Wednesday, December 18:
R. had a good night. We return to the subject of Bach, and he says that in his youth he was prompted by the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann to look into these compositions, searching for mysticism, but all he had really felt was boredom. He introduced this remark by exclaiming, "How necessary education is in all things!"
He works on his Retrospect, then he goes for a walk before lunch in intense cold. He tells me he would like to make music again, and since we are talking about Fidi, who is uncommonly bright, R. says, "Wait and see, when I have completed the score of Parsifal with much amore, I shall occupy myself with the education of my boy." He also goes out in the afternoon, to Angermann's, but this outing does not seem to agree with him; he complains of tightness in the chest, says jokingly that he has hardening of the arteries, but this joke takes my breath away.
In the evening Bach again, but this time I do not really hear the music, my thoughts are too far away. But I hear R.'s words about it. Of the 7th prelude (E-flat Major) he says: "That is Wotan - it and especially the first 9 bars must be played wildly. The ensuing fugue is the pacification, the good wife who dresses nicely, calms her husband down." Of the 8th prelude R. says, "I play that in a more moonlit way, never allowing the twilight to lift." The following fugue R. considers the most remarkable of all; he says it is extraordinarily elaborate, yet so full of feeling: "What strettos and augmentations it has - and what accents!" For him, he says, it is the quintessence of fugue, as fugues in his own album, which he regrets having lost, would clearly have shown.
And when today's six have been played he exclaims, "That is music in its true essence; everything we compose is applied music - a rondo by Hummel, for instance, is Bach diluted so-and-so many times, in the way one dilutes essence of roses so-and-so many times to obtain the familiar fragrance." "To give continuity to a dance melody - that is what he has succeeded in doing here; later one used figurations to isolate, to link." He explains to the children (Lusch and Boni) what a fugue is. Then he says, "Let us now play some applied Bach," and takes out the piano-duet arrangement of the Prelude; then, since his fingers are not working well, he asks Herr R. to play it solo; he does it very nicely, but for me R.'s participation is priceless, irreplaceable, for he sets the tempo. Right away, for instance, Herr R. played the first theme too broadly. R. says, "It is tempo which gives a performance its soul" - and how difficult it is to learn! He tells us that he once made a precise study of it, that they rehearsed the Eroica in Leipzig with a double-bass player, Pogner, also that the F Major once went well with Richter.
Infinite delight in Die Meistersinger. "And I, stupid fellow that I am," R. exclaims, "had on my return from France to throw it away on such a miserable nation as the Germans! Well, they haven't yet heard the last of it from me." ...