Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Writes His Publisher About His Sonatas

In 1835, Mendelssohn seized the opportunity to take over the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Bach's long-time residence, which he quickly made into the musical capital of Germany. He enlarged the orchestra to fifty people and was known to be a conductor of the strictest standards. Instead of playing the standard repertoire of the day which we now would consider to be music of the second and third rank, Mendelssohn programmed the music of Mozart and Beethoven along with Schubert, Chopin, Liszt and even Schumann. In Leipzig, he took over the Berlin Academy of Arts concerts in 1841 and traveled widely as a guest conductor and pianist as well as helping to set up festivals in Cologne, Dusseldorf and elsewhere. In 1842, Mendelssohn established the Leipzig Conservatory where he and Schumann taught composition and piano.

Autograph Letter Signed, in English, Leipzig, July 17, 1843, to his English publisher Edward Buxton. "Many thanks for your kind letter…I shall remain here during the whole of this summer, & therefore expect the pleasure of seeing you at the end of next month, when we may talk over everything about the 'erste Walpurgisnacht'. The day of publication of the Songs shall not be fixed until I have heard from you, and I have not the least objection to call them Vocal Quartetts, and to translate 'im Freien zu singen' by 'to be sung without Accompts', as you suggest. Only about the arrangement of the Sonata I am sorry not to be able to meet your wishes, being prevented by several reasons; I think it impossible to arrange any Composition of this kind in a satisfactory way for the Violin, at least I for myself would not be able to do it and please myself. Therefore if people object, as you say they do, to David's arrangement of my first Sonata, I am sure they are right in as far as the effect is not the same as with Violoncello, nor even half as good – but they are wrong if they think it is David's fault, because I am sure it cannot be done in a better way, at least I should certainly not be able to do it as well…”

Letters of Mendelssohn are extremely uncommon and this one has outstanding content about his work. In 1844, his first three sonatas were published, and this letter explicitly refers to one of them. In this period, he also composed a series of songs, and these are mentioned as well.