Widened Horizons: Life 1826-1833

What could be called a second stage in Mendelssohn's development extends from his matriculation at Berlin University to his acceptance of the conductorship of the Lower Rhine Festival in 1833 his first professional post. These were years largely taken up with travel, with organizing a revival of Bach's St Matthew Passion with the Singakademie and, of course, with composition.

It was a happy time on the whole. Grafted on to his happy home life was his ever-widening circle of friends; added to which he was by now to all intents and purposes grown-up. Some setbacks there were. His opera The Wedding of Camacho, based on Cervantes, was accepted rather grudgingly by Spontini, director of the Berlin State Opera; and although it did eventually reach the stage on 29th April 1827 and was warmly received by the public, Mendelssohn was hurt by some of the press reviews an& was left with a nasty taste in his mouth by the atmosphere of backstage cabal and intrigue. He felt that he had been rejected by his own city a sentiment that was to remain with him throughout his career, throughout his love-hate relationship with musical and official Berlin. As to his studies at the University, although Felix was clever, well read and polyglot given his background, how could he fail to be otherwise? - he was no academic, and when at the age of twenty-seven he was given an honorary doctorate by Leipzig University he did not take it very seriously.

On the other hand, the philosopher Hegel, who lectured on aesthetics, left an impression on Mendelssohn's receptive mind, even if the latter affected to despise mere talking about music. Certain Hegelian principles accord closely with those that Mendelssohn expounded in his own scores: 'Like any other art, music must restrain the emotions and their manifestations lest the music plunge into bacchanalian clamour and whirl into a tumult of passion. ... Music must remain untrammelled and yet in its outpouring serene. The proper domain of music is essentially that of inwardness combined with tone unalloyed. . . . In music, objectivity abates. Being the essentially Romantic art, music withdraws altogether into subjectivity, both as regards inner meaning and outer manifestation.' It looks, then, as though Mendelssohn affected to spurn musical aesthetics, whereas in reality he was not nearly such a pragmatist as he made out.

Musically, 1827 saw the emergence of two by-products of his Bachian enthusiasm, the Fugue in E minor for piano and the motet 'Tu es Petrus', written for Fanny; while his study of late Beethoven was reflected most clearly in his A minor quartet, op. 13. No less important was his meeting on one of his expeditions - and, like other young men of his generation, Mendelssohn made many long trips on foot - with Professor Thibaut, Professor of Law at Heidelberg and a devotee of Palestrina. Of him Mendelssohn was to write: 'One Thibaut is worth six ordinary men - I have learned a great deal from him, and owe him many thanks. For he has revealed to me the merits of old Italian music and warmed me with his enthusiasm for it. . . When I left him, he said: "Farewell, and we will build our friendship on Luis de Victoria and Sebastian Bach, like two lovers who promise each other to look at the moon and then fancy they are near each other" .'

This encounter had two results: practically, it aroused Mendelssohn's interest in Renaissance music in general and in Palestrina's idiom in particular; in more general terms, Thibaut's concern with the relationship between music and morals blended with analogous views that Felix had heard expounded by philosophers Hegel and Schleiermacher. In the mid-20th century we may raise a sceptical eyebrow at such preoccupations, but at that time they were very much in the air and have to be reckoned with when Mendelssohn's own attitudes are gauged. These can seem surprisingly priggish from time to time, and seemed so even to some of his contemporaries, but they derived partly from his own seriousness of purpose and partly from indoctrination.

Another important event in 1827 was Mendelssohn's visit to Stettin, where the famous song composer Carl Loewe conducted the first performances of the orchestral version of the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream of the Concerto for two pianos in A flat, and, in Northern Europe at any rate, of Beethoven's 'Choral' Symphony.

