Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Piano Sonatas

Description

It is said that the twenty-first century in which we are living has dilated all traditional subdivisions of human life. Youth tends now to reach one’s forties, and sometimes people of fifty are still considered “young”; old age begins approximately at 75, or perhaps even later. It is not uncommon for young people to be studying until their late twenties, and at times well into their thirties; childbearing is correspondingly delayed, as we commonly see around us.
It requires therefore a certain effort of imagination, from our side, to consider the stages of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s life, which seems to challenge entirely our schemes of thought.
He died at 38, which, by today’s standards, is still a youthful age; and if we wish to project onto these short but feverish years the traditional partition (“youthful”, “mature”, “late” style) we are forced to set his early teens as the beginning of his mature style, and his mid-twenties as the beginning of his late style.
He was an extraordinary child prodigy. Few musicians throughout the history of music can boast such accomplishments as his at so tender an age. He can be said to stand in the same class as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: both of them have written works which are still counted among the absolute masterpieces of music history before they reached age twenty.
Mendelssohn’s background was also like few others. He grew up in a family which was at the forefront of the German Enlightenment. His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was one of the most important philosophers of his age, and befriended Wolfgang von Goethe and other leading figures of contemporaneous culture. Their family was very wealthy, but also very active from the cultural and social viewpoint; thanks to Moses’ initiatives, German Jews conquered many rights and opportunities that previous ages had failed to grant them.
In spite of this, Abraham, Moses’ son and Felix’s father, decided that his whole family would convert to Christianity (Lutheranism). It is rather safe to assume that Abraham’s conversion was dictated more by considerations of convenience and opportunity than by genuine spiritual needs. Upon converting, the Mendelssohns adopted a second family name, Bartholdy, as a sign of their belonging to the Christian community.
Whilst the religious feeling of that generation in the Mendelssohn family was lukewarm at best, the same cannot be said of Felix, who was a convinced Christian and who tried to weave his Jewish roots and his Christian belief together, and to express them both in his music. His oratorios would express this in the clearest possible fashion: one is dedicated to the figure of Elijah, the most important prophet of the Old Testament and one of the symbols of Jewish spirituality; one to Paul, who converted from Judaism to Christianity but became the “Apostle of the Gentiles”, i.e. of the heathen; and one – which unfortunately was never finished – to Christ himself, seen not only as the incarnate God of Christian faith, but also as the prototype of the Jewish people’s adhesion to God’s calling.
It is within this framework that another of the extraordinary achievements of young Felix is worth mentioning. Having been educated in music by Carl Zelter, an excellent teacher who was among the earliest appreciators of a historicist perspective on music history, Felix was familiar with the works of J. S. Bach and the likes at a time when few others knew even their names, let alone their output. Felix was conquered by the score of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which he received as a token of reconciliation from Sarah Levy, an aunt of his who befriended Bach’s children and who had received with little enthusiasm the news of the Mendelssohn family’s “conversion”. Mendelssohn conducted the first “modern” performance of Bach’s Passion and, through it, launched what is now known as the “Bach Renaissance”.
Mendelssohn’s attention to the music of the past is one of his distinctive traits, and one which has led many to misunderstand his own music. In comparison with many of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn mastered ancient music languages with much greater ease; his counterpoint and fugal writing is extraordinarily fluent, and it is clear that Bach’s lesson was not lost on him. Mendelssohn’s musical personality was also imbued with the works and style of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven: a lineage which he respected and revered, and which inspired his own creativity.
This is not to say, however, that he lacked a musical personality of his own (far from that!), or that his music is backward and not forward-looking. Indeed, he was an innovator of the musical language, and also a quintessential Romantic, but of a Romanticism different from that of Chopin or Schumann. (Schumann, incidentally, was an enthusiastic supporter of Mendelssohn’s music and a very good friend of him). In comparison with others, Mendelssohn’s Romanticism is the realm of fantasy; in some way, it anticipates the “fantasy genre” as we now conceive it. He was fascinated with fairy-tale imagery, from the elves to the legendary bards in the style of Fingal. His music is less individualistic than Schumann’s or Chopin’s, and therefore is seen as “less Romantic” than theirs; however, if Romanticism also consists in a love for the supernatural, then few can compete with him on this ground.
