Princess Marie Has Also Been Poorly, So That The Whole House Has Been Very Dismal. The Last Few Days I Have Pulled Myself Together, And Have Had My Choruses To Herder's "Prometheus" Performed, Which Have Unexpectedly Made A Very Good Impression, And Were Received With Unusual Sympathy.

In the course of the summer I shall have the whole work printed.

The eight choruses, together with the [spoken] text, which has been skillfully compiled after Herder and Aeschylus [By Richard Pohl], and the preliminary Symphonic Poem (No. 5 of those published by Hartel), take about an hour and a half in performance. If I am not mistaken, the work will, later on, approve itself in larger concerts.

About the 15th May I shall be going to Aix-la-Chapelle, to conduct the Musical Festival there at Whitsuntide. That will be another good opportunity for many papers to abuse me, and to let off their bile! - If the programme which I shall put forward is realized at the September Festival you must come here and hear it with me.

My mother writes from Paris that Blandine has been living with the Countess d'A. since the 20th of this month. Cosima's marriage with H. von Bulow will probably take place before September. About Daniel the Princess will write to you fully when she is better.

God be with you and yours. Yours from my heart,

F. Liszt

Weimar, April 27th, 1857

183. To Frau von Kaulbach

[The letter, together with the following one, written by Kaulbach to Liszt in the fifties, was published in the Tagliche Rundschau [Daily Review], and afterwards in the Neue Berline Musikzeitung [Berlin New Musical Paper] of March 19th, 1891. It is well known that Liszt derived his inspiration to write the Hunnenschlachl [Battle of the Huns] from Kaulbach's celebrated picture on the staircase of the New Museum in Berlin. He intended to work up the six pictures of Kaulbach's which are there, in a similar symphonic manner, probably for theatrical performance in Weimar. Dingelstedt appears also to have planned an after-poem in verses. Kaulbach's letter to his friend is as follows: "Your original and spirited idea - the musical and poetic form of the historical pictures in the Berlin Museum - has taken hold of me completely. I much wish to hear yours and Dingelstedt's ideas of this performance. The representation of these powerful subjects in poetical, musical, and artistic form must constitute a harmonious work, rounded off into one complete whole. It will resound and shine through all lands!! - I shall therefore hasten to Weimar, as soon as my work here will let me free. - With the warmest regards to the Princess, that truly inspired friend of Art, and to her charming daughter, from myself and my wife, I remain, in unchangeable respect and friendship, Your faithful, W. Kaulbach."]

Dear Madam,

I have been encouraged to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my Symphonic Poem "Die Hunnenschlacht" (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the Master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weymar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic chorale "Crux fidelis," and the meteoric sparks blended therewith. As I already intimated to Kaulbach in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic chorale "Crux fidelis," than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby to win and pregnantly represent the conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I, both as a Catholic and as a man, could not dispense.

Kindly excuse this somewhat obscure commentary on the two opposing streams of light in which the Huns and the Cross are moving; the performance will make the matter bright and clear - and if Kaulbach finds something to amuse him in this somewhat venturesome mirroring of his fancy I shall be royally delighted.

Through Dingelstedt, whom our Grand Duke is taking away from Munich, you have heard the latest news from Weymar, and I have, alas! only bad news to give you of the Princess W. For many weeks she has been confined to bed with acute rheumatism, and it is hardly likely that she will be restored to health before my departure for Aix-la-Chapelle towards the middle of May. Allow me, my dear lady, to beg you to give Kaulbach my warmest and most hearty thanks for the wonderful sketch of Orpheus with which he has honored and delighted me; and once more begging you to pardon me for the dreadful scrawl of my manuscript, I remain yours with all respect and devoted friendship,

F. Liszt

Weymar, May 1st, 1857

184. To Fedor von Milde, Kammersanger

[A singer in the service of a prince] in Weimar [An excellent Wagner singer. The first Telramund in Lohengrin.]

Dear Friend,

I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of letting you know of the really extraordinary success, not made up, but thoroughly effectual and brilliant, of your wife. [Rosa, nee Agthe, trained by Franz Gotze.] Cologne, Dusseldorf, Bonn, Elberfeld, and the entire neighborhood agree with Aix-la-Chapelle that your wife made the festivity of the Musical Festival; and although success cannot as a rule be considered as a criterion of artistic worth, yet if it be attested so truly and de bon aloi as in this case, and follow that artistic worth, it has something refreshing and strengthening in which we, in trio, can fully rejoice.

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