Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 15
TO J. MOSCHELES IN LONDON.
My special weakness in new passages for the piano has again struck me forcibly in the “rondo brillant” which I want to adapt to your style. It is at these points that I always stick fast and get in distress; I fear you cannot but remark it. Otherwise, there is much in it that I like, and certain passages please me decidedly, but how I am to set about composing something quiet and uneccentric (I remember well that was your advice last spring), is more than I can tell. All that I have in my head for the piano is about as quiet as Cheapside, and when I sit down quite calmly to improvise, that sort of thing always comes gradually in again. On the other hand, the piece which I am now writing for the Philharmonic I am afraid will be far too tame. However, I must not criticise myself so much. I am hard at work, which is as good as saying that I am well and contented.
But when you, my dear Madame Moscheles, order me to take no account of public or critics, I must beg to state that my business is to write music in despite of the public, and in despite of the critics as well. What’s Hecuba to me, or criticism besides, the printed sort I mean? So if an overture to “Lord Eldon” in the form of a reversible canon should happen to occur to me, or a double fugue with a canto fermo, I will write them, though they would be sure to be unpopular. Still more a beautiful Melusine, though that is another matter. It would be horrible if one could never get a chance of having one’s things performed; still, as you think that there is no reason to fear it, I say long live the public and the critics, only I mean to live myself, and, if possible, come to England next year……