Part 24

Marschner was now at the zenith of his fame. Toward the close of 1830 he accepted an invitation to become Royal Chapelmaster at Hanover and distinguished himself at once in his new position by composing "Hans Heiling," his finest work and the strongest prop of his present fame. The book of this opera had been submitted to him anonymously. When the opera was first performed in 1833 in Berlin the librettist sang the titular rôle. It was none other than Edward Devrient. Marschner's reception at Hanover was in every way distinguished, but long before his death he forfeited some of the good will of the court circles and the portion of society influenced by them. Domestic misfortunes doubtless contributed much to embitter his disposition. He lost his wife in 1854. The immediate cause of his withdrawal in 1859 from active service was the appointment of C. L. Fischer as second Chapelmaster against his wishes. He lost his interest in the orchestra which he had brought to a high state of efficiency and was pensioned off as a General Music Director. Before then he married a third wife, a contralto singer named Therese Janda of Vienna, who survived him. He died of an apoplectic stroke on December 15, 1861, at nine o'clock in the evening. Besides the works mentioned in the foregoing recital, he composed "The Castle on Aetna," "The Babü," "Adolph of Nassau," and "Austin," operas, and incidental music to Kind's "Fair Ella," Hell's "Ali Baba," Rodenberg's "Waldmüller's Margret" and Mosenthal's "The Goldsmith of Ulm."

Marschner was not an old man when he died, yet his life compassed the climax of the Classic Period of German Music, the birth and development of the Romantic School and the first vigorous stirrings of the spirit exemplified in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner. He knew Beethoven, stood elbow to elbow with Weber, fought by the side of Spohr and exerted an influence of no mean potency in the development of Wagner. He was the last of the three foremost champions who carried the banner of Romanticism into the operatic field. It is likely that had he asserted his individuality more boldly instead of fighting behind the shields of his two great associates the world would know better than it does that he was a doughty warrior; and criticism would speak less often of his music as a reflection and of him as merely a strong man among the _epigonoi_ of Beethoven and Weber. Wagner set his face sternly against the estimate which lowers him to the level of a mere imitator. Schumann esteemed his operas more highly than those of any of his contemporaries, in spite of their echoes of Weber's ideas and methods. His record of the impression made on his mind by a performance of "The Templar and the Jewess" is a compact and comprehensive estimate of Marschner's compositions: "The music occasionally restless; the instrumentation not entirely lucid; a wealth of admirable and expressive melody. Considerable dramatic talent; occasional echoes of Weber. A gem not entirely freed from its rough covering. The voice-treatment not wholly practicable, and crushed by the orchestra. Too much trombone."

It is scarcely to be marvelled at that the world should have accepted the old verdict. Outside of Germany Marschner has had no existence for more than half a century. In Germany three of his operas may occasionally be heard. All the rest of his list have disappeared from the stage as completely as the hundreds of his compositions in the smaller forms. These three operas, "The Vampire," "The Templar and the Jewess" and "Hans Heiling," not only contain his best music but also exemplify the sum of his contributions to the Romantic movement. In them he appears in his fullest measure complementary to Weber and Spohr. Yet to appreciate this fact it is necessary to view them in the light of the time and the people for which they were created. It is scarcely possible to conceive their existence, much less to perceive their significance under changed conditions and beyond the borders of the German land. The measure of their present popularity in Germany is also the measure of their comparative merit. In them is exhibited Marschner's growth in clearness, truthfulness and forcefulness of expression and his appreciation of Romantic ideals. At this late day it is impossible to perceive anything else than a wicked perversion of those ideals in "The Vampire"; yet it finds a two-fold explanation in the morbid tendency of literature and the stage in Europe two generations ago, and the well-known proneness of the Germans to supernaturalism. The story is an excresence on the face of Romanticism for which the creators of the literary phase of the movement are not responsible. It tells of a nobleman who, having forfeited his life, prolongs it and wins temporary immunity from punishment by drinking the life-blood of his brides, three of whom he is compelled by a compact with the Evil One to sacrifice between midnight and midnight once a year. At the base of this dreadful superstition lies the notion that the Vampire's unconquerable thirst for blood is a punishment visited upon a perjurer. It may be largely fanciful, but it must, nevertheless, not be overlooked in accounting for the popularity of this subject that a degree of sympathy for it among the German people may have been due to the fact that it contains a faint mythological echo. In the Volüspa perjurers are condemned in their everlasting prison-house to wade knee-deep in blood. It is this superstition which prolongs the action in the opera until the fiend has killed two of his victims and stands before the altar with her who had been selected as the third. In treating this gruesome subject Marschner and his librettist compelled their hearers to sup full of horrors; nor did they scorn the melodramatic trick, which survived in the Bertrams and Rigolettos of a later time, of investing a demon with a trait of character calculated to enlist sympathetic pity in his behalf. The direct responsibility for this bit of literary and theatrical pabulum rests with Byron. He wrote the tale for the delectation of his friends in Geneva. But the time was ripe for it. Planché adapted a French melodrama on the subject for London six years before he performed a similar service to Marschner's opera, and Lindpaintner composed his "Vampire" a year after Marschner's work had been brought forward.

