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The day after tomorrow I have my sixth concert, and a month afterwards I start for home. Shall I hear from you soon? A thousand greetings. Your R. W. I returned here yesterday from the Dusseldorf Musical Festival, tired and dull. Hiller, who conducted the whole, had invited me, and it interested me to go through the whole thing for once, to hear "Paradise and the Peri," and to applaud Jenny Lind.
The late summer of 1850 brought Schumann an appointment of director of music in Düsseldorf, left vacant by the departure of Ferdinand Hiller for Cologne. Schumann and his wife went to Düsseldorf the first week of September and were received with open arms. A banquet and concert were arranged, at which some of the composer's important works were performed.
It was then Chopin told Sand of his pupil, Georges Mathias, "c'est une bonne caboche." Thalberg took his revenge whenever he could. After a concert by Chopin he astonished Hiller by shouting on the way home. In reply to questions he slily answered that he needed a forte as he had heard nothing but pianissimo the entire evening! Chopin was never a hearty partisan of the Romantic movement.
In considering his Sinfonietta, the Serenade, the Hiller Variations, the Prologue to a Tragedy, the Lustspiel Overture, the two concertos respectively for pianoforte and violin, we are struck not as much by the easy handling of old forms, as by the stark emotional content of these compositions.
On the whole, I still built my hopes upon the general effect of the music alone, the great promise of which at the rehearsals greatly encouraged me. Hiller, who had looked through the score and had already praised it, assured me that the instrumentation could not have been carried out with greater sobriety.
This was, however, to be the last time, and Hiller, who had read my book of Tannhauser, thought that I had a great advantage over him in writing my own words. He therefore made me promise to help him with the choice and writing of a subject for his next opera. Shortly afterwards Hiller was present at a performance of Rienzi, which was again given before a crowded and enthusiastic house.
Hiller, who have given their time to read aloud to the boys two evenings a week and have personally interested the boys in the books at the library, this impression has changed and in its place has come an attempt on the part of some of the boys at a system of self government.
Liszt has given a glowing description of an improvised soiree at Chopin's lodgings in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin that is, in the years before the winter in Majorca. At this soiree, we are told, were present Liszt himself, Heine, Meyerbeer, Nourrit, Hiller, Delacroix, Niemcewicz, Mickiewicz, George Sand, and the Comtesse d'Agoult.
He refused to occupy Ebersberg, everywhere swimming in blood and strewed with dead bodies. There was still a rallying-point left to the archdukes at the bridge of Krems, but they did not think they could defend it. The Archduke Louis and General Hiller passed to the right bank of the Danube, and the road to Vienna lay open.
But again he became the victim of indecision. Calling for peace negotiations, he loitered long at Budweis, failed to join Hiller so as to throw their united force across the French advance to Vienna, and when at last he brought up on the slopes of the Bisamberg he seemed for an instant aimless. Thus can the hope of peace paralyze a great general's activity.
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