Mendelssohn SourcesAuthor(s): Eric WernerSource: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Mar., 1955), pp. 201-204Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/891939 .

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MENDELSSOHN SOURCES By ERIC WERNER

Nothing in life or art can be more deceptive than bland facades which by their smoothness suggest that "God's in His heaven-all's right with the world!" As in mystery stories the apparently perfect alibi, so in history the accentuated propriety is ipso facto suspect. This experience seems to hold true for personalities as well as for sources. An excellent case in point is the evaluation of Mozart as man and artist during the 19th century. The task of re-examining the sources and of debunking the myths created by Constanze Mozart and Rochlitz fell to various scholars of the 20th century.

A similar task seems to lie ahead in the case of Mendelssohn. While not quite in the same class as Mozart, so far as his stature as a composer is concerned, Mendelssohn too has been presented to subsequent gener- ations as the ideally suave and harmonious man and composer.

Let us first look at his opus. It has been published, allegedly in its entirety, as the "Collected Works," by a committee whose editor-in-chief was Mendelssohn's friend, Julius Rietz. Nowhere did Rietz render an account of the material he had at his disposal except in his list at the end of the Briefe (Vol. 2, 1863, pp. 516-520)-a list that the first edition of Grove already characterized as "both vague and incomplete." By the end of the 19th century, however, it was generally known that a number of rather unimportant works had not been published but re- mained in autograph among the musical manuscripts of Mendelssohn in the Berlin State Library. To my knowledge, only two scholars have taken pains to look into these compositions: Georg Schiinemann, who published an extensive study on the early operatic compositions of Felix in the Zeitschrift fur Musikwissenschaft (Vol. 5, 1923, pp. 506-545), and Rudolf Werner, in his book Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy als Kirchen- musiker, Frankfort, 1930. Since then, at least four major compositions have come to light: the "little" violin concerto, edited by Menuhin; two concertos for two pianos and orchestra, beautifully recorded for Vox by Orazio Frugoni, who had smuggled microfilms of these manuscripts out of the Berlin Library; and an 8-part Kyrie with orchestra, recently per- formed at Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, Mr. Donald Mintz, of Cornell Univer- sity, has been preparing a list of these unpublished compositions. They amount to almost 200, and some of them--especially the choral pieces- will certainly enhance the stature of Mendelssohn as a composer.

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The situation with respect to the documents concerning his personality appears in a similar light. A series of letters by Felix was published by his closest relatives (brother and son), and a biographical "source-work," the famous Die Familie Mendelssohn, was written by Felix's nephew, Sebastian Hensel. Thus the matrix was created from which most of the later memoirs or biographies are nothing but stereotypes.

Now, we know from bitter experience that biographies by close rela- tives are seldom trustworthy; and this experience certainly holds true in the case of Mendelssohn. It is not difficult to trace the reasons for the Mendelssohn myth. Hensel wrote in the preface to the first edition of Die Familie Mendelssohn:

"I should like to see this book viewed and read as the chronicle of a typical good German bourgeois family. A thorough revision of the original draft was indeed necessary. Not that there was anything to conceal; what I omitted was either of no interest to the public at large, or else so intimate and sacred (as e.g. the bridal letters of my mother), that I would or could not publish it. .-. . Though I fancied that I had exercised a severe censorship in admitting or excluding material, I found that still more must be done in this direction...."

"I was not permitted to avail myself of a rich collection of family letters addressed to Felix, containing a host of lovely and interesting details; thus a regrettable lacuna mars the book . . ."

While we may sympathize with the author's sentiments, we can also recognize the two types of omissions in his book. They are clearly out- lined by him. They are either due to self-censorship by the author or to censorship by other members of the family. In fairness to him we should bear in mind that the book was published at a time when Wagner's vicious attacks on Felix Mendelssohn (Judaism in Music) had reached a crest of popularity and were being parroted uncritically by most German writers. Indeed, Hensel had good reasons for omitting every line which might have cast doubt upon the character of "a typical good German bourgeois family."

Of the subsequent biographical crop, only three works deviate from the Henselian pattern. They are: the correspondence with Carl Klingemann, Felix' most intimate friend (Essen, 1909), Eduard Devrient's Erinnerun- gen an Mendelssohn (Leipzig, 1869), and A. B. Marx' Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1865). These works say little, however, about the more intimate family life of the Mendelssohns, which was, as the (suppressed) letters indicate, constantly beset by religious and social problems.

