Thus terminated Spohr’s personal co-operation at opera and concert. But that he still cherished as warm an interest in the latter his letters to distant friends attest, and in this spirit he wrote on December 22nd. to Mr. Lüder: “Since we were at your house, we have had here the second subscription concert! It was the first concert that took place in Cassel without my co-operation, and at which I was present from beginning to end as an auditor. It consisted of carefully rehearsed music: the two finales from “Zemire and Azor” and “Euryanthe;” of instrumental music Mozart’s C major symphony with the fugue (called Jupiter); of concert things Beethoven’s violin concerto with Joachim’s cadences, and a concert piece by Moscheles for two pianofortes, called Hommage à Händel, very correctly and effectively played by Messrs. Reiss and Tivendell. The concert opened with the overture to “Rosamunda” by Schubert, one of his youthful works, but which is very pleasing, and was quite new to me. Reiss has again achieved great praise both by his arrangement and by his careful rehearsal and study of the music.” In the same letter he farther says: “We have also had again two quartet parties, and I am happy to say, that I am still all right at the violin, only I must always prepare myself a few days before, which was not necessary some years ago![43]”
The at this time still powerful impulse to compose, on the one hand, and the dread of being no longer capable of producing anything good and new on the other, gave rise to many painful struggles in the mind of Spohr,—till one morning he entered his wife’s apartment, and with a cheerful countenance announced to her that he had found the right way to get out of the difficulty. He had resolved upon writing a requiem, and had already conceived some fine ideas for it; he had the greatest hopes that he would be able to complete it, and produce a worthy conclusion to his numerous works. In happy and inspired mood he now immediately went to work; and in a few days wrote the first subjects, but this pleasure, like that which he had shortly before boasted of in his quartet play, was soon dissipated. On the second day after Christmas Day, while on his wonted way to the reading room of the museum in the evening twilight he had the misfortune to fall over the stone steps at the entrance, and to break his left arm. Beyond all expectation, nevertheless, the fractured limb was happily healing fast, and when, after a lapse of several months, with anxious fear of the result, he once more took up his violin, to draw the first tones from it, the trial seemed quite satisfactory. But after several days’ practice, followed up with great perseverance, he nevertheless became convinced to his great sorrow that his arm would never recover its lost strength and elasticity; upon which, as in this also he could no longer satisfy himself, deprived of another of the most precious elements of his existence, with a grieving heart he laid by his beloved violin!
Meanwhile, notwithstanding, many wished-for opportunities presented themselves elsewhere to Spohr, to keep alive his interest in musical enjoyments and to cheer him with the performance of his greater works. Scarcely was he recovered from the fracture of his arm, than he accepted an invitation to Magdeburg, to hear the performance of his oratorio, “Des Heilands letzte Stunden,” which was to take place there on Good Friday. With this performance he expressed himself highly pleased, in a letter to Mr. Lüders: “Orchestra, choruses, and solo-singers were alike excellently practised in their respective parts, and the effect, in the church of St. Ulrich, which is so favorably constructed for sound, was indeed heavenly. The solo-voices, for the most part belonging to the Seebach choral society, were particularly fine, harmonious and powerful dilettante singers, and led by their director Mühling they were so penetrated with the true spirit of the composition, that I was quite taken by surprise, and delighted!
The accompaniment also of the solo instruments in the grand air of Mary in the second part was very fine; for Grimm the harpist had been sent for from Berlin, and the other solo instruments—violin, violincello and horn—were played by members of the present orchestra of the Magdeburg theatre, who are, as luck would have it, virtuosi.”
In a similar letter of the 6th. April to Hauptmann, in speaking of his further contemplated plans of journey, he says: “Whether all these excursions will be carried into effect, is not yet decided; but for the rest of my life my artistic enjoyments are limited to them; for I am now perfectly convinced, that I cannot accomplish any great work more. I regret to say, that my last attempt of the kind failed, and my requiem remains a fragment; nevertheless, as the subject as far as the Lacrimosa dies illa, at which I stuck fast, pleases me well, and seems to have much that is new and ingenious in it, I shall not destroy it, as I should like to take it up again, and will make another attempt to complete it.”
This attempt, to which with much perseverance he devoted half a day, proved however a failure, and brought him finally to the avowed painful determination to relinquish composition entirely; as he did not feel capable of putting his musical ideas into a distinct shape. At the conclusion of the letter adverted to, he says further: “I thank you heartily for your kind wishes upon my birth-day! Notwithstanding my present low spirits on account of my artistic impotency, I nevertheless passed it agreeably enough. That may have arisen from my happily performed journey.” Scarcely three weeks afterwards, Spohr, again full of pleasurable anticipation, set out anew, and this time to Bremen, where the director of music Engel purposed to open his recently established choral society with the public performance of Spohr’s oratorio, “The Fall of Babylon,” a great undertaking, but so worthily executed that Spohr himself was greatly surprised and deeply moved.
