London, visited Berlin, and was asked to give Felix music-lessons.
This is the testimony of Moscheles, an excellent and kind-hearted man,
and a thoroughly skilled musician, after spending nearly every day for
six weeks with the family: "It is a family such as I have never known
before; Felix, a mature artist, and yet but fifteen; Fanny,
extraordinarily gifted, playing Bach's fugues by heart and with
astonishing correctness--in fact, a thorough musician. The parents
give me the impression of people of the highest cultivation;" and on
the subject of lessons he says: "Felix has no need of lessons; if he
wishes to take a hint from me as to anything new, he can easily do
so." But it is very pleasant to find Mendelssohn afterward referring
to these lessons as having urged him on to enthusiasm, and, in the
days in London when his own fame had far outstripped that of the older
musician, acknowledging himself as "Moscheles's pupil." The elder
Mendelssohn was by no means carried away by the applause which the
boy's playing and compositions had gained, and in 1825 he took his son
to Paris to obtain Cherubini's opinion as to his musical abilities,
with a view to the choice of a profession; for he had by no means made
up his mind that Felix should spend his whole life as a musician.
However, the surly old Florentine, who was not always civil or
appreciative of budding genius (_teste_ Berlioz), gave a decidedly
favorable judgment on the compositions submitted to him, and urged
the father to devote his son to a musical career. And, indeed, on
listening to the pieces which were dated this year, especially a
beautiful quartet in B minor, an octet for strings, the music to an
opera in two acts, "Camacho's Wedding," and numerous pianoforte
pieces, it is difficult to realize that the composer was then only
sixteen years of age, or that anyone could question the artistic
vocation that claimed him. But the next year a work was written, the
score of which is marked "Berlin, August 6, 1826," when it must be
remembered that he was seventeen years of age, which of itself was
sufficient to rank him among the immortals--the overture to the
"Midsummer Night's Dream." Full of lovely imaginings, with a wonderful
fairy grace all its own, and a bewitching beauty, revealing not only
the soul of the true poet, but also the musician profoundly skilled in
all the art of orchestral effect, it is hard to believe that it is the
work of a boy under twenty, written in the bright summer days of 1826,
in his father's garden at Berlin.
Passing over the intermediate years with a simple reference to the
"Meeresstille," "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage," which was then
composed, and a fine performance of Bach's "Passion Music," for which
he had been long drilling the members of the Berlin Singakademie, the
next event is a visit to England in 1829, where he was received with
extraordinary warmth, playing at the Philharmonic Concerts, conducting
his C minor Symphony, which he dedicated to the Philharmonic Society,
they in their turn electing him one of their honorary members; going
to dinners, balls, and the House of Commons, and enjoying himself most
hugely. His letters from England at this time are brimming over with
fun and graphic description; there is one especially amusing, in which
he describes himself with two friends going home from a late dinner at
the German Ambassador's, and on the way buying three German sausages,
going down a quiet street to devour them, with all the while joyous
laughter and snatches of part songs. There is also a little incident
of this time showing the wonderful memory he possessed. After a
concert on "Midsummer Night," when the "Midsummer Night's Dream" had
very appropriately been played, it was found that the score had been
lost in a hackney-coach as the party were returning to Mr. Attwood's.
"Never mind," said Mendelssohn, "I will make another," which he did,
and on comparison with the separate parts not a single difference was
found in it.
At the beginning of December he was at home again, and that winter he
wrote the "Reformation Symphony," intended to be produced at the
tercentenary festival of the "Augsburg Confession" in the following
June. This symphony, with which Mendelssohn was not entirely
satisfied, was only once performed during his lifetime, but since his
death it has frequently been performed, and though not one of his most
perfect works, is recognized as a noble monument in honor of a great
event. The next spring he again set out on his travels, this time
southward to Italy.