When this writer decided to re-examine the Mendelssohn sources, he soon came to realize that only a very few are accessible to the public. With two important exceptions they are all sheltered in private archives of members of the Mendelssohn family. The 44 green volumes of his musical autographs were deposited by his heirs in the Berlin State Library in 1877 under an agreement by which the German Government promised to

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establish two perpetual scholarships of 1500 marks per annum each, for the assistance of music students elected by competition from the German music schools. (The stipends were discontinued during the period of inflation following World War I and were never resumed; hence, legally speaking, the German Government would upon demand be obliged to return the volumes to Mendelssohn's legal heirs.) It was never quite easy to examine these volumes; now they have become even more difficult of access, as the Library is in the Russian Sector of Berlin.

Much more propitious is the situation concerning the personal papers of the master. Four great collections of them are known to this writer, of which three are accessible. I wish here to express my deep gratitude to many members of the Mendelssohn family for their gracious cooperation in the search for original documents-especially since it was the first time that an outsider has thus been favored. To Prof. Felix Gilbert, of Bryn Mawr College, Prof. Joachim Wach, of the University of Chicago, and his gracious sister Mme. Susie Heigl-Wach, Locarno, I am deeply indebted. I wish also to acknowledge the great benevolence of Miss Margaret Deneke, of Oxford. Without the active help of these persons the present and subsequent studies could not have been written. I am also grateful to my friend, Edward Waters, of the Library of Congress, who gave me valuable information about the Mendelssohn Collection in the Library of Congress, where it forms a part of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Founda- tion Collection.

The two largest and most important collections of family papers and letters are, at the present time, sheltered in Oxford and Locarno. The Oxford collection consists chiefly of the so-called "Green Books," a set of 21 folio volumes containing all letters of the family addressed to the composer. They afford a most detailed picture of the personal develop- ment of Felix, and give a wonderfully complete commentary upon his life and art.

Of the seven volumes of letters by Felix at present in Locarno, about a third has been published in the well-known Reisebriefe and Briefe 1832-47. It must be said again that these editions are absolutely unre- liable: doctoring of the text, omissions and "combinations" of passages from two or three letters into one are more the rule than the exception.

The more than 300 letters in the Library of Congress contain the entire correspondence between Mendelssohn and Julius Rietz, many letters to his publishers, and a few highly interesting letters from the circle around Zelter, Felix' teacher. Very significant among them is a letter to the publisher Buxton in London, wherein Mendelssohn recommends Schu- mann's Paradise and Peri in glowing terms. This letter alone should silence the old malicious lie that the friendship between Mendelssohn and Schumann was one-sided and that, deep in his heart, Felix despised Schumann. This falsehood has been effectively perpetuated by the Nazi musicologists, especially a Mr. B6ttger, the editor of the Schumann papers.

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A fourth large collection was, before 1939, in the possession of Prof. Georg Hensel, Fanny Mendelssohn's grandson. This writer was unable to establish its whereabouts. If the collection is still extant, it is bound to be somewhere in the Eastern Zone.

Aside from these major aggregations of Mendelssohn documents, three minor collections are known to be in the hands of descendants or relatives of the composer. Most of these consist of pictorial material (drawings or aquarelles by Mendelssohn), some of which are fully as lovely as his smaller musical compositions.

And now, the crucial question must be asked and honestly answered. Do all these papers and documents impart to us new aspects of the com- poser's work and personality, facets hitherto unknown? Such a question can be answered with an emphatic "Yes!" To be sure, the Felix Men- delssohn who emerges from these private and hitherto closely guarded letters is not the nice, merry, harmonious, debonair man depicted in most of the biographies. He appears rather as an autocratic, high-strung, irascible, extremely sensitive, proud, almost haughty personality; worst of all, he is possessed by an eternal restlessness. This particular quality was probably the result of his parents' stern upbringing, which did not permit the child one half-hour of idleness. There were also deeper psycho- logical reasons for this lasting discontent which cannot be discussed here. Certainly Felix Mendelssohn was not a man with "peace of mind"; nor did he consider this a desirable goal of life.

At the same time, his selfless generosity, captivating charm, warm feel- ing, impeccable integrity, and great noblesse shine radiantly forth from those old pages. Moreover, he was probably the least vain artist in history. Not the faintest trace of conceit, smugness, or even complacency can be found in these intimate letters. He appears as a human being of flesh and blood, not as a Sunday-school-book figure with a halo of "niceness." Many layers of legend, Victorian priggishness, and false tradition will have to be chipped away in order to retrieve the true contours of his image.

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