Part 26

Of his many other piano compositions, the most important are the Six Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35; another in E minor, full of fire and strength, his contribution to the Album "Notre Temps"; and the _Variations Sérieuses_. All the great composers, notably Beethoven, were fond of writing variations. Those of Mendelssohn are full of character, and often figure to advantage in the artistic programmes of pianists. For the piano with strings, the two Trios are the most interesting, and still challenge the chamber-concert givers. The two Sonatas with 'Cello also hold their own.

He loved to employ the piano with orchestra. The brilliant _Capriccio_ in B minor, and the Rondo in E flat, swift as an arrow and going as straight to the mark, are concert favorites; still more the _Serenade_ and _Allegro Giojoso_, full of life and charm. But most important, masterworks indeed, are the two Concertos. That in G minor, by the very fascination of its beauty, and by being such a model in form, so clear and pure throughout, has been practised so much in conservatories, and played at the début of so many callow virtuosos, that a shade of commonplace has settled over it. The other, in D minor, keeps itself more select, so that for the more exacting taste it is publicly too seldom played.

And, speaking of Concertos, we must not forget the one for the violin, which surely ranks only after that by Beethoven, and is attempted by all the violinists. Its charm is never failing. The fine intensity of the impassioned Allegro has something feminine and far reaching in its quality, so that it was a rare pleasure to hear it interpreted by such an artist as Camilla Urso, with such true nervous grasp and accent. The middle movement seemed divine; and the finale, heralded by the brass _ff_, is so uncontainable and full of fire, so brilliant and impetuous, that it admits of being taken at the most rapid tempo. It is perhaps the most popular of all violin concertos.

All the great masters have written string quartets. The Quartet for two violins, viola and 'cello, corresponding to the four essential parts in harmony, each maintaining its individuality, yet each essential to the whole, is the quintessence of musical expression. Any imperfection betrays itself inevitably; all is exposed; there is nothing hidden under an orchestral coloring or vague passages of mere effect. The four voices are four persons. Not to speak of Haydn, father and founder of the race, the greatest models are those of Mozart and Beethoven. Those of Beethoven often seem like foreshadowings in outline of later phases in his larger grand creations. Those of Mendelssohn are less purely quartet-like. They have more of a singing quality,--a melody with an accompaniment,--and seem to seek orchestral development. The early one in E flat is of highly impassioned character, and might be distinguished as the _Quartet Pathetique_. It has a pathetic introductory _Adagio_, followed by a passionate _Allegro_; then a _Canzonetta_, a quaint minor strain in the spirit of some sad old _Volkslied_ or Ballad; then an _Andante_ of profoundest melancholy; then a bold finale, in 12-8, running in very rapid triplets. The three Quartets of Op. 44 are in a riper style. But the first begins with a swift and fiery _Allegro_, of which the theme is strikingly symphonic, and which has been well said to be not quartet-writing at all, but a melody with a bass and a mere filling-in of middle parts; not a conversation between four distinct individualities. The Mendelssohnian ardor, depth of feeling, yearning aspiration, with all his grace, facility, and clearness, pervade these quartets; but more perfect as quartets are his part-songs for mixed and for male voices. His last quartet, in F minor, written just after the death of his beloved sister Fanny, so soon before his own, has spontaneous unity in all its movements. It is said to have been written in forty-eight hours, in one close closeting with grief.

Of the two Quintets, that in A, of the juvenile period, is fresh, bright, full of life and charm, having a lovely _Andante Intermezzo_, and an elfin _Scherzo_. The much later one, in B flat, by the irrepressible and soaring impetus of its _Allegro vivace_,--challenge bravely answered in the _finale_,--by the sad ballad-like _Andante scherzando_ in D minor; and by its profoundly, grandly beautiful _Adagio_, is perhaps more popular and always welcomed with sincere delight.

