The Charm of Mendelssohn

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 49, 19 June 1931, Page 1

The Charm of Mendelssohn

Several weeks ago a series of "Musical Portraits" of the famous music masters was inaugurated at 2Y A, and has proved justly popular. Last Monday evening a further aspect of Mendelssohn’s compositions was presented to listeners by. @ .. relay from the Taranaki Street Methodist Church of a programme consisting solely of this great composer’s works. The accompanying article by Sacheverell Sitwell will be of interest to all those who would like to know something of Mendelssohn’s life. — |

hag’ ig is an acknowledged | fact that concerthalls are always ugly in themselves. Up till a few years ago their decoration, as often as not, used to rise to its climax in a series of names-they were names and nothing more-of famous composers. These names were spelt out in great gilt letters and sometimes they occurred at regular |: intervals round the ledge of the dress- |: -circle, and sometimes they shone down from |: the root. | There. was something curious about |} those names. Beethoven was there. So | was Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Liszt. } _ Rossini and. Bellini, who really were names | \ and little more, showed near composers of | \whom one had "never even heard mention. ‘Pleyel, Méhul, Gretry, Spohr: these were some of them. And among them there was always Mendelssohn. But, in a sense, he was in a different category from any of the others,‘and there were two reasons for this. He was neglected by the good taste of twenty years ago, while he was still a popular idol with the old-fashioned public. ‘It is easy to explain what I mean. When I was a child you could not find a village in Yorkshire or Derbyshire where

there was not an old woman who would sing you "Oh, for the Wings of a Dove," or "Rest in the Lord," if you went to see her in her cottage. The English had taken Mendelssohn to their hearts as 3 they had no other musician except Handel. . But while he was a pleasure to many he was a pain to some few. 2d the cultured he meant "Songs without Words," the "Bees’ Wedding" ; ots of little pieces the sound or mention of which drove one nearly mad, and a sort of general association, by analogy, with the Albert Memorial. Now, when he has been dead some eighty years, the truth about Mendelssohn ‘is beginning to emerge. The public have had to give him up because he was so bad for them, while the other fruits of his varied and prolific genius are being brought back again into their rightful position. Not that they have ever been forgotten, but simply that persons who despise and will not listen to his music are denying themselves many delightful experiences. The secret of this charm lies in his personality. This was formed from fertility and genius allied to a most unusual clarity and logic, qualities seldom found except in artists of the very highest rank. \ , UT there are other reasons for it. ~ His family were rich and cultured Jews. He never knew money worries, and I think the safety and comfort of that are audible in his music. He was a child-prodigy. The Mendelssohns had a small orchestra to play in their dining-room on alternate Sunday mornings, and at this there was always a piece composed and conducted by little Felix, even when he was so small that

he had to stand on a chair.in order to be seen. Hopes were formed of him that had; hardly been allowed even to Mozart. There seemed to be nothing that Mendelssohn might not accomplish as he grew older. This is not to be wondered at when his music. to the Midsummer Night’s Dream is considered. He wrote this at the age of seventeen, and it is a beautiful and unique, masterpiece unlike anything else in the -world. It was written long before he had ever visited England, and it shows an ine stinctive understanding and appreciation of, England such as it is hard to believe any, person of foreign birth could have possessed, Nearly at the same time he wrote his beauti« ful Octuor. There seemed nothing, ine deed, that Mendelssohn might not achieve when he showed so much promise at such an early age. His father was anxious that he should travel and meet all the interesting person-. alities of his time. In this way he met all the leading musicians, Cherubini, Rossini, Spohr, Liszt, and made friends with the old. Goethe. He was also sent to Italy to see, the works of art, but it is related that nothing, however exciting, could distract,

him from spending at least some hours of each day in composition. Nor did the praise and flattery, attendant on his being a prodigy and a favourite with all, in any way impair his‘simplicity of character. He kept himself unspoilt and uninjured through all this. But he worked too hard. Far too much music was produced by him; in his twelfth, year alone, sixty finished pieces flowed from his pen. This fertility was a permanent danger to his health, and, indeed, in a sense,'it killed him. He was formed-of many things. He passed his early years in’ a kind of Mozartian identity. His piano-pieces have that mellifluous: rapidity and grace. The Rondo Capriccioso is a sort of continuation in this Mozartian tradition, but it also shows the influence of Weber’ and of Hummel, the virtuoso who was taken into his house by Mozart’ as a pupil when he was only seven years old. In fact, a famous Rondo by Hummel affords the closest comparison with that of Mendelssohn. All the formulae for this kind of music were already invented and had long been in use. They cannot have given Mendelssohn much trouble... . ie this respect he only continued and. did not enlarge the art. But: it is a different thing ‘with his orchestral works. In them, he was a pioneer searching after new effects, following, perhaps, a little farther. along the directions that Weber had started. In his overture Preciosa, Weber had made use of Spanish tunes for the first time in serious music; and Mendelssohn did-the same thing in Ruy Blas. Landscape-painting. was being brought into music with its incidents of costume and local: colour. Where Mendelssohn is concerned (Concluded on page 2.),

this was more especially the case in his Italian symphony. The last moyement is a Saltarello, a kind of tarantella such. as was used by Berlioz in his "Roman Carnival." This ended the symphony in vigorous and exciting fashion, and was much loved by an audience who were growing accustomed to the military trumpets or hunting-horns used, now and again, by Haydn and. Mozart for their finales, and to the Polonaise of -which Weber made frequent use. Mendelssohn’s association with the history of taste is an interesting study in itself. Of even more importance in this direction than the Italian symphony are his pieces of music inspired by Scotland. Because of Sir Walter Scott’s poems and novels Scotland had become .a.land of romance. It even took away

