The Queen found so much delight in the “Scotch” Symphony that the composer promptly dedicated it to her. But for that matter, England could scarcely hear enough of it. Whether or not one ranks it as high as the “Italian” the A minor unquestionably represents the other half of Mendelssohn’s chief symphonic accomplishment. The question to what degree it embodies Scottish elements or any appreciable degree of local colour is less important than the fact that it is strong, impassioned music, informed with a ruggedness and conflict unlike the sunnier A major. There is a mood of tumult and drama in the first movement, whose closing subject is a definite prefigurement of the songful theme in the opening allegro of Brahms’ Second Symphony. The Scherzo begins with a sort of jubilant extension of the Irish folksong “The Minstrel Boy” and the buoyant movement, as a whole, is full of tingling life. On the other hand, the Adagio undoubtedly displays a weakness characterizing so many of Mendelssohn’s slow movements—it is sentimental rather than searching or personal, since with Mendelssohn grief is “only a recollection of former joys”. Yet the finale is superbly vital and the sonorous coda with which it concludes has a regal stateliness and a bardic ring.
Whatever honours, labours, irritations and unending travels and fatigues were his portion on the Continent (and they seemed steadily to increase) it was to England that Mendelssohn continually turned to refresh his spirit. Not that his toil there was lighter or his welcome less hectic! But there was something about it all that filled his soul. People presented him with medals, commemorative addresses, they organized torchlight processions, sang serenades—and almost killed him with kindness. Yet we are told that “he never enjoyed himself more than when in the midst of society, music, fun and excitement”. “A mad, most extraordinary mad time ... never in bed till half-past one ... for three weeks together not a single hour to myself in any one day ... I have made more music in these two months than elsewhere in two years”. He ordered a huge “Baum Kuchen” from Berlin (though usually, Grove informs us, he made no great ado over “the products of the kitchen”, his chief enjoyments being milk rice and cherry pie). His power of recovery after fatigue was said to be “as great as his powers of enjoyment”. With it all “he was never dissipated”; the only stimulants he indulged in were “music, society and boundless good spirits”. Seemingly it never occurred to him that even a strong constitution can have too much of these.
When Mendelssohn became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra he appointed as his concertmaster his old friend, the violinist Ferdinand David, who it will be recalled was born in the same house at Hamburg. As early as 1838 Felix had written to David: “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head the beginning of which gives me no peace”. Actually, he had tried his hand at a violin concerto accompanied by a string orchestra during his boyhood though this was only a kind of student effort. But David took the promise seriously and when nothing came of it for a time determined not to let Mendelssohn forget it.
Fully five years elapsed before the composer finished in its first form the concerto which to this day stands with the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky as the most enduring of the repertoire. For the various technical problems of the solo part and even of the orchestration David was constantly at the disposal of his friend. He offered numberless hints of the utmost value and is even believed to have shaped the cadenza in the first movement as we know it. Even after the score was presumably complete David advised further changes and improvements, so that the work did not acquire its conclusive aspect till February, 1845. On the following March 13 it was performed by David at a Gewandhaus concert. Not under the composer’s direction, however. The latter was in Frankfort, in poor health and greatly worn out, and had no stomach for the excitements of another premiere. The conductor was his Danish friend, Niels W. Gade. It was not till two weeks later that David apologized by letter for his delay in describing the triumph of the concerto. “The work pleased extraordinarily well and was unanimously declared to be one of the most beautiful compositions of its kind”. In more than a century there has been no reason to alter this verdict.
Mendelssohn’s constitution may have been resilient and his recuperative powers as remarkable as his friends imagined, but it should have been clear to the more far-sighted among them that sooner or later these incessant journeys, this interminable business of composing, conducting, playing, teaching, organizing must exact a stern penalty. It is not surprising that, at the time the violin concerto was given in Leipzig, he preferred to remain in Frankfort with his wife and the children (who had gone through quite a siege of juvenile illnesses) and make a serious effort to rest. But truly efficacious rest is a habit that must be systematically cultivated. Felix did not possess it in his earlier years, nor could he acquire it now when overwork promised to consume the sensitive fibre of his being.
Yet in the summer of 1845 he was approached once more with a scheme of major dimensions. The Birmingham Festival Committee offered him the direction of a festival planned for August, 1846, and asked him to “compose a performance”—in this case, a new oratorio. He was sensible enough to refuse to conduct the whole festival but he was willing to produce such an oratorio, even if only ten months remained to compose most of the score and rehearse the performance.
The prophet Elijah had engrossed his imagination as an oratorio subject ever since he had completed “St. Paul” and discussed the new work with his friend Klingemann. In 1839 he had corresponded with Pastor Schubring about a text and he had even made rudimentary sketches for the music. Other obligations crowded it out of his mind. Now, six years later, he returned to it. He realized that the time was short but his heart was set on “Elijah”, although he was prudent enough to suggest some other work if the oratorio should by any chance strike a snag.
Mendelssohn could write fast—too fast, perhaps, for his artistic good. Still, “Elijah” was a heart-breaking assignment. It is only just to say that he realized certain inadequacies of the first version and revised not a little of the score after hearing it. His labours were complicated by the lengthy correspondence he was obliged to carry on with William Bartholomew, the translator. Mendelssohn insisted on a close adherence to the King James version of the Bible, with the result that the English words often conform neither to the accent nor the sense of the German originals. The choice of a soprano offered another problem. The composer wanted Jenny Lind, whom he admired extravagantly (he loved her F sharp and the note seems to have haunted his mind when he wrote the air, “Hear Ye, Israel”). But Jenny Lind was unavailable and he had to be satisfied with a Maria Caradori-Allan, whom he disliked and whose singing he afterwards described as “so pretty, so pleasing, so elegant and at the same time so flat, so unintelligent, so soulless that the music acquired a sort of amiable expression about which I could go mad”. Be all of which as it may, Caradori-Allan was paid as much for singing in the first “Elijah” as Mendelssohn was for composing it! The precious creature actually told him at a rehearsal that “Hear Ye, Israel” was “not a lady’s song,” and asked him to have it transposed and otherwise altered.
However, the first performance in Birmingham, Aug. 26, 1846, was a triumph for the composer though, to be candid, the uncritical adulation of the audience had settled the verdict in advance. The report of Mendelssohn’s boyhood friend, Julius Benedict, is typical: “The noble Town Hall was crowded at an early hour of that forenoon with a brilliant and eagerly expectant audience.... Every eye had long been directed toward the conductor’s desk, when, at half-past eleven o’clock, a deafening shout from the band and chorus announced the approach of the great composer. The reception he met from the assembled thousands ... was absolutely overwhelming; whilst the sun, emerging at that moment, seemed to illumine the vast edifice in honour of the bright and pure being who stood there, the idol of all beholders”!
It enhances one’s respect for the artistic probity of Mendelssohn that he preserved his balance. He evaluated his work critically, carefully modified or enlarged it and obliged Bartholomew to make a quantity of changes in the English text. On April 16, 1847, he conducted the revised version in the first of four performances by the Sacred Harmonic Society in Exeter Hall, London. On April 23 the Queen and the Prince Consort heard the work. Albert wrote in the book of words and sent to Mendelssohn a dedication: “To the Noble Artist who, surrounded by the Baal-worship of debased art, has been able by his genius and science to preserve faithfully, like another Elijah, the Worship of True Art, and once more to accustom our ears, amid the whirl of empty frivolous sounds, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and legitimate harmony: to the Great Master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his conception, through the whole maze of his creation, from the soft whispering to the mighty raging of the elements. Inscribed in grateful remembrance by