The Wagner Journal, 5, 1, 65–81

Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein

on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems
introduced, edited and translated by

Thomas S. Grey

Almost from the moment Wagner was forced to flee Dresden as a political exile in May
1849 through most of the subsequent years of exile in Switzerland, Franz Liszt served him
as an essential lifeline in matters personal, financial and artistic. Liszt helped to arrange
Wagner’s safe exit from Germany to Paris and Zurich, while his immediate comrades
in revolution faced sentences of death or life imprisonment. At the very same time Liszt
was in the midst of mounting a production of Tannhäuser in Weimar, where a year later he
would oversee the world premiere of Lohengrin. For a while, both composers harboured
dreams of becoming the musical Goethe and Schiller of a new cultural golden age at the
Weimar court. Among all his multifarious activities at Weimar, Liszt also publicised
Wagner’s operas in extensive essays published in French and German journals (the most
substantial of these, on Lohengrin, was reprinted in an 1876 English translation in volume iv
of The Wagner Journal).1
As Wagner’s revolutionary creative impulses swelled during the early 1850s and he
moved from drafting the texts of Der Ring des Nibelungen to beginning the monumental
task of its composition, the isolation of his Swiss exile was a mixed blessing. On one
hand, it had allowed him to cut all ties with the past and to think far outside the box of
traditional genres, styles and institutions. On the other hand, he grew to feel acutely the
lack of stimulating exchange with other musicians of the first rank, on top of the inabil-
ity to hear and see his own works performed. Here again, Liszt became his lifeline to
the outside world. For nine days at the beginning of July 1853 Liszt visited Wagner in
Zurich, playing for him some of the fruits of his new ‘Weimar’ period, including ideas
for the Faust Symphony (still in progress), possibly the B minor Piano Sonata, and some
of the earlier (as yet unpublished) symphonic poems.2 Later that autumn, on 6 October,
1 ‘Liszt on Lohengrin (or: Wagner in absentia)’, translation from The Monthly Musical Record
introduced and edited by David Trippett, in The Wagner Journal, iv/1 (March 2010), 4–12, iv/2
(July 2010), 28–40, and iv/3 (Nov. 2010), 47–57. Nicolas Dufetel has recently surveyed Liszt’s
critical efforts on Wagner’s behalf in the context of a study of unpublished materials relating
to some of the original French texts of Liszt’s essays and unrealised plans to collect them in a
single volume under the title Trois opéras de Richard Wagner considérés de leur point de vue musical
et poétique. See Dufetel, ‘Liszt et la “propagande wagnérienne”: Le projet de deux livres en
français sur l’histoire de l’opéra et sur Wagner (1849–1859)’, in Acta musicologica, lxxxii/2
(2010), 263–304.
2 In My Life Wagner claims that during this first visit ‘we went through several of his [recently
completed] symphonic poems with great ardour, in particular his Faust Symphony’. Wagner,
My Life, tr. Andrew Gray, ed. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, 1983), 495 (translation emended).
As the autograph of Liszt’s first complete draft of the Faust Symphony dates from August–
October 1854, either Liszt was improvising on sketches (written or mental) for the piece, or

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Franz Liszt in 1858 – a year after Wagner’s open letter – when the Weimar Kapellmeister had completed
twelve of his eventual thirteen symphonic poems. Photo by Franz Hanfstaengl

Wagner travelled to Basel to join Liszt and several of his young musical acolytes (Hans
von Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Joseph Joachim, Richard Pohl and Dionys Pruckner) who
had been collaborating on a festival of ‘new music’ in Karlsruhe, a short distance
north of the German border. This group was joined by Liszt’s Weimar companion,
the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, with her 15-year-old daughter, Marie.
(Afterwards Wagner journeyed with Liszt and the two women to Paris for several
weeks.) The most substantial encounter occurred between 13 October and 27 November
1856, when Liszt visited again in Zurich, this time with the Princess and young Marie.
The visit culminated in a miniature music festival organised by the two composers
in the town of St Gallen, featuring performances of the symphonic poems Orpheus and
Les préludes under Liszt’s direction and Beethoven’s Eroica conducted by Wagner.3

Wagner might be confusing what he heard in July 1853 with what Liszt played for him on the
later visit in 1856.
3 See Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (New York, 1933-47), ii.384–90 and
493–502 on these encounters, and cf. Wagner’s own accounts in My Life (note 2), 495–504 and
537–43.

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

While visits with Wagner, at any time in his life, invariably tended towards
monologues about his art, his health, his politics, his finances, or whatever else was pre-
occupying him at the moment, these meetings with Liszt coincided with particularly
critical junctures in Wagner’s creative biography of the 1850s when his receptivity to
artistic stimuli may have been especially heightened. The 1853 visits occurred on either
side of the abortive Italian sojourn of September 1853, when Wagner allegedly experi-
enced the dream-like ‘vision’ of La Spezia that inspired him to begin the composition
of Das Rheingold. Whatever the truth behind that contested autobiographical anecdote,
the fact remains that he did at long last sit down to the task of beginning the Ring on 1
November, within a few days of returning from Paris, the recent encounters with Liszt
still fresh in his mind. Less than a month after the 1856 visit in Zurich, Wagner sent
to Princess Carolyne’s young daughter, Marie, the famous first sketch of motifs from
Tristan und Isolde, explaining how these had interrupted his work on Siegfried: ‘music
without words, for the time being’, he glossed this sketch. ‘For much, I will probably
write the music before the poetry.’4
Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein seems to have impressed Wagner with a strong, pre-
cocious intellectual curiosity. Several letters from this period suggest that he developed
a genuine affection for her, baptising her ‘The Child’ on their first meeting in Basel.5
(The enthusiastic but overbearing Princess Carolyne, on the other hand, was another
matter.) It was to Marie, then, that he decided to address a kind of critical homage to
Franz Liszt and his new ‘symphonic poems’ in the form of an open letter, dated 17
February 1857, in part as a token of appreciation for Liszt’s unstinting financial and
artistic support since the time of Wagner’s departure from Dresden.6 The contents of
the letter point clearly enough to its intended purpose for publication (even the preco-
cious Marie cannot have been terribly interested in much of it); it duly appeared in the
10 April issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, although not until having undergone
some substantial editorial intervention, whether at the hands of Franz Brendel, Richard
Pohl or (as Ernest Newman surmised) Marie’s mother, Princess Carolyne.7

