Many thanks for your Artists. You had to overcome in me a lot of opposition to this composition; I was in no humour for it, I may tell you! Just think what antagonism you were bound to arouse in me by your choice of a poem alone. This is a more or less didactic poem. We listen to the voice of the philosopher, betaking himself to art once more, and doing so with the most emphatic resolution, Schiller indeed, to the life. And then a concert choir! I have no longer any taste for that kind of thing, and I could not compose it at any price; I should not know where to get the inspiration for it.
And another thing. My attitude as a musician to the verse or speech is now vastly changed from what it used to be. For no consideration could I now find melodies for Schiller's verse, which was certainly made to be read. These lines could only be dealt with musically in a somewhat arbitrary manner, and this arbitrary manner drives us, seeing that the melody can never attain fluency, to aberrations in harmony, violent efforts to force the unmelodious fount to assume artistic undulations. I have been through it all myself and have arrived at a stage of evolution where I turn to an entirely different formation. Thus consider it: the entire instrumental prelude to The Rhinegold is executed solely on the common chord of E flat!
Well, then, think how sensitive I am likely to be at the moment upon all these points and how staggered I must have been on first opening your Artists to run full tilt against a complete contradiction of my actual present system! I do not deny that I proceeded with much shaking of the head and stupidly almost always managed to light upon things that antagonised me, that is, I only looked at details here and details there. But then there were many of these details which tended to modify my ill-humour. Finally I pulled myself up and was struck by the sensible idea of running through and getting a general view of the whole, and then, happily, the thing began to grow upon me. Suddenly I seemed to see you at the rostrum, saw you, heard you and understood you. Here was a new instance in actual experience of the truth that it is only our own fault if we cannot accept what is offered us whole-heartedly. This call of yours to Artists is something great and noble and splendid, proceeding from your own life as an artist. I was deeply moved by the force of your intention.
I am working at high pressure. Could you not tell me of someone capable of copying out a proper score from my wild pencil notes? This time I am working very differently from formerly, but to make a fair copy would be the death of me; I should be wasting precious time over it which I could spend to far better purpose; and, besides, much writing makes me ill and takes away my inclination for my real work. Without an able copyist I am lost, but with him I should finish the whole in two years. I should need someone for the whole of that period; any intervals in copying could be occupied in writing out parts. Have a look round! There is nobody here. Of course it sounds somewhat ridiculous for me to want to keep a secretary when I can scarcely keep myself!
You ask me, my dear fellow, what my most pressing debts amount to! If you could supply me with five thousand francs as a loan (till the end of the year) you would indeed free me from the torments of hell! I have drained the last possible halfpenny from my only source of borrowing here, that is, from poor Sulzer, whom I have got into serious embarrassment by my failures to repay him. That is another source of torment: I can scarcely look him in the face.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 258