Charles Edward Horsley (1822–76), Mendelssohn’s composition student in Leipzig for two years beginning in 1841 and later a family friend of the composer, first met Mendelssohn in London in 1832 during the second of this well-traveled cosmopolitan’s ten visits to England. Through Horsley, Mendelssohn was introduced to George Maxwell, a student of the then-famed Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) and organist of St. John’s, Hyde Park, whose modest two-manual instrument built by J. C. Bishop Mendelssohn had expressed an interest in playing.
Such were the small means placed at Mendelssohn’s disposal, but he made the most of them, and many happy afternoons were spent in hearing his interpretation of Bach’s Fugues, his wonderful extemporizing, and the performance of his own Sonatas, and other Organ pieces, then only existing in his memory. As the reports of these meetings became spread through the town, other and larger organs were placed at his disposal, and at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christ Church, Newgate St., St. Sepulchre’s, and many other London churches he played on several occasions, giving the greatest delight to all who had the good fortune to hear him. I have heard most of the greatest organists of my time, both [sic] English, German and French, but in no respect have I ever known Mendelssohn excelled either in creative or executive ability, and it is hard to say which was the most extraordinary, his manipulation or his pedipulation—for his feet were quite as active as his hands, and the independence of the former, being totally distinct from the latter, produced a result which at that time was quite unknown in England, and undoubtedly laid the foundation of a school of organ playing in Great Britain which has placed English organists on the highest point attainable in their profession.1
Horsley’s memoir can serve to remind us that Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), a child prodigy (Robert Schumann was to call the man whose first compositions date from 1820 the “Mozart of the nineteenth century”), prolific composer in virtually every medium available to him, conductor of a vast repertory (for example, for two years as city music director of Düsseldorf, where he mounted performances of at least five Handel oratorios in his own arrangements, and later for a decade at the helm of the famed Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig), keyboardist, teacher (particularly as founding director of the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843), impresario, visual artist and poet was, unlike most of the German giants of the 19th century, very much involved with the organ as a means of musical communication.
Mendelssohn the Keyboardist
Mendelssohn began formal piano study with noted Berlin pedagogue Ludwig Berger (1777–1839) in 1815, and made his recital debut three years later at the age of nine. He then studied the organ with August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869) (who had no direct familial connection to the earlier Bach dynasty, although he was a staunch advocate of the music of its most famous citizen), perhaps from 1820 into 1823, and wrote his first pieces for the instrument during that period. Bach, then the organist of St. Mary’s Church and later director of the Institute for Church Music, published four volumes of organ works between 1820 and 1824 and surely had a significant influence on his teenaged student.
Although Mendelssohn probably considered the piano his principal instrument, he was obviously fascinated by the organ, was intent on developing a significant organ technique, and seldom missed an opportunity at least to try the instruments he encountered on his extensive travels.2 For example, he wrote from Sargans, Switzerland on September 3, 1831 that “happily an organ is always to be found in this country; they are certainly small, and the lower octave, both in the keyboard and the pedal, imperfect, or as I call it, crippled; but still they are organs, and this is enough for me.” He mentioned turning the D-major fugue subject of the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier into a pedal exercise:
I instantly attempted it, and I at least see that it is far from being impossible, and that I shall accomplish it. The subject went pretty well, so I practiced passages from the D major fugue, for the organ, from the F major toccata, and the G minor fugue, all of which I knew by heart. If I find a tolerable organ in Munich, and not an imperfect one, I will certainly conquer these, and feel childish delight at the idea of playing such pieces on the organ. The F major toccata, with the modulation at the close, sounded as if the church were about to tumble down: what a giant that Cantor was!3
Alas, the organ on which he practiced in Munich was also “crippled,” as he mentioned in a letter to sister Fanny on October 6, 1831:
