Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-04-17

GOSSIP about the Composer OF 6rann.
hnuser''-HIs Music and Disciples.
The Paris correspondent Of the New York
EVening Post says:
WAeNER's PERSONAL APPEARANCE. pr.
Wagner, as every body knows, is a German
Liberal, condemned for his share in the up
heavings Of l949 to "leave his country for'
what its rulers regard as "his country's
good;p and whose peculiar views in regard
TO music, and the aims and method sof mu-
sical composition, have thus obtained among
the innoyators of"Y Young Germany adegree
OF acceptance, due, for the most part, il may
ts ne eharitably surmised,, to sympathy with
the composers political views and the BAN
ishment from the common fatherland which
they have brought upon him.
He is about forty-five years of age; of
middle hight, with q pear shaped face, his
head being large and enormously full in the
forehead, and his chin, which is very promi-
nent, tapering off to a point. His eyes are
gray and his spectacles golden; his nose is
sharp, his complexion pale and suggestive
Of skin tender under the razor. The ex-
preston Of his countenance is sharp and
peevish; his manner is pedantic, and alto
gether he looks much more like pedagogue
than musician. So perfectly convinced Is
he of his superiority to the rest of mankind
that his conceit is something almost sub.
lime, in its way, and causes him to accept as
his due all that the devotion of his admirers
can give him, without being burdened with
the faintest perception of obligation for any
amount of time, labor or money be may
have received at their hands. l -
vAeNER's MUSIC.
The popularity of DIR. Wagners musical
theories consists in his condemnation of all
that class of musical effects which result
nh ox,I -.
in music which the musicians understand by
the term melody, and the non musician feels
and loves as tune, asserting that such effects
are meretricious, frivolous sensual, false and
abominable, unworthy of the admiration of
the human mind, and to be rejected by pure
reason as foreign to the sphere of true mus.
ical art. He, therefore, denies the claims of
Gluck, Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart
and Weber to be considered as musicians; !;
would drive the whole Italian school, with
Rossini and Bellini at their head to the
lowest regions of the inferno of false guides
and depraved pretenders, and claims to be
the founder of new school destined to
etface the memory Of past errors, and to in
itiate the world into The 'music of the fa-
ture." I 77
wAGNER's DISCIPLES.
Foremost among the converts to the faith
of Instrumentation as it is in Wagner stands
the unriValled piano player-but third-rate
composer-FranE List, at once the most IL
lastrious and the most fanatic of Wagner's
adherents; and next to Liszt comes his som
in-law,. Baron Won Bulow, pianist to the
King Of Prussia. After these comes a host
Of German philosophers, poets and politico.
musical amateurs, who have been proclaim
ing 50 loudly and for SO many years the pro-
fundity and sublimity of the i'creationsS of
their chief that general curiosity has been
excited upon the subiect-a curiosity that
has been heightened by the amazement and
horror so generally expressed, on their re-
turn to their respective countries, by nom
German travellers in Germany, whose ears
had been submitted to the action of the
Wagnerian creations during their travels.