Letters of Felix Mendelssohn

Genoa, July, 1831.

(Extract from a Letter to Frau von Pereira, in Vienna)

At first I resolved not to answer your letter until I had fulfilled your injunctions, and composed "Napoleon's Midnight Review;" and now I have to ask your forgiveness for not having done so, but there is a peculiarity in this matter. I take music in a very serious light, and I consider it quite inadmissible to compose anything that I do not thoroughly feel. It is just as if I were to utter a falsehood; for notes have as distinct a meaning as words, perhaps even a more definite sense. Now it appears to me almost impossible to compose for a descriptive poem. The mass of compositions of this nature do not militate against this opinion, but rather prove its truth; for I am not acquainted with one single work of the kind that has been successful. You are placed between a dramatic conception or a mere narrative; the one, in the "Erl König," causes the willows to rustle, the child to shriek, and the horse to gallop. The other imagines a ballad singer, calmly narrating the horrible tale, as you would a ghost story, and this is the most accurate view of the two; Reichardt almost invariably adopted this reading, but it does not suit me; the music stands in my way. I feel in a far more spectral spirit when I read such a poem quietly to myself, and imagine the rest, than when it is depicted, or related to me.

It does not answer to look on "Napoleon's Midnight Review" as a narrative, inasmuch as no particular person speaks, and the poem is not written in the style of a ballad. It seems to me more like a clever conception than a poem; it strikes me that the poet himself placed no great faith in his misty forms.

I could indeed have composed music for it in the same descriptive style, as Neukomm and Fischhof, in Vienna. I might have introduced a very novel rolling of drums in the bass, and blasts of trumpets in the treble, and have brought in all sorts of hobgoblins. But I love my serious elements of sound too well to do anything of the sort; for this kind of thing always appears to me a joke; somewhat like the painting's in juvenile spelling-books, where the roofs are coloured bright red, to make the children aware they are intended for roofs; and I should have been most reluctant to write out and send you anything incomplete, or that did not entirely please myself, because I always wish you to have the best I can accomplish.

Felix.