Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 31
TO CARL KLINGEMANN, LONDON.
For several days I have been straining all my powers on the "Elijah," and am hoping to make a good end of most of the things I disliked on the first performance. I have quite done one of the hardest portions—the widow—and you will certainly be content with the alteration, yes, I will say with the improvement.
The "Elijah" has gained much in significance and mystery in this passage. It was the want of these things which troubled me, the sort of want I discover, alas! after the festival, and can only define when I have mended it. But in the other passages we have talked about as well I hope to refine somewhat. I am very seriously going through again everything that satisfied me before, so that in a few weeks I hope to be ready with the whole, and then turn to something new. But the pieces I have already worked over afresh do show me clearly that it is well not to rest with such a work till it is as perfect as ever I can make it, even though a very small number of people indeed hear or know anything of these refinements. And though a prodigious time is taken up in making them, when a passage is really made better, its effect, both by itself and on the rest of the piece, is, indeed, vastly different. You see I am vastly contented with the "widow," the passage I completed to-day; therefore, I think one dare not rest satisfied, and conscience, too, gives me a hint now and then to the same effect.