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Even Meyerbeer taught Wagner something more than the use of certain instruments, the bass-clarinet, for instance. The old operatic speculator indubitably was responsible for Wagner's grand demands upon the scene-painter and the stage-carpenter. His pompous spectacles fired the younger man not only with "Rienzi."
And his orchestra is scarcely more than the orchestra of Beethoven. He did not require the band of independent instrumental families demanded by Berlioz and realized by the modern men. He was content with the old, classical orchestra in which certain groups are strengthened and to which the harp, the English horn, the bass-tuba, the bass-clarinet have been added.
The remaining instruments are: Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass-clarinet, 3 bassoons, contra-bassoon (or contra-bass sarrusophon); 4 horns, 2 trumpets (often muted); 2 cornets-
The king's reproaches of his friend and vassal for his treachery, and the music with its gloomy orchestration, mostly of horns, bassoons, viola, and lower strings, with occasional English horn, and the deepest notes of the clarinet interspersed with wails of the bass-clarinet, are profoundly touching and proceed naturally out of the situation.
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