Excerpt from Letters of Felix Mendelssohn to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles If I have abstained from giving publicity to these letters for so long a time, it is because I thought such delay was in accordance with the wishes of both writers. Many passages occur in which prominent musicians of those days are unreservedly criticised, passages which I felt as little authorized to suppress as to publish during the lifetime of those alluded to. I trust they will be none the less interesting now that time has judged between the critics and those criticised. Nor did I feel justified in omitting passages that may prove of less interest to the general public than to a smaller circle; for they truly depict the warm friendship which, in the course of years, ripened between Men delssohn and Moscheles, and they are thoroughly characteristic of the bright and genial way in which Mendelssohn would express his personal feelings. For a copy of my father's letters to Mendelssohn, I am indebted to Prof. Carl Mendelssohn, of Freiburg, the eldest son of the composer. From these I have made extracts, or embodied their substance in a com mentary, where it seemed necessary to explain what Mendelssohn had written. To give them in full I deemed undesirable, so much of similar subject-matter from the pen of my father having already been made public, notably in the Life of Moscheles, edited by my mother. This biography is chiefly compiled from diaries extending over a period of nearly sixty years, and faithfully reflecting his impressions on the mani fold incidents of his artistic career. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.