Richard, we know, had never heard of Beethoven, had never heard a bar of his music.  At the Gewandhaus the symphonies were regularly played, and to one of the performances he went, contented, with his head full of his play, not dreaming of what was to happen to him ere the morrow.  Here are his own words:  “I only remember that one evening I heard a symphony of Beethoven’s, for the first time, that it set me in a fever, and on my recovery I had become a musician.”  This is from one of his stories, but it describes with sufficient closeness what actually happened.  We know that saturated solutions of some salts at a touch solidify into a mass of crystals, and as far as intentions were concerned this, figuratively, happened to Richard:  his purpose was instantly set—­he would be a musician—­nay, he felt he was a musician.  As to his proceedings, however, a better simile would be that of a liquid into which you drop a little of another liquid and immediately a violent commotion with much heat is set up.  Beethoven’s music touched his young being, and a fermentation began which drove him forthwith to make himself a perfectly equipped technical musician.  Almost like Teufelsdroeckh and St. Paul, he was “converted” in the twinkling of an eye.

The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius.  The bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded.  Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and Beethoven took his place.  When he started to compose seriously it was Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained:  Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst Beethoven wrote only utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre music.  But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse to, compose came.  He had heard, probably, all Weber’s operas without any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven’s symphonies, and the incidental music to Egmont, he at once realized that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to write it.  Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a thing as the technique of the novelist’s trade, and believing in the omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written.