In 1833 Mendelssohn accepted an official post offered him by the
authorities of Duesseldorf, by which the entire musical arrangements of
the town, church, theatre, and singing societies were put under his
care. Immermann, the celebrated poet, being associated with him in the
direction of the theatre. Things, however, did not go on very smoothly
there. Mendelssohn found all the many worries of theatrical
management--the engagement of singers and musicians, the dissensions
to be arranged, the many tastes to be conciliated--too irksome, and he
did not long retain this appointment; but the life among his friends
at Duesseldorf was most delightful, and the letters written at this
time are exceedingly lively and gay. It was here that he received the
commission from the Caecilia-Verein of Frankfort for, and commenced,
his grand oratorio "St. Paul." The words for this, as also for the
"Elijah" and "Hymn of Praise" afterward, he selected himself with the
help of his friend Schubung, and they are entirely from the Bible--as
he said, "The Bible is always the best of all." Circumstances
prevented the oratorio being then produced at Frankfort, and the first
public performance took place at the Lower Rhine Festival at
Duesseldorf, in May, 1836.
But his visits to Frankfort had a very important result in another
way. Mendelssohn there met Mademoiselle Cecile Jeanrenaud, the
daughter of a pastor of the French Reformed Church, and, though he had
frequently indulged in the admiration of beautiful and clever
women--which is allowable, and indeed an absolute necessity for a
poet!--now for the first time he fell furiously in plain unmistakable
and downright love. But it is more characteristic of the staid Teuton
than the impulsive musician, that before plighting his troth to her he
went away for a month's bathing at Scheveningen, in Holland, for the
purpose of testing the strength of his affection by this absence. On
his return, finding his amatory pulse still beating satisfactorily, he
proposed to the young lady, and, as it must be presumed that she had
already made up her own mind without any testing, he was accepted. On
March 28, 1837, they were married, and the wedded life that then began
was one of pure, unclouded happiness to the very end. Cecile
Mendelssohn was a beautiful, gentle-hearted, and loving wife, just the
one to give a weary and nervous artist in the home-life, with herself
and the children near him, the blessed solace of rest and calm that he
so needed. It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor,
and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cecile
was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose
mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with features of
striking beauty and delicacy; her hair was between brown and gold, but
the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant
roses of her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke
little, and never with animation, in a low, soft voice. Shakespeare's
words, "My gracious silence," applied to her no less than to the wife
of Coriolanus."
After giving up his official position at Duesseldorf, in 1835,
Mendelssohn was invited to become the conductor of the now famous
Gewandhaus concerts at Leipsic, a post which he gladly accepted, and
which, retained by him for many years, was to be one of the greatest
delights of his artistic life. Not only was he loved and appreciated
in Leipsic--far more than in Berlin, his own city--but he had here an
opportunity of assisting many composers and _virtuosi_, who otherwise
would have sought in vain for a hearing. Thus, after Liszt, when
visiting the town, had been first of all received with great coldness,
owing to the usual prices of admission to the concerts having been
raised, Mendelssohn set everything straight by having a soiree in his
honor at the Gewandhaus, where there were three hundred and fifty
people, orchestra, chorus, punch, pastry, Meeresstille Psalm, Bach's
Triple Concerto, choruses from St. Paul, Fantasia on Lucia, the Erl
King, the Devil and his Grandmother, the latter probably a mild
satirical reference to Liszt's stormy and often incoherent playing. It
is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz
there, as told in the "Memoirs" of the latter, spending ungrudgingly
long days in aiding in rehearsals for his "Romeo et Juliette," though
Mendelssohn never sympathized much with Berlioz's eccentric muse.
The "Lobgesang," or "Hymn of Praise," a "symphonie-cantata," as he
called it, was his next great work, composed in 1840, together with
other music, at the request of the Leipsic Town-Council, for a
festival held in that town in commemoration of the invention of
printing, on June 25th. None who have heard this work can forget the
first impression produced when the grand instrumental movements with
which it commences are merged in the majestic chorus, "All men, all
things, praise ye the Lord," or the intensely dramatic effect of the
repeated tenor cry, "Watchman, will the night soon pass?" answered at
last by the clear soprano message of glad tidings, "The night is
departing, the day is at hand!" This "watchman" episode was added some
time afterward, and, as he told a friend, was suggested to the
composer during the weary hours of a long sleepless night, when the
words, "Will the night soon pass?" again and again seemed to be
repeated to him. But a greater work even than this was now in
progress; the "Elijah" had been begun.