There remains the Octet, written just before the Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not a double quartet, two quartets reinforcing or offsetting one another; but it is a conference of eight real parts, eight individualities. The _ensemble_, especially the fiery opening _Allegro_, has the richness and fullness of an organ's diapasons, and naturally abounds in contrapuntal imitation to keep eight such parts employed. It is laid out on the broad scale of a symphony, with great contrast between its several movements, especially between the airy-light, crisp _staccato_ of its _Scherzo_ (forerunner of the fairy overture) and the grand sweep and rush, like a freshet, of the _Presto_ finale. The work bears performance by all the strings of an orchestra, and is not seldom so presented.

We come now to his poetic, fascinating Concert Overtures, already ushered in by Shakespeare's fairy wand. Three of these date shortly after the Midsummer Night's Dream. The finest of them is the first, scored in Rome a year or two after his visit to the Hebrides, the outgrowth of an attempt to convey to his sister Fanny, in a piano sketch, his impressions of the "lonely island." The overture is often called "Fingal's Cave." It does not deal in literal description. It is not realistic. It is the feeling of the scene, subjectively conceived. The leading theme (B minor) suggests the dreamy reverie of one leaning over the water, absorbed in its commingling, fluctuating, mystic ebb and flow. The same poetic spirit sang the _Gondellieder_. In the strong answering motive you feel the wild force of the waves dashing on the rock-bound shores; loud calls give the sense of distance; you hear cries of sea-birds; while all bespeaks the watery atmosphere, the solemn silence and the mystic solitude of ocean.

Then came _Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt_,--a reproduction as Overture of two sea-pictures from two little poems of Goethe; the first conveying the sensation of a dead calm at sea; then the rising of a breeze, the boatswain's whistle, the setting of sails and swinging round of the huge, heavy hulk, the addressing itself to motion, making smooth, gallant headway (with ever and anon great, deep, mysterious sighs!) and entering port amid a triumphal blaze of trumpets. It is a wonderfully graphic and imaginative reproduction of the subjects. The instrumentation is as telling and artistic as the thematic working. The introduction of the piccolo and of the deep serpent and contrafagotto conveys a sense of illimitable height and depth.

The third, to "the Fair Melusina," Felix tells his sister, he wrote for an opera of Conradin Kreutzer's, based on Tieck's _Mährchen_, which he saw at a theatre. He disliked Kreutzer's music, especially the Overture, which was encored, and he resolved to write another "which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure." It is romantic music in the fullest sense. In the two contrasted themes,--the first (in F) watery, cool and rippling, tempting one beneath the waves,--the other (F minor) chivalric, heroic, proud, impatient,--he clearly had in view the princess Melusina (supposed to be a mermaid in the hours denied to her lord), and the brave knight who weds her. Schumann says it revives "those fables of the life deep down beneath the watery abyss." How bright and beautiful the mingling colors of the instruments! With what fine contrapuntal unity in variety the imitation and development proceeds!

More to the humor of to-day, perhaps, is his much later powerfully dramatic Overture to _Ruy Blas_. It is exciting, with bold contrasts, fraught with impending tragic crises, clear, strong, concise, and very effectively instrumented. Not so great as Beethoven's _Coriolanus_ overture, it is his nearest approach to that, and shows that Mendelssohn was capable of something more impassioned, concentrated, fateful, than dreams of fairyland, breathings of sentiment and reproductions of romance.

Now for his Symphonies. First, his greatest, in A minor, which is supposed to owe its inspiration to his recollections of Scotland. In its wild, tender, melancholy melody and coloring, its romantic, breezy, sea-shore character, it has affinity with the _Hebrides_ overture. How deep and tender the introductory _Andante con Moto_, 3-4! And how charmingly the kindred _Allegro_ melody, 6-8, sets out from it and runs so smoothly and so rapidly, most of the way in octaves between the first violins and low clarinet tones! How it winds in and out among the instruments, now quiet and individual, now borne along upon the swelling, roaring tide of the whole orchestra! How it keeps its sweet, sad, minor mood, relieved only by one little bit of sunshiny major! Then, after the repeat, what wild, strange, sea-shore modulations, the cool, mysterious thrill of ocean and the Infinite! And when again those shuddering modulations cross the smooth mirror, the excitement swells to a furious climax, and all the strings rush up and down the chromatic scale with a tremendous vehemence; and it all dies down again, till only flutes and reeds are left streaming in the air, sliding leisurely down tone by tone, and leading back to the _Andante_. Compare this exciting climax with one correspondingly placed in the seventh symphony of Beethoven; if it has not that Promethean fire that could defy Olympus, is it feeble in comparison?