Fac-simile autograph manuscript from "Hans Heiling," written by Marschner.]

The frank supernaturalism of "The Vampire," though it can only present itself to us in the light of perverted and vulgarized Romanticism, made a powerful appeal to the Germans with their innate if unconscious sympathy with the dethroned creatures of paganism. It was the vivid embodiment of this sympathy which gave to the Romantic School the characteristic element which Marschner represents in his estate of originality. The supernaturalism which is little more than an influence in "Der Freischütz" is boldly personified in "The Vampire." Already at the outset of the opera, the silent diabolism of Weber's _Samiel_ is magnified and metamorphosed into a chorus of witches, ghosts, and devils. The opening scene is a choral Wolf's Glen, the copy going so far as the choice of Weber's key, F-sharp minor. Yet in spite of the imitation it is here that Marschner first struck the keynote of the strongest element of his dramatic music,--the demoniac. It was the fault of the subject that he could not give a sign here of the element in which he is stronger still, or at least, more original,--the element of rude humor. That manifestation had to wait for the coming of Friar Tuck in his setting of the story of "Ivanhoe." The third element in which the strong talent of the composer moves most freely and effectually is the delineation of folk-scenes. Here he has followed closely in the footsteps of Weber and caught up the spirit of the common people as they gave it expression in their songs and dances. As Luther, in transforming a dialect into a literary language, caught the idiom from the lips of the people in the market-place, so Weber and Marschner went for their folk-music to the popular revels in tavern, field, and forest.

A want of dramatic cohesion and homogeneity has militated against "The Templar and the Jewess," the only opera of the three which might by virtue of its subject, have achieved and retained popularity in England, France and America as well as Germany. It suffers, too, in contrast with Weber's "Euryanthe" by reason of its failure to reach the lofty plane of chivalresque sentiment on which Weber's almost ineffable opera moves with an aristocratic grace and ease that put even "Lohengrin" to shame. Nevertheless, some of the significance of "The Templar and the Jewess" may be found in the evidences that "Lohengrin" is in part its offspring. The parallelisms are too striking to be overlooked, especially in the ordeals by which the two heroines are tried. The prayers of Rebecca and Elsa, the reliance of each upon a heaven-sent champion, the employment of the accompanying wood-winds stamp them as sisters in art. In "Hans Heiling," the supernaturalism is greatly purified and idealized. The hero of the opera is a king of underground spirits, who relinquishes his throne for love of a mortal maiden. He is deceived in his love, but stifles his desire for vengeance and returns to his old dominion. The musical advance over "The Vampire" is commensurate with the ethical. The musical declamation approaches in truthfulness that of the modern lyric drama, and an ingenious compromise is effected with the cumbersome device of spoken dialogue. In the scenes which play on the earth, this relic of the old German _Singspiel_ is retained; but in _Heiling's_ subterranean kingdom all speech is music.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY

The story of his fine life, watched over from the cradle as by fairies, is a poem. The family names are compound. Mendelssohn is German for son of Mendel; Bartholdy is Hebrew for son of Tholdy. One key to his artistic character is the general culture, intellectual and social, of the man, for which the opportunities were granted him from infancy in fuller measure than to any other great musician. Born in prosperity, amid refining influences; taught Greek and Latin classics; familiar with living poets, scholars and philosophers who frequented his father's house; passing a fortnight at the impressible age of eleven in the house of Goethe; imbued with reverence for the character and teaching of his wise Platonic grandfather, the Jew Moses Mendelssohn, the model for Lessing's "Nathan the Wise"; stimulated by the piquant and genial letters of his three gifted aunts (two of whom had turned Catholic), and above all by the tender, wise, exacting and appreciative oversight of his excellent father, to whom the best was only "just good enough," he grew unconsciously into a large and liberal way of thinking. He was at home in the most cultivated circles, "a native there, and to the manner born." What might it not have been to Schubert to have germinated and unfolded under such a genial sun in such a soil! Well was the youth named Felix!

