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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2019
Two years after completing his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826), Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy began to write of another vision: visiting his friend, the composer Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, in Sweden. Over the coming years, as Mendelssohn continually returned to this idea, additional reasons to make such a journey presented themselves: performances of his works in that city, including the Shakespearean overture, were well received; he became personally acquainted with Crown Prince Oscar, to whom he dedicated the op. 44 string quartets; he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music; his first cousin, Josephine (‘Peppi’) Benedicks, lived in Stockholm; and his friendship with Jenny Lind in the last years of his life only strengthened his interest in the north.
While Mendelssohn’s letters to Lindblad have long been known to scholars, the Gegenbriefe from Lindblad remain unpublished. For the first time, his voice is now fully restored to the conversation in an extensive correspondence that contributes to knowledge of Mendelssohn’s interpretations of his own music and his early reverence for the late Beethoven string quartets. In addition, this article also uncovers epistolary evidence of a cluster of related compositions by Mendelssohn and Lindblad spawned by Mendelssohn’s interest in the quartet in F Major (op. 135), including a little-known song that Lindblad dedicated to Felix on the occasion of his marriage.
Mendelssohn’s journeys to Scotland and Italy inspired his musical imagination in ways that have richly benefitted the concert repertoire. How might he have translated his impressions of Nordic history, culture and geography into new aural atmospheres, had he followed his dream to travel northwards?
1 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Sämtliche Briefe, ed. Juliette Laurence Appold et al. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008), 3:148. All translations, unless otherwise credited, are my own.
2 Ironically, one Swedish exchange that has featured prominently in Mendelssohn scholarship is one that brought him little pleasure: a series of encounters with the composer Franz Berwald (1796–1868), which neither party seems particularly to have enjoyed. See Rudolf Elvers, ‘Ein Schwede besucht die Mendelssohns: Aus den Reisebriefen des Hendrik Munktell 1829/30’, in Neue Musik und Tradition: Festschrift Rudolf Stephan zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Josef Kuckertz et al. (Laaber: Laaber, 1990), 233–7.
3 The pair evidently met during Wilhelm Benedicks’ period of employment at the Mendelssohn & Co. banking firm in Berlin in the 1810s. For more on Wilhelm, see Lindahl, C.F., Svenska millionärer: minnen och anteckningar (Stockholm: P.A. Huldberg, 1897), 2:89–94Google Scholar .
4 Inger Enquist provides the year 1805 in ‘Stamböcker i Musikmuseets arkiv’, Dokumenterat: Bulletin från Statens musikbibliotek 40 (2008): 24. Alternatively, Wilhelm may possibly have immigrated to Sweden as early as 1793; see his entry in the index to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Lea, Ewig die deine: Briefe von Lea Mendelssohn-Bartholdy an Henriette von Pereira-Arnstein, ed. Wolfgang Dinglinger and Rudolf Elvers (Hannover: Wehrhahn-Verlag, 2010), 2:752Google Scholar .
5 While Lea Mendelssohn typically praises Peppi’s character, she does take issue with her niece on occasion; she excoriates Peppi’s decision to circumcise her son (see letter dated 1 May 1819, Ewig die deine, 1:7), and she strongly disapproves of her preference for shopping over the more refined pursuits of music and the arts during a visit to Berlin (see letter dated 29 July 1831, Ewig die deine, 1:239).
6 Lea Mendelssohn’s letters to von Pereira-Arnstein have been published in Ewig die deine. Here, Peppi is often mentioned in connection with the disposition of last wills, such as that of Lea’s mother, Bella Salomon (see letter dated 27 April 1824, Ewig die deine, 1:105) and brother, Jakob Bartholdy (see letter dated 11 November 1825, 1:155).
7 Lea to von Pereira-Arnstein, 26 November 1821, Ewig die deine, 1:57. In his thorough notes on the history of Swedish theatre, Nils Personne confirms that Drouet ‘delighted and surprised’ his audiences in Stockholm, who had never before heard such agile double-tonguing or such smooth, violin-like legato playing; see Personne, Nils, Svenska teatern: några anteckningar (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1913), 4:89Google Scholar .
