4 Novembre 1847

“I know of no feeling more distressing,” writes Mendelssohn in 1843, “than having enemies.”[1] He goes on to say that he, at least, “to my great joy,” is on friendly terms with everyone. But being friendly and having friends are two different things and in a mood swing, which is often found in Mendelssohn, only a few months later he complains of having no friend to turn to for sympathy.[2]

Mendelssohn recognized that his personality lacked patience, crying to Moscheles in 1839, for example, “Wrong notes make me savage.”[3] Earlier he had written to this same friend,

If I were a little more mild, and a little more just, and a little more judicious.... But I am so soon irritated, and become unreasonable....[4]

It was no doubt these traits which contributed to his dissatisfaction with teaching.

I am convinced, from repeated experience, that I totally lack the talent requisite for a practical teacher.... Whether it be that I take too little pleasure in teaching, or have not sufficient patience, the fact remains that I do not succeed in it.[5]

When a professor reported that Mendelssohn had been called a “saint,” the composer objected, saying he took the word to mean “one of those who lay their hands on their laps and expect that Providence will do their work for them,” an attitude he hoped never to have.[6] But he added that he was “sincerely desirous to live piously.”[7]

As a younger man Mendelssohn enjoyed more leisure time and even considered in 1834 buying a horse for daily exercise.[8] He reported to his family that he was “very fond of dancing.”[9] His friend, Eduoard Devrient, also reports that Mendelssohn was a fine gymnast and swimmer.[10]

In his youth he particularly enjoyed his travel to foreign countries. We sense this enthusiasm in a letter to his sister, Rebecca.

In Italy I was lazy, in Switzerland a wild student, in Munich a consumer of cheese and beer, and so in Paris I must talk politics.

Coming from a prosperous family, Mendelssohn’s tourist journeys were lengthy and leisurely. He would walk great distances and would take time to sketch what he saw. For those readers who have never seen these sketches we must report that they are quite excellent. And of course we have musical sketches from these journeys in two of his symphonies, the Herbides Overture and other works.

But travel has its perils. In a letter to his father he complains of sea-sickness in crossing the English Channel.[11] In 1830 he reports he was thrown from a carriage and as a result was confined to bed for six weeks.[12]

Regarding music and his art, throughout his correspondence one frequently finds evidence of his high moral and aesthetic values. A comment to his brother, Paul, stands almost as a motto for his actions.

You must not suppose that I ever act in any affair but from my own conscientious impulses... I invariably strive to do and say nothing but what I hold to be right in my conscience and instinct.[13]

Because he had independent resources he could even distain the usual avenues for earning money, such as giving lessons or organizing benefit concerts for himself.[14]

For various reasons nearly every musician we know has a distaste for competition in music, even though financial need often requires one to serve as an adjudicator. Mendelssohn shared these feelings and celebrated when he finally decided not to participate in this activity again.

Today I made a resolution over which I am as happy as a bird, and that is to never again participate in any way in the awarding of prizes at a musical competition. Several proposals of this kind were made to me and I did not know why I was so annoyed, until it became clear to me that fundamentally it would be sheer arrogance on my part, which I would not tolerate in others. I should therefore be the last person to set myself up as a criterion and my taste as incontrovertible, and, in an idle hour passing in review all the assembled competitors, criticizing them, and – God knows – possibly being guilty of the most glaring injustice towards them. So I have renounced such activity once and for all and since then have been very happy.[15]

Partly for these reasons, he also objected to being compared to other composers.[16]

He was also quite reserved when it came to his own publicity, refusing for example to even participate in helping fill a request by newspapers and publishers for a “likeness” which could be used for publicity. He took the time in 1835 to respond to such a request as follows,

The idea which you communicate is very flattering for me, and yet I confess that I feel a certain degree of dislike to what you propose, and for a long time past I have entertained this feeling. It is now so very much the fashion for obscure or commonplace people to have their likeness given to the public, in order to become more known, and for young beginners to do so at first starting in life, that I have always had a dread of doing so too soon. I do not wish that my likeness should be taken until I have accomplished something to render me more worthy, according to my idea, of such an honor. This, however, not being yet the case, I beg to defer such a compliment till I am more deserving of it.[17]

Mendelssohn seems always to have been uniquely popular in London, and still is today. When once there he wrote his mother, “I am devilishly proud of my popularity.”[18]

With respect to the public, Mendelssohn was in constant demand to guest conduct his music and to participate in music festivals, all of which took time away from his composing. Mendelssohn, like Mozart, was very fluent and so on one occasion, when he complained that due to conducting he “could scarcely do anything else,” he adds in passing that he had nevertheless composed a sonata for piano and cello and three violin quartets.[19]

Later in life he began to feel that the time and energy expended in these public concerts were taking a toll on his own life. Writing to his friend, Moscheles, after a concert in Frankfurt in 1845, he became philosophical on this subject.

