Even a whiff of genius
J. G. Links
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: A LIFE IN LETTERS edited by Rudolph Elvers, translated by Craig Tomlinson
Cassell, £14.95, pp.334
hat sort of man was Mendelssohn? His grandfather was a distinguished Jewish philosopher (Mozart sententiously quoted his views on death to his own father). His father was a successful banker who mod- estly (but truly) said, 'I used to be my father's son: now I am my son's father'. His mother was a Jewish intellectual, a linguist and a musician. For various reasons, by no means only material or social, the young Mendelssohns were baptised and one of their mother's names, Bartholdy, was added to theirs. Felix was born in Berlin in 1809 and before he was 17 had composed the unforgettable octet, op.20, showing a complete mastery of stringed music. Six months later came the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream which trans- ports us to a world of magic every time we hear it. (I speak of non-musicians: musi- cians presumably know how it's done and can perhaps keep their feet on the ground.)
It is hard to avoid a comparison with Mozart at the same age. His father was a musical lackey in the service of an obscure prince-archbishop, his mother a coarse, barely literate hausfrau. Mozart himself, by diligent promotion on his father's part, had earned fame as a child-performer and had composed, according to Kochel, over 150 works, scarcely one of which would have been performed today if he had died at 17. We all know what became of him as a composer in the 17 years left to him. We also know a good deal of him as a man, thanks to the wonderful series of letters translated by Emily Anderson which I hope Macmillan have been able to keep in print.
If quantity were the test we should know even more of Mendelssohn, for he wrote and received thousands of letters during his short life (only four years longer than Mozart's). Moreover, a vast number of them have been published — Grove lists nearly 40 volumes, many translated into English. But he had far less to say. Unlike Mozart, who was only just beginning, Mendelssohn had no more masterpieces to write. Instead of having to seek patronage in order to support himself, he set off on a six-year Bildungsreise intended, in his own words, to enable him to decide where he wanted to live and to make known his name and capabilities. Money was no problem; he travelled with a letter of credit for £500 while he was in England (twice as much as Mozart earned in his most success- ful years) and wherever he went there were bankers instructed by his father to look after him. This did not deter him from pursuing a career as a serious musician and the success he achieved was undoubtedly well deserved. By the time he was 26 he became director of the Leipzig Gewand- haus, the best orchestra in Germany, where he was well paid for six months' work, leaving the rest of the year for travel and other engagements. Wherever he went he was welcomed, particularly in England which he loved, wrote most of his best letters from, and visited ten times. He married happily and had five children. Only when he accepted an appointment in Berlin under the King of Prussia did things seem to go no longer entirely his way and he soon returned to Leipzig with his
family. Then his sister Fanny died from a nosebleed (or perhaps the cure for it). Mendelssohn tried to recover from the blow in Switzerland but returned to Berlin where the sight of his sister's room, left untouched in the old family house, upset him so much that he resigned from the Gewandhaus and was soon dead himself.
Why was his early promise so unfulfilled, as it certainly was, despite his many enjoy- able compositions and his great service to the cause of music (not least in introducing Bach to the Germans)? The answer, if one exists, will not be found in this book which in no sense justifies its title of 'A Life in Letters'. Indeed, one cannot help wonder- ing what gap it is intended to fill. The introduction suggests, in a rather foggily translated passage, that many of the letters are published for the first time but there is no indication as to which these may be. The editor admits that some of Mendels- sohn's letters are 'difficult to interpret, in that only the addressee would have been able to understand them'. This being the case, generous linking passages and foot- notes are called for (nobody has to read footnotes if they do not want to) but explanations are instead kept to the mini- mum. An index provides a one-word de- scription of those mentioned and for Men- delssohn's 'Life' the reader must rely on a chronology recording the barest facts, few of them referred to in the letters. Some- times Mendelssohn refers to previous let- ters which have not been included as when, on 18 June, 1831, he writes to his father, 'You think that in Naples something or other happened to me that I am keeping from you, but this is truly not the case. The reasons for my displeasure there are pre- cisely those which I gave you in my last letter from Rome, and none other . . • But the 'last letter from Rome' is dated 15 February, before he had been to Naples, and to make something of the passage we have to turn to one of the 19th-century editions of the travel letters. Having done so we find an extremely interesting com- parison between Naples, then 'a great European city, more lively and varied, and more cosmopolitan' than Rome with its monotony, 'of one uniform hue, melancho- ly, and solitary' but which Mendelssohn loved 'infinitely better'. Finally, the reader should be warned that, although printed in Great Britain, the book is an American translation where suspenders hold uP trousers rather than socks, '5.3.' means 3, May, not 5 March, and Liszt 'concertizes in Leipzig. Is there then nothing good to be said about the book? There is quite Mendelssohn went everywhere, knew. everybody in the musical world, and had everything except genius (for a moment he even had a whiff of that). He was by no means a dull man, although he wrote too much. The reader who is prepared to be his own editor may find his efforts well re- warded. a lot'
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