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Mendelssohn's early death, while yet in the very prime of creative genius, was a stunning blow to Moscheles; more so, perhaps, than would have occurred from the loss of any one except his beloved wife, the mother of his five children. Our musician died himself, in Leipzig, March 10, 1870, and his passage from this world was as serene and quiet as his passage through had been.
The professor nodded to Constance, who stood with her small hands loosely clasped, her grave eyes fastened upon him. He half smiled, as his experienced fingers began the first soft notes of Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Long ago her foster father had written a set of exquisitely tender words that had exactly seemed to fit those unforgettable strains, so familiar to every true lover of music.
The golden glory surrounding and interpenetrating it indicates as before the radiation of its vibrations, which in this case show the dominant yellow in much greater proportion than did Mendelssohn's gentler music. The colouring here is far more brilliant and massive than in Plate M, for this music is not so much a thread of murmurous melody as a splendid succession of crashing chords.
Besides this, we had met at real musical evenings at the conductor Hauptmann's as well as at Mendelssohn's, on which occasion I heard the master take the violin in one of his own quartettes. It was precisely in these circles that I was impressed by the touching and venerable dignity of his absolutely calm demeanour.
Reissiger, for reasons which I shall discuss presently, may not have been so very much to blame for persisting in the old tempo; but Mendelssohn's indifference, with regard to this queer artistic contretemps, raised doubts in my mind whether he saw any distinction and difference in the case at all. I fancied myself standing before an abyss of superficiality, a veritable void.
The confectioner who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield who obligingly supplied the floral decorations; the organist who presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a very inefficient one, of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; the schoolmaster who looked after the children who strewed flowers on the churchyard path; the coachman who drove the happy pair to the station; the station-master who arranged for them a little salvo of his own, which took the form of fog-signals, as the train came in they were all there, and there was not an error in their initials or in the spelling of their names, although there were a good many in the list of distinguished guests, and still more in the long catalogue of presents.
In this despairing mood I felt but little emotion when, on going to say good-bye to Count Redern, he told me with a very sad face the news, which had just arrived, of Mendelssohn's death. I certainly did not realise this stroke of fate, which Redern's obvious grief first brought to my notice.
No. 17, another developed piece, strikes one as akin to Mendelssohn's Songs without Words. I must not omit to mention No. 21, one of the finest of the collection, with its calming cantilena and palpitating quaver figure. Besides the set of twenty-four preludes, Op. 28, Chopin published a single one, Op. 45, which appeared in December, 1841.
Whole pages of his diary are given up to an account of Mendelssohn's doings, and to the most enthusiastic expression of his love and admiration for one of the greatest musical geniuses of modern times.
It was highly interesting on this occasion to contemplate the anxious attention manifested by a body of more than five hundred singers and performers, watching every glance of Mendelssohn's eye, and following, like obedient spirits, the magic wand of this musical Prospero.
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