But, dear old friend! how heavy-hearted you make me with your extraordinary sensitiveness! In Zurich I could not manage to write to you; but on my very first leisure day in Paris I have sat down to give you somewhat of a scolding, as this time you deserve; although, considering your hasty youth, you might be excused. Let me just tell you how matters stand with the score of the Rheingold. I had already promised our young friend several years back that he should make the pianoforte score of my Nibelungen. As this time I was adopting a new method with the instrumentation, whereby I did not first make a completely developed preliminary sketch, I felt the want of an arrangement from which I could play to any one. I therefore asked my friend to go on with the pianoforte version while I was still writing the score, and so I sent him the detached sections as soon as they were finished. At the same time, he was to get Wölfel to make a copy, and so arrange with him that both could work at the same time. As soon as the copy and the pianoforte arrangement should be simultaneously finished in this way, I intended to gradually distribute both copy and score among my friends for perusal, and I can assure you that you would not have been the last. Liszt learnt — as did you — that his pupil had the score, and showed so much jealousy that, as the latter would be stopped in his work for some time by the mere fact of his going away, I commissioned him, when I sent him the remainder of the score, to send it at once to Liszt, and thus interrupt Wölfel's copying. At the end of four weeks Liszt was to send back the score to Dresden, that you might first get Wölfel to finish the copy, and then the young man was to receive this copy so as to finish the pianoforte arrangement. See, dear old fellow, that is how the matter stands; and you ought to see that there is no question here of undervaluing your friendship. But now, unfortunately, as I learn, Liszt has kept the score an immoderately long time; for he wrote me only lately that he would now send it off to you. I hope that has now been done, and I particularly request you to notify me immediately on the receipt of the same; for I am really most anxious about this solitary copy!! So that I may soon be set at ease, be also good enough to hurry on Wölfel with the completion of the copy; as soon as this is finished, I will further ask you to send the copy to Berlin, but the original score — after you have satiated yourself with the sight of my beautiful handwriting — to me.
Well! are you still angry??
As you seem anxious to be rid of the music and the wilderness of waste-paper with which I have loaded you up to the neck, I have made a selection as follows: Send the following, at your convenience, by carrier: 1. Bach's eight-part Motets. 2. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. 3. Mozart's Third Symphony. 4. Bach's two Passions. 5. Marx's Moses. 6. Music for a New Year's Prologue: score, 3/4, C minor (without orchestral parts). 7. Three of my Overtures (score). 8. Libretto of the opera Die Feen. 9. Of the opera Das Liebesverbot. 10. Aria from Norma (Oroveso). 11. Aria from Mary, Max and Michel (bass). 12. Les Adieux de Marie Stuart. 13. Les Deux Grenadiers. 14. Seven compositions for Goethe's Faust. 15. Fantasia for pianoforte.
I beg you further to take into your care and keeping the scores of Rienzi, Flying Dutchman, and Tannhäuser, with the books belonging to them, etc. All the rest you can destroy, burn, and use up as you like; thus you will get a little more breathing-space.
For your last parcel my best thanks: I beg you to send to London what has still to be forwarded to me. Has then nothing further appeared of the Tannhäuser pianoforte score without words? I should much like to have what is ready of it. Altogether, my heart bleeds when I think of this publication business: what could not be got from it, if it were conducted with zeal and prudence! Unfortunately, I hear nothing at all about it, not even from my creditors, who ought to be interested in the matter.
I shall probably never come back to Germany. You are all so silent about this, that I must well believe there is no prospect of it. Well, whatever our noble ministers may determine, I shall accustom myself thereto! But if you want to see me once more before our end comes, you must undertake a journey to Switzerland. I shall be back again by the beginning of July. In London I shall score the Walküre; from there, too, good Heine shall at last receive another letter from me. Heartiest greetings to him. Greetings also to your people; and amid all circumstances and doubts, keep in kind remembrance
Your
R. W.
My future address will be: Ferdinand Prager, 31, Milton Street, Dorset Square.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 131