Frau Land-Goldschmidt Stands As Incomparable In Her Glittering
Renown As A Singer As Handel In His As A Composer,
With the
difference - which is in Frau Lind's favor to boot - that Handel's
works weary many people and do not
Always succeed in filling the
coffers, whereas the mere appearance of Frau Lind secures the
utmost rapture of the public, as well as that of the cashier. If,
therefore, we place the affairs of the Musical Festival simply on
the satisfying and commercial debit and credit basis, certainly
no artist, and still less any work of Art, could venture to
compete with, and to offer an equal attraction to, the high and
highly celebrated name of Frau Lind. Without raising the
slightest objection to this, I must express my common-sense
opinion that with this magnet all others would be quite
superfluous, which, however, cannot be quite so indifferent to
me; for, as Louis XIV. represented the State, so Frau Lind would
constitute the Musical Festival proper. This avowal (for which I
deserve, at the very least, stoning with the usual ingredients of
operations of that kind in our civilized age, if I did not happen
to implore grace of the divine Diva herself) - this avowal I
already made last year, on occasion of the Dusseldorf Musical
Festival, to my esteemed friend of many years, Ferdinand Hiller.
What is the use of orchestra and singers, rehearsals and
preparations, pieces and programmes, when the public only want to
hear the Lind, and then hear her again - or, more correctly
speaking, when they must be able to say they leave heard her, in
order to be able to wallow at ease in their enthusiasm for Art?
What I foresaw then was also confirmed to a hair, for it proved,
as everybody knows, that all the sympathy of the public went in
favor of whatever Frau Lind did, so that the so-called Artist-
concert on the third day was the most fully attended, because in
it there were an aria from "Beatrice di Tenda" and Swedish songs
as special attraction - for which marvels the very simplest
pianoforte accompaniment was no doubt sufficient. - Should the
Committee of Aix-la-Chapelle be minded to take to heart the motto
of Hiller's Symphony, "Es muss doch Fruhling werden," ["The
spring will surely come."] in all its artistic endeavour, and, as
you write, to steer clear towards the goal of a "fresher
rekindling of the Musical Festival," we shall be obliged, alas!
to do without the Swedish Nightingale and Europe's Queen of Song.
In short, the point of the matter of this year's Musical Festival
at Aix-la-Chapelle is, as concerns myself, as follows:-
If they decide on having the "Messiah," I must beg to be pardoned
for having to excuse myself from coming. [Liszt finally dropped
his objection to the "Messiah." He had it performed at the
Musical Festival, conducted by him.]
If the Committee accepts the programme I have drawn (Schubert
Symphony, etc., including the last numbers) for the second day,
then it will be a pleasing duty to me to accept the honor of the
invitation, always supposing that the means for a brilliant
performance of the Beethoven Mass and the other works are
forthcoming, as one cannot doubt will be the case in Aix-la-
Chapelle - if my share in the Festival does not in any way give
offence to the neighboring towns, in which case I should of
course gladly and quietly retire, in order not to occasion any
disturbance, or unsatisfactorily prepared discord in the customs
of the musical Rhine-lands.
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