Mendelssohn and Certain Masterworks

In a measure he recovered. He went to Baden-Baden and later to Switzerland. He wrote letters, sketched and still composed. He greeted friends from England, he learned that London and Liverpool wanted new symphonies and cantatas. This time he did nothing about it. When he, finally, returned in September to Leipzig, he seemed to feel better, though Moscheles, meeting him, was frightened to see how he had aged and changed. On Oct. 9, while visiting his friend, the singer Livia Frege, in connection with some Lieder he planned to publish, he was seized with a chill. He hurried home and was put to bed, tortured by violent headaches. He had planned to go to Vienna late in the month to conduct “Elijah” with Jenny Lind as the soprano. Of this there could now be no question. On Nov. 3, 1847 he suffered another stroke and lay, it is claimed, unconscious, though Ferdinand David says that, till ten in the evening, “he screamed frightfully, then made noises as if he heard the sounds of drums and trumpets.... During the following day the pains seemed to cease, but his face was that of a dying man”. Some time between 9:15 and 9:30 in the evening he ceased to breathe. He was exactly three months short of 39 years old. Grouped about the bed were his wife, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz and Moscheles. “Through Fanny’s death our family was destroyed”, wrote Paul Mendelssohn to Klingemann; “through Felix’s, it is annihilated”! Leipzig was stunned by the news. “It is lovely weather here”, wrote a young English music student, “but an awful stillness prevails; we feel as if the king were dead....”

Posthumously, Mendelssohn’s fate seemed like a strange reversal of his supreme idol’s, Bach. Bach passed into long eclipse, then, largely through Mendelssohn’s heroic efforts, underwent a miracle of resurrection which has grown more overpowering clear down to our own time. Mendelssohn, almost preposterously famous at his death, was before very long pronounced outmoded, overrated, virtually negligible. The whole history of music scarcely shows a more violent backswing of the pendulum. To take pleasure in any but a handful of Mendelssohn’s works was for decades to lose caste, if not to invite ignominy. By 1910—just about the centenary of his birth—the low water-mark of derogation had been reached.

Now, a hundred years after his death, a most definite reaction is in progress. Is it not, rather, a salutary readjustment than a mere reaction? If Mendelssohn’s poorer works have not endured is it not better so? Struggle and suffering might, indeed, have lent a deeper undertone to his songs or enabled his adagios, in old Sir George Grove’s words, “to draw tears where now they only give a saddened pleasure. But let us take a man as we have him. Surely there is enough conflict and violence in life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy we can turn to others. It is well in these agitated modern days to be able to point to one perfectly balanced nature in whose life, whose letters and whose music alike all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may well forego for once the depths of misery and sorrow”.

And Grove’s words taken on an added poignancy precisely because they were not spoken of an epoch as grievous as our own!

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
by
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

Under the Direction of Bruno Walter

Barber—Symphony No. 1

Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolph Serkin, piano)

Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)

Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor

Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F Major

Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)

Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1

Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)

Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)

Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein)

Mozart—Cosi Fan Tutte—Overture

Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551

Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major

Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)

Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)

Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)

Bizet—Symphony in C major

Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)

Gershwin—American in Paris

Ibert—“Escales” (Ports of Call)

Liszt—Mephisto Waltz

Moussorgsky—Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski)

Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition

Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5, Op. 100

Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor)

Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor

Saint-Saens—Concerto No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus)

Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor

Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”

Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”)

Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)

Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)

Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone)

Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture

Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite

Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)

Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods

Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)

Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet

Stravinsky—Suite from Petrouchka

Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements

Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz

Herold—Zampa—Overture

Khatchaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite

Wieniawski—Violin Concerto (with Isaac Stern)

Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud

Milhaud—Suite Francaise

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)

Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture

Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major

Brahms—Academic Festival Overture

Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)

Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)

Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet

Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)

Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183

Ravel—La Valse

Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol

Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor

Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major

Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture

Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)

Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)

Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)

Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major

Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant, piano)

VICTOR RECORDS

Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major

Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn

Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits

Haydn—Symphony No. 4, in D major (The Clock)

Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo

Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)

Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture

Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture

Rossini—Semiramide—Overture

Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and III

Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Gotterdammerung—Siegfried Idyll

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)

Purcell—Suite for Strings with Four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn

Respighi—Fountains of Rome

Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York)

Schubert—Symphony No. 4, in C minor (Tragic)

Schumann—Concerto in D minor, (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin)

Tschaikowsky—Francesca de Rimini—Fantasia

Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major

J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)

Beethoven—Egmont Overture

Handel—Alcina Suite

Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)

Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March

Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)

Schelling—Victory Ball

Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture

Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Special Booklets published for
RADIO MEMBERS
of
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. Schirmer’s)

BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn

BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn

MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser

WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar

TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. Peyser

SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser

These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the limited supply lasts.

Transcriber’s Notes

• A few palpable typos were silently corrected.
• Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.
• Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)