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.
[Illustration: MENDELSSOHN'S FATHER.
Abraham Mendelssohn--from a pencil drawing made by his son-in-law William
Hensel.]
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.
[Illustration: MENDELSSOHN'S MOTHER.