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Mendelssohn on Music

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A letter Felix Mendelssohn wrote from Leipzig to his mother in Berlin on December 11”, 1842 shows that his thoughts were never far from music:

“On the 21st and 23rd, we are to give a concert here for the king, who has vowed death and destruction to all the hares in the vicinity. In this concert we mean to sing for his benefit (how touching!) the partridge and hare hunt from Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons. My “Witches’ Sabbath” is to appear again in the second part of the concert in a slightly different form than before, which was a little overdone in the trombone department and kind of deficient in the vocal parts.

“But to bring off the change, I’ve had to rewrite the whole thing from A to Z, and to add two new arias, not to mention the rest of the snipping and trimming. If I don’t like it now, I solemnly swear to give it up for the rest of my life!

“I wished for you the other day at a subscription concert. I don’t think I ever played Beethoven’s C major piano concerto so well – my old war-horse – the first cadenza in particular. A new return to the solo really pleased me – and apparently pleased the audience even more.

“What you write to me about the repertory of your Berlin concerts doesn’t make me want to hear any more about them. The arrangement of “Invitation to the Dance” and the compositions of English ambassadors – those are valuable things? If experiments are to he made and listened to, it would he advisable to be a little more generous with the works of our Fatherland.

“You’ll say again that I’m cynical, but many of my ideas are so closely connected to my life and views of art that you have to bear with me when it comes to them.”

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