Mendelssohn and Victorian England (review)

The importance of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Victorian English musical life should not be underestimated. His great oratorio Elijah, premiered at the Birmingham Musical Festival of 1846—one of the most important venues for the production of music in England throughout the nineteenth century—was called “mutton” to the “beef” of George Frederic Handel’s Messiah (1741–42) in the pages of the popular press (Yorkshire Post 3 Oct. 1895); few of the great multi-day musical festivals of the second half of the century could turn a profit without Elijah’s presence. Even after death, Mendelssohn’s importance to musicians remained supreme: the Mendelssohn Scholarship, founded in his honor in 1849, provided numerous British musicians, such as Frederick Corder, Swinnerton Heap, and Arthur Sullivan the opportunity to study at the Leipzig Conservatory at a time when “foreign polish” was still considered essential for the ambitious English composer. While esteem for Mendelssohn’s instrumental music fell toward the end of the nineteenth century, enough of English society valued him to secure his reputation as a beneficent influence and master vocal composer well into the twentieth.

Colin Timothy Eatock’s new book, Mendelssohn and Victorian England, is a detailed, meticulous account of the ten journeys Mendelssohn made to England between 1829 and 1847. After contextualizing London’s musical infrastructure in 1829, Eatock discusses in three chapters Mendelssohn’s influence on England and the country’s influence on him, and concludes with two chapters considering Mendelssohn’s legacy throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. Two appendices—a glossary of names, and a chronological list of Mendelssohn’s public and private performances in England, including venues, repertoire (when known), and Mendelssohn’s role in the performance (conductor, pianist, organist, violinist, violist, or composer)—round out this informative discussion of one facet of the composer’s life.

Eatock’s work is an excellent synthesis of hundreds of sources, primary and secondary, on the life and times of Mendelssohn in England. It is well written, and (for those who enjoy rich detail) an engaging and quick read. The volume does not, however, discuss or analyze any of Mendelssohn’s many compositions beyond naming them. Thus, while Eatock’s grasp of information is admirable, his apparatus is questionable, since he seldom moves beyond the mere listing of facts. Paragraphs of lists are followed by more paragraphs of lists. Typical is a discussion of the music journalist Henry Fothergill Chorley:

Also in 1839, Mendelssohn established a friendship with Henry Fothergill Chorley, music critic for The Athenaeum, who had traveled to the Brunswick Festival, where Mendelssohn was conducting. Arriving there on 4 September, the English critic forwarded to Mendelssohn a letter of introduction from Moscheles, along with a letter he himself wrote. “I should be much pleased,” suggested Chorley, “if I might be treated by you not as a stranger but a lover of your art—that is, wholly without ceremony.” His wish soon came true: Chorley noted in his diary that, following a rehearsal, Mendelssohn gave him a “friendly welcome to Germany.” Later that month, Chorley traveled to Berlin and Leipzig, with Mendelssohn arranging for his accommodation in both cities.

(68)

This paragraph’s topic sentence does not point to any larger significance of Chorley within Victorian music or, frankly, Mendelssohn’s life; the main part of the paragraph is a list of events, with the occasional quotation included; and there is no conclusion, simply a final event listed at the end of the paragraph. Brief exceptions occur in the final two chapters when Eatock makes semi-analytical discourses into the race-baiting tendencies of Mendelssohn’s late-nineteenth-century critics. Yet for the most part, everything in this volume is relegated to facts, and consequently larger meaning never coalesces.

Further, Eatock’s facts do not always tell the entire story. In his last chapter, while outlining the decline in Mendelssohn’s critical popularity at the end of the century, Eatock states that articles on Mendelssohn in prominent English musical journals, such as...