In the _Scherzo_ the scene shifts to sunny playfulness. Vividly the laughing theme leaps out from voice after voice; the instruments seem to speak, as Schumann says, like men. What hurrying, huddling gleesomeness in the accompaniments, like the tiny waves that crowd up round the spot where the fountain's column falls! In hushed _staccato_ the strings whisper a new motive, which is taken up by all and developed, with fragments of the laughing theme; and there seems to be a pointed allusion, fond and playful, to a characteristic of Scotch melody, in that emphatic mocking of the cadence of a minor third! It floats sportively away, in the violins, against a skyey background of oboe and horn tones, charming the soul away with it in pleased forgetfulness, when with a sudden revulsion of consciousness we are in the minor chord of D (like a great sob, escaping involuntarily), leading with solemn, stately measure and a sound of warning into the _Adagio_ in A, 2-4, a most lovely, deep and tender movement, in which the orchestra seems to sing a Psalm of Life.... Upon this bursts, like a flash of sunshine over the sombre water, the _Vivacissimo_, a most dashing, brilliant theme, pausing anon to let a more pensive melody of reeds be heard; but with rough, impatient vehemence the basses break off the episode, and the bacchic frenzy of the movement storms itself away again, until its force is spent, and the quiet naïve little reed theme gets another chance and runs fondling and chatting along in duet between bassoon and oboe, and the strain sinks to sleep as in the fairy overture. The short finale, in A major, is in kindred melody and rhythm with the first _Allegro_, but with a bold and swaggering carelessness of movement, as of a party breaking up and marching off from a glorious carouse, to the tune (at least its spirit) of "We won't go home till morning!"

After the immortal nine of Beethoven, there is no Symphony more perfect in form than this, of charm more enduring, although we have the great one of the "heavenly length" in C by Schubert, and such noble ones by Schumann. But Mendelssohn has the advantage over Schumann in point of instrumentation and of general clearness (the importance of clearness was a mooted point between the two friends and mutual admirers).

Even more enjoyable in some respects is the "Italian" Symphony in A. It was written earlier than the so-called third, the "Scotch," and is commonly numbered the fourth. Both were well advanced before he left Rome. Its movements are finely contrasted. After the fresh, sunshiny, buoyant _Allegro_, calling up the blue, blue sky and boundless green of Italy,--brought out all the more vividly by the pensive Mendelssohnian subjectivity of the low-running _staccato_ of the violins which sets in right after the announcement of the bright first theme,--how impressive is the sombre, solemn, antique-sounding, steady chant of reeds in the _Andante_, with the soft, warm gush of mingling flutes above! It is like passing from Italian noon-day into the rich gloom of some old church. The tranquil, blissful melody of the _Minuet_ flows on in limpid, peaceful beauty; and the mellow horn Trio makes a delicious episode. In the _Saltarello_ we feel the rush and whirl of Carnival, not without a dash of Mendelssohnian melancholy. The passage from that into the yet wilder _Tarantella_, with its whirling triplets, indicates the very _abandon_ and delirium of excitement, whereas the former, by the hitch in the alternate triplet, denotes a dance in which the dancer still keeps some control upon himself.

