put on a five years’ “probation” before she consented to give him her daughter’s hand!); and a household operetta for the approaching silver wedding of his parents. Klingemann wrote the libretto of this piece (“Heimkehr aus der Fremde”, which the critic Chorley in 1851 Englished as “Son and Stranger”). It contained special roles for Fanny, Rebecka, Devrient and Hensel—the last-named limited to one incessantly repeated note, because he was so desperately unmusical.

Hebrides, August 7, 1829.

... in order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there:

Felix returned to Berlin for the parental festivities. But Fanny’s wedding he missed, having injured his leg in a carriage accident and being laid up for two months. He might, had he chosen, have accepted a chair of music at the Berlin University in 1830, but he preferred to continue his travels. It seemed almost a matter of routine that he should stop off at Weimar to greet Goethe once more. He may or may not have suspected that he was never to see the poet again. Another friend he visited was Julius Schubring, rector of St. George’s Church in Dessau. Nürnberg, Munich, Salzburg, the Salzkammergut and Linz were stations on the way to Vienna, where his enjoyment was poisoned by the depressing level of musical life and the shocking popular neglect of masters like Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He made a side trip to nearby Pressburg to witness the coronation of the Austrian crown prince as King of Hungary. The most exciting incident of the day was the smashing of Mendelssohn’s high hat by a spectator whose view it obstructed!

Italy was another story. “The whole country had such a festive air”, he wrote in one of the first of those Italian letters which are among the gems of his correspondence, “that I seemed to feel as if I were myself a prince making his grand entry”. To be sure, there was not much music worth listening to and he was horrified by some of the things he heard in the churches. But there were the great masters of painting, there was the beauty of the countryside, the unnumbered attractions of Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, the fascination of Italian life and the charm of the Italian people. He heard the Holy Week musical services in the Sistine Chapel with works of Palestrina, Allegri and lesser men; wrote long and detailed letters to Zelter about the technical aspects of church singing in Rome, composed industriously, saw his boyhood playmate Julius Benedict and became acquainted with a wildly eccentric young French musician named Berlioz. On his way northward, in Milan, Felix met Beethoven’s friend, Dorothea von Ertmann; also, Karl Mozart, whom he delighted by playing some of his father’s music.

With his incredible dispatch he had managed to accomplish a great amount of creative work in Italy, despite his social and sight-seeing activities. He had finished a version of the “Hebrides” Overture, had made progress with his “Scotch” and “Italian” Symphonies, written a Psalm, several motets, the “First Walpurgis Night” (later recast), piano pieces, songs. Returning to Germany via Switzerland he stopped off in Munich and gave a benefit concert on Oct. 17, 1831. It was for this event that he composed his G minor Piano Concerto. In a letter to his father Felix referred to it, somewhat contemptuously, as “a thing rapidly thrown off”. It has been assumed that Mendelssohn may have had Paris in mind composing this concerto. At any rate, the first three months of 1832 found him once more in the French capital, where he made new musical acquaintances. One of these was the conductor, Habeneck; others, Chopin, Liszt, Ole Bull, Franchomme. Yet Mendelssohn found it difficult, even as he had earlier, to adjust himself to some musical insensibilities of Paris. He was appalled on one occasion to learn that his own Octet was given in a church at a funeral mass commemorating Beethoven. “I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd than a priest at the altar and my Scherzo going on”, he wrote his parents. Habeneck, who had him play at one of the Conservatoire concerts, wanted to produce at one of them the “Reformation” Symphony, which Felix had composed in 1830 for the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession. The performance never took place; the orchestra disliked the work, finding it “too learned, too much fugato, too little melody”.

Were these objections wholly unfounded? Irrespective of what passed in those days for excessive “learning” the “Reformation Symphony” is, in good truth, a stodgy work, far more willed than inspired. The most engaging thing in it is the citation in the first movement of that “Dresden Amen” formula, which half a century later Wagner was to employ in “Parsifal”. Strangely enough, some pages of the symphony sound like Schumann without the latter’s melodic invention. It is only just to point out that the composer himself came to detest it, declared it was the one work of his he would gladly burn and refused to permit its publication.

Zelter died not long after Goethe and the Singakademie found itself without a head. Mendelssohn seemed his old teacher’s logical successor and he would gladly have accepted the post. But many of the old ladies of the chorus did not take kindly to the idea of “singing under a Jewish boy”. When it came to a vote Felix was defeated by a large majority and one Karl Rungenhagen installed as Zelter’s successor. Rather tactlessly the Mendelssohns resigned their membership in a body. Felix’s popularity in Berlin was not improved by the situation, despite the family’s wealth and influence. He said little but the wound rankled, somewhat as happened earlier over Berlin’s rejection of “Camacho’s Wedding”.

The Cäcilienverein, of Frankfort, asked the composer to write an oratorio based on St. Paul. But if Mendelssohn was unable to oblige at once, the seed was planted and, in proper season, was to take root. Late in 1832 a different kind of offer came from another quarter. The Lower Rhine Festival was to be given in Düsseldorf the spring of 1833. Would Felix conduct it?

The Düsseldorf commission was accepted and as soon as preliminaries were arranged Felix was off to his “smoky nest” once more. He had now completed his “Italian” Symphony and placed it, along with his “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” and “Trumpet” Overtures at the disposal of the London Philharmonic. The Symphony was produced on May 13, 1833. To this day it remains one of the most translucent, gracious and limpid creations imaginable—“kid glove music”, as some have called it, but no less inspired for its gentility. Is it really Italian, despite the Neapolitan frenzy of its “Saltarello” finale? Is it not rather Grecian, like so much else in Mendelssohn’s art, with its incorruptible symmetry and its Mediterranean limpidezza? Where has Mendelssohn instrumented with more luminous clarity than in the first three movements? The second one, a kind of Pilgrims’ March, has none of the sentimentality which wearies in some of the composer’s adagios. The third, in its weaving grace is, one might say, Mendelssohnian in the loveliest sense.

“Mr. Felix”, as he was freely called, returned to Germany for the Düsseldorf festival, which began on May 26 (Whitsuntide), 1833. Abraham Mendelssohn came from Berlin to witness his son’s triumph. The Düsseldorf directorate was so pleased with