Moses Mendelssohn, a little humpbacked Jew peddler boy, with keen eyes and winning face, came to Berlin about the middle of the last century. He had a hard fight with penury, and an unconquerable passion for knowledge and the culture of his mind. At that time the Jews in Germany were at the lowest stage of social repression. Excluded from nearly all honorable and profitable pursuits, restricted to Jew quarters, outcast and despised, they were the chosen victims of Christian intolerance. On the other hand, driven back upon the synagogue, upon the even fiercer bigotry of their own priests and rabbis, with whom "to speak the German language correctly or to read a German book was heresy," the young man was caught between two fires. Yet so brave, so able was he, so faithful to his great life purpose, and withal so winning by his hearty, sterling honesty of spirit, that he became one of the lights of German literature, one of its recognized apostles; the intimate associate of Lessing, Herder, Kant, etc. His conversation had the Socratic quality; and his "Phaedo," a dialogue on immortality, founded on that of Plato, was so persuasive that it was translated into many languages. He married a Jewess in Hamburg, and grew prosperous as well as learned. He left three daughters and three sons. Abraham, the father of Felix, was the second son, a thriving banker, for a while in Paris, when he married Lea Salomon, of the Bartholdy family, a lady of wealth and culture, from Berlin, and formed a partnership with his elder brother in his native Hamburg. Their first child was Fanny, born, as her mother said, with "Bach fugue fingers." The second child, Jakob Ludwig Felix, was born February 3, 1809. Before he was three years old, the French occupied Hamburg, and Abraham fled to Berlin, where he formed a new banking house, and his whole family were baptized into the Protestant Communion, taking the added name Bartholdy.

The patriarchal rule, obedience and industry, was strict in the house. But the father was kind and gentle as well as severe, and Felix loved him dearly; called him "not only my father, but my teacher both in art and in life"; and wondered how it was possible that a father, not a technical musician, could criticize the son's early efforts in composition so shrewdly and so justly. After Felix became famous, Abraham said once humorously of himself: "Formerly I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son."

The mother, a lady of fine person, with an air of much benevolence and dignity, was a model housewife; spoke several languages, read Homer in the Greek, played the piano, and gave the first frequent five-minute lessons to her two eldest children, Fanny and Felix. The boy was full of life and fond of out-door play, very attractive with his long brown curls and great brown eyes. He was frank, unspoiled, earnest in what he undertook, and could bear no foolish flattery, no nonsense.

After a short visit of the family to Paris, in 1816, when Fanny was eleven and Felix seven years old, the children's education began systematically. Heyse (father of the novelist) was their tutor at large; Ludwig Berger, teacher for piano; the strict, conservative Zelter (Goethe's friend) for thorough bass and counterpoint; Henning for violin. Felix, whose pen and pencil sketches in his letters show such a facile gift for drawing, was taught landscape by Rösel. Greek he learned with his younger sister Rebecka, even reading Æschylus. The children were kept closely to their lessons; Felix used to say how much they enjoyed the Sundays, when they had not to get up at five o'clock to work.

He was first heard in a public concert on Oct. 24, 1818, when he played the piano part in a trio with two horns with much applause. Early in his eleventh year he entered the singing class of the Singakademie as an alto. "There he took his place," writes his friend Devrient, "amongst the grown people, in his child's suit, a tight fitting jacket cut very low at the neck, and with full trousers buttoned over it. Into the slanting pockets of these he liked to thrust his hands, rocking his curly head from side to side, and shifting restlessly from one foot to the other."--He spoke French and English fluently; wrote a letter in good Italian; and translated the "Andrea" of Terence into German verse, besides making such good headway in Greek. He could ride and swim and dance, right heartily, but was not fond of mathematics.

In 1820, his twelfth year, he set about composing regularly. With that year begins the series of forty-four volumes in which he methodically preserved autograph copies of a great part of his works down to the time of his death, with date and place carefully noted. These are now in the Imperial Library at Berlin. Another proof of his methodical self-discipline is found in the fact that for many years he made it an invariable rule to compose _something every day_.

His productive activity during the six early years from 1820 to 1826 was incessant, many-sided and prolific. In 1820, among other compositions named by Grove, are a Trio for piano and strings; a Sonata for pianoforte and violin; another for pianoforte solo; four organ pieces; a Cantata, bearing the earliest date of all (Jan. 13); a Lustspiel for voices and pianoforte, in three scenes, beginning: "Ich Felix Mendelssohn," etc. In 1821, five Symphonies for strings, songs, one-act operas. This was the year when Zelter first took him to Goethe at Weimar.