8 For an overview of nineteenth-century musical life in Sweden by decade, see Tegen, Martin and Jonsson, Leif, ‘Musiken, kulturen och samhället – en översikt i decennier’, in Musiken i Sverige III: Den nationella identiteten 1810–1920, ed. Leif Jonsson and Martin Tegen, Kungl. Musikaliska akademiens skriftserie 74 (Stockholm: Fischer, 1992), 19–52Google Scholar .
9 For Royal Opera production statistics of this period, see von Hofsten, Sune and Gustaf Strömbeck, Karl, Kungliga teatern: repertoar 1773–1973: opera, operett, sångspel, balett (Stockholm: Operan, 1974), 85–90Google Scholar .
10 On relative proportions of original Swedish works that premiered in different time periods, see Owe Ander, ‘“The Wealth of the Nations”: Die Stockholmer Oper und die Entwicklung einer nationalen Identität in Schweden’, Studia Musicologica 54, no. 1/4 (December 2011): 450–51.
11 For the rise and fall of the theatre monopoly, see Lönnroth, Ami and Eric Mattsson, Per, Anders Lindeberg: Mannen som höll på att mista huvudet för sin kärlek till teatern (Stockholm: Books on demand, 2011)Google Scholar .
12 For a chronological list of solo instrumental performances in Stockholm between 1772 and 1866, see August Dahlgren, Fredrik, Förteckning öfver svenska skådespel uppförda på Stockholms theatrar 1737–1863 och Kongl. theatrarnes personal 1773–1863: med flera anteckningar (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1866), 587–597Google Scholar .
13 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 20 January 1847, Sämtliche Briefe, 11:486.
14 For more on Peppi’s stambok, including a facsimile of the Prestissimo, see Enquist, ‘Stamböcker i Musikmuseets arkiv’, 24–6.
15 R. Larry Todd gives an account of the collection in which Felix’s manuscript copy of the Prestissimo is found in ‘A Mendelssohn Miscellany’, Music & Letters 71/1 (1990): 52–64.
16 For more on the songs that Fanny dedicated to Peppi, including ‘Frühlingsnähe’ from the friendship album, see Cornelia Bartsch, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Musik als Korrespondenz (Kassel: Furore, 2007), 250–54. The companion website for the research project ‘Fanny Hensel: Korrespondenzen in Musik’, created by Cornelia Bartsch, Kirsten Reese and Julia Heimerdinger, includes recordings and partial scores; see mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/Hensel_Korrespondenzen/ (accessed 30 June 2018).
17 Fanny Hensel, ‘Ferne’, op. 9/1, Autograph, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin; ‘Canzonetta da Pindemonte’, Autograph, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin; ‘An die Entfernte’, Autograph, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin; images for all three examples are available at mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/Hensel_Korrespondenzen/.
18 Lea Mendelssohn to von Pereira-Arnstein, 26 July 1824, Ewig die deine, 1:112.
19 Lea to von Pereira-Arnstein, 24 October 1824, Ewig die deine, 1:118.
20 Lea reports on Peppi’s death in her letter dated 20 September 1834; see Ewig die deine, 1:319.
21 Lea maintained contact with Peppi’s husband, Wilhelm, although neither Lindblad nor Felix Mendelssohn make reference to her or her family after her death; see letter dated 2 November 1837 in Ewig die deine, 1:410. The story of the Benedicks family, however, continued to develop in a grand rags-to-riches tale. From the humble beginnings of brothers Michael and Wilhelm (Peppi’s future husband), who had immigrated to Stockholm as goldsmith journeymen around the turn of the nineteenth century, the family amassed great wealth through the jewellery trade and their banking firm Michaelson & Benedicks. When Peppi’s youngest daughter, Emma Benedicks (1826–1895) – Wilhelm’s last heir, and also a substantial heir to Michael’s estate through her marriage to her first cousin, Carl Benedicks (1810–1888) – died at the end of the century, her estate included the largest collection of family jewels in Sweden. For details on the wealth of the Benedicks family, see Lindahl, Svenska millionärer, 1:1–2, 2:89–94, 2:219–28.
22 Lindblad arrived in Berlin in September 1825 and departed in the spring of 1827, although he spent several months toward the end of this period in Paris; see Öhrström, Eva, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad: En tonsättare och hans vänner (Skellefteå: Norma, 2016), 59–82Google Scholar .