4 Letter to Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein of 19 Dec. 1856, Richard Wagner: Sämtliche Briefe [SB],
viii, ed. Hans-Joachim Bauer and Johannes Forner (Leipzig, 1991), 230.
5 A remark in Mein Leben regarding his friendly rapport with Marie suggests, too, how she
might be an appropriate addressee even for some of Wagner’s ambivalent feelings towards
Liszt and his world. One evening during their communal sojourn in Paris in October 1853
Wagner interrupted some enthusiastic talk of Louis Napoléon and French politics with sudden
vehemence, maintaining his sullen reserve even while Liszt played (presumably from his ‘old’
Parisian-style repertoire) after dinner. Marie noticed this reserve, Wagner recalled, ‘caused
in part by my headaches and in part by a feeling of inner alienation from such circles as now
surrounded me. I was touched by her sympathy and palpable desire to cheer me up.’ Wagner,
My Life (note 2), 504.
6 SB viii.281 gives the date of 17 Feb. as ‘entered on the original manuscript by a foreign hand’,
as opposed to the date of 15 Feb. given to the letter in the Neue Zeitschrift publication and taken
over into Richard Wagner: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, 4th edn, 10 vols. (Leipzig, 1907)
[GS], v.
7 Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner (note 3), ii.501–2. Princess Carolyne’s extensive role in
Liszt’s own literary output is well known, if still difficult to quantify precisely. (On this matter,
see also Dufetel, ‘Liszt et la “propagande wagnérienne”’ (note 1).)

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The letter, or rather essay, does little to clarify Wagner’s critical opinion of Liszt’s
symphonic works, let alone the question of their possible influence on Wagner’s own
music at this time. At the very least, however, it can be understood as an attempt to
reconcile Wagner’s by now widely disseminated theories of the ‘musical-dramatic
artwork of the future’ with the project of his friend and benefactor, Liszt, to establish
a new genre of symphonic programme music. In The Artwork of the Future and Opera
and Drama Wagner had dismissed programme music (exemplified by Berlioz) as a
mistaken response to the expressive impulses manifested in Beethoven’s instrumental
music, which, according to Wagner’s reading of the Ninth Symphony, could find their
true resolution or ‘redemption’ only in a new genre of musical drama. In the present
essay he declares his intention to focus on the matter of ‘form’ rather than ‘content’ in
Liszt’s new works, mainly in order to show that here, just as in his own conception of
the musical drama, musical form will ‘evolve’ naturally in response to the poetic or
dramatic subject, if that subject has been adequately conceived in musical terms to
begin with. He is now willing to admit that ‘poetry’, broadly construed, may indeed
serve to liberate both operatic and instrumental music from the inherent constraints of
‘absolute’ music, based on periodic phrasing and simple patterns of statement, contrast
and return. (Even these patterns, Wagner argues, are not ‘absolute’ in the sense of exist-
ing in total abstraction from real life; rather they can be traced back to the emergence of
instrumental dance and march forms as responses to fundamental patterns of bodily
movement within certain conventional social contexts.)8
Whether Wagner himself had come to terms with Liszt’s ‘forms’ remains unclear.
He had looked for himself into the scores of the first six symphonic poems published
by Breitkopf & Härtel (Tasso, Les préludes, Orpheus, Prometheus, Mazeppa and Festklänge)
while taking a cure at Mornex the previous summer, and he had a chance to hear Liszt
play from his works at the piano and conduct two of them in St Gallen. Evidence sug-
gests that details of harmonic practice made the most immediate impact on him. Clearly
he and Liszt were both intrigued at this time by the possibilities of diminished 7ths and
augmented triads with respect to chromatic voice-leading, modulation and even large-
scale tonal plans. And Wagner famously admitted to having become ‘a wholly different
fellow, harmonically speaking’ as a consequence of having heard Liszt’s works (even
as he chided Richard Pohl for having published the remark).9 Wagner’s remark in
the essay about wanting to cry out ‘Stop! I have it all!’ after hearing the first sixteen bars
of one of Liszt’s orchestral works is equivocal, to say the least, and puzzling as well,
since, unlike earlier dance-based instrumental forms as Wagner describes them, the

8 Wagner’s remark about the ‘champions of an absolute music’ (see p. 77) clearly alludes to
Eduard Hanslick and his polemical treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen of 1854. Wagner may
have been the first person to link Hanslick specifically with the term ‘absolute music’, which,
as Sanna Pederson has argued, was not consciously promoted by Hanslick or otherwise
closely associated with him until later in the 19th century. See Pederson, ‘Defining the Term
“Absolute Music” Historically’, in Music & Letters, xc (2009), 240–62.
9 See the letter of 7 Oct. 1859 to Hans von Bülow regarding excerpts of a letter from Wagner to
Pohl which the latter had allowed Brendel to publish in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik on 9 Sept.
1859: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, tr. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New
York and London, 1988), 472.

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

‘formal secret’ of Liszt’s symphonic works is by no means set forth in simple periodic
terms at the outset. We might surmise, then, that Wagner’s own ideal of dramatically
evolving or ‘unfolding’ forms remained at odds with what he heard in Liszt’s music,
even if he felt he could approve in principle of their ‘poetic’ motivation.10
We know from Wagner’s correspondence that the text of his ‘open letter’ as pub-
lished in the 10 April 1857 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (xlvi, no. 15) departed
in many details from his own manuscript. He complained vehemently to Brendel
about the alterations in a letter of 15 April, and the same day sent to Liszt a set of errata
to be delivered to Brendel directly.11 Two days earlier he had sent a copy of the text to
Leopold Zellner requesting that he publish a correct version of the open letter in his
Wiener Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst.12 Nonetheless, Wagner allowed the pub-
lished version to serve as the basis of the reprinting of the text in his collected writings
when he assembled these in the early 1870s, which then necessarily served as the basis
of William Ashton Ellis’s translation of the text in volume iii of his collected edition of
Richard Wagner’s Prose Works (London, 1894). The full original text, as a letter to Marie
von Sayn-Wittgenstein, was first published in volume viii of the Sämtliche Briefe (see
note 4), on pages 265–82. The present translation is based on this version of the text. A
translation is not the appropriate place to attempt a detailed critical report, but most
significant divergences between the text as originally published in volume v of the
Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (note 6) and the edition of Wagner’s original text
in the Sämtliche Briefe have been annotated in the footnotes. The corresponding pagi-
nation of the text in the Sämtliche Briefe has been indicated in square brackets. Because
the text in Wagner’s autograph includes very few paragraph divisions, the paragraph
structure of the original published text from the Gesammelte Schriften has been retained,
which also facilitates comparison between that version, Ellis’s translation, and the
present translation. Since the manuscript letter transcribed in the Sämtliche Briefe con-
tains, of course, no title, the title given to the text in the Gesammelte Schriften has been
retained here.

