MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847). Autograph letter signed ('Felix Mendelssohn') to Julius Stern, Berlin, 4 November 1844.

MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix (1809-1847). Autograph letter signed ('Felix Mendelssohn') to Julius Stern, Berlin, 4 November 1844.

In German. Four pages, 195 x 125mm, with a few autograph cancellations and emendations, bifolium (old mounting strip pasted onto inner margin of p.1, obscuring a few individual letters; a few small puncture holes alongside the strip).

'When anything of mine gives pleasure to an artist ... that is indeed the best and most delightful external success': on the various productions in Paris of his incidental music for Sophocles's Antigone, and requesting Victor Hugo's autograph. The letter opens with the discussion of a misunderstanding by which Mendelssohn had forwarded the French translation of Antigone, together with a letter by its translators Paul Meurice and Auguste Vacquerie, to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (at whose request Antigone had been composed): he had however been unable to include a letter from Stern which was intended to accompany them, and is now unable to rectify the oversight. Mendelssohn is touched and delighted by Stern's praise for his music: 'When anything of mine gives pleasure to an artist ... that is indeed the best and most delightful external success that I can even imagine for myself'. Mendelssohn goes on (with excuses) to ask Stern's advice on a business matter, relating to the several productions of Antigone of which he has heard in Paris, besides the authorised one at the Odéon Theatre. According to the system in Germany, they should owe him copyright payments, 'as long as the score (i.e. the full score, not arranged) exists only in manuscript. And that is the case here. I sent the score to Paris solely for the production in the Odéon ...'. Mendelssohn concludes with another request, that Stern procure for him some autograph verses signed by Victor Hugo for a Christmas album he wishes to give to his wife, noting that the fact that he once set Hugo's Ruy Blas to music may stand in his favour.

Sämtliche Briefe, ed. Uta Wald, vol.10 (2016), no. 4619.