Dearest Wendelin,
It’s no good! I am still denied all peace and quiet: there is no point in trying to work! I must first provide a proper basis for my existence if I am to enter upon my fiftieth year with dignity and decency.
And so I am resolved to travel from Leipzig to Vienna: “Tristan” with Ander is out of the question, but I may rehearse “Tannhäuser” there (with the new scenes). Apart from this, I intend to give a big concert there which I may perhaps be able to repeat several times. For this I shall put together a programme from all my as yet unperformed works. I am now busy preparing it. What I need above all is to ensure the services of good copyists to write out the parts. As far as I know, there are some excellent copyists in Leipzig, and Härtel, for example, must be able to refer you to some of them. Would you be so good as to engage about three copyists in my name with immediate effect: in the course of October I am having to write out the entire programme for a very large orchestra, so that three will not be too many; I’d prefer one more (but good and reliable). Within the next day or so I shall then send you part of what has to be copied out. I think we shall be able to defray the cost of preparing these copies from the concert receipts, of which you certainly have high expectations. - My subsequent plan is as follows: when I have finished giving the concerts in Vienna, I should like (if possible!) to repeat the same programme in Leipzig. You might therefore make clandestine enquiries as to a suitable time when this plan could be instituted. I had then thought of inflicting myself on Berlin, where Hans shall give me a helping hand. We shall then see whether I have then earned a period of profound peace for myself for a time in Biebrich. -
As far as our concert in Leipzig is concerned, I have been assailed by doubts as to whether it will be worth our while - in view of the expectations of what I hope will be a very large audience - to perform only the one piece - the prelude to the “Mastersingers”. It strikes me that I ought to offer something else besides. If you - and others - are of the same opinion, I would propose the following.
“Fragment from ‘Tristan and Isolde’:
a) Prelude.
b) Closing section of the opera (without singing).”
This could be done as follows: at the end of the Prelude, as it appears in the theatre score, with the half-cadence in G in the basses, there would follow - without a break - page 425 of the full score - second system “mild and softly”. The whole thing would then form two splendid - and complementary - companion-pieces; the ending in particular was uncommonly effective when we rehearsed it in Vienna.
I would give the whole thing something like the following title:
a) “Love-death”. Prelude. b) “Transfiguration”. End of the opera. Think it over. I am ready to do it. You can obtain the parts from Härtels: ask for them at once. Well! God be with you! Write soon!
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 280