Farewell, dear friend, and let me soon hear from you again.
Yours in all friendship,
F. Liszt
Bronsart is going shortly to Paris, where he will stay some time. Cornelius is working at a comic opera [This would be the Barber of Baghdad.—Translator's note.] in the Bernhard's-Hutle. Raff is to finish his "Samson" for Darmstadt. Tausig is giving concerts in Warsaw. Pruckner will spend the winter in Vienna and appear at several concerts. Damrosch composed lately an Overture and Entre- acte music to the "Maid of Orleans." Stor plunges himself into the duties of a general music director. Thus much have I learned of our Neu-Weymar-Verein.
169. To Professor L. A. Zellner in Vienna
[General Secretary of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde ("Society of Lovers of Music") in Vienna; composer and writer on music.]
To my letter of yesterday I have still to add a postscript, my dear friend, concerning the information in your new Abonnement,[The Blatter fur Musik, Theater, and Kunst ("Pages of Music, theater, and Art"), edited by Z.] in which I was struck with the name of Bertini among the classics, which does not seem to me suitable. As far as I know, Bertini is still living, [He did not die till 1876.] and according to the common idea, to which one must stick fast, only those who are dead can rank as classic and be proclaimed as classic. Thus Schumann, the romanticist, and Beethoven, the glorious, holy, crazy one, have become classics. Should Bertini have already died, I take back my remark, although the popularity of his Studies is not, to me, a satisfactory reason for making his name a classic.—Moscheles' and Czerny's Studies and "Methods" would have a much more just claim to such a thing, and your paper has especially to set itself the task of counteracting, with principle and consistency, the confusion of ideas from which confusion and ruin of matters arise. Hold fast then to this principle, both in great and small things, for the easier understanding with the public, that the recognition of posterity alone impresses the stamp of "classical" upon works, in the same way as facts and history are established; for thus much is certain, that all great classics have been reviled in their own day as innovators and even romanticists, if not bunglers and crazy fellows, and you yourself have commented on, and inquired into, this matter many times..—.
In your number of today I read an extract from my letter to Erkel, [A well-known Hungarian composer ("Hunyadi Laszlo")] in which, however, the points are missing. Erkel shall show you the letter on the first opportunity, for he has not left it lying idle in his desk. Of course no public use is to be made of it.
Yours ever, F. L.
January 2nd, 1857