The essay which provoked the widest and fiercest hostility, especially amongst the Jews, was the _Judaism in Music_. Wagner started from two premises, (i) That the Jews, being alien in thought and feeling, could not express themselves in _our (i.e._ German) art; and (2) that had they thought and felt like Germans, they would have succeeded no better; for music--that is, song--is idealized speech, and the gurglings and bubblings which do duty for speech with the Jews cannot be idealized into anything beautiful. The answer is that very great music has been written by Jews; that music was an English, a Flemish and an Italian art before the Germans knew anything about it; that if music must be idealized German speech, with its guttural chokings, the less we have of it the better. The Jews paid little attention to Wagner's arguments, but objected to his "personalities." Now, the reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or "chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and some of the worst of these can be traced to Jew scribblers. Yet on the publication of _Judaism in Music_ in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, a wail went up from these journalistic descendants of Elijah; and several prominent Jew musicians signed and presented to the authorities of the Leipzig conservatoire of music a petition praying that Brendel (the editor who published the essay) might be dismissed from his post in the conservatoire. These underhand tactics put the Jews out of court. Nevertheless, Wagner's essay was a bad mistake. It is bad science, bad history, bad argument; it did no person, no cause, any good, and it worked a very great deal of harm.
Wagner was at his best when writing about music or about musicians he had known. A paper on Spontini, belonging to this period (Spontini died in 1851), has a pleasant, generous note; and the account of the pompous old gentleman's visit to Dresden a few years previous is amusingly lifelike. The _Communication to my Friends_, a trifle egotistical, is still full of interest. The article on musical criticism is not so good as it might have been. Wagner had the utmost contempt for the ordinary press criticism of the day: with that sort of thing, he wrote Uhlig, one could not tempt the cat from behind the stove. He knew what criticism should not be, but when he came to what it should be his view was warped by the obsession that pure music had reached its boundaries, and the future of music was involved with the future of the music-drama. When his prejudices were not aroused, he himself was the greatest critic who has lived: his programmes of the Choral and Eroica Symphonies are masterpieces in their kind; and his analysis of the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture can never be surpassed. Stage-managers have found his directions for the performing of _Tannhäuser_, _Lohengrin_ and the _Dutchman_ invaluable; they are also sometimes read by conductors, and should be read by singers. They show how in composing his operas Wagner meant every note he put to paper: the most minute fibres of the musical growth are alive, a living part of the organism.