pursuits. Add to those just mentioned the many concerts, to be arranged, rehearsed, conducted; the frequent negotiations attending on Berlin; the long official protocols; the hospitality and genial intercourse, where he was equally excellent as host or as guest; the claims of his family; the long holidays, real holidays, spent in travelling, and not, like Beethoven's, devoted to composition and we may almost be pardoned for wondering how he can have found time to write any music at all. But on the contrary, with him all this business does not appear to have militated against composition in the slightest degree. It often drove him almost to distraction; it probably shortened his life; but it never seems to have prevented his doing whatever music came before him, either spontaneously or at the call of his two posts at Berlin and Dresden. He composed Antigone in a fortnight, he resisted writing the music to Euy Bias, he grumbled over the long chorale for the thousandth anniversary of the German Empire, and over the overture to Athalie, in the midst of his London pleasures; but still he did them, and in the cases of Antigone and the two overtures it is difficult to see how he could have done them better. He was never driven into a corner.
The power by which he got through all this labour, so much of it self-imposed, was the power of order and concentration, the practical business habit of doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. This no doubt was the talent which his father recognised in him so strongly as to make him doubt whether business was not his real vocation. It was this which made him [1]sympathise with Schiller in his power of 'supplying' great tragedies as they were wanted. In one way his will was weak, for he always found it hard to say No; but having accepted the task it became a duty, and towards duty his will was the iron will of a man of business. Such a gift is vouchsafed to very few artists. Handel possessed it in some degree; but with that one exception Mendelssohn seems to stand alone.
Of his method of composing, little or nothing is known. He appears to have made few sketches, and to have arranged his music in his head at first, much as Mozart did. Probably this arose from his early training under Zelter, for the volumes for 1821, 2, 3, of the MS. series now in the Berlin Library appear to contain his first drafts, and rarely show any corrections, and what there are are not so much sketches as erasures and substitutions. Devrient and Schubring tell of their having seen him composing a score bar by bar from top to bottom; but this was probably only an experiment or tour de force. The fragment of the first movement of a symphony which is given on p. 305, is a good average example of the shape in which his ideas first came on to the paper.
Alterations in a work after it was completed are quite another tiling, and in these he was lavish. He complains of his not discovering the necessity for them till [2]post festum. We have seen instances of this in the Walpurgisnight, St. Paul, the Lobgesang, Elijah, and some of the Concert-overtures. Another instance is the Italian Symphony, which he retained in MS. for 14 years, till his death, with the intention of altering and improving the Finale. Another, equally to the point, is the D minor Trio, of which there are two editions in actual circulation, containing several important and extensive [3]differences. This is carrying fastidiousness even further than Beethoven, whose alterations were endless, but ceased with publication. The autographs of many of Mendelssohn's pieces are dated years before they were printed, and in most, if not all, cases, they received material alterations before being issued.
Of his pianoforte playing in his earlier days we have already spoken. What it was in his great time, at such displays as his performances in London at the Philharmonic in 1842, 44, and 47; at Ernst's Concert in 1844, in the Bach Concerto with Moscheles and Thalberg; at the British Musicians' matinee in 1844; and the British Quartet Society in 1847; at the Leipzig Concerts on the occasion already mentioned in 1836; at Miss Lind's Concert Dec. 5, 1845, or at many a private reunion at V. Novello's or the Horsleys', or the Moscheles' in London, or the houses of his favourite friends in Leipzig, Berlin, or Frankfort—there are still many remaining well able to judge, and in whose minds the impression survives as clear as ever. Of the various recollections with which I have been favoured, I cannot do better than give entire those of Madame Schumann, and Dr. Hiller. In reading them it should be remembered that Mendelssohn was fond of speaking of himself as a player en gros, who did not claim (however great his right) to be a virtuoso, and that there are instances of his having refused to play to great virtuosi.
1. 'My recollections of Mendelssohn's playing,' says Madame Schumann, 'are among the most delightful things in my artistic life. It was to me a shining ideal, full of genius and life, united with technical perfection. He would sometimes take the tempi very quick, but never to the prejudice of the music. It never occurred to me to compare him with virtuosi. Of mere effects of performance he knew nothing—he was always the great musician, and in hearing him one forgot the player, and only revelled in the full enjoyment of the music. He could carry one with him in the most incredible manner, and his playing was always stamped with beauty and nobility. In his early days he had acquired perfection of technique; but latterly, as he often told me, he hardly ever practised, and yet he surpassed every one. I have heard him in Bach, and Beethoven, and in his own compositions, and shall never forget the impression he made upon me.'
2. 'Mendelssohn's playing,' says Dr. Hiller, 'was to him what flying is to a bird. No one wonders why a lark flies, it is inconceivable
