Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Complete music for
violin and piano
Born in Hamburg in 1809, eldest son of the banker Abraham Mendelssohn
and grandson of the great Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn,
who took the additional name Bartholdy on his baptism as a Christian, Heine's
ticket of admission to European culture, was brought up in Berlin, where his
family settled in 1812. Here he enjoyed the wide cultural opportunities that
his family offered, through their own interests and connections. Mendelssohn's
early gifts, manifested in a number of directions, included marked musical
precocity, both as a composer and as a performer, at a remarkably early age.
These exceptional abilities received every encouragement from his family and their
friends, although Abraham Mendelssohn entertained early doubts about the
desirability of his son taking the profession of musician. These reservations
were in part put to rest by the advice of Cherubini in Paris and by the
increasing signs of the boy's musical abilities and interests.
Mendelssohn's early manhood brought the opportunity to travel, as far
south as Naples and as far north as The Hebrides, with Italy and Scotland both
providing the inspiration for later symphonies. His career involved him in the
Lower Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf and a period as city director of music,
followed, in 1835, by appointment as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in
Leipzig. Here he was able to continue the work he had started in Berlin six
years earlier, when he had conducted in Berlin a revival of Bach's St
Matthew Passion. Leipzig was to provide a degree of satisfaction that he
could not find in Berlin, where he returned at the invitation of King Friedrich
Wilhelm IV in 1841. In Leipzig once more, in 1843, he established a new
Conservatory, spending his final years there, until his death at the age of 38
on 4th November 1847, six months after the death of his gifted and beloved
sister Fanny.
Mendelssohn completed his Violin Sonata in F major on 15th June
1838, but withheld it from publication, leaving its rediscovery to Yehudi
Menuhin, who published the work in 1953. It is an example of music of the
composer's maturity, at a time when he had begun to contemplate the great
Violin Concerto in E minor. This last was introduced to the public in
Leipzig in 1845 by Ferdinand David, a pupil of Spohr, who had taken up a
position in 1836, at the age of 26, as leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra under Mendelssohn. The sonata in many ways prefigures the later concerto
and was presumably written with David in mind. The first movement starts with
the expected brilliance in a principal subject stated initially by the piano
and extended by the violin. This leads to secondary material, appearing first
with a shift to the minor. The central development ends with a passage
accompanied by violin arpeggios, prefiguring a similar passage in the future
concerto. These arpeggios accompany the start of the recapitulation, as the
principal subject makes its return. The moving A major Adagio again
allows the piano to introduce the main theme, then taken up by the violin in a
movement of fine simplicity that still finds a place for outbursts of
passionate feeling. The sonata ends with a movement in the familiar style of a
Mendelssohn scherzo in which the writing for the two instruments remains, as
always, perfectly balanced.
Mendelssohn owed his early training as a violinist to his teacher and
friend Eduard Rietz Born in Berlin in 1802, the son of a violinist in the
Berlin Court Orchestra, Rietz had joined the same orchestra in 1819, leaving it
in 1825, after disagreements with the conductor Spontini, to found the Berlin
Philharmonic Society the following year, leading its semi-amateur orchestra in
concerts with the Berlin Singakademie. This was the ensemble that he led in
Mendelssohn's famous revival of Bach's St Matthew Passion in 1829, an
enterprise in which he and his cellist brother Julius had collaborated by
helping to write out the parts for the performance. Mendelssohn dedicated to
Rietz his Violin Concerto in D minor, the Octet and the Violin
Sonata in F minor, Opus 4. Rietz died of consumption in 1832 and
Mendelssohn then dedicated to his memory the slow movement of his String
Quintet, Opus 18. Julius Rietz went on to a distinguished career, serving as
professor of composition at Mendelssohn's Leipzig Conservatory and later as
conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
The Violin Sonata in F minor received a particularly
condescending review in 1825 in the Berliner AIigemeine Musikalische Zeitung
from a critic under the pseudonym of Lukas van Leyden (quoted in part in
Heinrich Eduard Jacob: Felix Mendelssohn und seine Zeit, Frankfurt am
Main, 1959-60), patronising the two young performers. The first movement starts
with an Adagio introduction for the violin alone, followed by an Allegro
moderato in which the piano offers the first subject, leading to an A flat
major second subject, announced by the piano over a sustained bass note. The
repeated exposition is duly followed by a central development and a
recapitulation in which the second subject, now in F major, is followed by a
minor key closing section. The slow movement, in A flat major, is opened by the
piano statement of the wistful main theme, then taken up by the violin. A short
piano cadenza leads to an E flat major section, with a violin melody
accompanied by triplet figuration from the piano. This ends with more dramatic
intensity, before a return to the original key and thematic material, now
varied. The last movement opens emphatically, its opening section repeated,
after which the opening motif provides the substance for contrapuntal
exploration. An Adagio cadenza for the violin alone is capped by the
forceful closing section.
Mendelssohn owed his early musical training to Carl Zelter, who for
nearly thirty years directed the Berlin Singakademie and fostered the interest
of his pupil and the Berlin public in the music of J.S. Bach. Zelter had
pleased Goethe by his setting of some of the latter's poems, the beginning of a
warm friendship, and was responsible for introducing Mendelssohn to Goethe in
1821. Zelter's teaching stimulated Mendelssohn's interest in counterpoint and
inculcated in him a sound knowledge of classical musical practice.
The Violin Sonata in F major of 1820 is clear evidence of the
soundness of Zelter's teaching and the irrepressible talent of his pupil, in
whom he saw one who might outshine, at this stage, the young Mozart. The sonata
starts with a monothematic first movement, in which much is made of the opening
figure in an Allegro in tripartite classical form. The F minor Andante
moves into F major for the second element of its principal theme. This is
followed by a variation on the themes and a final version of the F minor theme,
which ends the movement. The sonata concludes with a lively Presto, a
foretaste of scherzo-type movements to come.
The shorter pieces here included are taken from a volume of exercises
written for Zelter between 1819 and 1821, published by the Mendelssohn scholar
R. Larry Todd and themselves dated to 1820. The Movement in G minor, classical
in form, frames a G major central section. If this echoes Mozart or Haydn, the
Andante in D minor is modelled on Bach in its >contrapuntal
three-voice texture. It is followed by the Fugue in D minor and Fugue in C
minor, both in three-voice texture and perfectly crafted, with a final
contrapuntal Allegro in C major, exercises that, it is suggested, Mendelssohn
would have taken up his violin to play through with his teacher.
Keith Anderson