I also play on the organ every day for an hour, but unfortunately I cannot practice properly, as the pedal is short of five upper notes, so that I cannot play any of Sebastian Bach’s passages on it; but the stops are wonderfully beautiful, by the aid of which you can vary choral[e]s; so I dwell with delight on the celestial, liquid tone of the instrument.4
He wrote his parents from Düsseldorf on August 4, 1834 about an outing to “Werden, a charming retired spot, where I wished to inquire about an organ; the whole party drove with me there; cherry tarts were handed to me on horseback out of the carriages. We dined in the open air at Werden; I played fantasias and Sebastian Bachs [sic] on the organ to my heart’s content; then I bathed in the Ruhr, so cool in the evening breeze that it was quite a luxury, and rode quietly back to Saarn.” In that same letter he talked of another
handsome new organ [that] has just been put up at considerable expense in a large choir room, and there is no way to reach it but by narrow dark steps, without windows, like those in a poultry-yard, and where you may break your neck in seventeen different places; and on my asking why this was, the clergyman said it had been left so purposely, in order to prevent any one who chose, running up from the church to see the organ. Yet, with all their cunning, they forget both locks and keys: such traits are always painful to me.5
English Organs
His contact with various English organs has been well documented. On his second visit to Britain he often played the closing voluntary or extemporized at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at that point the only organ in the country with a pedalboard sufficient to accommodate the works of Bach without what one observer called “destructive changes.”
On September 8, 1837 he played several Bach fugues on a two-manual instrument in St. John’s, Paddington. Two days later Mendelssohn was the focus of a particularly memorable event following Evensong at St. Paul’s, described in delicious detail by Henry John Gauntlett (1805–76), himself an organist of considerable accomplishment:
[Mendelssohn] had played extemporaneously for some time, and had commenced the noble fugue in A minor, the first of the six grand pedal fugues of Sebastian Bach, when the gentlemen who walk about in bombazeen [sic] gowns and plated sticks, became annoyed at the want of respect displayed by the audience to their energetic injunctions. “Service is over,” had been universally announced, followed by the command “you must go out, Sir.” The party addressed moved away, but the crowd got no less; the star of Sebastian was in the ascendant. The vergers of St. Paul’s are not without guile, and they possessed sufficient knowledge of organ performance to know that the bellows-blower was not the least important personage engaged in that interesting ceremony. Their blandishments conquered, and just as Mendelssohn had executed a storm of pedal passages with transcendent skill and energy, the blower was seduced from his post and a farther supply of wind forbidden, and the composer was left to exhibit the glorious ideas of Bach in all the dignity of dumb action. The entreaties of friends, the reproofs of minor canons, the outraged dignity of the organists, were of no avail; the vergers conquered and all retired in dismay and disappointment. We had never previously heard Bach executed with such fire and energy—never witnessed a composition listened to with greater interest and gratification . . .6
Two days later Mendelssohn improvised and managed to navigate the entire piece on a three-manual instrument in Christ Church, Newgate (built by Renatus Harris in 1690, enlarged by William Hill in 1834 and considerably altered by that builder in 1838).7 Gauntlett, the “evening organist” of the church, was again present:
Many who were probably present on the Tuesday morning at Christchurch [sic], were probably attracted there more by the desire to see the lion of the town, than from an earnest attachment to classical music: but all were charmed into the most unbroken silence, and at the conclusion only a sense of the sacred character of the building prevented a simultaneous burst of the most genuine applause.
M. Mendelssohn performed six extempore fantasias, and the pedal fugue he was not allowed to go through with at St. Paul’s. Those who know the wide range of passages for the pedals with which this fugue abounds, may conceive how perfectly cool and collected must have been the organist who could on a sudden emergency transpose them to suit the scale of an ordinary English pedal board. His mind has become so assimilated to Bach’s compositions, that at one point in the prelude, either by accident or design, he amplified and extended the idea of the author, in a manner so in keeping and natural that those unacquainted with its details could not by any possibility have discovered the departure from the text . . .
