Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

“ Mendelssohn the happy, "the boy born on a lucky day," has left a life-record that amid the gloomy heart-rending and often degrading histories of artists, shines with a chaste and holy life. Nature, the world and circumstance had done every thing for him. To the great and all-sufficient gift of his musical genius he added many others,—he had the eye of a painter, the heart of a poet, his intellect was of the highest order; he was tall, handsome, graceful, his social position one of the finest in Berlin, rich, and surrounded by the tenderest family affections. ”

“ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the son of a Berlin banker, was born at Hamburg, Feb. 3, 1809, and, unlike almost all other composers, was reared in the lap of luxury. He enjoyed every advantage which wealth could procure, with the result that he became highly educated in the other arts as well as in music. ”

“ With all these advantages, with all the success XI that attended him, with all the flattery lavished on him, Mendelssohn was never vain or proud, and throughout his life was utterly free from envy. His fine, fearless, childlike spirit, led him through the world, unconscious of evil, undaunted by it. With all the temptations that must have assailed the young, handsome, rich man, there is not one moment of his life over which his friends would wish to draw a veil. ”

“ The struggles which many, if not most men of genius, more particularly musicians, have had to pass through were unknown to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Some people go so far as to say that 26they miss the traces of those struggles in his character and in his music. And yet those who knew him best know that his soul, too, knew its own bitterness. His happiest years were no doubt spent at Leipzig, where I saw much of him while I was at school and at the University. He was loved and admired by everybody; he was undisputed master in the realm of music. ”

“ No ordinary boy could have escaped uninjured from the snares attendant upon such a life as that which Mendelssohn now lived. Notwithstanding his overwhelming passion for music, his general education had been so well cared for that he was able to hold his own, in the society of his seniors, with the grace of an accomplished man of the world. ”

“ The grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy for instance, though not a composer, was evidently a man of genius, a philosopher of considerable intellectual capacity and moral strength. The father of the composer was a rich banker at Berlin, and he used to say: “When I was young I was the son of the great Mendelssohn, now that I am old, I am the father of the great Mendelssohn; then what am I?” Even a poor man to become a rich banker must be a kind of genius, and so far the son may be said to have come of a good stock. ”

“ We knew little about his music, but the wonder of it grew upon us; and I remember one night when my two sisters and I went to our rooms how we began saying to each other 'Surely this must be a man of genius ... we can't be mistaken about the music; never did we hear any one play so before. Yet we know the best London musicians. Surely by and bye we shall hear that Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy is a great name in the world.'
My father's birthday happened while Mr. Mendelssohn was with us. ”

“ Being of a distinguished commercial family and an heiress, her husband added her name of Bartholdy to his own. Mme. Mendelssohn Bartholdy's other children were, Fanny her first-born, whose life is entirely interwoven with that of III her brother Felix, and Paul and Rebecca, born some years later.
When yet a boy, Felix removed with his parents to Berlin, probably at the time of the formation of the banking house. The Prussian capital has often claimed the honor of being his birthplace, but that distinction really belongs to Hamburg. ”

“ Sometimes the delicate spirit of creative genius is housed in a veritable tenement of clay, so that what is within seems ever at war with what is without. At times the antagonism is more dreadful still, and the artist-soul is sent to dwell in the body of a beast, coarse in speech and habit, ignorant and dull in mind, vile and unclean in thought. But sometimes Nature is generous, and makes the body itself an expression of the informing spirit. Mendelssohn was one of these almost rare instances. In him, artist and man were like a beautiful picture appropriately framed. ”

“ I asked.
"It is an oratorio on the subject of Elijah," he replied.
"It is bound to be good," said Schumann enthusiastically. "Posterity will call you the man who never failed."
"Ah!" said Mendelssohn almost sadly, "you are all good and kind, but you praise me too much. Perhaps posterity will remember me for my little pieces rather than for my greater efforts. Perhaps it will remember me best, not as the master, but as the servant; for in my way I have tried very hard to glorify the great men who went before me—Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert—Bach most of all. ”

“ His other music is remarkable for the sweetness of its melodies—its earnest simplicity. His instrumentality is scientific without being pedantic or heavy, and utterly devoid of antiquated formalism; though pathetic often, there is always a vigor and life in all his inspirations; the low mournful wail that runs through all Chopin's works, arising from a morbid condition of health and heart, is never felt in Mendelssohn. There is none of the bitterness, the long suffering that artists' lives entail and that artists infuse into their works, for Mendelssohn was a happy man from first to last. ”

“ Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
by the
Sacred Harmonic Society, London,
on the occasion of
his attendance at their performance of his oratorio
'St. Paul,'
at Exeter Hall, on the 12th day of September, 1837."
[54] Bartholomew had rendered the German words "und sein Wort brannte wie eine Fackel" as "his words appeared as light in darkness." The English Apocrypha (Ecclesiasticus xlviii., 1) has, "his word burned like a lamp." It is very difficult to fathom a composer's mind; but what can be the connection between "torches" and the key of F minor? ”

“ It had long been a custom with the Mendelssohn family to give musical performances on alternate Sunday mornings in their dining-room, with a small orchestra, which Felix always conducted, even when he was not tall enough to be seen without standing upon a stool. For each of these occasions he produced some new work—playing the pianoforte pieces himself, or entrusting them to Fanny, while his sister Rebecka sang, and his brother Paul played the violoncello. ”

“ The bright staccato rhythm flashed out from his fingers so gaily that I was swept into the song without time for hesitation:
"You have greatly obliged us," said Schumann courteously.
"It reminds me, though I don't know why," said David, "of that fairy-like duet about Jack Frost and the dancing flowers."
"Come along and play it with me," said Mendelssohn to Bennett; "you've been hiding your talents all day."
Bennett joined him at the piano, and the two began to romp like schoolboys. ”

