Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human—in painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose. He made what we consider mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?—but how few they are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the ages have produced—the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Michael Angelo: a man it is an honour to have known as it is a disgrace to have scorned—the one man born into the last century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise.
INDEX
Abendzeitung (Dresden), 75
Apel, August, 41, 51
Auber, D.F.E., Masaniello, 47, 89; compared with Meyerbeer, 67, 68
Avenarius, Eduard, marries Caecilie Geyer, 72
Bakunin, Michael, 136, 196
Baumgaertner, Wilhelm, 209
Bayreuth, 71, 323, 325-329, 400, 407, 409, 410
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 25, 26, 330, 331, 347, 350, 356, 371, 408, 416; his influence on Wagner, 33-35, 42, 62; arrangements of, by Wagner, 37; Fidelio, 148
Bellini, Vincenzo, 50, 92, 116, 150, 178
Bennett, Joseph, 328
Berlioz, Hector,
Wagner’s criticism on, 71; tragedy of
his life, 72; praises the Flying Dutchman,
128; in London, 225; his relations with Wagner,
226; his “Ride to the Abyss,” 370
Bethmann, Heinrich, 52, 54
Bispham, David, 277
Brahms, Johannes, 164
Brangaena, 245-248
Brazil,
Wagner receives a commission from, 230, 237
Brendel, Karl Franz, 50, 218
Brockhaus, Friedrich, marries Louise Wagner, 32
Buelow, Cosima von, and Wagner, 60, 323-325
Buelow, Hans von, 71, 250, 418; serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, 208; married to Cosima Liszt, 323, 324
Communication to my Friends, 219
Cornelius, Peter, 71, 418
Cusins, W.G., 46, 134
Dannreuther, Edward, 37, 67
Davison, J.W., 46
Dietsch, Pierre, 80
Dorn, Heinrich, 32, 37, 39, 40, 57
Dusk of the Gods, The, 178, 188, 325, 356, 373, 398; analysis and criticism, 400-406
Dvorak, Anton, compared with Wagner, 291, 292
Elgar, Sir Edward, 291
End in Paris, An, 212, 213
Europa, 75
Feen, Die, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 60-63. 72, 86, 93, 137