In this letter I am taking the way lately suggested by yourself, of setting down in writing ideas, rejoinders and conclusions called up by your recent criticism, as kindly offered as it was penetrating, of my opera Die Feen, and of attaining calmness and lucidity of mind the sooner by this means. But first of all I cannot do otherwise than offer you my deepest and most heartfelt thanks for that same admirable criticism and the attestation of your generous friendship, for which I am forever your debtor. Believe me, I know the worth of that sincerity, and although it may for the moment have evoked the bitterest sensations of disappointed hopes, I have all the more confidence in you and in those associated with you, for I have been schooled to this effect. I have learned my lesson and have not been brought up on flattery.
It was my good fortune to have the most sincere and strict of teachers; my lessons with Herr Miiller gave me a whole series of proofs of a sincerity almost pedantic in its strictness. He hardened me against the shrinking sensitiveness of a boy's too easily wounded aspirations and taught me to recognise the usefulness of frank criticism, even when offered with a motive not entirely unmixed. When I had completed the study of harmony under Herr Miiller and entered upon the sphere of counterpoint, I felt, and those whom I sought advice also felt, that he no longer sufficed me as a teacher and I therefore began to study under Herr Weinlig. This man, to whom I owe a larger debt than any achievements of mine can ever discharge, judged rightly and promptly where I was most lacking; he set aside for the moment the actual study of counterpoint in order to establish my knowledge of harmony on an absolutely secure basis. He at once set me to study the strict, concise style of harmony and kept me at it till he thought me absolutely secure of it, for in his opinion this concise style was the first and only basis from which one could learn to handle freer and richer harmonies, besides being also essential for the study of counterpoint. He next set me to learn counterpoint upon the best-established method and the strictest principles. When he thought he had laid in me a sure foundation in this last and most difficult part of a general education in music, and believed that my study of it was complete and ready to serve me in the most difficult fields of composition, he dismissed me with these words: "I herewith release you from tutelage, as a master frees his apprentice after he has learned everything which the master could teach him." I feel greatly fortified by this deep and earnest course of study, I feel that it gives me the means to make progress and take advantage of the education life freely offers. Furthermore, my teacher believed, and so do I, that publicity must be sought because thereby the world may be shaped. In the course of my studies with him, Herr Weinlig not only did not oppose, but eagerly desired and furthered the performance of instrumental compositions worked on during that time. The consequence was that during and after that period several overtures and finally a symphony of mine were performed at our subscription concerts, and I am glad to be able to say that it never did me any harm, and that, besides the great advantage of gaining greater knowledge of my medium by hearing my work, I won friends and obtained the sympathetic attention of the public. I now cherish the same purpose and the same desires in regard to my opera. You now wish, if I read your true intention aright, to rob me of that purpose and those desires. My opera does not please you; what is more, you dislike my whole tendency, which you declare to be contrary to your own view of art. The first objection is naturally rooted in the second. Our mutual attitudes are such that I cannot here discuss any detail, for each individual condemnation is naturally included in your general condemnation; and it is just this general condemnation, if you will allow me to say so, which seems to me to have been irrevocably fixed in you before you even looked into my work, for I would claim that my general tendency is the tendency of our day. You could have prophesied to me upon each several point and had in fact dealt with them before you knew my work in detail. You find all the failings of our age in it, while at the same time you declare void every appeal to the same. I am at heart convinced that you hold only those forms valid which answer to the unattainable models of old times and detect superfluous use of externals even in Mozart, which seems to me to show that the style of Gluck alone really conforms to your ideas. You ask me why I do not orchestrate like Haydn? Furthermore, in everything contrary to your theory, you find not alone the influence of what are considered the innovations of our day. I may say here I believe I have tried to avoid as far as possible any of its aberrations and, indeed, have abstained from things which Marschner, for example, allows. I repeat, you attribute this not only to these innovations, but to a lack of content, and accuse me of total ignorance of how to handle my medium, ignorance of harmony, ignorance of the rudiments of study. You think that none of my work has genuine emotion behind it. You will allow no inspiration anywhere. If I am not mistaken, this sums up your case as regards the value of my work, your final judgment upon it. I have been at some trouble to envisage them to myself and I can find no rejoinder! The attitude of the accused to the accuser and the accusation is this: he finds it at once inadmissible and impossible either to refute his accuser or to apologise for his fault! I am silent because any sort of opposition would seem to me presumptuous. But since it is neither my intention nor my desire to interpose in the negotiations already set on foot for the production of my opera, indeed, it is my conviction that only by the performance of the same can I reach my intended goal, I would like, with all due modesty, to answer you as far as I can upon the question of the practicability of performance.
I have just received a letter from my brother [Albert] pressing me to tell him what arrangements have been made for the performance of my opera. It incidentally calls up memories which comfort and encourage me. In my brother, whom for the moment I am thinking of merely as a professional singer, I had a very strict, I might almost say a merciless, critic, and he made a vigorous attack on the impracticability, in places, of my voice parts. Under his eye I revised and improved upon these passages to the best of my ability, and I assure you that I am prepared to make any further alteration of this kind that the singer may ask of me. It is notwithstanding self-evident that I cannot by these means introduce Italian bel canto into this opera. But I can still comfort myself with my brother's final verdict, which ran somewhat as follows: "Singers will heartily abuse your work and however much it has to be altered it will always be difficult for them; but whoever has the brains to understand it will be able to get a great effect with it."
It is true enough that the opera is difficult to rehearse, but I venture to doubt whether it is harder than Marschner's operas, which are nevertheless performed in many places. I should have thought that the transition from one to the other would not be so difficult. Moreover, I have experimented upon it a little myself. Upon request I rehearsed the entire opera. I have also already rehearsed and performed certain numbers of my opera, a terzet and an aria, and we accomplished it without too much effort, and it was well received in the concert hall. I have written an extra aria for my brother, one certainly no better and no easier than the corresponding number in my opera, and I may flatter myself I have got my effect, for I hear from Wurzburg that it has been sung again and again with great success.
These are, perhaps, trifling experiences, but now that I face you on a life-and-death issue for my opera you will not misunderstand me if I cling, like the shipwrecked mariner, to the smallest spar which promises life and hope of safety. Small and insignificant as these experiences are, yet, if I may measure great things by little, they raise certain hopes and make me think that the performance of my opera is not an impossibility. I ask you not to put any fatal obstacle in the way of the negotiations now in progress, and permit me, in order quietly to follow the usual routine, to fetch away the score and put it officially in the hands of the Herr Kapellmeister. Let me, just this once, tempt God.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 7