Highly-honored Baron,
The October number of your Bayreuther Blatter brought me the highest intellectual gift. [Wagner's Essay "The Public in Time and Space">[ No temporal ruler can bestow one like it. The estimation of it lays me all the more under an obligation to that true humility with which I have long and most devoutly paid homage to our incomparable master, Richard Wagner.
Accept my sincere thanks for the friendly words in remembrance of the performance of the Dante Symphony in your house, and kindly recall to the good graces of the Frau Baronin von Wolzogen.
Yours most respectfully and devotedly,
F. Liszt
November 15th, 1878 (Villa d'Este, Tivoli)
239. To Eduard von Liszt
.—. I take a hearty interest in the improvement of your health. You are the younger, the more sensible and useful of us two; therefore you should outlive me many years in good health.
I have been dreadfully industrious with my music-writing since the middle of September. I sit and walk in it like one possessed!
The "Via crucis" (now finished) has brought me back to a long- cherished idea—namely, the composition of choruses to be made use of at Church festivals during the giving of the 7 holy sacraments; thus 7 pieces of music of about a hundred bars each. These have now been 8 days at the copyist's, and, according to my thinking, are not quite a failure. If you also think this it will heartily rejoice