Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Quarterly.http://www.jstor.orgMendelssohn's Music and German-Jewish Culture: An Intervention Author(s): Michael P. Steinberg Source:The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 31-44Published by:Oxford University PressStable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/742258Accessed: 08-07-2015 11:51 UTCYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicandGerman- Jewish Culture:AnIntervention MichaelP. Steinberg In memoryofGeorge L. Mosse (1918-1999) Volume 82, Number 1 of The Musical Quarterly(Spring 1998) concluded with an article by JeffreySposato titled"Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identificationof Mendelssohn as Jew" and an editorial responseby Leon Botsteintitled"Mendelssohn and the Jews." The "creative writing" alluded to in Sposato's titlerefersto the vexed scholarlylegacy of Eric Werner's1963 biography Mendelssohn:A New Imageof the Composer and His Age (and the German edition that followedin 1980). As is the case with most significantscholarlycontroversies,thereis troubleboth at the level of the factsand at the level of interpretation.According to Sposato, Werner factually and interpretativelymisrepresented the com- poser as a self-identified Jew.(He had been convertedfrom Judaism to Protestantism by his parents in 1816 at the age of seven.) Wernerwas the first biographer of Mendelssohn to workwith trovesof Mendelssohn family lettersfromthe holdings of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, the Staatsbibliothekin West Berlin,and others.His own stated purpose was to use these sources towarda correctionof the "faulty premises" on which previousbiographical treatmentshad rested.But, according to Sposato and otherscholarswho have spent time with these same sources, Wemrnerconsistently mistranscribedand mistranslated pas- sages fromthe correspondence.According to Sposato, he did so with particularconsistency when the issue at hand involved the composer's relationship to his Jewish heritage and to the climate of anti-Jewishprej- udice to which he was exposed. According to Sposato, then,Werner "created"Mendelssohn's Jewish identification. In this issue,PeterWard Jonesseconds Sposato's views with a con- vincing and carefulletter.As a Mendelssohn scholar working in the Bodleian Library, one of the principalrepositories of Mendelssohn let- ters,Ward Jones carries greatauthority in his negative opinion of Werner's scholarlypractice. There is, in addition,an interpretative agreement between Ward Jones and Sposato. They agree that Werner consistently mis-and over-representedMendelssohn'sidentificationwith 31 This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions32TheMusical Quarterly his Jewishfamilyheritage.Sposato suggests, and Ward Jonesspecula- tivelyconcurs, that Mendelssohn, the man, mustbe understoodas a typ- ical, newly convertedProtestant ("Neuchrist"). There are, to mymind,three issues in this controversy that are of fundamental importance to three contiguous discourses:to Mendelssohn studies,to the cultural history of German Jewry in the firsthalf of the nineteenth century, and to the developing discoursethat we can call the cultural history of music. I would like to addressthe controversy at these threelevels, offering the followingargument: 1.The same overinvestmentin "Mendelssohn Hero" that appar- ently led Eric Wernerto distortthe biographical recordalso produced a measureof constructiveand indeed even truthful understanding of a complicated culturalmomentand biograph- ical formation.His errorsand even his alleged fraudulence notwithstanding, Werner's interpretiveshortcomings are quite standardand his biography standsas a major, if dated, mile- stone in Mendelssohn studies. 2.Felix Mendelssohn'sculturalmomentand biographical forma- tion cannot be understoodas those of a "typical Neuchrist"but ratheras a paradigm of a multiculturaland uncertainmoment in German Jewishhistory that was available only to the Bie- dermeier generation,i.e., the generation of 1815-1848. The assertionthat Mendelssohn should be considereda Protes- tant ratherthan Jewsimplyreplaces one conceptually and his- toricallyinadequate label with anotherand thus duplicates Werner's conceptual and historicallimitations,even if it restoresthe veracity of the source material.As Leon Botstein reflectedin his response to Sposato, "[s]elf-identifications are rarely exclusive or stable" (213). In Biedermeier Germany,they were unusually volatile. 