‘Time Is, Time Was, Time Is Past’
The Reiselied forms a distinct subcategory in Felix Mendelssohn’s song output. Of his more than seventy published songs, at least eleven speak primarily of departure, travelling, awareness of distance from loved ones, and homesickness. This chapter examines Mendelssohn’s experiences of journeying to other countries as expressed in his lively letters and the songs born of his meditations on the subject. In particular, it examines ‘Ferne’, with its archetypal traveller’s anxiety about relationships with those back home; the famous Heinrich Heine ‘Reiselied’; and one of the most poignant of Mendelssohn’s requiems for his sister Fanny, the Nikolaus Lenau song ‘Auf der Wanderschaft’, a restrained but raw expression of grief.