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The culture movement in Russia of the second quarter of the nineteenth century corresponds in its complexion to the early stage of the Mendelssohnian enlightenment in Germany, the period of the Me'assefim. But there were also essential differences between the two.
But it is perhaps better for avoiding the Charybdis of literalness. Those who accuse Rossini's "Stabat Mater" of a fervor more theatric than religious, will find the same faults in Parker's work, along with much that is purely ecclesiastical. Though his sorrow is apt to become petulance, there is much that is as big in spirit as in handling. The work is frequently Mendelssohnian in treatment.
Nor is the music of M. Rachmaninoff ever quite completely new-minted. Has it a melodic line quite properly its own? One doubts it. Many of the melodies of M. Rachmaninoff have a Mendelssohnian cast, for all their Russian sheen. Others are of the sort of sweet, spiritless silken tune generally characteristic of the Russian salon school.
They had also a pleasant visit from the great composer, Mendelssohn, who thus wrote from Windsor to his mother, "Add to this the pretty and most charming Queen Victoria, who looks so youthful, and is so gently courteous and gracious, who speaks such good German, and knows all my music so well," great praise from a Teutonic and Mendelssohnian point of view.
Anything more characteristically Mendelssohnian can scarcely be imagined than this leisurely passing of judgment on his own heart. Just what Cécile thought of his sudden departure we do not know. No doubt by that time she had ceased twitting her mother on Felix's supposed intentions to make Frau Mendelssohn of Mme.
In Germany he had tried the Mendelssohnian style, and had succeeded in composing an oratorio called Die Zerstorung Jerusalems, which luckily was not taken notice of by the moody theatre-going public, and which consequently received the unassailable reputation of being 'a solid German work. He also took Mendelssohn's place as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts when the latter was called to Berlin in the capacity of general director.
His voice faltered as he drew a glowing panegyric of his whilom benefactor, and pictured him as about to die in the prime of life, worn out by vigils and penances. In a revulsion of feeling, fresh stirrings of doubt of the Mendelssohnian solution agitated his soul.
Bribble's rendering of the service he had the sort of voice that brings out things and was still teeming with ideas about it when finally a wild outburst from the organ made it clear that, whatever snivelling there might be down in the chancel, that excellent wind instrument was, in its Mendelssohnian way, as glad as ever it could be. "Pump, pump, per-um-pump, Pum, Pump, Per-um...."
And so it has come about that the generations which had been under the influence of the Mendelssohnian rhetoric and enlightenment, of reform and assimilation, have, in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, been followed by a new generation which seeks to take up a standpoint other than the traditional towards the question of Zion.
No wonder, then, that, unlike Russian Jewry, the German Jews experienced an unprecedented revolution; that the difference between the Mendelssohnian generation and the next following was almost as great as that between the modern American Jew and his brother in the Orient.
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