Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Volume I Part 22

Long accounts of the Musical Festival you will find in Brendel's "Neue Zeitschrift" (Brendel himself was at Ballenstedt), the "Signale", "Rheinische Musikzeitung", and "Berlin Echo".

Your

F. LISZT

June 26th, 1852

Perhaps you can spare a few minutes before starting on your journey to write a few friendly lines to Langer about the performance of the "Liebesmahl" at Ballenstedt. He has behaved as excellently as might have been expected, and the chorus of students is splendid. Without it the performance would have been impossible, because the other singers were only just sufficient to strengthen the chorus. Send your letter to Brendel, who will give it to Langer, and let me have without delay the designs for the "Flying Dutchman".

81.

Cordial thanks, best of friends, for sending me the money, in connection with which I am troubled by one thing only: you do not tell me that the hundred thalers have been advanced on account of the honorarium for the "Flying Dutchman". I asked for the sum on that understanding, and no other, and only if I may a.s.sume that no one has been inconvenienced in this manner will it give me pleasure to spend the money on a trip of recreation. That trip, on which I start tomorrow, has come just in time; uninterrupted work has again strongly affected me, and the nerves of my brain are so overwrought that even these few lines put me in a state of violent excitement, wherefore I must ask you not to be angry if I make them very short. I feel that I am still capable of doing good things, but only by keeping very strict diet, and especially by frequently interrupting my work and entirely diverting my thoughts before going on again. The "Valkyrie", the poem of which I finished on July lst, I wrote in four weeks; if I had spent eight weeks over it, I should now feel better. In future I must adopt this course, and cannot therefore fix a term for the completion of the whole, although I have reason to suppose that the music will not give me much trouble.

I am surprised that you ask me for the designs for the "Flying Dutchman," because I have left the whole matter to the designer, Herr C. This man, with whom I do not care to have any further dealings, because he has a pa.s.sion for borrowing from a poor devil like me, wrote to me lately to say that he had applied by letter to Weimar in this matter, but had as yet had no reply. If you care to have the designs, all that is necessary will be for the management to reply to C.'s letter, and I ask you therefore to see that this is done.

Uhlig will arrange the score for you as soon as he receives your copy.

A thousand thanks for all you have again done for my works lately. I was not able to read the account of the Ballenstedt Musical Festival with anything but deep emotion. I am sure that by these performances you have again won many new friends for me, and I have no doubt that if ever I come to the fore it will be your doing.

Farewell, and be happy!

Your

RICHARD WAGNER

82.

MOST GLORIOUS FRIEND,

You have once more given me real, G.o.d-sent joy by your dedication of "Lohengrin". Accept my most cordial, most fervent thanks in return, and be convinced that it will be the task of my life to be worthy of your friends.h.i.+p. The little that so far I have been able to do for you and through you for the honour of art has chiefly this merit: that it encourages me to do still better and more decisive things for your works in the future. But what do you mean by occupying yourself with the bad jokes which have been circulating in a few newspapers, and by even accusing me of having been the cause of them? The latter is quite impossible, and H, has probably told you already that the ma.n.u.script of "Siegfried" has not been out of his hands for months. Some time ago I lent it, by your desire, to Fraulein Fromann alone, and the reading that took place at Zigesar's at the beginning of last year for the Hereditary Grand Duke cannot very well have originated the bad joke in the "Kreuzzeitung". However, that joke is quite harmless and insignificant, and I ask you urgently to ignore totally this kind of gossip once for all.

What can it matter to you whether people indulge their silliness in connection with you and your works? You have other cats to flog--"d'autres chats a fouetter," as the French proverb has it.

Do not therefore hesitate on your account or on my account to publish the "Nibelung" tetralogy as soon as it is finished.

Hartel spoke to me about your letter in connection with this affair about two months ago; and, in my opinion, you cannot do better than give the poem to the public while you finish the score. As to the definite performance of the three operas we must have a good talk when the time comes. If in the worst case you are not then back in Germany (and I need not tell you how I wish that this worst case should not happen), I shall stir in every possible way for the production of your work. You may rely on my practical talents for that purpose and have implicit confidence in me. If Weymar should prove too mean and poor, we shall try somewhere else; and even if all our strings snap (which is not to be expected), we may still go on playing if you give me full power to organize an unheard of music or drama festival, or whatever the thing may be called in any given place, and to launch your "Nibelungen" there.