3.If what we would today call "cultural identity" was in fluxin general in the Biedermeier period, it was particularly so fora personality such as Mendelssohn's.Felix Mendelssohn was not a "typical"anything. We would have littleinterestin his life were ifnot forhis exceptionality, much of which obviously residesin his music. Since thereis so much culturaland per- sonal engagement evident in the music,we should look there for guidance to significant issues involving the man's mind. We should look into that mind,moreover,for depth and conflict ratherthan forsheen and harmony. In doing so, we should dispense, in myview,with three interpretive fallacies: that of authorialintentionas a This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicandGerman-JewishCulture33 sufficientcondition forthe understanding of a creativework,that of cul- turalessentialismin the positing of "identity," and the fallacyspecific to post-Wagnerian Mendelssohn reception that recognizes the latter's"bril- liance" as an equivalent factorto his musical sheen and harmony and thus as equally suggestive of an alleged markof superficiality. As practi- tionersof a cultural history of music,can we not pursue cultural depth and musical depth together? The "new image" Wemrner sought to attach to Mendelssohn was that of a "musical focal point" of the nineteenth century. He sought to overcome threeobstacles in Mendelssohn reception: musical fashion,as he put it, which could findno place forMendelssohn among the categories of Wagnerism,impressionism,neo-classicism,and expressionism, and dode- caphony; the "infamousbanishment" by the culturalauthoritiesof the Third Reich; and the "equal harm that had been done by the uncritical adulation during a part of the nineteenth century."' Although he stated that he wanted to remove Mendelssohn fromthe hero worship of Victo- rian listenersand biographers in theirshadow,Werner certainlysought to reestablishthe importance of Mendelssohn without qualification or apology. He sought also to understandMendelssohn according to a high degree of cultural complication. He referredto that complication on the first page of the introductionas "the German Jewishsymbiosis." Wernerused this phrase in a general and imprecise manner.It is not clear whether by "symbiosis" he meant a new hybrid formationor a cohabitationof essentially differentcultures.(The phrase does not appear in the German edition of 1980, in which these opening pages are quite changed.) The termcan be used legitimately to discussforma- tions within German-Jewishspheres: Moses Mendelssohn,for example, was clearly both a Jew and a German. When, however,it is used to denote relationsbetween Germans and Jews it duplicatesby defaultthe veryassumptions of essential separateness of spheres that it claims to criticize. Wernerresortedto the term"German Jewishsymbiosis" at pre- cisely the momentit was falling into conflict.In a now classic letterof December 1962, first published in 1964, Gershom Scholem wrote: I deny thattherehas everbeensucha German-Jewishdialogue in any genuine sense whatsoever,i.e.,as a historical phenomenon. It takestwoto have a dialogue, who listento each other,whoare prepared to perceive theother,who are prepared to perceive theotheras whathe is and repre- sents,and to respond to him. Nothing can be more misleading thanto apply sucha concept to thediscussionsbetweenGermansand Jewsduring thelast200 years. It diedwhenthesuccessorsofMosesMendelssohn- whostill argued fromthe perspective ofsomekindof Jewishtotality, even This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions34TheMusical Quarterly though thelatterwasdetermined by the concepts ofthe Enlightenment- acquiesced in abandoning thewholenessin orderto salvage an existence for pitifulpieces ofit,whose recentlypopulardesignation as German- Jewish symbiosis revealsitswhole ambiguity.2 Scholem's lifelong conviction that Zionism was the only modern alternative by which to preserve his idea of Moses Mendelssohn's Jewish "totality" led him, with increasing vehemence after1945, to deny the historical validity eitherof a blending of German Christianand German Jewish culturesor even of a productivedialogue between them.On the otherside of the argument, historian George Lachmann Mosse, eminent forhis own workon German Jewishculture,has consistentlydisagreed with Scholem, who was a personal friendof his as well as a scholarly interlocutor.In books such as GermanJewsBeyondJudaism,Mosse affirmsboth the historicalexistence of a German Christian-German Jewishdialogue as well as that of a "German-Jewishidentity." Mosse has often stated-though I am not aware whetherhe has said so in print- that he used to tell Scholem that Scholem was himselfthe finestexam- ple of what he denied ever to have existed.3 In all discussionsof the foundationsand definitionsof German Christian-German Jewishdialogue or of German Jewishculture,the figure of Moses Mendelssohn looms largest. None of the figures under discussionhere devotes sustainedattentionto the thinking