Songs Without Words

Felix Mendelssohn explains his work

Feb 04, 2025

Felix Mendelssohn by Horace Vernet, 1831 (Wikimedia)

German composer Felix Mendelssohn is best known for his orchestral works and Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte)—a collection of 48 short piano pieces that spoke through melody alone. This was a concept that fascinated listeners, including Marc-André Souchay Jr., a cousin of Mendelssohn’s wife who had been pondering the deeper meanings of these pieces. In 1842, he wrote to Mendelssohn and shared his interpretations. This was Mendelssohn’s reply.

Berlin
15 October 1842
Dear friend,
So much is said about music, and yet so little is truly expressed. I’ve come to believe that words alone can never capture its essence. In fact, if I ever felt they could, I think I’d stop composing altogether. People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that it leaves them unsure of what to think, while words, they say, make everything clear. But for me, it’s the complete opposite. Not just long speeches—even the simplest words feel so unclear, so imprecise, especially when compared to music, which fills the soul with a thousand things far richer than words ever could.
What music reveals to me—especially the music I love—aren’t vague, unformed ideas that are hard to pin down in words, but thoughts so clear and powerful that words could never do them justice. Whenever I try to express these thoughts, I might get close to something true, but I always fall short. This isn’t because the thoughts are too weak or fleeting, but because words just aren’t capable of capturing them. If you ask me what I was thinking when I composed a particular piece, I’d say: exactly what the music itself is saying. Even if a specific word or idea crossed my mind at some point, I could never explain it fully to anyone else. The same word means something different to each person, and music evokes the same feeling in one listener as it does in another—but that feeling can never be fully captured by words.
Resignation, melancholy, praise of God, a hunting scene—everyone sees something different. What one person hears as resignation, another might hear as melancholy, while a third might not find anything particularly lively in either. Take a hunter, for example: if they’re a real outdoorsman, they might see the hunt and the praise of God as one and the same, and to them, the sound of hunting horns might well be the perfect expression of divine praise. We might only hear the hunt, but even if we debated it endlessly, we’d never get any closer to understanding. Words will always remain ambiguous, while music would prove us both right.
Can this be my answer to your question? It’s the only one I can give, though all it really says is that words, like always, remain far too vague.
Yours truly,
Felix M. B.

Letter originally published in German in the 1864 book, Briefe aus den Jahren 1833 bis 1847 von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.