The "Reformation Symphony" (No. 5) dates back almost to his juvenile period. It was written at the age of twenty-two. With the exception of one bright gem, the _Scherzo_, it seems to labor under the proverbial fatality of _occasional_ works. As a Symphony it is exceptional in form, consisting really of only two parts, with a refreshing interlude between. The first part, in which the idea of the Old, the frowning Catholic faith, predominates, includes the _Allegro_ with its short _Andante_ prelude. The second part, the triumph of the New, with its curious variations on the Lutheran Choral, "_Ein' feste Burg_," has likewise its short _Andante_ prelude, whose rather feeble prayer for peace it answers. Suppose a curtain dropped between the two parts, while for interlude and recreation we are vouchsafed that happy _Scherzo_.--But it is hardly fair to count this early effort into his symphonic period, any more than the Symphony "No. 1," in C minor, which bears date 1824.

From Symphony to Oratorio we have a noble bridge in the Symphony-Cantata "_Lobgesang_" or "Hymn of Praise." It is of later date, to be sure, than the oratorio _St. Paul_, and was composed to celebrate the invention of the art of printing, and to lend _éclat_ to the inauguration of the statue of Guttenberg, at Leipsic, June 25, 1840. Many regard it as the most felicitous and most inspiring of his larger works, although prompted by an "occasion"! Praise and gratitude to God for LIGHT; the waiting and longing for it through the long darkness of the middle ages; then the break of day; the free career and joy of a redeemed humanity; and first and last and everywhere the Praise of God: such were the themes and promptings of Mendelssohn's heart and genius when he composed the _Lobgesang_. The three orchestral movements which prepare the chorus are essentially symphonic. From the first trombone proclamation of the pregnant choral motive, through the rapidly unfolding, fiery, complex _Allegro_; through the sweet, sad (almost over-sweet) tune (as of "the heart musing, while the fire burns," yet with a slight flutter) of the middle movement, _Allegretto_, and its alternations with the cheery, choral-like full chords of the wind; to the last deep-drawn sigh of the rich, soulful _Adagio_, it is pure symphony, all leading up to the superb outburst of the irrepressible chorus of Praise. Thenceforth we breathe the mountain air of oratorio. The work is too familiar to require description. Enough to note the innate strong dramatic tendency of Mendelssohn, as shown in the middle point and climax of the work, the thrilling scene beginning with the anxious Tenor recitative; "Watchman, will the night soon pass?" with fitful, wild accompaniment; the startling Soprano answer: "The night is departing," flooding all with instant light; and then the blazing outburst of full chorus, taking up the words in an exciting fugue.--It is surely an inspired, a master-work, both instrumentally and vocally.

Of his two great Oratorios proper,--the greatest certainly since Handel,--the one most esteemed among musicians is the earliest, _St. Paul_, produced in 1836. It shows the influence of Bach throughout, in the frequency of narrative recitative; in the use made of the Lutheran Choral; in the introduction of turbulent Jewish people's choruses (_turbae_); and in a generally dramatic conception and shaping of the whole. It stands between a Bach _Passion_, and the more epical Handel Oratorio. Depth of religious feeling and great dignity of style pervade the entire composition. The music is contrapuntal, never dry and pedantic. The overture is of quite a different character from his concert overtures; it is a solemn, contrapuntal, sacred prelude, with the old-school profundity, yet genial and interesting enough to serve as a good concert piece by itself. The orchestral resources throughout are carefully husbanded, after the way of Mendelssohn, to the great gain of true and clear effect, affording room for great variety of coloring. He relies on the intrinsic strength of his ideas, rather than on a noisy over-fulness of instrumentation.

The choruses range from grand, uplifting ones to others very lovely and tender; others mob-like and vindictive, like "Stone him to death"; again others of a vivid local coloring, like those in which the Gentile crowd worship Paul and Barnabas, "O be gracious, ye Immortals," etc., full of light-hearted, sensuous Greek adoration, of "oxen and garlands" and ear-tickling flutes. The arias are characteristic, heartfelt, deeply pious melodies. _St. Paul_ is the oratorio which is most sure to gain, at every hearing, on a serious and truly music-loving listener.

