In music he learned a great deal from his friend Schalk,[184] a professor at the Vienna Conservatoire; but, like Berlioz, he got most of his education from the libraries, and spent months in reading the scores of the great masters.  Not having a piano, he used to carry Beethoven’s sonatas to the Prater Park in Vienna and study them on a bench in the open air.  He soaked himself in the classics—­in Bach and Beethoven, and the German masters of the Lied—­Schubert and Schumann.  He was one of the young Germans who was passionately fond of Berlioz; and it is due to Wolf that France was afterwards honoured in the possession of this great artist, whom French critics, whether of the school of Meyerbeer, Wagner, Franck, or Debussy, have never understood.  He was also early a friend of old Anton Bruckner, whose music we do not know in France, neither his eight symphonies, nor his Te Deum, nor his masses, nor his cantatas, nor anything else of his fertile work.  Bruckner had a sweet and modest character, and an endearing, if rather childish, personality.  He was rather crushed all his life by the Brahms party; but, like Franck in France, he gathered round him new and original talent to fight the academic art of his time.

[Footnote 184:  Joseph Schalk was one of the founders of the Wagner-Verein at Vienna, and devoted his life to propagating the cult of Bruckner (who called him his “Herr Generalissimus “), and to fighting for Wolf.]

But of all these influences, the strongest was that of Wagner.  Wagner came to Vienna in 1875 to conduct Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin.  There was then among the younger people a fever of enthusiasm similar to that which Werther had caused a century before.  Wolf saw Wagner.  He tells us about it in his letters to his parents.  I will quote his own words, and though they make one smile, one loves the impulsive devotion of his youth; and they make one feel, too, that a man who inspires such an affection, and who can do so much good by a little sympathy, is to blame when he does not befriend others—­above all if he has suffered, like Wagner, from loneliness and the want of a helping hand.  You must remember that this letter was written by a boy of fifteen.

     “I have been to—­guess whom?... to the master, Richard Wagner!  Now
     I will tell you all about it, just as it happened.  I will copy the
     words down exactly as I wrote them in my note-book.

“On Thursday, 9 December, at half-past ten, I saw Richard Wagner for the second time at the Hotel Imperial, where I stayed for half an hour on the staircase, awaiting his arrival (I knew that on that day he would conduct the last rehearsal of his Lohengrin).  At last the master came down from the second floor, and I bowed to him very respectfully while he was yet some distance from me.  He thanked me in a very friendly way.  As he neared the door I sprang forward and opened it for him, upon which he looked