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Overview
Brown discusses Mendelssohn’s family background and education; the role of religion and race in his life and reputation; his experiences as practical musician (pianist, organist, string player, conductor) and as teacher and composer; the critical reception of his works; and the vicissitudes of his posthumous reputation. The book also includes a range of hitherto unpublished sketches made by Mendelssohn. The result is an unprecedented portrayal of the man and his achievements as viewed through his own words and those of his contempories.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300127867 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Clive Brown, professor of applied musicology at the University of Leeds, is a professional violinist and author of Classical and Romantic Performing Practice, 1750–1900.
Read an Excerpt
A Portrait of Mendelssohn
By Clive Brown
Yale University Press
Copyright © 2003 Yale UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-300-09539-2
Chapter One
The ManI * Appearance and Manner
In the opinion of most of Mendelssohn's contemporaries, none of his portraits succeeded in conveying the mercurial qualities that so frequently made his features fascinating and arresting. The impression he made on observers was strongly conditioned by his relationship to the observer and by his state of mind. One of his closest English musical friends, William Sterndale Bennett, recalled "that Mendelssohn's personal appearance was often insignificant, not such as would attract passers-by in the street-but that, at other times, he had the appearance of an angel." Subjective reactions could range from Thackeray's reported comment, "His face is the most beautiful face I ever saw, like what I imagine our Saviour's to have been," to Wagner's doubtless spiteful recollection, "I saw him after his marriage, and he looked so fat, so unpleasant-an unsavoury fellow!"
The inadequacy of all Mendelssohn's portraits was insisted upon by his English friend, the journalist Henry Fothergill Chorley, who remarked: "Nature had gifted her favourite with one of the brightest and most expressive countenances ever bestowed on Genius. Those who have seen its expression at once brighten and deepen as he sat 'making music' (his own phrase), or watched its wonderful play in society will bear us out, in saying that the best portrait extant is meagre and pedantic as a likeness." And Elise Polko, who often sang under his baton between 1840 and 1847, observed: "I have never hitherto seen any portrait (the one by Hildebrandt I have unfortunately never met with) that represents that artistic head as it lives in my memory; there is something effeminate and sentimental in all the Mendelssohn portraits, which were certainly not the attributes of the living head. A marvellously executed little ivory relief, a profile in the possession of a musical friend of the deceased master, Knaur's statuette, and the large bust alone are exempt from this character, and therefore bear more affinity to the image in my memory."
Mendelssohn's appearance and manner as a child seem to have elicited almost as much attention as his musical gifts. The composer and conductor Julius Benedict recalled his meeting Mendelssohn for the first time in May 1821: "I shall never forget ... that beautiful youth, with his auburn hair clustering in ringlets round his shoulders, the look of his brilliant clear eyes, and the smile of innocence and candour on his lips;" and he later told the American writer Bayard Taylor that the boy "was a picture of almost supernatural beauty." Eduard Devrient, subsequently one of Mendelssohn's closest friends, remembered encountering him at a musical party at about the same time, where "he took his place amongst the grown-up people, in his child's dress-a tight-fitting jacket, cut very low at the neck, and over which the wide trousers were buttoned; into the slanting pockets of these the little fellow liked to thrust his hands, rocking his curly head from side to side, and shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. With half-closed eyelids, beneath which flashed his bright brown eyes, he would almost defiantly, and with a slight lisp, jerk out his answers to the inquisitive and searching questions that people usually address to young prodigies." Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, writing to his friend Goethe on 26 October 1821, described his pupil more objectively, and with typical succinctness, as "good and pretty, lively and obedient."
With maturity Mendelssohn apparently lost none of his physical attractiveness. At twenty he was, according to Devrient,
Of middle height, slender frame, and of uncommon muscle power, a capital gymnast, swimmer, walker, rider, and dancer.... His features, of the Oriental type, were handsome; a high, thoughtful forehead, much depressed at the temples; large, expressive dark eyes, with drooping lids, and a peculiar veiled glance through the lashes; this, however, sometimes flashed distrust or anger, sometimes happy dreaming and expectancy. His nose was arched and of delicate form, still more so the mouth, with its short upper and full under lip, which was slightly protruded and hid his teeth, when, with a slight lisp, he pronounced the hissing consonants. An extreme mobility about his mouth betrayed every emotion that passed within.
