In June of the same year another grand musical festival took place at Halberstadt, which was undertaken by the minister Augustin and his son, as the sixth musical festival of the Elbe, to direct which concert-master Frederick Schneider of Dessau and myself were invited. It differed chiefly from the previous ones in the erection of an enormous tent, or rather of a large booth constructed of planks, upon the square in front of the cathedral, for the refreshment and social entertainment of the visitors, as well as of the auditory and assistant artists, and in which all strangers could assemble at any hour of the day. The musical performances took place on three successive days, and began with Händel’s oratorio of “Samson” under Schneider’s direction. The next morning the objects most worthy of notice in Halberstadt were visited, particularly the collections of paintings belonging to the Canon von Spiegel and Dr. Lucanus. It was intended to have given a concert at the theatre, but as it was not sufficiently spacious to hold the numerous auditory, a second concert was given simultaneously in the large room of the “Golden Angel,” and the non-resident virtuosi and singers were divided equally to perform at both places. The tickets which were distributed admitted to the rehearsals also, so that each person could hear one of the concerts at the morning rehearsal, and the other at the evening performance; and one single piece of music only was given at both concerts, which was the favorite duet from “Jessonda” between Amazili and Nadori, sung by Mrs. Schmidt and Mr. Mantius, because neither party would permit this piece to be taken from it by the other.—I conducted at the concert given in the room at the “Golden Angel,” and played my new concertante in H minor with concert-master Müller from Brunswick. On the third day the last concert took place in the forenoon, and under my direction, upon which occasion I found upon my conductor’s desk a present of a red velvet coverlet bearing an inscription embroidered in silver. At this concert were performed Mozart’s symphony in C major, and that of Beethoven in C minor; my Lord’s prayer and a Te Deum by Schneider, and I had the satisfaction of observing that at this musical festival my three compositions met with the most general applause. At noon a grand banquet in the large tent terminated the festival, at which the proceeding were of a very noisy character.
We were obliged to devote the remainder of the vacation to a journey to Marienbad in Bohemia, where it was hoped my wife, who constantly suffered from nervous debility, would regain some strength from bathing and drinking the waters, as well as from the enjoyment of the fresh air from the mountains. Among the visitors at the baths we met Raupach of Berlin, with whom I took frequent long walks, during which he related to me many things relating to his approaching theatrical labours. He was at that time full of a new drama which he was going to write immediately upon his return home, in which he intended to lash the ill-natured and hypocrites, and the scene of which he had laid in China. But he probably never completed it, or perhaps the ill-natured ones of Berlin found means to prevent its representation, for so far as I know, no piece of the kind from the pen of Raupach was ever made public. The society of music at Marienbad, whose director was a linen manufacturer in the neighbourhood, had much pleased and surprised me with a very successful performance of Cherubini’s overture to “Medea,” with which, by way of serenade, he had greeted my arrival, and for which I the more readily complied with his wish to write a walz for them à la Strauss, to which also my inclination to try every sort of composition, had long predisposed me. At first, when I had practised their orchestra in it, the walz pleased me very well; but afterwards I found it wanting in that freshness and originality which distinguish most of the walzes of Strauss and Lanner. Nevertheless, by the desire of my publisher Haslinger of Vienna, he brought it out as Op. 89, not only in the original form as an instrumental piece, but also arranged for two and four hands.
On my return to Cassel I next wrote six four-voice songs for men’s voices, which Schuberth of Hamburgh published as Op. 90, and began my fourth quintet in A minor, finished in February of the following year, and which Simrock of Bonn published as Op. 91.
On the 5th April 1834, my children and friends took me by surprise with an unusually grand fete in celebration of my fiftieth birthday. For that very evening I had announced an opera and could not at all understand, why the intendance had suddenly countermanded it, but this had been solicited by my folks unknown to me. My wife and I now availed ourselves of the evening thus left at our disposal to accept an invitation to my son-in-law Zahn’s and we were both not a little surprised to find the apartments brilliantly lighted up with candelabra, and ornamented with ingenious transparencies and flowers, with my bust crowned with a wreath, and a brilliant company assembled to celebrate the day with music (a cantata composed by Hauptmann) and with speeches.
