F. Liszt
Pest, May 5th, 1874
147. To Princess Julie Waldburg at Castle Wurzach
Madame La Princesse,
I feel that I am quite inexcusable. You have been so kind as to send me some charming Lieder, and to accompany them with the most gracious lines in the world. How could I fail to thank you for them immediately? What rusticity!—Deign to think of this no longer, Princess; and permit me not to "judge" your songs,— magisterial competency would fail me utterly,—but to tell you that I have read them with much pleasure. The one of which the style and impassioned accent please me particularly is dedicated to Mme. Ehnn—"Liebeshoffnung"; but I do not mean to depreciate the others.
The oriental interval of the augmented fourth, which I scent in the "Mondlied," would be written, I think, more simply thus:—
[Here, Liszt writes a 2-bar musical score excerpt]
and further on
[Here, Liszt writes another musical score excerpt]
(C instead of B-sharp). And to prove to you, Princess, my attention in reading your works, I will venture to observe to you that in the French Romance "Comme a vingt ans" the prosody is neglected in the third couplet. Instead of the printed version (with two syllables omitted) it should run something like this:—