I wish I could give you better tidings of my work, best friend,
than I am able to do. The last few months have passed without my
being able to do any steady work at my writing. I have merely
sketched and patched.
By May will appear a new edition of the Kuenstler-Chor (with some
important simplifications and improvements), and shortly after
that the volume of my "Gesammelte Lieder" ["Collected Songs."]
(about thirty), one or two of which will not be displeasing to
you. I shall not be able to set to the working out of my
Elizabeth till my return from Vienna.
The three songs [by Cornelius] (dedicated to Princess Marie)
[Princess Wittgenstein, now Princess Hohenlohe in Vienna.] are
charming and excellent. There is in them such a refined and true
proportion in union with such fervent and ardent mood that other
people besides the author must love them.
In order to make no break in my wonted fault-finding, I observe
that in the fifth bar of the first song the A-flat is more
agreeable than G.
[Figure: Music example showing the passage in question.] The
carrying out of the motive in the second song:
[Figure: Here Liszt writes 2 bars of music to illustrate.]
(page 2, last line, and page 3) you have done most happily - also
the moonlight conclusion of it,
[Figure: Here Liszt writes 3 bars of music to illustrate.]
and the poetic delineation of the last verse in the third song
(in which the rests in the voice part and the motive in the
accompaniment, enlivened by the rhythm [Here follows in the
original an illegible sign. In the song there come in here, in
place of the quaver movement which has prevailed hitherto, some
long-sustained chords in the accompaniment, which are again
interrupted by the quaver movement.], make an excellent effect):-
-
"Wenn mein Lied zu Ende geht, Sing ich's weiter in Gedanken,
Wie's im Wald verschwiegen weht, Wie die Rosen sich umranken!"
["When my song is ended quite, Yet in thought I still am singing,
As the wood at silent night Echoes from the day is bringing!"]
Well and good, dearest Cornelius, and now some more soon, let me
beg of you! Don't make too long pauses in your hermitage, and
allow us to tell you and prove to you how truly we love you.
F. Liszt
P.S. - About two months ago I at last sent Schott the proofs of
the second year of the "Annees de Pelerinage," together with the
manuscript of Seroff's arrangement for two pianofortes of
Beethoven's C-sharp minor Quartet. Will you be so good as to get
Schott to let me know the fate of the C-sharp minor Quartet?
Although two-piano arrangements are somewhat thankless articles
of sale, yet perhaps Schott may manage to bring out this Quartet,
of which I should be very glad.
