Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 14
TO PASTOR JULIUS SCHUBRING, DESSAU.
Dear Schubring,—Your letter with the enclosed contribution came to hand while I was beginning to arrange the sheets of my oratorio,[1] and thinking much at the same time of the music I am going to write next winter. It struck me so much that I have copied out the whole text, as far as it has got, and now send it, hoping that you will do what you did before, and give me the benefit of all your comments and suggestions. You will see in the margin some notes of things that are still wanting, and of places which I want to fill with passages from the Bible and hymn book. But what I chiefly want is your opinion (1) about the form of the whole work, particularly of the narrative parts. Do you think it can be left as it is, with the narrative and the dramatic elements side by side? I can’t venture on Bach’s method of personified narrative, and this combination strikes me as the most natural thing, and only laborious at certain places, as the “Ananias,” where the lengthy inter-connected recitals make it so.
(2) Do you think there are any leading features of the story, or of the character and teaching of Paul, either omitted or set in a false light?
(3) Where would you make the divisions of the first and second parts?
(4) Do you think I could bring in the chorale. Some people have objected to it very strongly, and yet I cannot bring myself to give it up altogether, for it seems to me it must have a natural place in every oratorio taken from the New Testament. If you agree to this, please let me hear what chorales you would put in, and where. You see I ask a great deal, but then I shall have to work hard enough when I begin the music, and, besides, I know you take an interest in the matter.
If you can oblige me in all this, just send a few words to Berlin, where I must be for two or three days after to-morrow; it is to take care of my father, who was with me in England, and became seriously ill there. He is well again now, thank God! but I have had so much anxiety all this time that I want to do everything possible till I can feel he is safe at home. Then off again, and back to Düsseldorf. You know that I was director of the musical festival there, and have opportunely got settled there for two or three years to manage the church music and the singing association, and probably a new theatre that is to be founded there as well; my private reason, however, is to get an opportunity of composing in peace and for myself. I find the country and the people charming, and the “St. Paul” is to be brought out in the winter. I also had my new symphony produced in England, and people were pleased with it. It will be printed after “The Hebrides,” which is now in hand. That is all very good, but I am thinking one’s real work should come first, and so I hope it will turn out. It is very wrong of me to write you a dull, impersonal, and entirely serious letter like this, but things have gone that way with me lately, and so I am becoming more serious myself,—Yours,
- ↑ The “St. Paul.”