Mendelssohn’s orchestration is noted for its perfect balance, its clarity and its polish. He seems to have cared less for the brass than the other groups. His violin concerto, ranking next to Beethoven’s, shows his sympathy for the violin. The viola is also well treated in all his works. The violoncello obbligato in the accompaniment to the solo “It is enough” in Elijah proves that this instrument was a favorite. The clarinet passages in the Overture to Melusine and the use of the horns in the Notturno in A Midsummer Night’s Dream exhibit his poetic and romantic touch in the highest degree.
Many persons have left snap-shots of happy Mendelssohn, Sir Julius Benedict, a pupil of his, wrote enthusiastically: “It would be a matter of difficulty to decide in what quality Mendelssohn excelled the most,—whether as composer, pianist, organist, or conductor of an Orchestra. Nobody, certainly, ever knew better how to communicate—as if by an electric fluid—his own conception of a work to a large body of performers. It was highly interesting, on such an occasion, to contemplate the anxious attention manifested by a body of sometimes more than five hundred singers and performers, watching every glance of Mendelssohn’s eye and following, like obedient spirits, the magic wand of this musical Prospero. Once, while conducting a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, the admirable Allegretto in B-flat, not going at first to his liking, he remarked, smilingly that he knew every one of the gentlemen engaged was capable of performing and even composing a scherzo of his own, but that just now he wanted to hear Beethoven’s, which he thought had some merits. It was cheerfully repeated. ‘Beautiful! Charming!’ cried Mendelssohn, ‘but still too loud in two or three instances. Let us take it again from the middle.’ ‘No, no,’ was the general reply of the band, ‘the whole piece over again, for our satisfaction;’ and then they played it with the utmost delicacy and finish, Mendelssohn laying aside his bâton and listening with evident delight to the perfect execution. ‘What would I have given,’ he exclaimed, ‘if Beethoven could have heard his own composition so well understood and so magnificently performed.’”
MENDELSSOHN
By Bendemann
Another admirer wrote: “When once his fine, firm hand grasped the bâton, the electric fire of Mendelssohn’s nature seemed to stream out through it and be felt at once by singers, orchestra and audience. Mendelssohn conducted not only with his bâton, but with his whole body. At the outset, when he took his place at the music-stand, his countenance was wrapped in deep and almost solemn earnestness. You could see at a glance that the temple of music was a holy place to him. As soon as he had given the first beat, his face lighted up, every feature was aflame and the play of countenance was the best commentary on the piece. Often the spectator could anticipate from his face what was to come. The fortes and crescendos he accompanied with an energetic play of features and the most forcible action; while the decrescendos and pianos he used to modulate with a motion of both hands till they slowly sank to almost perfect silence. He glanced at the most distant performers when they should strike in, and often designated the instant when they should pause, by a characteristic movement of the hand, which will not be forgotten by those who ever saw it.”
Contemporary with Mendelssohn, though they seem much nearer to us than he, are three great geniuses of the Nineteenth Century,—Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. Though all three were admirers of the Classic masters, they formed an entirely new school of music, which was called “The Music of the Future.”
It is hard to say to which of these men Music owes the most; for while Wagner was certainly the greatest composer, Berlioz daringly led the way into these new regions where Wagner followed, and Liszt, with his extraordinary influence, his generosity of spirit, his untiring zeal in producing Wagner’s works as well as his lavish gifts to Wagner in times of trouble, was not the least important of the three in making Music what it is to-day. Moreover, Liszt’s own compositions helped to establish in the affections of the public this Music of the Future that became the Music of the Present and that is rapidly taking its place in the Music of the Past ranking as Classic in the first meaning of the word (see page [232]).
To understand how Music departed from the old roads and took a new path, we must remember that in 1830 with the Revolution that sent Charles IX from the French throne, a new spirit came into the world of literature, art and music. It is known as the Romantic Movement. Writers and painters, full of the excitement of the period and joy at the triumph of republican ideas, sought to portray nature and human nature in truer lines and colors than the traditional rules and measurements of the Classic period.
There was a great outburst of literature in France—Gautier, Flaubert, de Musset, de Vigny and Victor Hugo are a few of the names that rise to one’s lips when the Romantic Movement is mentioned. Painters, too, were numerous. There was but one French composer—Berlioz. Just what Victor Hugo expressed in literature, just what Delacroix expressed in painting, Berlioz expressed in music; and Berlioz stands alone, a solitary figure.