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Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:15,000.00 - 20,000.00 USD
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

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Auction Date:2014 Nov 12 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS in German, signed “Felix,” one page both sides, 8 x 10, November 20, 1837. Letter to a friend. In part (translated): “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 therapy?…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 Rhenish 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…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 Rudesheimer 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.” Mendelssohn goes on to 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; flee to taste the air of patriarchs in the pure East." In very good condition, with intersecting folds (one small separation passing through the end of the signature, repaired on the opposing side), and overall creases. A lengthy letter entirely in Mendelssohn’s hand, with interesting content about his life in Leipzig. He had been named conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835, but returned to Dusseldorf on a yearly basis to conduct the Lower Rhenish Music Festival. Once arriving in Leipzig he dedicated most of his professional efforts to developing the city’s musical culture, working with a number of institutions and founding the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843.