_Elijah_, most popular of oratorios (after the _Messiah_), and most familiar, requires even less comment. Description or analysis would bore. The subject began to occupy his mind in 1838. It was finished for the Birmingham Festival of 1846, where, himself conducting, it was received with utmost enthusiasm. Yet it did not satisfy himself, and he at once set about revising and polishing. This was but a year before his death. When he returned to England for the last time to conduct it, the Prince Consort addressed him as another Elijah "faithful to the worship of true Art, though surrounded by the idolators of Baal." In greatness and variety of poetic and imaginative design, in wealth of musical ideas, in ripeness of consummate musicianship, in sure calculation of effects, it is a full expression of the composer's genius. It abounds in numbers which captivate alike refined and simple listeners. It betrays the dramatic element in the opening picture of the drought relieved and culminating in the wonderful "Rain" chorus; in the episode of the Widow who has lost her son; in the scene between the Prophet and the wicked Queen; in the Baal choruses, secular, impatient, boastful, impotently clamoring for miracle; in the sweet soliloquy and meditation of Elijah in the wilderness; in his ascension in the fiery chariot; and more or less in all the great choruses, all very graphic. Then what lovely restful choruses, like "He watching over Israel," followed by the perfect Angel Trio: "Lift thine eyes"! And arias full of meaning and of exhortation, like the soprano "Hear ye, Israel," in composing which, beginning with the high F sharp, his mind was haunted by that note as he had heard it in the voice of Jenny Lind!

Judging from the few fragments published, his unfinished oratorio _Christus_ would have been his greatest sacred composition. From the first part, the Birth of Christ, we have the Trio of the Magi, teeming with wonder and anticipation; then the chorus: "There shall a star come forth," which has a sweet, pure, star-like beauty, ending with the choral: "_Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern!_" From the second part, or Passion, the tenor narratives, the accusing choruses before Pilate, terribly dramatic, especially the multitudinous echoes of "Crucify him," and the inexorable pronunciamento: "We have a sacred Law," bring him into still closer affinity with Bach; and even more so the exquisitely plaintive weeping chorus at the end.

Much might be said of his one Catholic work, the _Lauda Sion_, composed in 1846 for the feast of Corpus Christi at Liège, very beautiful in spite of the dry dogmatic Latin text, strange text for him! Much, too, of the three Motets for female voices; of the Hymn: "Hear my Prayer," with its soaring, bird-like soprano solo: "O for the wings of a dove!" of his masculine, strong settings of eight or ten of the Psalms, mostly for chorus with orchestra, with their Old Testament flavor; and of numerous smaller sacred compositions.

Of course so sensitive a nature, subject to many moods, quick to take impressions and to turn them into music, was prolific in songs with piano accompaniment. From his earliest composing days, at intervals throughout his life, he produced sets of _Lieder_ and duets, to the number of ninety or more. They are all musical, refined, full of feeling, some of them strikingly original; but before the few great ones of Beethoven, the numberless songs of Schubert, those of Schumann, and above all Robert Franz, they retreat into the shade. Yet they have been favorites in musical homes and concert rooms, especially in England, where they introduced the love of German song, tempting many feeble imitators, while awakening there some worthier responses from the kindred spirit, Sterndale Bennett.

More truly original, with more marrow in them, and more of the enduring quality, are his four-part songs, both for mixed and for male voices. These have been the staple and the best material on which the Liedertafeln all over Germany, and the part-song clubs of England and America have built. After more pretentious, ingenious, sensational part-songs of later origin, it is always refreshing to hear one of them; for they are sincere music, thoroughly artistic, with heart and soul and poetry in them. With them we may mention several larger pieces for male chorus, such as he composed to Schiller's Ode "To the Artists," with accompaniment of brass. The exhortation of the music is worthy of the poem; male choirs feel well when they lift their voices in a strain so manly and so edifying.