ABSTRACT
Eduard Hanslick’s are primary source material for a variety of reasons, but in this context they are included because his life paralleled the careers of several generations of composers. Hanslick assumes that some unfavorable reviews he had written in later years had lost him the friendship, but he never stopped admiring either the genius or the originality of the Frenchman. Hanslick claimed that he had never attacked Wagner over details or violations of rules. “The reviews written over forty years prove conclusively that the authors never cared about such things.” When Hanslick began his career as a critic it was not yet possible to earn one’s living by criticism and belles lettres, at least on the Continent. Hanslick was always clear and to the point, the probable reason for his greater influence on a lay public. It was in 1861, when he was only thirty-six, that he became a professor.
