Scarcely arrived in Bern, Spohr was surprised to see notices stuck up at the corners of the streets announcing two concerts of sacred music in which his oratorio “Die letzten Dinge” formed the chief feature of each, though preceded on the first evening by a cantata by Sebastian Bach, and on the second by four of Marcello’s Psalms. The first concert had already taken place the evening before, but as a great number of hearers as well as performers had come in from the neighbouring towns to the second concert, Mr. Edele, the director of the “Society of Ancient Classical Music” at Bern, had made arrangements to give a repetition of the oratorio on the next evening, so that at this second performance of it Spohr was enabled to hear it executed with the greater precision. As the news of Spohr’s presence soon spread through the church, the opportunity was seized of giving the composer of the work which had just been performed with such devout inspiration, a public mark of the great esteem in which he was held in Bern; and in the later part of the evening he was suddenly greeted by a quickly improvised serenade, and addressed in several animated speeches. On the following morning Spohr left Bern, and after spending several pleasant days with his female fellow-travellers in the Bernese Oberland and on the shores of the Vierwaldstädter Lake, he continued his journey across the Lake of Constance to Bavaria and its capital, Munich, where the much-talked-of grand exhibition of industry had just been opened. Though the one week spent there may have been found scarcely sufficient to see all the treasure of art and manufacture which had been collected partly for permanent and partly for a short exhibition only, the travellers do not appear to have thought a longer stay desirable, for they soon experienced also the prejudicial influence of the bodily and mental over-exertion, which, combined with the still more injurious climatic influences which during that disastrous summer carried off so many of the visitors to that then overcrowded city. Under such circumstances nothing could be more desirable than a visit to Alexandersbad, where Dr. Theodor Pfeiffer, a near relative, and proprietor of the cold-water-cure establishment, had long kindly invited them. A short stay in that place, with its healthful mountain air, sufficed to restore their depressed animal spirits, and Spohr gladly joined in all the social parties in their excursions to the romantic environs, and shared in all the cheerful parties of the company at the baths, which in kindly social spirit lived as one family. All this, together with the whole arrangements and rules of life, which were simple and in accordance with nature, were so much to Spohr’s taste, that from that time he always considered Alexandersbad as the beau-ideal of an invigorating summer residence, and after another visit there he firmly maintained that opinion for the rest of his life.
Spohr commenced the following year (1855) with the composition of six four-voice part-songs for soprano, alto, tenor and bass, which were soon after excellently sung at a private concert of the St. Cecilia society with double vocal support, under his own conducting, and aided by his own powerful bass. They made an unusual sensation among the lovers of music present, above all one entitled “Man’s Consolation” (the words by von Müller von der Werra), which went home to all hearts.
In the spring of the same year, Spohr obeyed an invitation from the king of Hanover to direct his double symphony, and several other of his compositions, at a grand concert. Upon his arrival at the railway terminus he was met by music-director Wehner, at the head of a numerous body of musicians and friends of the art, and in the evening at the hotel he was saluted with two serenades, by the military band, and the members of the choral society. On the subject of the pleasant days he passed in Hanover upon that occasion both in a musical and festive point of view, Spohr wrote to his friend Hauptmann: “I enjoyed myself much on my little excursion to Hanover. I played a quartet at the King’s, and it seemed to me that his musical culture went so far as to like that kind of music. At a morning concert got up by the chapel royal to let me hear two of my compositions which they had very carefully practised, I played also my quartet (E minor). The compositions adverted to were the 7th. violin concerto, executed in a very masterly manner by Joachim; and the first double quartet, of which Kömpel played the first violin in the first, and Joachim in that of the second quartet. This also, was played in the most finished manner. On the second day the chapel royal gave a first rehearsal of my symphony, “The Terrestrial and Divine in human Life,” which was followed by a grand dinner, which lasted five hours, and during which the speeches, songs and toasts were numerous and varied. Although much exhausted I was obliged to go to a musical party in the evening given by my old friend Hausmann, where I played two of my quartets, and as on the previous evening, did not get to bed till two o’clock. On the third day there was a grand rehearsal in the forenoon, and in the evening the concert for the benefit of the poor, for which the King had sent me the invitation to come to Hanover. I conducted the first half, consisting of the overture and duett from ‘Jessonda’ and my symphony. All these, executed in a masterly manner, particularly the double symphony, which I never heard better played, not even in London. The small orchestra led by Joachim was composed of the élite of the chapel royal and was very conveniently placed on the stage, so that it was advantageously separated from the large one. The latter was composed of twenty violins, six viols, five violincellos and five counter-basses. It contrasted well therefore by its imposing power, in the sonorous and not too spacious theatre, with the solo orchestra upon the stage. The effect was very satisfactory. But in fact the orchestra is a very superior one, particularly in the stringed instruments. The harmony comprises certainly several distinguished virtuosi, but in ensemble, it is neither so even in tone, nor so pure in intonation as ours. The second part of the concert was conducted by Fischer; it consisted of the overture to “Euryanthe,” Beethoven’s violin concerto (with new, superfluously long, very difficult and ungrateful, cadences by Joachim), and some ‘numbers’ of ‘Lohengrin.’ The concert was crowded and must have brought in a round sum to the poor-box.—On the morning before I left a deputation from the chapel royal presented me with a leader’s bâton more rich and tasteful in design than anything of the kind I ever saw. As I afterwards learned, it was made by order of the king, to be presented to me by the chapel royal. It consists of a beautifully grooved ivory staff with a golden handle richly set with coloured stones, with a similar gold ornamentation at the top, ending in a knob set likewise with small stones. The whole thing is extremely tasteful, and has upon the handle in raised letters: ‘The Royal Hanoverian Chapel to Music-director-general Dr. Spohr, March 31st. 1855.’ The Elector, who sent for the work of art to inspect it, expressed himself, as I am told, upon returning it, with very unreserved dissatisfaction that the inscription did not express ‘Director-general of Music to the Elector,’ and said, “who will know hereafter whose director general of music he was!”[42] &c.
