I have already stated that Weber, like Beethoven, generally got his
new ideas during his walks in the country; and riding in an open
carriage seems to have especially stimulated his brain, as it did
Mozart's. The weird and original music to the dismal Wolf's-Glen scene
in the "Freischütz" was conceived one morning when he was on his way
to Pillnitz, and the wagon was occasionally shrouded in dense clouds.

A curious story is told by a member of Weber's orchestra, showing how
a musical theme may be sometimes suggested by incongruous and
grotesque objects. He was one day taking a walk with Weber in the
suburbs of Dresden. It began to rain and they entered a beer garden
which had just been deserted by the guests in consequence of the rain.
The waiters had piled the chairs on the tables, pell mell. At sight of
these confused groups of chairs and tables Weber suddenly exclaimed,
"Look here, Roth, doesn't that look like a great triumphal march?
Thunder! hear those trumpet blasts! I can use that--I can use that!"
In the evening he wrote down what his imagination had heard, and it
subsequently became the great march in "Oberon."

Some psychological interest also attaches to the remark with which
Weber's son prefaces this story--namely that Weber was constantly
transmuting forms and colors into sounds; and that lines and forms
seemed to stimulate his melodic inventiveness pre-eminently, whereas
sounds affected his harmonic sense.

My subject is by no means exhausted, but for fear of fatiguing the
reader with an excess of details I will close with a few facts
regarding Richard Wagner's method of composing. I am indebted for
these facts to the kindness of Herr Seidl, of the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York, who was Wagner's secretary for several years, and