directors of the Gewandhaus Concerts decided to give the native
Leipzig public a chance to hear the new overture.

In this instance Herr Capellmeister Reinecke, who had heard the
piece under my direction, conducted it, and the very same
orchestra played it--in such wise that the audience hissed! I do
not care to investigate how far this result was due to the
straightforward honesty of the persons concerned; let it suffice
that competent musicians, who were present at the performance,
described to me the SORT OF TIME the Herr Capellmeister had
thought fit to beat to the overture--and therewith I knew enough.

If any conductor wishes to prove to his audience or to his
directors, etc., what an ambiguous risk they will run with "Die
Meistersinger," he need take no further trouble than to beat time
to the overture after the fashion in which he is wont to beat it
to the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach (which fashion suits
the works of R. Schumann fairly well); it will then be
sufficiently obvious that he is dealing with a very unpleasant
kind of music--let anyone imagine so animated, yet so sensitive a
thing as the tempo which governs this overture, let this
delicately constituted thing suddenly be forced into the
Procrustus-bed of such a classical time-beater, what will become
of it? The doom is: "Herein shalt thou lie, whatsoever is too
long with thee shall be chopped off, and whatsoever is too short
shall be stretched!" Whereupon the band strikes up and overpowers
the cries of the victim! Safely bedded in this wise, not only the
overture, but, as will appear in the sequel, the entire opera of
Die Meistersinger, or as much of it as was left after the
Capellmeister's cuts, was presented to the public of Dresden. On