Here is my revised Faust Overture, which to you will look very insignificant beside your Faust Symphony. To me the composition is interesting only on account of the period in which it came into being, but its recent remodelling prejudiced me in its favour again, and on this account I am childish enough to ask you to compare it very exactly some time with the first version, because I feel moved to express myself to you through this manifestation of my experience and of my gain in fineness of feeling. It seems to me that revisions of this sort show most clearly what disposition a man has acquired and what crudities he has discarded. The middle movement will please you better now. Of course I could introduce no new motif, as I should then have had to remake practically the whole work; all I could do here was to develop the mood a little more broadly, in the form, as it were, of a fuller cadenza. Naturally there is no mention of Gretchen, it is still only Faust himself.
If someone were to pay me well for it, I might still be inclined to publish it. Would you, I wonder, try that tough customer Hartel with it for me? A little money would not come at all amiss for my journey to London, so that I might be better able to save up there and get rid of some of my debts. The score for Act I of The Valkyrie will soon be ready. It is extraordinarily beautiful; up to now I have done nothing even approaching it.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 273