Had Wagner never written a line of music, had he elected to be a literary man, a poet, a dramatist, philosopher, his fame to-day would still be world-wide.  Had he confined his genius into this one channel of literary expression, as was his original intention, with his mental equipment, and a Napoleonic ambition that balked at nothing, the product would have been as original and extraordinary, we may be sure, as is his art-product in music.  Wagner, the musician, is so commanding a figure that the literary man is obscured; but when we consider the magnitude of his literary achievement, the dramas Tannhaeuser, Lohengrin, Flying Dutchman, Tristan, Parsifal, the stupendous Ring of the Nibelung, the essays on music, philosophy, criticism and sociology, and reflect that it is, so to speak, a by-product, it becomes apparent that, had he made literature his chief aim in life, the result would have been notable in the annals of the century.

Wagner seriously contemplated writing a biography of Beethoven at one time, and devoted several months to collecting materials for it.  But his finances were still in bad shape, and he was unable to undertake it without an order from some publisher, who would have been required to advance money.  He was unable to find such a party, and the project was abandoned, most unfortunately, as he would have made a valuable contribution to the subject.  The short biographical sketch he wrote on Beethoven on the centenary anniversary of the master’s birth, shows marvellous insight, especially in relation to the critical and analytical parts of it.  This work, instinct with worship of the master, is a product of Wagner’s mature years.  Here, as in his earliest utterances on Beethoven, he is the disciple glad to do homage to his master.

“A century may pass,” said Schopenhauer in a letter to the publishers of the (English) Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany, offering to translate Kant for them, in response to a wish he had seen expressed in their journal that England might ere long have a translation of Kant, “a century may pass ere there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian Philosophy, with so much English, as happen to dwell together in mine.”  Likewise centuries may elapse before another such musician will appear possessing the literary ability, critical faculty, ardor and enthusiasm that Wagner had for this work.

There is an affinity between them in which mind speaks to mind.  When writing on Bach’s influence on Beethoven, he says:[H] “If Haydn passed as teacher of the youth, for the mightily unfolding art-life of the man, our great Sebastian Bach became his leader.  Bach’s wonder-work became his Bible; in it he read, and clean forgot that world of clangor heard no longer.”  This describes Wagner’s own spiritual relationship to Beethoven, and the exaltation that must have been his on reading the symphonies, the Mass in D, the overtures.  He exhausts himself in praise of each.  He makes the Third Leonore Overture of as much account as the entire opera; he continually refers to the Egmont and the Coriolanus Overtures, and says that in the latter and in the Third Leonore, Beethoven stands alone and beyond all imitation.