Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/31

 THE LIBRETTO.

��" What I feared and wrote to you about, has really come to pass ; and the thing is becoming too objective — an interesting, even thrilHng picture, but far from edifying the heart of the listener. All the curses, the scenes of the sacrifice and the rain, Jezebel, etc., in all this there is nothing which now-a-days would come from the heart, and therefore nothing which would go to the heart. Pieces in your ' St. Paul,' like the aria in B minor ['Consume them all'], or choruses, ' Ihr Manner von Israel helfet ' [No. 38, in the English edition], etc., are certainly fine and charac- teristic ; but they are interesting rather than edifying. You will probably never hear people singing that aria at the pianoforte for their pleasure ; but the second and third arias in * St. Paul,' or that for tenor towards the close ['Be thou faithful unto death'], they are for everybody. There are many more passages in * St. Paul ' of general interest than there are in this ' text ' in its present form. Therefore you must carefully consider whether this time you prefer to turn away from Church music {i.e., music which refreshes, consoles) and create a tone-picture after the manner of the * Blocksberg- Cantata.'* If not, we must diligently set to work to keep down the dramatic, and raise the sacred element, and alwa3-s aim at this. Perhaps it will suffice to lead back from the second part to the effect of the rain scene in the first. I expect that will be very fine. It can only be surpassed by bringing out prominently Elijah's meaning (significa- tion) for the New Covenant, as the forerunner of the Messiah, pointing towards His coming, and such like. ( 15 )
 * Mendelssohn's setting of Goethe's " Walpurgis Night."

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