Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/190

 328 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS devote ms son to a musical career. And, indeed, on listening to the pieces whici 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 Ber- lin. Passing over the intermediate years with a simple reference to the " Meeres- stille," " 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 Philhar- monic Concerts, conducting his C minor Symphony, which he dedicated to the Philharmonic Society, they in their turn electing him one of their honorary mem- bers ; 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 Ambassa- dor'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 pos- sessed. 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 compari- son 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 tercente- nary festival of the " Augsburg Confession " in the following June. This sym- phony, with which Mendelssohn was not entirely satisfied, was only once per- formed 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 Dusseldorf, by which the entire musical arrangements of the town, church, theatre, and singing societies were put under his care, Immermann, the celebrated