About the Music
by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Elijah, An Oratorio after the Words
of the Old Testament, Op. 70 (1846)
— Felix Mendelssohn
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig
Following the excellent success of his first oratorio, St. Paul — some fifty performances were given within
eighteen months of its premiere in Düsseldorf in May 1836 — Mendelssohn began to cast about for a subject
for the work’s successor. He intended to create something on an even grander scale than St. Paul, and
considered a number of Biblical subjects, including St. Peter, King Solomon and Elijah. After poring over the
Old Testament for some time, he was struck by a passage in the First Book of Kings that he told the composer
and conductor Ferdinand Hiller “would be splendid for an oratorio” (the text was “And behold, the Lord
passed by,” which was set for chorus in the finished work), and settled on the subject of Elijah. Mendelssohn
wrote to his old friend Karl Klingemann, an amateur poet and a career diplomat for the House of Hanover
then stationed in London, and asked him to sketch out a rough draft of a libretto. They discussed the project
when Mendelssohn visited England in August 1837 to conduct the British premiere of St. Paul at the
Birmingham Festival, but Klingemann could work up little enthusiasm for the personality of the ancient
Hebrew prophet, and Elijah stalled.
With his hectically busy schedule of conducting the concerts of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Academy
of Arts in Berlin (Mendelssohn was the first orchestral music director in the modern understanding of the
position), composing, traveling, letter-writing, administration (he founded the Leipzig Conservatory in 1842
and served as its director until his death five years later) and family obligations, Mendelssohn was unable to
make any progress on his second oratorio until the summer of 1845, when he received a commission for such
a work from George Moore, the director of the Birmingham Festival. Mendelssohn enlisted the aid of the
pastor, theologian and librettist of St. Paul, Julius Schubring, in devising the text. There was considerable
reworking of the earlier libretto by both composer and clergyman to heighten its moments of drama, but by
early in 1846 Mendelssohn was working carefully, diligently and optimistically on the score of Elijah: “If it only
turns out half as good as I think it is, I will be glad indeed,” he told a friend. In May and June, as the piece
was nearing completion, Mendelssohn sent the German-language original to the chemist, violinist, hymn
writer and botanical artist William Bartholomew in London for the particularly difficult task of rendering the
scriptural text into English, a service he had already performed to the composer’s satisfaction for most of his
songs, St. Paul and the choral cantata Lobgesang (also known as the Symphony No. 2). Elijah was finished by
the end of July.
Mendelssohn arrived in England on August 17, 1846 to begin the final preparations for the premiere of
Elijah. With the help of Ignaz Moscheles, one of the era’s most eminent pianists and co-conductor of the
Birmingham Festival that year with Mendelssohn, the solo singers and some 85 orchestral players had
already been engaged in London. (Mendelssohn was much disappointed that Jenny Lind, for whom the
soprano part had been written, was unavailable.) Rehearsals were held in London for three days before the
entire entourage (accompanied by a bevy of music critics) boarded a special train for Birmingham on August
23rd. In Birmingham, another forty musicians were added to those brought from London, a chorus of 270
was assembled, and the dress rehearsals raised the interest of the British musical world to fever pitch. The
premiere, given at 11:30 on the morning of Wednesday, August 26th, was an immense success — four arias
and four choruses had to be encored. Though applause was not then customary at the performance of an
oratorio, the entire audience of 2,000 issued “shouts of exultation” and “a long-continued unanimous volley of
plaudits, vociferous and deafening,” according to The Times of London. “Never was there a more complete
triumph.” In a letter to Jenny Lind, Mendelssohn claimed that “it was the best performance I ever heard of
any of my compositions. I wish you had been there.” He left England on October 6th — it was his ninth trip to
that country — as the most highly esteemed composer in Britain since George Frideric Handel.
Though Elijah was immediately placed by critics and public alike in the rarefied company of Messiah and
The Creation as one of the greatest of all oratorios, Mendelssohn harbored some dissatisfaction with the work,
and altered many of its details in the months following the premiere. (He was an inveterate reviser, sometimes
tinkering for years with his scores, notably the “Scottish” and “Italian” Symphonies, before releasing them for
publication.) Despite the serious deterioration of his health from gross overwork, he agreed to return to
England to conduct the first performances of the revised Elijah, and gave the work four times in London and
once each in Manchester and Birmingham during the last two weeks of April 1847. Wedged among these
commitments during his stay in England were two private recitals at Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert; a public concert with the Philharmonic Society in which he conducted his “Scottish”
Symphony and the music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as played the solo part in Beethoven’s
Fourth Piano Concerto; serenades for two receptions at the house of the Prussian ambassador; and
participation in several chamber music evenings. It is understandable that he refused to extend his visit
beyond the planned departure date of May 9th: “One more week of this unremitting fatigue, and I should be
killed outright,” he explained. As soon as he arrived home in Leipzig, Mendelssohn was shocked to learn of
the unexpected death of his beloved sister Fanny in Berlin. He collapsed at the news. Too ill to work, he was
taken by his wife, Cäcilie, to Interlaken, Switzerland, where he went on long, solitary walks and made
sketches and watercolors of the beautiful landscape, but found it difficult to compose. Still, he was
determined, he said, “[to] force myself to be industrious in the hope that later on I may feel like working and
enjoy it.” He managed to complete the impassioned String Quartet in F minor (Op. 80) as a memorial to his
sister before the family returned to Leipzig in September, but soon thereafter relapsed. Mendelssohn died on
November 4, 1847; he was 38. Except for the F minor Quartet and fragments of an oratorio, Christus, Elijah
was the last important music he wrote.
