Add MS 46347

'HEAR MY PRAYER': hymn for soprano solo, chorus and orchestra by Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy; circ. 1847. Full score. Copy. The original version of this work, for soprano solo, chorus and organ, was composed at the request of its librettist William Bartholomew, for one of a series of concerts at Crosby Hall, London, directed by Miss Ann Sheppard Mounsey (see E. Polko, Reminiscences of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, translated by Lady Wallace, 1869, pp. 219-220). The first performance was given on 8 Jan. 1845 with Miss Mounsey as organist. The autograph score of the original version, completed on 25 Jan. 1844 and dedicated to William Taubert, is now MS.

86. R. 45 in the Victoria and Albert Museum; a page of autograph corrections is in Add. MS. 41570, f. 3. The present orchestrated version was made at the request of Joseph Robinson of Dublin (1816-1898), conductor and founder of the Antient Concert Society. In a note on f. lb he records that he requested the arrangement at a meeting with Mendelssohn in London in August 1846 and that the score was forwarded to him by [E.] Buxton (proprietor of the music publishing firm of Ewer & Co., cf. E. Polko, op. cit., p. 210) a few months after the composer's death (4 Nov. 1847). The orchestrated version was published by Novello, Ewer & Co. [ 1890?], with a note that it 'is now printed from a copy made from the Autograph by Dr. [Edmund] Chipp of Ely in 1852'. Paper; ff. i + 23. Oblong quarto. Circ. A.D. 1847. At f. i is the armorial bookplate, dated 1793, of Francis Robinson, father of Joseph Robinson. The latter's bookstamp is on f. 2. Bequeathed by the Rev. Stanford Frederick Hudson Robinson.