Felix Mendelssohn

“ For an hour and a half one had listened to unison singing without variety; and now after the silence comes this beautifully arranged harmony. The effect is splendid, and the hearer feels the power of music in his heart of hearts. It is this piece which is most peculiarly striking. They reserve the best voices for the “Miserere,” and render it with very great variation, swelling and falling from the lightest piano to the whole power of the voices. It is no wonder that everyone is captivated by it. ”

“ It was a curious sight in Albano to meet among all the girls with pitchers on their heads and people selling flowers and vegetables, one of these coal-black silent monks, who was turning his steps back to Mont Cavo. They have taken all the beautiful region in possession, and add a strange melancholy ground-tone to all the brilliancy and freedom and the perpetual blitheness there is in Nature here. It is as though the people required a sort of counterpoise to all that. ”

“ Evening.—Outside there is terrible thunder and lightning, and heavy rain as well. In the mountains one learns to treat the weather with respect. I did not go on from here, for it would have been a pity to travel down the lovely Simmenthal beneath an umbrella. It was a grey day, but beautifully cool for walking in the forenoon. The valley about Saanen and the whole route is indescribably fresh and delightful. I can never see too much green; if I were to stare all my life long at a sloping meadow-land with a couple of reddish-brown houses, I should always find the same pleasure in it. ”

“ All day long I sit down before a mountain and try to copy its outlines, and never leave oft till the drawing is hopelessly spoilt; my great idea is to get at least one landscape daily into my book.... It is a strange thing with the mountains here as the greatest books, they seem to change with oneself, and display a new aspect of themselves to one’s own altered temperament, and always rise above one in the same glory. ”

“ After breakfast my work goes forward, and I play, sing, and compose till about noon.
Then all the measureless delight of Rome lies as a free gift before me; I proceed with it very leisurely, and every day pick out afresh some great historic object; one day a ramble about the ruins of the ancient city, another day the Borghese Gallery or the Capitol, or else St. Peter’s or the Vatican, so each day is one never to be forgotten, and this sort of dallying leaves each impression firmer and stronger. ”

“ There are the cardinals in vestments worked in gold with red caps, before them the violet-robed abbés holding the golden palms, further off the brilliant dresses of the Pope’s attendants, then the Greek priests and the patriarchs in all their splendour, the Capuchins with their white beards and all the other monks; on another side one sees the Swiss guards with their uniforms as gay as the plumage of paroquets; all have olive branches in their hands, and the music goes on perpetually. ”

“ And that not only with complete sentences, and so on, but single words also seem to me vague, indefinite, and very open to misunderstanding in comparison with real music, the music that fills one’s heart with a thousand things finer than any language. What any music I care for means to me is not an indefinite feeling which one might render definite by translating it into words, but something perfectly clear. ”

“ The hostess has come in with a face full of trouble to say there is no one in the village to be my guide to Jaman and carry my bundle except a young girl; the men are all at their work. You must know I always set out alone in the morning with my bundle and cloak on my back; the guides from the inns are too dear and too tedious for me. The first honest-looking young fellow whom I find after two hours gets hired, and so I get on better on foot. How charming the lake and the path hither were is more than I can say. ”

“ Where was an admirable road a week ago is now a wild heap of rocks, great boulders in piles, gravel and sand everywhere, no trace of human labour to be seen. The water has gone down, indeed, but the streams are not quiet yet; now and then one hears the grinding of stones that are hurled together at the bottom, and the waterfalls sweep down pieces of black rock in their white foam. My guide showed me a handsome new house standing in the midst of the furious current. He said it belonged to his brother-in-law, and that there had been a fine meadow all round it, that used to bring in a great deal. ”

“ As you go up the Schwarze Mönch, with all the snows behind, it rises grander and grander; on every side flashing torrents fall like dust into the valley; one sees the snow mountains and glaciers quite near through the woods of pine, oak, and maple, and the wet meadows are strewn with innumerable bright flowers. On one side the Lutschine was hurling down the boulders one over another. As my guide said, it had brought down rocks “bigger than a stove.” But it is beautiful beyond everything. Unfortunately, we could not get up to the Smadribach, because all the bridges and pathways were destroyed. ”

“ Fancy all the beauties you have ever delighted in—it is that. The footpath is always sloping upwards under the shade of nut trees, past country houses and castles; on all the slope down to the glittering lake lie villages scattered here and there, and the villages are full of the sound of streams and fountains splashing at every corner; most beautiful it was, and one felt so free and bright! Now comes the village-girl with her straw hat; she is wonderfully pretty, and her name is Pauline. She puts my baggage in the basket on her shoulder, and so we march for the mountains. ”

“ For once I will be on the side of the whole of nature, which, indeed, is likely to be the safe side.
You know the position of the inn here, or if you have forgotten take my old Swiss sketch-book, where I have drawn it from every point of view, with the footpath in front, and which still makes me laugh privately. I am looking out of the self-same window now, getting a peep at the dark outlines of the mountains, for it is late in the evening, a quarter to eight, in fact. And I have an idea which is higher than the whole of nature, namely, that I will go to bed. ”

“ They seem made for the purpose, and the tone is so thrilling that a kind of shudder runs all through me when I begin. For the florid accompaniment I have an eight-foot flute, and a perfectly soft four-foot, which continues floating above the chorale itself. That you remember in Berlin. But there is one row of keys that has nothing but reed-stops, and of these I use a soft oboe, a clarion, very light, a four-foot, and a viola. That brings out the chorale so quick and penetrating; it sounds like human voices, full of emotion, singing in the distance. ”

