Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of May 28, 1872

Overview

The work with the children resumes, and correspondence about practical matters occupies much of the morning. A tenor named Diener is heard and engaged, though he shows the same shallow vocal habits that frustrate them in modern singers. The conversation turns to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which they treat as a mysterious and difficult work that may not belong before an undisciplined audience. After a pleasant outing to the Sophienberg with Malwida, the evening brings the pleasure of reading 'Nicht kapitulieren' aloud to great delight.

Content

Tuesday, May 28:

Since yesterday working again with the children; wrote to Hans, also to Fritz and L. Bucher concerning Herr Lang. Visit from Diener, the tenor, who has a good voice but also all the bad habits of present-day singers, who can only produce bursts, no sustained notes. R. engages him for Milan and will try to save him from the “theater lark.”

Talked a lot about the 9th Symphony; what gave B. the idea of setting Schiller’s poem to music? R. believes that he meant from the start to write a great symphony of joy in the spirit of the Freemasons and to precede it with struggle and mourning, but I have the feeling that he wrote the more somber movements first and then, finding, as it were, no finale, resorted to words.

But a work such as this remains a mystery. R. says how remarkable in B. is the hatred of trivialities, the avoidance of dominants, for example, and the enormous artistic instinct. Isolated passages are also splendidly orchestrated, such as the opening of the Adagio. We are, however, more and more convinced that such compositions as the first movement of this symphony do not belong in front of an audience, which never achieves the concentration necessary to grasp such mysteries.

With M. Meysenbug to the Sophienberg, a pleasant countryside, everything friendly and human. In the evening R. reads Nicht kapituliert, to our great delight.