Woodbridge, Nov. 15, [1870].
My dear Pollock,
. . . Ah, I should like to hear Fidelio again, often as I have heard it. I do not find so much ‘Melody’ in it as you do: understanding by Melody that which asserts itself independently of Harmony, as Mozart’s Airs do. I miss it especially in Leonora’s Hope song. But, what with the story itself, and the Passion and Power of the Music it is set to, the Opera is one of those that one can hear repeated as often as any.
If any one ever would take a good suggestion from me, you might suggest to Mr. Sullivan, or some competent Musician, to adapt that Epilogue part of Tennyson’s King Arthur, beginning—
And so to bed; where yet in sleep I seem’d
To sail with Arthur, etc.
down to
And War shall be no more—
to adapt this, I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to ‘feel the truth and Stir of Day’; till Beethoven’s pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with ‘Arthur is come, etc.’; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering in upon them. It is very grand in Fidelio: and I am persuaded might have a grand effect in this Poem. But no one will do it, of course; especially in these Days when War is so far from being no more!
I want to hear Cherubini’s Medea, which I dare say I should find masterly and dull. I quite agree with you about the Italians: Mozart the only exception; who is all in all.
Woodbridge, Dec. 5/70.