The first concerts of our 4th season will feature Felix Mendelssohn and Maurice Ravel’s string quartets. In the coming weeks before these concerts, we will post about the composers and their work, starting with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Felix MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809-1847)¹

Grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was raised a Protestant. By the age of seventeen he had composed twelve string symphonies, an opera and overture to the Midsummer Night’s Dream; at twenty he conducted the first performance of the St Matthew Passion since Bach’s death.

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In the evening, we assembled in Goethe’s rooms to tea; for he had invited a large party of his Weimar musical acquaintances to make them acquainted with the boy’s extraordinary talents. Presently Goethe made his appearance: he came from his study, and had a habit at least I² generally noticed it – of waiting till all the guests were assembled, ere he showed himself. . . . His ‘good evening’ was addressed to all; but he walked up to Zelter³ first, and shook his hand cordially. Felix Mendelssohn looked up, with sparkling eyes, at the snow-white head of the poet. The latter, however, placed his hands kindly on the boy’s head, and said, ‘Now you shall play us something.”
Zelter nodded his assent.
The piano was opened, and light arranged on the desk. Mendelssohn asked Zelter, to whom he displayed a thoroughly childish devotion and confidence, ‘What shall I play?’
‘Well, what you can,’ the latter replied, in his peculiarly sharp voice; ‘whatever is not too difficult for you.’ …
It was at length arranged that he should play a fantasia; which he did to the wonder of all. But the young artist knew when to leave off; and thus the effect he produced was all the greater. A silence of surprise ensued when he raised his hands from the keys after a loud finale….
Goethe was a great admirer of Bach’s fugues, which a musician of Berka, a little town about ten miles from Weimar, came to play to him repeatedly. Felix was therefore requested to play a fugue of the grand old master. Zelter selected it from the music-book; and the boy played it without any preparation, but with perfect certainty.
Goethe’s delight grew with the boy’s extraordinary powers. Among other things, he requested him to play a minuet. ‘Shall I play you the loveliest in the whole world?’ he asked, with sparkling eyes.
‘Well, and which is that?’
He played the minuet from Don Giovanni.
Goethe stood by the instrument, listening; joy glistening in his features….
‘Well, come,’ he said, ‘you have only played me pieces you know; but now we will see whether you can play something you do not know. I will put you on trial.’
Goethe went out, re-entered the room in a few moments, and had a roll of music in his hand. ‘I have fetched something from my manuscript collection. Now we will try you. Do you think you can play this?’
He laid a page, with clear but small notes, on the desk. It was Mozart’s handwriting. Whether Goethe told us so, or it was written on the paper, I forget, and only remember that Felix glowed with delight at the name; and an indescribable feeling came over us all, partly enthusiasm and joy, partly admiration and expectation. Goethe, the aged man, laying a manuscript of Mozart, who had been buried thirty years, before a lad so full of promise for the future, to play at sight, in truth such a constellation may be termed a rarity.
The young artist played with the most perfect certainty, not making the slightest mistake, though the manuscript was far from easy reading.
Goethe adhered to his good-humored tone, while all the rest applauded. ‘That is nothing,’ he said: ‘others could read that too. But I will now give you something over which you will stick; so take care.’
With these words, he produced another paper, which he laid on the desk. This certainly looked very strange. It was difficult to say if they were notes or only a paper, ruled, and splashed with ink and blots. Felix Mendelssohn, in his surprise, laughed loudly. ‘How is that written? who can read it?’ he said.
But suddenly he became serious; for while Goethe was saying, ‘Now, guess who wrote it?’ Zelter, who had walked up to the piano, and looked over the boy’s shoulder, exclaimed, ‘Why, Beethoven wrote that! any one could see it a mile off. He always writes with a broomstick, and passes his sleeve over the notes before they are dry. I have plenty of his manuscripts. They are easy to know.’
At the mention of the name, as I remarked, Mendelssohn had suddenly grown serious, – even more than serious….
He played it through once… generally correctly, but stopping at times, and correcting several mistakes with a quick ‘No, so;’ then he exclaimed, ‘Now I will play it to you.’ And, this second time, not a note was missing. ‘This is Beethoven, this passage,’ he said once turning to me, as if he had come across something which sharply displayed the master’s peculiar style. “That is true Beethoven. I recognize him in it at once.’

How he composed I⁴ enjoyed only one opportunity of witnessing. I went one morning into his room, where I found him writing music. I wanted to go away again directly, so as not to disturb him. He asked me to stop, however, remarking, ‘I am merely copying out.’ I remained in consequence, and we talked of all kinds of subjects, he continuing to write the whole time. But he was not copying, for there was no paper but that on which he was writing. The work whereon he was busy was the Grand Overture in C major, there was no looking forwards or backwards, no comparing, no humming over, or anything of the sort; the pen kept going steadily on, slowly and carefully, it is true, but without pausing, and we never ceased talking. The copying out, therefore, as he called it, meant that the whole composition, to the last note, had been so thought over, and worked out in his mind, that he beheld it there as though it had been actually lying before him.