Furthermore, whilst other Romantic composers denied in fact, if not in words, the aesthetic ideals of Classicism, Mendelssohn somehow managed to reconcile the transparency and elegance of Classical forms with the passion, exuberance, and vehemence of the Romantic style.
He was also an excellent piano virtuoso, but he did not identify with the piano in the same fashion as Chopin or Liszt. His biographer W. A. Lampadius wrote about him: “Mendelssohn’s skill as a virtuoso was no mere legerdemain, no enormous finger facility, that only aims to dazzle by trills, chromatic runs, and octave passages; it was that true, manly virtus from which the word virtuoso is derived; that steadfast energy which overcomes all mechanical hindrances, not to produce musical noise, but music, and not satisfied with anything short of exhibiting the very spirit of productions written in every age of musical art”.
All this emerges clearly in the three Piano Sonatas he wrote and which are recorded in this Da Vinci Classics production. Indeed, he wrote other works for the piano in this genre, but they are considered as “youthful” works (i.e., written before age 12!) and therefore are only seldom heard or recorded. Even these three Sonatas, to be sure, are not in the mainstream repertoire of concert pianists, and it is a pity. Although they all date back to Mendelssohn’s teens, they already display that ripeness which justifies labelling his teens as the threshold of his “mature” style. Mendelssohn demonstrates here his full mastery of musical form and of the musical discourse, but also, and very evidently, the abundance of his musical ideas and the liveliness of his musical fantasy. Furthermore, these Sonatas also show how his dialogue with the past was articulated. All three can be led back to some august models of the Sonata tradition, but none is subservient to that tradition; they display neither arrogance nor timidity, and they stand on a footing of respectful admiration and creative response toward the models of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
The first of these Sonatas, which bears the misleading opus number 105 since it was published posthumously, but which was written by Mendelssohn at age 12, reveals the influence of Haydn in the handling of musical form. The lightness and purity of the outer movements, deftly derived from very little musical material which is skillfully elaborated by the not-yet-teenage composer display his ties with the preceding century’s tradition. However, the central movement is an exquisite lyrical piece, whose Romanticism cannot be denied. It is a movement where the composer leaves the safe harbours of tradition in quest for new ideas – and he finds plenty. Among them, a notable effect is that of the “open pedal”, creating musical atmospheres similar to the landscapes painted by Turner, which predate Impressionism.
The second Sonata is that bearing opus number 6, in E major; here, the shadow of Beethoven begins to make itself visible. Written by a seventeen-y.o. composer, who would soon author one of his absolute masterpieces, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it opens with an exquisitely Mendelssohnian theme, which, however, also hints at one of Beethoven’s most lyrical Sonatas, i.e., op. 101. Another Beethovenian reference is found just before the end of the first movement’s exposition; here, Mendelssohn alludes to Beethoven’s Trio op. 97, “Archduke”, and to its enchanted atmospheres.
It is a curious joke of history that the last of Mendelssohn’s Sonatas, written at age 18 (!), bears opus number 106, the same as Beethoven’s Hammerklavier. Mendelssohn’s careful study of Beethoven’s colossal masterpiece is evident here, as is clear that he let himself be inspired by it; however, Mendelssohn’s op. 106 is another posthumously published work, and therefore no intentionality can be surmised in the coincidental identity of their opus numbers.
The allusions to op. 106 begin with the tonal plane, which includes the B-flat first theme and the second theme in G major (such an unusual choice that it cannot be casual). Furthermore, both Mendelssohn and Beethoven opt for a Scherzo in 2/4 as the second movement; normally Scherzos are in 3/4, and this is also a revealing touch. Resemblances become less pronounced in the third movements, where Mendelssohn draws abundantly from his own genius as the composer of unforgettable melodies. The finale is introduced, by both Beethoven and Mendelssohn, through a transition, but the style of their concluding movements is utterly different: a majestic Fugue in Beethoven’s case, and a brilliant, sparkling, and lively Finale in Mendelssohn’s. Here too it is evident that Mendelssohn is not conceitedly competing with Beethoven and with his (possibly) greatest Sonata; rather, he is responding artistically to Beethoven’s lesson, with the ardour, intensity, and genius of a young man. Who was, however, a very mature composer.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023