a little at that time from. the halo. that has always been round Spain. Hveryone chad read Scott’s-novels, and felt the imountains and mists of the North to be full of inspiration. . And there was Ossian to be read. 4s well as, Sir Walter Scott. Hven go massive and serious: a mind as Beethoven’s was drawn aside a little into this by-pass, and the reminders of his interest in it are the schottisches, certainly the most delightful trifles left by him. "The Scottish Symphony" and the "Hebrides Overture" were Mendelssohn’s contribution. They are two of his better works, and they did much to: increase his popularity in Bngland. ‘He was a favourite figure with the British public-from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, for whom he often

played, down to remote clergymen in country parishes who had heard some hymn or anthem of his sung in their cathedral town. Had he lived, it is probable that he would have settled in England. His approach to the public was through’ oratorio, and ‘"Hlijah," immediately on production, Was as popular in England as the "Messiah." It looked as if great days had come again, Mendelssohn was to become the Handel of the age, and it is interesting to think that had Handel died, as did Mendelsson, at the age of thirty-seven, there would‘ be little to’remember him " py. All his early successes had been in opera and his most famous works were not‘yet written. This may give an idea of what might have been produced by Mendelssohn had death spared him for another fonty years. His talent fitted in as exactly as did that of Handel with the English taste. It pleased and flattered without ever trying to startle, But.that Mendelssohn would also have improved taste, had he settled in England, there can be no doubt. There were persistent attempts made to persuade him to write an Wnglish opera. Weber had produced "Oberon" in London, some twenty years before, and Plauche, his librettist, mentions in his memoirs how he submitted various projects and drafts of subjects to Mendelssohn, who always delayed while expressing much:decision and détermination to set to work. The truth seems to be that Mendelssohn knew opera to be the one branch of music in which he would fail: This can have been the cnly. reason that held him back, for no undertaking could be vast enough to drain his fertility of invention. He must have liked the English as much as they liked him. He had, evidently, an instinctive understanding of our race. But, intleed, it is difficult to think of Mendelssohn hating anything or ahybody with bitterness. His nature was too -good-humoured and = urpane. His very music demonstrates a decisive change in.sentiment. ‘The days of the Regency were. over; Napoleon and his Marshalg-were no more; the last takes of the. eighteenth century were dead. It was-the reign of Queen Victoria. and of Louis Philippe... ‘The home and. the family. circlé were a change after so many wars and so many nights out. This sentiment excuses some of Mendelssohn’s melodies -or-it does not, according to your individual taste-but at any rate it was only a small side, a facet, of his talent. , For there has seldom been a composer with more promise, more latent achievement lying always just in front of him. The disappointment of these great expectations lay in the fact that Mendelssohn wrote always for his own day and never in advance of it. He was a close and ideal interpreter of what was wanted; it was as if the taste of the time dictated its wishes to him and ordered their shaping into music. And Mendelssohn never interfered with this; he did exactly as he was‘told. This failing in courage, this easy acceptance and desire’ to please, can be attached too easily to. his Jewish origin. The faults of that are to be found in Meyerbeer; though he, again, is a great man, and it is wrong to attack him when his music is never given, while in Mendelssohn the good qualities and the genius: of his race are most in- evidence. But as well-as all these other things there is his malady, -his consumption, to be considered. , The effects of it

coloured everything that he wrote, and indeed, made him write as much a he did. He had the usual facility and speed of the consumptive artist. He had, also, their liveliness of temperament which endeared him to a most extraordinary degree.with his family and his friends. He was devoted to his parents, to his sister Fanny, and to his wife. and I think this excessive affection, as with Mozart, was a trait of youthful character left over, stabilised as it were, from the days when he was such a gifted and wonderful child. Peaceful as was this atmosphere of affection that he lived in, and fortunate as he was in being removed from any want of money, there were, even yet, many exasperations and worries in his life. These were concerned, chiefly, in the production of his: own works, and things which would not \peen much nuisance to a°man of toug fibre wore Mendelssohn down and a ed to kill him. He. was’ interested in much other music,’ besides his own, but chiefly and principally in the great Bach. Bvery lover of beauty owes Mendelssohn a debt of gratitude for his enthusiasm over this; and, but for him, many works of the master would have been lost to the world. Mendelssohn’s campaign to, rescue his works and publish them:came just in time; in another few years: they would have’ gone irretrievably; . As he grew older his: concerns, .as was. natural, increased:.in scope and in variety. They began -to tell on his health, but the fatal blow from which he never recovered was: the death of his loved sister Fanny. When this was broken to him Mendelssohn fel: to the ground insensible. .It must have been a kind of seizure, but when;he got over the immediate effect 9 it he was left a hopeless. and. morose invalid. He had no longer any esire to write music, and: in hopes to save his life his family conveyed him by slow stages to Interlaken. There he made a recovery. and his health improved slightly for some months. He wrote only a.few songs and part of his last oratorio, "Christus," said to be a work’ of peculiar beauty and strange characte. Instead of writing music, for which he had still but little inclination, Mendelssohn spent his last few months in painting a series of large water-colour pictures of Swiss scenery. These ‘are said to have been most successful productions of their kind, and it would be interesting to know what has beconie of: them. It is possible that they still belong to his family in Germany: . But he began to decline again, and-on taking his last songs: to be sung by a f Sond of hts he had another and fatal seizure This time he lingered for four dreadful weeks and then died. He was one of the most natural and fluent composers there have. ever been, and the mere mention of these two characteristics makes a criticism of our own age that we live in, Convention, formula are dead now. ‘That is why every old building and every old piece of music puts us to shame. Rules and principles of architecture should govern everything," and when they do the greater geniuses break them and men of less talent keep to them and produce an infinity of good