Tuesday, June 27:
R. had a restless night; he got up 4 times, dreamed that he was on trial and having a difficult time in court! In the morning he is pleased by the peacocks, the white and the colored ones sitting together on the roof timbers of the poultry shed. He jokes about the "mousetrap for house tutors" he is setting in friend Gross’s "den." Then we talk about a preface for Stein’s dialogues. At lunch he remarks on the beauties of La Juive, the Passover celebrations, the final choruses, also the lively first act, and says it contains the best expression of the Jewish character; before that he had jokingly told Levi that frivolity did not suit him, yet when he was melancholy it was difficult for us to bear it sympathetically. (As far as orchestral work is concerned, he thinks La Juive more significant than La Muette.) He enlarges upon the difference between a Mozart allegro, which can never be taken too fast and which owes its effect to this liveliness, and a Beethoven one, in which every note has some significance. In the afternoon we drive up to the theater, the forest is dressed with foliage, and I am overcome by strange feelings of contentment in the midst of this industrious quiet, with people devoting all their will and energies to an illusion. In this artificial forest thoughts flutter around me like friendly birds, and the work of art itself seems scarcely more enchanting than watching it emerge tirelessly into being! At supper we at first discuss the positioning of the orchestra, and R. again argues heatedly against the practice of placing strings and wind instruments side by side; he says the orchestra must form a complete whole, the wind instruments giving the effect of lights; he had managed to reproduce the magnificent sound of the orchestra in Paris by adopting the positions he had learned from Spontini. The strings must also be divided up, in order to provide more "points de depart" ["starting points"], as Berlioz expressed it. Then we talk about Bismarck’s speeches and come to the conclusion that he has described the state of things very clearly and will probably succeed in gaining people’s sympathy, even if one cannot exonerate him from having caused the dismal situation. After that he reads to us the beginning of Prinzessin Brambilla.