You finish your score! and in the meantime let Hartel or some one else publish the poem as a forerunner.

How about the performance of "Tannhauser" at Berlin? I quite approve of your exceptional demand of 1,000 thalers for the same reasons which induced you to make that demand, and I thank you cordially for the artistic confidence with regard to the preparations which you have placed in me. Although a journey of Berlin would in existing circ.u.mstances be somewhat inconvenient, I am quite at your disposal, with the sole condition--which alone would make my journey useful and serviceable to "Tannhauser"-- that the Royal management asks me to come to Berlin by your desire and to settle with that management and with the other persons concerned the necessary preparations for the best possible success of your work. In any other circ.u.mstances I should be in an awkward and useless position at Berlin, without achieving the slightest thing. If you consider the matter, you will certainly agree with me, and see that this is the only way in which I perhaps might be of use to you.

As you know already, the "Flying Dutchman" is announced for the next birthday of H.I.H. the Grand d.u.c.h.ess: February 16th, 1853.

Care will be taken that the opera is properly mounted. Zigesar is full of enthusiasm for your genius, and will work with a will.

The corrected score has been sent at once to the copyists, and in six weeks the work will be rehea.r.s.ed comme il faut.

The theatrical season begins with Verdi's "Hernani," after which Spohr's "Faust," with new recitatives, will follow soon. By the middle of November I expect Berlioz, whose "Cellini" (with a considerable cut) must not be shelved, for, in spite of all the stupid things that have been set going about it, "Cellini" is and remains a remarkable and highly estimable work. I am sure you would like many things in it.

Raff has made great changes in the instrumentation and arrangement of his "Alfred," and probably the opera in its new form will have better effect even than before, although the three or four first performances were much applauded. Altogether I look upon this opera as the ablest work that has been written by a German composer these ten years. You of course are not included; you stand alone, and can be compared with no one but yourself.

I am very glad you have taken this trip. The glaciers are splendid fellows, and in the years of my youth I, too, had struck up a friends.h.i.+p with them. The tour round Mont Blanc I recommend you for next year; I made it partly in the year 1835, but my traveling companion was soon fatigued, and fatigued me still more.

Farewell. Be at peace with yourself, and soon publish your "Nibelung" poem, in order to prepare the public and put it in the proper mood. Leave all manner of "Grenzboten", "Wohlbekannte", "Kreuzseitungen", and "Gazettes Musicales" on one side, and do not bother yourself with these miserable scribblings. Rather drink a good bottle of wine, and work onwards, up to eternal, immortal life.

Your cordially grateful and truly devoted

F. LISZT

WEYMAR, August 23rd, 1852

83.

DEAREST FRIEND,

A thousand thanks for your last letter. Unfortunately I cannot reply to it as I should like to do; the nerves of my brain are once more in a state of great suffering, and for some time I ought to give up all writing and reading, I might say all mental existence. Even the shortest letter wearies me terribly, and only the most perfect quiet (where and how shall I find that?) may or might restore me. But I do not wish to complain, only to explain to you why it is that today I must limit my communication to stating briefly what is absolutely necessary. Do not be angry with me for not writing with that joyful expansion which is intended to make up for the impossibility of personal intercourse. As to Berlin nothing is settled yet. Hulsen considered my demand as a vote of want of confidence in his personal intentions, and this error I had to dispel by laying my most perfect confidence as a weight on his conscience. All I want him to do now is to acknowledge in a few words that he perfectly understands my difficult position with regard to "Tannhauser" at Berlin, and that he undertakes the performance with the desire of conquering that difficult position. The whole subject of honoraria I leave to him. One thing has recently calmed my anxiety: I have written tolerably comprehensive instructions for the performance of "Tannhauser", and have had them printed as a pamphlet and sent a sufficient number of copies to the theatres which had bought the score. I hope this will be of use. I send you herewith half-a-dozen copies. There will not be much that is new to you in the pamphlet, because I have discussed most things with you by letter; still it might be useful to you, because it will materially a.s.sist you in your purpose of restudying "Tannhauser" if you will give it to the stage-manager and the singers. This therefore I would ask you to do. The work has been a perfect torture to me. This eternal communication by letter and in print is terrible to me, especially when it is about things the significance of which has for a long time lain far behind me.

