ABSTRACT
Late on the morning of April 21, 1829, a disheveled young man fairly weakened by seasickness and hunger—Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy—disembarked from the steam packet Attwood and reached the customs house in London. Named after Thomas Attwood, former pupil of Mozart, organist of St. Paul’s, and a musician Mendelssohn would soon meet, the vessel had endured a difficult crossing from Hamburg—beset for fully three days by contrary winds, a storm, and enveloping fog that forced an anchorage the previous night at the mouth of the Thames to forestall collisions with other ships. Less than a year before, our “becalmed” traveler had composed as the first part of an orchestral overture his vision of Goethe’s “Meeresstille,” and there had captured an eerie musical quietude through motionless pedal points. But that night he cursed his music until the next morning, when, as the Attwood finally proceeded up the Thames along with hundreds of other ships, he beheld for the first time the “frightfully massive vista” of London. 1