of Moses Mendelssohn,and this is not the place to attempt to provide it. In all discussionsof the Mendelssohns,he figures as both the point of origin and the historicalreferent. For Scholem, Moses Mendelssohn is the guarantor of a "totality of Jewish life"forGerman modernity, a statementthat goes unelaborated. For Mosse, Moses Mendelssohn signifies as the interlocutorand friendof Gottfried EphraimLessing, who elevated their friendship into a model of Christian-Jewish dialogue and elevated dialogue into the principle of moraland aesthetic education that he and others began to referto as Bildung. For Eric Werner,Moses Mendelssohn's Judaism is consistent with a generalhumanism,and it is as humanismthat it is transmittedto and preservedby his grandson Felix. For Werner,Felix Mendelssohn is a humanistand thereforea defenderof the Jews.Through thissomewhat imprecisegloss of "humanism,"Werner argues forthe "European" ideals of Felix and statesthat "[i]n his case the conflictbetween Germanism and Judaism came as close to a solutionas the German nation would permit."4 Bildung encodes the principle, indeed the cult, that forges the com- mon German Christianand German Jewishproject in the period This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicandGerman-JewishCulture35 1815-1848. It is a bourgeoisproject and a civic one, locating both intel- lectual and commerciallife in patterns of exchange available in cities such as Berlin,Hamburg, and Leipzig, and deliberatelydifferentiating the patterns and politics of such urban lifefromthe styles and claims of imperial centerssuch as Vienna. Until 1848, the reactionarygaze of Metternich'sAustriastillfellon German cities,and the livelihoods withinthose cities that many historianshave called "unpolitical" were in fact carefully elaborated political, indeed even radical,practices. In a more temperedvein, Gershom Scholem said the following about the relationsbetween Christiansand Jews in Germany: The firsthalfofthenineteenth century was a period in which Jewsand Germansdrew remarkably close. During thistimean extraordinary amountof help camefromtheGermanside,with many individualJews receivingcooperation in their stormystruggle forculture.Therewascer- tainly no lackof goodwillthen;reading the biographies ofthe Jewish elite ofthe period, one again and again findsevidenceofthe understanding theyencountered.5 As always, Scholem insistedhere on the polarity of Germans and Jews,therebyreifying the nationalistessentialismthat grew dominant later in the century. Scholem pursued this categoricalpolarization delib- erately; mosthistorical scholarship has inheritedit more passively. Scholem refused consistently to use the categories "German Christian" and "German Jewish," and thusrefusedto acknowledge the Germanness of the German Jews,which they of course themselves proclaimed with the shared workof Bildung and civic consciousnessas theirmeasures. In correcting Scholem's nobly motivated counter-history, one must assertthe historicalfactthat modern literary German was inventedin the period of Goethe and his readers,the period of the early nineteenth century to which Scholem refersas the most remarkableforthe Ger- man-Jewish encounter. "Germany" as idea was producedby Christians and Jews.In this quite literal "production of Germany," the Mendels- sohn family in its multigenerational,multicultural,and multiprofessional eminence plays a key role. My own scholarlyentry into the complicated culturalworldof Men- delssohn and German Jewishhistory was afforded by way of an unex- pectedlyproductivetangent. In 1991 I was invitedto contributean essay to the collected volume Mendelssohnand His World;myassignment was to writeon Mendelssohn'sincidentalmusic to Sophocles's Antigone, which would be performed that summerat the Bard Music Festival.The This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions36TheMusical Quarterly discursivecontext of Sophocles's Antigone in the period conjures the names of Hegel, Boeckh, Tieck, and Droysen and confrontssome of the weightiest debates of the time,the most importantbeing the relation between ancient religion and modernstate practice.Antigone is about the characterof a citycaught between inherited religious normsand state authority. It was performed, in the versionwhich Mendelssohn contributed,in 1841 forthe courtof the recently crownedFrederick William IV of Prussia,whose statistand increasingly intolerantmode of authority stood in delicate negotiations with the civic health that had emerged underhis predecessors. It became clear to me as I workedon this relatively esotericeffort of Mendelssohn'sthat his involvementand investmentwith the Antig- one themeswere overdeterminedin that they broached reflectionsand resonancesof the question of