Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

by Todd, R. Larry

  The Viennese Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung ran a brief report of the service, as did the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung , which commented, “As edifying as this version of the sacred service is, its musical portion is still fragmented, and one would hope that in the future … entire, even if shorter, vocal works are performed….” 84 Felix himself groused about the new liturgy; after all the protracted discussions between king and clergy, “the great, much discussed church music” had shriveled up to “one piece before the beginning of the service.” 85 As if to circumvent those restrictions, Felix now attempted an ambitious introit psalm with orchestral accompaniment. On Christmas Day he was still composing this new setting (of Psalm 98), rushed into rehearsal the next day, and premiered at the New Year’s Day service. For the verse before the Alleluia, Felix produced a short a cappella setting of the opening of Psalm 90 (“Lord, you have been our dwelling place, in all generations”), Op. 79 No. 2. The other musical portions included the chorale Wachet auf from Paulus , and again Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr and the Te Deum .

  According to Fanny, Psalm 98 was marred by the sermon—“miserable beyond description” 86 —of the minister F. A. Strauß, who appears to have held strong views about the role of music in the liturgy. While the king and his advisers sought to reinstate Palestrinian a cappella music as an ideal, Felix contrived to introduce instrumental forces into the services, in what must have seemed like the thin end of a wedge toward ever increasing musical demands upon the liturgy. Psalm 98 led Felix to develop an especially cunning strategy. For the first three verses he limited himself to eight-part choral writing, with the full ensemble initially responding to the short invocation of the bass solo, “Sing to the Lord a new-made song,” in a radiant D major, before dividing into antiphonal four-part choirs ( ex. 14.7 ). Then, for “The Lord hath made known his salvation,” Felix alternated groups of soloists and the ensemble. But the imperatives of the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses—to make joyful noises to the Lord with instruments—induced him to add a harp, trombones, and trumpets in a discrete accompaniment to the chorus, now realigned to unfold a two-part canon. The imagery of the seventh and eighth verses, in which the roaring sea and rejoicing hills join the praise, inspired a full orchestral accompaniment, leading to the final section, “He then shall judge the world with righteousness.” Here Felix recalled the opening of the work in a triumphant Handelian finale for orchestra and chorus with compact points of imitation and wind fanfares. At its conclusion on New Year’s Day, in lieu of the Doxology, Felix then launched into the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah (like the psalm, in D major), further reinforcing the crescendo effect from an a cappella beginning to the joining of chorus and orchestra. But all this festive music ran counter to Strauß’s ascetic tastes; Felix later referred to “orders” and “counter orders” concerning the Psalmodieren , and Fanny averred that “to hear Felix talk of his dealings with the cathedral clergy” was “as good as a play.” 87

  Ex. 14.7 : Mendelssohn, Psalm 98, Op. 91 (1843)

  From January and February 1844 dates music for two more services, Passion Sunday and Good Friday, which fell in March. For the two introits Felix set Psalms 43 and 22 (Op. 78 Nos. 2 and 3) and for the verses composed two more Sprüche (Op. 79 Nos. 4 and 6). But in contrast to his earlier offerings, Felix avoided instruments and contented himself with double choirs. He arranged the five double verses of Psalm 43 into four sections, of which the first and third (verses 1–2 and 4) placed the tenors and bases in unison against the sopranos and altos in harmony. For the second section (verse 3, “O send out your light and your truth”), the ensemble blossomed into concordant eight-part harmony, revisited in the final section (verse 5), where Felix indulged in a rare instance of self-quotation. Here the text, “Why are you cast down, O my soul,” cited a refrain from the psalm’s predecessor, Psalm 42, already composed by Felix as the concert cantata Op. 42 (1837). He now adapted the earlier setting of the passage ( ex. 14.8 ), with its characteristic four-note psalm intonation, and thus effectively bridged the gap between concert and liturgical music.

