Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/130

 HISTORY OF MENDELSSOHN'S ••ELIJAH."

the Allegro of the song, but wanted to find something (in words and music) better appropriated to make the transition from the slow movement to the Allegro. The Recit. which I now send is taken from Isaiah xlix., 7. Here again the English words went at first perfectly well, but afterwards they would not do at all, and (which is the most essential) their meaning differed greatly. The German means that the Lord speaks ' to the soul that is despised and to the nation that is abhorred by others, and to His servant who is oppressed by tyrants,' and all this made me adopt the words for this Recit., and therefore I wish it to be expressed also in the English version.

" And besides all this you will find here and there little deviations from your words, where I have been forced into them by my alterations ; and therefore I beg you will look over the whole, that nothing might be in it of which you did not approve.

" I owe you still many thanks for several very, very kind letters, and indeed would have written long ago had it not been for a sea of tedious and compli- cated businesses with which they overload me here. I could not avail myself of the whole of the amplifi- cation which you proposed for the Widow's part, although I adopted several of your quotations in that passage ; but I was not able to give it the extent you proposed ; for although I very often feel the urgent necessity of altering the details (of which you now see so many instances), I can but very seldom bring myself to a deviation from the whole original plan ; and I even make those alterations almost everywhere in order to keep more faithfully to the object I had ( 108 )

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