Scan 44
The American history and encyclopedia of music, 1908
4 lines. Read by computer on 9 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
11847, also in Dresden, and under Wagner's baton. Each of these operas represented such a mighty advance over all that had gone before, an advance in musical as well as dramatic content, and in scenic structure as well as development of stage technic, that there is little wonder that the orchestra, the soloists and the chorus felt that Wagner had given them wholly new nuts to crack and wholly new problems to solve. The individual treatment of each instrument, from the first violin down to the drums and cymbals, the hundreds of things of which no one even had thought at that time, the overpowering sound of a Wagnerian fortissimo such as we find in his overtures to "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman" and "Tannhäuser"—all these things must have been in that day the cause of a vast amount of headache and head-shaking. And then, as regards all purely technical questions in his music, the unusual leading of the melodic line and the harmonic progression, which were exceedingly bold for that day, the astounding modulations, the leit-motif problem and its skilful applying and proving, together with the new "tone language" of the orchestra and the unbounded wealth of instrumental color, must have been confusing and perplexing for most of those who heard. It was but natural, therefore, that the Dresden success of "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman" and "Tannhäuser" was little more than an expression of local esteem for the "very talented, peculiar, but also extremely independent opera composer and Court director."
3The producing of "Lohengrin," which meanwhile had been completed, was declined by the directorate of the Dresden royal opera, and greatly to Wagner's sorrow, for he had written the opera for that house. Rarely has the truth of the old proverb, that "the aims, works and achievements of a genius can be completely and fully appreciated only by a genius," had finer confirmation than in the case of Richard Wagner. Fortunately for the saving of his art such a genius was at hand, Franz Liszt, the noblest, most unselfish musician of all ages. He who himself was a
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