Mendelssohn was a prodigy, born into a distinguished family of Jewish bankers and philosophers. He and his sister Fanny–also a talented composer, conductor, and pianist—were raised in a warm, intellectual, highly supportive artistic family. In addition to Mendelssohn’s remarkable, broad education in the liberal arts, he and Fanny studied music, of course. They matured early, and a stream of musical compositions flowed from them both. Their precociousness was recognized early on. The family’s wealth and social position afforded them access to Europe’s outstanding teachers and performers, and Felix and Fanny advanced with impressive abilities. In addition to their piano studies the two siblings studied counterpoint and composition with a well-known scholar, and benefited immensely by a veritable immersion in the music of the Baroque and Classic periods, especially that of J. S. Bach and Mozart. An impressive stream of compositions poured forth by Felix’s early teens, including the twelve “string symphonies.”
His musical style reflects, to a large degree, his upbringing and his personality—it speaks of discipline, balance, and an overall cheerful, largely untroubled mien. While his compositions reflect solicitude for clear, balanced musical structures, and an obvious avoidance of excess of romantic emotion and empty virtuosity, there is nevertheless a sentimental and emotive quality to them.
Clearly one of the most important German composers of his time, he infused the expressiveness of early romantic music with the clarity and intellectuality of Mozart and Haydn’s classicism. This exquisite balance found expression in a wide variety of musical genres; Mendelssohn was as at home writing Protestant oratorios such as Elijah and St. Paul as he was chamber music and symphonies. He composed a significant body of work in his relatively short life, including major works for orchestra that constitute an important part of today’s repertoire. Those works include five symphonies, six concert overtures, and six concertos.
Mendelssohn composed the first of his six concert overtures in 1825, followed by the evergreen Midsummer Night’s Dream overture the next year. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage followed in 1828, when he was nineteen years old. By this time, the busy young composer had written numerous works in a variety of genres, traveled extensively, and had been significantly influenced by the compositions of Weber and J.S. Bach. And perhaps of equal significance was the development of an important relationship with the aging Goethe. They had met on a family visit to Weimar in 1821, and a close association developed through the years. Indeed, it was Goethe who had recommended the young man’s influential Italian trip to his father.
It was Goethe’s popular pair of poems, Meeresstille and Glückliche Fahrt that inspired Mendelssohn to compose his overture. Earlier, in 1815, Beethoven—a great admirer of Goethe–had set the words of both of Goethe’s poems in a cantata for chorus and orchestra. German audiences of the time would have known the pair of poems well.
Like Beethoven, Mendelssohn divided his composition into two parts that reflect the contrasting moods of the respective poems. While it may be tempting to conflate the implications of the texts of the two into one “smooth sailing” narrative, that would be a misinterpretation. For Goethe’s first poem is a tense description of the bane of sailing ships—a dead still becalmed sea. It describes a “deathly, terrible stillness.” But, the second poem describes the sailor’s rescue, as the fog lifts, the heavens brighten, and the winds begin to whisper. And this contrast Mendelssohn vividly brings to life.
Consequently, the “calm sea” opens serenely with soft, lush low scoring for the strings, aptly evoking the ominous stillness of a glassy sea. Mendelssohn the classicist is known for his economy of melodic invention, and in this case the motive that permeates the entire composition is heard immediately in descending figure in the double basses alone. We will hear its unifying influence throughout. By the third bar, it appears in inversion in the violins, and by the tenth bar, in its original shape in the solo clarinet. The young composer was well grounded in the focused virtues that we all recollect from the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. The opening mood continues in a hymn-like fashion, moving smoothly without break through harmonic shifts and a variety of diverting timbres—all of which seems to mirror the flickering colors of dead still water. But, it doesn’t last, and the briefest of a whispered flourish in the solo flute is a harbinger of the salvation of a pickup in the wind. And it picks up quickly.
A dynamic transitional passage with frenzied scales and insistent repeated rhythms drives us right into the beginning of the “prosperous voyage,” proper. And we immediately recognize in the scintillating main theme the mastery of crisp, sparkling woodwind scoring so familiar from his earlier overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” This theme is a derivation of the opening motive in the bass, and that motive in its original, descending form is played forcefully in unison strings eight bars later. Given the composer and the era, one would expect the layout of this section to be in “sonata” form, and it is. After a short treatment of the first theme, there is a long transition to the dominant key, in which the opening motive of the very beginning now serves as a “second theme,” played softly by the violoncello section. The following development is a long one, in which Mendelssohn explores a variety of keys, and brings new variants of the basic melodic material to serve a brisk maritime voyage.
The recapitulation is cut short, no “second theme” material appearing, leading to a sizzling coda that would do justice to Tchaikovsky—the sight of land. A dramatic pause, and the three trumpets, held in abeyance hitherto for the whole work, triumphantly herald the denouement. But, the exuberant joy of landfall and a “prosperous voyage” is unexpectedly followed by a short, pianissimo “amen” cadence of thanksgiving.
–Wm. E. Runyan
© 2025 William E. Runyan