His extempore playing is very diversified—the soft movements full of tenderness and expression, exquisitely beautiful and impassioned—yet so regular and methodical, that they appear the productions of long thought and meditation, from the lovely and continued streams of melody which so uninterruptedly glide onwards in one calm and peaceful flow . . .
Mr. Samuel Wesley [(1766–1837) Gauntlett’s teacher, who was to die on October 5], the father of English organists, was present and remained not the least gratified auditor, and expressed his delight in terms of unmeasured approbation. At the expressed desire of M. Mendelssohn, who wished that he could hereafter say he had heard Wesley play, the veteran took his seat at the instrument and extemporized with a purity and originality of thought for which he has rendered his name ever illustrious. The touch of the instrument, however, requires a strong and vigorous finger, and Mr. Wesley who is at present an invalid was unable to satisfy himself although he could gratify those around him.8
On September 19, as part of the triennial music festival in Birmingham, Mendelssohn first tried the 1834 four-manual instrument by William Hill in the Town Hall, and then improvised on themes from Handel’s Solomon and a Mozart symphony, both part of the same program.9
On July 9, 1842 Mendelssohn paid a visit to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Buckingham Palace and then described the encounter in a charming letter to his mother written in Frankfurt on July 19:
Prince Albert had asked me to go to him Saturday at two o’clock, so that I might try his organ before I left England. I found him alone; and as we were talking away, the Queen came in, also quite alone, in a house dress. She said she was obliged to leave for Claremont in an hour; “But, goodness! How it looks here,” she added, when she saw that the wind had littered the whole room, and even the pedals of the organ (which, by the way, made a very pretty feature in the room), with leaves of music from a large portfolio that lay open. As she spoke, she knelt down and began picking up the music; Prince Albert helped, and I too was not idle. Then Prince Albert proceeded to explain the stops to me, and while he was doing it, she said that she would put things straight alone.
But I begged that the Prince would first play me something, so that, as I said, I might boast about it in Germany; and thereupon he played me a chorale by heart, with pedals, so charmingly and clearly and correctly that many an organist could have learned something; and the queen, having finished her work, sat beside him and listened, very pleased. Then I had to play, and I began my chorus from “St Paul”: “How lovely are the Messengers!” Before I got to the end of the first verse, they both began to sing the chorus very well, and all the time Prince Albert managed the stops for me so expertly—first a flute, then full at the forte, the whole register at the D major part, then he made such an excellent diminuendo with the stops, and so on to the end of the piece, and all by heart—that I was heartily pleased.10
In early 1845 Mendelssohn was living in Frankfurt, where he was visited by W[illiam] S[mith] Rockstro (1823–95), later a composition student of the master. They met at St. Catherine’s, where Mendelssohn played through all six of his sonatas, soon to be published. Rockstro was later to recall the “wonderfully delicate staccato of the pedal part in the [Andante con moto] of the 2nd [published as the fifth] sonata played with all the crispness of Dragonetti’s mostly highly finished pizzicato.”11
Mendelssohn the Romantic?
Mendelssohn lived his tragically short life during that century that we somewhat glibly define as the Romantic Era. Romanticism in the realm of music conjures up imagery of unbridled, passionate expression, particularly through the use of luxuriant chromatic harmonies (with Wagner as the ultimate exponent of such an approach), as well as attempts at musical pictorialism at a time when purely instrumental music was being touted as the ultimate means of expressing the otherwise inexpressible. Mendelssohn surely had a gift for the pictorial; as witness, the “Italian” and “Scottish” Symphonies, his Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (an “Overture after Goethe”), or The Hebrides (or “Fingal’s Cave”), another orchestral overture, this one generated by a visit to the west coast of Scotland.