1828 was a relatively fallow year, though it included in its modest harvest the Goethe-inspired overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and latterly Mendelssohn began to work on Zelter to let him conduct the Bach St Matthew Passion with the Singakademie. In this daring and ambitious enterprise, Mendelssohn was very strongly backed and sometimes goaded by his friend Eduard Devrient, an actor, who was set on singing the part of Jesus. It required the most enormous persistence on the part of the two young men to bring their scheme to fruition. If Zelter, who was, after all, a Bachian zealot, was extremely sceptical of the practicality of the idea, the choir was even more so. Later they were to preen themselves on their achievement: at the time, they were, according to Mendelssohn, as obstructive as possible. At any rate, the performance on 11th May 1829 made a deep impression and was repeated ten days later, though in the face of much opposition from Spontini, who was no friend to Mendelssohn. Shortly afterwards, Zelter himself was to conduct a third performance. Why the fuss? Simply because J. S. Bach and his music had dwindled to a minority cult largely centred on Berlin, though with sundry sturdy outcrops elsewhere. The public at large had forgotten all about him - and did not necessarily want to be reminded. 'Outdated rubbish' was the verdict of some who listened to a performance of the Passion in Königsberg.

Mendelssohn's next move was at the suggestion of Moscheles: a trip to London - the city that was to become a second home to the composer. His object was not so much to take active part in London's music but rather to 'take its temperature', to see what it was like. As things turned out, his expedition was a great success, thanks to the welcome from his friend Klingemann at the Hanoverian legation in London, and from Moscheles and his wife. Through them he had a ready-made entree into the city's musical and social circles. Soon after his arrival, Mendelssohn wrote to his family in these terms: 'London is the grandest and most complicated monster on the face of the earth. How can I compress into one letter what I have been three days seeing. I hardly remember the chief events and yet I must not keep a diary, for then I would see less of life, and that must not be. On the contrary, I want to catch hold of whatever offers itself to me. Things roll and whirl around me and carry me along as in a vortex.'

That was no exaggeration. He conducted his First Symphony in C minor, op. II, at a Philharmonic Society concert; he heard the famous Malibran in Rossini's Otello and even played for her at a soirée; he appeared as a pianist; he was even asked to write a song for a festival in Ceylon, that his family began to fear that he was becoming a social butterfly. In a sense he was, but it was to pay dividends, for in later years he spent a great deal of time in England and relied very much on the company of his friends in varied strata of society. Came July, and Mendelssohn set off with Klingemann on a tour of Northern England, Scotland and Wales, a hugely enterprising exploit for such a hothouse plant as Mendelssohn was. But he was far tougher than he seemed in the elegant salons of the metropolis. From York and Durham, the travellers came to Edinburgh, a city which Mendelssohn greatly admired, not only for its Mary Stuarti/Schiller associations but for its grandeur and its pretty girls.

At Liverpool, Klingemann parted from Mendelssohn, who went on by himself to Wales, where he stayed with the Taylors, kinsfolk of the Horsleys of Kensington whom he came to know so well. Back in London he was knocked over by a cabriolet, injuring his kneecap, and so was not able to return in time to Berlin for the October wedding of his beloved sister Fanny to the painter Hensel. That was one of the few disappointments on an astonishingly fruitful first foray to Britain.

Before leaving London, however, Mendelssohn finished his operetta Son and Stranger and on his return to Berlin continued work on his Fifth Symphony, the 'Reformation'. He was now aged twenty, and it gives one some idea of the speed at which he bad matured that he was offered the chair of musical history at Berlin University. Judging himself unsuited to the academic life, he declined it and may have been instrumental in getting his friend A. B. Marx appointed to the post in his place. Meanwhile preparations were going forward for a far more elaborate Continental tour which was to take in Italy as well as nearer-lying countries. After various delays, including an outbreak of measles in the family, Felix set off. After Dessau, he went to Weimar to see Goethe. Conversation and music flowed, his portrait was painted, and he played not only Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C minor to his host but some of his most recent keyboard pieces. A letter from Zelter to Goethe at that particular point is interesting: 'I thank you as much as possible; he [Mendelssohn]can feast on this all during his life. Sometimes I am afraid when I look at the boy's rapid rise. Up till now he has hardly met with any opposition.'