In 1841 began a troublesome and harassing connection with Berlin, a
city where, except in his home life, Mendelssohn never seems to have
been very fortunate. At the urgent entreaty of the king, he went to
reside there as head of the new Musical Academy. But disagreements
arose, and he did not long take an active part in the management. The
king, however, was very anxious to retain his services, and a sort of
general office seems to have been created for him, the duties of which
were to supply music for any dramatic works which the king took it
into his head to have so embellished. And, though it is to this that
we owe the noble "Antigone," "Oedipus," "Athalie," "Midsummer Night's
Dream," and other music, this work to dictation was very worrying, and
one cannot think without impatience of the annoyances to which he was
subjected. The king could not understand why he shrank from writing
music to the choruses of AEschylus's "Eumenides." Other composers would
do it by the yard, why not he?
Passing rapidly over the intervening years filled with busy work, both
in composition and as one of the principals of a newly started
Conservatorium in Leipsic, we come to 1846, when his great work
"Elijah" was at last completed and performed. On August 26th, at the
Birmingham Festival, the performance went splendidly. Staudigl took
the part of the prophet, and a young tenor, Lockey, sang the air,
"Then shall the righteous," in the last part, as Mendelssohn says, "so
very beautifully, that I was obliged to collect myself to prevent my
being overcome, and to enable me to beat time steadily." Rarely,
indeed, has a composer so truly realized his own conception as
Mendelssohn did in the great tone-picture which he drew of the Prophet
of Carmel and the wilderness.
"I figured to myself," he says, "Elijah as a grand, mighty prophet,
such as might again reappear in our own day, energetic and zealous,
stern, wrathful, and gloomy, a striking contrast to the court
myrmidons and popular rabble--in fact, in opposition to the whole
world, and yet borne on angel's wings!" Nothing can be finer than
this, with that exquisite touch in the last words, "_in opposition to
the whole world, and yet borne on angel's wings_."
After returning to Germany he was soon busily employed in recasting
some portions of "Elijah" with which he was not satisfied; he had also
another oratorio on even a grander scale, "Christus," already
commenced; and at last, after all his life-long seeking in vain for a
good libretto for an opera, he had begun to set one written by Geibel,
the German poet, "Loreley," to music. But his friends now noticed how
worn and weary he used oftentimes to look, and how strangely irritable
he frequently was, and there can hardly be a doubt that some form of
the cerebral disease from which his father and several of his
relations had died, was already, deep-seated and obscure, disquieting
him. The sudden announcement of the death of his sister, Fanny Hensel,
herself a musical genius, to whom he was very fondly attached, on his
return to Frankfort from his last visit to England in May, 1847,
terribly affected him. He fell to the ground with a loud shriek, and
it was long before he recovered consciousness.
Indeed, it may be said that he never really recovered from this shock.
In the summer he went with his wife and children, and in company with
his brother Paul and his family, on a tour in Switzerland, where he
hoped that complete idleness as regards music, life in the open air,
sketching, and intercourse with chosen friends, might once more give
strength to his enfeebled nerves. And for a time the beauty of the
mountains and the lakes seemed to bring him rest, and again he began
to work at his oratorio "Christus;" but still his friends continued
anxious about him. He looked broken down and aged, a constant
agitation seemed to possess him, and the least thing would often
strangely affect and upset him.
