Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/100

86 four-part composition, and so on, which makes me think again how confused and stupid most teachers and most books are on these points, and how clear the whole thing is when one presents it clearly.

She is a delightful vision to me. Imagine a delicate little pale maiden with noble, though not beautiful, features, so interesting and rare that it is hard to look away from her, and with all her movements and words full of a sort of geniality. She has the gift of composing songs and then singing them in a way I have never heard the like of; it is the most complete musical delight that ever yet fell to my lot. When she sits down at the piano and begins one of these songs of hers, the notes acquire a strange, new tone; all the music seems wonderfully swayed hither and thither, and in every note there is the finest and profoundest feeling. Then, when she sings the first bar in her tender voice, every hearer grows perfectly still and wrapt, and each in his own fashion feels himself penetrated through and through. I wish you could only hear her voice! It is so innocently and unconsciously beautiful; it comes from her inmost heart, and yet is so tranquil! Last year all this was perfectly recognisable. In every song she had written her talent was as clear as noonday, yet Marx and I sounded the tocsin about her among all the musicians here, and no man heeded us. But since then she has made a very remarkable advance. Anyone whom her present songs do not touch must be utterly insensible. So, unfortunately, it has become the fashion to ask the little maid for songs, to take the lights away from the piano