Part 10

"DEAR SIR AND FRIEND:--Your letter has given me real pleasure, and I send you my warmest thanks for your artistic resolve to bring 'Cellini' to a hearing in Dresden. Berlioz has taken the score with him to Paris from Weimar, in order to make some alterations and simplifications in it. I wrote to him the day before yesterday, and expect the score with the pianoforte edition, which I will immediately send you to Dresden. Tichatschek is just made for the title rôle, and will make a splendid effect with it; the same with Mitterwurzer as Fieramosca, and Madame Krebs as Ascanio, a mezzo-soprano part. From your extremely effective choruses, with their thorough musicianly drilling, we may expect a force never yet attained in the great carnival scene (finale of the second act); and I am convinced that, when you have looked more closely into the score, you will be of my opinion that 'Cellini,' with the exception of the Wagner operas,--and they should never be put into comparison with one another,--is the most important, most original musical dramatic work of art which the last twenty years have to show.

"I must also beg for a little delay in sending you the score and the pianoforte edition, as it is necessary entirely to revise the German text and to have it written out again. I think this work will be ready in a few weeks, so you may expect the pianoforte edition at the beginning of February. At Easter Berlioz is coming to Dresden to conduct a couple of concerts in the theatre there. It would be splendid if you should succeed in your endeavours to make Herr von Luttichau fix an early date for the 'Cellini' performance, and if you could get Berlioz to conduct his own work when he is in Dresden. In any case, I shall come to the first performance, and promise myself a very satisfactory and delightful result.

"Meanwhile, dear friend, accept my best thanks once more for this project, and for all that you will do to realise it successfully, and receive the assurance of the high esteem of

Yours very truly, "F. LISZT,

"_Weimar, January 4 (1854)._"

A few years later, in 1862, Liszt addresses his friend, Dr. Franz Brendel, the writer on music, saying:

"I have just received a few lines from Berlioz. Schuberth, whom I commissioned before I left to send the dedication copy of the 'Faust' score to Berlioz, has again in his incompetent _good nature_ forgotten it, and perhaps even from motives of economy has not had the _dedication plate_ engraved at all! Forgive me, dear friend, if I trouble you once more with this affair, and beg you to put an _execution_ on Schuberth in order to force a copy with the _dedication page_ from him. The dedication shall be just as simple as that of the Dante symphony, containing only the name of the dedicatee, as follows:

"'To Hector Berlioz.'

"After this indispensable matter has been arranged, I beg that you will be so kind as to have a tasteful copy, _bound in red or dark green_, sent perhaps through Pohl (?) to Berlioz at Baden (where he will be at the beginning of August)."

Liszt was always generous to a fault; he carried charity almost to excess. If it were possible that his art could be forgotten, his name would still be gratefully remembered for his numberless deeds of kindness. We have quoted Wagner's acknowledgment of Liszt's exertions in his cause, and his efforts on behalf of Robert Franz rescued that composer from poverty when old age was coming upon him. Beethoven was always the object of Liszt's worship, and the monument to the master at Bonn was reared chiefly through his labours of love.

THE END.