Ex. 16.21 : Friedrich Schneider, “Engelstimmen klangen” (1847)
In December 1846, when Felix had last seen Fanny in Berlin, she gently upbraided him for not having celebrated her birthday with her in several years. When he parted from her, he is reported to have said, “Depend upon it, the next I shall spend with you.” 189 In this promise, he kept his word.
Abbreviations
AfMw Archiv für Musikwissenschaft
AmZ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
BadV Briefe an deutsche Verleger (Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: 1968)
BamZ Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
BJ Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków
BL British Library, London
BLB Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute
BN Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
DM Die Musik
DR Deutsche Rundschau
GB Green Books, Bodleian Library, Oxford, M. Deneke Mendelssohn Collection
GM Goethe and Mendelssohn (Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: 1874)
HHI Heinrich-Heine Institut, Düsseldorf
JAMS Journal of the American Musicological Society
LA Briefe aus Leipziger Archiven (Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: 1972)
LAWFMB Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Leipzig
LBI Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
LC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
MA Mendelssohn Archiv , Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz
MahW Mendelssohn and his World (Todd: 1991)
MDM Margaret Deneke Mendelssohn Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford
MF The Mendelssohn Family (1729–1847) from Letters and Journals (Sebastian Hensel: 1882)
Mf Die Musikforschung
ML Music & Letters
MLL Felix Mendelssohn: A Life in Letters (Elvers: 1986)
MMR Monthly Musical Record
MN Mendelssohn Nachlass (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and Biblioteka Jagiellońska. Kraków)
MQ The Musical Quarterly
MS Mendelssohn Studien
MT The Musical Times
NYPL New York Public Library, New York, Mendelssohn Family Correspondence
NZfM Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
19 CM 19 th Century Music
PML The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
SBB Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz
VfM Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft
Notes
Preface
1 . See Anne Elliott, The Music Makers: A Brief History of the Birmingham Triennial Musical Festivals 1784–1912 , Birmingham, 2000.
2 . Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), no. 245.
3 . See Marek, 320–21, and, for a photograph of the statue, 324. In 1947 a bust of the composer was placed on the site of the former statue, and on March 10, 1993, a new statue was unveiled in a ceremony before the Neues Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Concurrently the conductor Kurt Masur spearheaded an initiative to restore the composer’s final Leipzig residence.
4 . See Treue, Schinköth, and the literature cited therein.
5 . See “Mendelssohn in Germany,” New York Times , December 2, 1934, where Herbert Peyser reported: “In the face of threats from higher up that the pressure of boycott might be applied to his works, Strauss went so far as to intimate that he could not surpass Mendelssohn and might, perhaps, not even be able to equal him.”
6. Luzi Korngold, Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Ein Lebensbild , Vienna, 1967, 64.
7 . Gerald Abraham, A Hundred Years of Music , Chicago, 1964, 59, 60–61.
8 . Radcliffe: 1954, 117, 127, 133, 137, and 140.
9 . Werner: 1963, 293, 358.
10 . Botstein: 1991, 7.
11 . See Michael Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace , Cambridge, 1995.
12 . Elizabeth Sheppard, Charles Auchester , Chicago, 1900, II, 167.
13 . E. D. Mackerness, “Music and Moral Purity in the Early Victorian Era,” Canadian Music Journal 4/2 (1960), 20.
14 . NZfM 33 (1850), September 3 and 6, 1850.
15 . “Robert Schumann mit Rücksicht auf Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und die Entwicklung der modernen Tonkunst überhaupt,” NZfM 22 (1845), passim ; parts are translated by Jürgen Thym in Todd: 1994, 317–37. See also Thym: 1984.
16 . On Wagner’s essay, see in particular Botstein: 1991, 9ff.; Mintz: 1992; and Ringer.
17 . On the connection between Mendelssohn’s incidental music and fairy illustrations, see the forthcoming study by Marian Wilson Kimber, “Victorian Fairies and Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in England”; on the genre of the fairy paintings, see Jane Martineau, ed., Victorian Fairy Painting , London, 1997.
18 . A Dictionary of Music and Musicians , London, 1890 (reissue of the first edition of 1879–1889), II, 305.
19 . The Star (London), February 23, 1889.
20 . On the shifting images of Mendelssohn’s masculinity, see especially Marian Wilson Kimber: 2002.
21 . Michael Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality , Oxford, 1995, 18.
22 . Encyclopaedia Britannica , 11th ed., Cambridge, 1911, XVIII, 124; see further Mintz: 1992, 127ff.
23 . Botstein: 1991, 16.
24 . Ibid., 17.
25 . Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians , Oxford, 2001, ix.
26 . Sposato: 1998; see also the rejoinders by Michael Steinberg and Leon Botstein, and response by Sposato in MQ 83 (1999).
27 . Botstein: 1991, 23.
28 . See further Marian Wilson Kimber: 2003.
29 . Reich: 1991b.
