Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/85

  Frau Kinkel was one of the most highly educated and most accomplished musicians I have ever known. I owe to her not only my capacity to enjoy Beethoven, Bach, and Gluck, and other great classical composers, but she also made me intimately acquainted with Chopin and Schumann, whose productions she played with exquisite grace. Still her musical principles and taste were severely those of the “old school,” and she detested Wagner as a reckless and almost criminal demoralizer of the musical conscience. On the way to the concert she did not fail to give me a thorough lecture on Wagner's vices, his contempt of the most sacred rules of harmony, his impossible transitions from one key to another, his excruciating dissonances, his intemperate straining after sensuous effects, and what not. “It is true,” she added by way of precautionary warning, “there is something exciting, a certain fascination in his music, and many people are carried away by it—some musicians, even, of whom something better might have been expected. But I hope when you hear it, you will remain cool and not lose your critical sense.” I had never heard a note of Wagner's music. I had seen some of his writings, the tone of which had not favorably impressed me. My personal contact with Wagner in Zürich, of which I have spoken before, had not been at all sympathetic; on the contrary, I shared the judgment about Wagner prevalent among the refugees there, that he was an excessively presumptuous, haughty, dogmatic, repellent person, from whom it was best to keep away. I was, therefore, by no means predisposed to be taken off my feet by the charms of his productions. All of which, when I told her, was quite reassuring to my mentor. As to the performance of Jenny Lind, Frau Kinkel and I were altogether of the same mind and feeling. Jenny Lind was then no longer young. Her appearance, although