Autograph Letter Signed by Mendelssohn Bartholdy Felix Composer (7 results)

4to. 9 lines on bifolium. With the drawing of a heart and black seal. One of only two surviving letters to his young wife Cécile Jeanrenaud: "Voici, chère Cécile, comme je garde ma promesse ! 1000 lieues ! 1000 baisers ! Espoir !". - The "promise" to which Mendelssohn alludes probably refers to his departure from England immediately after his participation in the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival on September 20th and 21st, 1837, though he may also have presented his wife this note personally upon his return, with a little gift. - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Cécile Jeanrenaud (1817-53) had met on 4 May 1836 and married in Frankfurt on 28 March 1837. Not even six months after the wedding, Mendelssohn travelled to Birmingham to conduct his "Paulus" and to premiere his 2nd piano concert. On September 27th the couple was reunited in Leipzig. - The uncommon seal, which forms part of the message, comprises the word "[H]élas", the number "1000", and a line of music with the note E - probably for "Espoir". - The only other known letter by Mendelssohn to Cécile is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. - Browned; slight damage to seal; traces of old repairs. - 1) Collection of Gerald Felix Warburg and Natica Nast Warburg. - 2) Sold by Northeastern Auctions, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 27 October 2013, lot 503.

4to (254 x 411 mm). 1 p. with integral autograph address leaf. Pages toned with some staining, restoration at center vertical fold, sheet laid down to mount. Letter to the publishing house of C.F. Peters regarding their offer to publish his work, , , , and framed with portrait.Much of Mendelssohn's early works, including quartets composed when he was just a teenager and the edition of Bach's St. Matthew Passion which reignited interest in the earlier composer, were published by A.M. Schlesinger of Berlin. By 1834, however, as this letter from the firm of C.F. Peters (known today as Edition Peters) attests, other established publishers were reaching out to print Mendelssohn's works."Your letter of the 9th gave me great pleasure and I thank you very much for it. The many excellent works that you have continually published, and the high rank that your publishing activity occupies in the musical world had long since made me want to do something of mine with you and see you publish it, and I would certainly have uttered it if I would have thought that you would [.] welcome this. I am all the more pleased to now receive your letter and I accept your [.] business offer that is so honorable to me(?) with great pleasure. Since I understand you might prefer pianoforte-compositions I would have liked to give you something of the same kind [.] but I have nothing ready to hand over at this moment. I hope, however, [.] that several works that are occupying me at the moment will be finished in a while, and [.] among them also pianoforte-stuff, some of which I started. As soon as they are ready, I will take the liberty of writing to you, and I will ask you then for your friendly and honorable sentiments. / Your news of the good success of my Calm Sea made me very happy, and I wish I had been at the concert, since I mailed the score right after I finished it, so I haven't even heard the piece yet." Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Op. 27), originally performed in 1828 and published in 1834 by the firm of Breitkopf & Hartel, was inspired both by the two Goethe poems mentioned in the title and by Beethoven's own similarly titled 1814-15 work for chorus and orchestra which had fallen into neglect by the time of Mendelssohn's writing.

8vo. ¾ p. with integral address panel. To the Leipzig bookseller, art dealer and publisher Theodor Oswald Weigel about the acquisition of two sets of Beethoven manuscripts. Mendelssohn is quite prepared "to pay the requested sum of 25 Louis d'or for the two volumes of Beethoven manuscripts that I recently saw in your library. However, my means would not allow me to pay a higher price and I would have to refrain from buying if the owners were to change their minds about these conditions. I very much hope this will not be the case, as you informed me of the conditions in your name and I can therefore safely assume that they will remain so [.]". - Mendelssohn owned a whole series of autographs by Beethoven and others, some of which he may have received from Giacomo Meyerbeer's brother Heinrich, the enfant terrible of the family. "Although the Beer and Mendelssohn families did not like each other", a remark by Heinrich Heine in his "Confessions" (published in the "Vermischte Schriften" of 1854) provides a hint "that Heinrich Beer and Mendelssohn knew each other. Thus, it is quite credible that the eccentric Beer gave the score of the 7th Symphony to Felix Mendelssohn; whether he also gave all the other pieces mentioned cannot currently be determined. In any case, Heinrich Beer's collection of autographs, which also included Mozart's 'Abduction from the Seraglio', later belonged to Paul Mendelssohn [Felix's brother], and was expanded by pieces from Bach, which demonstrably belonged to Felix. There is no reference to this collection in the numerous papers left by Felix nor in those of Paul. It can be assumed that Felix gave his autographs to Paul for safe-keeping, as Paul was considered the 'guardian' of the family, not only in financial matters" (cf. Elvers). In 1908, Mendelssohn's Beethoven autographs were acquired by the Royal Library in Berlin through a donation by Ernst von Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Paul's son. - Slight signs of wear. - Rudolf Elvers, Felix Mendelssohns Beethoven-Autographe. In: Carl Dahlhaus et al. (eds.), Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß Bonn 1970. Kassel, Bärenreiter, [1973], pp. 380-382, at p. 380f.

