144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



VII. 



" Lohengrin " was finished in 1S4Y, but the 

 political events of the next few years brought 

 Waguer's career in Germany to an abrupt con- 

 clusion. His growing dissatisfaction with socie- 

 ty coincided, unconsciously, no doubt, wiih the 

 failure of his operas after that first dawn of suc- 

 cess. He now devoted himself to criticism and 

 politics. He read Schopenhauer, whose pessi- 

 mist philosophy did not tend to soothe his per- 

 turbed spirit ; and during the next ten years, 

 from 1847 to 1857, he spoke to the world from 

 different places of exile in that series of political 

 and assthetical pamphlets to which I have before 

 alluded. 



In 1855, owing to the earnest advocacy of M. 

 Ferdinand Praeger, who, for thirty years, through 

 evil report and good report, has never ceased to 

 support Wagner, the Philharmonic Society in- 

 vited him over to London, and while here he con- 

 ducted eight conceits. He was not popular ; he 

 was surprised to find that the band thought it un- 

 necessary to rehearse, and the band was surprised 

 that he should require so much rehearsal. But 

 he drove the band in spite of itself, and the band 

 hated him. They said he murdered Beethoven 

 with his baton, because of the freedom and in- 

 spiration of his readings. Mendelssohn's Scotch 

 symphony had been deliberately crushed, or it 

 was the only thing that went, according to which 

 paper you happened to read. He did not care 

 for the press, and he was not much surprised 

 that the press did not care for him. The unfail- 

 ing musical intelligence of the queen and Prince 

 Albert was the one ray of sunlight in this his sec- 

 ond visit to our inhospitable land, but the power 

 of the man could not be hid even from his ene- 

 mies ; his culture astonished the half-educated 

 musicians by whom he was surrounded, his brill- 

 iant originality impressed even his own friends, 

 who saw him struggling through an imperfect ac- 

 quaintance with French and English to make him- 

 self understood. 



One evening, alone in company with M. Sain- 

 ton, Hector Berlioz, and Ferdinand Praeger, Wag- 

 ner surprised them all by suddenly launching out 

 on art, music, and philosophy. Berlioz was an 

 elegant speaker, accustomed to le^d easily ; but 

 Wagner, with his torrent of broken French and 

 his rush of molten ideas, silenced, bewildered, 

 delighted, and astonished them all. Berlioz is 

 gone, but that night still lives in the memory of 

 those who were present and who survive. 



Thus, Wagner passed through England for a 



second time, leaving behind him a vague impres- 

 sion of power and eccentricity, the first of which 

 the musical press did its best to kill, while fan- 

 ning the second into a devouring dame, which 

 swallowed up Wagner's reputation. Notwith- 

 standing Praeger's exertions, twenty-one years 

 flitted by, and little enough was heard of Richard 

 Wagner in this country until, owing to the in- 

 creasing agitation of a younger school of mu- 

 sicians, foremost among whom we must name Mr. 

 Eduard Dannreuther and Mr. Walter Bache, 

 " The Flying Dutchman " was at last indiffer- 

 ently produced at Covent Garden. 



In 1874 Heir Hans von Billow, pupil of Liszt, 

 and great exponent of Wagner's music, came 

 over, and, by his wonderful playing, aided steadi- 

 ly by the periodical Wagnerian and Liszt con- 

 certs given by Messrs. Dannreuther and Bache, 

 brought about the rise of the new Wagner move- 

 ment in England, which received its development 

 in the interest occasioned by the Baireuth Fes- 

 tival, and reached its climax in the Wagner Fes- 

 tival actively promoted by Herr Wilhelmj, and 

 undertaken by Messrs. Hodges and Essex, in 

 1877, at the Albert Hall. 



I have anticipated a little, because space 

 obliges me to draw briefly to the close of this 

 sketch. Mina, Wagner's first wife, was now 

 dead. I cannot here tell at length how Liszt 

 (whose daughter, Cosima von Biilow, became 

 Wagner's second wife in 1870) labored with un- 

 tiring zeal to revive Wagner's works, and how 

 his efforts were at last crowned with success all 

 over Germany in 1849-50. It was a popular 

 triumph. I remember old Cipriani Potter, the 

 friend of Beethoven, saying to me at the time 

 when the English papers teemed with the usual 

 twaddle about Wagner's music being intelligible 

 only to the few, " It is all very well to talk this 

 stuff here, but in Germany it is the people, the 

 common people, who crowd to the theatre when 

 'Tannhiiuser' and 'Lohengrin' are given." I 

 have noticed the same at the Covent Garden 

 concerts ; it was always the pit and gallery who 

 called for the Wagner nights, while the opera 

 which had the great run with Carl Rosa's Eng' 

 lish company was " The Flying Dutchman," and 

 "Tannhiiuser" and "Lohengrin" at both the 

 other houses were invariably the crowded nights. 



In 1861 the Parisians showed their taste and 

 chic by whistling " Tannhiiuser " off the stage. 



In 1863 Wagner appeared at Vienna, Prague, 

 Leipsic, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Pesth, and con- 

 ducted concerts with brilliant success. In 18C4 

 his constant friend the crown-prince, now Led- 



