Goethe and Zelter: Musical Dialogues

LorraineByrne Bodley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351565325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Goethe and Zelter spent a staggering 33 years corresponding or in the case of each artist, over two thirds of their lives. Zelter's position as director of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and Goethe's location in Weimar resulted in a wide-ranging correspondence. Goethe's letters offer a chronicle of his musical development, from the time of his journey to Italy to the final months of his life. Zelter's letters retrace his path as stonemason to Professor of Music in Berlin. The 891 letters that passed between these artists provide an important musical record of the music performed in public concerts in Berlin and in the private and semi-public soir of the Weimar court. Their letters are those of men actively engaged in the musical developments of their time. The legacy contains a wide spectrum of letters, casual and thoughtfully composed, spontaneous and written for publication, rich with the details of Goethe's and Zelter's musical lives. Through Zelter, Goethe gained access to the professional music world he craved and became acquainted with the prodigious talent of Felix Mendelssohn. A single letter from Zelter might bear a letter from Felix Mendelssohn to another recipient of the same family, reflecting a certain community in the Mendelssohn household where letters were not considered private but shared with others in a circle of friends or family. Goethe recognized the value of such correspondence: he complains when his friend is slow to send letters in return for those written to him by the poet, a complaint common in this written culture where letters provided news, introductions, literary and musical works. This famous correspondence contains a medley of many issues in literature, art, and science; but the main focus of this translation is the music dialogues of these artists.

Section III

Later Years’ Correspondence 1826–1832

357. Zelter

Berlin, 4 to 10 January 1826

Someone wrote a new setting of your Jery und Bätely and as I hear, in great style. However, it is supposed to have run its course and now they are asking for Reichardt’s setting once again.¹ The new composer edits the local music paper.² In this there was much talk about the weakness of Reichardt’s work which was once acclaimed. […]

358. Zelter

Berlin, 25 to 29 January 1826

27 January: The little piece by Director Struve³ informs and delights me, since it contains nothing which contradicts my melodic handling of both ballads. August Schlegel, who was in Berlin at that time⁴ when I set both pieces to music,⁵ and for whom I performed them often enough, was also in agreement. Likewise Tieck, who is hard to please musically, was particularly pleased by my melody to ‘Die Braut von Korinth’.

359. Goethe

Weimar, 18 March 1826

I shall wait quietly to see how the enclosed page, by which I set great store, will appear to the connoisseurs and other kindred spirits.⁶ The experts inmusical harmony will be sure to find something fugue-like in it,⁷ where manifold complications move, separate, meet, and answer one another. This page was distributed with the Stuttgarter Kunstblatf⁸ but, folded as it is, it cannot be fully appreciated there. Take care of it and think it over. […]

360. Zelter

Berlin, End of March to 4 April 1826

I received your lovely consignment of 18th March on Good Friday when I had completed arrangements for my Passion Music⁹ and was just about to bring it to performance.

The first comfort from your Charon was that our art of fugue is still living, and that what we build will not fall to ruins. Certainly, without your explanation I should have had to reflect a long time, in order to get a clear picture of the beautiful contrasts (counterpoint), the way that here what is most serious stands in delightful conflict with the most innocent love of life. So, too, the poetry into which you have woven it will be his delight as well as mine.

I had a similar experience with old Haydn. In reviewing his Creation, and particularly the overture which has the heading ‘Chaos’, I had remarked that such a theme was not suitable for art;¹⁰ but that genius everywhere has surmounted impossibilities, and therefore did so here – giving my reasons for this statement. Old Haydn let me know that, with regard to this matter, he had not thought about it beforehand at all but that my analysis concurred with his own conception, which he was only now aware of, and that he saw himself obliged to acknowledge the images I had referred to.¹¹ Other critics had hopelessly condemned the musical paintings in the work, but now I was justified. […]

4 April: We are expecting your gnome-like virtuoso¹² who will grate on our ears once again. I will gladly listen to him once more because he is the best of his kind, and as Wolf is given to saying, ‘The shepherd is also the ox’.

