MUSIC 125
Rogneda received from the public should not be ascribed to Serov's
admiration of Wagner, whom the Russian public was not yet able
to appreciate, but to that secret love of Meyerbeer which he pro-
fessed in his youth and to which in his works he always remained
true. Indeed, it was due to Serov's efforts that Lohengrin was
produced at the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg, yet in spite of
the enthusiastic reports which he sent Wagner after the perform-
ance, the opera was withdrawn from the repertory. In a word,
Serov's propaganda of cosmopolitanism in music was too prema-
ture to be successful. But was the Russian public sufficiently mature
for the "national school"?
The story of the "mighty band," as mentioned above, can best
answer this question. At the time the "mighty band" was formed,
there already existed in Russian music a certain national tradition.
At the musicales, which its members first gave in Dargornyzhsky's
home and subsequently at that of their leader Balakirev, the
young musicians worshiped Glinka. The "mighty band** re-
garded Bach as a "musical fossil," Haydn and Mozart as "anti-
quated," and Beethoven, except for his Ninth Symphony and last
quartets, ''outmoded." Schumann was most popular with them,
and they deigned also to approve of Chopin, but they accused
Liszt oŁ being theatrical, while Wagner was never even men-
tioned. Such was the mood of the small group of skilled" amateurs
at the beginning of the eighteen-sixties, when the leadership in
musical education was assumed by the Rubinsteins* Conserva-
tory. Anton Rubinstein had just returned from his first triumphal
tour in Europe and was preparing himself for more extensive ones
both in Europe and America. He could well have broadened the
musical horizon of the national school, but he chose to ignore its
members and they responded with sarcasm to his neglect. How-
ever, the Conservatory attended to its duties and, being patronized
by many wealthy and influential people, it soon gained public
approval. The "mighty band" had neither powerful nor wealthy
patrons, but its spirit of opposition to everything old and its ex-
clusiveness in the desire to develop a style of its own increased
during the sixties. Balakirev, the school's exacting mentor, was
the first to experience the result of this estrangement from the
public taste. His Free School of Music and its symphony concerts