Tuesday, March 29:
R. had a good night, and he is still happy at his work. Glorious spring weather. We drive to the Fantaisie and go for a walk there.
In the evening we play through Beethoven’s Battle of Vittoria; R. points out the childlike quality of the opening, praises the glories of the victory hymn, and is pleased by the way in which B. then “gets tired of the dry tone and plays the Devil.”
Its naive, folklike manner reminds him of Egmont, and we go through some of the music from that. R. himself plays the music for Klärchen’s death wonderfully.
“She really dies,” R. exclaims, “and he recommends her to Ferdinand! But that’s the way it is, and it is this truthfulness which makes the work so appealing. Beautiful, the way she appears to him.”
We talk of the fact that this music, written solely for the play, in fact gets lost at performances of it. R. thinks it should be performed here in our salon, just for a few people. He went to a lot of trouble with it in Zurich, he says.
At the famous oboe passage, which he compares to the whirring of the larks, he recalls Kummer in Dresden, saying he would never hear it played like that again.
Between the 1st and 2nd parts of the Battle of Vittoria he reads to us the account of this concert in his biography.
When we are alone, he speaks of the chords which sound as if they are part of the liturgy, and he says how moving they are. At the conclusion of this music he exclaims, “We musicians are prussic acid - when the music starts, nothing else matters!”