Notes for: July 29, 2008
By the time he was 20, Mendelssohn was a successful composer, pianist and conductor, making appearances throughout Germany. In 1829, in fact, he conducted the performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in Berlin that generated the revival of Bach’s choral music, all but lost following his death in 1750.
In recognition of this and other achievements, Mendelssohn, in 1830, was offered a professorship of music at the University of Berlin, an honor far beyond his years. At his parents’ insistence, however, he turned down the offer so that he could spend the next several years traveling and performing abroad. Mendelssohn’s father, a wealthy banker, had no need for Felix’s earnings, and his family reasoned that foreign travel would round off the young musician’s education and expand his reputation outside Germany,
At the suggestion of the poet Goethe, a close friend notwithstanding the 60 years difference in their ages, Felix decided to spend a year in Italy. Arriving in the fall of 1830, he first visited Venice and Florence, and then wintered in Rome. In the spring he went south to Naples, Capri, Pompeii and Paestum. His father flagged him down from going to Sicily – too dangerous – so he headed north to Genoa, Milan, Lake Como and home.
Mendelssohn’s pace was leisurely – pausing here and there to perform and to socialize, composing every morning, sightseeing in the afternoon. Wherever he went, he sent back to his family and friends in Germany entertaining, vivid and often insightful letters. Clearly, the impressionable young tourist loved the art and architecture – Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, St. Peter’s – and the landscape – the blue skies, clear air, bright moonlight, wealth of flowers, luxurious villas and verdant countryside.
A letter from Rome captures the essence of this correspondence:
“Life here is delicious, richer and more exciting than one can find anywhere else. The most lovely spring air; a warm blue sky; heavenly pictures everywhere, and nature and antiquity so colorful and rich that it beggars the imagination,
I have now stopped heating the room, and sit at my open window. The almond trees are in flower everywhere, the bushes are bursting into leaf, one already has to seek the shade. For February that’s quite tolerable.
In addition, in the past few days there has been the crazy carnival, when everyone spends the whole day out of doors. The place swarms with the craziest masks. The Italian women are at their most brilliant.
People throw confetti at one another like mad. They fling themselves with real passion into the childish game, and one cannot keep out of it. Nosegays of roses and violets are thrown to the ladies in their carriages, and they reward one with a shower of bonbons and sugared almonds. One lies in wait for acquaintances; the men have flour thrown at them until they look like miller’s apprentices.”
While wintering in Rome, Mendelssohn began to convert these warm and affectionate feelings for Italy into music, under the title “Italian Sketches.” According to his own account, the music encompassed a wide range and variety of impressions, not only from art and nature but also from his personal experiences and contacts with the vitality of the Italian people. By February the work was well along. “Rapid progress,” he wrote home. “It will be the jolliest piece I have so far written, especially the last movement.”
As Mendelssohn continued his journey through Italy and then returned to the music world at home, he temporarily lost interest. A year later, however, the London Philharmonic Society asked him for three new compositions, including a symphony. In response, he dusted off the “Italian Sketches” and converted them into the requested symphony, keeping the nickname “Italian.”
The first performance took place in London in May, 1833, before an enthusiastic audience. As incredible as it seems, Mendelssohn was dissatisfied with the score, withholding its publication, and for several years he talked about revising it. Apparently, he never got around to the revisions – when the score was finally published after his death, it carried the date March, 1833.
The first movement, in a buoyant 6/8 rhythm, is like a call to a celebration. The sparkle and joie de vivre of the music are irresistible, reaching a high point in the development when the main theme and a new melody are combined in a fugato texture remarkable for both its clarity and its sense of exhilaration
The second movement is usually likened to a leisurely procession of pilgrims because of the chant-like modal melody and the march-like rhythmic pace set and maintained by the cellos and basses. Since the movement was sketched after Mendelssohn left Rome, it may have been inspired by a religious procession that he saw in the streets of Naples.
Although not so labeled, the third movement is in the rhythm of a minuet – a bit old-fashioned, perhaps, and this may have been the music Mendelssohn was thinking of revising. However, the trio is far more picturesque, adding a touch of moonlight with tricky calls for the horns and bassoons.
The finale is a saltarello – a lively Italian dance with a skipping step at the start of each measure. Although written in a minor key, it may have been inspired by the Roman carnival scene described in the Mendelssohn letter quoted above. The music is indeed infectious, even frenzied. Mendelssohn saves a final surprise for the ending – the music dies away to a pianissimo and then rebounds with a final burst of excitement in the last five measures.