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Autograph letter signed (‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’) to [Jakob] Rosenhain, Berlin, 13 January 1842.
Details
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847)
Autograph letter signed (‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’) to [Jakob] Rosenhain, Berlin, 13 January 1842.
In German. Four pages, 186 x 120mm, bifolium. Envelope addressed to Rosenhain in Paris. Provenance: Christie's, 12 July 2017, lot 66.
A delightful, long letter to the pianist and composer Jakob Rosenhain: mentioning Fingal’s Cave and his plans to write an opera, and sending greetings to Chopin. Mendelssohn is thrilled to hear from his ‘pleasant, faithful, good-natured friend’, while chiding Rosenhain for not providing him with any of his own news. The piece in B minor that he sent a few weeks ago pleased Mendelssohn greatly: ‘Now I should like to know what new pieces you have. I have heard something about an opera but have you not something more for the piano? or songs, etc? Do write & tell me!’. Turning to his own work, he continues: ‘I was very interested in what you said of my work & the performance in Paris: many thanks. Yet I must confess that I promise myself very little results from it. Later, when I have succeeded in composing something better & bearing a more distinct stamp of the tendency that I have cultivated for myself, I may venture to hope that one or other of my works may make its way there: I doubt it of what I have written so far; they do not differ enough from those over there. But you can imagine nevertheless that it is a great pleasure to me when something of mine is played there, especially when a man like [François] Habeneck is interested in it’, to whom Mendelssohn asks Rosenhain to send his good wishes. He then asks his friend’s advice: ‘The metronome figures for my St Paul are found in the full score, published by Simrock in Bonn, and are indispensable for a performance. Do you think it advisable to begin with Die Fingalshöhle [Fingal's Cave] overture? Would it not be better for Hageneck first to have two or at least three overtures played at a rehearsal to see what appeals to the orchestra most?’, before adding a note on correcting a printing error in the score. ‘And fancy now to write an opera in Paris!’: Rosenhain knows that he would like [Eugène] Scribe for a librettist, but Mendelssohn has been struggling for ‘a thoroughly beautiful subject … There are so many difficulties in the way in coming forward in Paris with a first work of that kind that I really could only think of doing so if I had produced a few operas on the stage in Germany’. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn thanks Rosenhain for the kind thought, adding ‘If you see Baillot or Chopin kindly remember me to them’.
Jakob Rosenhain (1813-1894) had made the acquaintance of Mendelssohn in Leipzig a few years earlier: while the present letter comes some time before he moved permanently to Paris, in 1849, it is clear that Rosenhain was by this time a close acquaintance of the conductor François Antoine Habeneck (1781-1849), who led the Paris Opera. Sämtliche Briefe 3400.
Autograph letter signed (‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’) to [Jakob] Rosenhain, Berlin, 13 January 1842.
In German. Four pages, 186 x 120mm, bifolium. Envelope addressed to Rosenhain in Paris. Provenance: Christie's, 12 July 2017, lot 66.
A delightful, long letter to the pianist and composer Jakob Rosenhain: mentioning Fingal’s Cave and his plans to write an opera, and sending greetings to Chopin. Mendelssohn is thrilled to hear from his ‘pleasant, faithful, good-natured friend’, while chiding Rosenhain for not providing him with any of his own news. The piece in B minor that he sent a few weeks ago pleased Mendelssohn greatly: ‘Now I should like to know what new pieces you have. I have heard something about an opera but have you not something more for the piano? or songs, etc? Do write & tell me!’. Turning to his own work, he continues: ‘I was very interested in what you said of my work & the performance in Paris: many thanks. Yet I must confess that I promise myself very little results from it. Later, when I have succeeded in composing something better & bearing a more distinct stamp of the tendency that I have cultivated for myself, I may venture to hope that one or other of my works may make its way there: I doubt it of what I have written so far; they do not differ enough from those over there. But you can imagine nevertheless that it is a great pleasure to me when something of mine is played there, especially when a man like [François] Habeneck is interested in it’, to whom Mendelssohn asks Rosenhain to send his good wishes. He then asks his friend’s advice: ‘The metronome figures for my St Paul are found in the full score, published by Simrock in Bonn, and are indispensable for a performance. Do you think it advisable to begin with Die Fingalshöhle [Fingal's Cave] overture? Would it not be better for Hageneck first to have two or at least three overtures played at a rehearsal to see what appeals to the orchestra most?’, before adding a note on correcting a printing error in the score. ‘And fancy now to write an opera in Paris!’: Rosenhain knows that he would like [Eugène] Scribe for a librettist, but Mendelssohn has been struggling for ‘a thoroughly beautiful subject … There are so many difficulties in the way in coming forward in Paris with a first work of that kind that I really could only think of doing so if I had produced a few operas on the stage in Germany’. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn thanks Rosenhain for the kind thought, adding ‘If you see Baillot or Chopin kindly remember me to them’.
Jakob Rosenhain (1813-1894) had made the acquaintance of Mendelssohn in Leipzig a few years earlier: while the present letter comes some time before he moved permanently to Paris, in 1849, it is clear that Rosenhain was by this time a close acquaintance of the conductor François Antoine Habeneck (1781-1849), who led the Paris Opera. Sämtliche Briefe 3400.
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