an opera about the Nibelungenlied 95 ; the chief difficulty was imagining how, with the slaughter of so many Teutonic heroes, the whole affair would end. More easily dispatched was the setting of Psalm 13 for alto solo, chorus, and organ, finished on December 12. 96 Felix apportioned Broadley’s five quatrains (the first reads “Why, O Lord, delay for ever/smiles of comfort to impart?/Oh, if Thou forget me—never/more shall gladness cheer the heart”) into three movements. Following the tradition of the English verse anthem, each alternates between a solo and chorus, but there are some German features as well. The second movement offers a freely composed chorale ( ex. 12.6 ), and in the third Felix lapsed into his habitual fugal writing (two years later, he made an expanded orchestral arrangement, published posthumously as Op. 96). The work appeared in England as an anthem, but in Germany as Drei geistliche Lieder ; Felix himself may have prepared the German translation.

  Ex. 12.6 : Mendelssohn, Chorale (Psalm 13), Op. 96 (1840), No. 2

  Early in 1841 Felix corresponded with Paul about the Berlin situation. Finding von Massow’s communications increasingly vague, the composer requested a copy of the statutes of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Furthermore, Felix was not pleased when two Berliners passing through Leipzig openly discussed the proposal, even though the negotiations were supposedly confidential 97 (Felix had refrained from mentioning the potential move to Lea and Fanny, so as not to raise prematurely their hope of a family reunion 98 ). The statutes confirmed what Felix feared—that little thought had been given to coordinating the various arts in Berlin. To that end, in May he drafted a Pro Memoria . 99 He advised concentrating the various musical resources of the capitol and allying them with the Musical Academy; the new musical conservatory would need faculty in composition, singing, choral singing, and piano (as in his proposal for Leipzig, Felix again recommended a three-year course of instruction for students, admitted gratis ). But the project encountered bureaucratic obstacles: the Academy of Arts was regulated by a royal Ministerium of science, instruction, and medicine, and Felix had to confer with the official in charge, Minister K. F. Eichhorn. And so, May 5 to 25 found Felix in Berlin, where Eduard Devrient prevailed upon him to have patience with the odiosa of court ceremoniousness and pedantry. 100

  Because Eichhorn was unwilling to restructure the Academy on short notice, von Massow resorted to compromise. Felix would move to Berlin for a year, during which Eichhorn would expedite the desired reorganization. Felix would enjoy the benefits of his salary and new title, without immediately having to undertake specific duties. As early as mid-May, Felix was inclined to accept, though not until early June did he reveal his final decision to Paul and Lea (to Moscheles, Felix wrote that he would rather remain in Leipzig). 101 But the terms continued to shift; Eichhorn recommended that the king grant the title of Kapellmeister only upon the implementation of the academy reorganization. Felix now compared Berlin to a sour apple into which he had to bite; he was to become a schoolmaster to a conservatory that did not yet exist. 102 On the evening of July 28, 1841, members of the Gewandhaus serenaded him with his Volkslied , Op. 47 No. 4; Felix joined in singing its refrain, “When people separate, they say, ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’” Without giving up his apartment in Lurgensteins Garten, 103 he left Leipzig the following day with his family. Initially they resided in Rebecka’s quarters (she was again on vacation in Heringsdorf). Later, Felix secured rooms across the street from his childhood home.

  Meanwhile the Saxon king endeavored to strengthen ties to the composer through the minister J. P. von Falkenstein. In March came word that Frederick Augustus II would support the foundation of a Leipzig conservatory, and in April Felix visited Dresden. His purpose was to examine a model Bendemann had prepared of the new Bach monument, but it seems likely Felix discussed the conservatory as well. Having requested permission to dedicate the Lobgesang to the king, Felix sent a copy of the newly published piano-vocal score to Dresden in June; Frederick Augustus acknowledged the gift on July 1 and conferred on Felix the title of Saxon Kapellmeister. 104

  Despite the prospect of moving to Berlin, Felix maintained an unrelentingly hectic schedule at the Gewandhaus. Between New Year’s Day and Palm Sunday (April 4) he appeared as soloist on three subscription concerts, directed eleven in addition to the St. Matthew Passion, and participated in the chamber-music Abendunterhaltungen , the highlight of which came on January 20, when Felix performed the Kreutzer Sonata with Ole Bull, who used a rare violin by the sixteenth-century Brescian maker Gasparo da Salò. But when the Norwegian indulged in some “tasteless” gestures in other solos, Felix became “progressively more disturbed and agitated,” so that the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus bade Felix not to expect everyone to “regard art as sacred,” to which Felix rejoined that “one should not also act as if it were.” 105 Felix supported visits to Leipzig by several other artists, including Sigismond Thalberg, Sophie Schloss, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, and appearances by Clara Schumann. In the midst of all this music making, Cécile gave birth on January 18 to their third child, baptized on February 15 and named after three Mendelssohns, Paul Felix Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1841–1880), and destined later to found the chemical firm Agfa.

  Among the offerings of the season was the Leipzig premiere on January 7, 1841, of Spohr’s Sixth Symphony (Historical ), which reinforced the canonization of German music then underway. The four movements offered a chronological review, beginning with a fugue and pastoral to depict the Bach-Händel’sche Periode (1720) and continuing with a graceful Larghetto in the style of Haydn and Mozart (1780), a Beethovenian scherzo employing an additional third tympanum (1810), and a finale meant to depict the “most recent period” (1840). Felix and others questioned the finale; 106 instead of a serious example of Spohr’s mature style, the audience heard a caricature of Italian opera, with a surfeit of garish diminished-seventh harmonies, trivial melodies, and a noisy percussion complement enlarged to include a triangle, bass drum, snare drum, and cymbals.

  The musical past continued to haunt Felix, who reexplored the terrain of Spohr’s symphony by launching a series of four historical concerts (January 21 and 28, and February 4 and 11). In contrast to the earlier 1838 cycle (see p. 363), in which titans of German music had dominated several minor composers, the second began by pairing Bach (the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, motet Ich lasse dich nicht , Violin Chaconne, and three movements from the B-minor Mass) and Handel (Overture and aria from Messiah , Variations on The Harmonious Blacksmith , and choruses from Israel in Egypt ), and continued with three concerts devoted to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Representing Haydn were selections from the oratorios Die Schöpfung (including the extraordinary overture depicting chaos) and Die Jahreszeiten , the Emperor String Q
uartet, Op. 76 No. 3, an a cappella motet, and a Symphony in B=. Robert Schumann, still recovering from the passacaglia in the Crucifixus of Bach’s Credo—Schumann wrote that masters of all ages must bow before it—compared Haydn to a familiar house guest, politely received but no longer of interest for the present time. 107 For Mozart, Felix chose the Overture to La clemenza di Tito , Piano Concerto in D minor K. 466, Jupiter Symphony, the aria with obbligato violin solo, Non più, tutti ascoltai (K. 490), and some Lieder, sung by Sophie Schloss. Now unable to contain his enthusiasm, Schumann wished that all Germany could have attended. No less impressive was the Beethovenian finale, including the Third Leonore Overture, movements from the Mass in C, the Violin Concerto, and the Ninth Symphony. When the engaged tenor fell ill and abandoned the cycle An die ferne Geliebte , Felix saw in the audience the soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, just arrived from Dresden, who took off her bonnet and pelisse and performed with Felix the Lied Adelaide . 108