Noting Images: Understanding the Illustrated Manuscripts of Mendelssohn’s Schilflied and Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis

[1] Felix Mendelssohn and Paul Hindemith, composing about one hundred years apart, integrated visual elements, including drawings and illustrated notations, into musical manuscripts they designed as gifts for women they admired. The two documents, illustrating Mendelssohn's Schilflied (Reed Song, 1842) and Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis (1942), are intended for use within a close circle of friends, family, or students, and are strong declarations of compositional and artistic ideology. Although there is a long history of musical scores coupled with graphic illustration-medieval illuminated manuscripts, Biber's Mystery Sonatas, and contemporary graphic scores, for example-these manuscripts are unusual in that both the illustration and the conventional notation are in the hand of the same composer. Interpretation of these musical scores is enhanced by an understanding of the role played by the visual elements. Likewise, analysis of the illustrations should be coupled with a close examination of the music.(1)[2] Mendelssohn's manuscript, a gift for his friend Henriette Keyl, features a watercolor depicting reeds in a reflective lake under a dark sky and full moon.(2) This scene, inspired by the poem that forms the text to Mendelssohn's song, appears to the left of the first staff of the calligraphic copy of the score. The reeds in the watercolor, the stems of the notes, and the flowing cursive blend into each other and are reflected in the sinuous melody of the music; visual and aural elements of the work serve as metaphors for one another. Hindemith, on the other hand, makes a very different use of visual elements than Mendelssohn. His manuscript, a gift for his wife Gertrud, features numerous cartoon sketches of lions in a variety of poses and colors. The drawings of lions have nothing directly to do with the subject of the music, at least in the sense of evoking specific emotions that are analogues to the music, unlike the drawing of reeds in Mendelssohn's manuscript. Instead, the lions operate as markers in a game and serve as guides to understanding the system behind the score.[3] In the study that follows, I will describe the manner in which these composers, writing a century apart, combine images and music as reflecting different styles of signification, that is to say, different semiotic strategies. For Mendelssohn, art could be expected to achieve innate organic form when the constituent parts of the artwork were linked by similarities that were understood to be natural, and not artificial. For Hindemith, it is convention and artifice that link the parts of a work together into an architectural, and therefore meaningful, construction.Mendelssohn's Schilflied[4] In 1845, Mendelssohn sent his illustrated manuscript of the song Schilflied to Henriette Keyl, the wife of a Frankfurt wine merchant. The work, composed in 1842, was a setting of the fifth poem in a series entitled Schilflieder written in 1832 by the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau.(3) The text and image depict a scene by a pond lit by moonlight and populated by reeds, which suggest "ein susses Deingedenken" ("a sweet remembrance of you"). The text reads:Auf dem Teich, dem regungslosen,Weilt des Mondes holder Glanz,Flechtend seine bleichen RosenIn des Schilfes grunen Kranz.Hirsche wandeln dort am Hugel,Blicken durch die Nacht empor;Manchmal regt sich das GeflugelTraumerisch im tiefen Rohr.Weinend mus mein Blick sich senken;Durch die tiefste Seele gehtMir ein suses Deingedenken,Wie ein stilles Nachtgebet!(4)Mendelssohn often sent musical compositions to acquaintances and colleagues.(5) He also occasionally sent illustrated manuscripts of his compositions as gifts, but the Schilflied he presented to Keyl is a truly remarkable work, containing an exquisitely detailed watercolor and notation and text in Mendelssohn's finest handwriting. …