“ One passes from one spectacle to another in Rome, and so it is in St. Peter’s; one takes a few steps and the whole scene is changed. I went to the farther end, and there it was a wonderful picture to look down between the twisted pillars of the high altar, which one knows to be equal in height to the Schloss at Berlin, to see across the floor of the dome the catafalque with its crowded lights, strangely diminished by the distance, and the throng of people about it like so many dwarfs. ”

“ Now I have my concert before me, which is a handful, not to mention the friends who break in on me at every moment, nor the lovely weather which entices one out of doors, nor the copyists who compel one to stay at home—it is all a most pleasurable and most stormy existence. My concert has had to be put off on account of the October festival, which begins on Sunday and lasts all the week. There is the theatre and a ball every evening, no chance of an orchestra or a hall to play in. ”

“ In comparing one profession to another, people generally take the naked reality of one, and the most imposing ideal of the other, so, naturally, the decision is easy. And how easy it is for an artist to feel the bare realities of his trade, and then perhaps to envy practical men who have the chance of observing all the relations of life, and knowing all the diversities there are among men, to envy them especially when one considers all the actual, useful, beneficent things they may accomplish. ”

“ I was especially pleased that in spite of the strain and all the comments from this side or that, praising or blaming, the whole made just as fresh and living an impression on me as though I had come independently and without prepossession, and I saw it once more established that whatever is perfect, even though it be in the sphere most distant from one’s own, still has the power of perfection. And so may you read this long letter with half the joy it has given me to recall my Holy Week in Rome! ”

“ An enormous taper throws its light upon the page, and it is most interesting to see how they all press round in their vestments to read the music, Baini, with his monastic face, beating time with his hand, and at intervals coming in with his deep sonorous voice, and to observe all the play of the strongly-marked Italian faces. ”

“ I had neither table nor ink; in fact, I was stuck fast in the Pontine Marshes. May there be a happy year before you, and may it bring about our meeting; if you thought of me on the day, our thoughts must have met somewhere on the Brenner, or perhaps in Innsbruck, for all mine travelled towards you. If you have not noticed the date of this, you will see from its tone that I am at Naples. I can’t get back to a reasonable state of mind just yet; things round one are too seductive, and compel one to do nothing and think of nothing—the example set by the whole population is irresistible ”

“ I flatter myself, however, that I have found a deep significance in this picture, and maintain that he is right who sees most in a Titian, for the man was simply divine. He, indeed, found no opportunity to display the whole breadth of his inspiration, as Raphael did here in the Vatican; yet one can never forget his three pictures at Venice, and this of the Vatican, which I first saw this morning, stands in line with them. If a child could enter the world with perceptions fully developed, things would everywhere break on him with the same joyful, vivid effect as the pictures here do on oneself. ”

“ A time like this in which seriousness and pleasure unite does indeed strengthen and refresh one. Every day when I enter my room I feel delighted afresh at the thought of not having to travel on to-morrow—that so much can be quietly postponed—that I am in Rome. ”

“ Leanness takes the place of corruption; it is the contrast of the Jesuit churches sparkling with tinsel to the four white walls of the Calvinists; true piety may be in either, but the true path is between them. Heavens! excuse my sermonising tone, but how is one to explain one’s meaning on such matters? The leading ideas both in your overture and in my Reformation symphony, which, I think, resemble each other precisely in this, are interesting rather for what they signify, than simply in themselves. ”

“ When I set to work in the morning there comes a pull at the bell at every bar; a procession of singers with grievances to assail me, or incompetent singers whom I have to instruct, or else they are shabby players whom I have to engage; and when that has gone on all day, and I say to myself, it is all for the Düsseldorf theatre and its salvation, my temper becomes terribly bad. At the day before yesterday I made up my mind, shook myself free of the whole business, and now I am a man again. ”

“ There is one in particular which often recurs and is the most impressive of all, so much so that when it commences a slight movement passes through the auditory, whatever sort of people compose it; and in conversation whenever this style of music is spoken of, and you hear people talk of how the voices ring out as though less human than angelic, or of a harmony that one can hear but once, it is always this particular variation that is meant. ”

“ One flies over the level plains; for a little drink money the postilions will go at a furious gallop, which is quite what is wanted on the marshes, and if one wants to see the country, it is only necessary to refuse the drink money, and the pace falls off at once. From Albano through Ariccia, and Gengano to Velletri the road goes all the way between hills that are deeply shaded with all sorts of trees, up-hill and down-hill, through long avenues of elms, past monasteries and roadside images of the virgin. ”

“ It was delightful there; the broad green meadow far above the clouds served for a stage. Straight in front the snow mountains lifted themselves in the sky, the mighty spire of the Eiger, with the Schreckhorn, the Wetterhorn and all the rest, away to the Blumlisalp. In the misty depth below lay the Lauterbrunnen valley looking quite small, and down there we could see all the route we had been the day before with its waterfalls marked like threads, the houses just little points, and the trees showing like tufts of grass. ”

“ And then, just because the man of honour has the hardest task in dealing with a public which is more concerned about appearances than realities, therefore one cannot suffer the needs of the moment to guide or perturb one’s conscience, but above all external considerations must always maintain in one’s heart a something that can raise and sustain it. This tells very directly for my view, for that higher impulse is the best thing in every calling, and it is common to all—shared equally by yours and mine and every other. ”

“ But if people mean I have turned into a Pietist, one of those who folds his hands on his bosom and waits for God to accomplish all things for him, or one who, instead of struggling after perfection in his earthly calling, talks of a heavenly calling which is incompatible with mundane efforts, or one who cannot truly love any person or anything in this world—such a one I have not become, thank Heaven! ”