chosen as conductor, and thus it happened that Wagner's earliest and
deepest impressions came from the composer of the "Freischütz." In his
autobiographic sketch Wagner writes: "Nothing gave me so much pleasure
as the 'Freischütz.' I often saw Weber pass by our house when he came
from rehearsals. I always looked upon him with a holy awe." It was lucky
for young Richard that his stepfather, Geyer, besides being a
portrait-painter, an actor, and a playwright, was also one of Weber's
tenors at the opera. This enabled the boy, in spite of the family's
poverty, to hear many of the performances. In fact, Wagner, like Weber,
owes a considerable part of his success as a writer for the stage to the
fact that he belonged to a theatrical family, and thus gradually learned
"how the wheels go round." Such practical experience is worth more than
years of academic study.

While Wagner cordially acknowledged the fascination which Weber's music
exerted on him in his boyhood, he was hardly fair to Weber in his later
writings. In these he tries to prove that his own music-dramas are an
outgrowth of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. When Beethoven wrote that work,
Wagner argues, he had come to the conclusion that purely instrumental
music had reached a point beyond which it could not go alone, wherefore
he called in the aid of poetry (sung by soloists and chorus), and thus
intimated that the art-work of the future was the musical drama,--a
combination of poetry and music.

This is a purely fantastic notion on Wagner's part. There is no evidence
that Beethoven had any such purpose; he merely called in the aid of the
human voice to secure variety of sound and expression. Poetry and music
had been combined centuries before Beethoven in the opera and in
lyric song.