Judaism as an ancient faith.The substan- tial issue of Christian-Jewish relationsand tensions notwithstanding, the debate in this period about modern politics and ancient religion encom- passed Judaism as well as Christianity. For Jews as well as Christians, modernity and secularizationmeant the reinterpretation of inherited faith.Assimilationmeant Christianization,but it also meant seculariza- tion. Mendelssohn'sown reconfiguration of faithand its modern place contended with three moving variables: Judaism,Protestantism,and the secular world. This Antigone holds clues to the issue of assimilated enlightened Judaism and the uneasy Prussianstate. Their infusioninto Mendels- sohn's presence in this realizationof the play is intenseand ambiguous, and speaks to the importance of classical drama as a nineteenth-century forumforthe issuesas it speaks to the importance of the issuesthem- selves. It is not hard to see whySophocles's problematic of the con- frontationof private,familyreligion and morality and the exigencies of modernstate power strucka nerve among German intellectualsand the- ater publics in the nineteenth century, a period marked by the consoli- dation of state power-both the Austrianand the Prussianvarieties- and the perceiveddissipation of traditionalmodes of community and culture.Germans were asking the same question posed in the tragedy: in the transitionto modernity defined politicallyby the increasingly cen- tralizedstate, wheredoes one locate and how does one preservelegiti- macy (the central political category) and authenticity(the centralcul- tural category). In Sophocles, the modem state opposes the intransigence of tradi- tional morality-and hence the definitionsof legitimacy and authentic- ity-in the persons of Creon and Antigone. Creon is the restoringking who brings Thebes out of a threatenedrevolution,led by Polynices, This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicand German-Jewish Culture37 brotherof Antigone. To show that legitimacy restswith the state,he has forbiddenburialritualforthe slain Polynices.Antigone resistsand attempts to bury the corpse in an insistencethat legitimacy restsin a morality that is prior to and more constantthan the lifeand the rights of the state. For Hegel, the tragedy shows the way to synthesis and resolutionof value conflicts (family versus city, moral law and traditionversus politi- cal necessity)beyond the abilities of the characters,and hence of the possibilities of the drama.6For both Friedrichand August Wilhelm Schlegel, Antigone is the hero and Creon the villain; for Hegel the opposition is morallysymmetricaland, forthat precisereason, tragic. The harmonizationof the ethical lifeof individual persons,families,and religions with the lifeand exigencies of the state is the process of history workedout throughoutHegel's work,with the referencesto Antigone a recurringpresence.Hegel's reading cannot itselfbe read simply as an endorsementof Creon's position,just as his emergingphilosophy of the state cannot be read simply as an endorsementof state (i.e., Prussian) power. But such a simplifiedreading was prevalent in the 1830s and 1840s, as it is still today.George Steiner thereforetalksabout the con- servative,pro-CreonHegel paradigm; such a paradigmbelongs more accurately to the reception of Hegel than to his own position. This pro- Creon paradigm remaineddominant,George Steiner argues, until O. Ribbeck's Sophokles und seine Tragadien(1869)and Wilamowitz-Moellen- dorfon Antigone's martyrdom.7 To pursue the questions of the identity of "Mendelssohn's Antigone," the reception of the workin the line of Hegel and Boeckh shows profound political ambivalence,and we are in a position to see how Mendelssohn adds new refractionsto such ambivalence. Felix's culturaland religious sensibilitiescan be understoodaccord- ing to (at least) three issues:his relationship to Judaismand to Jewish assimilation,his growing devotion to Protestantmusic,and the social taboo of the discussionof Jewish matters among the assimilated,largely convertedBerlin intelligentsia. Abraham Mendelssohn'sfamousletterto his son of 8 July 1829 is a stern charge that his son adopt the name Bartholdy and drop the name Mendelssohn. Only thuscould Felix reap the benefitsof the Lutheran identity to which the family conversion entitledhim. The letterbears quoting: My fatherfeltthatthenameMosesden MendelDessauwould handicap himin gaining theneededaccessto thosewhohad thebettereducation at their disposal. Without any fearthathisownfatherwouldtakeoffense, my fatherassumedthenameMendelssohn.The change,though a small This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions38TheMusical Quarterly one,wasdecisive.As Mendelssohn,he became irrevocably detachedfrom an