23 A footnote in the first published version of Mendelssohn’s letters to Lindblad indicates that Lindblad also visited Mendelssohn in 1832, but there is no support for this anywhere in the letters themselves; rather, Lindblad’s letter of December 1832 is clearly a direct response to Mendelssohn’s letter from April 1830, which implies that no face-to-face meeting took place during the intervening time. See Bref till Adolf Fredrik Lindblad från Mendelssohn, Dohrn, Almqvist, Atterbom, Geijer, Fredrika Bremer, C.W. Böttiger och andra (Stockholm: A. Bonnier, 1913), 37, footnote 1.
24 Mendelssohn’s side of the conversation has long been known, beginning with its publication in the oft-cited volume, Bref till Adolf Fredrik Lindblad. More recently, the letters have become available, with detailed critical commentary, in Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Sämtliche Briefe.
25 Adolf Fredrik Lindblad’s letters to Mendelssohn are preserved in the ‘Green Books’ in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, M. Deneke Mendelssohn collection. Letters will be cited according to the appropriate volume in this series (GB) and item within the volume; for example, the first extant letter is Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 29 November 1827, GB I, 108. For Mendelssohn’s incoming correspondence in general, consult the first volume of Margaret Crum and Peter Ward Jones, Catalogue of the Mendelssohn Papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 3 vols (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1980).
26 Mendelssohn, too, was closely entwined in this network. His connections with Prince Oscar and Jenny Lind will be noted below, and only his untimely death prevented him from meeting Norman, who studied at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1848–52. On the origin of the nickname ‘Den svenske Schubert’, see Öhrström, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, 383–4.
27 For a thorough account of Lindblad’s life, see Öhrström, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad. For a brief overview of Lindblad’s biography and symphonic writing in English, see Owe Ander’s Introduction, in translation by Robert Carroll, in Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, Symfoni D-dur: Symphony D major, ed. Owe Ander, Monumenta musicae Svecicae 21 (Stockholm: Ed. Reimers, 2004), xi–xiv. See also Linder, Kerstin, ‘Lindblad, Adolf Fredrik’, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition (New York: Grove, 2001), 14: 712–713Google Scholar .
28 Quoted in Kerstin Linder, ‘Den unge Adolf Fredrik Lindblad: en biografisk studie’ (Licentiate dissertation, Uppsala University, 1973), 56. The quotation comes from Lindblad’s self-biographical sketch, which is preserved in the National Library of Sweden (S-Sk), L48:6–7, ‘Självbiografi’. For original-language quotations from primary sources, see Appendix; original spellings have been retained.
29 She mistakenly believes Mendelssohn’s eighteenth birthday to be 2 November 1825, rather than 3 February 1827; see Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpe, Memoarer, ed. Malla Grandinson (Stockholm: Bonniers förlag, 1910), 3:23.
30 Montgomery-Silfverstolpe, Memoarer, 3:16. Montgomery-Silfverstolpe (1782–1861), who refers to herself in the third person as ‘Malla’ in her memoirs, kept an extensive diary-journal from 1822 until her death; she read passages aloud to friends at her legendary salon gatherings in Uppsala, and a four-volume edition was posthumously published between 1908–11. For more on her relationship with Lindblad, see Holmquist, Ingrid, ‘Om Malla Silfverstolpe och Adolf Fredrik Lindblad’, in Litteratur og kjønn i Norden: Foredrag på den XX. studiekonferanse International Association for Scandinavian Studies (IASS), ed. Helga Kress, 167–172 (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan Universitets forlag, 1996)Google Scholar .
31 S-Sk, L48:8, ‘Dagbok förd under resa i Tyskland (31 juli – 6 november)’, 1825. Like Malla, Lindblad also inflates Mendelssohn’s age, though here only by three months. For more on the concert, which was organized by the violinist Ludwig Maurer, see Todd, Mendelssohn, 155.
32 Montgomery-Silfverstolpe, Memoarer, 3:72.
33 Felix and Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Fanny and Abraham, 7–8 July 1826, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:181.
34 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 7 February 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:196.
35 In comparison, Mendelssohn’s early letters to Carl Klingemann, who would become a closer friend than Lindblad and whose correspondence commenced around the same time (see below, footnotes 126 and 127), continue to use formal pronouns more than two years after this incident with Lindblad; see Marian Wilson Kimber, ‘“For Art Has the Same Place in Your Heart as Mine”: Family, Friendship, and Community in the Life of Felix Mendelssohn’, in The Mendelssohn Companion, ed. Douglas Seaton (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 53.
