Wagner had a beautiful way of dividing up the parts for violins and other instruments into smaller choirs which answered each other and with which he could get special effects. For example, the Prelude of _Lohengrin_ is probably the nearest thing in shimmering music to what the angels must play, so heavenly is it. Here he divides the violins into many parts and it is far more beautiful than if they all played the same thing. Thus, he gave more value to the instruments and greatly improved the orchestra. His preludes in which you hear the leading motives or name tags, are a table of contents for what follows. Wagner did not use tricks of decoration like Meyerbeer nor did he give show-off pieces for his singers’ benefit. His idea was to use sincere musical speech to tell the story and not one bit did he care how hard the singer worked to carry out his idea. Wagner, above all, was a dramatist, choosing lofty and noble themes of heroic and ideal subjects in which his imagination could play. He loved the sublime and the great spectacle. The chief interest of Wagner’s opera is in the orchestra which carries the theme webs. He used neither the folk song in its simple beauty nor accepted classic arias which could be taken out and sung. His song is often declaimed and appears not to sing with the orchestra, for the voices are used as instruments and not to show off vocal skill. Yet, Liszt was quick to take out from the operas and transcribe for piano the Fire Music, the Ride of the Valkyrie and many others which we now sing and whistle. Finally, Wagner by his example has given courage to the man of ideas, if he will believe in himself and work without ceasing. CHAPTER XXVI More Opera Makers—Verdi and Meyerbeer to Our Day After reading about the feats of the Wizard it is not surprising that he had many followers,—those who openly claimed to take him for an example, and others who did not realize how much they received from him and would not like to have been called his followers! VERDI—THE GRAND OLD MAN OF ITALY After following the Italian methods of writing opera and having become a very famous composer, Verdi received inspiration from Wagner in the last three or four years of his very long life. He was much loved and it is difficult to tell whether it was his operas or his beautiful character which prompted the affection. He was called “the Grand Old Man of Italy.” A national hero was he, and the Italians’ idol. Praise and flattery did not make him proud but spurred him to work through trouble and good fortune, and so he became one of the greatest opera writers. He was born a few months after Wagner, in the village of Roncole near Parma, and his life was interesting, for he lived at the time when opera was popular and was going through the Wagner upheaval which spread all over Europe.