28 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



So important is Wagner's Essay on Beethoven that it is hoped the 

 irresistible temptation to quote from it will be pardoned : 



Assuredly the inner impulses of that man's will covild never, or but indistinctly, 

 modify the manner in which he apprehended the outer world; they were too 

 violent, and also too gentle, to cling to the phenomena upon which his glance fell 

 in timorous haste, and finally with the mistrust felt by one constantly dissatisfied. 

 Nothing involved him in that transient delusion which could entice Mozart forth 

 from his inner world to search after external enjoyment. A childish dehght in 

 the amusements of a great and gay town could hardly touch Beethoven; the 

 impulses of his will were too strong to find the slightest satisfaction in such motley 

 pursuits. If his inclination to solitude was nourished hereby, that inclination, 

 again, coincided with the independence he was destined for. A wonderfully sure 

 instinct guided him in this particular respect and became the mainspring of the 

 manifestations of his character. No cognition of reason could have directed him 

 better than the irresistible bent of his instinct. 



The attitude of Wagner toward Schopenhauer is well explained 

 in the following from the translator's preface: 



It may perhaps not be superfluous to state here that Schopenhauer confesses 

 his view of music to be essentially incapable of proof ; that his theories of dreams 

 and visions is in the main hypothetical; and that Wagner makes use of the latter 

 by way of analogy and elucidation only. 



Not by a process of reasoning, not by willing it, but rather owing 

 to the receptive attitude of his genius does the composer create. 

 He becomes as it were a medium through which music flows ; but the 

 intensity of his longing to draw from out the invisible realm of sound 

 the melodies and harmonies which haunt him, at times like some mad 

 desire, causes him to appear as though actuated by the most powerful 

 promptings of his will. But if we follow the work of the composer 

 through the weeks, months or even years of his struggle with these 

 inspirations which succeed each other, shaped in turn by the subtle 

 influence of preceding ones, we shall find that, especially in the case 

 of a great orchestral composition, he is involved in tasks requiring a 

 mental concentration equal to that demanded by the most difficult 

 mathematical problems of astronomy. How he alters the original 

 sketches of his inspiration, unites all the material and perfects the form 

 until at last he gives to the world the completed work, so perfect in 



