This time I am quite distressed at being so long without any letter from you. Were not the contents of our letters always so innocent, I should feel disposed to think something had, for once, been confiscated. Have you received the score of Lohengrin, which I sent from here on May 1st? Have you received a second letter from me in which, among other things, I asked for a copy of your article on the Tannhäuser overture? Have you not written to me since then? And have you received through the R.'s a copy of my "Theater in Zürich"?
Is the pianoforte score giving you so much trouble that you can't get away from it? I have no further news from Härtels. What are they about? Are they already engraving? When you are seeing to the proofs I would like first to look through them before they are struck off; perhaps here and there an idea may occur to me. Do arrange with Härtels that you send me each time the revise, and I will return it to Härtels without delay. One thing more! I was informed lately that, to make things easily practicable, you had so transcribed the orchestral parts as to present the theme alone in the various registers of the pianoforte score. My friends, however, think that, in order to preserve, or at least to indicate, the full framework with its harmonic upper-voices, a somewhat more complex arrangement would not only be possible, but, having regard to the technique of the present day, quite practicable. If that were quite out of the question it would, after all, be better to arrange it for four hands. I am less in favour of the four-hand arrangement, but would prefer perhaps small notes. Have you, perchance, conferred with Liszt on this matter? I am really anxious to see something, and especially to have some news.
I am fairly well. However, I am tormented with a complaint which my doctor looks upon as a favourable crisis in my state of health generally: it does not trouble me in my work.
Now do say when you think of coming to see me. The weather will soon be favourable. In the summer my wife must go to the baths at Graubünden.
You already know that Weber, after all, prints my book. Lately I received four sheets to correct. To my astonishment I see that he is going to publish it in three volumes, small octavo, wide-spread — in fact, noble print. So he will increase the selling price. Oh, you booksellers!
Greetings at home and to the R.'s.
Farewell. Write soon to me, and give me plenty of news. Also get ready to start, so that we may soon see each other again. Farewell. I will not pay the postage of this letter, for I shall only send it off after I have made fruitless inquiry at the post for a letter from you. I can only get information about seven o'clock, and then it will be too late to pay the postage. Do the same with your letter, and in general!
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 27