30 . See Wehner: 2002b.
31 . Robert to Clara Schumann, September 18, 1854, in F. G. Jansen, ed., Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge , Leipzig, 1904, 398.
32 . Friedrich Niecks, “On Mendelssohn and Some of His Contemporary Critics,” MMR 5 (1875), 164.
Prologue
1 . Peter Gay, The Rise of Modern Paganism , N.Y., 1966, 334.
2 . Sorkin: 1996, 8–9.
3 . MF , I, 27. A fuller account is in Joseph Mendelssohn’s Lebensgeschichte of his father, published in the first vol. of Moses Mendelssohn: 1843, 3–56, and partially trans. in Brown: 2003, 85–88.
4 . Altmann: 1973, 66.
5 . Letter of March 29, 1840, Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Elise Jeanrenaud, MDM d. 24.
6 . MF , I, 22–23.
7 . Ibid., I, 1–2; Lewald: 1861, I, 205f.
8 . Lewald: 1992, 257.
9 . See Porstmann, 344.
10 . July 8, 1829, Abraham to Felix, in E. Werner: 1963, 37.
11 . La Palingénésie philosophique ou idées sur l’état passé et sur l’état futur des êtres vivants . On the Lavater affair, see Altmann: 1973, 194–263.
12 . Cited in ibid., 209.
13 . See Sorkin: 1996, 95–107.
14 . Moses Mendelssohn: 1983, 37.
15 . Ibid., 38.
16 . Altmann: 1973, 521.
17 . Sorkin: 1987, 70.
18 . Ibid., 99.
19 . Altmann: 1973, 583.
20 . Moses prepared the lectures during morning sessions with the fifteen-year-old Joseph, who acted as a secretary; Altmann: 1973, 643.
21 . Altmann: 1975, 19.
22 . Altmann: 1973, 684.
23 . Sorkin: 1996, 151.
24 . Ibid.
25 . See Elvers and Klein, 126, 128.
26 . According to Lowenstein: 1991, 186, the Meierei (dairy) was purchased in 1771; according to Jacob Jacobson: 1960, 255, in 1779.
27 . Spiel, 1991, 20–21; and Lowenstein: 1991, 185–87.
28 . MF , I, 63.
29 . See Gilbert: 1975, xix.
30 . Hertz: 1991, 214.
31 . Hertz: 1988, 6–7.
32 . See Wilhelmy, 719ff.
33 . Lewald: 1992, 247.
34 . A. van Hoboken, Joseph Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis , Mainz, 1971, II, 94.
35 . Martin Falck, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Sein Leb
en und seine Werke , Lindau, 1913, 51.
36 . See E. R. Jacobi.
37 . Wollny, 658.
38 . September 5, 1789, Johanna Maria Bach to Sarah Levy, in C. P. E. Bach: 1994, 1309–16.
39 . On the activities of the Singakademie see Schünemann: 1928; concerning Sarah Levy, cf. Uldall, 11f; E. Werner’s article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 8 (1960), 684; and Hertz: 1988, 102–3.
40 . Lewald: 1992, 248.
41 . Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Elisabeth Jeanrenaud, October 22, 1849, MDM d. 24; a trans. of the letters is in preparation by Joan Benson.
42 . See further Neumann, 136–42.
43 . “Der edle Mensch sei hülfreich und gut” (WoO 151).
44 . Quoted in Spiel, 111–12; for a facs., see the entry for Daniel Itzig in Encyclopaedia Judaica , Jerusalem, 1971, IX, 1150. According to Felix Gilbert, at the time no other Jewish family received a similar patent of citizenship (Gilbert: 1975, xvii–xviii).
45 . Spiel, 112–13.
46 . Ibid., 161.
47 . Ibid.
48 . See Hertz: 1988, 228ff. A more detailed study of the issue of conversion is in Lowenstein: 1994, 120–33. Lowenstein discerns three waves of conversions: (1) 1770–1805, distinguished by a striking number of women and illegitimate infants, (2) 1800–1820, affecting elite families and including conversions of entire families, and (3) 1822–1830, characterized by an increased number of men.
49 . Schleiermacher, 238, 241. Henriette did not convert until 1817, after the death of her mother, while Rahel converted in 1814 to marry the writer-diplomat Karl August Varnhagen von Ense.
50 . For the particulars, see Cohn.
51 . Lowenstein: 1991, 195.
52 . See Spiel, 159–60; and Gilbert: 1975, xxviii.
53 . See Jacobson: 1960, 254.
54 . Letter of August 26, 1799 (MF , I, 67).
55 . For particular examples, see Lowenstein: 1991, 197 fn. 43.
56 . In the early eighteenth century the Prussian Baron Friedrich Christian von Bartholdy had owned the dairy.
57 . Reisebilder II, cited in MF , I, 100.
58 . Regarding the frescoes, see William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting , New Haven, 1980, 178–80.
