ver I wrote on the subject was full of nonsense," he says
himself.

It was high time to overcome and settle these disturbing elements. His
imperfect understanding of the science of music, which had given rise
to these fancies and apparitions, now gave place to its real nature,
its fixed rules and laws. The skilled musician, Mueller, who
subsequently became organist at Altenburg, taught him to evolve from
those strange forms of an overwrought imagination the simple musical
intervals and accords, thus giving his ideas a secure foundation even
in these musical inspirations and fantasies. Corresponding success
however, had not yet been attained in the practical groundwork of the
art. The impetuous young fellow and enthusiast continued inattentive
and careless in this study. His intellectual nature was too restless
and aggressive to be brought back easily to the study of dry technical
rules, and yet its progress was not far-reaching enough, for even in
art their acquisition is essential.

One of the grand overtures for orchestra which he chose to write at
that time instead of giving himself to the study of music as an
independent language, he called himself the "culmination of his
absurdities." And yet in this composition, in B major, there was
something, which, when it was performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus,
commanded the attention of so thorough a musician as Heinrich Dorn,
then a friend of Wagner, and who became later Oberhofkapellmeister at
Berlin. This was the poetic idea which Wagner by the aid of his mental
culture was enabled to produce in music, and which gives to a
composition its inner and organic completeness. Dorn could thus
sincerely console the young author with the hope of future success for
his composition, which, instead of a favorable reception, met only
with indignation and derision.

The revolution which broke out in France in July, 1830, greatly
excited him as it did others and he even contemplated writing a
political overture. The fantastic ideas prevalent at that time among
the students at the university, which in the meantime he had entered
to complete his general education, and fit himself thoroughly for the
vocation of a musician, tended still further to divert his mind from
the serious task before him. At this juncture, both for his own
welfare and that of art, a kind Providence sent him a man, who,
sternly yet kindly, as the storm subsided, directed the awakening
impulse for order and system