175. To Dionys Pruckner in Vienna
Weymar, February 11th, 1857
From all sides, dearest Dionysius, I hear the best and most brilliant accounts of you. Without being surprised at this I am extremely pleased about it. To make a firm footing in Vienna as a pianoforte player is no small task, especially under present circumstances! If one succeeds in this, one can, with the utmost confidence, make a name throughout Europe. It is very important for you, dear friend, to appear often in public, so as to make yourself feel at home with them. In production the public have far more to care about the artist than he has to care about them, or indeed to let himself be embarrassed by them. At home, our whole life through, we have to study and to devise how to mature our work and to attain as near as possible to our ideal of Art. But when we enter the concert-room the feeling ought not to leave us, that, just by our conscientious and persevering striving, we stand somewhat higher than the public, and that we have to represent our portion of "Menschheits-Wurde," [Manhood's dignity] as Schiller says. Let us not err through false modesty, and let us hold fast to the true, which is much more difficult to practice and much more rare to find. The artist—in our sense— should be neither the servant nor the master of the public. He remains the bearer of the Beautiful in the inexhaustible variety which is appointed to human thought and perception—and this inviolable consciousness alone assures his authority.
Through your father I learn that you are thinking of going to Munich in the course of the spring. I, on my side, had also the intention of giving you a rendez-vous there. But yesterday I definitely accepted the conductorship of the Musical Festival of the Lower-Rhine, which will take place this year in Aix-la- Chapelle at Whitsuntide, on the 31st May, and could not undertake a long journey before then, in order not to break in on my work too much.
At the beginning of September we shall have grand festivities here in honor of the centenary of Carl August. Rietschel's Schiller and Goethe group will then be put up, and there will be a great deal of music on this occasion at the theater, for which I must prepare. I hope we shall see each other before then.
Bronsart is in Paris. You shall have his Trio very soon. Bulow is playing in Rostock, Bremen, and Hamburg. The Aix-la-Chapelle Committee have also invited him to the Musical Festival. Singer goes next week to Rotterdam, and on the 26th February a couple of my Symphonic Poems will be given at the Gewandhaus (directed by myself). I yesterday finished the score of another new one, Die Hunnenschlacht, [The Battle of the Huns] which I should like to bring out in Vienna when there is an opportunity.
Yours in all friendship,
F. Liszt
176. To Joachim Raff
[February 1857]