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Of Mendelssohn's character there is no need to speak further here; it was strangely summed up in his own words, in a letter he wrote to a man who had told him that he was spoken of as a veritable saint. How few saints are canonised in their own time, and how few deserve it ever! But let us take Mendelssohn's own words for his own epitaph: "So I am said to be a saint!
I have transposed it two notes lower, and put some sort of words to it. I also sing as a vocalize the first sixteen bars of the overture of Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream." "I don't think that I could do that," she said. "I am sure you could," I answered, upon which she tried it.
Perhaps it was the "Wood Robin," or the "Skylark," or one of Colcott's glees, or one of Mendelssohn's two-part songs, or Schubert's "Serenade," or Beethoven's "Adelaide"; or maybe an interlude of piano, one of Mozart's Sonatas, or "Der Freyschutz," and then a Kyrie, Dona Nobis, Gloria, or Agnus Dei, one or all, until it was time to retire. And still it snowed and snowed.
You can see it in her air the moment she walks away from the altar, keeping step to Mendelssohn's tune. Jack Sharpley says that she always seems to be saying, "Well, I've done it once for all." This assumption of the married must be one of the hardest things for single women to bear in their self-congratulating sisters.
Into further details there is no need to go; weddings are all alike, you will say, except, of course, when you happen to be one of the chief parties concerned. There was of course, the orthodox best man, bridesmaids, and spectators, the lengthy signing of the register and last but not least Mendelssohn's wedding march. I wonder how the world could have got on without it!
I will wager that the translation I drew up for my children will be read by his." Maimon happened to be looking over Mendelssohn's shoulder at his charming daughters in their Parisian toilettes. He saw them exchange a curious glance that raised their eyebrows sceptically. With a flash of insight he caught their meaning. Mendelssohn seeking an epigram had stumbled into a dubious oracle.
Mendelssohn's life flowed on in smoothness, in thorough contrast with the violent ups and downs of Beethoven's mind and music, for he was, as Stratton says, "on the most excellent terms with himself," as with the world in general. He was extremely sensitive to criticism and to false friendship, but he was never stung into those virulent humours which poisoned Beethoven's career.
In Mendelssohn's "Oedipus in Kolonos," however, the music expresses emotion rather than German emotion, and abounds in splendors of harmony that are strikingly Wagnerian in advance. Paine's second chorus describes the imaginary pursuit by Fate of the murderer of King Laius. It is full of grim fire, and the second strophe is at first simply terrible with awe.
His poetic impromptus for piano became the model for Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," and the multitudinous forms of modern short pieces, while his melodious, dainty, graceful valses were the forerunners of the exquisite dance-music which subsequently made Vienna famous, and which reached its climax in Johann Strauss the younger, universally known as "the waltz king."
Just as the musician's ear can tell, by half a dozen bars, whether that strain was Beethoven's, or Handel's, or Mendelssohn's, just as the trained eye can see Raffaelle's magic in every touch of his pencil, so Christ, the Teacher, has a style; and all the scholars of His school carry with them a certain mark which tells where they got their education and who is their Master, if they are scholars indeed.
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