This was unhappily the last festivity of the kind that my good wife lived to see. Our stay at Marienbad had not given her any permanent relief, and as her sufferings returned once more with the commencement of the winter, it became necessary for her to resume the attempt at cure in the next vacation. This time we met at Marienbad the brothers Bohrer, and after I had renewed my former acquaintance with these talented artists, we had frequent quartet parties together, in which we also prevailed upon the old linen-weaver, who was a good violin player, to join us. These music-parties enlivened my wife as well, who benefited so much by the waters that we returned to Cassel with the mostly lively hope of her ultimate recovery. But soon afterwards her condition again became worse, and I now felt but little disposed to proceed with my new oratorio which I had begun in April. Already the year before, on our return journey through Leipzic, Councillor Rochlitz had offered me an oratorio of the passion written by him: “Des Heilands letzte Stunden” [the last moments of the Saviour] to set to music. Although it had already been once set to music, under the title “The end of the just,” by Schicht, I nevertheless took it with pleasure, as he assured me that although the previous composition had been played and with some applause, yet it had not produced sufficient effect; for which reason he had again remodelled the text and had made it more suitable to the object proposed. As, however, I became informed that he had proposed this new text to Mendelssohn also for composition, before proceeding with the work I first wrote of the latter, requesting him to inform me whether he had the intention of composing the oratorio? As he replied in the negative, and informed me that he himself intended to put a text together from scripture (“Paulus”), I began my work in the spring of 1834, which was subsequently interrupted by our journey to the baths. As I nevertheless remarked that my wife, notwithstanding her suffering condition, interested herself as much in my present work as she had done in my previous ones, I soon forgot every thing in the inspiration with which I devoted myself to it. Although upon my return home from the rehearsals at the theatre Dorette received me always with sad looks and anxious observations respecting her health, she nevertheless evinced again so great an interest in the progress of my work, and listened with such lively attention to that which when ready I rehearsed at the St. Cecilia society, that again I always resumed the continuation of the work with new courage. Frequently nevertheless she would interrupt me with the melancholy question: “What will become of our Theresa, should I sink under my illness?”—for her anxiety for Theresa had at that time become her fixed idea—and when I made reply to her: “A happy wife, as our other children have become,” a radiant smile overspread her face, for she had also doubtless remarked, that Theresa, in spite of her youth, had already many aspirants for her favour, and she herself received with no displeasure the attentions of a member of our St. Cecilia society. In this manner I got to the end of the first part of my oratorio, and my wife had the pleasure of seeing the interest and enthusiasm with which it was sung by the society; but after that her strength quickly declined and she was obliged to take to her bed. When I saw the thoughtful expression of face of our physician and family friend Dr. Bauer, I called in also the most reputed physician of our town, Dr. Harnier, to consult with him. But he also shook his head and could give me little hope to save her. As my daughters Emilia and Theresa took upon them the closest care of their mother, I was enabled to comply with Dorette’s wish to continue my work during the day upon the completion of the oratorio, in which she greatly interested herself, but was obliged to watch by her bed at night in turn with Emilia. I had scarcely got to the third “number” of the second part, when her malady assumed the form of a nervous fever, which carried her off, and to the present day I think with bitter sadness of the moment when I pressed the last kiss upon her forehead.
My son-in-law Wolff took upon himself all the mournful preparations for the funeral, for which in my despair I was wholly incompetent, and by that means I was enabled to leave the town for a week with my youngest daughter, who was quite beside herself for grief at the death of her mother, and who moreover had passed the last day by the side of her sister Ida, who was likewise ill. I hired apartments at an inn at Wilhelmshöhe, and we strove to regain the necessary self-possession by long and fatiguing wanderings in the neighbouring bare and wintry woods. When we were at length obliged to return into town we felt the solitude of our house but the more intensely. It was therefore long before I could find resolution sufficient to continue the score upon which I had inscribed a memorandum of the day of my wife’s decease, the 20th November; until at length the disposition to work returned, and I finished the oratorio by the end of the winter. On Good Friday 1835 I gave an entire performance of it. The thought that my wife did not live to witness the completion and performance of the oratorio diminished greatly the satisfaction I experienced at this most successful of my works, and I did not attain a full conception of its effect until in its later performances. An opportunity for a repetition of the oratorio presented itself the same summer on Whitsunday, on which day the Prince, contrary to custom, had granted us permission to give a concert in the church. The theatrical vacation coming soon after this, I was obliged to seize the opportunity, and comply with the advice of my physician to proceed to a sea-bathing place, and I selected for the purpose Zandford, a newly-established and as yet not much frequented watering-place about 3 miles[33] from Haarlem. Besides Theresa, my sister-in-law, Minchen Scheidler, who for some years since the death of my mother-in-law had resided with us, and who during our former journeys was accustomed to visit her brother professor Charles Scheidler at Jena, accompanied me on this journey, and both were exceedingly pleased with it. We descended the Rhine to Dusseldorf, where I had projected staying for a few days, as Mendelssohn, who had accepted the situation of director of music in the new theatre built by Immermann, now lived there. The wife of Councillor von Sybel, at whose house I lived during the musical festival, had heard of our intention to make a short stay in Dusseldorf, and urged me to take up my lodging in her house, which I did the more readily as I had heard that Immermann was a visitor in her house and generally spent his evenings there.
