Dearest friend,
After many inquiries, thoughts, and searches, the affair of the Flying Dutchman score has turned out as follows: the score containing the corrected close of the overture and the finale of the opera is the same one you left me here as a present. I never thought of using it for our performance, and therefore wrote to Uhlig, whose death has affected H. and me painfully, shortly before his death, saying that he had made a mistake in demanding back two theatre scores, as one of them we necessarily required here, while the other had already been returned to him. Uhlig does not seem to have known that one of the three scores which were here for some time was my personal property, and I, for my part, could not accept his justification in describing my copy as a score belonging to the theatre. The confusion which had previously occurred in connection with the Flying Dutchman score sent from and returned to Dresden made me assume that Uhlig had made a second mistake.
Your letter today explains the matter, and I promise you that by tomorrow evening the theatre score shall be carefully corrected from my copy, and that my copy, containing the newly corrected close of the overture, will be sent to Fischer the day after tomorrow. You need not trouble yourself about it, and may dispose of this score as you like. Kindly excuse these delays. Musikdirektor Götze, who had to make these alterations in the score, has been much detained from his work, and only your letter explained the matter to me in the sense that you wish to dispose of my copy, which is cordially at your service.
Franz Liszt
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 93