ions, but I could not conceive any pleasure more intense and more
prolonged than that of listening to such a music-drama. Is not such a
pleasure worth cultivating, even if it involves some toil at first?
And have not musical people reason to regard with profound pity those
poor mortals who can enjoy beauty only through the medium of their
eyes, their ears being deaf to the charms of artistically combined
sounds?

At the "Siegfried" performance just referred to the audience
fortunately was large; but there have been other performances, equally
good, when the audience was meagre. On such occasions much of my
enjoyment was marred by the melancholy thought that such glorious
music should be wasted on empty stalls, when there were thousands of
persons in the city who, if they only could have been induced to
overcome their prejudices and devote a few hours of previous study to
the libretto and the pianoforte-score of these operas, would not only
have found them entertaining, but would have enjoyed them rapturously.

The essence and perennial charm of German music lies in its _melodious
harmony_. Nothing is more absurd than the notion that there is more
melody in Italian than in German music. The only difference is that in
Italian music the melody is more prominent, being unencumbered by
complicated harmonies and accompaniments, while in German music the
melody is interwoven with the various harmonic parts, which makes it
difficult to follow at first. But when once this gift has been
acquired, it is a source of eternal pleasure. Nor is it so difficult
to cultivate the harmonic sense, if one takes pains to hear good music
often and _attentively_. I once met a young lady on a transatlantic
steamer, who frankly confessed she could not see any beauty in certain
exquisite Wagnerian and Chopinesque modulations and harmonies which I
played for her on the piano. When asked if she did not care for
harmony at all, she replied: "Oh, yes! I know a chord which is _simply
divine_!" Then she played--what do you fancy?--the _simple major
triad_--A flat in the bass, and A flat, C, E flat an octave
higher--which is the most elementary of all chords, the very alphabet
of music. If she found this commonplace chord "simply divine," what
would she have said could she have been made to realize that the
modulations I had played were as superior to her chord in poetic charm
as a line of Shakspere is to the letters A B C? And she _could_ have
been ma