The next two years were no less productive. In the summer of 1822 the whole family made a leisurely tour in Switzerland, visiting on the way Spohr at Cassel, on the return Schelble, conductor of the famous Cäcilien-Verein at Frankfort, and Goethe again at Weimar. Near Geneva he wrote the first (Op. I) of three Quartets for pianoforte and strings. In the two years six more quartet Symphonies, making twelve in all, which do not figure in the catalogue, although they were not mere exercises. Then, too, an opera, "The Uncle from Boston," in three acts. He was then nearly fifteen, growing fast, his features and expression altering and maturing, and his hair cut short.

It is pleasant to read of the Sunday morning music in his grandmother's large dining-room, with a small orchestra, Felix conducting, Fanny or himself at the piano, Rebecka singing, and the young brother Paul playing the 'cello. Some composition of his own had place in every programme. Noted musicians passing through Berlin were often present. For critic there was his own father, besides the wise old Zelter. Every evening, also, more or less, the house was enlivened by music, theatrical impromptus, and "constant flux and reflux of young, clever, distinguished people, who made the suppers gay and noisy, and among whom Felix was the favorite." Among the intimates were Moscheles and Spohr.

A great advance was shown in the compositions of 1824. In the summer Felix, with his father and Rebecka, visited a bathing place on the shores of the Baltic, where he got his first impressions of the sea, afterwards reproduced in the _Meeresstille_ overture. In the next spring father and son were in Paris. There Felix met all the famous French musicians. Their devotion to _effect_ and superficial glitter, their ignorance of German music (Onslow, for instance, having never heard a note of _Fidelio_), the insulting liberties they took with some of its masterpieces, enraged the enthusiastic lad. With Cherubini his intercourse was more satisfactory. On the way home they paid a third, short visit to Goethe. The fiery Capriccio in F sharp minor, and the score of the two-act opera, _Camacho's Wedding_, from Don Quixote, were fruits of that year.

That summer Abraham Mendelssohn purchased the large house and grounds (ten acres) at No. 3 Leipziger Strasse, which became the sumptuous abode of the family, until the death of Felix, when it was occupied by the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords of the Prussian government. As described by Hensel, it was a dignified, old-fashioned, spacious palace, then in the suburbs of Berlin, near the Potsdam gate, on the edge of the Thiergarten. Behind the house was a court with offices, then gardens and a park with noble trees,--just the ideal seat for such an artistic family! There was a room for large musical parties and private theatricals. Between the court and the garden stood the _Gartenhaus_, the middle of which formed a hall large enough to hold several hundred persons, with glass doors opening on the lawns and alleys. It was a delightful summer house, but rather bleak in winter. There the Sunday music found new life; there Felix composed the Octet for strings; there, too, in the fine summer of 1826, the work with which he "took his final musical degree," astonishing the world as a full-fledged composer, a master of original, imaginative genius, the overture to _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. He had been reading with his sisters the Schlegel and Tieck version of Shakespeare's play. In this and many instances Fanny, herself a good musician and composer, was her brother's confidante and critic. The fairy vein, which had cropped out in earlier works (the Quintet in A, the Octet, etc.), seemed to have reached its full expression here. And the wonder is that the motives of the Overture all came in place when he wrote music for the whole play seventeen years later.

Meanwhile _Camacho_ was granted one unwilling hearing by Spontini, in the smaller theatre. Galled by the sneering remarks of the critics, Felix found the art atmosphere of Berlin more and more antipathetic. Entering the University of that city, he had less time for composition. How far he followed the course does not appear. He attended lectures of Hegel (one of whose courses was on music), and of Ritter, the great geographer. And he resumed his study of Italian classics, translating into German verse sonnets of Dante and others. There too he became a proficient in landscape drawing. Ten years later the University of Leipsic conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

The life in the new house was very genial and active. Felix practised riding, swimming and other gymnastics with characteristic ardor "to the utmost"; for skating he could not bear the cold. And what a brilliant and _élite_ society frequented those large rooms: Rahel Varnhagen, Bettina, Heine, Holtei, Lindblad, Marx, Humboldt, W. Müller, Hegel,--all famous then or afterwards! Young people were there "in troops." They had a little newspaper of their own, called in summer _Garten-Zeitung_, in winter _Schnee-und Thee-Zeitung_, edited by Felix and Marx, to which all comers were free to contribute; paper, ink and pens lay ready in the summer-houses. Graver heads, like Humboldt and Zelter, used the opportunity! "In all this brilliant interchange of art, science and literature," says Grove, "Felix, even at this early date, was the prominent figure. When he entered the room every one was anxious to speak to him. Women of double his age made love to him; and men, years afterwards, treasured every word that fell from his lips."