36 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 8 February 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:198.
37 The songs in Der Nordensaal (Berlin: Schlesinger, 1826) were first printed in Berlin with German translations by Amalia von Helwig. These same folksong arrangements, along with several newly composed songs, were subsequently published in the original Swedish in the first of nine volumes of Lindblad’s Sånger och visor vid pianoforte (Stockholm: Abr. Hirsch, [1878]).
38 Lindblad’s settings are the first published settings of Swedish folksong to give independent consideration to the piano part. Two other collections of folksongs with simple piano accompaniments had previously appeared in Sweden: Johann Christian Friedrich Hæffner’s musical supplements to the pioneering three-volume edition of folksong texts edited by Gustaf Geijer, Erik and August Afzelius, Arvid, Svenska folk-visor från forntiden (Stockholm: Strinnholm och Häggström, 1814–18)Google Scholar ; and Peter Grønland’s Alte schwedische Volks-Melodien (Copenhagen: C.C. Lose, 1818), an independent edition of settings of many of the same melodies in Hæffner’s supplements.
39 A favourable review by A.B. Marx appeared on the front page of the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 21 November 1827. According to the spirit of the times, Marx states that Lindblad fulfils the example of the ‘artist who fills the half-blurred, mysterious outlines [of old folk-songs] with living flesh when he elevates the otherwise universal to the particular, from a fragment to the image of the ancient condition’.
40 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 7 February 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:197.
41 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 8 February 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:198.
42 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 8 February 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:198.
43 For a discussion of Marx’s role in the divisive politics surrounding opera in Berlin, see Sanna Pederson, ‘A.B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity’, 19th-Century Music 18/2 (Fall 1994): 87–107.
44 Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Marxian Programmatic Music: A Stage in Mendelssohn’s Musical Development’, in Mendelssohn Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 150.
45 Montgomery-Silfverstolpe, Memoarer, 3:87.
46 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 4 August 1828, GB I, 28.
47 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 29 November 1827, GB I, 108. In the Green Books, this letter is chronologically misfiled with letters dating from 1829, but both the date written on the letter and its contents unquestionably place it in 1827.
48 Felix to Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 28–29 December 1833, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:319.
49 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 28 October 1837, Sämtliche Briefe, 5:361. An edition for piano, two hands was available in Stockholm by early 1837; Dagligt allehanda (27 February 1837), 4. But audiences likely had to wait until 1859 to hear the Royal Court Orchestra perform the overture; Aftonbladet (22 November 1859), 1.
50 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:244.
51 Sketches from the summer of 1838 eventually became part of the ‘Lobgesang’ Symphony two years later. See Larry Todd, R., Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 366, 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar .
52 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? Feb. 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:241.
53 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? Feb. 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:241–2.
54 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 6 July 1828, GB I, 28.
55 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 December 1832, GB II, 75.
56 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 23 March 1833, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:148.
57 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 December 1832, GB II, 75.
58 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 20 January 1847, Sämtliche Briefe, 11:486.
59 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 6 July 1828, GB I, 28. Early performances of this overture in Stockholm pre-date the first Swedish translation of the play, which Carl August Hagberg (1810–1864) created in 1843–44 and published in 1847 at the beginning of his 12-volume series of complete works. In general, Swedish audiences lagged behind their German counterparts in terms of Shakespeare reception; the first direct Swedish translation of a Shakespearean play, Geijer’s version of Macbeth (1813), appeared over 70 years after Caspar Wilhelm von Borck had transformed Julius Caeser into rhymed alexandrine couplets for German readers in 1741; on early Swedish performances and translations, including a handful of indirect translations from German or French translations as early as the 1760s, see Kent Hägglund, ‘Shakespeare på Erik Gustaf Geijers tid’, in Macbeth 1813: E G Geijer översätter Shakespeare, ed. Carina Burman et al., Geijerstudier 12 (Stockholm: Instant Book, 2013), 190–234.
60 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 29 November 1827, GB I, 108. The Harmoniska sällskapet was active as an amateur orchestra and chorus between 1820 and c. 1849. Until the early twentieth century, the Royal Swedish Court Orchestra, with roots dating back to 1526 making it one of the oldest orchestras in continuous existence, was the country’s only professional orchestra; see Kjellberg, Erik, ‘Vasahovens musik’, in Musiken i Sverige I: Från forntid till stormaktstidens slut, ed. Leif Jonsson, Ann-Marie Nilsson, and Gregor Andersson, Kungl. Musikaliska akademiens skriftserie 74 (Stockholm: Fischer, 1992), 200–201Google Scholar .