Folio. 2 pp. on a bifolium. In German. A deeply affectionate letter to Mrs. Verkenius, the widow of the District Court Councillor Erich Verkenius (1776-1841), founder and patron of the Lower Rhenish Music Festival, and to their daughter Sibylla as well as to their son-in-law, the banker Ignatz Seydlitz (1803-70), at whose house Mendelssohn had spent the night during the first choral festival of the German-Flemish Sängerbund, which had taken place in Cologne on June 14th and 15th, directed by himself and Franz Weber: "Dear Mr. Seydlitz and dear Mrs. Verkenius - for in fact I would like to address this letter to all three of you - I am happily returned and have found all my family safe and sound, thank God. And now I feel as though I needed quickly to return to Malzbüchel no. 4 [the Seydlitzes' address] and say something about thanks and never forgetting - which would probably sound quite as ungraceful as these lines read, but would be meant no less earnestly and sincerely. Of course you are already aware of everything I am trying to say; you know that a reception such as the one I just enjoyed at your house, and everything that was mentioned again of the present and the past, and, in brief, that lasting, unchangeable friendship is and always will be the finest, dearest and best thing in the world, and that you thus have beatified for me these just-spent days into true feasts. This is what I wished to thank you for! There have been but few hours since I parted with you that I did not do so in spirit [] (transl.)". - Published in: Reinhold Sietz (ed.), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Sein Leben in Briefen (Cologne & Krefeld, 1948), p. 237.

8vo. 1 p. on bifolium. To Mrs. Erskine, possibly the wife of the Scottish orientalist and historian William Erskine: "Mr. Mendelssohn presents his Compts. to Mrs. Erskine & regrets most sincerely not to be able to accept of Mrs. Erskine's very kind invitation; as he must leave London already next week he is not sure whether he will be able to thank Mrs. Erskine in person for her kind note, but he hopes to find an opportunity of doing so [.]". - Mendelssohn was known to have been in London in April 1847, to hear Jenny Lind sing in Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable". Mendelssohn greatly admired Lind and in the 1840s she became a protégée - it was rumoured that in 1847 he had written to her to suggest an elopement, though she was married at the time. - On laid paper watermarked "J. WHATMAN", with two early horizontal folds, in very good condition. - Though not formally signed, the use of his name at the beginning is effectively a signature.

Large 4to. 2 pp. To an undisclosed recipient: "When I posted the letter to you the day before yesterday, I already half suspected that yours would come yesterday - and it really did, and scolded me, and I deserved it, too. But write me again soon and tell me how you are. Your letter is in a bad mood, and it couldn't very well be otherwise; but tell me, couldn't you undertake some good and proper project of your own, in seclusion, as a comfort and therapeutic? [.] I am sending this letter with Rosen's portrait to Paul in Hamburg, who has just arrived there and will be staying there a few months; he will certainly be able to send it to you soon. I hardly think the sketch will be of any use because it was done so very hastily; but I find the likeness so very good, and I ask particularly to see to it that I get it back undamaged. When you write of the dead season again, and I think again of the despairing foggy days I was amazed to see this time in James Park, and when I then also see the disgusting snow that has been lying here for several days, then I say Germany forever, after all. Small and miserably dead it is here, and yet there is much to live for. If I had enough character to turn down the next Rhinish Music Festival, it could be possible that I would stay entirely, my whole life, sitting here in Leipzig, and I and my art, we would be only the better for it. But I fear I am too vain for them; and yet I must do it sooner or later. We are furnishing our flat - as people say - i.e., there has been constant talk of wallpaper, curtains, and furniture, and in a week we are supposed to be able to move in, although we don't want to until 4 weeks from now; in a new house standing alone, on the third floor, the view to the South over the fields and the forest, to the North on the promenade and the city and towers, to the West on a big water mill with its wheels, then you only have to drop in, your quarters are ready; in a room papered with bouquets of flowers you are to have lodgings, and the white hall and our rooms are completely at your disposal. You shall hear music, half as much as I in the last weeks, i.e., up to your ears - singing, piano, quartets, of whatever kind you want. And better than all that you will find my Rüdesheimer 1834 wine. I picked it out in Bingen, had a cask of it transported here, and am creating a huge furor with it here in Leipzig because they aren't used to things like that. And now even you, who has had to make do with the barbaric [.] things: Hock [Hochheimer is a wine from the Main area], and still have a German heart - you will like it [.]" (transl. from the German original). - Mendelssohn paraphrases the quote from the opening poem of Goethe's collection of poetry, The West Eastern Divan: "North and West and South splinter, thrones burst, kingdoms tremble; fee to taste the air of patriarchs in the pure East". Rosen, to whom he refers, is the Sanskrit scholar Friedrich Rosen, who had died in London on September 12, 1837. Cecile Jeanrenaud is Mendelssohn's wife, who he had married on March 28, 1837. - Crude repair to marginal tears.

