I have been here since the day before yesterday. .—.
Continue to love me—as I do you.
With all my heart your
F. Liszt
Address me to Weimar (at the Altenburg). I must return here from Lowenberg (between the 15th and 8th September) in order to await the Grand Duke at the Wartburg.
35. To Breitkopf and Hartel
Dear Herr Doctor,
Together with the corrected proofs of the Pastoral and the C minor Symphonies (in which I found one or two errors) I sent you (from Weimar) my pianoforte arrangement of the 3rd instrumental movements of the 9th Symphony. After various endeavors one way and another, I became inevitably and distinctly convinced of the impossibility of making any pianoforte arrangement of the 4th movement for two hands, that could in any way be even approximately effective or satisfactory. I trust you will not bear me any ill-will for failing in this, and that you will consider my work with the Beethoven Symphonies as concluded with the 3rd movement of the 9th, for it was not a part of my task to provide a simple pianoforte score of this overwhelming 4th movement for the use of chorus directors. Arrangements of this kind have already been made, and I maintain that I am not able to furnish a better or a more satisfactory one for helpless pianofortes and pianists, and believe that there is no one nowadays who could manage it.
In my edition of the 9th Symphony for two pianos, prepared for Schott, the possibility was offered to me of reducing the most essential parts of the orchestra-polyphony to ten fingers, and of handing over the chorus part to the second piano. But to screw both parts, the instrumental and vocal, into two hands cannot be done either "a peu pres or a beaucoup pres!"
In case other proofs of the remaining Beethoven Symphonies are ready, you might send me them to Weimar before Tuesday, 20th September. I should be glad at the same time to receive the splendid 6 Mottets of Bach in eight-voice parts (among which is "Sing unto the Lord a new song"). I am all the more in need of reading such works, as I am at present unable to hear a performance of them.