Wednesday, May 17:
R. slept well. He writes to Seidl about the London venture. We go for a drive, make a “giro” [“round trip”], as R. jokingly calls it. A letter from Herr Schön about the school idea greatly upsets R. But he calms down, and we embark on our usual conversations about “everything”; among other things, he says that popular melody was to Beethoven what doggerel verse was to Goethe. We drive out to the mental institution, where I have to order some straw mats for the comedy. Music in the evening, Boni takes part, quite well, in a duet of the Kaisermarsch and R. plays the Andante from the 9th Symphony, better, I think, than even he has ever played it before!