Wednesday, October 6:
Restless night for R.; reflections about the King. The morning brings me R.'s letters to our friend A. Frommann, among them one written after the King's intervention in R.'s life, how little it accords now with the reality! If only all things transitory were but sent as symbols!
In the afternoon a walk with R. In the evening our musicians, we go through the Symphonie fantastique; the first movement, lamenting, melancholy, pleases us most. R. says, 'That was Berlioz's best feature.' 'Scène aux champs' reminds us too much of the Pastoral, and the finale is stiff and disagreeable. R. says, 'There is always something measured about f tempo, you can only be wild in |, as in the finale of the A major.' What particularly strikes me is Berlioz's inability to develop his themes, which are often very fine, something he shares with Schubert; he does not perceive, as Beethoven, Bach, R. so profoundly perceive, all that a theme contains, that it is the seed from which the whole plant must emerge.
Went through some Handel. R. was improvising today, he wrote down a lovely theme.