R. reminds me that yesterday, in the reading of “Pandora” (Epimetheus’ tale of her disappearance), I was moved to tears; he finds beauty in the poem, yet recognises the search for forms in it. After dinner R. speaks of Lessing’s word, that he would rather have the striving after truth than truth itself, “yes, if only there were something other than that which we now understand as truth!” —
In the evening Beethoven’s Quartet in A major, [1] without excessive joy in it; at the Scherzo, which R. has ever pointed out as a Dutch peasant dance, it proves that in memory he has wholly recomposed it, for in truth it is far less rough, far more sentimental, than he had thought. The E minor [Quartet] [2] delights us, above all the Minuet, which R. declares to be one of the fairest ever written! To me, the first part of this Minuet is as the fluttering of two butterflies and their yearning toward the light — a painfully cheerful, agitated game. Yet what can one say of music? … R. advises the young musicians of the distinction between “Tempo di Minuetto” and “Minuetto”; the former slower, the latter, through Haydn, becomes a Ländler. R. takes up quartets of Haydn and finds them admirable.
[1] Opus 18, No. 5.
[2] Opus 59, No. 2.
Notes
Enclosed with the diary is an excerpt from the Fränkische Zeitung of the same day (front page) with an unsigned commentary on the rejection by the King of Bavaria of the ultramontane address submitted by Dr. Jörg.
Also enclosed with the diary was a torn-out newspaper clipping from the Fränkische Zeitung of October 27, 1875, containing an “appeal to Bayreuth’s craftsmen and small business owners” to sign up for participant lists for an exhibition during the festival year. At a meeting the previous evening, an attempt had been made to prevent the exhibition, allegedly “because Herr Richard Wagner does not want an exhibition to take place alongside the Stage Festival.” However, they would not be deterred from “at least partially taking advantage of the resulting influx of foreigners in what was already a difficult time, since we have so often been told that this time would be a significant honor and source of income for the residents” (signed C. Wendel).
Revised English translation by Jo Cousins.