entireclass,thebestofwhomhe raisedto hisown level. By thatname he identifiedhimselfwitha different group.Through the influencewhich, ever growing,persists to this day, thenameMendelssohn acquiredgreat authority and a significance whichdefiesextinction.This,considering that you werereareda Christian,you can hardly understand.A Christian Mendelssohnis an impossibility. A ChristianMendelssohntheworld wouldnever recognize. Nor shouldtherebe a ChristianMendelssohn;for my fatherhimselfdid notwantto be a Christian."Mendelssohn"does and always willstandfora Judaism in transition,whenJudaism,just becauseit is seeking to transmuteitself spiritually,clings to itsancientformall the more stubbornly and tenaciously,byway of protestagainst thenovelform thatso arrogantly and tyrannically declareditselfto be theone and only path to the good.8 This passage is a profound reflectionof and on Jewish assimilation in Prussiain the firsthalf of the nineteenth century. The historical logic is Hegelian: assimilation represents historical development and the mat- urationof spiritual life.Abraham did not see his conversionand name change as a rejection of his father's path, but precisely as a continua- tion of it. Moses had changed his name in accordance with the social changes of German Jewry; Abraham took the process one significant step furtherand expected his own son to respect thishistorical trajec- tory. Felix's rebellionmustthereforebe seen in termsof his general rejec- tion of a Hegelian historical linearity-more on thiswill followbelow. Felix thus recomplicated the cultural identity in relationto which his fatherand grandfather had soughtharmony and resolution. With regard to this spirit of complication, Felix's determinationto remaina Mendelssohn mustbe understoodin conjunction with the growing devotion to Protestantmusic-asa markof his increasing insis- tence on a criticaland self-forming cultural identity. The 1829 revival of the St. MatthewPassionis the strongestexample. One mightargue that Mendelssohn'srelationto Protestantismand the integrity of its aesthetic representations foreshadowsMahler's attachment,two generations later (however moreconflictedthe latter's maybe), to Catholicism and Catholic theatricality. Mahler roamed the contoursof the German world,holding positions in Prague,Budapest, and Hamburg, and craved the returnto the center, which meant the cultural,musical,and sym- bolic worldof Vienna. His own conversionto Catholicism mustthere- forebe understoodas a dimensionof a desireto participate in the major- ity cultureof the AustrianCatholic baroque.9 Similarly, Mendelssohn's itinerary had taken him from Hamburg,Ddisseldorf, and Leipzig to the This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicand German-Jewish Culture39 new culturalcenter of Berlin,and his Protestantdevotion represented also a devotion to culturaltraditionsof northern Germany, with Bach as culturalas well as musical hero. Nevertheless,the confidenceand mastery Mendelssohn showed in 1829 were not freeof Jewishself-consciousness,as noted in the memoirs of Eduard Devrient. Devrient,an actor (Haemon in the 1841 Antigone) and close friendof Mendelssohn's,recalled Mendelssohn'sremarkson the success of the St. MatthewPassion: "To thinkthat a comedian and a Jew mustrevive the greatest Christianmusic forthe world."'1 The fact that the performance took place in the Singakademie generated the re- curringdisapproval, in the nineteenth-centuryliterature,of the alleged secularizationof Bach.'1 Such uncertainties persisted. The difficult episode of the Singakademie'srejection of Mendels- sohn's candidacy forthe directorship in 1833 reaches to the core of the cultureof Bildung,Christian-Jewishrelations,and civic life.'z In the essay "Mendelssohn and the Berlin Singakademie: The Composer at the Crossroads,"published as well in the 1991 volume, William A. Little takes issue with the view,advocated by Werner,that anti-Jewishnesswas involved in the rejection of Mendelssohn forthe directorship. Little writes:"Eric Werner,by readingselectively and falling back on polemics, sees the entire episode in termsof a Judeo-Christianconflict,and more specifically as one more example ofJudeo-Christianenmity. Such a reductiofalters however,on both the factsand nuances of the case." But it is Little's argument that falters,in myview,on precisely that border between factand nuance. His solid circumstantial argument awakens the scholar'smost frustratinganxiety: does one read the lines, or does one read between the lines? In Little'saccount, the election of Carl Rungen- hagen over Mendelssohn never touched the question of religiousorigins, but rather swayed in favorof reliability and experience over youth and unreliability.Mendelssohn, in Little's summary of the