I Think There Is No Need For Me To
Accentuate The Fact That A Musical Conductor Cannot Blindly
Subscribe To
Just every programme that is put before him, and I
hope that the honorable Committee will not consider that there
Is
any assumption in my proposition to place the Aix-la-Chapelle
programme more in accord with my own collective endeavors.
I am writing a few lines of thanks by the next post to President
Herr Van Houten for the distinction shown to me about the
consideration contained in this letter, which I beg that you will
communicate to him verbally.
Awaiting further communications from the Committee, I remain,
dear Herr Capellmeister, with warm acknowledgements and high
esteem,
Yours very truly,
F. Liszt
171. To J. W. von Wasielewski in Dresden
Dear Friend,
Your letter reached me, after some delay, in Zurich, where I had
to keep my bed for several weeks - and today I write to you still
from my bed, and sulking because the geographical change which I
have made has not brought about any improvement in my
pathological condition (which, by the way, is quite without
danger).
How are you, dear Wasielewski? Have you settled yourself
pleasantly in Dresden? Are you working at music industriously and
methodically? - How far have you got in your biography of R.
Schumann? With regard to this work, the publication of which I am
awaiting with great interest, I am sorry to be unable to follow
the wish you so kindly express. Many letters addressed to me by
Schumann in earlier years are lost, and since my residence in
Weymar (from the year 1848) we certainly wrote to one another
from time to time, but only when theater or concert performances
of his works gave a sort of business occasion for it. Weymar does
not deserve the reproach of having kept itself too much in the
background in this respect. At the Goethe Festival in 1849 I had
the great closing scene to the second part of "Faust" given,
which was, later on, repeated; at the beginning of 1852 the music
to Byron's "Manfred," with a stage performance of the drama such
as he desired, was given several times, and, as far as I know, up
to now no other theater has made this attempt. [Liszt was
actually the first.] The Weymar theater is likewise the only one
which contains in its repertoire Schumann's "Genoveva" (which was
indeed given here for the first time in April 1855). It goes
without saying that, during the years of my work here, most of
his chamber music - Quartets, Trios, Sonatas - as well as his
Symphonies, Overtures, and Songs, have been cherished with
particular preference and love, and have been frequently heard in
various concerts, with the exception of one of the most
important; but the very slight amount of public activity of our
Vocal Union has prevented, as yet, any performance of the "Peri,"
which, however, has already been partly studied, and will ere
long be given at last.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 157 of 244
Words from 81823 to 82326
of 127569
