"Mr. Lazarus," said Mendelssohn, "will you kindly make that phrase a little stronger, as I wish it to stand out more prominently? I know I have marked it piano." "Of course," added Mr. Lazarus, "I was playing it religiously as marked."
The story that the holding C's for the oboe in No. 19 (which accompany "There is nothing") were inserted by Mendelssohn at the end of the first rehearsal to satisfy Grattan Cooke, the oboeist, is a pure myth. A MS. score of the work, used at Birmingham, and now in the possession of Messrs. Novello, Ewer and Co., shows that these notes were not subsequently added, but formed part of the original design. Moreover, Mendelssohn would hardly be guilty of the mock-descriptive in allowing the words "There is nothing" to be sung without any accompaniment. And Cooke could not complain that the composer had not given him any oboe solos, after he had played the beautiful oboe obbligato in "For the mountains shall depart," which was doubtless written by Mendelssohn expressly for Cooke.[47] The story probably took its origin from the following circumstance, which has been fully told by Dr. E.J. Hopkins. When the vocal score of "Elijah" was first published, Mendelssohn presented a copy to Grattan Cooke, who was a great favourite with the composer. In this copy Mendelssohn wrote the following inscription:—
"An Grattan Cooke, zum freundlichen Andenken.
"Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
"London, Frühling, 1847."
Mendelssohn knew that Grattan Cooke was fond of a joke, and, as Dr. Hopkins says, the composer's quiet humour is well shown in the above inscription. The length of the note is seven bars of slow time, the last of which is not only indefinitely prolonged by a pause, but has in addition a crescendo and diminuendo mark. "Any oboeist," observes the Temple organist, "who would dare to try and sustain that note as directed would, before bringing it to a termination, himself cease to exist!"[48]
"Elijah" was honoured with the novelty of a preliminary analytical notice in The Times of Monday, August 24, 1846, two days before the first performance. This article, two columns in length, was one of the earliest contributions of the late J.W. Davison, on his joining the staff of The Times, of which paper he was for many years the musical critic.