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LEIPZIG, April 30, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Our last letters crossed on the road. A thousand thanks
for yours that I received a few days ago. You know what heartfelt
pleasure it gives me every time I see that well-known handwriting of
yours on the address, and how grateful I am to you for writing to me,
overwhelmed as you are by every kind of claim on your time. It would
certainly be better if we need never correspond, and could exchange
ideas verbally from one end of the year to the other, and that in
Germany too! That is a prospect I am less than ever inclined to give up;
only, I don’t quite see my way to the where and the how. So, in the mean
while, accept my thanks for the letter. The terms at our music school
are two hundred thalers per annum; the cost of living here, at all
decently, would amount at least to two hundred thalers. Young
Englishmen, who usually live rather better, would probably require from
two hundred and fifty to three hundred thalers,--say fifty or sixty
pounds per annum.
The school has made a fair start; new pupils are almost daily joining,
and the number of lessons and of teachers has had to be considerably
increased. There are already thirty odd pupils, twelve of whom are
instructed free of charge, and some of them are very promising.
We are afflicted, however, with two veritable maladies, which I mean to
fight with all my might as long as I have anything to do with the
institution. First, the Directors want to enlarge and to expand,--build
houses and hire rooms,--whilst I maintain that for the next ten years
the two large rooms that we have, and in which instruction can be given
simultaneously, are quite sufficient. And then the pupils all want to
compose and to theorize, whilst I believe that the principal thing that
can and ought to be taught is sound practical work,--sound playing and
keeping time, sound knowledge of sound music, etc. Out of that, all
other knowledge grows of itself; and what is beyond is not a matter of
teaching, but must come as a gift from above. Don’t you agree with me?
That I am not the man to turn art into mere mechanism, I need not say.
But whither am I wandering? I have got into chatting instead of writing
the two lines I intended. So now good-by.
Yours ever,