conceived the idea of the poem of Junger Siegfried, which I proposed to issue as a heroic comedy by way of prelude and complement to the tragedy of Siegfrieds Tod.  Carried away by my conception, I tried to persuade myself that this piece would be easier to produce than the other more serious and terrible drama.  With this idea in my mind I informed Liszt of my purpose, and offered the Weimar management to compose a score for Junger Siegfried, which as yet was unwritten, in return for which I would definitely accept their proposal to grant me a year’s salary of fifteen hundred marks.  This they agreed to without delay, and I took up my quarters in the attic-room evacuated the previous year by Karl Ritter, where, with the aid of sulphur and May-blossom, and in the highest spirits, I proposed to complete the poem of Junger Siegfried, as already outlined in my original design.

I must now give some account of the cordial relations which, ever since my departure from Dresden, I had maintained with Theodor Uhlig, the young musician of the Dresden orchestra, which I have already described, and which by this time had developed into a genuinely productive association.  His independent and indeed somewhat uncultivated disposition had been moulded into a warm, almost boundless devotion to myself, inspired both by sympathy for my fate and a thorough understanding of my works.  He also had been among the number of those who had visited Weimar to hear my Lohengrin, and had sent me a very detailed account of the performance.  As Hartel, the music-dealer in Leipzig, had willingly agreed to my request to publish Lohengrin on condition that I should not demand any share in the profits, I entrusted Uhlig with the preparation of the pianoforte arrangement.  But it was more the theoretical questions discussed in my works that formed the chief link that bound us together by a serious correspondence.  The characteristic which especially touched me about this man, whom from his training I could regard merely as an instrumentalist, was that he had grasped with clear understanding and perfect agreement those very tendencies of mine which many musicians of apparently wider culture than his own regarded with almost despairing horror, as being dangerous to the orthodox practice of their art.  He forthwith acquired the literary facility necessary for the expression of his agreement with my views, and gave tangible proof of this in a lengthy treatise on ‘Instrumental Music,’ which appeared in Kolatschek’s German monthly journal.  He also sent to me another strictly theoretical work on the ‘Structure of Musical Theme and Phrase.’  In this he showed the originality of his ideas about Mozart’s and Beethoven’s methods, to an extent which was only equalled by the thoroughness with which he had mastered the question, especially where he discussed their highly characteristic differences.  This clear and exhaustive treatise appeared to me admirably adapted to form the basis for a new theory