10 Rainer Kleinertz has argued, nonetheless, for a more positive view of Liszt’s possible influence
on Wagner’s approach to formal issues at this time, citing the one symphonic poem Wagner
did expressly single out for praise, Orpheus. See his essay ‘Liszt, Wagner, and Unfolding Form:
Orpheus and the Genesis of Tristan und Isolde’, Franz Liszt and his World, ed. Christopher H.
Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton, NJ, 2006), 231–54.
11 SB viii.303–4.
12 An abridged version of the text did appear under the title ‘Zur musikalischen Form’, Blätter für

Musik, Theater und Kunst, iii (1857), 117–18 and 121–2. As an abridged text, however, it could
not properly serve Wagner’s purposes in rectifying Brendel’s edited version.

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Richard Wagner to Marie Wittgenstein

(17 February 1857)

My dear Child! Perhaps I owe you a somewhat fuller disquisition on our friend [Franz
Liszt] and his recent orchestral compositions, for in conversation one always treats
these things aphoristically, and in any case, there now appears to be no likelihood of
conversation between us any time soon.13 [266] Your wish to hear my clear and con-
sidered opinion of Liszt must put me in something of an awkward position. For as
you know, only one’s enemies can be trusted to ‘speak the truth’, while the opinion of
a friend (especially one so gratefully indebted to Liszt as I am) is likely to appear so
suspect of partisan favour that few would take it seriously. But I shan’t let that bother
me, for it seems merely a maxim of the world of mediocrities – the ‘mediocracy’, as you
have cleverly put it14 – who arm themselves with a wit and energy born of envy and
so imagine themselves quite unassailable. My own experience teaches me, however,
that anyone who depends on the recognition of his enemies in coming to terms
with himself must have a great deal of patience, but very little grounds for self-confi-
dence. Should I really worry that my friendly appraisal of Liszt could do him harm,
or that the advocacy of Herr Bischoff would be much more salutary?15 Therefore
take what I have to say to you as the testimony of a man who speaks only from his heart,
and as confidently as if there were no maxims in the world, or as if all were on his side.
And yet I am faced with still another problem, namely what I should write to you
at all. You were witness to the great joy stirred in me by Liszt’s own performance of his
newest compositions.16 You saw how thoroughly I was moved – overjoyed that at last
such things have been created, and that I should have the opportunity to hear them.
No doubt, too, you noticed how little I said at the time, and you understood my silence
as that of one who has been deeply stirred. That was indeed the case, at first; but in
addition, I must confess, my silence was also a conscious response to the situation,
that is, to an ever-growing conviction that the deeper and more complex our most

13 Throughout the autumn of 1856 Wagner had been hoping that Liszt would be able to negotiate
with the authorities at Weimar at least a temporary amnesty to allow a visit with Liszt and
perhaps some profitable interactions with the court of Duke Carl Alexander. By the beginning
of 1857 it was clear that no such permission was to be forthcoming.
14 Mediokratie, a neologism used in place of the normal German noun Mittelmäßigkeit as a play on

the word ‘aristocracy’ (Aristokratie).

15 Ludwig Bischoff (1794–1867), editor of the Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung and an outspoken

opponent of the emergent ‘New German School’ at the time of Wagner’s open letter.
16 A reference to Liszt’s visit several months earlier, in October and November 1856, during

which time he performed for Wagner his recently completed Faust and Dante symphonies at
the piano, and perhaps several of the symphonic poems as well. Liszt conducted Orpheus and
Les préludes in a concert programme on which he collaborated with Wagner, given in St Gallen
in the third week of November 1856.

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

fundamental, personal perceptions,17 the less easily these are expressed in words. We
have to communicate in a language not of our own making – a pre-formed common
language that ultimately makes it possible for us to communicate with the world at
large, so long as we meet it on a simple utilitarian footing. The further our perceptions
[267] are removed from this everyday world, the more difficult expression becomes, to
the point where our philosophers use language in a wholly contrary fashion for fear of
being understood at all. The artist, for his part, has recourse to the marvellous tools of
his art, quite useless for the purposes of everyday communication, in order to express
a thing which, even in the best of circumstances, will be understood only by those
who already share his perception. Music is surely the medium most suited to commu-
nicating perceptions for which speech is inadequate, and one could even identify the
innermost nature of all perception as music.18 Thus if, when Liszt played his works for
me, I received impressions only transmissible through music, then that was as it should
be; it would have seemed foolish, if not impossible, to speak aloud of that which had
become music precisely because it could not be expressed in any other way. Who has
not tried at some point to translate musical impressions into words? No one who truly
understood the music could have been satisfied with the results of such endeavours.
And anyone who is nearly so deeply affected by music as Liszt is will have experienced
the same tremendous struggle as Liszt did [when writing about music] in attempting
the impossible thing of using a verbal and figurative medium to communicate ideas
about music. Even then he will realise he has managed to communicate only with other
like-minded musicians, but not at all with the purely literary reader. It is the latter type,
indeed, who has rewarded Liszt by dismissing his diction and style as unintelligible,
unpleasing, overwrought, and so on.19
What should I say to you, then? On the whole it seems that I may not get much
beyond a rather convoluted demonstration of the impossibility of saying anything.
Yet this actually brings us closer to the heart of the matter. Our aestheticians
and connoisseurs have assembled such an array of terms and expressions to
describe the external totality of the artwork, its technical-formal component, [268]
that one first runs into trouble in trying to speak of that other component which they
have overlooked.20 So I, too, will talk to you here about that outward, more readily
identifiable aspect of his works.21 With that much you will have to be content. For
the rest, I refer you to my mute silence in the face of those performances of which I
spoke earlier.

17 Anschauungen, a term used throughout the letter suggesting either perceptions, views (as in
Weltanschauung) or intuitions.
18 A variation of Schopenhauer’s claim that ‘properly understood’ music could provide an

insight into the essential nature of philosophy. See The World as Will and Representation,
tr. E.F.J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1969), i.264.
19 Wagner probably intends here an apologia for Liszt’s brochure, Tannhäuser et Lohengrin de

Richard Wagner (Leipzig, 1851), which, along with its German translation (1852), was fairly
widely read during the first half of the 1850s. Ironically, and aptly, Wagner’s own writing is at
its most tortuous here where he claims to be excusing the difficulties presented by Liszt’s.
20 i.e. the ‘content’.
21 i.e. their form.