The next stop was Munich, where Mendelssohn met all the notabilities, was extremely sociable, fell mildly in love with a gifted and attractive young pianist, Deiphine von Schauroth and, in his letters at least, was very rude about the climate of musical taste in the Bavarian capital. Nevertheless from that visit sprang two works, the Rondo Capriccio in E, op. 14, and in due course the first Piano Concerto in 6 minor. He then travelled on to Salzburg and Vienna, which seemed already to have forgotten the great days of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, and was given over to frivolity and sentimentalism. Eventually, by way of Pressburg where he saw the coronation of the King of Hungary, Mendelssohn arrived in Venice and wrote: 'Italy at last! What I have been looking forward to all my life as the greatest happiness is now begun, and I am basking in it.' But once again, the standard of music and music-making shocked him. Enthralled as he was by the Titians and Giorgiones on view, he was taken aback by the general and complacent ignorance shown by local pianists.

Arriving in Rome on 1st November 1830, he stayed there till April of the next year. As always he was immediately accepted by society, on the strength of his family name and also because of his own fast-growing international reputation as a composer. As always his letters are a treasure trove of comment and criticism. We read of the receptions he attended, of the boundless hospitality of the Prussian historian/diplomatist Baron von Bunsen and his wealthy English wife, Fanny (Waddington), of life among the cardinals, of the unappetizing German colony of painters, of his friendship with Horace Vernet and Thorvaldsen, of the death of Pope Pius VIII and the celebrations attendant on the election of his successor Gregory XVI, of Berlioz's unstable emotional state, of music in the Sistine Chapel, of Mendelssohn's dislike of plainsong and his contacts with two scholar- and musician-priests, Santini and Baini. From posterity's more selective point of view, Mendelssohn's stay in Rome is particularly important because of the music to which it gave rise. Church music, mostly Protestant, like his Three Sacred Pieces, op. 23, 'Aus tiefer Not', 'Ave Maria' and 'Mitten wir im Leben sind', and also his noble 'Non nobis, Domine' setting, op. 31, can be set alongside his first version of the Hebrides overture, his continuation of Die Erste Walpurgisnacht and sketches for the 'Scotch' and 'Italian' Symphonies.

After a visit of a few weeks to Naples, Mendelssohn started home, via Rome, Florence, Milan (where the operatic infection nearly caught him and where he met Mozart's son Karl), through Switzerland, mostly on foot, and once more to Munich. There his embryo affair with Delphine von Schauroth showed signs of developing into a grande passion, and his First Piano Concerto had its première. He also accepted the invitation to write an opera for the Royal Theatre, though nothing was to come of it. Finally, his route took him to Paris where he stayed from December 1831 till April 1832. It was his third visit and as always he met everybody; but his was not the temperament to make the best of the French capital nor to discover what made it an exciting place to be in during the early 1830s.

A short visit to London came as a relief. He wrote: 'I wish I could only describe how happy I feel to be here again once more; how much I like everything, and how gratified I am by the kindness of old friends.' By 'friends' he meant Klingemann, Moscheles, Sir Thomas Attwood, the Horsley family, Rosen and many others. He felt at ease, loved and praised. For a memento of this recharging of batteries, we need only turn to his Capriccio Brillante for Piano and Orchestra in B minor, op. 22, and his first volume of Songs Without Words, written at the behest of Novello. It was during this second visit to London that Mendelssohn suffered another blow - the death of his mentor, confidant and friend Zelter. This left the directorship of the Berlin Singakademie vacant, which was an appointment Mendelssohn would have welcomed. It would have meant official recognition in his own city, something he craved, though he had no illusions about the snags.

Prodded by his family and his friends, and against his better judgment although he would dearly have loved the job, he allowed himself to become a candidate. The period of waiting was painful, the result even more so. In January 1835 Zelter's former deputy Rungenhagen was chosen by an overwhelming majority of votes, and the Singakademie lived to rue its decision, while Mendelssohn never quite got over it. This was the winter of his discontent. The only consolation, and it was not inconsiderable, was a commission from the London Philharmonic Society for 'a symphony, an overture and a vocal piece' which had come his way in November 1832. First fruit of this request was the 'Italian' Symphony, on which he had been working and had its première on the 13th May1833. It led to his being invited to become permanent musical director, taking up the appointment on 1st October 1833.

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