Lawrence Gilman

(Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died in Leipsic, November 4, 1847)

OVERTURE, "A MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS DREAM": Op. 21

Mendelssohn, knowing Shakespeare through German translations by Schlegel and Tieck, wrote in 1826 (he was then seventeen years old) his overture to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." The music was begun July 7th, and finished August 6th. It was first written as a piano duet, and afterwards scored for orchestra. Mendelssohn's incidental music to Shakespeare's play was not composed until seventeen years later. The following comments by Mr. Frederick Niecks furnish an excellent indication of the significance of the overture: "Before our mind's eye," he writes, "are called up Oberon and Titania as they meet in 'grove or green by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen'; the elves, who, when their king and queen quarrel, creep into acorn-cups; ... Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed; the knavish sprite Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, who delights in playing merry pranks.... But there are other things in the overture than fairies. There are Duke Theseus and his betrothed, Queen Hippolyta, and their train; the two pairs of lovers—Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena; and those hempen homespuns, the Athenian tradesmen—Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.... But let us see where the different dramatis personÆ are to be found in the overture.

"The sustained chords of the wind instruments [which begin the work] are the magic formula that opens to us the realm of fairyland. The busy, tripping part of the first subject [violins and violas] tells us of the fairies; the broader and dignified part, of Duke Theseus and his following; the passionate first part of the second subject [at first wood-wind, then strings, later the full orchestra], of the romantic lovers; and the clownish second part, of the tradesmen, the braying reminding us of Bottom's transformation into an ass. The development is full of the vivacious bustle and play and fun of the elves; ... the pianissimo passage towards the end ... signifies the elves' blessing on the house of the Duke. In conclusion we have once more the magic formula [the four sustained chords of the opening], which now dissolves the dream it had before conjured up."

OVERTURE, "FINGAL'S CAVE" [OR, "THE HEBRIDES"] [106]: Op. 26

Mendelssohn, visiting the Hebrides in 1829, was deeply impressed with what he saw. "In order to make you realize," he says in a letter written August 7, 1829, "how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there"—then follows, in notation, a passage from the overture. Later in the month he wrote from Glasgow: "How much lies between then and now! ... Staffa—scenery, travels, people: Klingerman [the friend who accompanied him] has described it all, and you will excuse a short note, especially as what I can best tell you is contained in the above music." In September he wrote from London: "'The Hebrides' story builds itself up gradually"; and early in the following year (January 21, 1832) he wrote from Paris: "I cannot bring 'The Hebrides' to a hearing here because I do not regard it as finished in the form in which I originally wrote it [the first version of the overture was finished late in 1830]. The middle portion ... is very stupid, and the whole working out smells more of counterpoint than of blubber, sea-gulls, and salt fish." His friend Klingermann wrote as follows of the impressions produced by Fingal's Cave: "We were put out in boats, and climbed, the hissing sea close beside us, over the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal's Cave. A greener roar of waters surely never rushed into a stranger cavern—comparable, on account of the many pillars, to the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, lying there absolutely purposeless in its utter loneliness, the wide, gray sea within and without."

It has been said of the music of this overture that, in hearing it, "you will think of yourself in a ship, gliding over rocking waves, about you a vast expanse of sea and sky, light breezes blowing, the romantic stories of the past coloring the sights that one has seen." Wagner, on the strength of this work, praised the composer as "a landscape painter of the first order."

OVERTURE, "BECALMED AT SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE": Op. 27

Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und glÜckliche Fahrt[107] was written in illustration of two short and contrasted poems by Goethe, entitled Meeres Stille and GlÜckliche Fahrt (published in 1796). They have been translated into English prose as follows:

"BECALMED AT SEA"

"A profound stillness rules in the water; the ocean rests motionless; and the anxious mariner looks on a smooth sea round about him. No breeze in any quarter! Fearful quiet of death! Over the monstrous waste no billow stirs."

"PROSPEROUS VOYAGE"

"The fog has lifted, the sky is clear, and the Wind-god looses the hesitant band. The winds sough, the mariner looks alive. Haste! Haste! The billows divide, the far-off grows near; already I see the land!"

The overture was composed in 1828, and revised five years later. The introduction (Adagio) pictures the ominous calm, the deathlike quiet of the waters, the vast and motionless expanse of windless sea. The flute-calls which end this first section have been interpreted as "the cry of some solitary sea-bird," as "whistling for the wind," as a portrayal of "dead silence and solitude." Then follows (Molto allegro vivace) the picture of the sudden and inspiriting change which comes with the springing up of the breeze—the clearing of the sky, the joyous resumption of the voyage, the exhilarated spirits of the mariners. The conclusion suggests the happy arrival in port, the salutes, the dropping of the anchor.

