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Updated: May 3, 2025
Weinlig had taught him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each masterpiece an easier task; and to Weinlig the world owes a huge debt of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death in 1842 he dedicated The Love-feast of the Apostles to his widow.
Richard Wagner, who has been somewhat ironically called the musician of the future, and whose music has been relegated to posterity by a considerable number of his contemporaries, was born at Leipsic, May 22, 1813. After his preliminary studies in Dresden and Leipsic, he took his first lessons in music from Cantor Weinlig.
Richard now began to realize the need of solid work, and settled down to study music seriously, this time under Theodor Weinlig, who was cantor in the famous Thomas School. In less than six months the boy was able to solve the most difficult problems in counterpoint. He learned to know Mozart's music, and tried to write with more simplicity of style.
His first creative attempt was a blood-thirsty drama, where forty-two characters are killed, and the few survivors are haunted by the ghosts. Young Wagner soon devoted himself to the study of music, and, in 1833, became a pupil of Theodor Weinlig, a distinguished teacher of harmony and counterpoint.
So Richard had to muddle along as he best might, while his good relatives doubted whether he would ever be able to do anything at all, until by good fortune he tried Theo. Weinlig.
His Matthew Passion lay there untouched, with the dust thick on it, and there it remained until Mendelssohn had it sung a century after its first and only previous performance. Here Wagner took lessons on the pianoforte from Gottlieb Müller, and never learnt to play. Later he worked at counterpoint with Weinlig. But at first the drama and not music continued to hold his attention.
"Now," said Weinlig at the last, "you will probably never want to write a fugue, but the knowledge that you can will give you confidence." According to the late Mr. Dannreuther his words were, "You have learnt to stand on your own legs." So it came to pass that Richard's ambition was fulfilled: he was a musician.
Weinlig saw what was wrong and what was wanted; instead of Müller's "you must not do this or that: it is against 'rule," he explained matters and showed Richard that if he once learnt the tricks of the trade he would be able to compose just as he liked; in six months Richard had become an expert contrapuntist and could fugue it with students who had toiled for years.
In the letters, in accounts written by Dorn and others, we find fire, enthusiasm, even a good deal of blatherskite and wild vapouring, but scarcely a hint of "poetry," of the special poetical sense, of the poet's outlook on life: and in his music he was chiefly occupied in mastering the technical side of the craft, assimilating, and at the same time emancipating himself from, the lessons with Weinlig, and, absorbed in the task, simply letting romance, poetry, imagination, fancy and the rest go hang; his practical outward life was devoted to talking what he thought was politics and drinking lager.
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