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When he revived Bach’s Passion Music, and conducted the first performance of that immortal work after it had been dormant for about a century, he found, stepping to the conductor’s desk, that a score similar in binding and thickness, but of another work, had been brought by mistake. He conducted this amazingly complicated work by heart, turning leaf after leaf of the book he had before him, in order not to create any feeling of uneasiness on the part of the executants.

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One of Mendelssohn’s favorite stories was an ancient Roman tradition of a motionless assembly of senators, seated in death-like silence, whom a guileless Gaul mistook for stone statues, and was therefore bold enough to pluck the beard of one of the circle, when the supposed statue started into life and cut down the audacious Gaul with his sword. In remembrance of this anecdote, Mendelssohn and Hildebrandt agreed, that whenever they met, no matter where, even in the most aristocratic society, never to say good day to each other without a certain form. Hildebrandt was suddenly to stand still and assume a stony face, when Mendelssohn was to go up to him slowly and solemnly and pull his beard, while he was in turn to submit to a sharp Roman blow on the shoulder, which dissolved the magic spell, and they were then to greet each other with their usual cordiality.

Mendelssohn, letter to his mother
Prince Albert had asked me to go to him on Saturday at two o’clock, so that I might try his organ before I left England. I found him alone; and as we were talking away Queen Victoria came in, also alone, in a simple morning dress. She said she was obliged to leave for Claremont in an hour, and then, suddenly interrupting herself, exclaimed, ‘But goodness! what a confusion!’ for the wind had littered the whole room, and even the pedals of the organ (which, by the way, made a very pretty feature in the room), with leaves of music from a large portfolio that lay open. As she spoke, she knelt down and began picking up the music; Prince Albert helped, and I, too, was not idle. Then Prince Albert proceeded to explain the stops to me, and she said that she would meanwhile put things straight. I begged that the Prince would play me something, so that, as I said, I might boast about it in Germany; and he played a chorale by heart, with the pedals, so charmingly and clearly and correctly, that it would have done credit to any professional; and the Queen, having finished her work, came and sat by him and listened, and looked pleased….
The Queen asked if I had written any new songs, and she said she was very fond of singing my published ones. ‘You should sing one to him,’ said Prince Albert, and after a little begging she said she would try the ‘Frühlingslied’ in B flat, ‘if it is still here’, she added, ‘for all my music is packed up for Claremont.’ Prince Albert went to look for it, but came back saying it was already packed.
[But I] rummaged about amongst the music, and soon discovered my first set of songs. So of course I begged her to sing one of these, to which she very kindly consented; and which did she choose?
‘Schöner und schöner schmückt sich’ – sang it quite charmingly, in strict time and tune, and with very good execution. Only in the line ‘Der Prosa Last und Müh’, where it goes down to D and up again by semitones, she sang D sharp each time; and as I gave her the note the first two times, the last time she sang D where it ought to have been D sharp. But with the exception of this little mistake it was really charming, and the last long G, I have never heard better or purer or more natural from any amateur. Then I was obliged to confess that Fanny⁵ had written the song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a fall), and to beg her to sing one of my own also. If I would give her plenty of help she would gladly try, she said, and then she sang the Pilgerspruch, ‘Lass dich nur’, really quite faultlessly, and with charming feeling and expression.

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He had been once more making music with the Queen, and had been genuinely delighted with her rendering of his songs. As he was about to leave, she said:
‘Now, Dr Mendelssohn, you have given me so much pleasure; is there nothing I can do to give you pleasure?’…
‘Well, to speak the truth, I have a wish, and one that only Your Majesty can grant.”
‘It is granted,’ she interposed.
And then he told her that nothing could give him greater pleasure than to see the nurseries and all the domestic arrangements connected with the royal children. The most consummate courtier could not have expressed a wish better calculated to please the Queen. She most cordially responded, and herself conducted him through the nurseries. Nor was the matter treated lightly; she had to show him the contents of the wardrobes and give him particulars of the service, and for the time being the two were not in the relative position of gracious sovereign and obedient servant, but rather of an experienced materfamilias and an enlightened paterfamilias, comparing notes, and giving one another points on the management of their respective children.

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Anonymous letter received by Sir Thomas Beecham in Leipzig, November 1936
Sir Thomas Beecham
c/o Gewandhaus, Leipzig
When you conduct tomorrow evening in the Gewandhaus you will see in the first row, exactly as in Berlin, the Leaders (Führer-Persönlichkeiten) assiduously applauding. You will be in a better position to judge the real musical culture of these gentlemen when you have been informed of the following facts which, perhaps, nobody else will tell you:
Some days ago, late at night, the monument of Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy, the immortal composer and conductor of the Gewandhaus, was pulled down and removed.
May you, dear Sir, be comforted by the fact that this act of racial hatred brings the blush of shame to the cheeks of millions of music-loving Germans.

1. Below are excerpts from Norman Lebrecht’s “Book of Musical Anecdotes”, The Free Press , NY ↩︎
2. Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860); German author and critic. ↩︎
3. Carl Zelter (1758-1832); Mendelssohn’s mentor. ↩︎
4. Julius Schubring (b. 1806); German composer. ↩︎
5. Fanny Cecilie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1805-47), amateur pianist and composer; Mendelssohn’s sister. ↩︎