ABSTRACT
On 28 November 1847, Paris’s most important music journal, the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris (published under the direction of Maurice Schlesinger from 1834 to 1846) commented on the death of Felix Mendelssohn in an article signed by the writer Maurice Bourges, the translator of several of Mendelssohn’s Lieder and his oratorios Paulus and Elias:
For almost one month all the echoes of the musical press are repeating this cry of astonishment and regret: Mendelssohn is dead! […] Certainly much less familiar with the works and the merit of the illustrious master, who visited here very briefly […], France has also been unable to hear this universal wail without painful sympathy. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn is certainly not a popular composer in France. Although several of his piano works are known among the amateurs and elite artists, his most important works are less well known if they are known at all. […] Mendelssohn’s first opus was published in 1824. It was the quartet in c minor for piano, violin, viola and cello. 2
