Let us take one more glimpse of our beloved composer.  It was the morning of August 26, 1846.  The Town Hall of Birmingham, England, was filled with an expectant throng, for today the composer of the “Elijah” was to conduct his greatest work, for the first time before an English audience.  When Mendelssohn stepped upon the platform, he was greeted by a deafening shout; the reception was overwhelming, and at the close the entire audience sprang to its feet in a frenzy of admiration.  He wrote to his brother Paul that evening:  “No work of mine ever went so admirably at the first performance, or was received with such enthusiasm both by musicians and public.”  During April the following year, four performances of the “Elijah” took place in Exeter Hall, the composer conducting, the Queen and Prince Albert being present on the second occasion.  This visit to England which was to be his last, had used his strength to the limit of endurance, and there was a shadow of a coming breakdown.  Soon after he rejoined his family in Frankfort, his sister Fanny suddenly passed away in Berlin.  The news was broken to him too quickly, and with a shriek he fell unconscious to the floor.

From this shock he never seemed to rally, though at intervals for a while, he still composed.  His death occurred November 4, 1847.  It can be said of him that his was a beautiful life, in which “there was nothing to tell that was not honorable to his memory and profitable to all men.”

Mendelssohn’s funeral was imposing.  The first portion was solemnized at Leipsic, attended by crowds of musicians and students, one of the latter bearing on a cushion a silver crown presented by his pupils of the Conservatory.  Beside the crown rested the Order “Pour le Merite,” conferred on him by the King of Prussia.  The band, during the long procession, played the E minor “Song without Words,” and at the close of the service the choir sang the final chorus from Bach’s “Passion.”  The same night the body was taken to Berlin and placed in the family plot in the old Dreifaltigkeit Kirch-hof, beside that of his devoted sister Fanny.

XI

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Many of the composers whose life stories we have read were surrounded by musical atmosphere from their earliest years; Robert Schumann seems to have been an exception.  His father, August Schumann, was the son of a poor pastor, and the boy August was intended to be brought up a merchant.  At the age of fifteen he was put into a store in Nonneburg.  He was refined in his tastes, loved books, and tried even in boyhood to write poetry.  He seemed destined, however, to live the life marked out for him, at least for a time.  It grew so distasteful, that later he gave it up and, on account of extreme poverty, returned to his parents’ home, where he had the leisure to write.  At last he secured a position in a book store in Zeitz.  In this little town he met the daughter of his employer.  The engagement was allowed on the condition that he should leave the book store and set up his own business.  But where was the money to come from?  He left the store, returned home and in a year and a half had earned a thousand thalers, then quite a handsome sum.