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So, then, let me begin with the most superficial thing of all: how Liszt is regarded
by the public at large. This public knows him as a superlative virtuoso whose brilliant
career has won him successes far and wide, and here they are satisfied they know what
they are dealing with. But now Liszt’s abandonment of that career and his sudden deci-
sion to become a composer perplex them: what are they to make of that? It is especially
discomfiting to find no precedent for this change, especially not in the case of any can-
onised classical musician. It’s true, everyone may know of some virtuoso who, having
accumulated great wealth, has then thought to flatter his vanity by dabbling in compo-
sition. One is inclined to indulge this as a harmless whim, and to this extent the public
allows the keyboard-hero to act out his compositional fancies, while naturally wishing
that he would rather just return to performance. Along these lines, people are generally
considerate enough to pass over Liszt’s great new musical creations in silence, while it
is only the most crabbed watchdogs of classical music who cannot refrain from barking
their disapproval. That is hardly surprising; in fact, it would be surprising only if things
were any different. Who among us was not slightly taken aback at first? But then we had
to reproach ourselves for not taking sufficient account of Liszt’s true nature. Whoever has
had the opportunity of hearing Liszt play Beethoven (for example) in a small, intimate
gathering must have been struck by the fact that this was no mere matter of reproducing
– rather, it was a matter of truly producing anew. The dividing line between these two
processes is admittedly very hard to define. But I am convinced that to really interpret
(or reproduce) Beethoven adequately, one must be able to produce anew with him. This
notion may be unfathomable to those who have never heard Beethoven in any [269] but
run-of-the-mill concerts or virtuoso exhibitions, the sort of performance with which I
have unfortunately become so familiar over time that I have no wish to trouble others
with the sorry details. But I would ask anyone who has heard Liszt play among a circle of
friends Beethoven’s op. 106 or op. 111 (the two grand sonatas in B flat and C), for instance:
what did they know of these creations beforehand, and what did they learn of them
now?22 If this is just reproducing, then such reproduction is certainly worth more than
any of those attempts by present-day keyboard composers to ‘reproduce’ the still poorly
understood sonatas of Beethoven in their own music. This was the particular nature of
Liszt’s upbringing [Bildung]; what others achieved with pen and paper, he accomplished
himself at the piano. Who would deny that even the greatest master, in his first period, is
simply reproducing or imitating? I will admit that even the greatest genius, as long as he
is still reproducing in this sense, will never achieve the significance of the original works
themselves and their creators; his own true value and significance will be realised only
in the acquisition of a truly personal independence. Liszt’s reproducing activity during
his career as a virtuoso has truly surpassed that of anyone else in the field, in that he
shed such a true light on the value and significance of his predecessors’ works, drawing
himself up very close to their own stature. The novelty of even this achievement has been

22 In his account of the impromptu music festival he and Liszt produced in St Gallen in late
November 1856, Wagner recalls an evening reception at the house of a local patron where Liszt
‘played for us, among other things, the great B flat major sonata of Beethoven [i.e. op. 106, the
‘Hammerklavier’], at the close of which [Theodor] Kirchner remarked bluntly that we could
all now claim we had witnessed the impossible; for he would always have to believe what he
had just actually heard an impossibility’. Wagner, My Life (note 2), 542.

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

largely overlooked, and that is one reason for the general perplexity over Liszt’s new
career, which is in fact nothing less than the arrival of this artist at his own period of crea-
tive maturity.23 I am reinforced in this view by the touching modesty with which Liszt
looks back at his earlier compositions. Always acting, as he did, quite instinctively, he was
engaged in composition at every stage of his career; and the works of his early period are
for the most part of comparable value to the early works of any great composer. Liszt was
perhaps that much less satisfied with them to the extent that he sensed how far his skills
as a performer, as I suggested above, surpassed those of any predecessor.24 [270]
I tell you all this because it is through these observations that I myself have come to
understand what seemed to be a perplexing situation. It is perhaps superfluous for me
to say all this to you in particular, dear child, for you have probably divined the whole
matter with the same instinct that all along has guided Liszt in his development. We
men, with whom nothing is to be done even though we make so much of ourselves – we
must finally confront women quite humbly in these matters. Nonetheless, you may
see some value in sharing with me here the man’s advantage, which is to express con-
sciously, if only after the fact, to himself and to others that which women have already
instinctively felt for themselves. Indeed, this can be the only value my letter as a whole
might have for you.
It seems to me that Liszt, travelling along his own individual path, has arrived at his
full artistic maturity as a composer over just the past ten years. If only a few are as yet
capable of comprehending the path he has taken, just as few are in a position to recognise
how suddenly he has arrived at this goal. As I have said, it would only be questionable
and unsettling were it otherwise. And whoever may have quickly grasped the value of
this phenomenon, the uncommon density and power of musical talent manifest in these
great works Liszt has brought forth so suddenly, as if by magic – that same person might
yet be confused with regard to the form of these compositions. Having overcome any
initial doubt as to our friend’s calling as a composer, this person might find himself beset
with another nagging concern. You see that I am proceeding according to plan, approach-
ing the subject obliquely and with caution, as the rest of the world ought to do; I am still
aiming to touch on just that aspect which can be most readily discussed, which might
finally bring us face to face with those other matters about which nothing can probably be
‘said’ in words at all. So, then – on to ‘Form’!
Ah, dear child! If there were no form, there would certainly be no works of art; but
neither, certainly, would there be any critics of art. This fact is so clear to the critics that
they cry out in desperation for form, while the carefree artist – who could no more exist
without form than they – [271] doesn’t worry himself about it in the least while engaged
in the task of creation. How can that be? Probably because the artist, without knowing
it, is always creating forms, while the critics create neither forms nor anything else.
It would seem that the artists, apart from all they have already created, are supposed

23 The remainder of this paragraph was omitted from the published text in the Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik and subsequently in GS v.
24 ‘Liszt war durch sie vielleicht in dem Grade weniger befriedigt, als ihm das unbewusste

Gefühl dessen inne worden ist, dass er am Klavier, wie ich es bezeichnete, keinen Vorgängern
näher und ebenbürtiger war‘ (SB viii.269).

