My dear Mason: Although I do not know at what stage of your brilliant artistic peregrinations these lines will reach you, I feel assured that you are not ignorant that I am very, very sincerely and affectionately obliged to you for keeping me in kind remembrance, a fact to which the musical journals which you have sent me bear good witness. The "Musical Gazette" of New York has in particular given me genuine satisfaction, not alone on account of the agreeable and flattering things concerning me personally which it contains, but furthermore because this journal seems to me to inculcate an excellent and superior direction of opinion in your country. As you know, my dear Mason, I have no other self-interest than to serve the good cause of art so far as is possible, and wherever I find men who are making conscientious efforts in the same direction, I rejoice and am strengthened by the good example which they give me. Be so good as to present to your brother, the head editor of the "Musical Review", as I suppose, my very sincere thanks and compliments. If he would like to receive some communication from Weimar upon matters of interest which occur in the musical world of Germany, I will willingly have them sent to him through the medium of Mr. Pohl, who, by the way, does not live any longer at Dresden, where the numbers of the "Musical Gazette" were addressed by mistake, but at Weimar in the Kaufstrasse. His wife, one of the best harpists that I know, stands among the virtuosos of our "Chapelle", and is an important factor in the representation of the opera, as also in concerts.
Apropos of concerts, in a few days I will send you the program of a series of symphonic performances, which ought to have been established here several years ago, and to which I consider it an honor and a duty to give definite encouragement from the year 1855.
I expect Berlioz toward the end of January. We shall then hear his trilogy "L'Enfance du Christ", of which you already know "La Fuite en Egypte". To this he has added two other short oratorios, "Le Songe d'Herode" and "L'Arrivée à Saïs".
The dramatic symphony "Faust" (in four parts, with solos and choruses) will also be given in full during his stay here.
In regard to visits from artists who have been personally agreeable to me during the last month, I would name Clara Schumann and Litolff.
In Brendel's journal, "Neue Zeitschrift", you will find an article signed with my name, on Mme. Schumann, whom I have again heard with that sympathy and absolute admiration which her talent compels.
As for Litolff, I confess that he has made a very vivid impression on me. His fourth concerto symphony (manuscript) is a very remarkable composition, and he played it in so masterly a manner, with such verve, with such boldness and certainty, that I derived intense pleasure from it.
If there was a little of the quadruped in the amazing execution of Dreyschock (and this comparison should not vex him; is not the lion classed among quadrupeds as well as the poodle?), in that of Litolff, there is certainly something winged; moreover, he has all the superiority over Dreyschock that a biped having ideas, imagination, and sensibility has over another biped which imagines itself possessed of all this wealth—often very embarrassing!
Do you continue your familiar intercourse with the Old Cognac in the New World, my dear Mason? Let me again commend measure to you, an essential quality for musicians. In truth, I am not too well qualified to extol the quantity of this quality, for, if I remember rightly, I have often employed tempo rubato when I was giving my concerts (work which I would not begin again for anything in the world), and even quite recently I have written a long symphony in three parts, called "Faust" (without text or vocal parts), in which the horrible measures 7⁄8, 7⁄4, 5⁄4 alternate with common time and ¾. By virtue of which I conclude that you should be satisfied with 7⁄8 of a little bottle of old cognac in the evening, and never exceed five quarts!
Raff, in his first volume of "Wagner Frage", has thoroughly realized something like five quarts of doctrinal sufficiency, but that is an unadvisable example to copy in a critical matter, and above all in the matter of cognac and other spirits!