[_Written in English._] "LEIPZIG, _May_ 8, 1846. "My dear Sir,--I write these lines to inform you that I intend to send the whole of the first part of my oratorio to Mr. Moscheles in the course of the next fortnight. It is by far the greater part of the two; the choruses from the second part will be in England towards the beginning of July, and the rest of the whole in the middle of that month. All this, _Deo volente_. "I wish Mr. Bartholomew, in London, who has translated several other vocal pieces of mine, would undertake also this; and I wish he might take advice of my friend, Mr. Klingemann, who understands both languages thoroughly, and who understands my music better than both languages. "The most essential condition for my oratorio is a most excellent barytone singer--a man like Pischek, or Staudigl, or Oberhofer. Will you have such a m...." [Here the letter is torn away, and concluded in a lady's handwriting, thus:] "Believe me always yours truly, "FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY." The summer of 1846 was very hot, and Mendelssohn often became exhausted over the close application which he gave to his work. "I have lived the life of a marmot," he writes, but he kept his time. The complete Part I. was despatched from Leipzig on May 23. He was then interrupted in the process of composition for three weeks by having to conduct the Lower Rhine Musical Festival at Aix-la-Chapelle (May 31 to June 2);[28] then a Soirée at Düsseldorf; after that the production of his "Lauda Sion," at Liège, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 11; and finally a great Choral Festival at Cologne--"an enormous 'Sängerfest,'" he writes, of "nearly 2,000 men, which I have also to direct." For this Mendelssohn had composed a Festgesang on Schiller's "An die Künstler" ("To the Sons of Art"), Op. 68. [Footnote 28: It was on this occasion that Mendelssohn omitted the two "redundant bars" in the _Scherzo_ of Beethoven's C minor Symphony. See Sir George Grove's forthcoming work on "Beethoven," and the chapter on the C minor Symphony; also the "Dictionary of Music and Musicians," Vol. II., 288_a_.] On his return to Leipzig, Mendelssohn heard that some members of the Philharmonic band, who had been discourteous to him during his previous visit to London, were not to be engaged for the Birmingham Festival. He at once wrote off to Moscheles in the following emphatic terms:-- [MENDELSSOHN TO MOSCHELES.] "LEIPZIG, _June_ 26, 1846.[29] "My dear Friend,--The occasion of these lines is a passage in Mr. Moore's letter, in which he says: 'Nearly the whole of the Philharmonic band are engaged [for Birmingham]; a few only are left out who made themselves unpleasant when you were there.'[30]