[...] I regard it as a duty to you and to myself to draw your attention to the danger threatening the continuance and completion of the music of The Mastersingers.
Had you found it possible this day a year ago to give me an advance on my work of the three thousand gulden for which I begged so urgently, my work would have been finished now. At that time my one thought was to remain at work undisturbed. Instead, I was obliged to enter upon undertakings which would bring in money at once. The interruption my work was bound to suffer in the midst of such agitations could not but be very injurious. After indescribable difficulties, and having at last contrived to settle down at a heavy cost, I have just now got to grips with my work, when anxieties for my future livelihood and the necessary peace for composing begin to torment me again. I realise that soon I shall have to enter upon further disturbing engagements; indeed, that I shall have to go to Russia this winter (at latest) in order to get the wherewithal to live. The prospect disheartens me, because it has a crippling effect on work which must soon be interrupted.
Tormented by apprehensions, I apply to you again after a year has passed, remembering the friendly help you once gave me. I beg you now to let me have without delay that sum of three thousand gulden for which I asked before, and then I will remain steadily at work (with the exception of a few small excursions for the purposes of my art) and can promise to let you have the finished opera (which delights me) very soon. Nearly one hundred pages of script of the score, in very small writing, are already finished, and I could let you have these now. But for the pianoforte arrangement I would refer you to Herr Tausig, who is in this neighbourhood. [...]
I have promised the Grand Duke of Baden a big concert at the end of October, the programme to consist of extracts from my new operas. On this occasion Hans Sachs's "Cobbler's Song" will be given, together with certain things from The Mastersingers which I have had already performed in Russia and Hungary, and I anticipate extraordinary popular success.—
It would give me great pleasure should you care to hear it. Also, so far as I am concerned, you might advantageously issue at once, in advance, separate editions of popular numbers (overtures, extracts from The Mastersingers, Pogner's speech and Sachs's "Cobbler's Song").
Besides these, however (since my debt to you would, of course, exceed the value of a single opera), the pianoforte arrangement of The Valkyrie, which Tausig is to carry out under my own eye, with special intent to make it easily playable, is also at your disposal. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 560