OVERTURE TO THE LEGEND OF THE LOVELY MELUSINA: Op. 32

We know, on the testimony of Mendelssohn himself, that this overture, based on the ancient legend of the fair being who was part woman and part fish, was suggested to the composer by an opera on the subject which he saw at Berlin in 1833. Under date of April 7, 1834, he wrote to his sister Fanny: "You ask me which legend you are to read. How many, then, are there? And how many, then, do I know? And do you not know the story of the lovely Melusina?... Or have you really never heard of the beautiful fish? I have composed this overture to an opera by Konradin Kreutzer ["Melusine," libretto by Fr. Grillparzer, music by Kreutzer, produced at Berlin February 27, 1833] which I heard last year about this time at the KÖnigsstadt Theatre.... HÄhnel [the singer—Amalie HÄhnel—who took the part of Melusine] ... was very charming, especially in one scene where she presents herself as a mermaid and dresses her hair; it was then that I conceived the idea of writing an overture.... I took what pleased me of the subject (and that is, precisely what coincides with the legend). In short, the overture came into the world, and this is its family history."

The OuvertÜre zum MÄrchen von der SchÖnen Melusine was finished November 14, 1833. Schumann wrote of it as follows in the Neue Zeitschrift fÜr Musik, after a performance in Leipsic: "To understand it, no one needs to read the longspun, although richly imaginative, tale of Tieck;[108] it is enough to know that the charming Melusina was violently in love with the handsome knight Lusignan, and married him upon his promising that certain days in the year he would leave her alone. One day the truth breaks upon Lusignan that Melusina is a mermaid—half fish, half woman. The material is variously worked up, in words as in tones. But one must not here, any more than in the overture to Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' wish to trace so coarse an historical thread all through.... Always conceiving his subject poetically, Mendelssohn here portrays only the characters of the man and the woman, of the proud, knightly Lusignan and the enticing, yielding Melusina; but it is as if the watery waves came up amid their embraces and overwhelmed and parted them again. And this revives in every listener those pleasant images by which the youthful fancy loves to linger, those fables of the life deep down beneath the watery abyss, full of shooting fishes with golden scales, of pearls in open shells, of buried treasures, which the sea has snatched from men, of emerald castles towering one above another, etc. This, it seems to us, is what distinguishes this overture from the earlier ones: that it narrates these kind [sic] of things quite in the manner of a story, and does not experience them. Hence, at first sight, the surface appears somewhat cold, dumb; but what a life and interweaving there is down below is more clearly expressed through music than through words, for which reason the overture (we confess) is far better than this description of it." [109]

It has been said that the music illustrates "the loveliness and the loving nature of Melusina; the hardness of her fate and the anxiety caused by it. The waving motion [the flowing theme heard at the beginning] is indicative of her grace, and at the same time reminds us of the element with which she was connected." A more energetic theme is said to suggest Melusina's knightly consort; a third theme (in the violins) is a love-motive; later there is a return, fortissimo, of the energetic knightly theme of the beginning. There is a development of these themes; and "near the end we may recognize [Melusina's] cries on being discovered by her husband. The rest is like the vanishing of a beautiful reality into a beautiful memory."

SYMPHONY No. 3 ("SCOTCH"): Op. 56

1. Andante con moto

Allegro un poco agitato

2. Vivace non troppo

3. Adagio

4. Allegro vivacissimo

Allegro maestoso assai

To Mendelssohn's Scotch visit in the summer of 1829 may be traced this third symphony in A minor, as well as the "Fingal's Cave" ["Hebrides"] overture (see page 200-202). In a letter dated July 30, 1829, he wrote from Edinburgh: "We went, in the deep twilight, to the Palace of Holyrood, where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there, with a winding staircase leading up to it. This the murderers ascended, and, finding Rizzio, ... drew him out; about three chambers away is a small corner where they killed him. The chapel is roofless, grass and ivy grow abundantly in it; and before the altar, now in ruins, Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. [110] Everything about is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found to-day in that old chapel the beginning of my Scotch symphony."

The symphony was planned in 1831. In a letter written from Rome in March of that year he says: "From April 15th to May 15th is the heyday of the year in Italy. Is it to be wondered at that I cannot call up the misty Scotch mood?" The work was not completed until more than a decade later—January 20, 1842.

