Leipzig, January 22nd, 1841.

Sir,

I beg to offer you my thanks for the confidence you have shown me by your polite letter, and the accompanying music. I have looked over your overture with much pleasure, and discovered many unmistakable traces of talent in it, so that I should rejoice to have an opportunity of seeing some more new works of yours, and thus to make your musical acquaintance in a more intimate and confidential manner. The greater part of the instrumentation, and especially the melodious passage which is in fact the principal subject, pleased me much. If I were to find any fault, it would be one with which I have often reproached myself in my own works; in the very overtures you allude to, sometimes in a greater, and sometimes in a lesser degree. It is often very difficult, in such fantastical airy subjects, to hit the right medium. If you grasp it too firmly, it is apt to become formal and prosaic; and if too delicately, it dissolves into air and melody, and does not become a defined form. This last rock you seem to have split upon; in many passages, especially at the very beginning, but also here and there in other parts, and towards the close again, I feel the want of a musical well-defined form, the outlines of which I can recognize, however misty, and grasp and enjoy. I should like, besides the meno allegro, to see some other more definite idea, and to have it worked out; only then, the other rock is too apt to show itself, and modulations be seen, where there should be nothing but moonlight. In order, however, to give free course to these poetical thoughts, the spirit of entire supremacy must hover over the whole (that fact should not become too dry, nor fancy too misty); and it is only where this complete mastery over thought and arrangement exists, that the reins may be given to imagination. This is the very point which we are all obliged, more or less, to study; I hope you will not be offended, therefore, that I do not find this problem entirely solved in your work either; in your future productions, with which I hope to become acquainted, the connection will, no doubt, be closer, and my critical remarks rendered unnecessary.—I am, with sincere esteem, yours,

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.