The first impression experienced by Spohr on his return from Hanover, was also an agreeable one, for he found at home a telegraphic message that had arrived during his absence, to the following effect: “Inspruck, March 27th. 1855, 10 m. p. 10 at night. One hundred and fifty dilettanti of Inspruck, who have just performed the music of “Jessonda” with rapturous applause, send to the master their heartfelt greetings.” The letters which subsequently arrived from Inspruck informed him in a more detailed manner, “that the opera had been three times performed there in the national theatre to crowded houses, for the benefit of the fund for the relief of the poor, and in a manner surpassing all expectation, by musical and vocal dilettanti;” and expressed at the same time “the hope that the friends of music in that place would have the gratification of greeting the honoured and veteran composer in their own mountains in the course of the year, and hear again that classic opera under his own personal direction.”
That hope however was not realised, for the journey contemplated this year was in the opposite direction, towards the north; first to Hamburg, where Spohr had not been since the great fire in 1842, and was therefore greatly interested to see the magnificent manner in which it had been rebuilt. Fully satisfied in that expectation, he had at the same time the pleasure of seeing again several much-loved friends (among whom the family of the Grunds), and to hear many successful musical performances, both in private and public circles.—Being so near to the sister town Lubeck, to which his wife was still fondly attached, and for whose kind-hearted inhabitants he himself, since his visit in the year 1840, had a predilection, it was natural that both should much desire to make a trip thither, upon the railway which had since then been opened to connect the two towns. Although it is true that during the fifteen years which had elapsed, many former friends had gone to their last rest, yet the venerable old instructor was still living, and met his former lady pupil and her renowned husband with the same warmth of heart. Verging upon eighty years of age, he had recently retired from professional life, but the institution he had so long successfully directed flourished still, conducted in the same spirit by his worthy son Dr. Adam Meier; and Spohr and his wife, deeply moved by his touching kindness, took up their abode beneath the hospitable roof that was so endeared to them by past recollections.—As the interests of music were also well represented by Kapellmeister Hermann, a former pupil and a warm partizan of Spohr, the days passed agreeably in social intercourse with old friends and new acquaintances.
In the course of the year 1855 Spohr wrote his 33rd. violin quartet (Op. 152, published by Siegel of Leipzic) and three grand duets for two violins (Op. 148, 150 and 153, published by Peters of Leipzic) which last he dedicated to the brothers Alfred and Henry Holmes of London. Neither could he have commended his work to better hands to ensure a performance and publicity worthy of them, for although those young artists never had the advantage of his personal instruction, yet by dint of a diligent study of his “Violin School,” they had become so penetrated with the spirit of his composition and his style of play, that Spohr during his last stay in England had been exceedingly gratified to hear his older violin duets executed by the two talented youths in a really masterly manner; and when a few years afterwards, upon an artistic tour on the continent, they visited Cassel, they caused, as Spohr himself remarks in a letter: “everywhere the greatest sensation by their splendid play, and especially excited admiration by the highly finished and surprising performance of his duets and concertantes.”
In the spring of 1856 Spohr received a letter from a former pupil, the director of music Kiel, of Detmold; where upon, at the desire of his Prince, he proposed to Spohr the composition of some songs for a baritone voice, with pianoforte and violin accompaniment. Although doubtful at first that such a combination would be suited to a deep male voice, he nevertheless interested himself in the trial, and in a short time he wrote a collection of six songs of the required kind, with which he himself felt highly satisfied. He then gave a hearing of them in manuscript to his musical friends in his own house, in which he himself took the violin part, which had proved of a somewhat difficult nature, and gave the voice part to Heinrich Osthoff an ex-concert-singer, who for some years past had been settled in Cassel as a teacher of music, and who from his particularly excellent and expressive execution of all Spohr’s song pieces, sacred and otherwise, was a welcome guest in all musical circles. In Detmold also, the new songs dedicated to the Prince were very favorably received, and the Prince, as his director of music informed Spohr, sang them every day with increased satisfaction. When Spohr shortly afterwards forwarded the first printed presentation copy (published by Luckhardt of Cassel, Op. 154) to the musical prince, the latter in an autograph letter of thanks thus expressed himself: “that the great pleasure the fine songs already gave him would be yet increased when he should have the opportunity of singing them with Spohr’s own accompaniment.” The obliging letter was at the same time accompanied by a valuable souvenir, in the shape of a shirt-pin with the appropriately selected emblems of an oak-leaf in green gold, with an acorn of pearl set in gold, presented to Spohr as an honourable acknowledgement “of his true German worth as musician and as man.”
The first weeks of the summer vacation were passed by Spohr in a very pleasant and recreative journey to Dresden, Saxon Switzerland and Prague; after which, having reposed a short time in his own beautiful flower-garden, he undertook a journey into the Harz, at the solicitation of an enthusiastic musical friend, the jurisconsult Haushalter of Wernigerode.
The increased leisure time gained by Spohr in consequence of the appointment of his new colleague he now devoted to composition, for which, despite his advanced age, the impulse and love had not yet diminished. Though his musical ideas may no longer have flowed so copiously, and assumed as readily the form he wished, as in former years, and though he himself at times expressed doubts as to whether his later works would take equal rank with his earlier compositions, yet he frequently received an enthusiastic recognition of the merit of his newest compositions from quite unexpected quarters, which always gave him fresh courage to continue his musical creations.