Singakademie's attitude,was "urbane,and his outlook,fashioned by wide experience, was broadlycosmopolitan." It is the culturaland ideological loadedness of precisely these termsthat mustbe considered:the virtuesof cos- mopolitanism and urbanity become faultsas theybegin to signify root- lessnessand insincerity, and they do so in nineteenth-century discourses precisely as they are attached to Jews." Increasingly at the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the civic is caught between the international and local, with the common denominatorof national language no longer able to hold the center. As early as 1833, one can therefore suggest, the Jewish-Protestant symbiosis that Mendelssohn had internalizedwas in jeopardy on the This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions40TheMusical Quarterly outside as well. If Eric Wernerbelieved this to be the case, he was right. Ifhe bent the nails more readily to receive his hammers, he was egre- giously at faultfor doing so-andfor doing so unnecessarily. Another example of the inner symbiosis ofJewishmemory and Protestantculture,but increasingly embattledfromwithout,appears in Eric Werner's perceptivereading of the Jewish subtextin a January 1831 letter disparaging the frivolity of New Year'scelebrations.The days around the turning of the year, wroteMendelssohn,are "real days of atonement."Wernerattributesthese thoughts to "his parentalhome, where the very seriousattitudetowardsthe New Year had simply been transposed from Jewish to Christian practice."'14 The same sensibility is revealed in the wordsto the concludinghymn of Goethe's "Erste Walpurgisnacht"(1831), which Mendelssohn set: Und raubtmanunsden altenBrauch, Dein Licht,wer kannes rauben? And ifwe arerobbedofourold costums, Who can robus of thy light?" The Sophoclean theme of the robbing of custom musthave been evident,perhaps even disturbing, to Mendelssohn. How can a Jewish referencenot be present in such words,once appropriatedby Mendels- sohn? This question intensifiesin the context of Mendelssohn'stwo ora- torios:Paulus (1836) and Elias (1846).(Werner, it should be noted, defendsElias and is condescending withreferenceto Paulus. He criti- cized it forits waste of dramatic potential. It is possible,although I am not aware of his ever having said so, thathe scorned it, relativeto Elias, forits clear statementof Protestantdevotion.) As a final example, I would like to offera reading of Paulus that emphasizes the complicated- ness of its cultural,devotional, and emotional references. I would argue that Paulus can be understoodin termsof a seriesof dialogues between fathersand sons, as voiced by the bass and tenor parts. The bass part is consistently inhabited by the dramaticrole of Paul. The tenor part shiftsbetween a Handelian anonymity and the role of Barnabas. The shiftis itself fascinating in its nomadism,its shifting positionpossiblyallegorical of the difficulty of a son in finding a secure position of self-identification. Paulus was writtenin the aftermathof Abraham Mendelssohn's death and as a tributeto his memory. It transmitsAbraham's conviction in a linear realizationof historythroughsynthesisand, a fortiori, conver- sion. This work'snarrativeof the conversionof Paul tells this story in a transparentway. And yet it does not do so without representing as well This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicandGerman-JewishCulture41 the innerconflict required-and required of Felix-in telling and advo- cating his father's story. The father/soninscriptions are multiple, as the Abraham/Felixaxis is doubled by the Bach/Mendelssohn one and the division of male voices into bass (Paul) and tenor. In the firsthalfof Paulus, the tenorand bass have two duets. The firstis a duet forPaul and Barnabas to the words (Corinthians 5:20): "So sind wir nun Botschafteran ChristiStatt /Now we are ambassadorsfor Christ."The second duet carriesa similarstatement. Finally, the tenor has a last cavatina, with cello obbligato, to the words"Sei getreu bis in den Tod, so will ich dir die Krone des Lebens geben! Fiurchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir! / Be faithfulunto death, and I will give you the crownof life.Do not fear,I am with you." Dramatically, it is unclear who is speak- ing here and to whom. But the tenorvoice and rhetoricresonatewith the consolation offered by a son to a father-a situationawkwardand indeed unrealizedin the relationship of fatherand son but possibly invoked with commemorativeaffectionof a son fora dead father. If this last statementforthe tenorcloses the musical as well as the much less certaindramaticrelationbetween tenorand bass, we can ask what may have been achieved, or at least portrayed,by their joint trajec- tory. If the bass/tenorduets