in his output.

Some of these compositions, together with several by Fanny were dispatched to Abraham in Paris. The father was particularly pleased with a fugue and wrote home: “I like it well; it is a great thing. I should not have expected him to set to work in such good earnest so soon, for such a fugue requires reflection and perseverance”. He was perturbed over his daughter’s composing, though he appreciated her talent. It was well enough, he declared, for Felix to take up music as a profession but Fanny must bear in mind that a woman’s place is in the home. As a warning example he points to the sad end of Madame Bigot, who busied herself professionally with music and now is dead of consumption!

Mendelssohn at the age of eleven.
Sketch by an unknown artist.

In 1821 there took place in Berlin an event which stirred the musical world of Germany to its depths—the first performance of Weber’s “Der Freischütz”. The composer, who supervised the rehearsals, was generally accompanied by his young friend and pupil, Julius Benedict. One day while escorting his master to the theatre, Benedict noticed a boy of about eleven or twelve running toward them with gestures of hearty greeting. “’Tis Felix Mendelssohn!” exclaimed Weber delightedly, and he at once introduced the lad to Benedict, who had heard of the remarkable talents of the little musician even before coming to Berlin. “I shall never forget the impression of that day on beholding that beautiful youth, with the auburn hair clustering in ringlets round his shoulders, the look of his brilliant, clear eyes and the smile of innocence and candour on his lips”, wrote Benedict much later in his “Sketch of the Life and Works of the late Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy”. Felix wanted the pair to visit the Mendelssohn home at once, but as Weber was expected at the opera house he asked Benedict to go in his stead. “Felix took me by the hand and made me run a race till we reached his house. Up he went briskly to the drawing-room where, finding his mother, he exclaimed: ‘Here is a pupil of Weber’s, who knows a great deal of his music of the new opera. Pray, mamma, ask him to play it for us’; and so, with an irresistible impetuosity, he pushed me to the pianoforte and made me remain there until I had exhausted all the store of my recollections”.

A more spectacular event in Felix’s young life was his first visit to Goethe, in Weimar, the same year. It was Zelter who, anxious to acquaint the poet with his prodigious young pupil, had engineered the meeting. Felix had never gone anywhere without his parents and the family was not a little concerned about this expedition. He was plied with no end of advice before setting out, told how to behave at table, how to eat, how to talk, how to listen. “When you are with Goethe, I advise you to open your eyes and ears wide”, admonished Fanny; “and after you come home, if you can’t repeat every word that fell from his mouth, I will have nothing more to do with you!” His mother, for her part, wrote to Aunt Henrietta (the celebrated family spinster, “Tante Jette”): “Just fancy that the little wretch is to have the good luck of going to Weimar with Zelter for a short time. You can imagine what it costs me to part from the dear child even for a few weeks. But I consider it such an advantage for him to be introduced to Goethe, to live under the same roof with him and receive the blessing of so great a man! I am also glad of this little journey as a change for him; for his impulsiveness sometimes makes him work harder than he ought to at his age.”

The Mendelssohns need not have worried. The old poet took the boy to his heart from the first. Nor was Felix remiss about communicating his impressions. “Now, stop and listen, all of you”, he writes home in an early missive which forms part of one of the finest series of letters any of the great composers has left posterity. “Today is Tuesday. On Saturday the Sun of Weimar, Goethe, arrived. We went to church in the morning and heard half of Handel’s 100th Psalm. After this I went to the ‘Elephant’, where I sketched the house of Lucas Cranach. Two hours afterwards, Professor Zelter came and said: ‘Goethe has come—the old gentleman’s come!’ and in a minute we were down the steps and in Goethe’s house. He was in the garden and was just coming around a corner. Isn’t it strange, dear father, that was exactly how you met him! He is very kind, but I don’t think any of the pictures are like him....

“Every morning I get a kiss from the author of ‘Faust’ and ‘Werther’ and every afternoon two kisses from my friend and father Goethe. Think of that! It does not strike me that his figure is imposing; he is not much taller than father; but his look, his language, his name—they are imposing. The amount of sound in his voice is wonderful and he can shout like ten thousand warriors. His hair is not yet white, his step is firm, his way of speaking mild....”

Felix made much music for the poet’s enjoyment. Every day he played him something of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or compositions of his own (he had even brought some of Fanny’s songs for Goethe’s daughter-in-law, who had a pretty voice). “Every afternoon”, wrote Felix, “Goethe opens the Streicher piano with the words: ‘I haven’t heard you at all today; make a little noise for me’; then he sits beside me and when I am finished (I usually improvise), I beg him for a kiss or else I just take it!” Once Felix played a Bach fugue and suffered a slip of memory. Nothing daunted he went on improvising at considering length. The poet noticed nothing! At other times he would sit by the window listening, the image of a Jupiter Tonans, his old eyes flashing. And when the boy finally left Weimar Goethe missed him sorely. “Since your departure”, he lamented, “my piano is silent. A solitary attempt to waken it to life was a failure. I hear, indeed, much talk about music but that is only a sorry diversion”. A certain classical symmetry and a halcyon beauty in the boy’s music and in his performances seem to have appealed to a deep-seated element of the poet’s nature. When some time afterwards Felix dedicated a quartet to him, Goethe accepted it with a letter of fulsome praise. Yet when poor Schubert about the same period sent him a number of his finest Goethe settings the Olympian did not even deign to acknowledge them!

Leah Mendelssohn, delighted with the letters Felix was writing from Weimar, proudly forwarded them to Aunt Jette, in Paris. “If God spare him”, replied that worthy person, “his letters will in long years to come create the deepest interest. Take care of them as of a holy relic; indeed, they are already sacred as the effusion of so pure and child-like a mind. You are a happy mother and you must thank Providence for giving you such a son. He is an artist in the highest sense, rare talents combined with the noblest, tenderest heart....” The good woman spoke prophetically! Not all of Mendelssohn’s letters have been preserved and some of them were withheld out of scruples which today are rather difficult to appreciate. Whether the anti-Semitic excesses of the Nazi regime spared those portions of the correspondence not previously given to the world is still unknown. Perhaps we shall never read it in all its inundating fullness. There were times in his short life when he wrote as many as thirty-five letters in one day! At any rate, those we have are precious.

It must not be imagined that Felix’s numerous boyhood compositions served student ends