Our inner life is that that is worth living; but then that is a very different thing to our outer doings, -- something [the inner life] very much better. Conducting and getting up public performances is all very well in its way; but the result, even for the public, does not go far. A little better, a little worse, what does it matter? How soon it is forgotten! And what is it but our inner life, our calm and peaceful moments, that act and react on all this, that impel us and lead us onwards, taking all that public business in tow, and dragging it here and there, whichever way it should go?[20]

By the final year of his life, Mendelssohn was ready to withdraw from public appearances altogether.

Playing and conducting – in fact, any and every official appearance in public – has grown intensely distasteful to me, so that each time I only make up my mind to do it with the greatest reluctance and unwillingness. I believe the time is approaching – or perhaps is already here – when I shall put all this kind of regular, public performance of music on the shelf, in order to make my own music at home, to compose and let this existence continue, as best it may, without me. I do not believe there is much to be learned from it, and as for its usefulness, I have become convinced that a piece of paper covered with notes – even if it is worthless in itself – is of more use to me, and certainly gives me more pleasure than 250 rehearsals and performances with excellent success.[21]

The reader must understand that his complaints here should be seen from the perspective that Mendelssohn had also lost much valuable time through the years to illness. Although popular biographies say little about the subject, the fact is that Mendelssohn had chronically poor health which may have played a role in his early death before the age of 40.

For most of his life he suffered from ear-ache and depression, often at the same time. The influence of these problems on his personality is easy to see in his letters as a young adult. In 1832 he writes to his friend, Moscheles, that he is experiencing both of these complaints.

I was very unwell at the time I received your last letter, suffering acutely from a musician’s complaint, the ear-ache. A proper letter shall follow as soon as I have shaken off that dreadful fit of depression which has been weighing on me for the last few weeks.... Just now I am passing through one of those periodical attacks when I see all the world in pale gray tints, and when I despair of all things, especially of myself.[22]

In a letter written the same day to Moscheles’ wife, Charlotte, Mendelssohn wonders, “How to overcome these fits of intense depression, I really do not know.” At times he wonders if it might be better to be a carpenter. Two days later he writes his friend Karl Klingemann, that headache often accompanies his ear-ache and that “I have never lived through a more miserable period.”

Early the following year, 1833, he announces “the fog seems lifting” and many of his letters during this year speak of his joy in again being healthy in mind and body. Early in 1834, however, he has another serious ear-ache, which he attributed to riding in a carriage during a storm.

I am particularly joyful today at having suddenly lost a most painful ear-ache that has tormented me these three weeks, and made even hearing difficult; the sound of my piano seems quite a new gift. I caught this ear-ache driving to a concert at Elberfeld, with a frightful storm and rain pelting continually into my ear, and lost it by putting on a blister and letting it draw for 48 hours.[23]

The death of his father in late 1835 brought on a long period of depression. In December, 1835, he speaks of suffering “the most painful and bitter anguish” and in January, 1836, that he wished he were less sad and depressed. To a professor in London he writes,

I feel like a person walking drowsily. I cannot succeed in realizing the present, and there is a constant alternation of my old habitual cheerfulness and the most heartfelt deep grief, so that I cannot attain to anything like steady composure of mind.[24]

After his marriage the following year, once again Mendelssohn bounces back. By December the happiness continued,

This year has been the happiest of my existence and I daily appreciate the blessings it has bestowed.[25]

A week later he is stricken again with ear problems.

I should have written to you at New Year’s...but I was prevented in the most tiresome way by an indisposition, or illness, which attacked me in the last week of the year and, I am sorry to say, has not yet subsided. This has put me in bad spirits, and at times made me so desperate that even today I write only because I see that it is no use waiting till I am better. I am suffering, as I did four years ago, from complete deafness in one ear, with occasional pains in the head and neck, etc.; the weakness in the ear keeps on without any interruption and as I have to conduct and play in spite of it you may imagine my agony, not being able properly to hear either the orchestra or my own playing on the piano! Last time it went off after six weeks, and God grant that it may do the same this time; but though I summon up all my courage, I cannot quite help being anxious as, till now, in spite of all remedies, there is no change and often I do not even hear people speaking in the room.[26]

In 1839 it seems that it was primarily the depression that had returned, as we see in a letter of October.

I have been almost all the time since in so very bad state of health, or rather of mind (and that is the same thing), that I disliked writing, playing, composing and everything in the world. I cannot say that this indisposition, or what its name may be, has quite subsided at present.[27]

A few weeks later he was complaining of “an abominable cold and catarrh.” In 1841 he complains of “languor” and of feeling exhausted. Occasional references in his correspondence though 1844 suggest the sense of fatigue was continuing to bother him.

The following year, 1845, finds him happy and productive once again, but in 1846 he is worrying about fatigue again.

The fact is my health frequently leaves much to be desired and all this conducting and performing often fatigues me greatly.[28]

During 1847 he still complains of depression, observing that “everything seems empty and desolate within me.”[29] Only his children, with their “unalterably cheerful faces” help him during this period. In August, 1847, he is vacationing with his family in Interlachen and he is cheerful and happy. But his tranquility is broken by visitors,

...when people come and talk at random about commonplace matters, and of God and the world, my mood becomes again so unutterably mournful that I do not know how to endure it.[30]

Three months later Mendelssohn was dead.