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to supply a little something extra expressly for these gentlemen, who would otherwise
be left empty-handed. This favour, in fact, has been granted to the critics only by those
artists who could not bring anything about on their own and so had to seek assistance in –
forms; and we know what that means, do we not? Swords without blades! If someone then
comes along who can forge his own blade (you see that I have just come from the smithy
of my young Siegfried!),25 these fools will only cut themselves on it, for they clumsily
grab at the blade, just as before they had merely grabbed at the hilt with no blade. This,
too, annoys them greatly, for now the clever smith holds the hilt in his hand, as befits the
proper handling of a sword; now, moreover, they cannot even see the hilt [Griff] that had
once been proffered them and that alone had enabled them to grasp the concept [Begriff]
of art at all. And there you have the reason for all this outcry over the absence of form!
Who has ever seen a sword wielded without a hilt? Doesn’t the sure, precise handling of
the sword prove that it possesses a good, solid hilt? Naturally, this will be visible and tan-
gible to others only when it is no longer held; only when the master is dead and the sword
hung up in his armoury do people notice the hilt.26 Yet they seem incapable of imagining
how, if a new champion came to fight, he too would need a hilt to wield his blade. People
are as blind as that – so just let them be!
Yes, dear child, that’s how it is: Liszt, too, has no ‘form’. But let us rejoice in that; for if
one could see the hilt (there you have my metaphor again!), then we should have to fear
that he was holding his sword backwards. And that surely would constitute an excess
of gallantry in this malicious, mean-spirited world, where one must strike out boldly if
people are to be convinced there is a blade to one’s weapon. But enough of this joking –
although I would like to linger a moment on the subject of form.
I was inadvertently struck after hearing Liszt’s new orchestral works by the [272]
happy choice of their designation as ‘symphonic poems’.27 And indeed, more is gained
in the coining of this term than one might suppose, for it could only have originated
together with the purer art form itself.28 No doubt this sounds strange to you, so I will try
to communicate my point of view on the matter as distinctly as possible.
The titles and the approximate scope of these orchestral works, taken individually,
will at first remind one of the genre of the overture, as that was significantly expanded
in the hands of preceding masters. Yet just how inadequate this name is for works that
would be more appropriately heard anywhere except before a dramatic performance will
certainly be sensed by anyone who, since the advent of Beethoven’s great examples in
this genre, has had to fall back on this most unfitting designation. Even so, it is not merely
25 Wagner had completed the second composition draft, or orchestral sketch, of Act I of Siegfried
on 5 Feb. 1857 (the letter is dated 17 Feb.).
26 The published text inserts an additional clause at the end of this sentence (‘and they detach this –

as a concept [Begriff] – from the weapon itself’), while omitting the same pun on Griff and Begriff a
few lines earlier (‘and that had enabled them to grasp the concept [Begriff] of art at all’); GS v.188.
27 The original text gives the abbreviation ‘symph. Dichter.’ and the word Beziehung (relation)

instead of Bezeichnung (designation) in this sentence (SB viii.272); both are presumably slips
of the pen. (Bezeichnung occurs in related position in the following sentence.)
28 The published text substituted the adjective ‘newer’ (neueren) for ‘purer’ (reineren), one of

the changes specifically cited by Wagner in an angry letter to Franz Brendel (15 April 1857)
complaining about the many changes and inaccuracies he found in the Neue Zeitschrift printing
(SB viii.303).

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

custom but a much more essential constraint that has dictated our continuing recourse
to the name, a constraint grounded in the very form itself with which the composer has
been working. To understand the particulars of this form it is necessary to recall the
history of the overture since its inception. The surprising fact emerges that this form
originated as a dance piece played by the orchestra to open a stage performance; more
astonishing still is what the talents of our greatest masters have accomplished within this
form over the course of time. Not just the overture, though, but every kind of independ-
ent instrumental piece derives its form from the dance or march: a series of such pieces
came to be called a ‘suite’ and a piece in which several such dance forms were connected
came to be called a ‘symphony’. The formal seed of the symphony is still to be found in
its third movement – the minuet or scherzo – where it appears in full candour, as if to
reveal the formal secret behind all the movements. If I were a painter I might aptly repre-
sent a Bach fugue in a series of sketches of a dance performed by four dancers who start
one after the other, introducing themselves now more closely, now further apart, until
they are all commingled.29 By this I do not in any sense mean to belittle the value of this
form, to which we owe so many great things. I only mean to point out that the form is a
very distinct one, a form that can easily be distorted beyond recognition and that [273]
therefore demands fairly strict observance from its practitioners.30 How much might
truly be expressed within this form we discover to our great delight in the symphonies
of Beethoven, all the more delightfully and satisfyingly so where his expression is most
closely adapted to it. The form only became a problem when – as in the overture – it was
forced to accommodate an idea that could not be communicated through the strict rule of
the dance. This rule is based on a principle of alternation [Wechsel], as opposed to the prin-
ciple of evolution or development [Entwickelung] required by dramatic material. The former
principle has become established, in the context of dance- or march-based forms, as the
succession of an initial, lively musical period followed by a gentler one, and finally the
repetition of the more lively initial period – this much deriving from the very nature of
the thing. Without such alternation and return a symphonic movement in the traditional
sense is inconceivable. What is clearly revealed in the third movement – the form of the
minuet and trio – can be detected as the formal kernel of all the movements, as we have
already determined, if in varying degrees of disguise (especially in the second move-
ment, which tends towards variation form). It will be evident that the conflict arising
between this form and a dramatic idea necessitates either the sacrifice of development
(the idea) to alternation (the form), or the other way around. As you will recall, I have else-
where cited Gluck’s overture to Iphigénie en Aulide as an example in which the composer
has understood with infallible instinct the nature of the problem.31 He utilises here the
alternation [Wechsel] of contrasting moods, in accordance with the overture form, instead
of attempting to open his drama with a kind of musical development [Entwickelung]
29 This sentence visualising fugal procedure is omitted from the published text. And in fact, as
Wagner continues here, the ‘form’ in question seems to be the binary dance form he started out
to describe, not the fugue.
30 The published text adds here: ‘just as the dance itself requires of the dancers’ (GS v.189).
31 Wagner is referring to his article ‘Glucks Ouvertüre zu Iphigenia in Aulis’, printed in the

NZfM, xli/1 (1854), 1–6, and reprinted in GS v.111–22. However, he had already spoken of the
overture in similar terms in the 1841 essay ‘Über die Ouvertüre’ (originally ‘De l’ouverture’, in
the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris), reprinted in GS i.194–206.

