If it would interest you, dear sir, to get to know the
score, I will willingly write to Gounod and beg him to give me
the work to send to you.
I have repeatedly heard the most gratifying tidings of the
sympathy and care which you bestow in Detmold upon the works of
Wagner and Berlioz. Regardless of the many difficulties,
opposition, and misunderstandings which meet these great
creations, I cherish with you the conviction that "nothing truly
good and beautiful is lost in the stream of Time," and that the
pains taken by those who intend to preserve the higher and the
divine in Art do not remain fruitless. In the course of this
autumn (at the end of November at latest) I am going to see
Wagner, and I promise to send you from Zurich a little autograph
from his hand. I would gladly satisfy your wish sooner, but that
the letters which Wagner writes to me are a perfectly inalienable
benefit to me, and you will not take it amiss if I am more than
avaricious with them.
Accept, my dear sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, with
which I remain
Yours most truly,
F. Liszt
Weymar, September 8th, 1855
Enclosed are Berlioz' letter and the manuscript of "Sappho."
144. To Moritz Hauptmann
[The celebrated theorist and cantor of the Thomashirche in
Leipzig (1792-1868)]
Very dear Sir,
By the same post I send you, with best and warmest thanks for
your friendly letter, the volume of Handel's works which contains
the anthems. The second of them, "Zadok the Priest and Nathan the
Prophet anointed Solomon King," is a glorious ray of Handel's
genius, and one might truly quote, of the first verse of this
anthem, the well-known saying, "C'est grand comme le monde." ["It
is as great as the world."] -
The cantata "L'Allegro, il Pensieroso," etc., enchants me less,
yet it has interested me much as an important contribution to
imitative music; and, if you will kindly allow me, I want to keep
the volume here a few days longer and to send it back with the
two others.
I agree entirely, on my side, with your excellent criticism of
Raimondi's triple oratorio ["Joseph," an oratorio by the Roman
composer, consisting of three parts, which was given with great
success in the Teatro Argentina in Rome in 1852]. There is little
to seek on that road, and still less to find. The silver pfennig
(in the Dresden Art-Cabinet), on which ten Pater Noster are
engraved, has decidedly the advantage of harmlessness to the
public over such outrages to Art, and the Titus Livius, composed
by Sechter, will probably have to moulder away very
unhistorically as waste-paper.