***
Elijah was long considered Mendelssohn’s masterpiece, the greatest oratorio created during the 19th
century. It was the music of first choice for performance at memorial concerts following his death — London
heard it again just two weeks after he died — and was the principal means by which funds were raised in
England to found a Mendelssohn Scholarship Fund to send promising students to the Leipzig Conservatory;
Arthur Sullivan, a dedicated composer who later made his name and fortune with W.S. Gilbert in one of the
less serious forms of musical expression, was the first recipient of the award. Elijah reinvigorated the British
school of oratorio composition, and it was the direct inspiration for works by Charles Hubert Parry, Alexander
Mackenzie, Charles Villiers Stanford, John Stainer and, at the turn of the new century, Edward Elgar. It has
been performed more often in England than any other work of its type except Messiah — at least 22 times
during the 1886-1887 season, for example; forty years later, it was still able to record 20 performances.
The work’s popularity is indebted precisely to the manner in which Mendelssohn fulfilled his original
conception for Elijah as a vehicle of vast, intense drama. Though he knew only misfortune in opera (a youthful
comedy, The Wedding of Camacho, failed to achieve even the slightest margin of success, and later projects on
Shakespeare’s The Tempest and on the ancient German legends of the Lorelei and the Nibelungs [!] went
uncompleted), he was strongly drawn to the dramatic possibilities in the story of the Old Testament prophet.
“In such a character as Elijah it seems to me that the dramatic should predominate,” he instructed his
librettist Schubring. “The personages should be introduced as acting and speaking with fervor; not, in
Heaven’s name, to be mere musical pictures.” And further, “I am particularly eager to do justice to the
dramatic element.... No epic narrative must be introduced. If I might make one observation it is that I would
fain see the dramatic more prominent as well as more vividly and sharply defined.” By eschewing the
connective fiber of the traditional musical narrative, Elijah achieves a grand monumentality for which the
American author John Erskine in his biography of the composer found an impressive antecedent:
“[Mendelssohn’s] canvas is as heroic as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the conception of the prophet
Elijah in largeness, in mystery and in dignity, might have sprung from Michelangelo’s imagination.” Such a
structure, however, also imposed the liability of interrupted action — Elijah is a series of isolated tableaux
rather than a continuous story. The libretto is also marred by Schubring’s insistence upon imposing his New
Testament didacticism upon the Old Testament story. As with so many instances of problematic librettos in
all species of musical drama, however, the sheer power, emotion, intensity and vision of the music sweeps
before it all literary shortcomings.
***
Elijah was a Hebrew prophet several centuries before Christ whose mission was to destroy the pagan cults
of Baal introduced into Israel by Jezebel, the wife of the errant Israelite king Ahab. Elijah was the hero of
many stories, some of which look forward to aspects of Christ’s life. Elijah departed from the earth in a
chariot of fire, leaving his sacred mantle and the continuation of his work to his disciple, Elisha. The prophet
also figures prominently in the Koran, the sacred book of Islam.
The first of Elijah’s two parts is divided into three scenes prefaced by the prophet’s curse of drought sung to
the solemn intonations of trombones and winds and a tempestuous Overture in fugal style that depicts the
effect of the misfortune on the people of Israel. The Israelites voice their despair in the choruses that follow,
while a tenor aria (“If with all your hearts ye truly seek me”) offers the hope of divine comfort. Scene Two
opens with Elijah at the brook of Cherith, guarded by a host of angels. At the end of the chorus “For He shall
give His angels charge over thee,” an angel commands Elijah to go to Zarepath, where a widow will provide
food that God promises will sustain him through the drought. Upon his arrival, the widow tells him that her
son is near death. Elijah prays three times over the boy, and he revives. A chorus of praise closes the scene.
In Scene Three, one of the most gripping episodes in the entire realm of oratorio, Elijah announces the end of
the three-year drought, and presents himself to Ahab. He challenges Ahab’s priests of Baal to prove the power
of their god. The priests call upon Baal to bring down fire upon a sacrificial animal without success. Elijah’s
prayers are answered, and the Israelites are moved to again profess the true faith. Elijah orders them to slay
the priests. With Israel repentant, Elijah prays once again, this time for an end to the drought. A youth is sent
to watch for rain clouds, at first reports nothing, but then sights an approaching storm. The people rejoice
(“Thanks be to God! He laveth the thirsty land!”).
Part II is looser in dramatic structure than Part I because of Schubring’s frequent insertion into the libretto
of pious and rather preachy texts that are extraneous to the story. The main occurrences are Queen Jezebel’s
rousing the people against Elijah and his flight into the desert; the appearance of God to the prophet; the
reinvigoration of Elijah’s faith and his mighty acts; and his assumption into heaven in a fiery chariot.
©2013 Dr. Richard E. Rodda