59 . Curiously enough, in 1812, the year of the Prussian Edict of Emancipation, Bella Salomon herself adopted the name Bartholdy, though she did not convert. See Jacobson: 1960, 256.
60 . MF , I, 75; no date for the letter is given.
61 . It appeared in a list of the Berlin Jewish congregation; see Jacobson: 1960, 257; and Gilbert: 1975, 315.
62 . For the text of the decree, see Schoeps, 81ff.
63 . A Vorvertrag signed by the parties in Berlin on December 8, 1821 established the new organization. Klein: 1995b, 100–102.
64 . See, e.g., his letter of December 9, 1823 to Zelter, in F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy: 1984, 29–30. A facs. of the original, in HHI, is in E. Werner: 1975, 22–23. An earlier letter to Zelter, written on August 22, 1822, i.e., before his parents’ conversion, is signed Felix Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn Bartholdy: 1984, 26–28). At least two letters of Lea, from December 25, 1822, to Wilhelm Hensel and July 29, 1823, to Moritz [Maurice] Schlesinger, are signed Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy. See Gilbert: 1975, 51; and Elvers: 1974, 48. Finally, a drawing by Wilhelm Hensel, probably executed for the birthday of Felix’s sister Fanny on November 14, 1822, is titled “Fanny Mendelssohn Bartholdy als Schutzheilige der Musik Cäcilie.” See plate 6.
65 . Dubnov, IV, 650–51. See also p. 430, below.
66 . The two conjoined as one quotation in MF , I, 32. For the original sources, see Altmann: 1973, 728.
67 . Henriette (Hinni) Meyer (1776–1862), daughter of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz “court Jew” Nathan Meyer. Several of her letters are published in Gilbert: 1975.
68 . April 16–22, 1815, Zelter to Goethe; Hecker I, 424.
69 . MF , I, 33. Joseph’s firm was situated at Spandauer Str. 68, which had been the residence of his father. See Elvers and Klein, 126, 128.
70 . Benjamin served in the War of Liberation against Napoleon of 1813 and embraced the Protestant faith in 1816, when he changed his name to Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn. Recent studies include: Gilbert: 1975b, 183–201; Stolzenberg: 1979; Klein: 1990; and Stolzenberg: 1990.
71 . Klein: 1995b, 89, 91.
72 . Moses Mendelssohns gesammelte Schriften , ed. G. B. Mendelssohn, 7 vols., Leipzig, 1843–1845. See Altmann: 1968, 80; and Reissner: 1969, 212f.
73 . A reference to Adalbert von Chamisso’s popular story Peter Schlemihl (1813), in which the title character exchanges his shadow to the devil for everlasting wealth. Abraham made these comments during a visit in St. Petersburg with Maximilian Heine, brother of the poet. See M. Heine, 245. In MF , I, 61, Sebastian Hensel transmits an abridged version. Despite the self-denying assertion, Hensel claims that Abraham was a “harmonious, independent, vigorous character, and had nothing of the epigone in him.”
74 . See Klein: 2000 and Barbier, 45.
75 . On his way Abraham had met Goethe in Frankfurt in August; on September 1, Abraham reported about the visit: “‘Are you a son of Mendelssohn?’ he asked me, and that was the first time that I heard my father mentioned without an epithet, as I always wished.” Kippenberg, 73.
76 . September 7, 1803, Zelter to Goethe, Hecker I, 56.
77 . A. B. Marx: 1865, I, 110; see also Marx: 1991, 209.
78 . “The response was an unprecedented, truly fearsome one, the crowd inflamed to the point of madness. Mendelssohn went backstage to see the composer even before the performance was over, and found him stalking up and down in feverish excitement: ‘Ah, ç’a frappé, ç’a frappé! [That has struck home, that has struck home!].’” Ibid. The opera left its mark on Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio and was admired by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who would perform the opera in Düsseldorf and the Overture and finales of the first two acts in Leipzig.
79 . MF , I, 72.
80 . April 11, 1800, Brendel Veit to Karl Friedrich Zelter; in the same letter she also describes Abraham as “half-French” (halbfranzosen ). Körner, 27, 28.
81 . MF , I, 62.
82 . Marx: 1991, 209.
83 . Between 1805 and 1808 Pölchau sold many of the Emanuel Bach materials to Abraham Mendelssohn, who gave them to Sara Levy; she, in turn, donated them to the Singakademie and Ripienschule. See Schünemann, 1941, 71; and, more recently, Kulukundis, 159–76.
84 . MF , I, 72.
85 . The business was located on the Mühlendamm in the mansion formerly occupied by Veitel Heine Ephraim, one of Daniel Itzig’s partners during the reign of Frederick the Great. See Elvers and Klein, 136–37. Abraham returned to Berlin by the end of May; an entry in a Judenbürgerbuch dated May 31, 1804 lists him as a Berliner Stadtjude . See Kliem, 130.
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