My very dear friend,
I am extremely glad that you liked my article on "Euryanthe" and theater direction, and I thank you most truly for your warm and very encouraging letter. For many weeks past I have been imitating you (as you and others always set me a good example), and am publishing several views on Art-subjects and Art-works in the Weimar official paper. By degrees these articles will swell into a volume, which shall then contain the complete set.
For the present I allow myself to send you my Sonata, which has just been published at Hartel's. You will soon receive another long piece, "Scherzo and March," and in the course of the summer my "Annees de Pelerinage, Suite de Compositions pour le Piano" will appear at Schott's; two years—Switzerland and Italy. With these pieces I shall have done for the present with the piano, in order to devote myself exclusively to orchestral compositions, and to attempt more in that domain which has for a long time become for me an inner necessity. Seven of the Symphonic Poems are perfectly ready and written out. I will soon send you the little prefaces which I am adding to them, in order to render the perception of them more plain. Meanwhile I merely give you the titles:—
1. "Ce qu'on entend sur la Montagne" (after V. Hugo's poem in the "Feuilles d'Automne").
2. Tasso. "Lamento e Trionfo"
3. "Les Preludes" (after Lamartine's Meditation poetique "Les Preludes").
4. "Orphee."
5. "Promethee."
6. "Mazeppa" (after V. Hugo's Orientale "Mazeppa").
7. "Festklange."