Dear friend,
For more than a month I have been detained here by the serious illness of the young Princess M. W. My return to Weimar is in consequence forcibly postponed for at least another month, and before returning there it is impossible for me to think of serving you with any efficiency. You propose to me to find you a purchaser for Lohengrin and Siegfried. This will certainly not be an easy matter, for these operas, being essentially, I might say exclusively, German, can at most be represented in five or six German towns. You know, moreover, that since the Dresden affair official Germany is not favourable to your name. Dresden, Berlin, and Vienna are well-nigh impossible fields for your works for some time to come. If, as is not unlikely, I go to Berlin for a few days this winter, I shall try to interest the King in your genius and your future; perhaps I shall succeed in gaining his sympathy for you and in managing through that means your return by way of Berlin, which would certainly be your best chance. But I need not tell you how delicate such a step is, and how difficult to bring to a good end.
As to the confederation of princes which you mention again in your letter, I must unfortunately repeat to you that I believe in its realization about as much as in mythology. Nevertheless I shall not omit to sound the disposition of H.H. the Duke of Coburg during the visit I shall probably have the honour of paying him at the beginning of January. By his superior intelligence and personal love of music, access to him will be made easier. But as to the other thirty-eight sovereigns of Germany, excepting Weimar, Gotha, and Berlin, I confess that I do not know how I shall manage to instill into them so subtle an idea as would be the positive encouragement and the active protection of an artist of your stamp. As to the dedication of Tannhäuser, the Hereditary Grand Duke, while graciously receiving your intention, has sent me word that it would be more convenient to defer the publication for a few months, so that I have not been in a hurry to make the necessary arrangements for the engraving of the dedication plate.
Try, my dear friend, to get on as best you can till Christmas. My purse is completely dry at this moment; and you are aware, no doubt, that the fortune of the Princess has been for a year without an administrator, and may be completely confiscated any day. Towards the end of the year I reckon upon money coming in, and shall then certainly not fail to let you have some, as far as my very limited means will go; you know what heavy charges are weighing upon me. Before thinking of myself I must provide for the comfortable existence of my mother and my dear children in Paris, and I can also not avoid paying Belloni a modest salary for the services he renders me, although he has always shown himself most nobly disinterested on my behalf. My concert career, as you know, has been closed for more than two years past, and I cannot resume it imprudently without serious damage to my present position and still more to my future.
However, on my way through Hamburg I have yielded to numerous solicitations to conduct in April a grand Musical Festival, the greater part of the receipts of which will be devoted to the Pension Fund of Musicians, which I founded about seven years ago. Your Tannhäuser overture will of course figure in the programme, and perhaps also, if we have sufficient time and means, the finale of the first or second act, unless you have some other pieces to propose. Kindly write on this subject to your niece, who is engaged for the whole winter at Hamburg, and ask her to come to our assistance on this occasion. For it is my firm intention, not avowed or divulged, you understand, for there would be much inconvenience and no advantage in confiding it to friends or the public, to set aside part of the receipts for you. Could not you, on your part, arrange some concerts at Zurich, the proceeds of which would enable you to get through the winter tolerably? Why should you not undertake this? Your personal dignity, it seems to me, would not in the least suffer by it.
Yet another thing, another string to your bow. Should you think it inconvenient to publish a book of vocal compositions, lieder or ballads, melodies or lyrical effusions, anything? For a work of this class signed with your name I can easily find a publisher and insist upon a decent honorarium, and there is surely nothing derogatory in continuing in a path which Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Rossini have not disdained. I quite understand what you say of my compositions in the Goethe Album, and only regret you did not hear my Tasso overture, which, I flatter myself, would not have displeased you. In consequence of the good opinion which you kindly express of my talent as a composer, I am going to ask you a favour if the idea meets with your approval.
While recently glancing through the volume of Lord Byron which has scarcely ever quitted me on my travels, I came again upon the mystery Heaven and Earth, and on reading it once more felt persuaded that one might turn it to good account by preserving the difference of character between the two women Anah and Aholibamah and by keeping of course the Deluge as a purely instrumental piece for the denouement. If in your free moments you could think of cutting out of this an oratorio of moderate length, as in Byron, I should be truly obliged to you. Read over the mystery, and tell me whether you like my plan. In the course of the summer my Sardanapalus (in Italian) will be completely finished, and I shall be delighted to undertake another work at once. If you reply before the end of November, address Bückeburg, for I shall not return to Weimar, for the rest of the winter, till the beginning of December.
Franz Liszt
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 28