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incompatible with this form. In Beethoven’s overtures, on the other hand, we have the
clearest example of how the greatest masters of the subsequent generation began to baulk
at the restrictions imposed by this form. Beethoven knew that his music was capable of
infinitely greater things; he felt himself equal to the task of carrying out the idea of evolu-
tion or development [Entwickelung], and nowhere do we see this more clearly manifested
than in the great overture to Leonore.32 It is plain for all to see, however, what disadvan-
tages the traditional form necessarily posed to the master here. And anyone with enough
insight to understand a work such as this will [274] have to agree with me when I iden-
tify its greatest weakness in the repetition of the first part following the central section,
distorting beyond recognition the idea of the whole piece – all the more since in all the
other parts (and above all in the coda) we find the master guided solely by the principle of
dramatic development. Whoever sees all of this clearly and without bias will necessarily
concede, as well, that this unfortunate state of affairs could only have been avoided by
omitting that repetition altogether,33 thus dispensing with the overture form itself – that
is to say, the original symphonic dance form – and thereby taking the first step towards a
new form.
What would this new form be, then? Necessarily, whatever form was called for by the
object.34 And what would this object be? A poetic motive, that is to say – prepare yourself!
– ‘programme music’.
This may sound like a dangerous proposition, and whoever hears me say this will,
I’m sure, complain loudly about the deliberate abolition of music’s independence. But let
us consider for a moment the matter of this objection more closely. Can music – the most
splendid, incomparable, individual and independent of the arts – be diminished in any
way except in the hands of hacks, those who have never been initiated into its divinity?
And is Liszt, the most musical of all musicians known to me, to be counted among those
hacks? Hear my credo: music will never, in any union into which it may enter, cease to be
the highest, the most redeeming art.35 It is the nature of music to realise in and through
itself, unmistakably and immediately, certain truths that the other arts can only hint at
or suggest. Think of the coarsest dance-step or the worst bit of doggerel verse: even these
are ennobled by the music to which they are set (so long as it is not a matter of deliberate
caricature).36 For music is, thanks to its native seriousness, of such a chaste and marvel-
lous nature that everything it touches is thereby transfigured. But just as certain is the
fact that music can be perceived only in forms which were originally foreign to it, forms
derived from external aspects of human experience.37 Such forms acquire their deepest
32 i.e. the third Leonore overture, op. 72.
33 i.e. the repetition of the ‘first part’ (sonata exposition) in the conventional sonata recapitulation.
34 The phrase in the original text here (‘Nothwendig die jedesmal durch den Gegenstand

erforderte [Form]’) is modified and extended in the published text: ‘Notwendig die jedesmal
durch den Gegenstand und seine darzustellende Entwickelung geforderte’ (‘Necessarily,
whatever form was called for by the object and the development that should represent it’; GS
v.191).
35 The published text puts this ‘credo’ in italics (GS v.191).
36 The original text (SB viii.294) is missing the negative in this parenthetical clause (‘so lange

sie es ernst nimmt und [nicht] absichtlich carricirt’), which the published text supplies,
presumably correctly.
37 ‘Formen, … die einer Lebensbeziehung oder Lebensäußerung entnommen sind’ (SB v.191).

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

significance in this process, precisely through the revelation of the music latent in them.
[275] Nothing is less absolute than music, as regards its presence in our lives, and the
champions of an absolute music are clearly a muddle-headed bunch.38 To confound
them it would suffice to have them name, if they could, any music independent of those
forms derived from corporeal motion or from poetic verse (according to the causal cir-
cumstances). We have earlier recognised the dance and march forms as the unalterable
foundations of purely instrumental music and we saw how these determine the form
of even the most complicated compositions, to the extent that any deviation from their
model, such as omitting the recapitulation of the first period or section, is perceived as
a transgression into formlessness.39 Even one so bold as Beethoven thus felt compelled
to avoid such a transgression, though to his own great detriment. We are then agreed on
this point that, for its appearance in our mortal world, divine music requires something
on which to fasten itself, a conditioning factor. But then I ask you: do the dance or march,
along with whatever sorts of representations these ritual behaviours might call to mind,
constitute a more worthy form-giving motif [Motiv zur Formgebung] than, for example, the
mental representation of an Orpheus or a Prometheus via the concentrated outlines of
their deeds and sufferings? I ask you further, if music depends on a form for its communi-
cation, as I have demonstrated above, would it not increase music’s nobility and freedom if
it were to take that form from the representation of motifs such as Orpheus or Prometheus,
rather than from the representation of motifs such as a mere dance or march? No one will
be in any doubt as to this, though they may still point to the difficulty of extracting an
intelligible form for musical composition out of such exalted representations, when up to
now it has seemed impossible to fix on such a form without the help of these lower sorts of
form-giving motifs (I don’t know if I am expressing myself accurately here).
The grounds for such reservations are to be found in the performance of works by
less qualified or simply eccentric [phantastischen] musicians, lacking any higher artistic
calling – works that deviate from the traditional symphonic (dance-based) forms, which
these composers have not even succeeded in mastering, to the extent that these pieces
are simply unintelligible if we don’t follow their bizarre distortions of the dance form
step by step with an explanatory programme. Of course we feel that music is degraded
in this way, if only because, [276] on one hand, it has been subjected to an unworthy idea,
and, on the other hand, that idea has not even been clearly expressed; this latter situation
is largely due to the fact that whatever we can understand here derives from such traces
of the conventional form still present, wilfully and amateurishly distorted though they
are. Let us forget such caricatures, however, which occur in every art form, and consider
instead the vastly enriched and developed expressive potential music has continued to
acquire up to the present day in the hands of its greatest geniuses. In doing so, we can
have no doubt as to the potential of music as such (for just think of what amazing things

38 ‘sinnlose Köpfe’ (SB viii.275). Brendel apparently toned down the aspersion at Hanslick and
his supporters by rephrasing this: ‘the advocates of an absolute music clearly do not know
what they are talking about’ (GS v.191).
39 The published text emends the phrase ‘wie die Wiederholung der ersten Periode’ in the

original (SB viii.275) to the presumably correct reading ‘wie die Nichtwiederholung der ersten
Periode’ (GS v.192), alluding to the example of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 3 discussed
several paragraphs earlier.