His bearing retained from his boyhood the slight rocking of the head and upper part of the body, and shifting from foot to foot; his head was much thrown back, especially when playing; it was always easy to see whether he was pleased or otherwise when any new music was going on, by his nods and shakes of the head. In society his manners were even then felt to be distinguished. The shyness that he still retained left him entirely during his subsequent travels, but even now, when he wished to propitiate, he could be most fascinating, and his attentions to young ladies were not without effect.
In youth Mendelssohn evidently took greater care of his appearance than in later years, for when he visited Frankfurt in the autumn of 1827, his boyhood friend the composer Ferdinand Hiller recalled that "his figure had become broad and full, and there was a general air of smartness about him, with none of that careless ease which he sometimes adopted in later life." Devrient's statement about Mendelssohn's loss of shyness during his travels between 1829 and 1832 is corroborated by the Belgian journalist Franccois-Joseph Fetis, who first met him in 1829; writing in 1838, Fetis recalled: "In 1834, I found him again at Aix la Chappelle, where he had gone for the Easter musical festival. He was then twenty-five; his former youthful shyness had given way to the assurance of an established artist, and even to a certain air of haughtiness."
The contrast between Mendelssohn's slight build and his athleticism was commented on by many. The American musician and journalist Richard Storrs Willis, for instance, noted in the 1840s that he was "a man of small frame, delicate and fragile looking; yet possessing a sinewy elasticity, and a power of endurance which you would hardly suppose possible." He retained, in particular, a love of swimming and hiking. In 1837, shortly after his marriage, he almost lost his life when he suffered a cramp while bathing in the Rhine; but the experience did not deter him, for a couple of weeks later his bride, Cecile, recorded in her diary, "Felix went to bathe today just like every other day." Despite well-corroborated reports of physical strain in 1847, Mendelssohn retained his bodily vigor until his final illness; his close friend and colleague Ferdinand David stated that in Switzerland during that summer "he walked uninterruptedly for several days at a time in the mountains and came back to the house very sunburned and exhausted."
Descriptions from the early 1840s emphasize a number of prominent characteristics. Queen Victoria remarked in her diary, after meeting him on 16 June 1842: "He is short, dark, and Jewish looking-delicate, with a fine intellectual forehead." Around the same time Elise Polko, a young girl already predisposed to hero-worship, also saw him for the first time. She recalled that "his grandly modelled head was at once impressed on my memory.... His hair was black and curling, the forehead of the highest order of intellectual beauty, the nose somewhat bent, the lips well chiselled, the shape of the face oval, the eyes irresistible, brilliant and spiritual. His slender figure, scarcely attaining to middle size, seemed to increase in height and become imposing as he stood at his director's desk. His hands were of remarkable beauty."
Many descriptions referred to the arresting effect of his eyes. George Grove, in his Dictionary of Music and Musicians, summarizing information gathered from those who knew him, reported that his most striking feature was "the large dark-brown eyes. When at rest he often lowered the eyelids as if he were slightly short-sighted-which indeed he was; but when animated they gave an extraordinary brightness and fire to his face and 'were as expressive a pair of eyes as were ever set in a human being's head.' They could also sparkle with rage like a tiger's. When he was playing extempore, or was otherwise much excited, they would dilate and become nearly twice their ordinary size, the brown pupil changing to a vivid black." Willis recalled: "His eye possessed a peculiarity which has been ascribed to the eye of Sir Walter Scott,-a ray of light seemed often to proceed from its pupil to your own, as from a star. But yet, in the eyes of Mendelssohn, there was none of that rapt dreaminess so often seen among men of genius in art. The gaze was rather external than internal: the eye had more outwardness than inwardness of expression."
