Anecdotes of Great Musicians/Anecdote 90
90.—THE COMPOSER'S DEBT TO NATURE.
Many a composer has been indebted to some sound or tone in nature for the suggestion of musical ideas. Nature suggests and man elaborates the melody, though some writers would have us believe that the composer is simply the amanuensis of nature, in many cases. But we must remember that music is art, and that nature supplies nature, not art.
A good composer will turn to account a suggestion from any source, however humble. Mendelssohn took pleasure in acknowledging his debt to nature in these matters. While Mendelssohn was not a Beethoven, while he could not so well depict the rugged, the grand, the heroic, as did that musical Jupiter, yet Mendelssohn was the tone poet of the forest and field, the bright sun, and the blue sky.
A friend of his relates how they were walking in the country one day, and getting tired, threw themselves on the grass in the shade and were there pursuing their conversation. Suddenly Mendelssohn seized him by the arm and whispered, "Hush!" A moment later the composer told him that a large fly had just then gone buzzing by and he wished to hear its sound die away in the distance.
Mendelssohn was at that time working on his overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and not long after it was completed. He then showed his friend a certain descending bass modulation with the remark, "There, that's the fly that buzzed past us at Schonhausen."