ABSTRACT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Carl Friedrich Zelter lived in an age when the art of letter-writing, like the rise of the novel, was a phenomenon of the time. It wove itself into Goethe’s epistolary novel, Werther, and into the letters that Goethe wrote from Weimar to Zelter in Berlin. It was through Zelter that Goethe gained access to the professional musical world beyond Weimar and became acquainted with the prodigious talent of Felix Mendelssohn. Following the introduction of Felix to Goethe in the winter of 1821/22, the composer featured regularly in their correspondence until 1832, the year Goethe and Zelter died. Their correspondence provides accounts of his progress from the composition of his first Piano Quartet in 1821 to his embarking on the Italienische Reise in 1830. In its pages, we continually encounter an exuberant image of the child, an early display of virtuosity, or some rising intellectual ground successfully surmounted. Reading such letters gratifies and furthers the range of our knowledge about Mendelssohn. It is the manifestation of this prodigious power in Mendelssohn’s early years and the significance of what must be one of the most extraordinary friendships in music history that I wish to examine in this chapter.
