A restless night for R.; reflections upon the King! The morning brings me R.’s letters to our friend A. Frommann, among which is also one asking about the King’s intervention in R.’s life—how little of that was now true. If only everything transient could be a parable! – – – In the afternoon a walk with R. In the evening our musicians; we take up the “Symphonie Fantastique”, and the first movement, plaintive and melancholy, pleases us most. R. says: that was Berlioz’s best stroke; the Scène aux champs is too reminicent of the Pastoral, and the Finale is stiff and repulsive. R. says: the 6/8 always has something measured; wildness can only be in 2/4, as in the Finale of the A major. What strikes me most is Berlioz’s incapacity to develop his often very beautiful motives—here he resembles Schubert; he does not know what Beethoven, Bach, and R. so profoundly knew: that a theme contains within itself the seed from which the whole plant must unfold! – Some Handel was also taken in hand. (R. improvised to-day, and wrote down a fine theme.)
Revised English translation by Jo Cousins.