My dear friend.
It is my birthday today. Flowers have been delivered to my house. I was ill, and not until yesterday did I go out into the park again. I have had little cause to think of you, since I can no longer be of any help to you but only cherish silent hopes for your well-being.
Thus I sat alone.
I was suddenly struck by an idea for the orchestral introduction to the third act of the Mastersingers. This act will be crowned by a most moving climax at the moment when Sachs rises to his feet before the assembled populace and is received by them with a sublime outpouring of enthusiasm. At this point the people sing in bright and solemn tones the first eight lines of Sachs’s poem to Luther. The music for this was already written. Now, for the introduction to the 3rd act, when the curtain rises and Sachs is discovered sitting there in deep contemplation, I shall have the bass instruments play a soft, tender and profoundly melancholic passage that bears the imprint of the greatest resignation: then, on the horns and sonorous wind instruments, comes the solemnly joyful bright-toned melody of “Awake! for dawn is drawing near: and from the woodland green I hear a rapture-laden nightingale”: the melody adds its voice to what has gone before and is increasingly developed by the orchestra.
It has now become clear to me that this work will be my most perfect masterpiece and - that I shall live to complete it.
But I wanted to give myself a birthday present; I shall do so by sending you this news.
Look after yourself; take good care of yourself, and - if you have to think of me - imagine that you see me always in the mood inspired by this birthday morning hour: this will console you, and you, too, will prosper. Without doubt! -
Kindest regards from
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 278