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Updated: June 22, 2025
Spohr's authority was immense throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the Dutchman, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere, though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, and the score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it unopened.
The only consolation I could find was the personality and childlike nature of his step- daughter Johanna, who was then fifteen, and who sang me Spohr's Rose, wie bist du so schon with great expression and in a voice of an extraordinarily beautiful quality.
When the company went to supper Ole found on the leader's music-rack a concerto of Spohr's, and began to try it over. Carried away with the music, he forgot himself, and was discovered by Lundholm on his return, and scolded for his presumption. "What impudence!" said the violinist. "Perhaps you think you could play this at sight, boy?" "Yes," was the reply, "I think I could."
Some indefatigable musician inside was practising the violin with surprising energy and vigor, and within the little garden the distant murmur of the river and the gentle breathing of the West wind round the fell were entirely conquered and banished by these triumphant shakes and turns, or by the flourishes and the broad cantabile passages of one of Spohr's Andantes.
He gives an amusing account of his first day in London, on the streets of which city he appeared in a most brilliantly colored shawl waistcoat, and narrowly escaped being pelted by the enraged mob, for the English people were then in mourning for the death of George III, which had recently occurred, and Spohr's gay attire was construed as a public insult.
Spohr's more pretentious works are a singular union of meagerness of idea with the most polished richness of manner; but, in imagination and thought, he is far the inferior of those whose knowledge of treating the orchestra and contrapuntal skill could not compare with his.
Wagner always cherished the recollection of this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician, and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in all literature.
Here he found that a French theatrical troupe was performing every evening before the august assembly, but only the privileged few could by any possibility gain admittance to the theatre. Spohr's ingenuity was equal to the emergency, and making friends with the second horn player, he induced that artist to allow him to substitute for him one night.
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