![[Americana.]](/_next/image.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg2.bonhams.com%2Fimage%3Fsrc%3DImages%252Flive%252F2006-09%252F22%252F7332891-4-1.JPG%26width%3D650&w=2400&q=75)
![CALEPINO, AMBROGIO. 1435-1511. [Dictionarium.] Calepinus Ad librum. Mos est putidas.... Venice: Peter Liechtenstein, January 3, 1509.](/_next/image.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg2.bonhams.com%2Fimage%3Fsrc%3DImages%252Flive%252F2012-08%252F09%252F8520323-124-1.jpg%26width%3D650&w=2400&q=75)
![HEARN, LAFCADIO. 1850-1904. [Japanese Fairy Tales.] Philadelphia: Macrae-Smith, [But Tokyo: T. Hasegawa,] [c.1931].](/_next/image.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg2.bonhams.com%2Fimage%3Fsrc%3DImages%252Flive%252F2025-11%252F07%252F25776056-1-1.jpg%26width%3D650&w=2400&q=75)
This auction has ended. View lot details
You may also be interested in
Lot 38
MUSIC - RICHARD WAGNER Autograph letter signed ("Richard Wagner"), to an unnamed correspondent ("Sehr geehrter Herr!"), thanking him for his excellent and detailed study of his work, Lucerne, 24 May 1871
24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £2,000 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
MUSIC - RICHARD WAGNER
Autograph letter signed ("Richard Wagner"), to an unnamed correspondent ("Sehr geehrter Herr!"), thanking him for his excellent and detailed study of his work, which he has not been able to attend to until now, but which he has read with genuine delight since it allows him to judge the effect his work has on someone else, it being hard for him to analyse his own work from such a point of view; and even if some details might be unwelcome, they are still interesting as they help him towards an understanding with the more thoughtful part of the public, of whom his correspondent is the pioneer pointing the way; he wishes him well with his work therefore, just as it is: he is also grateful for his offer to help out with the Festspiele, suggesting he contact Karl Tausig who along with some enthusiastic friends is organising fund-raising to defray costs of the undertaking; and concludes by once more thanking him for his work, 2 pages, small tear in lower left-hand margin, mounted, some slight ink-running and creasing but nevertheless still in attractive condition, folio, Lucerne, 24 May 1871
Footnotes
WAGNER WELCOMES HELP IN JUDGING HIS OWN WORK AND SUPPORT FOR THE FLEDGLING BAYREUTH FESTIVAL. This fine letter was written shortly after Wagner's visit to Bayreuth, which resulted in his announcement on 12 May of plans to hold the festival in 1873. He was also working on writing the Preface to his Collected Works and putting them into order: Cosima records in her diary that he was working on this on the morning that he wrote our letter (while Nietzsche paid a visit that afternoon, being afterwards accompanied by Wagner to the station). This was also the week that French abasement by the newly-proclaimed German empire was made total, when the French regular army was forced to attack the Communards holding Paris. The tone of our letter is however modest rather than triumphalist, Wagner confessing that he is unable to see his own work as others see it and that criticism is to be welcomed as long as his work is taken seriously, since he is at pains to make his work understood to those who take a friendly interest in his music.
Carl (Karl) Tausig, to whom Wagner directs his correspondent, was in charge of a patron's scheme for the proposed Bayreuth Festival, by which a thousand patrons tickets would be sold for 300 Thalers each in return for which they would receive free seats. Born in Poland of Jewish parentage, he was a piano virtuoso and regarded by many as the most gifted of Liszt's pupils. Wagner was devoted to him, and allowed to make piano transcriptions of his operas. He was to die of typhoid, aged 29, that July.
The identity of Wagner's correspondent and his article have, so far, eluded us. Wagner had been contacted earlier that month by the publisher Emil Heckel, asking what contribution he could make to the Bayreuth project, Wagner referring him, as in our letter, to Tausig. One authority states that Heckel's was the "single response" to the Bayreuth appeal, which suggests that our letter has not yet registered on the scholarly radar (Curt von Westernhagen, Wagner: A Biography, ii, 1978, p. 437).