Mendelssohn's eyes also impressed another American writer, Bayard Taylor, who left an evocative account after encountering him in Frankfurt during the winter of 1844 to 1845. "As we pushed through the crowd," he wrote, "my eyes, which had been wandering idly over the picturesque faces and costumes around us, were suddenly arrested by the face of a man, a little distance in front, approaching us. His head was thrown back; and his eyes, large, dark, and of wonderful brilliancy, were fixed upon the western sky. Long, thin locks of black hair, with here and there a silver streak, fell across his ears. His beard, of two or three days' growth, and his cravat, loosely and awkwardly tied, added to the air of absorption, of self-forgetfulness, which marked his whole appearance. He made his way through the crowd mechanically, evidently but half conscious of its presence." Taylor also recorded a visit to Mendelssohn two days later and, in recalling the appearance of the composer on that occasion, was conscious of the similarity of his description to the fictional idealization of the composer in Elizabeth Sara Sheppard's 1853 novel Charles Auchester. A Memorial:
I sat thus, face to face with him, and again looked into those dark, lustrous, unfathomable eyes. They were black, but without the usual opaqueness of black eyes, shining, not with a surface light, but with a pure, serene, planetary flame. His brow, white and unwrinkled, was high and nobly arched, with great breadth at the temples, strongly resembling that of Poe. His nose had the Jewish prominence, without its usual coarseness: I remember, particularly, that the nostrils were as finely cut and flexible as an Arab's. The lips were thin and rather long, but with an expression of indescribable sweetness in their delicate curves. His face was a long oval in form; and the complexion pale but not pallid.... Those who have read the rhapsodical romance of Charles Auchester, wherein the character of Seraphael is meant to represent Mendelssohn, will find his personality transfigured by one of his adorers,-yet, having seen that noble head, those glorious eyes, I scarcely wonder at the author's extravagance.
The similarity of descriptions of Seraphael, in Sheppard's novel, to those of the real Mendelssohn is well illustrated by a passage in which Seraphael conducts a performance of Messiah: "He raised his eyes to the chorus and let them fall upon the band. Those piercing eyes recalled us.... He was slight, so slight that he seemed to have grown out of the air. He was young, so young that he could not have numbered twenty summers;-but the heights of eternity were foreshadowed in the forehead's marble dream. A strange transparency took the place of bloom upon that face of youth, as if from temperament too tender, or blood too rarefied; but the hair betrayed a wondrous strength, clustering in dark curls of excessive richness. The pointed fingers were pale, but they grasped the time-stick with an energy like naked nerve."
Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewsky, who as a pupil at the Leipzig Conservatorium knew Mendelssohn in the mid-1840s, also referred in particular to his eyes:
Mendelssohn had a slender, delicately formed figure. His dextrous and agile bodily movements were extraordinarily lively. These matched the facial expressions, which often changed suddenly. The dark eye blazed like lightning. It could just as quickly assume a friendly, benevolent and cheerful expression as a sharply penetrating one or a serious and thoughtful one. In the latter case he also blinked his eyes, with his glance directed at a particular person, which gave him a somewhat questioning look. The high, beautifully domed forehead was framed by black hair, which fell in curls to the sides and behind. The face that tapered towards his chin was bordered by thick sideboards. The moderately curved nose was of the Roman type and betrayed his oriental ancestry. The extremely finely formed mouth made a striking impression. When he opened it in conversation or laughter, two rows of dazzlingly white teeth could be seen. Everything combined in Mendelssohn to make his appearance as a whole attractive and charming. It is thus understandable that he was a highly beloved and admired personality, and all the more so because his intellectual qualities were irresistibly engaging.
In the last few years of his life Mendelssohn's features and bearing clearly showed signs of strain. This is evident from a number of accounts of his final visit to London. In November 1847, for instance, the English writer Sarah Austin, who had first met him in Berlin in the mid-1820s, described his appearance at a Philharmonic concert the previous April, playing Beethoven's G Major Piano Concerto "with all the playful grace, the ease, and conscious mastery that communicated their peculiar charms to the performance"; but she continued, "such was the promising aspect in which Dr. Mendelssohn appeared in the lighted evening concert-room to his admiring audience. By daylight, and in closer contiguity, the spectator was struck by a certain appearance of premature age which his countenance exhibited; he seemed already to have outstretched the natural term of his existence by at least ten years. No one, judging by the lines in his face, would have guessed his age to be thirty-nine only. The disproportion between his actual age and the character of his face was es-pecially noticed at the morning 'Homage to Mendelssohn,' performed in Harley Street by the Beethoven Quartet Society. Here he was gay and animated, and played delightfully; but, to the surprise of close observers he was no longer a young man."
Continues...
Excerpted from A Portrait of Mendelssohn by Clive Brown Copyright © 2003 by Yale University. Excerpted by permission.
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