“If I have heard any of those old five-part Masses they think so much of here? I know not.
“Good-bye. Write more of your lovely capriccios, and the Lord preserve you from Choral Fugues!”
To Ernst.
“And now about Dresden. I was engaged to give two concerts there, and found chorus, orchestra, and a noble tenor all complete! Nowhere else in Germany have I happened on such wealth. Above all, I found a friend—devoted, energetic, and enthusiastic—Charles Lipinski, whom I knew in Paris. He so worked upon the musicians, by firing them with ambition to do better than Leipzig, that they were rabid for rehearsals. We had four, and they would gladly have had a fifth had there been time.
“The Dresden Kapelle is directed by Reissiger, of whom we know little in Paris, and by young Richard Wagner, who spent a long time with us, without, however, making himself known except by a few articles in the Gazette Musicale. He has only just received his appointment, and, proud and pleased, is doing his very best to help me.
“He bore endless privations in France, with the added bitterness of obscurity, yet he returned to Saxony and boldly wrote and composed a five-act opera, Rienzi, of which the success was so great that he followed it up with the Flying Dutchman.
“A man who could, twice over, write words and music for an opera must be exceptionally gifted, and the King of Saxony did well to give him the appointment.
“I only heard the second part of Rienzi, which is too long to be played in one evening, and I cannot, in one hearing, pretend to know it thoroughly, but I particularly noted a fine prayer and a triumphal march.
“The score of the Flying Dutchman struck me by its sombre colouring, and the clever effect of some tempestuous motifs. But there, as in Rienzi, I thought he abused the use of the tremolo—sign of a certain lazy attitude of mind against which he must guard.