I took my violin with me, and my last works also, among which a second recently finished concertino, E major, Op. 92, published by Breitkopf and Härtel of Leipzic. We first went to Frankfort, stopped there one day only at Speyer’s house, and then continued our journey from Bieberich by the steamboat. At Dusseldorf we were received at the house of Mrs. von Sybel in a very friendly manner, and already on the first evening had the pleasure of making Immermann’s acquaintance, who to the special delight of my sister-in-law read to her his charming “Tulifäntchen.” Of Mendelssohn, who was not there, I heard, that he also was one of the friends of the house, but never appeared there on those evenings when Immermann came, because with him, who devoted his whole attention to the spectacle only, he had disagreed about the opera.
The next morning, when I paid a visit to Mendelssohn and met his sister there, he played to me the first “numbers” of his oratorio “Paulus,” with which I was not altogether quite pleased because it was too much in the style of Händel. He and his sister, on the other hand, appeared greatly pleased with my concertino in E major, in which there occurred a characteristic staccato in one long stroke, by way of novelty, such as he had never before heard by any other violinist. Accompanying me then in a very clever manner from the score, he could not hear this staccato often enough, and repeatedly requested me to begin with it again, saying the while to his sister: “See, this is the famous Sporish staccato, which no violinist can play like him!” Thence I went to see Immermann, who proposed to me to pay a visit to Grabbe, who at that time, at Immermann’s invitation, was staying at Dusseldorf, and I thus on the same day made the acquaintance of that strange being. When, upon my entering his lodging, the little fellow set eyes upon a giant like me, he drew back timidly into a corner of the room, and the first words he spoke to me were: “It would be an easy matter for you to throw me out of that window.” I replied: “Yes, I certainly could, but I am not come here with that intention.” This comical scene over, Immermann then first introduced me to the foolish yet interesting creature.
In the house of our hospitable hostess we passed some pleasant days alternately in Mendelssohn’s and Immermann’s society, and then resumed our journey on board the Dutch steamer to Cleves, where I was desirous of visiting my old friend Thomae for a few days. We found him a widower also; for he, too, had recently lost his wife. The nut-tree in his garden, of which we had set the nut in 1818 with such solemnity during our stay with his family, was in full leaf and flourishing amazingly. Thomae’s children, who were now all grown up, and of whom the eldest son had now taken his father’s place as notary, were all in good health, but he himself seemed low-spirited and ill. Our visit nevertheless afforded him great pleasure, and upon our departure he presented Theresa, as god-daughter of his deceased wife, with a gold watch, and entreated us to visit him again on our return. In this manner, after quitting the steamboat at Rotterdam, we arrived safely at Zandford, by way of the Hague, Amsterdam and Haarlem. When we had hired apartments at the bath-house and looked out of our windows upon the sea for the first time, my sister-in-law uttered the ominous words: “Here I could wish to remain for ever!” After I had arranged with the physician of the bathing-establishment, who came from Haarlem daily to visit the bathers, respecting the terms for his attendance during my bathing cure, and had immediately begun to bathe, I soon went into the sea with real pleasure, and took great delight in swimming about in it. Our fellow inmates of the bath-house and guests at the dinner-table were some puritan families from Elberfeld and Barmen, whose religious notions I had soon sufficient opportunity to learn by their conversation at table, but which by no means inspired me with a wish to make their nearer acquaintance. After dinner we used to take our walks in the wood, which, beginning immediately behind the downs, extended almost as far as Haarlem, and in this manner we passed the fine weather with which we were favoured in the summer of 1835, very happily in our retirement. This was, however, soon to be interrupted by an unexpected artistic enjoyment; for the lovers of music of Amsterdam, who had been informed of my presence in Zandford, invited me and my fellow travellers to a concert which they had arranged in my honour. We proceeded therefore by omnibus to Haarlem, and thence by the canal boat to Amsterdam, where we alighted at the house of Mr. Tenkate, a former acquaintance of mine. In his company we went to the concert given in the concert room of Felix Meritis, at which several of my compositions were given; first one of my symphonies, then the duet from “Jessonda,” sung by Mr. de Vruecht of Haarlem and the prima donna of the German theatre; after which Mr. Tours of Rotterdam played a violin-concerto of mine, and Mr. Vruecht terminated the concert with some songs. After we had supped at the house of our host, and were on the point of going to bed, a serenade was given me, which we listened to from the balcony of the house.