  Felix’s music for Psalm 22, which opens with Christ’s words uttered on the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), approached most compellingly the Prussian monarch’s ideal of a cappella responsorial psalmody. Here the composer collapsed the psalm to fit into three broad sections (verses 1–8, 14–18, and 19–28) and in the process truncated several verses, probably to restrain the length of the composition. A fair amount of the music alternates between expressive chantlike intonations, floating around a tone recited by a solo tenor acting as cantor, and muted choral responses, first in four-part harmony and then expanding to eight. For “I am poured out like water” (verse 14) the texture shifts to four soloists answered by the chorus, in a series of poignant, rising chromatic lines. The closing section, in which the psalmist’s cry for help is heard, turns from minor to major and revives the responsorial patterns of the opening. “All the ends of the earth shall remember,” the soloists intone, answered in hushed reverence by the chorus, “and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.”

  Ex. 14.8a: Mendelssohn, Psalm 43, Op. 78 No. 2 (1844)

  Ex. 14.8b: Mendelssohn, Psalm 42, Op. 42 (1837)

  Two other psalms—Nos. 55 and 100—occupied Felix at the beginning of 1844. Neither achieved the expressive power of the Op. 78 settings, yet the anthem Hear My Prayer would enjoy extraordinary success in England. Set to William Bartholomew’s paraphrase of the opening verses of Psalm 55, the score, for soprano solo, chorus, and organ, was written for the newly renovated Crosby Hall on Bishopsgate Street, where Elizabeth Mounsey (later Bartholomew’s sister-in-law) organized sacred concerts during the 1840s. (An impressive fifteenth-century timber and stone edifice, the Hall had been the residence of Richard Plantagenet, before his coronation as Richard III.) Felix modeled his composition on the English verse anthem, with its alternating solo and choral writing, and had studied seventeenth- and eighteenth-century examples of Purcell, William Croft, and others. Still, Felix was not reluctant to introduce German color into the work, as in the chromatic recitative for “My heart is sorely pain’d within my breast” and the involved organ part, which interacts with and accompanies the soloist. But the very popularity of the anthem in England (it entered the cathedral repertoire during the last quarter of the nineteenth century) and its gentle tunefulness later exposed it to charges of superficiality from those contemptuous of Victorian mores. The English success (in contrast, the 1845 German version, dedicated to Wilhelm Taubert, attracted scant attention on the Continent) 88 gave credence to the idea Felix had accommodated his style to English tastes; indeed, the English scholar Wilfrid Mellers went so far as to inveigh against Felix’s “spurious religiosity which reflected the element of unconscious humbug in our morality and beliefs.” 89

  We know vexingly little about Felix’s a cappella setting of Psalm 100, for four-part chorus, completed on January 1, 1844. 90 In 1963 and 1984 Eric Werner maintained it was a commission of the New Israelite Temple of Hamburg. 91 Indeed, among the thousands of letters the composer preserved in the so-called Green Books are five (November 14, 1843 to April 12, 1844) from the director of the temple, Dr. Maimon Fränkel, 92 conveying the request that Felix, “dear to every German Israelite,” compose several psalms, among them Nos. 24, 84, and 100, for the temple, about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary.

  Fränkel’s letters of March 29 and April 12 reveal he eagerly awaited the delivery not of Psalm 100 but Psalm 24. Felix could well have intended to compose Psalm 24, or perhaps sent a setting, now lost, but the work in question was surely not Psalm 100, since he had already set it on January 1. 93 The straightforward, popular style of the music and its Lutheran version indicates it was written for the Berlin cathedral. When the work was published in 1855, it appeared in Musica sacra , a three-volume series of psalms for the use of the Berlin Domchor throughout the liturgical calendar. The king had desired that Fe
lix compose the entire cycle, but on February 14, 1844, he sought release from this assignment, no doubt wary of its scope and tiring of the restricted a cappella medium. 94 Instead, he proposed that a committee of composers, including Spohr, Carl Loewe, and Moritz Hauptmann, collaborate to accomplish the task.

  Less than two months after returning to Berlin, an increasingly embittered Felix was predicting his imminent departure. 95 But first the royal Musikdirektor shared with Wilhelm Taubert the orchestral concerts, where Felix presided over his own Psalm 114 and Handel’s Israel in Egypt at the Garnisonkirche on Palm Sunday (with personnel of four hundred and fifty), and Beethoven symphonies, including the Ninth on the last concert, March 27. A rehearsal of the Eighth convinced Richard Wagner that Felix was guilty of taking overly fast tempi and of glossing over passages, though during rehearsal he polished some details with a “certain obstinacy.” 96 At private musicales Felix improvised, performed humdrum waltzes of the English ambassador, Lord Westmoreland, and accompanied several visiting artists—the soprano Schröder-Devrient, the Italian tenor Napoleone Moriani, and the Belgian cellist A. F. Servais, whose grimaces Felix slyly studied.