In September he returned to Leipsic; he was then more cheerful, and
able to talk about music and to write, although he could not resume
the conductorship of the Gewandhaus concerts. He again had projects in
view. Jenny Lind was to sing in his "Elijah," at Vienna, whither he
would go and conduct, and he was about to publish some new songs. One
day in October he went to call upon his friend, Madame Frege, a gifted
lady who, he said, sang his songs better than anyone else, to consult
her about some new songs. She sang them over to him several times, and
then, as it was getting dark, she went out of the room for a few
minutes to order lights. When she returned he was lying on the sofa,
shivering with cold, and in agonizing pain. Leeches were applied, and
he partially recovered; but another attack followed, and this was the
last.
FRANZ LISZT
By Rev. HUGH R. HAWEIS, M.A.
(1811-1886)
[Illustration: Liszt.]
Franz Liszt was born in 1811. He had the hot Hungarian blood of his
father, the fervid German spirit of his mother, and he inherited the
lofty independence, with none of the class prejudices, of the old
Hungarian nobility from which he sprang. Liszt's father, Adam, earned
a modest livelihood as agent and accountant in the house of Count
Esterhazy. In that great musical family, inseparably associated with
the names of Haydn and Schubert, Adam Liszt had frequent opportunities
of meeting distinguished musicians. The prince's private band had
risen to public fame under the instruction of the venerable Haydn
himself. The Liszts, father and son, often went to Eisenstadt, where
the count lived; there they rubbed elbows with Cherubini and Hummel, a
pupil of Mozart.
Franz took to music from his earliest childhood. When about five years
old he was asked what he would like to do. "Learn the piano," said the
little fellow. Soon afterward his father asked him what he would like
to be; the child pointed to a print of Beethoven hanging on the wall,
and said, "Like him." Long before his feet could reach the pedals or
his fingers stretch an octave, the boy spent all his spare time
strumming, making what he called "clangs," chords and modulations. He
mastered scales and exercises without difficulty.
Czerny at once took to Liszt, but refused to take anything for his
instruction. Salieri was also fascinated, and instructed him in
harmony; and fortunate it was that Liszt began his course under two
strict mentors. He soon began to resent Czerny's method--thought he
knew better and needed not those dry studies of Clementi and that
irksome fingering by rule--he could finger anything in a half-a-dozen
different ways. There was a moment when it seemed that master and
pupil would have to part, but timely concessions to genius paved the
way to dutiful submission, and years afterward the great master
dedicated to the rigid disciplinarian of his boyhood his "Vingt-quatre
Grandes Etudes" in affectionate remembrance.
Such a light as Liszt's could not be long hid; all Vienna, in 1822,
was talking of the wonderful boy. "_Est deus in nobis_," wrote the
papers, profanely. The "little Hercules," the "young giant," the boy
"virtuoso from the clouds," were among the epithets coined to
celebrate his marvellous renderings of Hummel's "Concerto in A," and a
free "Fantasia" of his own. The Vienna Concert Hall was crowded to
hear him, and the other illustrious artists--then, as indeed they have
been ever since forced to do wherever Liszt appeared--effaced
themselves with as good a grace as they could.
It is a remarkable tribute to the generous nature as well as to the
consummate ability of Liszt, that, while opposing partisans have
fought bitterly over him--Thalbergites, Herzites, Mendelssohnites
_versus_ Lisztites--yet few of the great artists who have, one after
another, had to yield to him in popularity have denied to him their
admiration, while most of them have given him their friendship.
Liszt early wooed, and early won Vienna. He spoke ever of his dear
Viennese, and their resounding city. A concert tour on his way to
Paris brought him before the critical public of Stuttgart and Munich.
Hummel, an old man, and Moscheles, then in his prime, heard him and
declared that his playing was equal to theirs. But Liszt was bent upon
completing his studies in the celebrated school of the French capital,
and at the feet of the old musical dictator, Cherubini. The Erards,
who were destined to owe so much to Liszt, and to whom Liszt
throughout his career owed so much, at once provided him with a
magnificent piano; but Cherubini put in force a certain by-law of the
Conservatoire excluding foreigners, and excluded Franz Liszt.
