Tuesday, January 14:
R. slept well, he leaves me in cheerful mood to go to his work, and around noon he fetches me and sings to me Gurnemanz’s narration to Parsifal, up to the words “er starb, ein Mensch wie alle,” which is as far as he has got. When I attempt to explain to R. how moving I find this simple fervor, he says, “Yes, one could describe that as its essentially German quality, simplicity combined with immovable faith, and the urge to prove this faith through good deeds.” Before we enter the dining room, R. says to me, “I feel well, and my only wish is that it may go on like this forever.”
Lunch with the children, much fun regarding our pet Israelites; R. thinks the only feeling they have in regard to his compositions is how well he does things. After lunch I beg R. to mark in the scores of Beeth.’s symphonies all the things he would like to see altered. He says, “After Parsifal.” In the evening, when I come down to supper, he shows me the alteration he has made to “er starb, ein Mensch wie alle.” “It was too much like Cherubini,” he said.
In the evening the B. Platter went through manuscripts: Herr Lipiner on Prof. Lagarde, unfortunately again quite impossible. Then, to our utter delight, the sextet from Le Nozze di Figaro; R. can never impress on me too much the artistic mastery of this work, its delicacy, wit, charm, and fluidity.