Mendelssohn and the Passing Fly

Composers constantly borrow from nature: a rhythm, a call, a sound that lingers in the ear. Nature offers raw material; art refines it. Felix Mendelssohn was open about such debts. He once told a friend that, unlike Beethoven—who could paint the rugged and the heroic like a musical Jupiter—he could at least turn woods and fields, the glitter of sunshine, and the blueness of the sky into music.

The same friend described walking with Mendelssohn in the country. They grew tired, lay down in the shade, and talked. Suddenly Mendelssohn seized his companion’s arm: “Hush!” he whispered. A big fly had buzzed past them, and Mendelssohn wanted to listen to the sound dying away.

At that time he was working on his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not long after, when the piece was finished, he showed his friend a descending figure in the bass and said, “There—that’s the fly that buzzed past us at Schönhausen.”

In a few notes, an everyday insect had been transformed into musical atmosphere—light, quick, and vanishing into air.