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composer. In 1843 his father died. Hitherto Cornelius's musical studies
had been unsystematic. Now opportunity served to remedy this, for his
relative, Cornelius the painter, summoned him in 1844 to Berlin, and
enabled him a year later to become a pupil of Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn
(1799-1858), counterpoint and theory generally being worked at
laboriously. After leaving Dehn, Cornelius proved his independence by
writing a trio in A minor, a quartet in C, as well as two comic opera
texts. In 1847 he returned to Dehn and immediately composed an enormous
mass of music, including a second trio, 30 vocal canons, several
sonatas, a Mass, a Stabat Mater; he also wrote a number of translations
of old French poems, which are classics of their kind. In 1852 he first
came in touch with Liszt, through his uncle's instrumentality. At
Weimar, whither he went in 1852, he heard Berlioz's delightful
_Benvenuto Cellini_, a work which ultimately exercised great influence
over him. For the time, however, he devoted himself, on Liszt's advice,
to further Church compositions, the influence of the Church on him at
that time being so great that he applied, but vainly, for a place in a
Jesuit college. Still his mind was bent on the production of a comic
opera, but the composition was long delayed by the work of translating
the prefaces for Liszt's symphonic poems and the texts of works by
Berlioz and Rubinstein. Between October 1855 and September in the
following year, Cornelius wrote the book of the _Barbier von Bagdad_,
and on December 15, 1858, the opera was produced at Weimar under Liszt,
and hissed off the stage. Thereupon Liszt resigned his post, and shortly
afterwards Cornelius went to Vienna and Munich, and still later came
very much under Wagner's influence. Cornelius's _Cid_ was completed and
produced at Weimar in 1865. For the last nine years of his life
(1865-1874) Cornelius was occupied with his opera _Gunlod_ and other
compositions, besides writing ably and abundantly on Wagner's
music-dramas. In 1867 he became teacher of rhetoric and harmony at the
Musikschule, Munich, and married Berthe Jung. He died on the 26th of
October 1874. Not the least of Cornelius's many claims to fame was his
remarkable versatility. Many of his original poems, as well as his
translations from the French, rank high. Among his songs, special
mention may be made of the lovely "Weihnachtslieder," and of the
"Vatergruft," an unaccompanied vocal work for barit