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have been accomplished even within the older, restricted forms); rather, we must doubt
only whether composers have shown the necessary poetic-musical acumen [Fähigkeit]
to view a poetic object [dichterischen Gegenstand] in such a way that it might serve them
in devising an intelligible musical form. Herein lies the difficult secret whose solution
is reserved for a select and exceptionally talented figure, one who is at once a complete
musician and a thoroughly perceptive poet. What I mean by this is hard to articulate, and
I leave it to the daily increasing number of great aestheticians to work out the concept dia-
lectically. I only know that anyone possessed of true feeling and intellect will understand
me once he has heard Liszt’s ‘symphonic poems’, for it was these that first clarified for me
the problem at hand.40
Truly, I would forgive anyone who has doubted up to now that we might witness the
flourishing of a new genre of instrumental music. For I must confess to having shared
these doubts, siding with those who saw in our programme musicians a very unpromis-
ing phenomenon, while at the same finding myself in the droll situation of being counted
among their number, thrown into the same pot along with them. Even in the best exam-
ples of this genre, products of real talent, I have always found that while listening to them
I would lose track of the musical thread, no effort of mine sufficing to hold on to it or
to reconstruct it. This occurred to me again recently with the love-scene [Adagio] from
Berlioz’s symphony Roméo et Juliette, the principal motifs of which are so marvellous in
themselves.41 The great rapture inspired in me by the [277] unfolding of the main theme
[Entwickelung des Hauptmotives] faded, in the course of the movement, and yielded to a
sense of deep misgiving; I immediately guessed that once the musical thread had been
lost (that is, the logical and perceptible alternation of distinct motifs) I needed to orient
myself by means of scenic-dramatic motifs [szenische Motive] which, however, I could not
recall just then and which were not included in the programme. These scenic-dramatic
motifs are doubtless present in Shakespeare’s famous balcony scene; but it was a great
failing on the part of the composer to take them over unchanged, in the same disposition
as presented by the dramatist. Having decided on this scene as the subject [Motiv] of a
symphonic poem, the composer ought to have realised that the dramatist turns to very
different means from those of the musician in expressing more or less the same idea. The
dramatist is much closer to everyday life, and he is intelligible only when he presents
his idea to us in the form of an action that, for all its manifold and complexly structured
elements, still resembles this life in such a way that each viewer is able to experience it
for himself. The musician, on the other hand, is not concerned in any way with the proc-
esses of daily life and must remove himself from all such detailed incidents, extracting
only their concrete emotional content [conkreten Gefühlsgehalte] – that which alone may
be reproduced distinctly in music. A truly musical poet [Ein rechter musikalischer Dichter]
would have presented the material to Berlioz in a clearly idealised form. And surely
40 The published text inserts ‘his Faust and Dante’ (i.e. the two programme symphonies) after
the reference to the symphonic poems (GS v.193). Throughout the original, Wagner for some
reason abbreviates ‘symphonische Dichtung’ (mainly as ‘symph. Dicht.’, here as ‘symph.
Dichtun’), so that in some cases it is unclear whether a singular or plural form is intended.
41 The published text adds ‘our friend’ (Berlioz) and ‘marvellously gripping’ (motifs) (GS v.193).

Wagner had recently heard Berlioz conduct excerpts from his ‘dramatic symphony’ in London
(June 1855); see Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner (note 3), ii.477; also My Life (note 2), 525.
He had also heard the whole work in Paris at the time of its premiere in 1839.

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

Shakespeare, had he thought to present this material to Berlioz for musical reproduction,
would have written it differently, in just those ways that Berlioz’s composition needs to
differ from what we have now if it were to be intelligible on its own terms. Now we are
speaking here of one of the most inspired works of this talented composer; so it should be
easy enough to gauge my attitude towards less happy attempts, spoilt by base or absurd
subjects [Motiven]. Such attempts would have prejudiced me hopelessly against the whole
enterprise, if we did not possess such excellent examples of more circumscribed musical
pictures as the Scène aux champs, the Marche des pélerins, etc.,42 which demonstrate to our
surprise what effective results may in fact result from this procedure.
I have brought up the example of Berlioz only to demonstrate how extremely difficult
is the solution to the problem before us; the secret of this solution [278] could, in fact, be
equated with that invisible ‘hilt’ of the blade I was describing earlier. This hilt I confidently
placed in Liszt’s hands, which it fitted so especially well as to become entirely hidden
from view. The secret is also that of individuality and individual perception, which would
remain for ever unknown to us except as revealed in the artworks of the inspired indi-
vidual. We must depend, finally, on the artwork as such and the impression it makes on
us, which is in the end something equally individual. What can be abstracted from it in
terms of general artistic rules or precepts is precious little indeed, and those who expect
to derive more from an artwork cannot really have understood the matter at all. So much
is certain, that Liszt’s perception of the poetic object [eines poetischen Objektes] is a wholly
different matter from that of Berlioz; Liszt’s perception is that which I attributed above to
the [hypothetical] poet in speaking about the scene from Roméo et Juliette, the moment he
thought to offer this object to the composer as a matter for musical execution.
You see that I have come so close to the heart of the matter that there is little more I
can reasonably say to you. At this point it is a matter of what one individual can com-
municate to another as a secret, and whoever would carry on out loud about such things
cannot have caught very much of what has been said, since one would only willingly
broadcast secrets one has misunderstood. Thus, if I remain silent about what Liszt com-
municated to me through his symphonic poem[s], I will allow myself just to say a few
more words about the formal nature of these artistic communications. I was surprised
above all in this respect by the incredible precision and eloquent distinctness with which
the [poetic] object spoke to me. Naturally this was no longer the object such as the poet
had depicted it in words; it had assumed an entirely different, indescribable character,
so subtle and unapproachably ethereal that one can hardly imagine how it could at the
same time present itself to our feeling in such a uniquely clear, distinct, palpable and
unmistakable manner. This genial sureness of musical conception manifests itself right
away in the beginning of Liszt’s compositions, and so tellingly that often after the first
sixteen bars I feel compelled to cry out, ‘Enough! I [279] have it all!’ This seems to me such
a predominant feature of Liszt’s works that, in spite of the antipathy displayed by certain
parties, I do not doubt in the least that the general public will get to know and appreci-
ate them very quickly. The difficulties facing the dramatic composer, on account of the
more complicated expressive means of his genre,43 are present only to a lesser degree in
42 That is, the slow movements from the Symphonie fantastique and Harold en Italie respectively.
43 Wagner seems to be referring to the demands of operatic production in general rather than
to matters of compositional structure or method per se.

