Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Part 11

"Oh, a little!" answered Zelter indifferently.

The ladies insisted--they always had music when Zelter made them a visit.

"Come, make some noise and awaken the spirits that have so long lain slumbering!" ordered the old poet.

Zelter advanced to the piano and played a stiff, formal little tune of his own.

He arose and motioned to Felix.

"Play that!" said the teacher.

The child sat down, and with an impatient little gesture and half-smile at the audience, played the piece exactly as Zelter had played it, with a certain drawling style that was all Zelter's own. It was so funny that the listeners burst into shouts of laughter. But the boy instantly restored order by striking the ba.s.s a strong stroke with both hands, running the scale, and weaving that simple little air into the most curious variations.

For ten minutes he played, bringing in Zelter's little tune again and again, and then Zelter in a voice of pretended wrath cried, "Cease that tin-pan drumming and play something worth while."

Goethe arose, stroked the boy's pretty brown curls, kissed him on the forehead and said: "Yes, play something worth while. I know you two rogues--you have been practising on that piece for a year or more, and now you pretend to be improvising--I'll see whether you can play!"

And going to a portfolio he took out a ma.n.u.script piece of music written out in the fine, delicate hand of Mozart, and placed it on the music-rack of the piano. Felix played the piece as if it were his own; and then laying it aside, went back and played it through from memory.

Then piece after piece was brought out for him to play, and Zelter leaned back and by his manner said, "Oh, it is nothing!"

And certainly it was nothing to the boy--he played with such ease that his talent was quite unknown to himself. He had not yet discovered that every one could not produce music just as they could talk.

Goethe's admiration for the boy was unbounded. The two weeks of Mendelssohn's prescribed visit had expired and Goethe begged for an extension of two weeks more. Every evening there was the little impromptu concert. After that Felix paid various visits to Weimar.

Goethe's house was his home, and the affection between the old poet and the young musician was very gentle and very firm. "All souls are of one age," says Swedenborg. Goethe was seventy-three and Mendelssohn thirteen when they first met, but very soon they were as equals--boys together.

Goethe was a learner to the day of his pa.s.sing: he wanted to know. In the presence of those who had followed certain themes further than he had, he was as an eager, curious child. When Goethe was seventy-eight and Mendelssohn eighteen, they spent another month together; and a regular program of instruction was laid out. Each morning at precisely nine, they met for the poet's "music lesson," as Goethe called it, and the boy would play from some certain composer, showing the man's peculiar style, and the features that differentiated him from others.

Goethe himself has recorded in his correspondence that it was Felix Mendelssohn who taught him of Hengstenberg and Spontini, introduced him to Hegel's "aesthetics," and revealed to him for the first time the wonders of Beethoven.

Can you not close your eyes and see them--the mighty giant of fourscore, with his whitened locks, and the slight, slender, handsome boy?

The old man is seated in his armchair near the window that opens on the garden. The youth is at the piano and plays from time to time to ill.u.s.trate his thought, then turns and talks, and the old man nods in recognition. The boy sings and the old man chords in with a deep, mellow ba.s.s which the years have not subdued.

When there are others present these two may romp, joke and talk much--masking their hearts by frivolity--but together they sit in silence, or speak only in lowered voices as all true lovers always do.

Their conversation is spa.r.s.e and to the point; each is mindful of the dignity and worth that the other possesses: each recognizes the respect that is due to the mind that knows and the heart that feels. "All souls are of one age."

With one exception, Felix Mendelssohn was unlike all the great composers who lived before him--he was born in affluence; during his life all the money he could use was his. No struggle for recognition marked his growth. He never knew the pang of being misunderstood by the public he sought to serve. Whether these things were to his lasting disadvantage, as many aver, will forever remain a question of opinion.

Felix Mendelssohn was the culminating flower of a long line of exquisite culture. He was an orchid that does not reproduce itself. With him died the race. All that beauty of soul, vivacity, candor and sparkling gaiety, with the nerved-up capacity for work, were but the flaring up of life ere it goes out in the night of death. Such men never found either a race or a school. They are the comets that dash across the plane of our vision, obeying no orbit, leaving behind only a memory of blinding light.

The character of Mendelssohn was distinctly feminine, and it follows that his music should be played by men and not by women, otherwise we get a suggestion of softness and tameness that is apt to pall. Man, like Deity, creates in his own image.

Sorrow had never pierced the heart of this prosperous and very respectable person.

He was never guilty of indiscretion or excess, and no demon of discontent haunted his dreams.

In Mendelssohn's music we get no sense of t.i.tanic power such as we feel when "Wagner" is being played; no world problems vex us. The delicate, plaintive, spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with an insinuating gossamer touch, are not there. The brilliant extravaganzas of Liszt--pa.s.sages illumined by living lightning--are wholly wanting.

But in it all you feel the deep, measured pulse of a religious conviction that never halts nor doubts. There are grace, ease, beauty, sweetness and exquisite harmony everywhere. In the "Saint Paul," as in his other oratorios, are such arias for the contralto as, "But the Lord is mindful of His own"; for the ba.s.s, "G.o.d have mercy upon us," and for the tenor, "Be thou faithful unto death." These reveal pure and exalted melody of highest type. It uplifts but does not intoxicate. Spontaneity is sacrificed to perfection, and the lack of self-a.s.sertion allows us to keep our wits and admire sanely.

Heinrich Heine, the pagan Jew, once taunted Mendelssohn with being a Jew and yet conducting a "Pa.s.sion Play." The gibe was a home-thrust and a cruel one, since Mendelssohn had neither the wit nor the mental acuteness to avoid the pink of the man who was hated by Jew and Christian alike. Towards the exiled Heine, Mendelssohn had only a patronizing pity--"Why should any man offend the people in power?" he once asked.

Only the exiled can sympathize with the exile--only the downtrodden and the sore-oppressed understand the outcast. Golgotha never came to Mendelssohn, and this was at once his blessing and his misfortune.

And the grim fact still remains that world-poets have never been "respectable," and that the saviors of the world are usually crucified between thieves.

In life Mendelssohn received every token of approbation that men can pay to other men. For him wealth waited, kings uncovered, laurel bloomed and blossomed, and love crowned all. His popularity was greater than that of any other man of his time. He had no enemies, no detractors, no rivals--his pathway was literally and poetically strewn with roses. What more can any man desire? Lasting fame and a name that never dies?

Avaunt! but first know this, that immortality is reserved alone for those who have been despised and rejected of men.

Saintship is the exclusive possession of those who have either worn out, or never had, the capacity to sin.

Fortunately for Felix Mendelssohn he never had it--he was ever the bright, joyous, gracious, beautiful being that all his friends describe, and every one who met him was his friend thereafter. The character of "Seraphael" in the novel of "Charles Auchester," by Miss Sheppard, portrays Mendelssohn in a glowing, seraphic light. The book reveals the emotional qualities of a woman given over to her idol, and yet the man is Mendelssohn--he was equal to the best that could be said of him.

The weakness of Miss Sheppard's book lies in the fact that she is so true to life that we tire of the goodness and beauty, and long for a rogue to keep us company and break the pall of a sweetness that cloys.

The bitterest thing Mendelssohn ever said of a public performer was to describe a certain prima donna as acting like an "arrogant cook." All the good orchestra leaders are supposed to have fine fits of frenzy when they tear their hair in wrath at the discordant braying of careless players. But Mendelssohn never lost his temper. When his men played well, as soon as the piece was done he went among them shaking hands, congratulating and thanking them. This would have been a great stroke of policy in the eyes of a groundling, for the action never failed to catch the audience, and then the applause was uproarious. At such times Mendelssohn seemed to fail in knowing the applause was for him, and appeared as one half-dazed or embarra.s.sed, when suddenly remembering where he was, he would seize the nearest 'cello, violin or oboe, and drag the astonished man to the front to share the honors and bouquets.

If this was artistry it was of a high order and should be ranked as art.

I once heard Henry Irving make a speech at Harvard University, and shall never forget the tremor in his voice and the half-embarra.s.sment of his manner. What could have been more complimentary to college striplings?

And then, as usual, he looked helplessly about for Ellen Terry, and having located her, held out his hand toward her and led her to the front to receive the homage.

Tears filled my eyes. Was Irving's action art? Ods-bodkins! I never thought of it: I was hypnotized and all swallowed up in loving admiration for Sir Henry and the beautiful Lady Ellen.

Felix Mendelssohn was beloved by his players. First, because he never wrote parts that only seraphs of light could play. In this he was unlike Wagner, who could think such music as no bra.s.s, no wood nor strings could perform, and so was ever in torments of doubt and disappointment.

Second, he was always grateful when his players did the best they could.

Third, he was graciously polite, even at rehearsals. The extent of his inclination to rebuke was shown once when he abruptly rapped for silence, and when quiet came said to his orchestra: "I am sure that any one of the gentlemen present could write a symphony. I think, too, that you can all improve on the music of the past--even that of Beethoven.

But this afternoon we are playing Beethoven's music--will you oblige me?" And every man awoke to the necessity of putting the sweet, subtile, strong quality of the master into the work, instead of absent-mindedly sounding the note, fighting bluebottles, and taking care merely not to get off the key too much.

At the great Birmingham Festival several hundred ladies in the audience contrived at a given signal to shower the great conductor with bouquets.

And Mendelssohn, entering into the spirit of the fun, dexterously caught the blossoms and tossed them to his players, not even forgetting the triangles and the boys who played the kettledrums.

Bayard Taylor has described the l.u.s.trous brown eyes of Mendelssohn, that seemed to send rays of light into your own: "Such eyes are the possession of men who have seen heavenly visions. Genius shows itself in the eye. Those who looked into the eyes of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns or Lord Byron, always came away and told of it as an epoch in their lives. This was what I thought when I sat vis-a-vis with Felix Mendelssohn and looked into his eyes. I did not hear his voice, for I was too intent on gazing into the fathomless depths of those splendid eyes--eyes that mirrored infinity, eyes that had beheld celestial glory.

Little did I think then that in two years those eyes would close forever."

In a letter to Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn's s.e.x-quality is finely revealed, when he says that his friends are advising him to marry, and he is on the lookout for a wife.

Ye G.o.ds! there is something strangely creepy about the thought of a man going out in cold blood to seek a wife. Only two kinds of men search for a wife; one is the Turk, and the other is his ant.i.thesis, who is advised to marry for hygienic, prudential or sociologic reasons. John Ruskin was "advised" to marry and the matter was duly arranged for him. In a week he awoke to the hideousness of the condition. Six years elapsed before John Millais and Chief Justice Coleridge collaborated to set him free, but the cicatrix remained.

The great books are those the authors had to write to get rid of; the only immortal songs are those sung because the singers could not help it. The best-loved wife is the woman who married because her lover had to marry her to get rid of her; the children that are born because they had to be are the ones that stock the race; and the love that can not help itself is the only love that uplifts and inspires.

Felix Mendelssohn, the slight, joyous, girlish youth, should have preserved his Cecilia-like virginity. He should have left marriage to those who were capable of nothing else; this would not have meant that he turn ascetic, for the ascetic is a voluptuary in disguise. He should simply have been married to his work. The wonder is, though, that once the thought of marriage was forced upon him, he did not marry a Hitt.i.te who delighted in pork-chops and tomato-sauce, ordered Guinness Stout in public places, and disciplined him as a genius should be disciplined.

Fate was kind, however, and the lady of his choice was nearly as esthetic in face and form, as gentle and spirituelle as himself. She never humiliated him by cackle, nor led him a merry chase after society's baubles. Her only wish was to please him and to do her wifely duty. They pooled their weaknesses, and it need not be stated that this, the only love in the life of Mendelssohn, made not the slightest impress on his art, save to subdue it. The pa.s.sing years brought domestic responsibilities, and the every-day trials of life chafed his soul, until the wasted body, grown tired before its time, refused to go on, and death set the spirit free.