Liebster Franz!

Wagner, Richard [Siegfried-Idyll. Symphonic poem.: orch. E major. WWV 103] Siegfried-Idyll von Richard Wagner. Partitur … Mainz, B. Schott’s Söhne, [1878], n. and. 22430

Printing (lithography); 1878; score; [4], 46 p.; 35cm

Score: fl, ob, cl1, cl2, tr, cor1, cor2, fag, vl1, vl2, vla, vlc, cb

On the title page: Author’s handwritten dedication to Franz Liszt: Liebster Franz! / You are nicht bös dass / ich dir diese schicke. / Cösel [?] hat’s erlaubt! / Von ganzer Seele / grusst dich / Lieben dein / Wagner

Provenance: Sgambati Fund Inv. 289478

The Siegfried-Idyll or Siegfried Idyll, a “symphonic poem” for small orchestra, in E major, is one of Wagner’s very few instrumental compositions, and is closely linked to the musician’s private life. In fact, on the morning of 25 December 1870, Christmas Day and the thirty-third birthday of his wife Cosima (daughter of his friend Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult), Wagner surprised her with the performance of this piece, in the villa in Triebschen on Lake Lucerne, their home since 1866, himself directing the thirteen musicians of the small orchestra, who had been arranged on the stairs. Cosima’s words in his diary reveal all his emotion: “It was music, and what music! When it ended, Wagner came to me with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic poem for my birthday.” The gift also testified to the happiness and serenity of that period, which had seen the recent celebration of the marriage and the birth, on 6 June 1869, of the third child Siegfried, the first son, to whom the composition is ideally dedicated.

Now follows the critical profile of the composition written by the musician Alberto Veronesi:

“The material of which it is composed, already so rich in personal emotional meanings, however derives from a precise moment of the action of the second day of the Ring, and precisely from the powerful final duet of the third act of Siegfried, before the words of Brunhilde” Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich” (Eterna fui, eternal I am), which introduce her decision to accept Siegfried’s love. This musical material essentially consists of two closely related themes, which Wagner had sketched long before deciding to use them in the opera: that is, in the summer of 1864, during his first stay with Cosima, then still Hans von Bülow’s wife. , on Lake Starnberg near Munich, with the intention of entrusting them to the intimate voices of a string quartet. Above all, the first of these themes, based on the so-called melody of peace, in E major, as elementary as it is intense, was profoundly linked to the feeling of love that united him to Cosima. But beyond any legitimate autobiographical or sentimental reference, the elaboration of the motifs, their contrapuntal intertwining and their development in the calm and relaxed flow of the music make the score of Siegfried’s Idyll one of the most perfect and refined creations among all those that came from Wagner’s pen: here a very fine dispenser, with reduced means, of timbric and harmonic subtleties of rare lightness, in a dreamy chamber dimension open to the light, and in a light of culminating apotheosis: perhaps the most serene and happiest of his entire life as an artist”.

The copy of this edition, present among the collections of the Casanatense Library, and enriched by Richard Wagner’s autograph manuscript dedication to Liszt, is part of the Sgambati musical collection, and was probably a gift given to the musician Giovanni Sgambati by his teacher and friend Franz Liszt after 1878, the year of publication.

In the dedication Wagner begs his great friend and protector Liszt, who has now also become his father-in-law, to accept without getting angry this gift of the printed score of “Siegfried-Idyll”, sent by him with Cosima’s approval:

Liebster Franz! / Sei nicht bös dass / ich dir diese schicke. / Cösel [?] hat’s erlaubt! / Von ganzer Seele / grusst dich / Lieben dein / Wagner

(Dearest Franz! Don’t be angry at the fact that I’m sending you this. Cosima [?] gave me permission! Greetings from my heart, your dear Wagner)