Page:The history of Mendelssohn's oratorio 'Elijah'.djvu/60

 HISTORY OF MENDELSSOHN'S "ELIJAH."

of my friend, Mr. Klingemann, who understands both languages thoroughly, and who understands my music better than both languages.

" The most essential condition for my oratorio is a most excellent barytone singer — a man like Pischek, or Staudigl, or Oberhofer. Will you have such am..

[Here the letter is torn away, and concluded in a lady's handwriting, thus :]

" Believe me always yours truly,
 * Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy."

The summer of 1846 was very hot, and Mendels- sohn often became exhausted overthe close application which he gave to his work. " I have lived the life of a marmot," he writes, but he kept his time. The complete Part I. was despatched from Leipzig on May 23. He was then interrupted in the process of composition for three weeks by having to conduct the Lower Rhine Musical Festival at Aix- la-Chapelle (May 31 to June 2) ;* then a Soiree at Diisseldorf ; after that the production of his " Lauda Sion," at Liege, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June II ; and finally a great Choral Festival at Cologne — "an enormous ' Sangerfest,' " he writes, of " nearly 2,000 men, which I have also to direct." For this Mendelssohn had composed a Festgesang on

• It was on this occasion that Mendelssohn omitted the two "redundant bars" in the Scherzo of Beethoven's C minor Sym- phony. See Sir George Grove's forthcoming work on " Beethoven," and the chapter on the C minor Symphony; also the " Dictionary of Music and Musicians," Vol II., 2S8a. ( 42 )

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