Letters of Felix Mendelssohn to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles

FELIX MENDELSSOHN’S LETTERS

1. Mendelssohn’s Study. From a Water-Color made by Felix Moscheles a few days after the composer’s death.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINALS IN HIS POSSESSION, AND EDITED By FELIX MOSCHELES ILLUSTRATED
I am indebted to Mr. Isaac Henderson, of New York, for his kind assistance in the selections made for publication.
Messrs. Littleton, of the firm of Novello, I have to thank for some interesting details in reference to Mendelssohn’s business transactions with them.
The letters as published in “Scribner’s Magazine,” by arrangement, were selections from my manuscript translations. The portraits of Mendelssohn and of the Mendelssohn family were, however, not contributed by me, with the exception of the reproduction of the bust by Rietschel, and of the medallion by Knauer.
Felix Moscheles.

The letters addressed by Felix Mendelssohn to my father came into my possession in 1870. After Mendelssohn’s death, my father had carefully arranged them in a special manuscript book, and had supplemented them with an index of the contents and a table showing the dates of the principal events in the life of his departed friend.
If I have abstained from giving publicity to these letters for so long a time, it is because I thought such delay was in accordance with the wishes of both writers. Many passages occur in which prominent musicians of those days are unreservedly criticised,—passages which I felt as little authorized to suppress as to publish during the lifetime of those alluded to. I trust they will be none the less interesting now that time has judged between the critics and those criticised. Nor did I feel justified in omitting passages that may prove of less interest to the general public than to a smaller circle; for they truly depict the warm friendship which, in the course of years, ripened between Mendelssohn and Moscheles, and they are thoroughly characteristic of the bright and genial way in which Mendelssohn would express his personal feelings.