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Dein Reiz is aus der Maassen Gleichwie der Pfauen Art, Wenn Du gehst auf der Strassen, Gar oft ich Deiner wart’ Gar oft ich Deiner wart’. Ob ich gleich viel muss stehn | Im Regen und im Schnee, Im Regen und im Schnee, Kein Müh soll mich verdriessen, Wenn ich Dich Herzlieb seh’, Wenn ich Dich Herzlieb seh’, Wenn ich Dich Herzlieb seh’,. (Aus dem Wunderhorn.) |
May 14.
This letter was begun three days ago, and I have not yet been able to finish it. Ries has left again. We played Beethoven’s grand Sonata in A minor, dedicated to Kreutzer, at his concert, and that by heart, which was great fun. I do not know whether I told Moscheles that the scores of my three overtures, “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Meeresstille,” and “Isles of Fingal,” will appear in a few days at Breitkopf & Härtel’s, which makes me unspeakably proud. As soon as they are to be had, they shall be presented to you, and I only wish I could have again dedicated them to you, my dear Moscheles; but as that wouldn’t do, my friends at home wished me to inscribe them to the Crown Prince, who has shown himself extremely gracious to me this last autumn. For my own part, I was thinking of the Philharmonic, and so it is undecided. A knotty point, you see.
And do you know, dear Mrs. Moscheles, that Varnhagen is going to be married again,—six months after his inconsolable book about his wife,—and that to my cousin Marianna Saaling. A young musician has just been here with an atrocious Fugue for me to look through; also another native genius who feels an impulse to write Chorales, enough to make one turn yellow with impatience; and yet he has written Chorales ever since I came here, the last always worse than the one before it; and as we go on being vexed with one another, there are some lovely scenes, he not being able to understand that I still find his compositions bad, and I that he has not improved them. I am, however, the very type of a good Cantor, and preach so much to the point that it is great fun to hear me. The lilies of the valley are out; how pleased I should be to send Serena some! But even without them, may she live and prosper, and Emily and Felix as well. And how about Emily’s tune? Now there is an end to my paper; indeed, I have talked nonsense enough.
Ever yours,
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Düsseldorf, June 26, 1834.
You amiable couple in Chester Place!—Let me thank you a thousand times for that nice, good, kind letter that you have treated me to again; they are high days and holidays for me when I receive your letters, and can read them over and over again. If you, my dear Moscheles, thank me for the Rondo, I must thank you for thanking me; but I still maintain you are too indulgent. The other day, Dr. Frank, whom you know, came to Düsseldorf, and I wished to show him something of my A major Symphony. Not having it here, I began writing out the Andante again, and in so doing I came across so many errata that I got interested and wrote out the Minuet and Finale too, but with many necessary alterations; and whenever such occurred I thought of you, and of how you never said a word of blame, although you must have seen it all much better and plainer than I do now. The first movement I have not written down, because, if once I begin with that, I am afraid I shall have to alter the entire subject, beginning with the fourth bar,—and that means pretty nearly the whole first piece,—and I have no time for that just now. The dominant in the fourth bar strikes me as quite disagreeable; I think it should be the seventh (A-G). But many thanks to you and the Philharmonic for playing so much of my music. I am sure I am delighted, if only the public does not grumble!