Probably Brahms' Vienna friends and admirers little dreamed how near they had been at this time to losing their favourite. The position of municipal music-director at Düsseldorf was pressed on his acceptance in the autumn of 1876, and he was sufficiently tempted by it to be characteristically unable to decide on a negative answer. He was, indeed, so long in coming to a final resolution, that the Düsseldorf authorities had every reason to feel persuaded they had secured him for the opening of the year 1877. At the last moment he wrote: 'I cannot make up my mind to it.' This seems to have been the last occasion on which he entertained the idea of binding himself to the performance of fixed duties, though it has been surmised that he might have consented at a somewhat later period to associate himself with a high class for composition at the conservatoire of the Vienna 'Gesellschaft,' if he had been approached by the principal, Josef Hellmesberger, on the subject of forming one. Certain incidents belonging to the autumn of 1877, related by Widmann in his Brahms' 'Recollections,' show that at this time, when the master had successfully proved his powers in every form of composition for the concert-room, the old desire to try his hand at writing for the stage revived within him. Brahms and Widmann met at Mannheim, and were present at the production, on September 30, of Götz's unfinished opera, 'Francesca di Rimini,' under Frank. In the course of a long _tête-à-tête_, held on their return to their hotel after the performance, Brahms clearly explained his views on the subject of opera texts, 'letting it be seen,' says Widmann, 'that any resolution he might have formed against composing an opera might give way were he to find himself in possession of a libretto really to his liking.' The convictions professed on this occasion by the composer may be traced to an attitude of mind similar to that to which we referred on recording his conversation with Bulthaupt. Strange as it may appear, they have a fundamental kinship with those which led Wagner to embark on his career as a musico-dramatic reformer, though the methods proposed by Brahms were not only much more drastic than those pursued by Wagner, but ran, as Widmann has observed, directly in the opposite direction from that taken by the development of modern art as represented by this master. 'The composition of music to the entire drama seemed to Brahms unnecessary and even mischievous. Only the culminating points and those parts of the action should be set for which music would be an inherently suitable medium of expression. The librettist would thus gain space and freedom for the dramatic development of his subject, whilst the composer would be at liberty to devote himself solely to the purposes of his art which would be best served if he were able to concentrate his energies on a definite situation such as a jubilant _ensemble_.'