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. He was the glass of fashion and the mold of form in music; not only in pianoforte music, but in orchestral and vocal music as well. One might continue the quotation, and remark how the observed of all observers is now quite, quite down; but one may never say that his music is out of tune and harsh. Its very mellifluousness is what has condemned it. It is all honey, without spice. For this reason it has become the fashion now to slight Mendelssohn, as it once was to revere him.
This is unjust. His pianoforte music is such an easy mark for epigrams that truth has been sacrificed to wit. There is much in it that is admirable. Some of it will probably come to life again. Indeed, it has not all the appearance of death now, choked as it may seem to be in its own honey. A few of the ‘Songs Without Words,’ the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, opus 35, some of the short capriccios and the Variations sérieuses still hold a high place in pianoforte literature.
The mass of his music, however, has fallen into disgrace. This is not wholly because the world ate too much of it and sickened. One does not look askance at it as one looks at sweets once immoderately devoured and henceforth distressful even to the eye. One sees weakness and defects to which its fate may be attributed.
At the basis lies a monotony. His melodies and harmonies are too unvaryingly alike. He is a slave to milky mannerisms. The curves of his melodies are endlessly alike; there is a profusion of feminine endings, dwellings in commonplaceness, suspensions that have no weight. His harmonies are seldom poignant. His agitation leads no further in most cases than the diminished seventh. To this he comes again and again, as regularly or as inevitably as most Romanticists went to tombstones for their heroics. The sameness of melody, the threadbare scheme of his harmonies, these mark a composer with little great creative force.
In the pianoforte music one finds even a lack of ingenuity. He has nothing to add to the resources of the instrument. He knew himself to be sterile in pianoforte figures. The ‘Songs without Words’ show but two or three types of accompaniment, and these are flat and monotonous. There are the unbroken chords, usually without a trace of subtlety in line, such as we find in the first, the fifteenth, the twenty-first, the thirty-seventh, and numerous others. There are plain chords, usually triads, monotonously repeated, as in the tenth, twentieth, twenty-second, and thirty-ninth, flat with the melody, or in syncopation as in the fourteenth and seventeenth. There are the rocking figures such as one finds in all the ‘Gondola’ songs, in the so-called ‘Spring Song,’ and in the thirty-sixth. Only rarely does he give to these figures some contrapuntal flexibility, as in the fifth and in the thirty-fourth, known as the ‘Spinning Song,’ and in the eleventh.
There are many songs which have no running accompaniment, which are in the simple harmonic style of the hymn tune. These are usually extremely saccharine. The few measures of preludizing with which they begin are monotonously alike—an arpeggio or two, as if he were sweeping the strings of his harp, as in the ninth and the sixteenth. Some, however, are vigorous and exciting, like the ‘Hunting Song’ (the third), and the twenty-third, in style of a folk-song.
It is the lack of variety, of ingenuity and surprise which makes the ‘Songs without Words’ so extraordinarily sentimental and inanimate as a whole, both to the musician and to the pianist. The workmanship is always flawless, but there is little strain to pull it out of perfect line. Mendelssohn had considerable skill in picture music. The overture to ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and the overture suggested to him by his visit to Fingal’s Cave are successful in this direction. It is worthy of note that at least two of the best of the ‘Songs without Words’ are in the nature of picture music—the so-called ‘Hunting’ and ‘Spinning’ songs. The gondolier songs likewise stand out a little from the rest in something like active charm. These offer him an external idea to work on and he brings to his task a very neat and sensitive, though unvaried, technique.
He had also a gift, rather special, for light and tripping effects. It does not often show itself in the ‘Songs without Words.’ There is one in C major, published after his death, which shows him to advantage in this vein, and the light ‘Spring Song’ has a touch of it. Among his other pieces the Rondo Capriccioso in E major and the little scherzo in E minor stand out by virtue of it.