61 Aftonbladet, 10 April 1833.
62 Aftonbladet, 10 October 1844.
63 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 29 November 1827, GB I, 108.
64 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 23 March 1833, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:148.
65 Lindblad to Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy, [19 November 1833], GB II, 168. Although undated, the letter was written on the day of Louise Dulcken’s second Stockholm performance.
66 Dulcken was the sister of violinist Ferdinand David (1810–1873).
67 Aftonbladet, 13 April 1840.
68 Lindblad to Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy, [19 November 1833], GB II, 168.
69 Lindblad to Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy, [19 November 1833], GB II, 168.
70 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 December 1832, GB II, 75. Lindblad had written to Lea previously. Fanny reports in her diary that a letter arrived on 20 September 1829; see Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Tagebücher, ed. Rudolf Elvers and Hans-Günter Klein (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2002), 23. Felix, who was in England at the time, eventually read the letter and received the sonata upon his return to Berlin in December 1829; see Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 11 April 1830, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:511.
71 Felix Mendelssohn to Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 28 and 29 December 1833, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:319.
72 For an overview of Swedish music history in English, see Alander, Bo, Swedish Music (Stockholm: Swedish Institute, 1956)Google Scholar ; and, more recently, relevant sections of Frederick Smith, Key, Nordic Art Music: From the Middle Ages to the Third Millennium (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002)Google Scholar .
73 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 Dec 1832, GB II, 75.
74 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 Dec 1832, GB II, 75.
75 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 26 Dec 1832, GB II, 75.
76 Mendelssohn led the Gewandhaus Orchestra in a performance of Lindblad’s Symphony in C major on 14 November 1839, and he also helped Lindblad publish the symphony with Breitkopf & Härtel. For a detailed listing of works performed during the first hundred years of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s existence, see Dörffel, Alfred, Statistik der Concerte im Saale des Gewandhauses zu Leipzig (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1884), 1–79Google Scholar .
77 On the paucity of performances of the late quartets in the first half of the nineteenth century and the concomitant reliance on score-reading at the piano and the use of piano arrangements, which distorted the sound and added to the perceived ‘strangeness’ of the pieces, see Knittel, K.M., ‘“Late”, Last, and Least: On Being Beethoven’s Quartet in F major, op. 135’, Music & Letters 87/1 (January 2006): 22–23Google Scholar . In 1857, Smetana spoke more generally of the inhabitants of Gothenburg being ‘frightened by Beethoven’, which surely derived from their limited experiences with – and, more likely, rumours about – the later works such as these quartets; for more context, see note 121.
78 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:240–41. In the literature, Lindblad’s name is often mentioned in connection with this passage, but only in passing. See, for example, Schmidt-Beste, Thomas, ‘Mendelssohn’s Chamber Music’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, ed. Peter Jameson Mercer-Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 138Google Scholar .
79 Aftonbladet (23 March 1871), 1.
80 Aftonbladet (3 March 1874), 1.
81 Music and Theatre Library, Stockholm (S-Skma), Mazerska kvartettsällskapet archive, Ö1:2, ‘1823–1827, Musikjournal från Johan Mazers musikaftnar: Musikalisk journal för Bolaget på Djurgården’, 1r, 1v.
82 On average, quartets nos. 1–10 were played just shy of eight times each; no. 11, which was acquired at the same time as the earlier quartets, was not read.
83 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:241. The fragment is from Lindblad’s song ‘Saknad’; for complete melody, see Example 3.
84 Mendelssohn, likely transcribing the passage from memory, introduces small changes to the rhythm of the melodic line.
85 Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, ‘Saknad’, no. 33 in Sånger och visor vid pianoforte, vol. 2 (Stockholm: Abr. Hirsch, [1879]), 74.
86 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:240.
87 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 23 October 1827, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:229. Four days later, he finished the quartet.
88 The figure in Example 4 does not appear in other works from this time period, either, which include the Seven Character Pieces (MWV U44, U55, U56, U59–62); Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-flat major (MWV U64); Songs, op. 8; Tu es Petrus (MWV A4, op. 111); Fugue in E major (MWV U66, op. 35/1).
