Leipzig, December 16th, 1842.
My dear Schubring,
I now send you, according to your permission, the text of “Elijah,” so far as it goes. I do beg of you to give me your best assistance, and return it soon with plenty of notes on the margin (I mean Scriptural passages, etc.). I also enclose your former letters on the subject, as you wished, and have torn them out of the book in which they were. They must, however, be replaced, so do not forget to send them back to me. In the very first of these letters (at the bottom of the first page), you properly allude to the chief difficulty of the text, and the very point in which it is still the most deficient—in universally valid and impressive thoughts and words; for of course it is not my intention to compose what you call “a Biblical Walpurgis Night.” I have endeavoured to obviate this deficiency by the passages written in Roman letters, but there is still something wanting, even to complete these, and to obtain suitable comprehensive words for the subject. This, then, is the first point to which I wish to direct your attention, and where your assistance is very necessary. Secondly, in the “dramatic” arrangement. I cannot endure the half operatic style of most of the oratorio words, (where recourse is had to common figures, as, for example, an Israelite, a maiden, Hannah, Micaiah, and others, and where, instead of saying “this and that occurred,” they are made to say, “Alas! I see this and that occurring.”) I consider this very weak, and will not follow such a precedent. However, the everlasting “he spake” etc., is also not right. Both of these are avoided in the text; still this is, and ever will be, one of its weaker aspects.
Reflect, also, whether it is justifiable that no positively dramatic figure except that of Elijah appears. I think it is. He ought, however, at the close, at his ascension to heaven, to have something to say (or to sing). Can you find appropriate words for this purpose? The second part, moreover, especially towards the end, is still in a very unfinished condition. I have not as yet got a final chorus; what do you advise it to be? Pray study the whole carefully, and write on the margin a great many beautiful arias, reflections, pithy sentences, choruses, and all sorts of things, and let me have them as soon as possible.
I also send the ‘Méthode des Méthodes.’ While turning over its leaves, I could not help thinking that you will here and there find much that will be useful. If that be the case, I beg you will keep it as long as you and your young pianoforte player may require it. I don’t use it at all. If it does not please you, I can send you instead, a sight of Zimmermann’s ‘Pianoforte School,’ which is composed pretty much on the same principle, and has only different examples, etc.
Speaking is a very different thing from writing. The few minutes I lately passed with you and yours, were more enlivening and cheering than ever so many letters.—Ever your
Felix M. B.
To Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Leipzig, December 22nd, 1842.[64]
My dear Brother,