My friend, who is more precious to me than all else,
I am not well. Yesterday I drew up the accompanying draft of a letter such as I wish you to send me but intended for the public eye. Since I cannot write any more today, I hesitated to send you this draft on its own. Yet I am seized by a longing to hear from you. I believe this draft cannot be unwelcome to you. Without being diffuse it expresses in clear and explicit terms what must some day be expressed in this way if a start is to be made in the outside world. I regard such a document as a formal decree to establish the necessary work of the future. - That is why I do not hesitate to send you this paper today, although I cannot accompany it with any further news. My indisposition is turning out to be a severe chill: it is entirely without danger, but I must avoid all forms of exertion. -
Forgive me, my dear and noble friend! I am so sad if I cannot always be something for you! Life has otherwise no meaning whatsoever, nor any further appeal for me. -
I shall soon have recovered and shall then continue! -
Loving and true unto death
Your
Richard Wagner
The reports which you have communicated to me confirm me in my opinion that it is time to devote particular attention to fostering an important area of German art. You have shown that the German nation has produced perhaps the greatest creative masters in the realm of music, but that nowhere on German soil has an institution been called into being which would have enabled a truly valid performance style to be established for the works of those masters, and ensured that that style was handed down to posterity. At the same time, you base upon the expected success of this institution the hope that a valid German style of music might be developed for performance style in general, and, by demonstrating that the selfsame need exists in the case of our great German poets, you wish to see that institution expanded in such a way that a valid and correct style might also be developed on the dramatic stage, a style in keeping, that is, with the German musical style. Were we to succeed in calling into being an Academy of Art which made good our past failings, with the result that the German nation might one day again produce minds as great as Mozart & Beethoven, Göthe & Schiller, and if these masters were to find the means for their artistic presentation as well-prepared as in Italy & France, which have at all times maintained such means in a state of constant readiness for their own masters, I should inevitably regard such an outcome as an uplifting reward for the most noble exertions. The grandson of him who revived the plastic arts in Germany, and the son of the royal patron of national science & literature need recall only that he is the great-grandson of that German prince who first went out to meet his people with truly German trust, in order that he, too, may set himself a noble task, a task of benefit to the German spirit and for the powerful realization of which he may reckon upon the supportive loyalty of his noble people.
The higher and more worthy of the German spirit I esteem that task, the more clearly do I recognize, however, the great difficulties bound up with its solution. We are entering the realm of an artistic genre here which, like music & the theatre, has until now generally been accounted a form of entertainment: I have now become conscious of the harmful consequences of exploiting this public prejudice, and I find that real courage is required if I am to proceed here with that seriousness of purpose which has previously been deemed appropriate only to the other branches of art. Herein, especially, do I recognize the need to establish a Royal precedent, and I intend to provide such an example with a resoluteness which has unfortunately not been shown so far elsewhere.
And so, although I am certain that this undertaking will shortly be accorded the seriousness of purpose which it requires, I, like you, must nevertheless recognize the difficulties which have arisen as a result of our having previously been deflected, in our German seriousness of purpose, from this area of art, and which consist in the fact that suitable means of educating people to higher artistic ends are so extremely hard to find here. I realize therefore that the fruits of even our most strenuous labours will ripen only very slowly. Since, however, I do not doubt in the ultimate success of our continuous and serious zeal, I resolved to issue you with instructions to establish and organize the proposed Academy of Art according to the plan which you developed in greater detail in the report which you prepared for me.
One consideration, however, holds me back: I wish you, above all other things, to be able to devote yourself, completely undisturbed, to the completion of your great creative works, and, whereas I may make a point of doing all I can to keep your mind free of all cares, I am bound to doubt in my own ability to carry out this resolve if I am to burden you, at the same time, with the task of setting up & running the Academy of Art.
Fortunately, your destiny has brought you the friend who appears eminently suited to replacing your activities in this one particular direction. Dr Hans v. Bülow, whose outstanding reputation as a virtuoso artist of the first order has recently received the most general recognition & confirmation as a result of his astonishing achievement as the conductor of so very new and difficult a work as your Tristan, seems to me the only man truly suited to take your place in running the proposed school, the more so in that he has also become so very dear to you and so intimately friendly in consequence of his versatile and learned education in other areas, too. I am therefore writing to inform you of my decision to appoint H. v. B. director of the German Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and assume that in consequence of this appointment the institution will, at the same time, be assured of your most intimate involvement, just as it shall be administered in your spirit alone, in order that your own serious artistic aims may there be realized. May the outcome of my decisions coincide with the intimate wishes which gave rise to them.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 336