Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of September 23, 1871

Overview

A bad night with restless Fidi gives way to news that the publisher will print extra copies, pleasing Wagner. He reflects on the newly appeared Albumblatt and the uncertain origins of music he once thought might not be his own. Cosima's curiosity about a sonata connected to Frau Wesendonck prompts Wagner to dismiss commissioned occasional pieces as weaker than music drawn from his own portfolio.

Content

Saturday, September 23:

In the margin: “Arrival of Fritz, R. suffering from a severe headache.” I had a very bad night; Fidi was restless. R.’s publisher is printing 500 extra copies of the edition, which pleases R.

The Albumblatt fuer Fuerstin M. has now appeared. R. says he had always believed it was by someone else, had inquired whether it was not perhaps by Schubert, since it had seemed so familiar, but nobody had known anything about it and so he had taken it to be original.

I tell him I should like to hear the sonata which Frau Wesendonck had. “It is nothing much,” he says, “for I wrote it for her, and always, when I sit down to do something, it turns out miserably, like that piece for Countess Pourtales, too. The Albumblatt fuer Fuerstin M. was something I had in my folio.”