everything that Mendelssohn was asked to take charge “of all the public and private musical establishments of the town” for a period of three years. He was to have a three months’ leave of absence each summer. “One thing I especially like about Felix’s position is that, while so many have titles without an office he will have a real office without a title”, declared the father.

Meanwhile, the projected “St. Paul” oratorio was more and more filling its composer’s mind and probably a large part of it had already taken shape. As a matter of fact, he looked upon his appointment at Düsseldorf less as a lucrative engagement than as furnishing him an opportunity “for securing quiet and leisure for composition”. Still, he gave much attention to his duties, particularly those in connection with church music “for which no appropriate epithet exists for that hitherto given here”. In an evil hour he had lightly agreed to take charge of the activities at the theatre. It was not long before he regretted it. Felix was never made to cope with the intrigues and irritations of an opera house. On the opening night, at a performance of “Don Giovanni”, there was a riot in the theatre and the curtain had to be lowered four times before the middle of the first act. Associated with him was Karl Immermann, with whom he had previously negotiated about an opera book based on Shakespeare’s “Tempest”. In Düsseldorf their relations became strained and eventually Felix, in disgust, gave up his theatrical labours and the salary that went with them.

“St. Paul” was not so swiftly completed as the composer may have hoped from his Düsseldorf “leisure” (actually, it was finished only in 1836). But he could not, from a creative standpoint, have been called an idler. To the Düsseldorf period of 1833-34 belong the Overture “The Beautiful Melusine”, the “Rondo Brillant” in E flat, for piano and orchestra, the A minor Capriccio for piano, the concert aria, “Infelice”, a revision of the “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” Overture and not a little else. The “Melusine” is one of his most poetic and mellifluous inspirations, with its lovely “wave figure” based on the arpeggiated form of the F major chord and so intimately related to one of the Rhine motives in Wagner’s “Ring”. How Mendelssohn managed to accomplish so much without slighting in any way his social obligations, his watercolor painting, his excursions here and there is hard to grasp.

In good truth, the enormous productivity which his unremitting facility encouraged, his piano playing and conducting, his incessant travels were subtly undermining his system. The effects did not make themselves felt at once but they contributed, bit by bit, to a nervous irritation that grew on him. Whether or not he appreciated that he came from a stock which, though healthy, bore in itself the seeds of an early death he made no effort to spare himself and never hesitated to burn the candle at both ends. The Mendelssohns had delicate blood vessels, they were predisposed to apoplexy. Abraham may or may not have been forewarned when, on returning to Berlin from Düsseldorf with his wife and Felix, he fell ill at Cassel. For a time his sight had been failing and he was becoming an outright hypochondriac. The more difficult he grew the more intense was the filial devotion Felix lavished on him.

Early in 1835 the composer received from Dr. Conrad Schleinitz a communication which showed that his good fortunes were to remain constant. It was nothing less than an invitation to accept the post of conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was flattered but experience had made him canny. Before giving his reply he demanded categorical answers to a number of questions touching artistic and business matters. Everything was settled to his satisfaction and, with his parents, his sisters and their husbands, he returned to the Rhineland to conduct another Lower Rhine Festival, this time to be held in Cologne.

If there was one place which promised to provide as happy a home for Felix as London did it was Leipzig. The atmosphere of the town was a spiritual balm after the hectic life of Düsseldorf. Who shall say that it was not with symbolic intent that the newcomer led off his activities with his own “Calm Sea” Overture and Beethoven’s serene Fourth Symphony? And although Felix’s circle of musical friendships sometimes appeared boundless he now came into intimate contact with certain choice and master spirits of the age whom he might otherwise have known only casually. An early visitor at Mendelssohn’s new home was Chopin and in a letter to his parents in Berlin he writes of his pleasure in being able to associate once more with a thorough musician. One of those to whom Felix introduced Chopin was Clara Wieck, then only sixteen. On October 3—a historic date, as it proved—another stepped into the charmed circle, Robert Schumann, to whom Mendelssohn was to become a god. “Felix Meritis entered”, wrote Schumann describing in his best Florestan vein the first Gewandhaus concert. “In a moment a hundred hearts flew to him!”

Light-heartedly Felix accompanied his sister, Rebecka, and her husband on a trip to the family homestead in Berlin. There seemed to be even more gayety than usual and a greater amount of extempore music-making for the entertainment of the father. A short time after he had returned to Leipzig in great good humor he was shocked by the entrance of his brother-in-law, Hensel, with the news that Abraham Mendelssohn had died in his sleep on Nov. 19, 1835. The blow was heavy but Felix, once he regained control of himself, endured it with fortitude. Yet the loss of the father whom, to the last, he idolized marked the first great sorrow of his life. To Pastor Schubring he wrote: “The only thing now is to do one’s duty”. It sounds like a copy-book maxim but it was undoubtedly sincere. His specific “duty” in this case was to complete the still unfinished “St. Paul”, about which Abraham had been ceaselessly inquiring.

Logically the oratorio should have been given by the Cäcilienverein, in Frankfort, which had originally commissioned it. But Schelble, the director of the Society, was ill. So the premiere took place at the Düsseldorf Festival of 1836. Klingemann, who sent an account of it to the London “Musical News”, said that the performance was “glorious”, that he “had never heard such choral singing”. The composer himself was more restrained. “Many things gave me great pleasure, but on the whole I learned a great deal”. He had come to the conclusion that the work, like so many of his others, would benefit by a careful overhauling. And in due course he set about recasting and improving. He had grounds for satisfaction. If “St. Paul” does not reach some of the prouder dramatic heights of the later “Elijah” it is a woeful error to underrate it.

Mendelssohn felt he owed it to his old friend, Schelble, to take over the direction of the Cäcilienverein; so he cancelled a Swiss vacation he had planned and went to Frankfort. He hobnobbed with the Hiller family and with Rossini, who happened to be in Germany for a few days. But more important, he made the acquaintance of Cécile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud, daughter of a clergyman of the French Reformed Church. Cécile’s widowed mother was herself still so young and attractive that for a time people thought that she, rather than the 17 year-old girl, was the cause of Felix’s frequent visits. Fanny Hensel had latterly been urging her brother to marry, alarmed by his somewhat morbid state of mind. Cécile Jeanrenaud, according to Wilhelm Hensel, complemented Felix most harmoniously; still, “she was not conspicuously clever, witty, learned, profound or talented, though restful and refreshing”. Mendelssohn was not the man to let his