“ To Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Interlachen, August 3rd, 1847.
Dear Brother,
We are all well, and continue to live the same quiet life that you enjoyed with us here. It was, indeed, most solitary the first days after you left us, when each of us went about with dismal faces, as if we had forgotten something, or were looking for something,—and it was so, indeed! Since then, I have begun to write music very busily; the three elder children work with me in the forenoon; in the afternoon, when the weather permits, we all take a walk together ”

“ I often cannot understand how it is possible to have so acute a judgment with regard to music, without being yourself technically musical; and if I could express, what I assuredly feel, with as much clearness and intuitive perception as you do, as soon as you enter on the subject, I never would make another obscure speech all my life long. I thank you a thousand times for this, and also for your opinion of Bach. I ought to feel rather provoked that after only one very imperfect hearing of my composition, you at once discovered what after long familiarity on my part, I have only just found out ”

“ This article has the unique value of being the record of an eminent musical scholar who was an actual pupil of Mendelssohn. No change of reputation can alter the value of such a record of a man whom even his contemporaries knew to be greater than his works. Mendelssohn’s aristocratic horror of self-advertisement unfitted him for triumph in a period of revolution ”

“ You have hurt the feelings of the King by your refusal to compose music for the “Eumenides.” I was with him when Graf Redern gave him back the book with this decision. As I saw this touched the King very nearly, though he was not in the least excited, I remarked that perhaps you conceived that the whole trilogy was to be set to music. His Majesty answered, “That would be all the better, but it could not prevent Mendelssohn composing for the ‘Eumenides,’ which, in itself, may be regarded as a splendid whole.” ”

“ It is just as if a lover were to bring a declaration of love to his mistress in rhyme and verse, and recite it to her.
I am now going to Munich, where they have offered me an opera, to see if I can find a man there who is a poet, for I will only have a man who has a certain portion of fire and genius. I do not expect a giant, and if I fail in meeting with a poet there, I shall probably make Immermann's acquaintance for this express purpose, and if he is not the man either, I shall try for him in London. I always fancy that the right man has not yet appeared ”

“ I feel much the want of a friend here, to whom I could freely unbosom myself; who could read my music as I write it, thus making it doubly precious in my eyes; in whose society I could feel an interest, and enjoy repose; and honestly learn from him, (it would not require a very wise man for this purpose.) But just as trees are not ordained to grow up into the sky, so probably such a man is not likely to be found here; and the good fortune I have hitherto so richly enjoyed elsewhere, is not to fall to my share at present ”

“ I cannot contrive to make my room warm, and I am not to get another and warmer apartment, till New Year's Day. In a dark little hole on the ground floor, overlooking a small damp garden, where my feet are like ice, how can I possibly write music? It is bitterly cold, and an Italian like myself is peculiarly susceptible. At this moment a man outside my window is singing a political song to a guitar.
I live a reckless life—out morning, noon, and night: to-day at Baillot's; to-morrow I go to some friends of the Bigots ”

“ I could never write such music. No, no! That was Bach, John Sebastian Bach—part of his St. Matthew Passion. I was playing not so much the actual notes of any chorus, but rather the effect of certain passages as I could feel them in my mind."
"So that was by Bach!" I said in wonder.
"Yes," said Mendelssohn; "and people know so little of him. They either think of him as the composer of mathematical exercises in music, or else they confuse him with others of his family. He was Cantor of the St. Thomas School here in Leipzig, the perfect type of a true servant of our glorious art. ”

“ Not refinement of style nor careful workmanship can alone save music from the obliterating cyclone. One may as well face the fact that only a few men’s moods and reveries are of interest to the world, that sentimentality must ever dress in a new fashion to win fresh tears and sighs.
I
The sweetest singer of songs without words was Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. He sang the sweetest stories ever told. He was thoroughly prosperous in his day; he was even more than that, he was admirable and worshipful. The whole of his life reads much like the accounts of Mozart’s early tours. ”

“ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
To Marc-André Souchay, Lübeck. [57] Berlin, October 15th, 1842.
... There is so much talk about music, and yet so little really said. For my part I believe that words do not suffice for such a purpose, and if I found they did suffice, then I certainly would have nothing more to do with music. People often complain that music is ambiguous, that their ideas on the subject always seem so vague, whereas every one understands words ”

“ In the autumn of the following year this “garden-house” witnessed a memorable private performance of the work by means of which the greatness of Mendelssohn’s genius was first revealed to the outer world—the overture to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The finished score of this famous composition is dated “Berlin, August 6, 1826”—its author was only seventeen and a half years old. Yet in no later work does he exhibit more originality of thought, more freshness of conception, or more perfect mastery over the details of technical construction, than in this delightful inspiration. ”

“ What I alluded to about his solitary life, merely referred to his inward feelings and perceptions; for in other respects he is well acquainted with what is passing in the world. He knows what people like, and what to give them; but above all he is a genuine artist, which is the chief thing; but I am sure I need not say that I will not compose music for any words I do not consider really good, or which do not inspire me, and for this purpose it is essential that I should have your approval. I intend to reflect deeply on the poem before I begin the music. ”

“ I leave that to my betters."
"Never mind," said David, giving his shoulder a friendly pat; "at least you can write for the piano. I believe in you, and your queer music."
"That's nice of you, David," replied Schumann, "but as to Mendelssohn and me, who shall decide which of us is right? He believes in making music as pellucid to the hearers as clear water. Now I like to baffle them—to leave them something to struggle with. Music is never the worse for being obscure at first." ”