Letters of Felix Mendelssohn

Lucerne, August 27th, 1831.

(To Wilhelm Taubert)

I wish to offer you my thanks, but I really do not know where to begin first; whether for the pleasure your songs caused me in Milan, or for your kind letter which I received yesterday; both however are closely connected, and so I think we have already made acquaintance. It is quite as fitting that we should be presented to each other through the medium of music-paper, as by a third person in society; indeed I think that in the former case you feel even more intimate and confidential. Moreover, persons who introduce any one often pronounce the name so indistinctly, that you seldom know who is standing before you; and they never say one word as to whether the man is gay and good-humoured, or melancholy and gloomy. So we are infinitely better off. Your songs have pronounced your name clearly and plainly; they also disclose what you think and what you are; that you love music, and wish to make progress; so thus perhaps I know you better than if we had frequently met.

What a source of pleasure it is, and how cheering, to know there is another musician in the world who has the same purposes and aspirations, and who follows the same path as yourself; perhaps you cannot feel this so strongly as I do at this moment, who have just come from a country where music no longer exists among the people. I never before could have believed this of any nation, and least of all of Italy, with such rich and luxuriant nature, and such glorious, inspiriting antecedents. But alas! the occurrences I latterly witnessed there, fully proved to me that even more than harmony is dead in that land; it would indeed be marvellous if any music could exist where there is no solid principle. At last I was really bewildered, and thought that I must have become a hypochondriac, for all the buffoonery I saw was most distasteful to me, and yet a vast number of serious people and sedate citizens entered into it. When they played me anything of their own, and afterwards praised and extolled my pieces, I cannot tell you how repugnant it was to me; I felt disposed to become a hermit, with beard and cowl, and the whole world was at a discount with me. In Italy you first learn to value a true musician; that is, one whose thoughts are absorbed in music, and not in money, or decorations, or ladies, or fame; it is doubly delightful when you find that, without your being aware of it, your own ideas exist and are developed elsewhere; your songs therefore gave me especial pleasure, because I could gather from them that you must be a genuine musician, and so let us mutually stretch out our hands across the mountains.

I beg that you will also look on me in the light of a friend, and not write so formally as to my "counsel" and "teaching." This portion of your letter makes me feel almost nervous, and I scarcely know what to say; the most agreeable part however is your promise to send me something to Munich, and to write to me again. I will then tell you frankly and freely my honest opinion, and you shall do the same with regard to my new compositions, and thus I think we shall give each other good counsel. I am very eager to see those recent works of yours that you have promised me, for I do not doubt that I shall receive much gratification from them, and many things which are only foreshadowed in the former songs, will probably in these become manifest and distinct. I shall therefore say nothing to-day of the impression your songs have made on me, because possibly any suggestion or question may be already answered in what you are about to send me. I earnestly entreat of you to write to me fully, and in detail, about yourself, in order that we may become better acquainted. I can then write to you what I purpose and what I think, and thus we shall continue in close connection.

Let me know what you have recently composed and are now composing; your mode of life in Berlin, and your plans for the future; in short all that concerns your musical life, which will be of the greatest interest to me. Probably this will be obvious in the music you have so kindly promised me, but fortunately both may be combined. Have you hitherto composed nothing on a greater scale; some wild symphony, or opera, or something of the kind? I, for my part, feel at this moment the most invincible desire to write an opera, and yet I have scarcely leisure even to commence any work, however small. I do believe that if the libretto were to be given to me to-day, the opera would be written by to-morrow, so strong is my impulse towards it. Formerly the bare idea of a symphony was so exciting, that I could think of nothing else when one was in my head; the sound of instruments has such a solemn and glorious effect; and yet for some time past I have laid aside a symphony that I had commenced, in order to compose on a cantata of Goethe's merely because it included, besides the orchestra, voices and a chorus. I intend now, indeed, to complete the symphony, but there is nothing I so strongly covet as a regular opera.

Where the libretto is to come from I know less than ever since last night, when for the first time for more than a year I saw a German æsthetic paper. The German Parnassus seems in as disorganized a condition as European politics. God help us! I was obliged to digest the supercilious Menzel, who presumed modestly to depreciate Goethe,—and the supercilious Grabbe, who modestly depreciates Shakspeare,—and the philosophers who proclaim Schiller to be rather trivial! Is this new, arrogant, overbearing spirit, this perverse cynicism, as odious to you as it is to me? and are you of the same opinion with myself, that the first and most indispensable quality of any artist is to feel respect for great men, and to bow down in spirit before them; to recognize their merits, and not to endeavour to extinguish their great flame, in order that his own feeble rushlight may burn a little brighter? If a person be incapable of feeling true greatness, I should like to know how he intends to make mefeel it? And as all these people, with their airs of contempt, only at last succeed in producing imitations of this or that particular form, without any presentiment of free, fresh, creative power, unfettered by individual opinion, or æsthetics or criticism, or the whole world besides; as this is the case, do they not deserve to be abused? and I do abuse them. Pray do not take this amiss; perhaps I have gone too far. But, it was long since I had read anything of the kind, and it vexes me to see that such folly still goes on, and that the philosopher who maintains that art is dead, still persists in declaring that it is so; as if art could in reality ever die.

These are truly strange, wild, and troubled times; and let those who feel that art is no more, allow it for Heaven's sake to rest in peace; but however roughly the storm may rage without, it cannot so quickly succeed in sweeping away the dwelling; and he who works on quietly within, fixing his thoughts on his own capabilities and purposes, and not on those of others, will see the hurricane blow over, and afterwards find it difficult to realize that it ever was so violent as it appeared at the time. I have resolved to act thus so long as I can, and to pursue my path steadily, for at all events no one will deny that music still exists, and that is the chief thing.

How cheering it is to meet with a person who has chosen the same object and the same means as yourself! and I would fain tell you how gratifying each new corroboration of this is to me, but I scarcely know how to do so. You must imagine it for yourself, and your own thoughts must supply any deficiencies; so farewell! Pray let me hear from you soon, and frequently. I beg to send my kindest wishes to our dear friend Berger; I have been long intending to write to him, but have never yet accomplished it. I shall certainly however do so one of these days. Forgive this long, dry letter, next time it shall be more interesting, and now once more farewell.—Yours,

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.