Old Fogy | Page 9

hope that Philadelphia is not alluded to! I am also informed
that the lad occasionally goes to concerts! Well, he begged me to visit
Bayreuth just once before I died. We argued the thing all last June and
July at Dussek Villa--you remember my little lodge up in the wilds of
Wissahickon!--and at last was I, a sensible old fellow who should have
known better, persuaded to sail across the sea to a horrible town,
crowded with cheap tourists, vulgar with cheap musicians, and to hear
what? Why, Wagner! There is no need of telling you again what I think
of him. You know! I really think I left home to escape the terrible heat,
and I am quite sure that I left Bayreuth to escape the terrible music.
Apart from the fact that it was badly sung and played--who ever does
play and sing this music well?--it was written by Wagner, and though I
am not a prejudiced person--ahem!--I cannot stand noise for noise's
sake. Art for art they call it nowadays.
I fled Bayreuth. I reached Munich. The weather was warm, yet of a
delightful balminess. I was happy. Had I not got away from Wagner,
that odious, bourgeois name and man! Munich, I argued, is a musical
city. It must be, for it is the second largest beer-drinking city in
Germany. Therefore it is given to melody. Besides, I had read of
Munich's model Mozart performances. Here, I cried, here will I revel in
a lovely atmosphere of art. My German was rather rusty since my
Weimar days, but I took my accent, with my courage, in both hands

and asked a coachman to drive me to the opera-house. Through green
and luscious lanes of foliage this dumpy, red-faced scoundrel drove; by
the beautiful Isar, across the magnificent Maximilian bridge over
against the classic façade of the Maximilineum. Twisting tortuously
about this superb edifice, we tore along another leafy road lined on one
side by villas, on the other bordered by a park. Many carriages by this
time had joined mine in the chase. What a happy city, I reflected, that
enjoys its Mozart with such unanimity! Turning to the right we went at
a grand gallop past a villa that I recognized as the Villa Stuck from the
old pictures I had seen; past other palaces until we reached a vast space
upon which stood a marmoreal pile I knew to be the Mozart theater.
What a glorious city is Munich, to thus honor its Mozart! And the
building as I neared it resembled, on a superior scale, the Bayreuth barn.
But this one was of marble, granite, gold, and iron. Up to the esplanade,
up under the massive portico where I gave my coachman a tip that
made his mean eyes wink. Then skirting a big beadle in blue,
policemen, and loungers, I reached the box-office.
"Have you a stall?" I inquired. "Twenty marks" ($5.00), he asked in
turn. "Phew!" I said aloud: "Mozart comes high, but we must have
him." So I fetched out my lean purse, fished up a gold piece, put it
down, and then an inspiration overtook me--I kept one finger on the
money. "Is it Don Giovanni or Magic Flute this afternoon?" I
demanded. The man stared at me angrily. "What you talk about? It is
Tristan und Isolde. This is the new Wagner theater!" I must have yelled
loudly, for when I recovered the big beadle was slapping my back and
urging me earnestly to keep in the open air. And that is why I went to
Salzburg!
Despite Bayreuth, despite Munich, despite Wagner, I was soon happy
in the old haunts of the man whose music I adore. I went through the
Mozart collection, saw all the old pictures, relics, manuscripts, and I
reverently fingered the harpsichord, the grand piano of the master.
Even the piece of "genuine Court Plaister" from London, and numbered
42 in the catalogue, interested me. After I had read the visitors' book,
inscribed therein my own humble signature, after talking to death the
husband and wife who act as guardians of these Mozart treasures, I

visited the Mozart platz and saw the statue, saw Mozart's residence, and
finally--bliss of bliss--ascended the Kapuzinberg to the Mozart cottage,
where the Magic Flute was finished.
Later, several weeks later, when the Wagner municipal delirium had
passed, I left Salzburg with a sad heart and returned to Munich. There I
was allowed to bathe in Mozart's music and become healed. I heard an
excellent performance of his Cosi Fan Tutti at the Residenztheater, an
ideal spot for this music. With the accompaniment of an orchestra of
thirty, more real music was made and sung than the whole Ring Cycle
contains. Some day, after my death, without doubt, the world