gner, "Benvenuto Cellini" by Berlioz, and Schumann's
"Genoveva," and music to Byron's "Manfred." Liszt's new departure
and the extraordinary band of artists he drew around him attracted
the attention of the world of music, and Weimar became a great musical
center, even as in the days of Goethe it had been a visiting shrine for
the literary pilgrims of Europe. Thus a nucleus of bold and enthusiastic
musicians was formed whose mission it was to preach the gospel of the
new musical faith.

Richard Wagner says that, after the revolution of 1849, when he was
compelled to fly for his life, he was thoroughly disheartened as an
artist, and that all thought of musical creativeness was dead within
him. From this stagnation he was rescued by a friend, and that friend
was Franz Liszt. Let us tell the story in Wagner's own words:

"I met Liszt for the first time during my earliest stay in Paris, at
a period when I had renounced the hope, nay, even a wish of a Paris
reputation, and, indeed, was in a state of internal revolt against the
artistic life which I found there. At our meeting he struck me as the
most perfect contrast to my own being and situation. In this world into
which it had been my desire to fly from my narrow circumstances, Liszt
had grown up from his earliest age so as to be the object of general
love and admiration at a time when I was repulsed by general coldness
and want of sympathy. In consequence, I looked upon him with suspicion.
I had no opportunity of disclosing my being and working to him, and
therefore the reception I met with on his part was of a superficial
kind, as was indeed natural in a man to whom every day the most
divergent impressions claimed access. But I was not in a mood to look
with unprejudiced eyes for the natural cause of this behavior, which,
though friendly and obliging in itself, could not but wound me in the
then state of my mind. I never repeated my first call on Liszt, and,
without knowing or even wishing to know him, I was prone to look on
him as strange and adverse to my nature. My repeated expression of this
feeling was afterward told to him, just at the time when my "Rienzi"
at Dresden was attracting general attention. He was surprised to find
himself misunderstood with such violence by a man whom he had scarcely
known, and whose acquaintance now seemed not without value to him. I am
still moved when I think of the repeated and eager attempts he made to
change my opinion of him, ev