Etc., rubbish, to the ruin of eye and ear! I will try to leave it
out in my Mass, although this style is very usual in composing
Church music. In five or six weeks I hope to have finished this
work, at which I am working heart and soul (the Kyrie and Gloria
are written). Perhaps I shall still find you at Vienna (or in the
outskirts, which are charming), when I come to Gran in the month
of July.
If not, we shall see each other again at Weymar, for you owe me a
compensation for your last fugue, which is no more to my taste
than Kuhmstedt's counterpoint. When are you going to send me the
complete works of Anton Rubinstein that you promised me, and
which I beg you not to forget? Your idea of a retrospective
Carnival seems to me excellent, and you know how to write
charming and distinguished pieces of that kind.
Farewell, dear friend; I must leave you to go and have a
rehearsal of Schumann's "Genoveva," which is to be given next
Monday. It is a work in which there is something worthy of
consideration, and which bears a strong impress of the composer's
style. Among the Operas which have been produced during the last
fifty years it is certainly the one I prefer (Wagner excepted -
that is understood), notwithstanding its want of dramatic
vitality - a want not made up for by some beautiful pieces of
music, whatever interest musicians of our kind may nevertheless
take in hearing them.
A thousand cordial greetings, and yours ever,
F. Liszt
Weymar, April 3rd, 1855
When you write to me, please add your address. I beg you will
also return my best compliments to Lewy. [Pianist in St.
Petersburg; a friend of Rubinstein's.]
A thousand affectionate messages to Van II. from the Princess.
137. To Freiherr Beaulieu-Marconnay, Intendant of the Court
theater at Weimar
[Autograph in the possession of Herr Hermann Scholtz, Kammer-
Virtuosos in Dresden. The addressee died in Dresden.]
Dear Baron,
It is not precisely a distraction, still less a forgetfulness,
with which I might be reproached as regards the programme of this
evening's concert. The indications which Her Royal Highness the
Grand Duchess condescends to give me are too precious to me for
me not to be most anxious to fulfill at least all my duties. If,
then, one of Beethoven's Symphonies does not figure in today's
programme, it is because I thought I could better satisfy thus
the intentions of H.R.H., and that I permitted myself to guess
that which she has not taken the occasion to explain this time.
The predilection of His Majesty the King of Saxony for
Beethoven's Symphonies assuredly does honor to his taste for the
Beautiful in music, and no one could more truly agree to that
than I. I will only observe, on the one side, that Beethoven's
Symphonies are extremely well known, and, on the other, that
these admirable works are performed at Dresden by an orchestra
having at its disposal far more considerable means than we have
here, and that consequently our performance would run the risk of
appearing rather provincial to His Majesty.
