[3] "Early Letters of Robert Schumann," trans. by M. Herbert, London, 1888, pp. 113, 118.
[4] In German the terminology of letters standing for tones is richer than in English. B is our B-flat, while H stands for our B-natural; Es is E-flat; As, A-flat, etc.
[5] See page 128 for Schumann's comment on this motto.
[6] The remarkable story of this courtship is told at length in "Clara Schumann, Ein Künstlerleben," by Berthold Litzmann, Zweiter Band, Leipsic, 1906. It has also been vividly sketched in English by Mr. Richard Aldrich, in an article in _Music_, vol. 18.
[8] H, it will be remembered, stands in German for the note B-natural, which makes the musical interval of a fifth with E.
[9] "Clara Schumann, Ein Künstlerleben," by Berthold Litzmann, 1903-1906.
[10] "The Symphony since Beethoven," Eng. trans., p. 31.
[11] See the Adagio of the Quartet, opus 41, no. 1. The accompaniment is essentially a piano accompaniment, transcribed for 'cello and viola; but without the pedal it lacks fluidity.
[12] "Studies in Modern Music," First Series, Essay on Schumann, p. 213.
[Illustration: FELIX MENDELSSOHN From the painting by Edward Magnus]
In studying the relations of a number of contemporary artists to the general tendency of their age it is interesting to note how, in spite of the influence exerted upon them all by prevailing conditions and available opportunities, each responds to the occasion in his own way, always maintaining, in the common enterprise, his own particular ideals, tastes, and methods. Despite all the schools and movements in the history of art, each artist remains himself. So it was in the period of romanticism. The romantic tendency was in the air--the tendency to subjectivism, to picturesqueness, to specialized expression, to a richly sensuous embodiment of ideas; but nevertheless, each individual composer approached music from his own standpoint, seized upon those elements in it for which he had a native affinity, and quietly ignored what did not attract him.
That Mendelssohn should have been a romanticist at all is a proof of the strength of the romantic tendency in his day; he seemed born rather for the severest, purest, most uncompromising classicism; and if he did, as a matter of fact, come to share the ideals of his age, it was in his own way and for his own ends. The crudities, the exaggerations, the morbid self-involution of the extreme phases of the movement, certainly never infected him. For this happy immunity he was indebted largely to the fortunate conditions of his life, both personal and artistic. Crudity is usually a result of narrowness of culture or of a deficiency in technique; and Mendelssohn grew up in a singularly refined domestic and social circle, and was a skilled musician before he was breeched. Exaggeration springs from a lack of taste; and Mendelssohn's taste, both by native endowment and by training, was consummate. Self-consciousness, whether blessed or baneful, is the child of suffering; how, then, should it come to one whose whole life was so protected, so guided, so lapped in material prosperity, family affection, and social respect?