Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 5, 1870

Overview

The day is animated by Wagner’s work on Siegfried’s Rhine journey, whose music puts both him and Cosima in fine spirits. A musical passage draws from Wagner an old Magdeburg memory in which comic orchestral disorder became, for him, unexpectedly painful and unforgettable. Cosima’s suspicions about the student intrude on the evening, but Aristophanes remains the day’s final shared occupation.

Content

Saturday, February 5:

For R. a lively awakening to work, I with the children. Siegfried’s passage down the Rhine, signaled by the extensive theme of the Rhinemaidens, who are glad of his arrival, puts us in fine spirits.

R. talks about the song of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, “O heil’ge Götter,” and says to me: “If you only knew what it brought back to my mind! In Magdeburg, at the end of a gay Auber overture, my poodle, which had been waiting outside for me, came into the orchestra, ran to the bassoon, and sat there quite still, but then he suddenly let out a loud note of lament. Everybody laughed; it affected me terribly, and I can always hear that melancholy song above the merry orchestra.”

In the evening lesson in Greek history, I pay the student (16 francs) and make a note of it, because he appears to be dishonest. In the evening finished The Frogs.