4to. 4 pp. on bifolium. To the Committee for this year's Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Dusseldorf. Mendelssohn, the 1839 Director of the Lower Rhenish Music Festival, writes to the festival's committee recommending the works to be included. "I hasten to answer, as the time is indeed approaching and is beginning to press. Against the march and chorus from the Ruins of Athens, which you are adding to the second day, it is only natural that I have nothing to object; I would suggest putting the piece right after the Eroica Symphony, where it would certainly have a good effect. But I wouldn't know what cantata by Bach to suggest for the second day as now programmed; I don't know any which would fit in as regards the time it needs and even more as regards style; if another piece needs to be selected, I would perhaps suggest the chorus by Haydn 'Des Staubes eitle Sorgen' but it seems enough to me, anyway. In 1833 with you and 1834 in Aachen, the program of the 2nd day was shorter than this; last year in Cologne it was at least no longer, and so I think: 1) Eroica Symph[ony], march and chorus by Beeth[oven], new hymn by Spohr. 2) Overture and Psalm -would be quite a sufficient program. To be sure, if Herr Rietz doesn't keep his promise, quite a substantial overture would have to be selected, to make the second part as interesting as possible. But this time the main thing for me would be if you could manage to have Alceste performed in the theater. You write of the difficulties with the chorus; they are indeed the biggest ones that can place themselves in its way, to my knowledge, but even if they couldn't be removed, I would prefer seeing Alceste performed with a very bad chorus a hundred times more than giving up the idea completely. First, in Alceste the main thing is Alceste herself, then Admet, then Hercules, and then only the chorus, and with a performance to be expected from Frl. von Fassmann and Tichatschek or Eichberger or some other outstanding Admet, the chorus recedes in any case into the background. Then there is the second question if it is impossible to improve the chorus? Couldn't 12-20 of the best chorus singers be brought in from Cologne and Aachen? I would with pleasure come a week earlier myself for this and hold separate rehearsals for the chorus every day to make this performance possible. Finally, several passages could and in such a case would have to be deleted, such as the ball in the second act and similar passages in which the chorus plays too much of a main part, and as I said, that would be that much more feasible as Alceste herself and her and Admet's suffering are definitely the main thing in the opera. As several of your members know, I already felt the urgent wish for something new in the course and sequence of the music festival last year, and I said so. My suggestions on this were perhaps not practical, but now, through this coincidence, the opportunity arises this time in Dusseldorf, at least, of giving the festival a new attraction of the kind I had in mind. If this music festival performs the Messiah on the first day, then the Beethoven symphony with a miscellaneous program, and finally a Gluck opera (and even if it is most inferior in execution and even if it has the worst chorus, but beautifully sung in the main roles and beautifully played by the orchestra), this would indeed be something new, as I wished, and because of that this music festival would be outstanding as compared to all the earlier ones. I would therefore very much wish that this plan, even if it be only the hope of it, be mentioned already in your first tentative announcements - how differently would the music festival appear because of it! In the interest of the public, too; in regard to the box office it would also make a palpable difference. Of course I assume that the performance would have to be considered in conjunction with both the others, and only those would receive tickets to the opera who had attended the music festival on the preceding days or had been participants in it. And even if the prices were not raised, the proceeds would be significant. Not to mention the enjoyment all friends of music would derive from it. I ask you to let me know your answer as soon as possible, as I would, as I said, to this end make my departure earlier, if necessary. In any case your speedy answer is now very much desired, as the time is now fast approaching [.]" (transl.). - In a postscript, Mendelssohn has written: "The fine tenor here, Schmidt, just came to ask if he couldn't take part in the music festival; he would try to arrange things so that he could come there at that time and take a solo pan. I told him you had written Tichatschek, but he claims that he is giving guest performances in Berlin at Pentecost and would thus not be able to come to the Rhine. Also, the things that Schmoetzer and Eichberger, whom I mentioned to him, are also detained. So I don't hesitate to let you know about his wish. In a second postscript written in the left margin of the first page Mendelssohn has added; Please have the kindness to hand the enclosed letter over to Director Schadow" (transl.). - The Lower Rhenish Music Festival (Das Niederrheinische Musikfest) was one of the most important festivals of classical music, which happened every year with few exceptions between 1818 and 1958 at Pentecost for 112 times. The Festival was held in various German cities over time and the directors included Robert Schuman, Richard Strauss, Franz Liszt, Otto Goldschmidt, Anton Rubinstein, Hans Richter & Richard Strauss. - Light browning; small clipped section on f. 2.