Famous composers and their works, Vol. 2

by Unknown

Then came the leisurely, long stay in Italy, particularly Rome, of which his letters give such glowing and minute accounts. There he lived a most genial and happy life, giving himself up completely to the sunny scene and climate, to art, and fine churches (of which he found the music dull), old ruins, and all that was picturesque and characteristic in roba di Roma of all sorts. He was six months in Rome; six weeks in Naples, finding there his old friend Benedict, whom he first knew as Weber's pupil in Berlin; then Florence, Genoa, Milan and the Italian Lakes. In Italy he composed the "Italian" and "Scotch" Symphonies, the Walpurgisnacht music, and many smaller things. And he filled several drawing-books with sketches. Then, by way of Switzerland, walking from Geneva to Interlachen (all minutely, graphically chronicled in the Letters), to Paris again, where he threw himself into the musical and social "swim." But in spite of his warm reception, and the presence of Hiller, Meyerbeer, and many friends, he found the gay metropolis no more to his taste than before, and was glad to spend two months again in the "smoky nest" of London, playing, composing, and publishing.

MENDELSSOHN'S WIFE.

From a pencil drawing by William Hensel.

During a second stay in Munich he became "on a brotherly footing" with the very musical family of the Baermanns. For Heinrich Baermann, one of the finest of clarinet players, he, as well as Weber, composed concert pieces. It is his grandson, Carl Baermann, the admirable pianist, who now adds to the musical prestige of Boston. There, too, he brought out his G-minor Concerto (Oct. 17, 1831). And there he was commissioned to compose an opera, and went to Düsseldorf to consult the poet Immermann about a libretto with Shakespeare's Tempest for a subject.

Early in 1832, his great friends Goethe and Zelter died. Mendelssohn seemed to be the man of all others to succeed the latter at the Singakademie; but he lost the election. As a proof of his wise and noble loyalty to art about this period, read what he wrote to William Taubert from Lucerne: "Don't you agree with me, that the first condition for an artist is, that he have respect for the great ones, and do not try to blow out the great flames, in order that the petty tallow candle may shine a little brighter?"

In May, 1833, his success in conducting the Lower Rhine Festival brought him an offer to take general charge of the Music in Düsseldorf for three years at an annual salary of six hundred thalers ($450)! But his father advised him to accept duties before emoluments. There he brought out operas by Mozart and Cherubini; and in the church, Palestrina, Bach, Handel, Beethoven: above all Israel in Egypt. There he composed the greater part of St. Paul, and his Melusina Overture. Socially Düsseldorf was a delightful place to him; but musically it was disappointing. In the spring of 1835 he conducted the Cologne Festival.

Soon we find him settled (from 1835 to 1844, and again from 1845 to the end of his life) in the most genial home sphere of his artistic labors, Leipsic, where he held the first conductor's post in Europe, at the head of the famous Gewandhaus Concerts. Hardly had he begun his notable career there, when he was summoned to Berlin to the death-bed of his father (Nov. 19, 1835). His grief was profound; for we have seen in what respect and love he held him. He carried back to Leipsic two fixed purposes: first, to finish Paulus, then to seek a wife. The Oratorio, for which he selected the words himself, had lain complete before him a year when it was first given at the Lower Rhine Festival in 1836 with great enthusiasm. The wife was found in Frankfurt am Main. It was Cecile Jeanrenaud, the lovely seventeen-year-old daughter of a deceased pastor of the Reformed French Church there, who lived with her mother, née Souchay, a highly respected, rich, patrician family of Frankfort. The happy honeymoon ran over with fun and drollery in their joint diary full of sketches.

In Leipsic his hands were soon full of most congenial tasks: conducting the Messiah; the Israel in Egypt, with his own organ part; his own St. Paul; besides a series of historical concerts; and composing his Forty-Second Psalm, E-minor string Quartet, the D-minor piano Concerto, the three organ Preludes and Fugues, etc. And is it not worth notice, by the way, that here Mendelssohn commonly shines as the best of programme-makers? Indeed, he seems to have been the first in whom that function rose to the dignity of an art, when he was not balked by others. Certainly the concerts, ("academies") which Mozart and Beethoven gave mostly in noble houses, to make their new works heard, offered no models of good programme-making, containing often far too much of a good thing, say three great Beethoven Symphonies, with much other matter, in a single evening! The democratic age of concert-giving had not yet come in.

In all this he was strong and happy in the sympathetic companionship of his young wife, though often torn from her to fulfil engagements at the Birmingham Festival and elsewhere. Thenceforth for several years he gave his heart and soul to Leipsic, chiefly to the Gewandhaus concerts; he worked with enthusiasm, and was rewarded by the enthusiasm he created.