89 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 29 December 1827, GB I, 21.
90 Mendelssohn likely had access to early copies of the Beethoven quartet through Schlesinger, who had by this time already published Mendelssohn’s three piano quartets (MWV Q11, Q13, Q17, Opp. 1–3).
91 Schubert also provides potential models through his use of Lieder in chamber music, including Der Tod und das Mädchen in the Quartet in D minor (D. 810) and Die Forelle in the Piano Quintet in A major (D. 667); however, although these works, completed in March 1824 and presumably in the autumn of 1819, respectively, predate Mendelssohn’s song-quartet, they were not published until 1831 and 1829, and Mendelssohn is unlikely to have known them before this time.
92 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:241.
93 Benedict Taylor, ‘Cyclic Form, Time, and Memory in Mendelssohn’s A-Minor Quartet, op. 13’, The Musical Quarterly 93/1 (2010): 46. See also Schmidt-Beste, ‘Mendelssohn’s Chamber Music’, 138–9. Hans Kohlhase also discusses the form of this quartet at length in ‘Studien zur Form in den Streichquartetten von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’, in Zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Constantin Floros, Hans Joachim Marx, and Peter Petersen, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 2 (Hamburg: Wagner, 1977), 75–104.
94 Attributed to J.H. Voss. Mendelssohn sent a copy of the op. 9 Lieder – the companion volumes Der Jüngling and Das Mädchen – to Lindblad in Sweden; Lindblad sends his thanks in the letter dated 26 December 1832, GB II, 75.
95 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 6 July 1828, GB I, 28.
96 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 6 July 1828, GB I, 28.
97 Likely the circle around Johan Mazer (see above, note 81). Lindblad dedicated a sonata to the violinist Jonas Falkenholm (1794–1869), who also participated in Mazer’s gatherings. Although the official notebook of the chamber music activity during the years 1823–32 indicates that the Mendelssohn quartet was first played on 11 August 1829, it may have been independently read earlier in an unofficial capacity by players at least partly in Mazer’s circle; ‘1823–1827, Musikjournal från Johan Mazers musikaftnar’, 36.
98 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 6 July 1828, GB I, 28.
99 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 12 August 1836, GB V, 115.
100 Felix mentions a ‘wunderschönes Mädchen’ in Frankfurt but gives no further details in a letter to Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Fanny Hensel dated 13 July 1836, Sämtliche Briefe, 5:33.
101 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Eintragungen in den ‘Schreibkalendern’ 1836 und 1837, ed. Hans-Günter Klein and Peter Ward Jones, Mendelssohn-Studien. Sonderband 1 (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2009), 39.
102 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 4 July 1837, GB VI, 55.
103 Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, ‘För evigt’, no. 29 in Sånger och visor vid pianoforte, vol. 1 (Stockholm: Abr. Hirsch, [1878]), 74. Lindblad’s complete songs are freely available for download at ‘Adolf Fredrik Lindblad’, Swedish Musical Heritage, www.swedishmusicalheritage.com/composers/lindblad-adolf-fredrik/ (accessed 30 June 2018).
104 The German version of the song is enclosed in Lindblad’s letter to Mendelssohn, 4 July 1837, GB VI, 55.
105 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 22 October 1837, Sämtliche Briefe, 5:361.
106 For the sake of comparison, ‘Tröstung’ has been transposed up a whole step from its original pitch level.
107 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 20 January 1847, Sämtliche Briefe, 11:489.
108 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Cécile Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, The Mendelssohns on Honeymoon: The 1837 Diary of Felix and Cécile Mendelssohn Bartholdy Together with Letters to Their Families, ed. and trans. by Peter Ward Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 50. The same editor provides the original German text in Das Tagebuch der Hochzeitsreise: nebst Briefen an die Familien (Zürich: Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, 1997), 77.
109 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 28 October 1838, Sämtliche Briefe, 6:218.
110 For ideological parallels between Mendelssohn and Oscar, see Robin Garvin, ‘Romantic Irony in the String Quartets of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann’ (PhD diss., The Florida State University, 2008), 61.
111 Mendelssohn to Ignaz Moscheles, 7 February 1834, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:343.
112 Letter from Fanny, Lea, Felix and Cécile to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 28 and 29 July 1838, Sämtliche Briefe, 6:175.
