Monday, December 14:
Our conversation is as usual concerned with what we heard yesterday. I told R. that, listening to the B. sonata, I felt as if B. were making use of all possible forms—recitative, fugato, Italian canto, figuration—in order to express something inside him of which even the music itself was only an indirect image.
In consequence, it seemed to me important that a composer have within himself this certain something which is in fact inexpressible, rather than that he should be able to find melodies or play around with forms. Thus it is even in philosophy; it can solve no riddles, but the important thing is that the philosopher feel the riddles inside himself: this is a quality Schopenhauer has.
Recently R. said so aptly, “Brahms composes as Bach might have composed.” He asked me yesterday whether I knew what he would call his new orchestral works—“hovering forms”—and he would attach to them as a motto the first verse of the Faust dedication. I told him that the continuation of this—“My tragic theme rings out, for strangers fated; their very plaudits give my heart a pang”—could even be applied to the Nibelungen, but he replied: “Oh no, my tragic theme is for you and for nobody else. I have never had anybody except you.”
Rubinstein brings along his piano arrangement of the Rhinemaidens’ scene, with which R. is very satisfied. In the evening read Schopenhauer. When I remark to R. that the one great passage in Parerga about the Kantian teaching (Volume I, pages 96-98) seems to me a particularly good model of descriptive writing, which as such should be included in all textbooks and given to young people to analyze, he asks me to read it again. Everything in it, right down to the punctuation, is wonderful.
Schiller’s letter to Fichte as quoted by Frauenstadt moves us with the moral courage of its truthfulness—where can this be found nowadays? Who would have the strength and greatness to write such a letter?
Richter writes a not exactly encouraging letter about Dr. Glatz, whose training he would like to see entrusted to his mother!