According To My Opinion, This Is
Raff's Most Successful And Grateful Work.
Farewell, dear friend, and bear in friendly remembrance
Your very sincere and obliged
F. Liszt
Weymar, May 24th, 1856
154. To Louis Kohler
My Very Dear Friend,
At last I have come out of my "Purgatory" - that is to say that I
have come to the end of my symphony to Dante's "Divina Commedia."
Yesterday I wrote the final bars of the score (which is somewhat
smaller in bulk than my "Faust" Symphony, but will take pretty
nearly an hour in performance); and today, for rest and
refreshment, I can allow myself the pleasure of giving you my
friendliest thanks for your friendly letter. The dedication of
your work "Systematic Method of Teaching for Pianoforte Playing
and Music" (the latter must not be forgotten!) pleases me much,
and you will allow me to take a modest revanche [revenge]
shortly, in dedicating one of my latest works to you. Probably
Schlesinger will bring out several books of my songs next winter,
in which you will perhaps find much that is in sympathy with your
ideas of the melody of speech. Hence I wish that you would not
refuse me the pleasure of using your name in connection with
them, and of letting it precede them, as an interpretation, as it
were, of the intention of the songs. Hartel will send you in a
couple of days the first seven numbers of the arrangements for
two pianofortes of my Symphonic Poems which have already
appeared. An arrangement of that kind is not so easy to make use
of as a four-hand one. Nevertheless, after I had tried to compass
the score of Tasso plainly into one pianoforte, I soon gave up
this project for the others, on account of the unadvisable
mutilation and defacement by the working into and through one
another of the four-hand parts, and submitted to doing without
tone and color and orchestral light and shade, but at any rate
fixing an abstract rendering of the musical contents, which would
be clear to the ear, by the two-piano arrangement (which I could
arrange tolerably freely).
It is a very agreeable satisfaction to me that you, dear friend,
have found some interest in the scores. For, however others may
judge of the things, they are for me the necessary developments
of my inner experiences, which have brought me to the conviction
that invention and feeling are not so entirely evil in Art.
Certainly you very rightly observe that the forms (which are too
often changed by quite respectable people into formulas) "First
Subject, Middle Subject, After Subject, etc., may very much grow
into a habit, because they must be so thoroughly natural,
primitive, and very easily intelligible." Without making the
slightest objection to this opinion, I only beg for permission to
be allowed to decide upon the forms by the contents, and even
should this permission be withheld from me from the side of the
most commendable criticism, I shall none the less go on in my own
modest way quite cheerfully.
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