361. Zelter

Berlin, 11 April to 14 May 1826

[…] However often I have read these letters already, I still read almost every page two or three times and the clearest view comes to me through stone and rock into the belly of the deepest past. I am examining the genuine originals before me and I recognize the difference between them and a reproduction. It is much the same for me: I hear a good piece of music and then look at the score. Very often I find a thick wall between the two, if not the impossibility that both things are the same. Even what supports education serves the decline of art. […]

All good singers are either sick, getting sick or are travelling abroad. Madame Schröder has arrived again,¹³ who will help a lot, even if she is as corpulent as she was, and [if] we had half-a-dozen [like her] we could walk in the loveliest shade [they provide] !

362. Goethe

Weimar, 20 May 1826

First of all, my best thanks for the score of that truly enthusiastic song.¹⁴ It is now a full 30 years old, and dates from the time when a rich, youthful spirit still identified itself with the universe, in the belief that it could fill it out and even reproduce it in its various parts. That audacious drive has bequeathed to us a pure and lasting influence upon life, and however much we may have progressed in philosophical knowledge and poetic treatment, still it was important at that time, and, as I can see on a daily basis, it inspired and guided many. […]

We, too, had a fleeting visit from Matthisson;¹⁵ our disciples of the Muses gave him a warm reception, sang his poems, presented him with laurel wreaths, and did all this at a celebratory dinner, which went off appropriately and well. […]

When one thinks how many distinguished men finally float about like drops of oil on water, and at most come in contact only at one point, one can understand how one was so often in life thrust back into solitude. However, the fact of our having lived so long near one another, as we did with Wolf,¹⁶ may have shaped and benefitted our endeavors more than we know or are aware of. […]

It is evident from all of this that I was busy with your old letters again. I want to see now that I can catch up with some things for you. […]

If you would like to tell me something about Hummel’s performance in your own way, in my present state you would give me [double joy].

363. Zelter

Berlin, 22 to 23 May 1826

Tuesday, 23 May: Hummel has given two profitable concerts,¹⁷ although the time of his arrival was not the most favourable. In my judgement, he is the epitome of contemporary pianoforte playing, for he combines what is genuine and new with feeling and virtuosity. One forgets fingers and keys, one hears the music; everything sounds as secure and easy as it is difficult. A pot made of the worst clay, filled with Pandora’s treasures.

The Liedertafel takes place today and you will be remembered there. Count Sierakowski, whom Prince Radziwill of Posen recommended to me, is my guest.¹⁸ My building progresses slowly and I have to drive myself mad with it, otherwise nothing at all would happen. I thought I would be out of here and Satan leads me back again. Soon I will have to take up residence, leave the lovely nest I have now and move again to a completely new house. The gods will decide what is to become of me.

364. Zelter

Berlin, 25 May to 27 May 1826

When he was ten years old, my Felix discovered with his lynx eyes, in the score of a splendid concerto by Sebastian Bach,¹⁹ six pure consecutive fifths, which I doubt I should ever have found, as in the larger works I pay no heed to such things, and this passage is scored in six parts. But the handwriting on the manuscript is beautiful and clear, and the passage occurs twice. Now, is it an oversight or a licence? Either the composer has altered one part and forgotten to erase the other, or an accident, as I myself have experienced, could be the reason. I once maintained, when we were having a debate about harmony, that I could let them hear half a dozen pure fifths, one after the other, and they would never find it out, and I proved my point. It may have been so with old Bach, the purest, the finest, the most daring of all artists, quo nihil sol majus optet.²⁰ […]

The enthusiastic song, as you yourself call it,²¹ I myself don’t know how to call it anything else other than: ‘Aus der Luft’ (Out of the Air). I read it, how often, and only certain durations of notes – spheres, planets and things of that nature – occurred to me as definite sounds, with which I had to do all the rest. And now, when you provide me with information, I am none the wiser, since you too have been driven to exhuberant expression by an infinite, indefinable idea. I have been asked about it more than once and I replied: it is my wedding song.

I have written to you about Hummel. For me he is more than a virtuoso, much more. I gladly listen to him improvising in spite of the presumption that he could wrest a fantasy from himself before a gapin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Music Examples
• A Musical Odyssey: Thirty-Five Years of Correspondence between Goethe and Zelter
• Section I Early Years’ Correspondence 1796–1814
• Section II Middle Years’ Correspondence 1815–1825
• Section III Later Years’ Correspondence 1826–1832
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index