Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 20, 1873

Overview

The day centers on rehearsing Beethoven's C Minor Symphony, which moves both Wagner and his wife deeply. Wagner responds as an interpreter and critic, thinking about how the symphony's parts interlock and how difficult the score is to conduct effectively. The evening culminates in a lavish banquet where Wagner is praised in patriotic and literary terms and responds emotionally. The occasion feels like a peak of public recognition, reinforced by good news from the children.

Content

Monday, January 20:

A good night, rehearsal at 10 o’clock, C Minor Symphony; the good people do their best and it goes really well, they understand R. at once. Tremendous impact of the work on R. and me; he says that on the recapitulation of the melancholy little march he could not conceal his emotion: “They have been more or less driven off by the more weighty, happy pomp, but they sound again, as if saying they also had a right to be heard - everything here is dramatic.”

I told him that during the finale I had thought of the procession to the Panathenaea, and this little march he mentioned was for me like the procession of virgins who carried the pylos of each athenaeum - that for war, people, etc.

At the same time we were both thinking, each in his own way, of Fidi; I thought: He will never know how these things should sound if he does not hear them conducted by his father - and he probably will not! Perhaps he has it inside himself. The indescribable relationship between the various parts of a Beethoven symphony - they belong together, but who can explain how? R. says he would like to change the 4 time signature of the first movement into 2 because it is so awkward to beat as written, and the nuances also suffered in this rhythm; it gave rise to too many accents. Beethoven, he thinks, must have felt that people would go wrong in 4 and thus wrote it as if for children.

Telegram to the children, from whom I have had no letters. At 9:15 in the evening we are fetched by Dr. Baumeister and taken to the Sagebiel restaurant; a lavish banquet, in the best of styles and the best of company. The speaker, Dr. Baumeister, reveals himself to be a thorough connoisseur of R.’s writings and welcomes him as a patriot, author, poet, etc., in words full of significance. R. replied, very moved. The Bayreuth arms hang on the wall opposite those of Hamburg. My second neighbor, Senator Petersen (the police president), proposes the toast to me. The banquet ends at 2 o’clock - it was the finest ever given for us. Good news from the children.