TO PASTOR SCHUBRING AT DESSAU.
Dear Schubring,—I have owed you a letter for almost a year. It is no use to begin with excuses; I am too hopelessly in the wrong, and should never get to the end of my apologies. Indeed, I couldn’t explain how the delay came about. On establishing myself here last autumn I got your letter with your notes for the “St. Paul;” they were the best contributions I had received, and that same afternoon I set to and thought it over seriously. I took a Bible, and sitting down amid all the confusion of my study, soon got so deep in it that I could hardly force myself to go on with other work which was bound to be completed first. I was on the point of writing then to give you my heartiest thanks, but then it struck me it would be pleasanter if I could say the thing had been already commenced, and when I really did begin it in the spring the manifold cares of composition sprang up to distract me. But now I cannot content myself with thinking of you, but must write to ask about yourself and your family. That the latter has increased I know, only was it quite right of you not to let me have a word on the subject, or even a bit of paste-board, but to leave me to the chance of a roundabout piece of information? Though I confess, indeed, I deserved this thoroughly, yet a preacher, as you are, is the last person who should exact vengeance, or bear malice against his enemy. Please don’t do so now, but let me hear from you again.
Your notes for the “St. Paul” were admirable; I have made use of them all without exception. It is a curious thing, and a good one, that in all the passages I formerly wanted to invert or alter for the sake of the composition, I have time after time had to restore the precise text of the Bible; it is the best in the end. Half the first part is now ready; I hope to end it by Autumn and to complete the whole about February. But how are things going at Dessau? It would be pleasant to hear they remained just as they were. I do hope you still keep your cheerfulness and love of life, still play the piano, and delight in Sebastian Bach, and so are the same old fellow you were. I should not doubt it, but here one is surrounded with such direful examples of preachers who do their best to freeze up every pleasure for themselves and others; dry prosaic pedagogues, who regard a concert as sinful, and a country dance as a pernicious dissipation, think a theatre the lake of brimstone itself, and denounce the spring with its blossoms and sweet weather as a pit of corruption.
You will have heard of the Elberfeld breed. But in these parts it is still worse, and its result is abominable. Worst of all is the arrogance with which these folk look down on others, just as if no good thing could exist out of their own range.
Our music advances slowly, but it does advance. This summer we performed one of Bach’s masses in church, an Ave Maria out of “Verleih uns Frieden,” and next month we are giving Handel’s Te Deum (Dettingen). Of course there is a great deal to be desired, but one hears the things, and the performance and the performers gradually improve. Hauser at Leipsic has scored a cantata of Bach’s in E flat, by Seb. Bach from the manuscript of the voice parts, one of the strongest of his pieces that I know. When I can find time I will send you a copy. But now my paper and this letter are both at an end. Farewell, dear friend, and write to me shortly.Yours,