in the second half of Paulus can be under- stood as projections of harmony between fatherand son, then they act out in musical termsthe alliance between Abraham and Felix that the composition of thisoratorio explicitlyexpressed. The oratorio,named forthe father,is concluded musically and dramaticallyby the son. In a way, Felix anoints himselfthe successorin Christian music that his fatherwanted. But the duet formthat is so prominentspeaks in a differ- ent direction.The duet formis Felix Mendelssohn'smusicalizationof G. E. Lessing'sprinciple of Nebeneinander, an aesthetic principle that is also a culturalone with important resonances to the concernsof his friendMoses Mendelssohn. Lessing's mostfamoustreatiseon aestheticsis his essay on the Roman sculpture Laocodn (1766). In it he argues forthe necessary differ- ence between textualand visual representationalpractice. The sculpture underdiscussion portrays a fatherand his two sons being devoured by a serpent.(Obviously, this "plot" resonatesas well in mytreatment.) But whereas the dramatic description of this event in Virgil's Aeneidde- scribesthe horrible suffering of the victims,the sculptor, at least accord- ing to Lessing,portrays the scene with a reserveof pathos. For Lessing, narrativeand its rulesof sequence (Nacheinander) can be moreliteral than an image, with its rule of simultaneity(Nebeneinander). Abraham Mendelssohn's understanding of history and cultural development, as voiced in his understanding of religious conversion through three generations of his family followsa code of Nacheinander. This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions42TheMusical Quarterly His son Felix returnsto a Lessingian code of Nebeneinander,although he is able to explore both options in music. In Paulus, these explorations play themselvesout with enormous subtlety. In its most generalplan, this oratorioworksin and through the dialectic of sequence and simul- taneity; historicalevolution and historical dialectics; and a scenario of Judaism into Christianity(Abraham's) and a scenario of Judaism with Christianity(Felix's). If the tensionbetween Judaism and Christianityduplicated the tension between generations-between fathersand sons-thenits reso- lution would be more elusive than ever. But a generous culturewould allow or even encourage the negotiation of such resolutionas a pro- tected space where subjectivitymight survive.The resolutionof the Christian/Jewish tension is not-pace Werner-at hand, but the co- habitation-theNebeneinanderis a possibility in the generosity of Felix's aestheticformsand emotional desires. Eric Wernerdid not question the profundity of Mendelssohn'sProtestant conviction. He did insiston the profundity of his relationto Judaism. He insistedon that in a post-Holocaust context in which Jewish and Ger- man Jewishintegrityrequiredrescuing. His distortions may have been caused by such ideological pressure. No mattertheirmotivation,they cannot be condoned. Moreover, it is possible that Wernerhad neither the conceptual nor the historical subtlety to argue the characterof that relationship or the subtlety of the confluenceof Jewish and Protestant attachments.It goes without saying that Werner'sfactualerrorsshould not be repeated. The same is trueforhis conceptual inadequacies, although he cannot be blamed forthese in the same way. Conceptual and critical adequacy have been at the centerof debates and innovationsin the humanitiesin the decades since Werner's biography was first published. New trendsin argumentation, often pooled under the rubric "postmodernism" and oftenaccused of assuming -or promoting-the "death of the subject" and the "death of the author,"are in factmodes of human understanding that argueagainst the presumption of the simplesubject or the simple author. They are, moreover,grounded in the modernist positions of Marx and Freud,both of whom understoodsecular modernityaccording to a new configuration of misleading surfacesand submerged truths.Thus the biographical sub- ject or the historicaltextcan be understoodas complicated, overdeter- mined,and indeed contradictoryformations,contingent on culture,his- tory, and language and possessed of dignity and greatnessprecisely for theircontinued confrontationswith conflictand complication. This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMendelssohn'sMusicandGerman-JewishCulture43 One principle at the core of recentworkin culturalstudiesis that bf the hybridity or multiple culturalconsciousnessof modernidentities and positions. The term"double consciousness,"firstused by W. E. B. DuBois to name what has now become the commonplace of "African- American" culture,has been taken up recentlyby Paul Gilroy in his book The BlackAtlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Gilroy