Copyright notice: The texts, photos, images and musical scores on all pages of this site are covered by UK Law and International Law. All rights of publication or reproduction of this material in any form, including Web page use, are reserved. Their use without our explicit permission is illegal. Weimar is a city of artists and the ducal family knows how to honour the arts Berlioz, Memoirs , Travels to Germany I Letter 10 β in The common thread running through the entire story was the sympathetic patronage exercised by successive Grand-Dukes and Grand-Duchesses of Saxe-Weimar: Carl Friedrich and his wife Maria Pavlovna , sister of the Tsar of Russia, his son and successor Carl Alexander and his wife Wilhelmine Marie Sophie Louise , daughter of the King of the Netherlands.
Needless to say, all the members of the ducal family were fluent in French the correspondence of Liszt and Carl Alexander, both of them German in upbringing, was conducted entirely in French.
Weimar was of course well-known to him, but not at this stage as a musical city, rather as the cultural and intellectual centre that was associated with the names of two of his literary heroes, Goethe and Schiller , as well as their patron the Grand-Duke Carl August cf. CG no. Berlioz was already familiar with the works of these poets, though only in French translation.
Initially Berlioz did not have any musical connections in Weimar. CG nos. A friend of Goethe, he played the flute in the theatre orchestra in Weimar till and founded a musical institute in the city. Schumann , himself an early advocate of the composer, promptly sent Berlioz a copy of the article CG no. When Berlioz eventually set out in December for his much-delayed trip to Germany, Weimar was thus an obvious stop on his itinerary: before the end of the month he contacted Lobe and received from him a warm and helpful letter CG nos.
He arrived in Weimar around 18 January coming from Frankfurt and stayed there till the 28th, when he left for Leipzig CG nos. After the disappointments of the start of the trip, the stay in Weimar marked the beginning of a more positive phase. But it was also in Weimar that Marie Recio , whom Berlioz had attempted to leave behind in Frankfurt, caught up with him and they made the rest of the trip together CG no.
