To the Hon. Committee of this year’s Lower Rhine Musical Festival.
Leipzig, January 18th, 1838.
I am deeply grateful for the invitation contained in your letter of the 8th of January. Your kind remembrance is not less prized by me than the prospect of again attending such a pleasant festival, and deriving from it as much enjoyment as that for which I have already to thank the Rhenish Musical Festivals. I therefore accept your invitation with sincere delight, if God grants health to me and mine, and if we can mutually agree on the selection of the music to the full satisfaction of both parties. The more successful the previous Cologne festival was with regard to the arrangement of the pieces performed, especially in Handel’s work with the organ, the more important it seems to me to have at least one piece in the programme by which this year’s festival may be distinguished from others, and by means of which progress may, as far as possible, be manifested. For this purpose I consider it absolutely necessary to have the name of Sebastian Bach in the programme, if only for one short piece; for it is certainly high time that at these festivals, on which the name of Handel has shed such lustre, another immortal master, who is in no one point inferior to any master, and in many points superior to all, should no longer be forgotten. The same scruples which exist in opposition to this, must also have existed in former years with regard to the works of Handel, and you are all grateful to those who, disregarding these obstacles, revealed to you such treasures of sublimity and elevation. Earn for yourself, then, similar thanks from the Rhenish friends of music by making a beginning which is indeed difficult (for this I do not deny), and must be proceeded with cautiously, but which will certainly be attended with the best results, and universally imitated by others. When anything of Bach’s has been once performed, it will be easy to discover that it is beautiful, and to perform it again; but the difficulty is the beginning. The proposal that I wish to make to you on this subject is, to introduce into this Musical Festival a short Psalm of Bach’s (about twenty minutes or half an hour in length), and if you are afraid of doing this on the second day, from the dread of scaring away the public, whom this learned name might alarm, then do so on the first day, and give in addition a rather shorter oratorio of Handel’s. It is pretty certain that no fewer people will come to hear Handel, for those who do not fear the one will be equally disposed to like the other, and there are still three or four totally unknown and truly admirable oratorios of his, which would not occupy more than an hour and a half, or scarcely two hours at most, and would be a welcome novelty to all lovers of music. I became first acquainted with these works by the splendid gift of the previous committee,[33] and I shall be very glad if you can derive any benefit from these volumes for this year’s festival. With regard to the second day, I may first inquire whether you intend to apply to Cherubini for his grand “Requiem;” it must be translated, and is entirely for men’s voices, but as it will only last an hour, or even less, that would not much matter, and according to the universal verdict it is a splendid work. At present, however, the chief object seems to me to be the first point in this letter, and I therefore beg you will arrange about it as soon as possible.