  On January 7, 1844, Felix attended the Berlin premiere of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman , which played before the king to a packed house. According to Wagner, Felix embraced him after the performance. 97 Though the German aesthetician Karl Werder judged the opera an “unprecedented masterpiece,” 98 Felix publicly maintained his reserve; still, a tantalizingly brief diary entry of Robert Schumann reveals Felix was “totally indignant” about Wagner’s music. 99 And when Raymund Härtel considered publishing the work and pressed Felix for his judgment, he procrastinated, preferring to speak to the publisher personally about the matter. 100 Felix afforded quite a different reception for the Schumanns, who arrived in Berlin on January 25, en route to embarking upon their Russian sojourn. Not only did Felix urge Edward Buxton to publish Robert’s new oratorio after Thomas Moore, Das Paradies und die Peri , he also dedicated to Clara the fifth volume of the Lieder ohne Worte , Op. 62. 101

  Ex. 14.9a: Fanny Hensel, Andante in G major, Op. 2 No. 1 (1836)

  Ex. 14.9b: Mendelssohn, Lied ohne Worte in G major, Op. 62 No. 1 (1844)

  Ex. 14.9c: Mendelssohn, Lied ohne Worte in A minor, Op. 62 No. 5, Venetianisches Gondellied (1841)

  Three of the new Lieder already had ties to Clara, including the second and third (“Trauermarsch”), and the sixth (“Frühlingslied”), which Felix had presented to Clara a few months before on her twenty-fourth birthday. 102 In compiling the opus, Felix continued to exploit the genre of the piano Lied to explore the feminine qualities of parlor-room music making. Thus, No. 1 (Andante espressivo ), which begins unassertively on the dominant with a drooping, sighlike figure, paraphrases material from an Andante in G major of Fanny from 1836 ( ex. 14.9a, b ). 103 The part-song-like No. 4, also in G major, is to be performed with much Innigkeit , a word, difficult to translate, that connotes depth of feeling and intimacy. And No. 5, in A minor, is yet another Gondellied , with broken chords generating lapping cross rhythms against the subdued love duet in the treble. The surprise ending in A major, where the melodic thirds disappear into blurry arpeggiations, subtly prepares the opening of the “Frühlingslied,” which, in the same key, perhaps suggests yet another song of desire and love ( ex. 14.9c and p. 437 ).

  Felix would have shared the new piano Lieder with Fanny, who was then revitalizing her fortnightly musicales. After a pause of several weeks, the series began anew on February 11, 1844, with Felix’s participation. The day before, as he copied out a duet arrangement of his Variations, Op. 83, Fanny took the sheets one by one to the piano and began to practice; on Sunday, the two premiered the new work, playfully described on the autograph as composto per la musica delle Domeniche in casa Hensel dalla (vechhia) Vedova Felice 104 (why Felix dubbed himself an “old widow” remains a mystery). A more brilliant gathering took place a month later (probably on March 10), when twenty-two carriages filed into the courtyard of Leipzigerstrasse No. 3. In the audience were eight princesses and a young, slender man whose eyes “had something surprising, even subjugating about them” 105 —Franz Liszt. The program featured Pauline Decker and Felix performing songs, the young Joachim some virtuoso variations of Ferdinand David, and Fanny directing her brother’s Erste Walpurgisnacht , in which Felix helped her render the overture at the piano—adding bits of material in the bass and treble 106 —before “disappearing” into the audience.