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purely instrumental works. Our orchestras are generally good, and where Liszt or one
of his trusted pupils is present as conductor, the works cannot fail to meet with the same
success they did with the good-hearted people of St Gallen, who touchingly expressed
their astonishment at how easily they were able to follow and understand them, despite
all they had heard about the supposed barren formlessness of Liszt’s works.44 You can see
how this re-affirms my good opinion of the public, for whom we can hope for nothing
better than to be so suddenly lifted out of its habitual manner of feeling things. Precisely
because it is so powerful and unaccustomed, this effect may only be a temporary one,
without repercussions for everyday life. Nonetheless, the witnessing of such an effect
on the public is the only hope of external reward for the artist, and he would do well to
shield himself with this slight gratification from the criticism he is sure to receive when
that public disperses and each single member sets about reflecting individually.45 For
many a musician who may have found himself carried away by the performance will
find cause to complain the next day about this or that peculiarity, bluntness or rough-
ness; especially the unusual and sometimes seemingly harsh harmonic progressions
may afterwards give him pause.46 We are left with the question, then, how these listen-
ers remained undisturbed by such things during the performance itself, aware only of
the new, unaccustomed and gripping impression it made – an impression that evidently
could not have been produced without the means of these very ‘peculiarities’? It is, in fact,
in the nature of any new, unusual, definitive phenomenon that we will regard it in some
sense as strange and suspicious; this belongs to the very secret of individuality. In some
fundamental way we are all alike, [280] as genus and species; yet in our way of perceiv-
ing things we are all so unalike as to remain for ever alien to one another, at some level.
This is the very nature of individuality; and however objectively this is developed – that
is, however comprehensively our perceptions are shaped, solely in response to the object
before us – something of our peculiar individuality is still sure to attach to those percep-
tions. The element of an individual perception that is generally comprehensible can be
communicated only through the medium of such individual peculiarities, such as can be
assimilated, in turn, only through love.47 Perceptions can be communicated only through
such individuality: one can assimilate the former only by means of the latter. To see what
another individual sees, we must see it through his eyes, and only love allows us to do so.
What the other sees, we see only if we look through his eyes, which we can accomplish
only by means of love.48 If we love a great artist, this is as much as to say that we have
44 Referring to the orchestral concerts given jointly by Wagner and Liszt in the town of St Gallen
in late Nov. 1856 (see introduction).
45 The foregoing is a conflation of the published and the original texts (the sense of the original

being somewhat obscure at this point).

46 The published text adds scare quotes around the qualities in question (‘Sonderlichkeit’,

‘Schroffheit’, ‘Härte’) and omits the phrase ‘oft grell erscheinenden’ (‘seemingly harsh’): cf. GS
v.196 and SB viii.279.
47 The foregoing sentence is omitted from the published text (SB viii.280: ‘Jenes allgemein

fassliche der Anschauung eines Individuums theilt sich aber nur darin das Medium dieser
Eigenthümlichkeit mit, und diese eignen wir uns nur durch die Liebe an’). This seems to be
because the following sentence in the published text (unclear in the original manuscript) is an
attempted revision of the same.
48 This sentence is likewise omitted from the published text (SB viii.280: ‘Was er sieht, sehen

wir nur, wenn wir es mit seinen Augen sehen, und dies vermögen wir nur durch die Liebe’) –

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 Wagner’s Open Letter to Marie Wittgenstein on Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

taken into ourselves those same individual peculiarities that enabled his creative vision
to flourish. I have never felt more strongly the inspiring and edifying effects of such love
than in my love for Liszt; and with this in mind, I would cry out to those who doubt him:
‘Only trust in him, and you will be amazed at what your trust can accomplish! If you still
hesitate, if you fear betrayal, just consider whom you are being asked to trust. Can you
name me any musician more musical than Liszt, any who better combines all the richest
and deepest musical capacities, any who is possessed of finer or more delicate feeling,
who is more able, more naturally gifted and yet who has worked harder to cultivate such
breadth? If you can name no other, then put your faith in this one (who is furthermore
far too noble a man to deceive you), and be certain that your trust will be most richly
rewarded precisely where you doubters at present fear disappointment.’49
So, dear child! There is nothing else I can say to you now, and indeed, what I have just
been saying towards the end here is addressed much less to you than to others, so that
you probably won’t know what to make of it, unless perhaps it occurs to you to have it
[281] published for the benefit of others. Indeed, in looking over my letter, I find that I have
been speaking less to you than to those whom I felt such a lively need to address publicly
some years ago.50 I seem to have fallen into bad habits once again, about which I ought to
be more careful, seeing what trouble they caused me before.51 Such poor sense deserves
to be punished, and if you think it would harm no one other than myself, then you might
do me the favour of having this letter published. If you feel too kindly disposed towards
me to do me any personal damage, and would rather punish me anonymously, you could
perhaps name someone else as the author – perhaps Herr Fétis;52 one can believe any-
thing of him!
But above all, give Franz my greetings, and tell him I have loved him well, and I
always shall!

Yours,
RW

again, probably because it has been incorporated in revised form into the published text.
A number of illegible passages occur towards the end of the original manuscript, as indicated
in the transcription given in SB viii.280–81.
49 Another sentence omitted from the original (and here) repeats material added or revised in

the published version (SB viii.280: ‘Auch ist er ein viel zu nobler Kerl, um euch zu betrügen!’)
50 The reference is, of course, to the Zurich writings of 1849–51 and to Oper und Drama in

particular. His audience for this letter consists of the critics of those writings as well as the
critics of the new Lisztian programme music.
51 The revised version of this passage in the published text reads: ‘When I consider all the

confusion I created at that time, I see that I have now fallen into those bad habits once again,
something I ought really to have avoided, considering how little good came of it before’
(‘Wenn ich überlege, welche Konfusion ich damals anrichtete, so müsste ich mich als in eine
alte Sünde zurückverfallen betrachten, wofür ich mich, da sie mir so schlecht bekam, doch
recht hüten sollte’; GS v.197–8).
52 François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871), the conservative French music historian and critic, and a

notorious opponent of Berlioz. Fétis had published a series of largely disparaging articles on
Wagner and his writings in the Paris Revue et gazette musicale in 1852 (see Newman, The Life
of Richard Wagner (note 3), ii.219).

81