Do not be angry with me [...] for answering your letter so late. Shortly after its receipt came Liszt's visit and directly after that I journeyed here into the high parts of Graubünden to take the cure. Besides, having little time to spare I had no great inclination to fall into the aesthetic theorising which I feared I should certainly be tempted into if I wrote a letter to you. I hope now I may get through without it, if I send you only just a short answer to tell you how very much pleasure your sympathy gives me and how I wish that your recent self-sacrificing excursion from Königsberg had met with a better reward than the [...] rather distorted and spiritless performance of my Tannhäuser at Leipzig.
Your book [The Melody of Speech] surprised me indeed. Much of it concerns me so very closely that I was bound to get to know it; I had read it even before you sent it me. Your idea of looking for the melody in the words testifies to the earnestness with which you are grappling with the matter; and you have been most happy in detecting the true melodic and harmonious accents. In the main, indeed, I become more and more conscious that the matters in question are things every man settles most satisfactorily for himself, but since there is such a disastrous amount of learning going on it is natural enough to wish to conduce to a sensible method of teaching. Speaking of which, I have repeatedly pointed out to Brendel that in his [New Musical] Journal he ought to confine himself much more to what is learnable—that is, technique. The content of a work of art is an individual matter and does not concern the critic. He discusses feelings of like or dislike, and these again are matters for the individual. Technique, however, is the common property of artists of all ages; one inherits it from others, each adds to it and shapes it according to his ability and his necessity. This can be discussed, but naturally only between artists; the laity should know nothing about it. I really think my writings have afforded openings for much debate on the principal questions of technique; with little or no result so far, I observe.
If I have raised any important issue in this respect, it is surely that of the relationship between poetry and music in general—or between spoken verse and melody in particular. I think it would be a very good thing to try to make an exact and intelligible examination of modern spoken verse as it has been evolved by our literary poets, as a thing distinct in itself quite without regard to musical melody, and thereby to prove—with numerous examples—that this verse cannot be set to music, because our modern melody has developed from quite different and purely musical impulses, which have nothing at all in common with those which have produced the verse of literature. From this one false relation of aesthetic technique, the whole false relationship between our literary poetry and our music might be convincingly demonstrated; but this can only be done successfully by the method of a thoroughly detailed exposition of purely technical relevancies. Any kind of declamation upon the subject, in its general aspect, is absolutely useless and Brendel will certainly find himself perpetually besieged with questions—"What are we to do, then? Are we to go on composing at all? Are we to compose operas—or what else?" I have advised him to discourse himself on the subject of these questions, and on the fact that he receives them. Closer investigation is bound to bring out that we are dealing with an outworn old-fashioned technique, to which no artistic content whatever can possibly be imparted, so that we need not be surprised that our most adroitly constructed music—has nothing to say to us.
I am glad now that you have felt this for yourself—your writings are proof of it. Only I would rather you did not confine yourself for the most part only to the moods aroused in you by word-phrases pure and simple, but would pay more definite attention to the real melodious word-phrase—the verse. If, for instance, you let the literary verse stand, only singing it in accordance with its musical melodic content, you will still at best only get what I have elsewhere previously called "prosaic melody," "musical prose"; but it is just this prose which will have to be abolished if our (relatively) best music is to emerge from its unmelodious vagueness. In the first quarter of the third volume of Opera and Drama I have, I believe, expressed myself particularly and sufficiently on this point; I cannot but observe day by day how little notice has been given to it yet. You would be doing a good work if you were to make it, axiom by axiom, the subject of your inquiry in closest detail. This alone and nothing else is any use, the rest is nothing but idle blather! Well, I have plunged quite deeply enough into theory—it's not good for me! My ailments have been brought on by theorising and I can only hope to regain my health through actual artistic production. I cannot "write" about art any more. Perhaps some day you will get something better than that from me—something to hear and to see! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 248