XXVIII of the theatre concert for Pentecost on 31 May.42 Mendelssohn enthusiastically agreed and promised to provide Dorn with a manuscript copy of the score since he himself would have left for Weimar by then.43 His letter to Dorn of 2 June, however, demonstrates that this copy was not completed in time, not least since Heinrich Marschner, at the time also resident in Leipzig, had suggested further revisions which had fallen on fertile soil with the composer. This letter, posted already from Weimar, is telling in a number of ways and will therefore be quoted extensively: “Enclosed is my symphony, very punctually and within the agreed time. I hope it can still be copied out, rehearsed and performed by the day before yesterday. But seriously, I have to apologise profusely for not having been able to fulfil my promise; you had predicted that from the beginning, but that is impossible since I was fully determined, started to make the necessary corrections during the first days of my stay here, and plunged myself so deeply into the revisions that I had to add a number of things in the last movement and remove much old material. Even thus, there would have been enough time; but then the promised copyist jilted me day after day and if I did not have to leave town first thing tomorrow morning, I believe it would still not be finished because threats about my departure and suchlike have no effect here anymore as I have stayed here for almost a fortnight instead of four days. Nevertheless, I am sending you the symphony anyway, first to ask you to have another look and also to show it to our friend Marschner to see whether the cuts in the last movement are sufficient (as I hope they will), further to ask you to send the same when you no longer need it (which I fear will be very soon, alas) to my sister, Madame Hensel, Leipziger Strasse no. 3 in Berlin, either through somebody who happens to go there or by mail without postage, as I have promised her a copy and already announced it in a letter. Excuse the trouble I am causing you, but until the day before yesterday I always thought it might perhaps still be possible for the copy to reach you in time, and since I had resolved to send it I cannot do otherwise. Perhaps there is even a positive side to the delay preventing the performance; in retrospect, it occurred to me that the chorale and all the catholicisms would have appeared odd in the theatre; and a Reformation Symphony at Pentecost might have sounded strange.”44
Leipzig also held celebrations for the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession from 25 to 27 June, but again the symphony does not seem to have been considered for those (the possibility is not even mentioned by either Mendelssohn or Dorn); Bach cantatas were used as the music for them.45 Dorn did send the score to Fanny Hensel in Berlin as requested; it later passed into the possession of Eduard Ritz and after his death into that of his brother Julius Rietz. The manuscript is of utmost importance for the genesis of the symphony as it precisely documents the status of the composition in late May 1830, proving that practically all more substantial revisions (with the exception of the end of the coda in the finale) had already been implemented by this time, rather than during the final preparation of the score for the premiere in November 1832 (see the Critical Report). Even in catholic Munich, Mendelssohn kept thinking about the symphony. When watching the Corpus Christi procession on 10 June, he further specified its poetic idea: “I wish you had been with me the other day when I was walking amongst the crowds during the procession, looking around a great deal and feeling very contented with myself because of the first movements of the church symphony, as I would not have expected the contrast between the first two movements to work so well even today. But if you had heard the whole crowd chanting prayers very monotonously, with a hoarse priest shouting in between, or another reading the Gospel and cheerful military music with trumpets blasting right through the middle, and how the colourfully painted banners fluttered back and forth, and how the choirboys were draped with golden tassels – I think you would have praised me as I did myself and was delighted.”46 More importantly, however, the symphony at the same time came even closer to being performed than in Leipzig: the music direction of the royal court had expressed interest in the C minor Symphony as well as the “Reformation Symphony”. “The whole orchestra will probably assemble one of these mornings to play through both my symphonies; because they have asked me to have them for the concerts next winter,” the composer wrote to his family on 27 June.47 Soon after, the two works were indeed played through on the piano in a small circle: “Yesterday morning there was a musical matinée in my rooms: Baron Poissl [the director of the court music], Kapellmeister Stuntz,
4 2 See Heinrich Dorn, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, Dritte Sammlung, Berlin, 1872 (hereafter: Dorn, Erinnerungen), p. 70. 43 See Critical Report, description of Source D. 44 Letter of 2 June 1830 to Heinrich Dorn, location unknown. The letter was held until 1945 in the Prussian State Library under the shelfmark Mus. ep. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy 4; here quoted from: Heinrich Dorn, Aus meinem Leben. Nr. 2. Erinnerungen an Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und seine Zeitgenossen, in: Die Gartenlaube 18 (1870), no. 9, pp. 137–142, and no. 10, pp. 151–153, quotation on p. 152; also in: Dorn, Erinnerungen [note 42], pp. 73–75. 45 See Silber, Mendelssohn and His Reformation Symphony [note 8], pp. 316–317. 46 Letter of 15 June 1830 to Rebecka Mendelssohn Bartholdy, US-NYp, *MNY++ Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, family letters, no. 104, published in: Silber, Mendelssohn and the Reformation Symphony [note 8], pp. 221–226, quotation on pp. 221–222. According to Dinglinger, The Programme of Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony [note 8], pp. 117–118, Mendelssohn was referring to the contrast between first movement and Scherzo. One wonders, however, whether the composer did not mean the slow introduction and the Allegro con fuoco of the first movement instead: the Scherzo is doubtlessly “cheerful”, but there is nothing militaristic about it, and there are no trumpets either. On the other hand, the Allegro entry in bar 42 combines both these elements to a high degree and literally “blasts right through the middle” of the Dresdner Amen prayer. Additionally, the terms “piece” or “movement” were treated quite flexibly in the nineteenth century; after all, the Andante of the “Reformation” symphony only numbers 54 bars as well, and the autograph counted the slow introduction to the first movement separately from the Allegro. 47 Letter of 26 and 27 June 1830 to Fanny Hensel [section of 27 Juni], Basel, Paul Sacher Stiftung, Sammlung Rudolf Grumbacher, Ref.-Nr. 195, quoted from: Friedrich Schnapp, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Brief an seine Schwester Fanny Hensel vom 26./27. Juni 1830, in: Schweizerische Musikzeitung 99 (1959), pp. 85–91, quotation on p. 87.