rt
written by Mendelssohn long afterwards, in which he spoke of dismissing
the incompetents of the band, who went away as men who had lost their
bread. It had its opera, which was doubtless as good as the average
German opera of the time. But without a conservatoire, without musicians
of the first rank, with its middling orchestra, it cannot be compared
with, say, Vienna, where the very air breathed music and great musical
traditions and memories abounded. Bach, the poor organist and
schoolmaster, was little more than a name to all save his pupils and
their pupils. His _Matthew_ Passion lay there untouched, with the dust
thick on it, and there it remained until Mendelssohn had it sung a
century after its first and only previous performance.

Here Wagner took lessons on the pianoforte from Gottlieb Mueller, and
never learnt to play. Later he worked at counterpoint with Weinlig. But
at first the drama and not music continued to hold his attention. He
studied Greek plays and Shakespeare, and his highest ambition was to
achieve a stupendous drama which in the matter of sensations and murders
should eclipse anything yet done. But it dawned upon him that without
music his play could not make its full and proper effect, so into music
he went, and was at once caught in the impetuous torrent of the time. He
could not play, but he could read scores, and soon all Beethoven was as
well known to him as his mother's face. Accounts, more or less
trustworthy, are given of his singing and whistling the chamber works;
and it is an undoubted fact that he made a pianoforte transcription--one
would much like to see it--of the Choral Symphony. He tried his hand at
composition, and wrote some things that are without value; he sketched
one opera which came to nothing, and in 1833 completed another, _The
Fairies (_Die Feen_), which was not produced till more than fifty years
afterwards. The following year he was appointed conductor of the
Magdeburg Theatre, and with this appointment may be said to end his
apprenticeship to the trade he was to follow for some years.

MAGDEBURG, RIGA, PARIS, 1834-1842.

The trade he had chosen was that of operatic conductor. It was not until
eight years later that he made a serious debut as an operatic composer.
_The Forbidden Love (Das Liebesverbot)_ is entirely unknown to me; but
it may be doubted whether Wagner, with his head full of confused ideas,
and as yet no definite and distinctive plan or meth