[...] Yesterday I sent Frau Betty Schott the first piece of work I should care to call a musical composition, done amidst the distracting external affairs of these days and since the completion of The Twilight of the Gods. It is an "Albumblatt" dedicated and specially intended for her. As I shall shortly be engaged on a big and very exhausting concert tour to increase the funds for our Bayreuth Festival, I cannot possibly begin work on the big orchestral pieces which I planned and promised you, and shall probably not be able to do so till next autumn and winter, when I hope to get some leisure. I know that you will not press me on the point, but I should much have liked to have been able to give you one of the pieces by now. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 673