Dearest Friend,
Many thanks for your last letter. I wrote lately to Frau R. As she is already resigned to Pillnitz, I cannot venture to expect much from her decision.
I enclosed a small letter for you, which gave you an account of the Leipzig Tannhäuser affair. Now I have to ask your help again in a new piece of confusion which has arisen. In order to make it clear to you, let me proceed historically.
In the year 1846, Dr. Schmidt, at that time the Leipzig theatre-director, asked me for the score of the Flying Dutchman with a view to performance. So, with my Tannhäuser experience to hand, I retouched the instrumentation most carefully, and sent the revised copy to Schmidt. The performance — under God's help — came to nothing; but up to now, when I again began to think of the Dutchman, I was too easy-going to inquire after the Leipzig score, which had become of no use; rather, I set to work afresh to retouch the instrumentation, but at last lost patience, so that — as you will have perceived — I often, and mostly, contented myself with minor alterations. Then the Dresden orchestral parts arrived, and the musical director, Schöneck, who was to set them right according to my new version, finds, to his astonishment, that these parts have already been most minutely altered according to another and more thoroughly retouched copy. Then only does it occur to me that before I sent off the score retouched for Leipzig, I gave it to our Dresden copying department, so as to arrange our own orchestral parts in conformity therewith. Now I am in this fix. The parts do not agree with the score which I have to hand here; but I will not have them changed, because the former retouching is more thorough; so I now require that earlier retouched score. I am now pretty certain that I had the Dresden score made like the Leipzig one, or rather, that I gave a lithograph copy of the Dutchman to the office for that purpose; so that at the present moment there exist two copies of the score in Dresden — the original one, and a new one, lithographed and retouched. I should like to receive the second one as speedily as possible; and I therefore beg you to entreat Fischer, in my name, to get Busch at once to give him the said score also (which will not be a matter of any special difficulty), and then you can send it as soon as possible by post, addressed to the theatre-director Löwe here.
But this affair has further consequences. For the copy which has now to be prepared for Weimar, and perhaps for other copies which may be wanted later on elsewhere, I should like you also to take as model that older version (as it is the more thorough). Nothing beyond the close of the overture should be altered in accordance with the latest version; the rest according to the older one, excepting if it should turn out here and there that I had been more thorough in my recent than in my former changes. For this purpose I wish you would hunt up that Leipzig score, so as to procure it for yourself. Unfortunately I do not know whether Dr. Schmidt is still living in Leipzig: Brendel, however, could obtain information on this point. Then one would have to find out whether Schmidt kept the score for himself, or handed it over with the inventory to the succeeding management. No one in Leipzig has a right to the score, as I received no honorarium for it; but one hundred thalers were to be paid me after the performance (which, as you know, did not take place). If you obtain this score, keep it at your disposal: if you cannot get it, then the altered Dresden score, when I have sent it back, must serve as model. Abominable nuisance!
We have fabulously fine weather here now. Good heavens! how I should like to fly well away this summer, as far as Italy! But, after the Leipzig experiences, I have still less hope of receipts. I may be glad if in the course of this whole year something blossoms out from Weimar for the Flying Dutchman. But for travel I need money; otherwise I shall not set out at all. By May I shall be in the thick of my poem: already I am making my sketches.
I wrote to you about a painting animal who wanted to catch me: it is done. The first portrait was bad, because the idiot did not understand me. Then Herwegh came to the sittings, and under his minutest guidance — with his intelligent and practised eye — a really good portrait has been obtained, which will soon appear here; and yesterday I offered it to Breitkopf and Härtel for publication. But it's no good for Brendel. And what should he want me for? Arrange your present portrait business according to this news.
Ernst is fiddling about in the neighbourhood.
Why, in the name of fortune, do you want information about my music-making in Zurich? Here the order of the day is "be present," not write and read about it. But why, then, does not Brendel publish the special notice which I sent to him about my position here? I gave it to him with a definite purpose.
Is your eldest youngster well again? There is always something the matter with children! You must have become beautifully lean again: soon you might wear apostles' costume again, and flit about with me at midday amid flowers by the waterside!
Kind greetings at home. Keep safe and sound, and farewell.
Your
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 61