Wednesday, March 19:
R. is now having better nights, thank God! In the morning he has some business with the Court gardener, and I am busy with birthday preparations. The spring weather has changed, east wind and cold!
Visited the house. At lunch discussion of the difficulties of our undertaking: in 6 months the copyists have not yet finished Die Walküre; and how do things look with the machinery, etc.? “He could talk,” says R. with a laugh, pointing at Beethoven’s picture. “He wrote his symphonies, couldn’t hear them, and then ran around half-naked in the woods striking terror into everybody, and now I must pay for his having got the cart stuck in the mud with his ideas!”
In the evening we look at old etchings, sent to us by the Jew Seligsberg, and then play through Hagen’s part as copied by Herr Zumpe. Great consternation over its difficulties!
In the morning R. sang a pretty theme by Auber; when I observed how French it was and remarked that the Germans should not try to imitate such things, for they could not succeed, R. says, “Yes, not even a German Jew, Meyerbeer is clumsy in comparison.” Auber’s being a musician is proof that music is the art of today, in another period he would perhaps have been a wood carver.