113 Felix to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 30 Dec 1838, Sämtliche Briefe, 6:270. Two days later, he makes a similar remark to Carl Klingemann, 1 January 1839, Sämtliche Briefe, 6:277.
114 For a historical discussion of types and implications of literary dedications, which have much in common with musical dedications, see Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131–5.
115 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 28 October 1838, Sämtliche Briefe, 6:217–18.
116 Lindblad to Mendelssohn, 20 November 1838, GB VIII, 131.
117 The official letter of dedication, which Mendelssohn sent to Monseigneur le Prince via Breitkopf & Härtel, is lost, along with the Prince’s copy of the score; Arvid Jakobsson, Acting Castle Librarian and custodian of the Bernadotte Archives, email message to author, 20 April 2016; see also Sämtliche Briefe, 6:394.
118 Dagligt allehanda (13 November 1839), 4. According to Emily Green’s application of gift exchange theory to musical dedications, these two acts – the inclusion of the dedication on the printed music, and the subsequent public announcement in the newspaper – allow the gift (dedication) to extend beyond giver and receiver to reach the important third party in the exchange, the observer who witnesses the act of giving; see Emily Hannah Green, ‘Dedications and the Reception of the Musical Score, 1785–1850’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2009), 25.
119 Post- och inrikes tidningar (20 November 1847), 2.
120 A decade-by-decade historical population chart of Swedish cities in the nineteenth century is printed in Historisk statistik för Sverige, Del 1: Befolkning 1720–1967, second edition (Örebro: Statistiska centralbyrån, 1969), 61–2.
121 Smetana to Liszt, 10 April 1857. Quoted in English in Marta Ottlová, ‘Smetana, Bedřich [Friedrich], 3. In Search of Recognition Abroad: Sweden, 1856–61’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusic.com (accessed 30 June 2018).
122 See the first page of Göteborgs handels- och sjöfartstidning on the following dates: (31 January 1857, 28 February 1857, 11 February 1858 and 12 January 1859); Göteborgsposten (7 February 1860), 4. Newspaper announcements show that quartets from op. 44 were publicly performed on at least nine occasions between 1860 and 1888 in Stockholm or Gothenburg; the total number of performances is likely much higher, due to a general lack of documentation of private chamber music gatherings. In addition, one article noted an upcoming performance in Moscow by the Music Society (Musiksällskapet i Moskva) in November 1876, evidence of the country’s links with Russia via the sea route to St Petersburg. Performance dates were obtained by searching the newspaper database operated by the National Library of Sweden: Sök bland svenska dagstidningar, https://tidningar.kb.se/ (accessed 30 June 2018).
123 Göteborgsposten (16 April 1883), 3.
124 Adolf Lindgren, ‘Musik’, Aftonbladet (22 March 1875), 3.
125 Pia Nyström and Anne Marie Elmquist, Kungl. Musikaliska akademien matrikel, 1771–1995 (Stockholm: Kungl. Musikaliska akademien, 1996), 171, and ‘Teater och musik’, Dagens nyheter (7 November 1877), 2.
126 The Bärenreiter edition of Sämtliche Briefe has uncovered 5,855 of the approximately 7,000 letters believed to have been written by Felix; see also John Michael Cooper, ‘Knowing Mendelssohn: A Challenge from the Primary Sources’, Notes, second series, volume 61/1 (September 2004): 46–7. Regina Back estimates the number of letters written to him to be around 7,000; see ‘A Friendship in Letters: The Correspondence of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Carl Klingemann’, in Mendelssohn Perspectives, ed. Nicole Grimes and Angela Mace (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 269.
127 In addition to Back’s article cited above in footnote 126, a more complete discussion of the Mendelssohn–Klingemann correspondence is found in Back, Regina, ‘Freund meiner MusikSeele’: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Carl Klingemann im brieflichen Dialog (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2014)Google Scholar .
128 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 19? February 1828, Sämtliche Briefe, 1:240–44.
129 Mendelssohn to Lindblad, 23 March 1833, Sämtliche Briefe, 3:148. Between 1814 and 1905, the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway shared a common ruler.
130 Biddlecombe, George, ‘Secret Letters and a Missing Memorandum: New Light on the Personal Relationship between Felix Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 138/1 (2013): 81Google Scholar.