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If he was not kind to the "bird-stuffers" as he called them, he was even less kind to the ringmen of the orchestra, the illustrious Kapellmeisters who toured the country to show off their flourishes and their dainty hands, those who exercised their virtuosity at the expense of the masters, tried hard to make the most familiar works unrecognizable, and turned somersaults through the hoop of the Symphony in C minor.
He was not sure enough of himself in music to trust to his own personal feelings, and so he slavishly followed the interpretations of Wagner given by the Kapellmeisters, and the licensees of Bayreuth. He desired to reproduce even to the smallest detail the setting and the variegated costumes which delighted the puerile and barbarous taste of the little Court of Wahnfried.
To all of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a belief in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been passed in a German principality with Kapellmeisters and Conservatoriums and a Court Opera Company.
Both tactics produced the same result. Christophe had plunged: nothing could stop him: and as he had promised, everybody was passed in survey, composers and interpreters alike. The first victims were the Kapellmeisters. Christophe did not confine himself to general remarks on the art of conducting an orchestra.
Three men approached the boy, the president of the society and two experienced Kapellmeisters, or choirmasters. In the presence of all the members the boy was given a difficult anthem, which he was invited to set to music in four parts. He was then led by a beadle into an adjoining room, and the door locked. There the boy set to work on his composition.
Just half an hour later the boy knocked on the door in signal that the music was finished. The beadle opened the door, and the boy presented his completed score to the president. The latter examined the score carefully, then handed it to the Kapellmeisters. They in turn examined it, and passed it on to the other members. Each man as he looked at the composition showed his surprise.
Cornelius left two posthumous works, 'Der Cid' and 'Gunlöd, which have been produced during the last few years. They are little more than imitations of Wagner's maturer style. He produced but one opera during his lifetime, but that displayed an originality and a resource for which it would be vain to look in the multifarious compositions of the Kapellmeisters of the period.
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