Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/134

120 at least the chief one; that lies on the surface. But there is another. Especially in the overture there is apparent to me a certain tendency which I am only too well acquainted with, for, as I believe, it ruined my own Reformation symphony, and which can yet be unfailingly overcome by repeated and varied composition. Just as the French attempt to make their ideas appear elevated and interesting by much tormenting and juggling with them, so, I believe, a natural distaste for this sort of thing may lead one to the opposite extreme of complete timidity at everything piquant and flashing, so that, in the end, the bare musical idea lacks boldness and interest. Leanness takes the place of corruption; it is the contrast of the Jesuit churches sparkling with tinsel to the four white walls of the Calvinists; true piety may be in either, but the true path is between them. Heavens! excuse my sermonising tone, but how is one to explain one’s meaning on such matters? The leading ideas both in your overture and in my Reformation symphony, which, I think, resemble each other precisely in this, are interesting rather for what they signify, than simply in themselves. Naturally, I don’t mean they should be exclusively the latter, for that would bring us back to the French style, but neither should they be the former alone, for the two should be welded together and interpenetrate each other.

To give a theme real musical interest in and for itself, as you can do it down to every second hautboy and trumpet in your instrumentation, that, I take it, is the chief point to concern oneself with. In your