DÜsseldorf, April 7th, 1834.

Dear Fanny,

You are no doubt very angry with such a lazy non-writing creature as myself? but pray remember that I am a town music director, and a beast of burden like that has much to do. Lately on my return home I found two chairs standing on my writing-table, the guard of the stove lying under the piano, and on my bed a comb and brush, and a pair of boots (Bendemann and Jordan had left these as visiting cards). This was, or rather is, the exact state of musical life in DÜsseldorf, and before things become more orderly here, it will cost no little toil. So you must now more than ever excuse my indolence about letter-writing, and, indeed, write yourself oftener to stir me up, and heap coals of fire on my head. Your letter, to which I am now replying, was inimitable; a few more such, I beg. You say, by the bye, that you speak of “Melusina” just like X——. I only wish this was true, and then, instead of a meagre Hofrath, we should have a solid fellow;—but listen! I must fly into a passion. Oh! Fanny, you ask me what legend you are to read? How many are there, pray? and how many do I know? and don’t you know the story of the “lovely Melusina?” and would it not be better for me to hide myself, and to creep into all sorts of instrumental music without any title, when my own sister (my wolf sister!) does not appreciate such a title? Or did you really never hear of this beautiful fish? But when I remember how you might grumble at me for waiting till April, to grumble at your letter of February, I plead guilty and apologize. I wrote this overture for an opera of Conradin Kreuzer’s, which I saw this time last year in the KÖnigstadt Theatre. The overture (I mean Kreuzer’s) was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much; but not Mlle. HÄhnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene, where she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure; so I selected the portion of the subject that pleased me (exactly corresponding with the legend), and, in short, the overture came into the world, and this is its pedigree.

You intend, no doubt, to take me to task also on account of the four-part songs in my “Volks Lieder,” but I have a good deal of experience on this point. It seems to me the only mode in which Volks Lieder ought to be written; because every pianoforte accompaniment instantly recalls a room and a music desk, and also because four voices can give a song of this kind in greater simplicity without an instrument; and if that reason be too Æsthetic, then accept this one, that I was anxious to write something of the kind for Woringen, who sings these things enchantingly. Seriously, however, I find that the four-part songs do “suit the text (as a Volks Lied) and also my conception,” and so you see we differ very widely.

By the bye, I quite forgot to say that I wished to introduce a wood-demon into the “Passion.” It is a good idea. Don’t whisper it to any one, or to a certainty they will really attempt it next year; and PÖlchau declares the Romans were familiar with them, under the name of diabolus nemoris. Only fancy, they have sent me my Academy patent in a formidable red case (carriage paid), and in it a very ancient statute of the “Academy for the fine arts and mechanical sciences,” along with a complimentary letter, hoping I would return to Berlin, where my “productions” were as highly prized as elsewhere. An excellent reason; had they only said “because, respected Sir, you can nowhere feel so happy as in the Leipziger Strasse, No. 3,” or even given any hint about parents and brother and sisters,—but not a word of this!

One of my DÜsseldorf troubles is at this moment beginning; I mean my next-door neighbour, who has placed her piano against the wall just on the other side of mine, and to my sorrow practises two hours a day, making every day the same mistakes, and playing all Rossini’s airs in such a desperately slow, phlegmatic tempo, that I certainly must have played her some malicious trick, had it not occurred to me that she was probably at all hours more tormented by my piano than I by hers. Then I sometimes hear the teacher or the mother, (I can’t tell which,) strike the right note distinctly seventeen times in succession; and when she is playing at sight, and gradually out of the darkness developes some old barrel-organ tune, which could be recognized by a single note,—it is hard to bear. I know all her pieces by heart now, the moment she strikes the first chord.—Farewell, dear Sister, ever your

Felix.