So let us talk of something else—for instance, Baron Vietinghoff's [He took the noun de plume Boris Scheel, and in 1885 he performed his opera "Der Daemon" in St. Petersburg, which originated twenty years before that of Rubinstein.] Overture, which you were so kind as to send me, and which I have run through with B[ronsart] during his short stay at Weymar—too short to please me, but doubtless much too long for you!—The Overture in question is not wanting either in imagination or spirit. It is the work of a man musically much gifted, but who has not yet sufficiently handled his subject. When you have an opportunity, will you give my best compliments to the author, and give him also the little scale of chords that I add? It is nothing but a very simple development of the scale, terrifying for all the long and protruding ears, [Figure demonstrating a descending whole-tone scale] that Mr. de Vietinghoff employs in the final presto of his overture (page 66 of the score).
Tausig makes a pretty fair use of it in his Geisterschaff; and in the classes of the Conservatoire, in which the high art of the mad dog is duly taught, the existing elementary exercises of the piano methods, [Figure: Musical example; a five-finger exercise] which are of a sonorousness as disagreeable as they are incomplete, ought to be replaced by this one, which will thus form the unique basis of the method of harmony—all the other chords, in use or not, being unable to be employed except by the arbitrary curtailment of such and such an interval.
In fact it will soon be necessary to complete the system by the admission of quarter and half-quarter tones until something better turns up!—
Behold the abyss of progress into which the abominable "Musicians of the Future" precipitate us!
Take care that you do not let yourself be contaminated by this pest of Art!
For a week past it has done nothing but rain here, and I have been obliged to have fires and stoves lighted in the house. If by chance you are favored with such a temperature at Schwalbach, I invite you to profit by it to make some new Fugues, and to make up, by plenty of work for the pedals, for the pedestrian exercise of which you would be necessarily deprived.
B., to whom I beg you to give my cordial and kind remembrances, led me to hope that you will stay a couple of days at Weymar after your cure. If this could be so arranged I for my part should be delighted, and should pick a quarrel with you (even if it were a German quarrel!) if you were not completely persuaded of it!
Remember me most affectionately to la Sagesse, and do me the kindness to count, under all circumstances, on
Your very sincerely devoted
F. Liszt