Of the longer pieces we need touch upon only two. These are the Prelude and Fugue in E minor and the Variations sérieuses. The former is the first of six such works published in 1837 as opus 35. The prelude is the best part of it. Though here as elsewhere he seems to have no new or interesting means to set the piano in vibration, though he holds without change to close arpeggio figures throughout, yet there is a breadth of style and a sweep which approaches real power of utterance. The fugue is excellently put together. The theme itself recalls Bach, for whom, be it mentioned, Mendelssohn had profound and constant admiration, and whose works his untiring labor resurrected and brought to public performance. Still it need hardly be added that this fugue is a work of art, more than of expression. The inversion of the theme is clever, and there is a certain pompous grandeur in the sound of the chorale just before the end. The other preludes and fugues in the set are relatively uninteresting.
The Variations are worthy of study and are by no means lacking in musical value. The theme itself was happily chosen. There is a respectable sadness and melancholy in it far more dignified and genuine than the sentimentalities of the ‘Songs without Words.’ The harmonies which underlie it are hardly bold enough to dash beyond the diminished seventh; but a number of chromatic passing notes give the whole something like poignancy and considerable warmth. Moreover, it suggests chromatic treatment in the subsequent variations.
The variations themselves are full of change and offer a range of contrast of which Mendelssohn was not often master. The effect of the series as a whole is therefore stimulating and rather brilliant.
The first variation adds a counterpoint to the theme in groups of four sixteenths. The counterpoint in the second is of groups of six sixteenths. The first two variations thus seem to set the piece gradually into a free motion, which throughout the next two grows more vigorous and more nervous. The fifth is typical of Mendelssohnian agitation; but it serves as an excellent introduction to the chords of the sixth and seventh. The eighth and ninth work up to a frenzy of quick motion. Then follow two in a suppressed and quiet style, the first a little fugue, the second a brief and exquisite cantilena. The twelfth is the most vigorous of the lot, a movement as near the virtuoso style as Mendelssohn ever was able to produce. The thirteenth is interesting by reason of the contrast between the legato melody in the left hand and the excellent staccato counterpoint. A short adagio, rather superior to most of the songs in a similar style, forms the fourteenth. The fifteenth is transitional, the sixteenth and seventeenth merely lead up to the presto at the end. The entire group presents nothing in the treatment of the piano in advance of Weber, if, indeed, it anywhere equals him; but it is both in quality and in style a very fine piece of pianoforte music, which can hardly fall under the censure to which most of his music for the instrument is open.
There are two concertos and a concert piece for piano and orchestra. The latter owes its form and style very clearly to Weber’s concert piece in F minor. Both the concertos are fluent and plausible enough; the orchestra is handled with Mendelssohn’s customary good taste and sensitiveness; but the writing for the pianoforte is wholly commonplace and the themes themselves of little or no distinction.
The ‘Songs without Words’ were published in six groups of six pieces each during his life. After his death in 1847 two more sets appeared. The influence of all these was widely felt, particularly among composers of mediocre gifts. Chopin had no liking for them. In fact, Mendelssohn’s music was more than ordinarily distasteful to him; and he is said to have declared that Mendelssohn never wrote anything better than the first song without words. In some respects this is true. Schumann had a great admiration for Mendelssohn; admired his orderly style and manner. But Schumann’s individuality was far too pronounced, especially in pianoforte predilections, to submit to the milky sway of Mendelssohn.
In pianoforte music, William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) carried on the Mendelssohn tradition quite undefiled. Bennett was more than a pupil of Mendelssohn; he was a devoted and unqualified admirer. His own pianoforte works are numerous, but they have suffered something of the same malice of Fate that still preserves the ‘Songs without Words’ chiefly for fun. They include four concertos, and many short pieces, studies, diversions, impromptus. They have the merits of their prototypes, clear, faultless writing and melodiousness.
A contemporary of Mendelssohn whose life led him finally to Petrograd, is still remembered by one or two of his studies. This is Adolf Henselt (b. 1814-89). Henselt’s work is really independent of Mendelssohn. His style was founded upon a close acquaintance with Weber’s. In 1836 he gave private recitals in Berlin and was especially prized for his playing of the Weber sonatas. Two sets of concert studies were published as opus 2; and in them is the still famous and delightful Si oiseau j’étais. Besides these he composed numbers of Rhapsodies, Ballades, and other short pieces in the romantic style; all of which together show distinctly more originality in the treatment of the piano than Mendelssohn showed.