Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians — Felix Mendelssohn, Part 1

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

The correspondence of Goethe and Zelter displeases me.

I always feel out of sorts when I have been reading it.

Do you know that I am making great strides in water-colors?

Schirmer comes to me every Saturday at eleven, and paints for two hours at a landscape, which he is going to make me a present of, because the subject occurred to him whilst I was playing the little "Rivulet" (which you know).

It represents a fellow who saunters out of a dark forest into a sunny little nook; trees all about, with stems thick and thin; one has fallen across the rivulet; the ground is carpeted with soft, deep moss, full of ferns; there are stones garlanded with blackberry-bushes; it is fine warm weather; the whole will be charming.

--_Mendelssohn to Devrient_ FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Thirty-eight years is not a long life, but still it is long enough to do great things.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in the year Eighteen Hundred Nine, at Hamburg, and died at Leipzig in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven.

His career was a triumphal march.

The road to success with him was no zigzag journey--from the first he went straight to the front.

Whether as a baby he crowed in key, and cried to a one-two-three melody, as his old nurse used to aver, is a little doubtful, possibly.

But all agree that he was the most precocious musical genius that ever lived, excepting Mozart; and Goethe, who knew them both, declared that Mendelssohn's music bore the same relationship to Mozart's as the talk of a grown-up cultured person to the prattle of a child.

But then Goethe was not a musician, and sixty years had passed from the time Goethe saw Mozart before he met Mendelssohn.

Goethe loved the brown-curled Jewish boy at sight; and whether on meeting Mozart he ever recovered from the taint of prejudice that most people feel when a prodigy is introduced, is a question.

But who can wonder that the old poet's heart went out to the youthful Mendelssohn as soon as he saw him!

He was a being to fill a poet's dream--such a youth as the Old Masters used to picture as the Christ when He confounded the wise men.

And then the painters posed this same type of boy as Daniel in the lions' den;

and back in the days of Pericles, the Greeks were fond of showing the beautiful youth, just approaching adolescence, in the nude, as the god of Love.

When the face has all the soft beauty of a woman, and the figure, slight, slender, lithe and graceful, carries only a suggestion of the masculine strength to come--then beauty is at perihelion.

The "Eros" of Phidias was not the helpless, dumpy cherub "Cupid"--he was a slender-limbed boy of twelve years who showed collar-bone and revealed every rib.

Beauty and strength of the highest type are never complete--their lure lies in a certain reserve, and behind all is a suggestion of unfoldment.

Maturity is not the acme of beauty, because in maturity there is nothing more to hope for--only the uncompleted fills the heart, for from it we construct the Ideal.

Goethe looked out of his window and seeing Felix Mendelssohn playing with the children, exclaimed to Zelter, "He is a Greek god in the germ, and I here solemnly protest against his wearing clothes."

The words sound singularly like the remark of Doctor Schneider, made ten years later, when Herr Doctor removed the sheet that covered the dead body of Goethe, and gazing upon the full-rounded limbs, the mighty chest, the columnar neck and the Jovelike head, exclaimed, "It is the body of a Greek god!"

And the surgeons stood there in silent awe, forgetful of their task.

Zelter, who introduced Mendelssohn to Goethe, was a fine old character, nearly as fine a type as Goethe himself.

Heine once said, "Musicians constitute a third sex."

And that there have been some unsexed, or at least unmanly men, who were great musicians, need not be denied.

The art of music borders more closely upon the dim and mystic realms of the inspirational than any of the other arts.

Music refuses to give up its secrets in a formula and at last eludes the sciolist with his ever-ready theorem.

But still, all musicians are not dreamers.

Zelter, for instance, was a most hard-headed, practical man: a positivist and mathematician with a turn for economics, and a Gradgrind for facts.

He was a stone-mason, and worked at his trade at odd times all through his life, just because he felt it was every man's duty to work with his hands.

Imagine Tolstoy playing the piano and composing instead of making shoes, and you have Zelter.

This curious character was bound to the Mendelssohn family by his love for Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of Felix.

Moses Mendel added the "sohn" in loving recognition of his father, just as "Bartholdy" was added by the father of Felix in loving token to his wife.

It was the grandfather of Felix who first gave glory to the name.

We sometimes forget that Moses Mendelssohn was one of the greatest thinkers Germany has produced--the man who summed up in his own head all the philosophy of the time and gave Spinoza to the world.

This was the man to whom the erratic Zelter was bound in admiration, and when it was suggested that he teach musical composition to the grandchild of his idol, he accepted the post with zest.

But there came a shade of disappointment to the grim and bearded Zelter when he failed to find a trace of resemblance between the child and the child's grandfather.

The boy was sprightly, emotional, loving; and could play the piano from his tenth year better than Zelter himself.

When Goethe teasingly suggested this fact, Zelter replied, "You mean he plays different, not better."

Goethe apologized.

Yet the boy was not a philosopher, and this grieved Zelter, who wanted him to be the grandson of his grandfather, and a musician besides.

The lad's skill in composition, however, soon turned the old teacher's fears into joy.

Such a pupil he had never had before!

And he did not reason it out that no one else had ever had, either.

The child, like Chopin, read music before he read print, and improvised, merging one tune with another, bringing harmony out of hopeless chaos.

Zelter followed, fearing success would turn the boy's head--berating, scolding, chiding, encouraging--and all the time admiring and loving.

The pretty boy was not much frightened by the old man's rough ways, but seized upon such of the instruction as he needed and filled in the rest with his own peerless soul.

The parents were astounded at such progress.

At first they had wished merely to round out the boy's education with a proper amount of musical instruction, and now they reluctantly allowed the old teacher to have his way--the lad must make his career a musical one.

