“Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings”

—  Richard Wagner

21 June 1880
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)
Context: Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.

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Richard Wagner39
German composer, conductor 1813–1883

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