studiesmodernistCaribbean culturefromthe standpoint of its multiple legacies and ambitions:black, local, European,cosmopolitan.According to Gilroy,any authenticity that is to be discoveredor assertedmustbe done so on the basis of multiplicity.16 If we look through these lenses, as I believe we should, onto Mendelssohn and his world, we can begin to understandthe subtlety with which it speaks. Toward that goal, we musttake at theirvalue cor- rectionsin the accumulation of scholarly evidence. But we cannot con- fusesuch correctionswith self-appointed new interpretations. Alternatively, we should ask ourselves,to what extent we late- twentieth-century scholarsseem drivento do to Mendelssohn what our nineteenth-centurypredecessors did to Mozart-elevatehim to prodigy statusso that we can draw circles around him by treating him as a child. In the case of Mozart,thiswish to maintainhim as a precious child meant soaking him in the eighteenth-century courtlinesshis music con- sistently undermined.In the case of Mendelssohn, it means to insiston the shallownessof the bourgeoiscomposer, the opportunist, the spoiled child, devoid of ambition,complication, or conflict.To understand Mendelssohn as a thinking adult requiresnegotiation with a psychologi- cal and cultural composite of greatcomplexity. We should ponder care- fully the stakes in attacking Eric Werner,and ponder the hold on histor- ical reality that might be lost with the dismissalof his arguments- which do not live or die by his faultypractices. Does thisanti-Wernerian zeal not also allow a certainreturnof a repressed anti-Mendelssohnian- ism in itsforbearanceof a renewed two-dimensionality, ifnow the two- dimensionality of the "typical Neuchrist"ratherthan the "self-identified Jew?"Contrary to both of these labels, rather, I would suggest that Mendelssohn'slifeand music are both more productively to be under- stood according to the subtle negotiation between Jewish and Christian spheres of cultureand memoryduring the formationof the modernGer- man world--and that much at a culturalhistorical moment,moreover, when the boundariesof all threeof these were evolving and unpre- dictable. This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions44TheMusical Quarterly Notes 1.EricWerner,Mendelssohn:A New Imageof the Composer andHis Age, trans.Dika Newlin(NewYork:Macmillan,1963),viii. 2.The original letterwaswrittentoManfred Schlksser,editoroftheFestschriftin whichitwas published. The letter explainedwhy Scholemwouldnotcontributean essay tothevolumeon the"German Jewishdialogue." GershomScholem,"Widerden Mythos vom deutsch-juidischen'Gesprich'," in AufgespaltenemPfad:FestschriftfurMargarete Siissman, ed.M. Schlosser(Darmstadt:Erato,1964),translatedas "Against the Myth of the German-JewishDialogue," inOn Jews and Judaism inCrisis.Selected Essays(New York:Schocken,1976),61-62. 3.ForMosse'sviewin general, seeGerman]ewsBeyond Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress,1985). 4.Werner,Mendelssohn: A-New Image,44. 5. Scholem,"Jews andGermans"(1966),inOn Jews and Judaism in Crisis,80. 6.See thediscussioninMarthaC. Nussbaum,The Fragilityof Goodness:LuckandEthics inGreek Tragedy and Philosophy(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1986),52. 7. GeorgeSteiner,Antigones(Oxford:ClarendonPress,1984),41. 8.Werner,Mendelssohn:A New Image,37. I have duplicated thetranslationas pro- vided by Wernerbuthavemadeone change after comparing histranslationwiththe Germanversionusedinhisownlater,Germaneditionof1980.Wheretheletter says thatthenameMendelssohnhad acquired"greatauthority"(eingrossesGewicht), Wernerhad hyperbolically translated". .. acquired a Messianic import." I am verygrate- fultoPeterWardJonesfor pointing thisouttome. 9.See my discussionofthisissueinitsrelationtoMahlerandotherthinkersinthe chapter "TheCatholicCultureoftheAustrian Jews" inThe Meaningof the Salzburg Festi- val:Austriaas Theaterand Ideology, 1890-1938(Ithaca:Cornell UniversityPress,1990), 164-95. 10.EduardDevrient,Meine Erinnerungen an FelixMendelssohn (Leipzig:J.J.Weber, 1872),62. 11.See Werner,Mendelssohn:A New Image, 100. 12.Werner,Mendelssohn:A New Image, 230-31. 13.WilliamA. Little,"MendelssohnandtheBerlin Singakademie: The Composer at theCrossroads,"inMendelssohnandHisWorld,ed.R. Larry Todd(Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress,1991),78,80. 14.Werner,Mendelssohn:A New Image,171. 15.Werner,Mendelssohn:A New Image, 203. 16.Paul Gilroy, TheBlackAtlantic: Modernity andDoubleConsciousness (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard UniversityPress,1993). This content downloaded from 146.164.3.22 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:51:19 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions