orchestra. After the close of the London season he started
with Klingemann on a tour through Scotland, where he was
inspired with the first idea of his overture to The Isles of Fingal,
returning to Berlin at the end of November. Except for
an accident to his knee, which lamed him for some time, his
visit was highly successful and laid the foundation of many
friendships and prosperous negotiations.
The visit to England formed the first division of a great scheme of travel which his father wished him to extend to all the most important art centres in Europe. After refusing the offer of a professorship at Berlin, he started again, in May 1830, for Italy, pausing on his way at Weimar, where he spent a fortnight with Goethe, and reaching Rome, after many pleasant interruptions, on the 1st of November. No excitement prevented him from devoting a certain time every day to composition; but he lost no opportunity of studying either the countless treasures which form the chief glory of the great city or the manners and customs of modern Romans. He attended, with insatiable curiosity, the services in the Sistine Chapel; and his keen power of observation enabled him to throw much interesting light upon them. His letters on this subject, however, lose much of their value through his incapacity to comprehend the close relation existing between the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries and the ritual of the Roman Church. His Lutheran education kept him in ignorance even of the first principles of ordinary chanting; and it is amusing to find him describing as enormities peculiar to the papal choir customs familiar to every village singer in England, and as closely connected with the structure of the “Anglican chant” as with that of “Gregorian music.” Still, though he could not agree in all points with Baini, the greatest ecclesiastical musician then living, he shared his admiration for the Improperia, the Miserere, and the cantus planus of the Lamentationes and the Exultet, the musical beauty of which he could understand, apart from their ritual significance.
In passing through Munich on his return in October 1831 he composed and played his pianoforte concerto in G minor, and accepted a commission (never fulfilled) to compose an opera for the Munich theatre. Pausing for a time at Stuttgart, Frankfort and Düsseldorf he arrived in Paris in December, and passed four pleasant months in the renewal of acquaintances formed in 1825, and in close intercourse with Liszt and Chopin. On the 19th of February 1832 the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was played at the conservatoire, and many of his other compositions were brought before the public; but he did not escape disappointments with regard to some of them, especially the Reformation symphony, and the visit was brought to a premature close in March by an attack of cholera, from which, however, he rapidly recovered.
On the 23rd of April 1832 he was again in London, where he twice played his G minor concerto at the Philharmonic concerts, gave a performance on the organ at St Paul’s, and published his first book of Lieder ohne Worte. He returned to Berlin in July, and during the winter he gave public performances of his Reformation symphony, his concerto in G minor, and his Walpurgisnacht. In the following spring he paid a third visit to London for the purpose of conducting his Italian symphony, which was played for the first time, by the Philharmonic Society, on the 13th of May 1833. On the 26th of the same month he conducted the performances at the Lower Rhine festival at Düsseldorf with such brilliant effect that he was at once offered, and accepted, the appointment of general-music-director to the town, an office which included the management of the music in the principal churches, at the theatre, and at the rooms of two musical associations.
Before entering upon his new duties, Mendelssohn paid a fourth visit to London, with his father, returning to Düsseldorf on the 27th of September 1833. His influence produced an excellent effect upon the church music and in the concert-room; but his relations with the management of the theatre were not altogether pleasant; and it was probably this circumstance which first led him to forsake the cultivation of the opera for that of sacred music. At Düsseldorf he first designed his famous oratorio St Paul, in response to an application from the Cäcilien-Verein at Frankfort, composed his overture to Die schöne Melusine, and planned some other works of importance. He liked his appointment, and would probably have retained it much longer had he not been invited to undertake the permanent direction of the Gewandhaus concerts at Leipzig, and thus raised to the highest position attainable in the German musical world. To this new sphere of labour he removed in August 1835, opening the first concert at the Gewandhaus, on the 4th of October, with his overture Die Meeresstille, a work possessing great attractions, though by no means on a level with the Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Isles of Fingal, or Melusine.
Mendelssohn’s reception in Leipzig was most enthusiastic; and under their new director the Gewandhaus concerts prospered exceedingly. Meanwhile St Paul steadily progressed, and was first produced, with triumphant success, at the Lower Rhine festival at Düsseldorf, on the 22nd of May 1836. On the 3rd of October it was first sung in English, at Liverpool, under the direction of Sir George Smart; and on the 16th of March 1837 Mendelssohn again directed it at Leipzig.
The next great event in Mendelssohn’s life was his happy marriage, on the 28th of March 1837, to Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud. The honeymoon was scarcely over before he was again summoned to England to conduct St Paul, at the Birmingham festival, on the 20th of September. During this visit he played on the organ at St Paul’s and at Christ Church, Newgate Street, with an effect which exercised a lasting influence upon English organists. It was here also that he first contemplated the production of his second oratorio, Elijah.
Passing over the composition of the Lobgesang in 1840, a sixth visit to England in the same year, and his inauguration of a scheme for the erection of a monument to Sebastian Bach, we find Mendelssohn in 1841 recalled to Berlin by the king of Prussia, with the title of Kapellmeister. Though his appointment resulted in the production of Antigone, Oedipus Coloneus, Athalie, the incidental music to the Midsummer Night’s Dream, and other great works, it proved an endless source of vexation, and certainly helped to shorten the composer’s life. In 1842 he came to England for the seventh time, accompanied by his wife, conducted his Scotch symphony at the Philharmonic, again played the organ at St Peter’s, Cornhill, and Christ Church, Newgate Street, and was received with honour by the queen and the prince consort. He did not, however, permit his new engagements to interfere with the direction of the Gewandhaus concerts; and in 1843 he founded in Leipzig the great conservatoire which soon became the best musical college in Europe, opening it on the 3rd of April in the buildings of the Gewandhaus. In 1844 he conducted six of the Philharmonic concerts in London, producing his new Midsummer Night’s Dream music, and playing Beethoven’s pianoforte concerto in G with extraordinary effect. He returned to his duties at Berlin in September, but succeeded in persuading the king to free him from his most onerous engagements.
After a brief residence in Frankfort, Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig in September 1845, resuming his old duties at the Gewandhaus, and teaching regularly in the conservatoire. Here he remained, with little interruption, during the winter—introducing his friend Jenny Lind, then at the height of her popularity, to the critical frequenters of the Gewandhaus, and steadily working at Elijah, the first performance of which he conducted at the Birmingham festival, on the 26th of August 1846. The reception of this great work was enthusiastic. Unhappily, the excitement attendant upon its production, added to the irritating effect of the worries at Berlin, made a serious inroad upon the composer’s health. On his return to Leipzig he worked on as usual, but it was clear that his health was seriously impaired. In 1847 he visited England for the tenth and last time, to conduct four performances of Elijah at Exeter Hall, on the 16th, 23rd, 28th and 30th of April, one at Manchester on the 20th, and one at Birmingham on the 27th.
