In the morning I hear the Idyll, and after it the “Rose- und Kosenlied”[1]—R. and I in tears! Afterward I learn how R. arranged this whole secret. The orchestra from Hof was engaged, and he conducted the rehearsal yesterday in the Hotel Sonne.
He tells me how well the children behaved at the rehearsal, modest and without giving themselves airs. We breakfast in the salon, while the musicians play pieces from Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Die Meistersinger. Blessed day!
In fair sounds and sweet words R. is telling me that I may count my birthday blessed, since he thus celebrates it. What right do I have to this crown?!. . . Lovely evening with the children, a sacred occasion.“Tat tvam asi,” R. keeps calling out to me, “that is you, you are everything, everything has been conjured up by you!” … At supper yesterday we had to laugh heartily when R. declared he was now so lazy that he thinks he must be glistening like rotten wood.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) KINDER-KATECHISMUS ZU KOSEL’S GEBURTSTAG
Wiener Sängerknaben Members of the Wiener Philharmoniker
SIR GEORG SOLTI, KBE, conductor
Recording: Sofiensaal, Vienna, April 1968
This brings us to Baron Reichenbach’s “Od,”[2] and he told us that one night when his wife Minna could not sleep she asked him what time it was; the room was completely dark, but he took his watch in his hand and said: “Eleven minutes to 9.” When she laughed at him for his “impertinence,” he made a light and saw that he had read it quite correctly. [In margin-. “Thought of Marie Much.”]—
We are transported to solemn reflections by the fact that R. met Prof. Nagelsbach, our neighbor, and, asking him how the holidays had begun, received the answer: “Not well, for our youngest child died at 10 o’clock! Just as if the little one had not wished to spoil our pleasure—we were still able to give the others their presents; when we then went up to the bedroom, the child was dying.” —
Today a mason fell from the theater building and was killed. It reminds one of Eduard and Ottilie[3], when at such times one always wishes to be and is happy, yet what can dim the happiness of love, this star that gleams through all tempests? . . . When I told R. in the evening that this had been my happiest birthday, he asked me why, and I replied, “Because Götterdämmerung has been completed and thus the real worry of our life removed!” —
[1] “Children’s Catechism for Kosel’s Birthday”: On Christmas Day 1873, Richard and the children surprised Cosima with the “Kose- und Rosenlied”. For Christmas Day 1874, Richard wrote an orchestral version, which he secretly rehearsed with the children and the Hofer Orchestra in the Hotel Sonne. This version (WWV 106B) contains an extended orchestral postlude that takes up the redemption motif from the Ring, presumably with reference to the completion of Götterdämmerung. Cosima writes on a blank page of the score: “Sung by my children with orchestral accompaniment on Christmas Day 1874 at 8 a.m. in the hall (on the gallery) of Wahnfried.”
[2] Karl Freiherr von Reichenbach (1788-1869), German industrialist and natural philosopher, postulated the existence of the life force “Od” (from Odin), an imperceptible force emanating from humans; for example, “Sensitives” could perceive weak light phenomena in the dark in the vicinity of magnets.
[3] Eduard and Ottilie from Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”.