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Mendelssohn wrote volumes of Songs Without Words for piano. Chopin, Debussy and Scriabin composed PRELUDES; Schubert wrote IMPROPTUS; Brahms created INTERMEZZI - In fact, as the piano evolved from Stein to Steinway, 19th century composers were eager to explore the developing instrument’s richer and more powerful “singing-tone.”

But what about instrumental music in general? Is it not singing without words?

No longer in the service of words, instrumental music is the unique expression of music alone. Yet the language of pure music maintains strong ties to spoken language. Words do not necessarily give music a fixed meaning; however, the absence of words forces us to confront music on purely musical terms. The instrumentalist must explore the musical text far beyond the composer’s rudimentary indications of articulation, tempo, expression or dynamic markings.

Mendelssohn’s genius was perhaps the most purely musical in all of western music, but his music always maintained the closest possible ties to spoken language. If Schubert was the master of illuminating words through harmonic coloring and imbuing them with music, Mendelssohn was the master of speaking music not only as if it had words, but as if it were words, delivering the most eloquent narrative with purely musical means.

There is a story associated with the Fugue in E minor of Mendelssohn’s anxiety about the serious illness of a friend and the expression of joy upon the subsequent recovery to good health. The story is plausible enough and the music seems to fit; the somber beginning, the increasingly agitated middle section, the bursting forth of the E major Chorale at the point of greatest turbulence and the bitter-sweet bliss of the final phrases. Is this what this music is all about? Perhaps.
The importance of the E minor fugue is neither its unusual structure nor the romantic tale that accompanies it. It is rather a blazing statement of the musical vision of a young genius venturing into what may have been for him yet uncharted waters. The expressive power of this early attempt apparently was not lost on Mendelssohn himself when ten years later he added the masterful prelude to this fugue for publication as the first of six preludes and fugues Opus 35.

The Sonata in E major was written even earlier than the fugue. It is another extraordinary example of the complexities of a budding musical master. Next to the intimate, but intense passions of the first movement and the Midsummer Night’s Dream frolics of the second movement stands a probing, even somewhat tortured recitative, searching for something not yet fathomed, catching only brief glimpses of it.

The Fantasy in F sharp minor is the culmination of Mendelssohn’s efforts to unify the various parts of a multi-movement work as well as the elements within each movement. The first movement is a representation of a “fantastic” apparition, a model upon which almost all of Franz Liszt’s music is based. Yet while pointing to the future, the powerful paroxysm of this movement can be traced back to another great and gentle master: Franz Joseph Haydn. The horrific outcry towards the end of Haydn’s F minor Variations (Hoboken XVII:6) must have even given Haydn a moment of pause when he tried to soften the impact of his emotional outburst by adding the subtitle: Sonata -Un Piccolo Divertimento. To this day, the perception of Mendelssohn as a mild and gentle member of a privileged bourgeoisie, and therefore almost by definition incapable of bold actions, still persists. This Fantasy dispels this perception.

Setting anti-Semitism aside for a moment, it is possible that Wagner recognized some of his own tricks subtly and unassumingly preempted by Mendelssohn and perhaps even felt the warmth and compassion that emanates from Mendelssohn’s music. But being the zealot that he was, these very traits in Mendelssohn’s personality gave Wagner intellectual cover to denounce Mendelssohn’s music as backward looking and reactionary. Apparently even an imaginary threat to Wagner’s supremacy as a flag-waving revolutionary was enough to provoke his unrelenting wrath. It was also safer to secretly attack someone who was no longer living than to contend with the sharp tongue of his contemporary, the imposing and venerated Johannes Brahms.

In conclusion, it would be fitting to recall Brahms’ sentiment that he would gladly give up all the music he had written for the Hebrides Overture. Brahms clearly recognized in the power of Mendelssohn’s eloquence the aesthetic ideal that was largely discredited toward the end of the 19th century: a grand statement need not be grandiose.

Gershon Silbert