to which Liszt was at that time condemned, and which bound him to a perpetual environment of distracting and exciting elements, debarred us from all more intimate and fruitful intercourse.  Yet from this time onward I continued to receive constant testimonies of the profound and lasting impression I had made upon him, as well as of his sympathetic remembrance of me.  From various parts of the world, wherever his triumphal progress led him, people, chiefly of the upper classes, came to Dresden for the purpose of hearing Rienzi.  They had been so interested by Liszt’s reports of my work, and by his playing of various selections from it, that they all came expecting something of unparalleled importance.

Besides these indications of Liszt’s enthusiastic and friendly sympathy, other deeply touching testimonies appeared from different quarters.  The startling beginning made by Werder, on the occasion of his midnight visit after the second performance of the Fliegender Hollander in Berlin, was shortly afterwards followed by a similarly unsolicited approach in the form of an effusive letter from an equally unknown personage, Alwino Frommann, who afterwards became my faithful friend.  After my departure from Berlin she heard Schroder-Devrient twice in the Fliegender Hollander, and the letter in which she described the effect produced upon her by my work conveyed to me for the first time the vigorous and profound sentiments of a deep and confident recognition such as seldom falls to the lot of even the greatest master, and cannot fail to exercise a weighty influence on his mind and spirit, which long for self-confidence.

I have no very vivid recollections of my own doings during this first year of my position as conductor in a sphere of action which gradually grew more and more familiar.  For the anniversary of my appointment, and to some extent as a personal recognition, I was commissioned to procure Gluck’s Armida.  This we performed in March, 1843, with the co-operation of Schroder-Devrient, just before her temporary departure from Dresden.  Great importance was attached to this production, because, at the same moment, Meyerbeer was inaugurating his general-directorship in Berlin by a performance of the same work.  Indeed, it was in Berlin that the extraordinary respect entertained for such a commemoration of Gluck had its origin.  I was told that Meyerbeer went to Rellstab with the score of Armida in order to obtain hints as to its correct interpretation.

As not long afterwards I also heard a strange story of two silver candlesticks, wherewith the famous composer was said, to have enlightened the no less famous critic when showing him the score of his Feldlager in Schlesien, I decided to attach no great importance to the instructions he might have received, but rather to help myself by a careful handling of this difficult score, and by introducing some softness into it through modulating the variations in tone as much as possible.  I