In fact, if I still trouble myself about these earlier operas, it is only from the necessity of circ.u.mstances, not from any desire to hark back. This leads me to Berlioz and Raff. Candidly speaking, I am sorry to hear that Berlioz thinks of recasting his "Cellini". If I am not mistaken, this work is more than twelve years old. Has not Berlioz developed in the meantime so that he might do something quite different? It shows poor confidence in himself to have to return to this earlier work. B. has shown quite correctly where the failure of "Cellini" lies, viz., in the poem and in the unnatural position in which the musician was forcibly placed by being expected to disguise by purely musical intentions a want which the poet alone could have made good.

This "Cellini" Berlioz will never put on its legs. But which of the two after all is of more importance, "Cellini" or Berlioz?

Leave the former alone, and help the second. To me there is something horrible in witnessing this attempt at galvanizing and resuscitating. For heaven's sake let Berlioz write a new opera; it will be his greatest misfortune if he fails to do this, for only one thing can save him, the drama, and one thing must lead him to ever deeper ruin, his obstinate avoidance of this sole refuge: and in this latter he will be confirmed by occupying himself again with an old attempt, in which he has been deserted by the poet, for whose faults he will try once more to make up by his music.

Believe me, I love Berlioz, although he keeps apart from me in his distrust and obstinacy; he does not know me, but I know him.

If I have expectations of any one, it is of Berlioz, but not in the direction in which he has arrived at the absurdities of his "Faust". If he proceeds further in that direction, he must become perfectly ridiculous. If ever a musician wanted the poet, it is Berlioz, and his misfortune is that he always prepares this poet for himself, according to his musical whim, arbitrarily handling now Shakespeare, now Goethe. He wants a poet who would completely penetrate him, who would conquer him by delight, who would be to him what man is to woman. I see with dismay that this exceedingly gifted artist is peris.h.i.+ng in his egotistic solitude. Can I save him?

You do not want to have "Wiland." I believe it to be a beautiful poem, but am no longer able to execute it for myself. Will you offer it to Berlioz? Perhaps Henri Blaze would be the man to treat it in French.

How about Raff? I thought he was writing a new work, but no; he is remodeling an old one. Is there no LIFE in these people? Out of what can the artist create if he does not create out of life, and how can this life contain an artistically productive essence unless it impels the artist continually to creations which correspond to life? Is this artificial remodeling of old motives of life real artistic creativeness? How about the source of all art unless new things flow forth from it irresistibly, unless it is wholly absorbed in new creations? Oh, ye creatures of G.o.d, do not think that this making is artistic creating. It betrays no end of self-complacency, combined with poverty, if we try to prop up these earlier attempts. If Raff's opera, as you tell me, has pleased, he ought to be satisfied; in any case he had a better reward than I had for my "Feen," which was never performed at all, or for my "Liebesverbot," which had one abominable performance, or for my "Rienzi," of the revival of which I think so little that I should not permit it if it were contemplated anywhere. About the "Dutchman," "Tannhauser," and "Lohengrin" I trouble myself with disgust, and only for the reason that I know that, on account of imperfect representations, they have never been perfectly understood. If they had had their due anywhere, I should care devilishly little about things that I have outlived.

Good people, do something new, new, and once more new. If you stick to the old, the devil of barrenness holds you in thrall, and you are the most miserable of artists.

Well, this is off my heart; he who charges me with insincerity will have to answer Heaven; he who charges me with arrogance is silly.

I can write no more; do not be angry; my head is bursting. Only let me say the warmest farewell that is in my heart. Love me as before, and write soon to

Your

RICHARD WAGNER

ZURICH, September 8th, 1852

84.

DEAREST FRIEND,