At the basis lies a monotony. His melodies and harmonies are too unvaryingly alike. He is a slave to milky mannerisms. The curves of his melodies are endlessly alike; there is a profusion of feminine endings, dwellings in commonplaceness, suspensions that have no weight. His harmonies are seldom poignant. His agitation leads no further in most cases than the diminished seventh. To this he comes again and again, as regularly or as inevitably as most Romanticists went to tombstones for their heroics. The sameness of melody, the threadbare scheme of his harmonies, these mark a composer with little great creative force.
In the pianoforte music one finds even a lack of ingenuity. He has nothing to add to the resources of the instrument. He knew himself to be sterile in pianoforte figures. The ‘Songs without Words’ show but two or three types of accompaniment, and these are flat and monotonous. There are the unbroken chords, usually without a trace of subtlety in line, such as we find in the first, the fifteenth, the twenty-first, the thirty-seventh, and numerous others. There are plain chords, usually triads, monotonously repeated, as in the tenth, twentieth, twenty-second, and thirty-ninth, flat with the melody, or in syncopation as in the fourteenth and seventeenth. There are the rocking figures such as one finds in all the ‘Gondola’ songs, in the so-called ‘Spring Song,’ and in the thirty-sixth. Only rarely does he give to these figures some contrapuntal flexibility, as in the fifth and in the thirty-fourth, known as the ‘Spinning Song,’ and in the eleventh.
There are many songs which have no running accompaniment, which are in the simple harmonic style of the hymn tune. These are usually extremely saccharine. The few measures of preludizing with which they begin are monotonously alike—an arpeggio or two, as if he were sweeping the strings of his harp, as in the ninth and the sixteenth. Some, however, are vigorous and exciting, like the ‘Hunting Song’ (the third), and the twenty-third, in style of a folk-song.
It is the lack of variety, of ingenuity and surprise which makes the ‘Songs without Words’ so extraordinarily sentimental and inanimate as a whole, both to the musician and to the pianist. The workmanship is always flawless, but there is little strain to pull it out of perfect line. Mendelssohn had considerable skill in picture music. The overture to ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and the overture suggested to him by his visit to Fingal’s Cave are successful in this direction. It is worthy of note that at least two of the best of the ‘Songs without Words’ are in the nature of picture music—the so-called ‘Hunting’ and ‘Spinning’ songs. The gondolier songs likewise stand out a little from the rest in something like active charm. These offer him an external idea to work on and he brings to his task a very neat and sensitive, though unvaried, technique.
He had also a gift, rather special, for light and tripping effects. It does not often show itself in the ‘Songs without Words.’ There is one in C major, published after his death, which shows him to advantage in this vein, and the light ‘Spring Song’ has a touch of it. Among his other pieces the Rondo Capriccioso in E major and the little scherzo in E minor stand out by virtue of it.
Of the longer pieces we need touch upon only two. These are the Prelude and Fugue in E minor and the Variations sérieuses. The former is the first of six such works published in 1837 as opus 35. The prelude is the best part of it. Though here as elsewhere he seems to have no new or interesting means to set the piano in vibration, though he holds without change to close arpeggio figures throughout, yet there is a breadth of style and a sweep which approaches real power of utterance. The fugue is excellently put together. The theme itself recalls Bach, for whom, be it mentioned, Mendelssohn had profound and constant admiration, and whose works his untiring labor resurrected and brought to public performance. Still it need hardly be added that this fugue is a work of art, more than of expression. The inversion of the theme is clever, and there is a certain pompous grandeur in the sound of the chorale just before the end. The other preludes and fugues in the set are relatively uninteresting.
The Variations are worthy of study and are by no means lacking in musical value. The theme itself was happily chosen. There is a respectable sadness and melancholy in it far more dignified and genuine than the sentimentalities of the ‘Songs without Words.’ The harmonies which underlie it are hardly bold enough to dash beyond the diminished seventh; but a number of chromatic passing notes give the whole something like poignancy and considerable warmth. Moreover, it suggests chromatic treatment in the subsequent variations.
The variations themselves are full of change and offer a range of contrast of which Mendelssohn was not often master. The effect of the series as a whole is therefore stimulating and rather brilliant.
The first variation adds a counterpoint to the theme in groups of four sixteenths. The counterpoint in the second is of groups of six sixteenths. The first two variations thus seem to set the piece gradually into a free motion, which throughout the next two grows more vigorous and more nervous. The fifth is typical of Mendelssohnian agitation; but it serves as an excellent introduction to the chords of the sixth and seventh. The eighth and ninth work up to a frenzy of quick motion. Then follow two in a suppressed and quiet style, the first a little fugue, the second a brief and exquisite cantilena. The twelfth is the most vigorous of the lot, a movement as near the virtuoso style as Mendelssohn ever was able to produce. The thirteenth is interesting by reason of the contrast between the legato melody in the left hand and the excellent staccato counterpoint. A short adagio, rather superior to most of the songs in a similar style, forms the fourteenth. The fifteenth is transitional, the sixteenth and seventeenth merely lead up to the presto at the end. The entire group presents nothing in the treatment of the piano in advance of Weber, if, indeed, it anywhere equals him; but it is both in quality and in style a very fine piece of pianoforte music, which can hardly fall under the censure to which most of his music for the instrument is open.
There are two concertos and a concert piece for piano and orchestra. The latter owes its form and style very clearly to Weber’s concert piece in F minor. Both the concertos are fluent and plausible enough; the orchestra is handled with Mendelssohn’s customary good taste and sensitiveness; but the writing for the pianoforte is wholly commonplace and the themes themselves of little or no distinction.