TO PASTOR JULIUS SCHUBRING, DESSAU.
Dear Schubring,—Your letter with the enclosed contribution came to hand while I was beginning to arrange the sheets of my oratorio,[1] and thinking much at the same time of the music I am going to write next winter. It struck me so much that I have copied out the whole text, as far as it has got, and now send it, hoping that you will do what you did before, and give me the benefit of all your comments and suggestions. You will see in the margin some notes of things that are still wanting, and of places which I want to fill with passages from the Bible and hymn book. But what I chiefly want is your opinion (1) about the form of the whole work, particularly of the narrative parts. Do you think it can be left as it is, with the narrative and the dramatic elements side by side? I can’t venture on Bach’s method of personified narrative, and this combination strikes me as the most natural thing, and only laborious at certain places, as the “Ananias,” where the lengthy inter-connected recitals make it so.
- ↑ The “St. Paul.”
