Tuesday, February 26:
R. works; in a very nice letter he has written to my father he says, “I am composing now all day long, like Raff or Brahms.” He is in a splendid mood, his eyes radiate joy, kindness, and cheerfulness.
Many stupidities about the Idyll; someone sees the “Forest Murmurs” in it without the “sung dialogue” of Fafner and Siegfried; another says there is no motive from Siegfried in it!
In the evening Waverley, after again walking secretly to the theater with the children. Much enjoyment from this beautiful and serene book. Then R. is in the mood for music and takes up Haydn’s Bear Symphony, great delight in the final movement; then he shows friend Seidl the Andante of Haydn’s G major Symphony and says it is one of the loveliest things ever written, and how wonderful it sounds!
Continuing to talk about music, he says there are few things in music which completely satisfy one’s longing; the Adagio from the Ninth Symphony is one of them, that could go on as long as it pleased, it is like a Sabbath, complete rest, it relaxes all one’s limbs! But much belongs to what he calls cold music, quintets, trios, concertos, duets, music in which “the notes never pierce one like a dagger, the sweet compulsion is never felt” for example, Beethoven’s B-flat major Symphony, for which one has to be in the right mood. The Scherzo, he says, but in the Adagio he always feels like saying yes; and the theme of the first movement does not appeal to him. On the other hand, the F major never fails to affect him. In this connection I remark that the difference between the two works is the difference between a play by Schiller and a play by Shakespeare.
We talk again about the pamphlet on the Jews. R. says that the 1813 uprising, misinterpreted by the ruling princes and thus crushed, was as much a disaster for Germany as the Thirty Years’ War.