  IV

  With the end of the concert season Felix longed to relax in Leipzig before traveling to London, where he had agreed to direct several concerts in an effort to bolster the precarious finances of the Philharmonic. On February 22 Felix had managed to slip away from Berlin to attend a Gewandhaus concert and had heard Hiller conduct the Scottish Symphony. But “social susceptibilities”—Felix’s alarm at the deterioration of the orchestra under Hiller’s interim leadership—had caused a falling out between the two friends and ended their correspondence. 107 Now, in April, Felix and Cécile arrived after the concert season, to take up a quiet life at Lurgensteins Garten. Only the arrival of the cellist A. F. Servais, who gave a late concert on April 24, brought Felix before the public eye to perform Beethoven’s Archduke Trio. 108 Otherwise, Felix spent his time working on the final chorus of the incidental music to Racine’s Athalia and planning a new piano concerto for England. 109 Shortly after arriving in Leipzig, Cécile fell ill with an alarming cough; “I believe we must take it very seriously in hand, lest worse should be in store,” 110 Felix reacted, no doubt concerned the symptoms suggested consumption, to which Cécile’s father had succumbed (Cécile would die of the disease in 1853). The trip to England now in jeopardy, Felix brought Cécile and his children at the end of April to Frankfurt and rented a country house for her convalescence, carefully supervised by her mother. By early May Cécile’s recovery was sufficiently advanced to permit Felix to depart for London; there he arrived on May 8 and took up quarters with Klingemann.

  Once again Felix enjoyed an unusually warm reception. 111 In contrast, he had left Berlin in some controversy. When the king asked him to provide music for the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Felix replied he would attempt the project even though he thought it at best difficult; his lack of enthusiasm was viewed as a refusal. Indeed, Bunsen questioned the composer’s loyalty to the monarch by comparing Felix to Brutus in Julius Caesar . 112 The Eumenides affair posed yet one more irritant to Felix’s professional concerns in Berlin. But in England, he enjoyed unbridled artistic freedom and again flourished in the vibrant concert life and high society of the city.

  The center of his efforts was the Philharmonic, where between May 13 and July 8 he directed the final five concerts of the season. Felix’s presence added much luster to the society; the Musical World characterized his stewardship as “the wisest thing that has ever been done since the society came into existence.” 113 He programmed several notable English premieres—the Scottish Symphony and Beethoven’s first Lenore Overture (May 13); selections from the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (May 27); Overture to Schubert’s opera Fierrabras (June 10); Bach’s orchestral Suite in D (June 24); and Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens (July 8). Nevertheless, Felix’s leadership was not without controversy. On the morning of the last concert (July 8), when Felix arrived late for a rehearsal, a disgruntled violist began to hiss him, and Felix was accused of neglecting to program works by English composers. 114 Moreover, Felix’s efforts to introduce Schubert’s music fell on deaf ears. Felix had planned to perform the “Great” C-major Symphony, of which he had sent the parts to London several years before, 115 but at a rehearsal the strings bridled at the superabundance of repeated triplets in the finale, and he substituted the overture to Fierrabras (1823), a grand opera then utterly unknown. Nevertheless, the critic J. W. Davison rejected this work as “literally beneath criticism”: “[Schubert] has certainly written a few good songs, but what then? Has not every comp
oser that ever composed written a few good songs?” 116 (Not until 1856 did the symphony receive its English premiere.)

  At the fifth Philharmonic concert (May 27), Felix presided over the English debut of Joachim, who, circumventing a regulation against the appearance of prodigies on the series, performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto to acclaim. 117 Preparations for the concert, which included selections from the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, were painstaking. Felix supervised at least one seven-hour rehearsal, which gave him a severe headache, forcing him to decline an invitation from Charles Babbage, the cantankerous mathematician then developing his futuristic calculator known as the Difference Engine. 118 Two other Philharmonic concerts attracted considerable attention. On June 24 the Italian cellist Alfredo Piatti performed a concerto on a seventeenth-century Amati cello given by Liszt, and on the same concert Felix rendered Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. From Rockstro we have an amusing anecdote about the cadenza for the first movement, which gave the orchestra difficulty in finding the cue for its reentry. In rehearsal Felix made no fewer than three attempts, each a freshly improvised cadenza, only at the performance to reject all three in favor of a fourth cadenza. 119 No less spectacular was the concert of June 10, at which the Midsummer Night’s Dream music was encored before a royal audience that included Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Saxon king, and the Duke of Wellington, all of whom sat ten steps away from Felix. 120