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Her manner was generally thought too reserved; indeed she was considered cold, and called 'the fair Mimosa, In music we have an expressive term, 'calm but impassioned, and this I deem an appropriate conception for the portrait of Cécile." Mendelssohn was so surprised at the depth of the impression the young girl had made upon him that he was worried.
Her fame was largely increased by the poet Goethe, who made her one of the many idols of his vagrant affections. He spoke of her playing in the highest terms, placing her above Hummel. But the verdict of Mendelssohn is probably more accurate: "Those who rate her so high," he says, "think more of her pretty face than of her not pretty playing."
In still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke came and they became the most slovenly in the world in this fine quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no modern music could get a hearing there.
In Germany, since the time of Mendelssohn, the study of the Talmud had been on the wane. The great yeshibot formerly existing in Metz, Frankfort, Hamburg, Prague, Fiirth, Halberstadt, etc., disappeared, and the reforms introduced in the synagogue and the numerous converts to Christianity impressed the outside world with the idea that Judaism among German Jews was writhing in the agony of death.
MENDELSSOHN'S SKILL AS A CONDUCTOR. In the spring of 1835. Mendelssohn was invited to come to Cologne, in order to direct the festival. Here we met again, and thanks to his kindness, I had the pleasure of being present at one of the general rehearsals, where he conducted Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.
It was at this time that Prince Albert sent to Mendelssohn the book of the oratorio "Elijah" with which he used to follow the performance, with the following autographic inscription: "To the noble artist, who, surrounded by the Baal worship of corrupted art, has been able by his genius and science to preserve faithfully like another Elijah the worship of true art, and once more to accustom our ear, lost in the whirl of an empty play of sounds, to the pure notes of expressive composition and legitimate harmony to the great master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his conception through the whole maze of his creation, from the soft whispering to the mighty raging of the elements: Written in token of grateful remembrance by Albert.
Otherwise, instead of being moved by the miseries of Oedipus, we should be chiefly occupied with amusement at the oddity of the music, and soon bored unendurably by its monotony and thinness. Mendelssohn decided then to use unison frequently for suggestion's sake, but not to carry it to a fault.
This anecdote was related by Mendelssohn himself to show the graciousness of the English queen.
I know not what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished style that reminds me of Mendelssohn. It would almost do for the words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte": "DEAR MISS MARIA, I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks.
They feel more at home in the modern orchestra; which is indebted to their master Mendelssohn for a particularly delicate and refined development in the direction opened up by Weber's original genius.
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