But to go back to my story.
Reassured on the subject of the performance, I continued my preachment, singing the leading motifs, explaining the orchestration and doing my best to work my little gang up to a pitch of enthusiasm, to the great wonderment of our neighbours who—mostly simple country folks—were so wrought upon by my speeches that they quite expected to be carried away by their emotions, wherein they were usually grievously disappointed.
I also named each member of the orchestra as he came in and gave a dissertation on his playing until I was stopped short by the three knocks behind the scenes. Then we sat with beating hearts awaiting the signal from Kreutzer or Valentino’s raised baton. After that, no humming, no beating time on the part of our neighbours. Our rule was Draconian.
Knowing every note of the score, I would have let myself be chopped in pieces rather than let the conductor take liberties with it. Wait quietly and write my expostulations? Not exactly! No half-measures for me!
There and then I would publicly denounce the sinners and my remarks went straight home.
For instance, I noticed one day that in Iphigenia in Tauris cymbals had been added to the Scythian dance, whereas Gluck had only employed strings, and in the Orestes recitative, the trombones, that come in so perfectly appropriately, were left out altogether.
I decided that if these barbarisms were repeated I would let them know it and I lay in wait for my cymbals.
They appeared.
I waited, although boiling over with rage, until the end of the movement, then, in the moment’s silence that followed, I yelled:
“Who dares play tricks with Gluck and put cymbals where there are none?”