110 To Dr. Franz Brendel
Dear Friend,
Herewith an article which I send you for your paper. “Euryanthe,” which I conduct here tomorrow, is the occasion of it. Still a more general question is aroused in it, which I am to a certain extent constrained “to agitate” from Weymar.[“Gesammelte Scriften” vol. iii., I.] I flatter myself that our ideas will meet and harmonize in it. At first I had prefaced it by a couple of introductory lines, which I now erase. Will you be so good as to introduce me yourself in the Neue Zeitschrift by a few words? You will be the best one to make up this little preface. My name can be put quite openly with its five letters, as I am perfectly ready to stand by my opinion.
Tuesday morning I go to Gotha. The Duke’s opera is to be given at the end of this month, or at latest on the 2nd April, and from the day after tomorrow till the first performance I shall be quartered at Gotha. In consequence of this I must unfortunately give up my excursion to Leipzig for the moment,—but I hope that David will allow another rehearsal in the Gewandhaus in the course of April, after the “Lohengrin” performance here with Gaze (on April 7th and 8th), which I must of necessity conduct. The news, which it appears some papers have published, that I was thinking of arranging a concert in Leipzig, belongs to the generation of ducks [geese?] who amuse themselves in swimming around my humble self. My visit to Leipzig has no other object than to make some of the musicians acquainted with one or two of my symphonic works. Should they be pleased with them, they might perhaps be given there next season. In any case, however, several of them will appear in score next autumn.
My time is exceedingly limited, and I must see about a great many things today which do not put one in the mood for correspondence.
Yours in friendship,
F. Liszt
Saturday, March 18th [1854]
111. To Louis Kohler.
[Weimar, April or May, 1854]
My very dear friend,
I am extremely glad that you liked my article on “Euryanthe” and theater direction, and I thank you most truly for your warm and very encouraging letter. For many weeks past I have been imitating you (as you and others always set me a good example), and am publishing several views on Art-subjects and Art-works in the Weimar official paper. By degrees these articles will swell into a volume, which shall then contain the complete set.
For the present I allow myself to send you my Sonata, which has just been published at Hartel’s. You will soon receive another long piece, “Scherzo and March,” and in the course of the summer my “Annees de Pelerinage, Suite de Compositions pour le Piano” will appear at Schott’s; two years—Switzerland and Italy. With these pieces I shall have done for the present with the piano, in order to devote myself exclusively to orchestral compositions, and to attempt more in that domain which has for a long time become for me an inner necessity. Seven of the Symphonic Poems are perfectly ready and written out. I will soon send you the little prefaces which I am adding to them, in order to render the perception of them more plain. Meanwhile I merely give you the titles:—
1. “Ce qu’on entend sur la Montagne” (after V. Hugo’s poem in the “Feuilles d’Automne”).
2. Tasso. “Lamento e Trionfo”
3. “Les Preludes” (after Lamartine’s Meditation poetique “Les Preludes”).
4. “Orphee.”
5. “Promethee.”
6. “Mazeppa” (after V. Hugo’s Orientale “Mazeppa”).
7. “Festklange.”
8. “Heroide funebre.”
9. “Hungaria.”
By Christmas I intend to bring out the scores of all these—which would make about fifteen hundred plates in octavo size.
The post affair in regard to your letter with the article on Raff’s “Fruehlingsboten” is very unpleasant to me. Neither has come into my hands, or else I should assuredly have let you know much sooner. What has become of it cannot now be traced; a similar thing happened also with a manuscript sent to me from Dresden, which was never able to be found. Excuse me, dear friend, for the carelessness which you supposed I had shown, of which I am in this case not guilty, as Pohl has already written to you by my request—and continue to keep for me always your sympathetic friendship, with which I remain, in complete harmonious unison,
Yours most truly and gratefully,
F. Liszt