MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847) - photo 1
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847) - photo 2
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847) - photo 3
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847) - photo 4
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847) - photo 5

MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847)

Lot 71
14.12.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 13 860
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premiumsee on Website%
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
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ID 870704
Lot 71 | MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847)
Estimate value
£ 9 000 – 12 000
MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847)

Autograph letter signed ('Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy') to [Jenny Lind], Leipzig, 15 May 1846.

In German. 6 pages, 229 x 141mm. Autograph envelope (addressed to 'Fräulein Jenny Lind' in Vienna). Tipped on guards into a binding, blue cloth. Provenance: Sotheby's, 27 February 1973, lot 320.



'I have been thinking of you every day, every hour!': an ecstatic letter of admiration and affection for the legendary Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Mendelssohn commiserates with Lind's homesickness, but hopes that she is now 'happy and cheerful again, making music and delighting everyone with all the marvellous talents that God has given you and that you have made your own ... if only the best ray of all the true joy you spread could reflect back on you and warm and enliven you as completely as you warm and enliven others!'. Mendelssohn alludes teasingly to a proposed opera composition with 'Mme B. Pf' [Charlotte Johanna Birch-Pfeiffer] ('I'll tell you in person when I see you again. We've given up the Peasant War subject-matter completely') and looks forward rapturously to seeing Lind again in Frankfurt-am-Main: 'if on Wednesday the sky deigns to be blue and the sun deigns to shine we'll sail down the Rhine on the foredeck and I'll tell you the names of the castles'. He excuses the 'silly' nature of his letters on account of a bad cold and overwork, especially on his oratorio Elijah: 'The last part of my oratorio will be completely finished tomorrow or the day after, and several pieces of the second part are already done too. I've been really happy with this in recent weeks, and at times I've been jumping up and down in my room when it seemed to me it was turning out really well ... But now I'm a bit mixed up, from all the notes I've written out in recent weeks, because until then I'd always been working in my head, with a bit on paper from time to time, but not in a proper organised sequence'. He goes on to reflect on his 'absolute duty' to compose an opera for Lind, and looks forward ecstatically to rehearsing Schöpfung with her in two weeks: 'I'm counting the days until I can hear that "troublesome" voice singing again'.



Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind had an intense friendship in the last years of the composer's life, and there has been some speculation about its true nature. Mendelssohn's Elijah, first performed at Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August that year, included an aria, 'Hear Ye Israel', composed with Jenny Lind's voice in mind, with its tessitura around F#, a note in her range that he found irresistible. Sämtliche Briefe 5296.





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10.12.2022 – 13.12.2022
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