Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/106

 HISTORY OF MENDELSSOHN'S '•ELIJAH."

��flat, SO heartless, so unintelligent, so soulless, that the music acquired a sort of amiable expression about which I could go mad even to-day when I think of it. The alto had not enough voice to fill the hall. . . but her rendering was musical and intelligent, which to me makes it far more easy to put up with than want of voice. Nothing is so unpleasant to my taste as such cold, heartless coquetry in music. It is so unmusical in itself, and yet it is often made the basis of singing and playing — making music, in fact."

To Jenny Lind, Mendelssohn wrote : —

" The performance of my ' Elijah ' was the best performance that I ever heard of any one of my compositions. There was so much go and swing in the way in which the people played, and sang, and listened. I wish you had been there."

The opinions of the professional critic and the composer have been given ; the impressions of a cultured amateur in the audience may therefore appropriately follow. The subjoined extract is from a letter written by the late Mrs. Samuel Bache, of Birmingham (mother of those gifted musicians, Francis Edward and Walter Bache), to her nephew, Mr. Russell Martineau, M.A., in which she gives a full account of the Festival : —

•• Edgbaston, Scpteviher 4, 1S46.

" . . . . ^^'ednesday morning * Elijah ' was performed, and of this I cannot exaggerate my ( 88 )

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