For the beginning of July Spohr had been invited to Prague, where the half-centennial anniversary of the Conservatory of that city was to be celebrated by three grand musical performances—among which was his opera “Jessonda.” The celebration of divine service in the cathedral on the first morning was followed in the evening by a grand concert in the theatre. It began with a new Symphony by Kittl, the director of the conservatory, which, like the other Pièces d’Ensemble, was performed by the pupils of the institution; while the solo-pieces were executed by foreign resident musicians who had received their education there; among these, the celebrated violinists Dreyschock and Laub. “On the second evening,” in the words of the “Tagesboten aus Böhmen,” “not only in honour of the great musician present, but in order to give every true lover of art a right festive evening, the ‘Jessonda’ of Dr. Louis Spohr was selected, and Prague had this time the satisfaction of seeing the inspired and still vigorous veteran conduct the performance of his work himself.... As Spohr took his place at the conductor’s desk, which was hung with wreaths of laurel and ornamented with a crown of the same, he was received by the densely crowded house, which comprised all the leading artists and lovers of music of Prague, with long and enthusiastic applause. At every moment of interest, of which the fascinating “Jessonda,” (the not yet surpassed model of German lyrical opera) is one uninterrupted beautiful chain, the most gratifying acclamations were first directed to the master, and then to the singers. After the second act, the venerable poet of sweet sounds was vehemently called forward upon the stage, as also after the last act, when another crown of laurel was thrown to him.... The conducting of the honoured master Spohr is still marked by unimpaired vigour, and attention to every detail; his stroke of the baton has its usual characteristic stamp” &c. The concert spirituel, which had been arranged for the third evening, as the finale to the musical part of the festival, comprised as chief subject, the ninth Symphony of Beethoven; but at the grand dinner given on the following day, a series of select musical pieces was performed, and the opportunity seized, both by loud calls for the repetition of the overture to “Jessonda,” and every possible mode of demonstration, to honour Spohr, the Nestor of the numerously congregated musicians, as the king of the feast. Not less however than by all these demonstrations was he gratified by the kind anticipation of his wishes with the invitation to visit the country-house in the neighbourhood of Prague which had been hallowed by Mozart’s lengthened residence; to which the present proprietor Herr Popelka himself accompanied him, to shew him the room, which Spohr also looked upon as sacred ground, where Mozart had composed his “Don Juan.”
Spohr was less fortunate upon his return journey in realising a long-cherished and ardent wish. He had for several years vainly endeavoured to hear upon a foreign stage Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo,” which he had never been able to give a performance of in Cassel, and which was known to him only in the pianoforte selection. With this object also, already in the beginning of the summer, apart from and independent of his subsequently promised visit to Prague, he had projected a journey to Dresden, for the reason, as he then expressed in a letter to his friend Lüder—“that with the constantly increasing dearth in the repertory of modern operas, an as yet unheard opera of Mozart was too important an event, and for him an artistic necessity too great, that he should not joyfully undertake even a much longer journey to hear it.” Long previously he had written on the subject to his friend the director of music Reissiger, and at length thought to see his hope realized in Dresden, either before or after the Prague musical festival. Unfortunately, however, owing to the absence of the chief singers of the opera, it could not be carried out, and so, consoling himself meanwhile till the autumn, he took the road to Alexandersbad, where during a pleasant sojourn of a week, he reposed from the exertion of the previous journey in the enjoyment of the quiet relaxation he so much desired.
Greatly gratified, and visibly refreshed as Spohr again returned from this pleasant excursion to Alexandersbad, yet from that period he exhibited a constantly increasing low-spirited and thoughtful mood, which was so opposite to his former manner. To his wife, who vainly tried every means to cheer him, he would then reply after a protracted and earnest silence, that he was weary of life, as he could no longer be doing; that he had enjoyed to exhaustion all that mortal life could given, and lived to see a more widely spread recognition and love for his music than he even could have hoped for,—that now he ardently wished for death, before the infirmities of old age completely prostrated him. Nevertheless he always felt cheerfully moved again by invitations to new journeys, and musical enjoyments, of which several presented themselves in the autumn. In September namely, the journey to Wiesbaden to the musical festival of the Middle-Rhine, and in October to Leipsic, to the performance of his own and other works which particularly interested him, at the Gewandhaus concert, at the conservatory and at the church,—on which occasions he at both places followed the musical performances with persevering interest and pleasure, and received with lively satisfaction the various ovations of which he was the object. Although upon this journey to Leipsic, and lastly also to Dresden, he found no opportunity to realise his most ardent expectation to hear the “Idomeneo,” he nevertheless was somewhat compensated for the disappointment by the kindness of the Frankfort theatrical Intendant, who on his previously expressed wish, announced Cherubini’s opera of “Medea” for the evening of his arrival there, on his way through to Wiesbaden, and thus afforded him the high enjoyment of hearing that classically beautiful music.