However, scholars agree that much of his work was inspired by an obvious admiration of the idioms of Bach, Handel and Mozart, music of balanced formal structures and elegant clarity. This is particularly evident in what he wrote for the organ, as well as what he played on the instrument. He learned his reverence for Bach through his studies in theory and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), director of the Berlin Singakademie, who inculcated those contrapuntal principles we find employed so fruitfully in the organ works. Father Abraham Mendelssohn acknowledged the impact of Zelter’s tutelage in a letter of March 10, 1835:
I felt more strongly than ever what a great merit it was on Zelter’s part to restore Bach to the Germans; for, between [Johann Nikolaus] Forkel’s day [1749–1818] and his, very little was ever said about Bach . . . [I]t is an undoubted fact, that without Zelter, your own musical tendencies would have been of a totally different nature.12
It was with Zelter’s Singakademie that the 20-year-old Mendelssohn conducted his famed “revival” of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew on March 11 and 21, 1829.
A prime symbol of Mendelssohn’s adulation of Bach is the recital he played on August 6, 1840 in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig as a means of raising funds to build a memorial to Bach, a goal finally achieved with its unveiling on April 23, 1843. The substantial repertory consisted entirely of works by the honoree:
Fugue in E-flat major (“St. Anne”), BWV 552
Prelude on “Schmücke dich,” BWV 654
Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582
Pastorale in F major, BWV 590
Toccata in F major, BWV 565
The formal recital was framed with improvisations. The first served as a prelude to the “St. Anne” fugue. According to Schumann, the other was based on the Lutheran chorale O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (the language by Paul Gerhardt commonly translated as “O sacred head, now wounded”) and ended with a fugal passage that included the BACH motto (H equaling B-natural), “rounded to such a clear and masterly whole, that if printed, it would have appeared a finished work of art.”13 Mendelssohn’s adoration of the Leipzig master is also reflected in the fact that, other than improvising and his own works committed to paper, Mendelssohn as an organist, with passing exceptions, otherwise played only Bach.
As a Composer of Works for the Organ
Until recently, most were aware of only two sets of published pieces by Mendelssohn for the organ: the Three Preludes and Fugues, opus 37, issued in 1837 and dedicated to Thomas Attwood (1765–1838), a student of Mozart and organist of both St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Chapel Royal; and the Six Sonatas, opus 65, issued in 1845. However, due to the splendid and meticulous scholarship of Wm. A. Little, since 1989 we have been offered access to a larger corpus of work. Dr. Little studied manuscripts found in libraries in Berlin and Kraków, Poland, and has made available through a five-volume collection published by Novello a considerable number of preludes, fugues, duets, sets of variations and individual movements simply defined by their tempo markings. Many of these are preliminary versions of what was later published by Mendelssohn, and some are inconsequential juvenilia (including Mendels-sohn’s earliest work for the organ, a Praeludium in D minor dated November 28, 1820, written at a time when he was studying with A. W. Bach), but a handful of the truly independent movements warrant performance, and Dr. Little’s work allows the possibility of a better understanding of Mendelssohn’s evolution as a composer by comparing preliminary with more mature versions of familiar movements from the published pieces.
“[Mendelssohn’s] compositions were reflections of his celebrated improvisations, which had as a foundation the polyphonic traditions of the Baroque. The mature organ compositions went beyond a single style of music, however, and exhibited a skillful combination of Baroque and Romantic characteristics, masterfully integrated by his distinctive musical personality.”14 Although finally and distinctly “Mendelssohnian,” one can delineate a handful of distinct idioms in his works for organ: fughettas and fully developed fugues (obviously based on an understanding of the Bachian model, but not slavishly dependent on it); employment of Lutheran chorale melodies as a cantus firmus or as the basis of variation sets; the virtuosic toccata; improvisatory moments, almost approximating instrumental recitative; an awareness of the English voluntary tradition of the preceding century (a slow introductory section followed by a faster, sometimes fugal section); and the lyric, one-movement character piece, the sort of expression that was to flower fully in, for example, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words for the piano. Idioms that seem more natural at the piano do appear; Mendelssohn’s virtuosity on the pedals results in demands on the feet that equal those made of the hands.