The first movement has been said to record the sombre impressions made upon the composer by his visit to Holyrood. The second movement has been described as "a picture of pastoral nature, characterized by a continuous flow of rural gaiety," and as "the most wonderful compound of health and life, heath and moor, blowing wind, screaming eagles, bagpipes, fluttering tartans, and elastic steps of racing Highlanders, all rounded off and brought into one perfect picture." The third movement (Adagio) has been characterized as "a revery in which the composer meditates upon the ancient state and grandeur of the country. Its majestic strains might almost have been swept from Ossian's harp." In the last movement "the romantic sentiment disappears. In its place we have the heroic expressed with astonishing force and exuberant spirit." This movement has also been called "the gathering of the clans."

SYMPHONY No. 4 ("ITALIAN"): Op. 90

This symphony was begun during Mendelssohn's sojourn in Italy (1830-31); it was finished in March, 1833. The following commentary by Ambros on the characteristics of the different movements is as sound and as interesting as any: "... That Italian clearness of outline, that cheerful, ingenuous enjoyment of abounding life without dream-like reflection, is a fundamental feature of the A major symphony. If it were not too hazardous, one might say ... [that] there sounds in Mendelssohn's symphony, not indeed the impression of Rome, ... where, according to Jean Paul's expression, the spirits of heroes, artists, and saints gaze on man, seriously admonishing him,—but rather the local tone of the environs of Monte Cavo in the adjacent Albanian chain of mountains. Indeed, we may readily imagine the youth Mendelssohn looking out, let us say, from Nemi or Genzano across the rounded mirror of the sea upon the splendid foliage of the wooded cliffs of the coast, and how the motive of the first movement, loudly exulting in the full joy of life, passes through his soul, so that he has to sing it aloud.

"The Andante [generally known as the 'Pilgrim's March'] has been thought by some to be in the church style. 'The cowl,' according to an old proverb, 'does not make the monk,' and just as little does a continuous contrapuntal bass make a piece of music into a contrapuntally conceived one. We might perhaps say more appropriately that the Andante tells a romance of the olden time, as it were, in the style of Chronicles—only the poet's eye occasionally betrays itself, sadly smiling. Being once in the Albanian mountains, with our fancy, perhaps we now recall the picturesque castle-embattlements of Grotta Ferrata, and the old devotional stations with the solemn mosaic pictures of saints upon a gold ground.

"In the [third movement] the person of the tone-poet advances more into the foreground: it is the purest feeling of well-being, of calm, happy enjoyment, that emanates from the gentle movement of this melody, as if reciting to itself RÜckert's glorious words:

"'Die Erd' ist schÖn genug den Himmel zu erwarten,
Den Himmel zu vergessen nicht schÖn genug ihr Garten.'

["'The earth is fair enough to make us hope for heaven,
Her garden not so fair that heaven is lost to mind.']

"And these horns in the Trio,[111] are they not as if, in the midst of the Italian paradise, a truly German yearning comes over him for the dear light green of the woods of his home?

"But the Finale, the 'Saltarello,'[112] draws us into the midst of the gay swirl of Southern life; and the almost melancholy ritardando[113] towards the close, does it not remind us, like a sigh of the tone-poet, that amid all the magnificence he is, after all, but a stranger, a wanderer that comes and goes? Like Berlioz's 'Harold,' this symphony is therefore a souvenir of Italian travel, a piece of Italy that the tone-poet has brought away with him." [114]

Mendelssohn witnessed the Carnival at Rome, and this last movement was doubtless the result of his impressions, which he recorded in a letter written [from Rome] February 8, 1831: "On Saturday all the world went to the Capitol to witness the form of the Jews' supplications to be suffered to remain in the Sacred City for another year, a request which is refused at the foot of the hill, but, after repeated entreaties, granted on the summit, and the Ghetto is assigned to them. It was a tiresome affair; we waited two hours, and, after all, understood the oration of the Jews as little as the answer of the Christians. I came down again in very bad humor, and thought that the Carnival had begun rather unpropitiously. So I arrived in the Corso and was driving along, thinking no evil, when I was suddenly assailed by a shower of sugar comfits. I looked up; they had been flung by some young ladies whom I had seen occasionally at balls, but scarcely knew, and when, in my embarrassment, I took off my hat to bow to them, the pelting began in right earnest. Their carriage drove on, and in the next was Miss T——, a delicate young English-woman. I tried to bow to her, but she pelted me, too; so I became quite desperate, and, clutching the confetti, I flung them back bravely. There were swarms of my acquaintances, and my blue coat was soon as white as that of a miller. The B——s were standing on a balcony, flinging confetti like hail at my head; and thus pelting and pelted, amid a thousand jests and jeers and the most extravagant masks, the day ended with races."