In April 1829 Mendelssohn paid the first of ten visits to Eng land, the last being shortly before his death, in 1847. From the outset he was received with unparalleled enthusiasm. The Phil harmonic Society had forgotten the lesson in conducting given by Spohr in 182o; and Mendelssohn, on his first appearance, was obliged to conduct his C minor symphony from the pianoforte ; a useless survival of the days of continuo orchestration (see IN STRUMENTATION, sec. 4). As Spohr said, "Of the two conductors not one is real ; the leader of the orchestra has no score and cannot beat time while he is playing; while the gentleman at the piano forte has no use for his instrument and cannot control the players." In later visits Mendelssohn changed all that. For this first concert he replaced the minuet of his symphony by a wonderful orchestra tion of the scherzo of his octet. This remained unpublished until 1911. He introduced Beethoven's concerto in E flat to English audiences and, during a visit five years later, the concerto in G. He was one of the first to play a concerto by heart in public; but though this was no effort to his Macaulayesque memory, he cared so little for display that once, when the score of one of his trios was mislaid, he put another volume upside down on the desk and asked somebody to turn the pages in order that he might not be seen to be playing by heart when his colleagues were playing from notes. After the first London performance of the Mid summer Night's Dream overture a friend left the score in a cab. but Mendelssohn rewrote it from memory.
During his visits to England his organ recitals revolutionized English organ-playing, and his productions of St. Paul and Elijah (the latter receiving its first performance at the Birmingham festival of 1846) established his influence on English music as co-equal with that of Handel.
One thing he emphatically did not establish. He did not found the "Mendelssohn tradition" in conducting. That accusation is one of Wagner's calumnies, and Wagner refutes it in the telling.
He tells us that when he conducted in England he found that our overloaded programmes compelled him to concentrate his re hearsal on a few items and pull the rest through by bluff. Men delssohn had had the same experience in the years from 1829 to 1847, and this was what the orchestral players chose to call "the Mendelssohn tradition." Wagner's vitriolic pen has saved him from having his own bluff immortalized by orchestral old stagers as "the Wagner tradition." The true Mendelssohn tradition was represented by Joachim (q.v.). It is a tradition of love and reverence for the intentions of classical composers, and of a spirit of service in the highest interests of art. Mendelssohn also tried to introduce Schubert's C major symphony in London, but the orchestral players laughed so uncontrollably at the finale that he had to withdraw the work.
The first visit to London had been followed by a tour in Scot land, in which a visit to Staffa inspired him with the theme of his overture The Hebrides (or Fingal's Cave). The whole British
campaign was the first instalment of a grand tour which Abraham Mendelssohn had planned for the enlargement of his son's mind. Accordingly Felix refused the offer of a professorship in Berlin and spent most of 1831 in Italy, reaching Rome on Nov. 1, 1830.
Abraham Mendelssohn felt deeply the duty which orthodox Jews owed to the memory of his father, who had brought his race out from the ghetto and created its modern social position; and he considered that in baptizing his children as Christians he ought to renounce for them that great Jewish name. Accordingly he provided Felix with visiting-cards which added his mother's maiden name, Bartholdy, and expected Felix eventually to drop the name of Mendelssohn. But it was too late; to Abraham's regret Felix's reputation was already established under his grandfather's name.
The main fruit of the Italian tour was the Italian symphony, which gave Felix much trouble and, according to his own account, "some of the bitterest moments" in his experience. The widely stretched rhythms of the brilliant and spirited first movement are the kind of things that very easily upset a composer's calcu lations, and perhaps it was these that caused Mendelssohn bitter moments before he achieved their present easy and satisfactory balance. His letters on the music of the Sistine Chapel show keen observation and little disposition to be overawed by tradition; and it is not likely that he would have been more impressed by the Gregorian chanting of Solesmes than he was by the Palestrina tradition under the direction of Baini, who was then master of the pontifical choir. But he was as enthusiastic as Baini himself about Palestrina's Improperia and Lamentatione, and the famous Miserere of Allegri, with its exquisite modern abellimenti.
In 1832 his wonderful conducting of the Lower Rhine festival at Dusseldorf led to his appointment as general music-director to the town. This implied the management of the music in the principal churches, at the theatre, and at two concert-halls. Men delssohn succeeded brilliantly in his organization of the church music and the concerts; but in attempting to look after too many details himself he rather lost ground with the theatre. Still, he was happy at DUsseldorf, where he began his first oratorio, St. Paul; and he might have stayed there longer but for an invitation to take the permanent direction of the Gewandhaus concerts at Leipzig. This was the highest musical position in Germany, and accordingly Mendelssohn went to Leipzig in Aug. 1835, where he was received with acclamation. The reputation and prosperity of the Gewandhaus concerts increased, and meanwhile St. Paul was finished in time to crown the Lower Rhine festival at Dussel dorf next year.