This was a bitter pill to the eager student. He hardly knew how little
he required such patronage. In a very short time "_le petit Liszt_"
was the great Paris sensation. The old _noblesse_ tried to spoil him
with flattery, the Duchesse de Berri drugged him with bonbons, the
Duke of Orleans called him the "little Mozart." He gave private
concerts, at which Herz, Moscheles, Lafont, and De Beriot, assisted.
Rossini would sit by his side at the piano, and applaud. He was a
"miracle." The company never tired of extolling his "nerve, fougue et
originalite," while the ladies who petted and caressed him after each
performance, were delighted at his simple and graceful carriage, the
elegance of his language, and the perfect breeding and propriety of
his demeanor.
He was only twelve when he played for the first time at the Italian
Opera, and one of those singular incidents which remind one of
Paganini's triumphs occurred. At the close of a _bravura cadenza_, the
band forgot to come in, so absorbed were the musicians in watching the
young prodigy. Their failure was worth a dozen successes to Liszt. The
ball of the marvellous was fairly set rolling. Gall, the inventor of
phrenology, took a cast of the little Liszt's skull; Talma, the
tragedian, embraced him openly with effusion; and the misanthropic
Marquis de Noailles became his mentor, and initiated him into the art
of painting.
In 1824 Liszt, then thirteen years old, came with his father to
England; his mother returned to Austria. He went down to Windsor to
see George IV., who was delighted with him, and Liszt, speaking of him
to me, said: "I was very young at the time, but I remember the king
very well--a fine, pompous-looking gentleman." George IV. went to
Drury Lane on purpose to hear the boy, and commanded an encore. Liszt
was also heard in the theatre at Manchester, and in several private
houses.
On his return to France, people noticed a change in him. He was now
fourteen, grave, serious, often pre-occupied, already a little tired
of praise, and excessively tired of being called "le petit Liszt." His
vision began to take a wider sweep. The relation between art and
religion exercised him. His mind was naturally devout. Thomas a Kempis
was his constant companion. "Rejoice in nothing but a good deed;"
"Through labor to rest, through combat to victory;" "The glory which
men give and take is transitory," these and like phrases were already
deeply engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart. Amid all his
glowing triumphs he was developing a curious disinclination to appear
in public; he seemed to yearn for solitude and meditation.
In 1827 he again hurried to England for a short time, but his father's
sudden illness drove them to Boulogne, where, in his forty-seventh
year, died Adam Liszt, leaving the young Franz for the first time in
his life, at the early age of sixteen, unprotected and alone. Rousing
himself from the bodily prostration and torpor of grief into which he
had been thrown by the death of his father, Franz, with admirable
energy and that high sense of honor which always distinguished him,
began to set his house in order. He called in all his debts, sold his
magnificent grand "Erard," and left Boulogne for Paris with a heavy
heart and a light pocket, but not owing a sou.
He sent for his mother, and for the next twelve years, 1828-1840, the
two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There, as a child, he had been a
nine days' wonder, but the solidity of his reputation was now destined
to go hand in hand with his stormy and interrupted mental and moral
development. Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once. No
drawing-room or concert-room success satisfied a heart for which the
world of human emotion seemed too small, and an intellect piercing
with intuitive intelligence into the "clear-obscure" depths of
religion and philosophy.
But Franz was young, and Franz was poor, and his mother had to be
supported. She was his first care. Systematically, he labored to put
by a sum which would assure her of a competency, and often with his
tender genial smile he would remind her of his own childish words,
"God will help me to repay you for all that you have done for me."
Still he labored, often woefully against the grain. "Poverty," he
writes, "that old mediator between man and evil, tore me from my
solitude devoted to meditation, and placed me before a public on whom
not only my own but my own mother's existence depended. Young and
over-strained, I suffered painfully under the contact with external
things which my vocation as a musician brought with it, and which
wounded me all the more intensely that my heart at this time was
filled entirely with the mystical feelings of love and religion."
[Illustration: Franz Liszt.]