The Published Works
Three Preludes and Fugues, opus 37
Little, volume I
Published in 1837 simultaneously in London by Novello and in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel
The Novello edition was dedicated to “Thomas Attwood Esqre / Composer to Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal.” The Breitkopf & Härtel edition was dedicated to [in translation] “Mr. Thomas Attwood / Organist of the Chapel Royal / in London / with Respect and Gratitude.”
Prelude and Fugue in C minor
Prelude and Fugue in G major
Prelude and Fugue in D minor
Initial versions of the three fugues had apparently been written earlier (although only that in C minor appears in the Little edition) and were simply mated with preludes written during Mendelssohn’s honeymoon of early April 1837. Organists should be aware of and perhaps consult for stylistic comparisons Mendelssohn’s Six Preludes and Fugues, opus 35, for the piano, which had been written over a period of years prior to their publication, also in 1837.
Six Sonatas, opus 65
Little, volume IV
Published in 1845 simultaneously by Coventry & Hollier in London (Six Grand Sonatas for the Organ), Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig (Sechs Sonaten für die Orgel) and Giovanni Ricordi in Milan (Sei Sonate per Organo); 6 Sonates pour l’Orgue ou pour Piano à 3 mains was issued by Maurice Schlesinger of Paris in 1846.
Sonata I in F minor: Allegro moderato e serioso—Adagio—Andante recitativo—Allegro assai vivace
Sonata II in C minor: Grave—Adagio—Allegro maestoso e vivace—Fuga, Allegro moderato
Sonata III in A major: Con moto maestoso—Andante tranquillo
Sonata IV in B-flat major: Allegro con brio—Andante religioso—Allegretto—Allegro maestoso e vivace
Sonata V in D major: Andante—Andante con moto—Allegro maestoso
Sonata VI in D minor: Choral—Andante sostenuto—Allegro molto—Fuga—Finale, Andante
In July 1844 the English publisher Charles Coventry initiated what became opus 65 by commissioning Mendelssohn to write a set of three voluntaries for the organ. On August 29 Mendelssohn wrote Coventry, asking that the label “sonata” replace “voluntary,” saying that he didn’t quite understand the precise meaning of the latter term. He continued to assemble individual movements, some reworked from earlier efforts, some new for the occasion, and finally committed himself to what was published in April 1845. At one point there was discussion about titling the collection “Mendelssohn’s School of Organ-Playing,” suggesting that the pieces could serve a didactic function, but that label was abandoned prior to publication. Given their evolution, it should come as no surprise that these assemblages do not meet textbook definitions of what a typical four-movement sonata ought to be, although No. 1 hints at the conventional (its opening loose sonata-form movement finds a double in the first movement of No. 4). Chorales appear in four of the sonatas. Fugal writing appears in all but No. 5, and No. 3 contains a brilliant double fugue. Even the minimal suggestions of registration and terraced dynamics suggest a retrospective viewpoint.
The Previously Unpublished Works
Little, volume I
Fugue in C minor [Düsseldorf, July 30, 1834]
Fughetta in D major [July 1834?]
Two [Duet] Fugues for the Organ in C minor and D major [Düsseldorf, January 11, 1835]
Fugue in E minor [Frankfurt, July 13, 1839]
Fugue in C major [Frankfurt, July 14, 1839]
Fugue in F minor [Frankfurt, July 18, 1839]
Fughetta in A major
Prelude in C minor [Leipzig, July 9, 1841]
The first two pieces became the basis for the third, inscribed as “Two fugues for the Organ / to Mr. Attwood with the author’s best and sincere wishes.” An accompanying letter informed Attwood that “I take the liberty of sending to you two fugues for the Organ which I composed lately, and arranged them as a duet for two performers, as I think you told me once that you wanted something in that way.” The idea for the duets perhaps arose from an experience of June 23, 1833, when Attwood and Mendelssohn performed a four-hand version of one of the former’s coronation anthems on the instrument in St. Paul’s. The Fugue in C minor later became the second movement of Opus 35, No. 1. The Fugue in C major later became the final movement of Opus 65, No. 2.
