Wednesday, January 11:
A young poet, Hartmann, sends us a printed account of his experiences with Herr v. Perfall! R. orchestrates. I write out the letter to Countess Bass, while the children are working.
At lunch we discuss the alliance with Austria and welcome this as a great German political deed on Bismarck's part. R., who had read a printed letter from G. Sand, which my mother had sent to me, feels a great urge to reply to it: "Of the philosophers, the Protestants of Germany of whom you speak, we know nothing, for they are all infected by French culture; I know only of a king whose minister had made him understand that the insolence of the French could no longer be tolerated, and of an army which is the people in arms."
I drive to Countess B.'s to deliver my little piece of work, with which she is satisfied. Letter from L. Bucher in Versailles.
In the evening a technical discussion between R. and Richter, in which I am chiefly struck by what R. says about the horn: that it had recently, in the Idyll, sounded so indistinct to him, so blurred, which made him realize how carefully it had to be used, since it traced not the outline, but the color of a melody; that was also what made this instrument so romantic.
The Joachim-Muhler affair makes us smile. "It just goes to show the irony of the present world situation," R. says, "the Jesuit Muhler vanquished by the Jew Joachim." Of Beethoven: "He was the first to hear once more the melody of the people and to introduce it in music." Ended the evening with Gibbon.