Dear Friend,
Today I deserve a little praise. The Weber task is finished, and hence I have kept my promise a few weeks in advance.
How I have understood my task you will see from the short Preface on the first page of the various readings to the "Conzertstuck." The printer will have to act in strict conformity with what is there stated, and to give the necessary letters and signs. Unfortunately I cannot help giving this unusual trouble, for two kinds of letters and signs are positively indispensable.
My responsibility with regard to Cotta's edition of Weber and Schubert I hold to be: fully and carefully to retain the original text together with provisory suggestions of my way of rendering it, by means of distinguishing letters, notes and signs,—and these I beg you will again have fully explained to the printer.
In the various readings you will probably find some things not inappropriate;—I flatter myself that I have thus given performers greater licence, and have increased the effect without damaging or overloading Weber's style. Get Pruckner, who is acquainted with my bad musical handwriting, to play the various readings to you.
N.B.—They must be printed in small notes throughout the whole edition.
The parcel containing the "Conzertstuck," "Momento capriccioso," 4 Sonatas of W[eberj (and the 2 Beethoven ones of the Bulow edition) will be despatched to you tomorrow by Kolb. Send me, at your early convenience, Weber's 2 Polonaises (Hartel's last edition), which must not be omitted in Cotta's edition; also let me have all Schubert's Dances (Valses, Landler, Eccossaises, in Holle's edition revised by Markull). And as I have now got into the way of revising, I should like at once to prepare the Schubert volume and submit to you, before the end of November, the result of many years of most delightful communion with Weber's and Schubert's pianoforte compositions, with fingering, marks for pedal and expression, and various readings.
The Schubert volume I shall limit to 3 or 4 Sonatas, the great
Fantasia, some 8 Impromptus, the Moments Musicals, and all his
Dances. A few other pieces as duets may follow later, more
especially his Marches and the Hungarian Divertissement.
Let me hope that my work may prove intelligible, temperate and satisfactory, and also of some service to ordinary pianists.
Any remarks and objections you may have to make in connection with these, I shall be quite willing to consider.