Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/291

MENDELSSOHN. campaign 'the most troublesome and vexatious' he had ever known; 'nineteen concerts since Jan. 1, and seven more to come, with at least three rehearsals a week all through.' The amount of general business and correspondence, due to the constant rise in his fame and position, was also alarmingly on the increase. In a letter to his mother, Jan. 25, he tells of 35 letters written in two days, and of other severe demands on his time, temper, and judgment. And when we remember what his letters often are—the large quarto sheet of 'Bath paper,' covered at least on three sides, often over the flaps of the fourth, the close straight lines, the regular, extraordinarily neat writing, the air of accuracy and precision that pervades the whole down to the careful signature and the tiny seal—we shall not wonder that with all this, added to the Berlin worries, he composed little or nothing. 'I have neither read nor written in the course of this music-mad winter,' says he, and accordingly, with one exception, we find no composition with a date earlier than the latter part of April 1841. The exception was a pianoforte duet in A, which he wrote expressly to play with his friend Madame Schumann, at her concert on March 31. It is dated Leipzig, March 23, 1841, and was published after his death as op. 92. As the pressure lessens, however, and the summer advances, he breaks out with some songs, with and without words, and then with the '17 Serious Variations ' (June 4), going on, as his way was, in the same rut, with the variations in E&#x266d; (June 25) and in B&#x266d;. It was known before he left Leipzig that it was his intention to accept the Berlin post for a year only, and therefore it seemed natural that the 'Auf Wiedersehen' in his Volkslied, 'Es ist bestimmt,' should be rapturously cheered when sung by Schröder-Devrient to his own accompaniment, and that when serenaded at his departure with the same song he should himself join heartily in its closing words. He took his farewell, as we have said, with a performance of Bach's Passion, in St. Thomas's church, on Palm Sunday, April 4, and the appointment of Kapellmeister to the King of Saxony followed him to Berlin.

For some time after his arrival there matters did not look promising. But he had bound himself for a year. Many conferences were held, at which little was done but to irritate him. He handed in his plan for the Musical Academy, received the title of Kapellmeister to the King of Prussia, the life in the lovely garden at the Leipziger Strasse reasserted its old power over him, and his hope and spirits gradually returned. He was back in Leipzig for a few weeks in July, as we find from his letters, and from an Organ prelude in C minor, a perfectly strict composition of 38 bars, written 'this morning' (July 9), on purpose for the album of Mr. Dibdin of Edinburgh. He then began work in Berlin. The King's desire was to revive some of the ancient Greek tragedies. He communicated his idea to Tieck, the poet, one of the new Directors; the choice fell on the Antigone of Sophocles, in Donner's new translation; and by Sept. 9 Mendelssohn was in consultation with Tieck on the subject. He was greatly interested with the plan, and with the novel task of setting a Greek drama, and worked at it with the greatest enthusiasm. By the 28th of the same month he had made up his mind on the questions of unison, melodrama, etc. The first full stage rehearsal took place on the 22nd, and the performance itself at the Neue Palais at Potsdam on the 28th Oct., with a repetition on Nov. 6. Meantime he had taken a house of his own opposite the family residence. A temporary arrangement had been made for the Gewandhaus Concerts of this winter to be conducted by David, and they began for the season on that footing. Mendelssohn however ran over for a short time, after the second performance of Antigone, and conducted two of the series, and the concert for the benefit of the orchestra, returning to Berlin for Christmas.

On Jan. 10, 1842, he began a series of concerts by command of the king, with a performance of St. Paul in the concert-room of the theatre; but, if we may believe Devrient, there was no cordial understanding between him and the band; the Berlin audiences were cold, and he was uncomfortable. 'A prophet hath no honour in his own country.' It must, however, have been satisfactory to see the hold which his Antigone was taking both in Leipzig and Berlin, in each of which it was played over and over again to crowded houses. During the winter he completed the Scotch Symphony, which is dated Jan. 20, 1842. His sister's Sunday concerts were extraordinarily brilliant this season, on account not only of the music performed, but of the very distinguished persons who frequented them; Cornelius, Thorwaldsen, Ernst (a constant visitor), Pasta, Madame Ungher-Sabatier, Liszt, Böckh, Lepsius, Mrs. Austin, are specimens of the various kinds of people who were attracted, partly no doubt by the music and the pleasant réunion, partly by the fact that Mendelssohn was there. He made his escape to his beloved Leipzig for the production of the Scotch Symphony, on March 3, but though it was repeated a week later, he appears to have returned to Berlin. He once more, and for the last time, directed the Düsseldorf Festival, on May 15–17; and passing on to London, for his seventh visit, with his wife, conducted his Scotch Symphony at the Philharmonic, amid extraordinary applause and enthusiasm, on June 13, and played his D minor Concerto there on the 27th, and conducted the Hebrides, which was encored. The Philharmonic season wound up with a fish dinner at Greenwich, given him by the directors. On the 12th he revisited St. Peter's, Cornhill. It was Sunday, and as he came in the congregation were singing