Two weeks ago, we wrote about Mendelssohn and Bach. Today, we go back to the beginning of Felix Mendelssohn’s story—one that starts with his grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn. The difference between the Classical Principle and Romanticism is nowhere else more clear.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) changed the world in a way that few people do. He was born into a poor Jewish family, and was largely self-educated. He challenged society's prejudices: in philosophy, as witnessed in his defense of Leibniz and Plato, against the more popular British empiricism, and the French Enlightenment's Voltaire. He also overcame prejudices about the Jewish people and their religion, through the power and beauty of his own mind. He taught himself Greek, German, French, English, Italian, and Latin. As a young boy, he mastered the “Guide for the Perplexed” by Moses Maimonides, and later the “Theodicy”of Leibniz.
He even challenged his own name. Tradition said that he should be known as Moses Dessau, i.e. Moses from the town of Dessau. His father was named Mendel. He called himself Moses Mendelssohn (i.e. son of Mendel), thus establishing a family name. What a travesty that Moses' son Abraham (who had many good qualities), challenged his son (Felix) to take the name Bartholdy, in order to obscure his Jewish origins. Felix revered his grandfather Moses, and kept his last name.
Moses Mendelssohn studied Homer and Plato, and translated the first three books of Plato's “Republic” into German. Several of his philosophical treatises are written in Platonic dialogue form, and his famous work, “Phaedon, or On the Immortality of the Soul” (1767), is based upon the “Phaedo” of Plato. It was this work, which catapulted Mendelssohn into the role of preeminent philosopher of Europe, earning him the appellations of "Berlin Plato" and "Jewish Socrates." He also translated Shakespeare into German.
He became friends with the great playwright Gottfried Lessing. Moses Mendelssohn became the model for Nathan in Lessing's play "Nathan the Wise", which presents religious tolerance between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, not in a modern situation, but in Jerusalem amidst The Crusades! (FT 1) Lessing and Mendelssohn were active in the court of King Frederick the Great at Potsdam. They defended the tradition of Leibniz against Voltaire, and the sense-certainty of empiricism.
Mendelssohn wrote:
“To you, immortal Leibniz, I set up an eternal memorial in my heart! Without your help I would have been lost for ever. I never met you in the flesh, yet your imperishable writings ... have guided me to the firm path of the true philosophy, to the knowledge of myself and of my origin. They have engraved upon my soul the sacred truths on which my felicity is founded ... Is there any slavery harder to bear than the one in which reason and heart are at loggerheads with one another?”
You may find yourself asking, "If Leibniz is so important, how come I never heard of him? " To which we answer, "His importance is precisely why you never heard of him." We will attach suggested readings at the end of this article.
At the court of Frederick the Great, Lessing and Mendelssohn became friends with the music director, CPE Bach, the fifth son of the famous J.S. Bach. J.S. Bach had visited the court in 1747, where he met a monumental challenge from the King with his breakthrough work, "A Musical Offering", which included a 6 part Ricercar (basically a fugue) on the King's Theme.
This was in opposition to the light-as-air music proposed by Jean Jacques Rousseau (Yes, the author of "The Rights of Man"). Rousseau is said to have revolutionized taste, by "meeting the people where they're at." Here is his "L'Air de la Troupe Marchant" (Song of the Marching Troops).
As hard as it is to believe, this mediocrity was composed decades after the death of Bach.
You do have to meet the people where they are at. You cannot shoot miles over their heads and expect them to respond. The question is: Do you meet them where they are, in order to educate and uplift them to something higher; or to placate and stroke them, like a pet? Bach thought that fugal polyphony was natural to human beings. He took simple well-known hymns, transformed and uplifted them, in a way that could not but help uplift the listener.
Rousseau insisted that counterpoint was confusing and got in the way of melody. He even tried to "simplify" music for the people. Instead of reading left to right, then switching all the way to the left again, he proposed having music read left to right, then the next line right to left, to make it easier for the people. Never mind how language has been read for millennia. Rousseau functioned as a romantic, before the so-called romantic period in music even began.
Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing were at the Court of King Frederick the Great, and were friends with another man who was trying to uplift and educate that monarch, and that court, CPE Bach, the 5th son of J S Bach, and director of music at Potsdam. Though he loved the written works of both Lessing and Mendelssohn, he chose to set another poet.
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–1769) was a professor of philosophy and poetry at the University of Leipzig during the last years that Johann Sebastian Bach was Cantor at the Thomaskirche (choir director at Saint Thomas' Church) in that city. He was an advocate of "natural theology": finding God in nature, science, and philosophy, and the Goodness of the Creator as expressed in the best qualities of humanity; rather than through an overemphasis on "revealed religion" and mysticism. He was loved by his students for his calm qualities of humility, generosity, modest piety and friendliness. He practiced what he preached, and strove to be a living example of God's goodness.
As a poet, he is seen as a founder of a new German school of lyricism that led to Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. He is credited with beginning the process of liberating German poetry from Gottsched's stifling rules of the French Academy, which followed Aristotle's arbitrary restrictions.
In 1757, Gellert published his "Sacred Odes and Songs," and suggested that they could be sung to traditional chorales (hymn tunes). His close friend, J.S. Bach's son, CPE Bach, thought that they deserved better (small wonder, his father was the master of elevating simple hymns). CPE Bach set all 54 of them to original music (though he re-ordered the poems). Although his settings are somewhat hymn-like, they may also be the foundation for a new form: "Lieder", or the "Art Song. Here is the text to song 1.
Song 1: Bitten (I ask of you)
Gott, deine Güte reicht so weit,
So weit die Wolken gehen;
Du krönst uns mit Barmherzigkeit,
Und eilst, uns beizustehen.
Herr, meine Burg, mein Fels, mein Hort,
Vernimm mein Flehn, merk auf mein Wort,
Denn ich will vor dir beten!
God, your goodness reaches so wide,
As far as the clouds go;
You crown us with mercy,
And hurry to help us.
Lord, my castle, my rock, my treasure,
Take my torch, remember my word,
For I will pray before you.
Here is the setting by CPE Bach:
Some 45 years later, Ludwig van Beethoven set several of the same songs. He knew and respected the settings of CPE Bach. In fact, his setting of Bitten pays tribute to CPE Bach. The third last line, "Herr, meine Burg, mein Fels, mein Hort" is sung in Bach's version on a single note. Beethoven follows suit. Please compare that line in both settings.
Here is the setting by Beethoven
What does that tell us? Is Beethoven a revolutionary? He certainly is! He goes way beyond his predecessors. At the same time, his respect for them grew as he learned. He is a revolutionary who does not discard the past.
Instead of a cancel-culture movement, we need the opposite. Or, as Verdi puts it: " We should study the past. It will allow us to move forward." Future advances depend on studying past ones.
Ft 1. Lessing stated that at the time of his play (about 1,000 A.D.), the Muslims and the Jews were the only civilized people in the world. The overwhelming motiv in the play is: "Is it not enough to be human?" During the 20th century holocaust, many German Jews named their children Lessing, in honor of what he had done.