of Korner’s poems, among them “Lutzow’s wilde Jagd” and the “Schwertlied.”  These songs were soon in everybody’s mouth and acted like sparks flung into the powder-magazine of national feeling.  Naturally they reacted upon the composer himself, and under their influence and the spirit which they did so much to foster Weber’s Germanism developed from an emotion into a religion.  He worked with redoubled zeal in behalf of German opera at Prague, and when he was called to be Court Music Director in Dresden in 1817, he entered upon his duties as if consecrated to a holy task.  He had found the conditions more favorable to German opera in the Bohemian capital than in the Saxon.  In Prague he had sloth and indifference to overcome; in Dresden the obstacles were hatred of Prussia, the tastes of a court and people long accustomed to Italian traditions, and the intrigues of his colleagues in the Italian opera and the church.  What I wrote some eighteen years ago {3} of Weber’s labors in Dresden may serve again to make plain how the militant Germanism of the composer achieved its great triumph.

The Italian regime was maintained in Dresden through the efforts of the conductor of the Italian opera, Morlacchi; the concert master, Poledro; the church composer, Schubert, and Count von Einsiedel, Cabinet Minister.  The efforts of these men placed innumerable obstacles in Weber’s path, and their influence heaped humiliations upon him.  Confidence alone in the ultimate success of his efforts to regenerate the lyric drama sustained him in his trials.  Against the merely sensuous charm of suave melody and lovely singing he opposed truthfulness of feeling and conscientious endeavor for the attainment of a perfect ensemble.  Here his powers of organization, trained by his experiences in Prague, his perfect knowledge of the stage, imbibed with his mother’s milk, and his unquenchable zeal, gave him amazing puissance.  Thoroughness was his watchword.  He put aside the old custom of conducting while seated at the pianoforte, and appeared before his players with a baton.  He was an inspiration, not a figurehead.  His mind and his emotions dominated theirs, and were published in the performance.  He raised the standard of the chorus, stimulated the actors, inspected the stage furnishings and costumes, and stamped harmony of feeling, harmony of understanding, and harmony of effort upon the first work undertaken—­a performance of Mehul’s “Joseph in Egypt.”  Nor did he confine his educational efforts to the people of the theatre.  He continued in Dresden the plan first put into practice by him in Prague of printing articles about new operas in the newspapers to stimulate public appreciation of their characteristics and beauties.  For a while the work of organization checked his creative energies, but when his duties touching new music for court or church functions gave him the opportunity, he wrote with undiminished energy.