. Richard Wagner : his life and works . olently attacking thepoem of William Tell, parodied after Schiller, but addingthat some of the music was so ravishing as to make oneforget the subject. Rossini, however, whomhe declared to be the mostvoluptuously gifted of com-posers, engrossed his mindto the last. It disturbedhim not to be able to clas-sify him ; he would not callhim simply good, still lessmediocre, and as he couldnot put him on a line withthe geniuses of Germanmusic, he was obliged toconfess that he saw therea phenomenon very dim-cult to explain, — and hedid not explain it. As to Gouno
. Richard Wagner : his life and works . olently attacking thepoem of William Tell, parodied after Schiller, but addingthat some of the music was so ravishing as to make oneforget the subject. Rossini, however, whomhe declared to be the mostvoluptuously gifted of com-posers, engrossed his mindto the last. It disturbedhim not to be able to clas-sify him ; he would not callhim simply good, still lessmediocre, and as he couldnot put him on a line withthe geniuses of Germanmusic, he was obliged toconfess that he saw therea phenomenon very dim-cult to explain, — and hedid not explain it. As to Gounod and hisFaust, which he had at-tacked along with William Tell in the same writing, he neverreturned to the charge ; one occasion had sufficed him topass judgment,1 not so much on the production as on the 1 This brief judgment suffices to explain the attacks, as vain as they were des-perate, with which the author of Faust pursued Richard Wagner. The currentopinion is that Wagner has qualified the music of Faust as musique de THE KING OF BAVARIA AND RICHARD Ludwig : Master, let us change, I am betterhere. Let me make music at Bayreuth, and thou, go andreign at Munich ! (Grsetz, Der Floh, Vienna ) 3 76 RICHARD WAGNER tendencies of an inferior talent whose aim was success, andwho, in his eagerness, took up with all kinds of means. Who were his favorite composers, and what were thecompositions of his choice ? Beethoven, with his quartetsor his sonatas for intimate study, and his symphonies forpublic execution ; Bach, with his Well Tempered Clavichord;Mozart with The Magic Flute, II Seraglio, Figaro and DonJuan; Weber with Furyanthe and Dcr Freischutz; Mozartagain, with his symphonies in E flat, G minor and C were his daily friends, his boon companions. What helooked for first of all in a composition, he said, was homo-geneity of style, equilibrium between the means and the end,and he found this absolute concordance between Mozartsmusic and his or
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