[...] I need ten thousand gulden to finish my house and garden. Should you be willing to advance me this sum at once against the compositions I am pledged to deliver you, I would engage to let you have six great orchestral works, each of the length and importance of a big overture, at six months' intervals, the first, at latest, at the end of this year, 1874.
By midsummer we shall have finished the publication of The Twilight of the Gods. I shall then have time to carry out plans which have long occupied my mind, and that will put me in better humour than the writing of dramatic scores, which I know will for the most part be left to languish by our theatres, whereas I have always been fortunate with orchestral compositions. Now I can form a fair computation of the value of such a piece from the offer made me by the firm of Peters when they wanted to secure a new orchestral composition from me after the success of the Kaisermarsch. They offered one thousand thalers, and I believe I should have little difficulty in getting them to pay me for six such works in advance. Quite apart from this, though, I now want to make use of the possibility of earning some money to provide what I need to finish my house, which, as is usual, has involved many unforeseen expenses. If my proposal, my wish, my request, are somewhat unusual—well, it is Franz Schott to whom I make them, and, when all's said and done, it is Richard Wagner who does so! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 663