Most honoured Sir,
A few lines in haste to thank you most cordially for the gift of the full score of the “Mastersingers” which arrived today in response to my request and which I intend as a present this Christmas for a friend who is utterly devoted to me and extremely able, but quite without means: it will make him very happy. -
As for Hamburg, I entirely agree with you that the fee for performing rights should be reduced to 40 ld’or: but I would ask you to insist on immediate payment, since the Hamburg management is not to be trusted for longer than a week. 18 months ago the management there wrote to me asking for the “Flying Dutchman”; I demanded 30 ld’or; they replied, saying that that was too much, and so I let it pass. Last summer I discovered that the “Flying Dutchman” was being given in Hamburg; my agent however advised against prosecuting the people there, - he said they were always on the brink of bankruptcy, and that I should have to spend so much on powers of attorney etc. that it was questionable whether I should recover even my costs. - And so! forgive me if I repeat my urgent request that you remit a copy of the full score (with your stamp granting them the performing rights) only in return for immediate payment of my fee as well. With so many theatres it is difficult to retain an overall picture. -
A complete edition of the full scores of my operas is something that increasingly preoccupies me. Much has already been lost here. I recently heard from C. F. Meser’s unfortunate successor in Dresden, who wrote to say that ever-increasing orders for the full scores of “Rienzi” and the “Flying Dutchman” were a source of frequent embarrassment to the firm, making him regret that they had not had the full scores engraved at the time. On the other hand, the engraving of the full score of “Tannhäuser” came at a bad time for him, since it was taken in hand by the said Herr H. Müller before I had set to work revising some of the scenes (for Paris). Since then he has behaved so inconsiderately towards me that I have not yet permitted him to complete the score with the new scenes, and, in consequence, have not yet sent them to him. In other words, if this score were to be completed according to the revised version, I would insist, after my own fashion, that theatres would have to obtain this edition. All this is in the air at present, since I should prefer to save it up for a complete collected edition. None the less, it would be of interest to me to know, should you care to make something out of this, what sort of an arrangement you would come to with Herr H. Müller (Meser) and Breitkopf & Härtel with a view to taking over their publishing interests. I should like to begin, for ex., with a somewhat amended edition of the “Flying Dutchman”, and then devote the remaining years of my life to the remaining editions, finishing with the “Nibelungs”, a task to which I could attend gradually and at my convenience. I believe the best solution would be for you to announce a subscription, since you would then have no difficulty in finding a form in which the King of Bavaria could be persuaded to support the enterprise: he would put his name down for as many copies as you thought necessary to cover more or less all of the costs. -
Well, that is as far as I can go today!
Assuring you of my best wishes, I remain
Your most devoted servant
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 387