Little, volume II
Andante in F major [July 21, 1844]
Allegretto in D minor [July 22, 1844]
Andante [with Variations] in D major [July 23, 1844]
Allegro [Chorale and Fugue in D minor/major] [July 25, 1844]
Con moto maestoso in A major [August 9, 1844]
Andante/Con moto in A major [August 17, 1844]
Allegro Vivace in F major [August 18, 1844]
Allegro in D major [September 9, 1844]
Andante in B minor [September 9, 1844]
[Chorale] in A-flat major [September 10, 1844]
Adagio in A-flat major [Frankfurt, December 19, 1844]
[Chorale] in D major
Allegro in B-flat major [Frankfurt, December 31, 1844]
With its “pizzicato” pedal line, the Allegretto in D minor seems a premonition of the second movement of Opus 65, No. 5 (see Examples 1a and 1b). The Con moto maestoso and following Andante became the two movements of Opus 65, No. 3. The Allegro Vivace became the final movement of Opus 65, No. 1. The Allegro in D major and Andante in B minor became the third and second movements of Opus 65, No. 5. The Adagio in A-flat major became the second movement of Opus 65, No. 1.
Little, volume III
Allegro moderato e grave in F minor [Frankfurt, December 28, 1844]
Allegro con brio in B-flat major [Frankfurt, January 2, 1845]
Andante alla Marcia in B-flat major [Frankfurt, January 2, 1845]
Moderato in C major
Fugue in C major
Grave and Andante con moto in C minor [Frankfurt, December 21, 1844]
Allegro moderato maestoso in C major
Fugue in B-flat major [Frankfurt, April 1, 1845]
Choral [& Variations] in D minor [Frankfurt, January 26, 1845]
Fugue in D minor [Frankfurt, January 27, 1845
Finale—Andante sostenuto in D major [Frankfurt, January 26, 1845]
The Allegro moderato e grave in F minor became the first movement of Opus 65, No. 1. The opening of the Allegro con brio in B-flat major generated the first movement of Opus 65, No. 4 (see Examples 2a and 2b). The following Moderato and Fugue in C major provided the genesis of the third and fourth movements of Opus 65, No. 2, while the Grave and Andante con moto are the obvious parents of the opening movements of that same sonata. The Chorale, Variations and Fugue in D minor, with some reworking became the bulk of the Sonata in D minor, Opus 65, No. 6. The Finale—Andante sostenuto in D major in 3/4 meter was transformed with substantial alterations into the final movement of that same sonata as an Andante in 6/8 (see Examples 3a and 3b).
Little, volume V
Praeludium in D minor [November 28, 1820]
Fugue in D minor [December 3, 1820]
Fugue in G minor [December 1820]
Fugue in D minor [January 6, 1821]
Andante—sanft in D major [May 9, 1823]
Volles Werk [Passacaglia] in C minor [May 10, 1823]
Chorale Variations on “Wie groß ist des Allmächt’gen Güte” [July and August 1823]
Nachspiel in D major [Rome, March 8, 1831]
Fuga pro Organo pleno in D minor [Berlin, March 29, 1833]
Andante con moto in G minor [London, July 11, 1833]
In this volume of early works (including Mendelssohn’s first essays for the instrument), only a single piece seems to have inspired a mature work: The Nachspiel [Postlude] in D major provided the basic material of the Allegro maestoso e vivace of the Sonata in C, Opus 65, No. 2, which blossoms into a quite different fugue from that of the sonata.
For organists Mendelssohn’s works for their instrument admirably fill the void that had developed after the death of Bach, a period virtually devoid of significant writing for the instrument. They have maintained currency to the present and inspired an interest in the instrument on the part not only of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries (as witness, Schumann’s Six Fugues on BACH, opus 60, written in 1845 and published a year later), but several of his successors as well.
