with which I drew in all the chaotic variety of sound that I heard as the orchestra tuned up:  the long drawn A of the oboe, which seemed like a call from the dead to rouse the other instruments, never failed to raise all my nerves to a feverish pitch of tension, and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe.  Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on the piano.

Another work also exercised a great fascination over me, namely, the overture to Fidelio in E major, the introduction to which affected me deeply.  I asked my sisters about Beethoven, and learned that the news of his death had just arrived.  Obsessed as I still was by the terrible grief caused by Weber’s death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of this great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, filled me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my childish dread of the ghostly fifths on the violin.  It was now Beethoven’s music that I longed to know more thoroughly; I came to Leipzig, and found his music to Egmont on the piano at my sister Louisa’s.  After that I tried to get hold of his sonatas.  At last, at a concert at the Gewandthaus, I heard one of the master’s symphonies for the first time; it was the Symphony in A major.  The effect on me was indescribable.  To this must be added the impression produced on me by Beethoven’s features, which I saw in the lithographs that were circulated everywhere at that time, and by the fact that he was deaf, and lived a quiet secluded life.  I soon conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique supernatural being, with whom none could compare.  This image was associated in my brain with that of Shakespeare; in ecstatic dreams I met both of them, saw and spoke to them, and on awakening found myself bathed in tears.

It was at this time that I came across Mozart’s Requiem, which formed the starting-point of my enthusiastic absorption in the works of that master.  His second finale to Don Juan inspired me to include him in my spirit world.

I was now filled with a desire to compose, as I had before been to write verse.  I had, however, in this case to master the technique of an entirely separate and complicated subject.  This presented greater difficulties than I had met with in writing verse, which came to me fairly easily.  It was these difficulties that drove me to adopt a career which bore some resemblance to that of a professional musician, whose future distinction would be to win the titles of Conductor and Writer of Opera.