Goethe on Lake Garda famously uncovered the luminous gateway to Italy in September 1786, but few realize how deeply the great German poet’s visual impressions were intertwined with an enduring passion for music that would link him to Carl Friedrich Zelter and the young prodigy Felix Mendelssohn.
Johann Caspar Goethe (1710–1782) had imposed rigorous intellectual standards upon his children, Johann Wolfgang and Cornelia. By the age of fourteen, the siblings practiced piano diligently; by late August of that year, the family attended the Frankfurt concert of a seven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. During his law studies in Leipzig (1765–1768), Goethe formed a close bond with Bernhard Theodor Breitkopf, heir to the renowned musical publishing house. In 1769, Breitkopf set several of the twenty-year-old, yet-unknown Goethe’s poems to music in the collection Neue Lieder, later republished as Goethes Leipziger Liederbuch.
Goethe’s deep musical sensibility accompanied his literary, botanical, and philosophical investigations throughout his Italian Journey. Departing Lake Garda, he paused in Venice in late September 1786, enraptured by the celestial singing of a women’s choir at the Church of the Mendicanti and attending opera at Teatro San Moisè. In Rome and Naples between 1786 and 1787, he celebrated the theatrical brilliance of Italian opera, praising “our beloved Cimarosa”.
Upon his return to Weimar, Duke Carl August appointed him artistic director of the Court Theatre, a post he commanded from 1791 to 1817. Here Goethe fostered a pivotal friendship with composer and conductor Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), director of the Sing-Akademie in Berlin. Zelter became Goethe’s trusted musical adviser and confidant.
In 1821, Zelter introduced Goethe to his brightest pupil: a twelve-year-old boy named Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). Between 1821 and 1830, the young composer visited Goethe’s Weimar residence on four extended occasions. While Mendelssohn listened with reverent awe to the venerable poet’s artistic counsel, Goethe was captivated by Felix’s virtuosity and the compositions of his talented sister Fanny, prompting Goethe to pen the lyrical poem “An die Entfernte” (To the Distant One).
It was through Mendelssohn that Goethe came to understand the profound genius of Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1825, Mendelssohn dedicated his Piano Quartet No. 3 in B minor, Op. 3 to Goethe, and in 1829, at just twenty years old, Felix revived Bach’s monumental St Matthew Passion at the Sing-Akademie. Zelter wrote to Goethe describing the concert as standing “between earth and heaven”; Goethe replied that it felt as though he had heard “the distant echo of the sea”.
Curated by Pia Dusi and Giancarlo Ganzerla for GN Magazine.
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