s earlier than
the completion of the opera and six before the first representation,
he directed a performance of it in the Gewandhaus at Leipzig. He never
was a favourite in that stodgy city, the headquarters of musical
Judea, and the audience is said to have been scanty. In fact, he
himself said that, although he gave concerts only to gain money, he
never made any profits until he went to Russia. The audience, if
small, was enthusiastic. But, without entertaining any delusions about
persecution and the deliberate ignoring of his work, it is easy to see
that such music as this could not possibly be understood at once.
Though this overture is clarity itself to our ears, it is terribly
complicated, and the style was absolutely new. I doubt whether the
players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for
here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures
which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time. There
was no "form"--no statement of first and second subject, no
working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no
recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains
were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the
part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring--these were a
mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting.
Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst
them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his
nights to raising a stone wall of misunderstanding between the
composer's music and the ears of the audience; and at this game Wagner
was an adept. The generation rising up to-day finds it hard to see
what an earlier generation found to carp at in Wagner's music; in
fifty years' time the war between Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites will
be inexplicable, and the story of it may not improbably be regarded as
grossly exaggerated, if not a pure myth. Men of my generation know
very well it was an ugly and stupid reality; we know also it was
brought about by the Wagnerites. Not Wagner's "discords," his "lack of
melody," his "formlessness" and so on hindered an almost instantaneous
appreciation of his music, but the "explanations" of the music. Things
easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were
"explained" as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the
"revolution" Wagner had brought about in music. No wonder many good
folks w