may even be due to the entire inconvenience of the old concert-rooms
that I owe my vivid recollection of my first meeting with Wagner's work.

How mysterious it was, and what a strange agitation it filled me with!
There were new effects of orchestration, new timbres, new rhythms, and
new subjects; it held the wild poetry of the far-away Middle Ages and
old legends, it throbbed with the fever of our hidden sorrows and
desires. I did not understand it very well. How should I? The music was
taken from works quite unknown to me. It was almost impossible to seize
the connection of the ideas on account of the poor acoustics of the
room, the bad arrangement of the orchestra, and the unskilled
players--all of which served to break up the musical design and spoil
the harmony of its colouring. Passages that should have been made
prominent were slurred over, and others were distorted by faulty time or
want of precision. Even to-day, when our orchestras are seasoned by
years of study, I should often be unable to follow Wagner's thought
throughout a whole scene if I did not happen to know the score, for the
outline of a melody is often smothered by the accompaniment, and so its
sentiment is lost. If we still find obscurity of meaning in Wagner's
works you can imagine how much worse it was then. But what did it
matter? I used to feel myself stirred with passions that were not human:
some magnetic influence seemed to thrill me with both pleasure and pain,
and I felt invigorated and happy, for it brought me strength. It seemed
as if my child's heart were torn from me and the heart of a hero put in
its place.

Nor was I alone in the experience. On the faces of the people round
about me I saw the reflection of my own emotions. What was the meaning
of it? The audience consisted chiefly of poor and commonplace people,
whose faces were lined with the wear and tear of a life without interest