The boy composed a cantata, which was given in the parlors of his parents' home, with an orchestra secured for the occasion.

Felix stood on a chair and led his band of musicians with that solemn dignity which was his through life.

Zelter grumbled, ridiculed and criticized--that was the way he showed his interest.

The old musician declared they were making a "Miss Nancy" of his pupil--saturating him with flattery, and he threatened to resign his office--most certainly not intending to do so.

It was about this time that Zelter threw out the hint that he was going down to Weimar to see his friend Goethe--would Felix like to go?

Felix would be delighted, and when the boy's father and mother were interviewed, they were pleased, too, at the prospect of their boy's making the acquaintance of the greatest poet of Germany.

Felix was duly cautioned about how he should conduct himself.

He promised, of course, and also agreed to write a letter home every day, recording the exact language that the author of "Werther" used in his presence.

Goethe and the Carlylian Zelter had been cronies for many years.

The poet delighted in the company of the gruff old stone-mason musician, and together they laughed at the world over their pipes and mugs.

And sometimes, alas, they hotly argued and raised their voices in donner-und-blitzen style, as Germans have been known to do.

Yet they were friends, and the honest Zelter's yearly visits were as a godsend to the old poet, who was often pestered to distraction by visitors who only voiced the conventional, the inconsequential and absurd.

Here was a man who tried his steel.

Now, Zelter had his theories about teaching harmony--theories too finely spun for any one but himself to grasp.

Possibly he himself did not seize them very firmly, but only argued them in a vain attempt to clear the matter up in his own mind.

The things we are not quite sure of are those upon which we insist.

Goethe had pooh-poohed and smitten the table with his "stein" in denial.

And now Zelter, the frank and bold, stealthily and by concocted plot and plan took his pupil, Felix Mendelssohn, with him on a visit to Weimar.

He wanted to confound his antagonist and to reveal by actual proof the success that could be achieved where correct methods of instruction were followed.

Jean Jacques had written a novel showing what right theories, properly followed up, could do for his hero.

Zelter had done better--he exhibited the youth.

"A girl in boy's clothes, I do believe," said Goethe, with his usual banter, in the evening when a little company had gathered in the parlors.

Felix sat on his teacher's knee, with his arms around the old man's neck, girl-like.

"Does he play?"

continued Goethe, going over and opening the piano.

"Oh, a little!"

answered Zelter indifferently.

The ladies insisted--they always had music when Zelter made them a visit.

"Come, make some noise and awaken the spirits that have so long lain slumbering!"

ordered the old poet.

Zelter advanced to the piano and played a stiff, formal little tune of his own.

He arose and motioned to Felix.

"Play that!"

said the teacher.

The child sat down, and with an impatient little gesture and half-smile at the audience, played the piece exactly as Zelter had played it, with a certain drawling style that was all Zelter's own.

It was so funny that the listeners burst into shouts of laughter.

But the boy instantly restored order by striking the bass a strong stroke with both hands, running the scale, and weaving that simple little air into the most curious variations.

For ten minutes he played, bringing in Zelter's little tune again and again, and then Zelter in a voice of pretended wrath cried, "Cease that tin-pan drumming and play something worth while."

Goethe arose, stroked the boy's pretty brown curls, kissed him on the forehead and said: "Yes, play something worth while.

I know you two rogues--you have been practising on that piece for a year or more, and now you pretend to be improvising--I'll see whether you can play!"

And going to a portfolio he took out a manuscript piece of music written out in the fine, delicate hand of Mozart, and placed it on the music-rack of the piano.

Felix played the piece as if it were his own;

and then laying it aside, went back and played it through from memory.

Then piece after piece was brought out for him to play, and Zelter leaned back and by his manner said, "Oh, it is nothing!"

And certainly it was nothing to the boy--he played with such ease that his talent was quite unknown to himself.

He had not yet discovered that every one could not produce music just as they could talk.

Goethe's admiration for the boy was unbounded.

The two weeks of Mendelssohn's prescribed visit had expired and Goethe begged for an extension of two weeks more.

Every evening there was the little impromptu concert.

After that Felix paid various visits to Weimar.

Goethe's house was his home, and the affection between the old poet and the young musician was very gentle and very firm.

"All souls are of one age," says Swedenborg.

Goethe was seventy-three and Mendelssohn thirteen when they first met, but very soon they were as equals--boys together.

Goethe was a learner to the day of his passing: he wanted to know.

In the presence of those who had followed certain themes further than he had, he was as an eager, curious child.

When Goethe was seventy-eight and Mendelssohn eighteen, they spent another month together; and a regular program of instruction was laid out.

Each morning at precisely nine, they met for the poet's "music lesson," as Goethe called it, and the boy would play from some certain composer, showing the man's peculiar style, and the features that differentiated him from others.

Goethe himself has recorded in his correspondence that it was Felix Mendelssohn who taught him of Hengstenberg and Spontini, introduced him to Hegel's "Æsthetics," and revealed to him for the first time the wonders of Beethoven.

Can you not close your eyes and see them--the mighty giant of fourscore, with his whitened locks, and the slight, slender, handsome boy?

The old man is seated in his armchair near the window that opens on the garden.

The youth is at the piano and plays from time to time to illustrate his thought, then turns and talks, and the old man nods in recognition.

The boy sings and the old man chords in with a deep, mellow bass which the years have not subdued.

When there are others present these two may romp, joke and talk much--masking their hearts by frivolity--but together they sit in silence, or speak only in lowered voices as all true lovers always do.

Their conversation is sparse and to the point; each is mindful of the dignity and worth that the other possesses: each recognizes the respect that is due to the mind that knows and the heart that feels.

"All souls are of one age."