Letters of Franz Liszt, vol 2, From Rome to the End | Page 9

feelings towards me
is always a pleasure and a comfort. First of all then accept my warmest
thanks for your two letters, which bring back to me the best
impressions of your morning and evening visits to me in my blue room
on the Altenburg.
It goes without saying that I have no objection to make to the
publication of the Andante from the Berg Symphony in the Jubilee
Album in honor of Johann Schneider. I only beg, dear friend, that you
will look the proof over accurately, and carefully correct any omissions
or mistakes in the manuscript.
I should be very glad if I could send you a new Organ work, but
unfortunately all incentive to that sort of work is wanting to me here;
and until the Tieffurt Cantor makes a pilgrimage to Rome all my organ
wares will certainly remain on the shelf.
Ad vocem of the Tieffurt Cantor, I will tell you that I have been
thinking of him very particularly these last few days, whilst I was
composing St. Francis's Hymn of Praise ("Cantico di San Francesco").
The song is a development, an offspring as it were, a blossom of the
Chorale "in dulci jubilo," for which of course I had to employ Organ.
But how could I be writing an Organ work without immediately flying
to Tieffurt in imagination?--And lo, at the entrance to the church our
excellent Grosse [The trombonist of the Weimar orchestra (died 1874),
who was so faithfully devoted to Liszt, and whom the latter
remembered in his will] met me with his trombone, and I recollected an
old promise--namely, to compose a "piece" for his use on Sundays. I
immediately set to work at it, and out of my "Cantico" has now arisen a
Concertante piece for Trombone and Organ. I will send you the piece
as an Easter egg by the middle of April. [Published by Kahnt in Leipzig]
Meanwhile here are the opening chords:--
[Here, Liszt illustrates with a musical score excerpt of the opening
chords of the Concertante, in F major]
and on a lovely evening in May will you play the whole with Grosse in
your church at Tieffurt, and perpetuate me with Organ and

Trombone!--
It has struck me that your name is not mentioned among the
fellow-workers in the Johann Schneider Jubilee Album. If there is still
time and space you might perhaps contribute your arrangement of the
Fugue from the "Dante Symphony" (with the ending which I composed
to it for you). This proposal is open to amendment, on the supposition
that Hartels are willing to agree to it--and, above all, that it suits you.
.--. N.B.--I beg you most particularly to make no further use of the two
Psalms "By the waters of Babylon," of which you have a copy, because
I have undertaken to make two or three essential alterations in them,
and I wish them only to be made known and published in their present
form. I send the new manuscript at the same time as the Cantico di San
Francesco.
My best greetings to your wife, and rest assured always of my sincere
thanks, and of the complete harmony of my ideas with your own.
F. Liszt
Rome, March 11th, 1862
When I am sending several manuscripts at Easter, I will write a couple
of letters to Weimar and thank Jungmann [A pupil of Liszt's in Weimar;
died there in September 1892] for his letter. I feel the want of time
almost as much in Rome as in Weimar, and I have observed a strict
Fast in correspondence as a rule, so that for three months past I have
hardly sent as many as three to four letters to Germany.
Remember me most particularly to Herr Regierungsrath Miller! [A
friend of Liszt's, a multifarious writer on music; died 1876]

3. To Dr. Franz Brendel.
[Autograph in the possession of Herr Alexander Meyer Cohn in
Berlin.]
Dear Friend,
Your friendly letter has again brought me a whiff of German air, which
is all the more welcome to me here as I have not too much of it. One
sees extremely few German papers in Rome--also I read them very
irregularly--and my correspondents from Germany are limited to two,
of whom friend Gottschalg, my legendary Tieffurt Cantor, is the most
zealous. His letters flow from his heart--and are therefore always
welcome to me.

For all of good news that you tell me I give you twofold thanks. Firstly,
because you have for the most part brought it about, prefaced it, and
seen it through. And then, because you tell it me in so friendly a
fashion. Although I have long been prepared to bear the fiasco of my
works quietly and unmoved, yet still it is pleasant to me to learn that