Engelberg, August 23rd, 1831.
My heart is so full that I must tell you about it. In this enchanting valley I have just taken up Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," and read half of the first scene; there is surely no genius like that of Germany! Heaven knows why it is so, but I do think that no other nation could fully comprehend such an opening scene, far less be able to compose it. This is what I call a poem, and a beginning; first the pure, clear verse, in which the lake, smooth as a mirror, and all else, is so vividly described, and then the slow commonplace Swiss talk, and Baumgarten coming in,—it is quite glorious! How fresh, how powerful, how exciting! We have no such work as this in music, and yet even that sphere ought one day to produce something equally perfect. It is so admirable in him too, to have created an entire Switzerland for himself, inasmuch as he never saw it, and yet all is so faithful and so strikingly truthful; the people and life, the scenery and nature. I was delighted when the old innkeeper here, in a solitary mountain village, brought me from the monastery the book with the well-known characters and old familiar names; but the opening again quite surpassed all my expectations. It is now more than four years since I read it. I mean presently to go over to the monastery, to work off my excitement on the organ.