264.—FALLIBLE.
Here is a little incident that illustrates how great composers are not above the slips made by common mortals, and how human ears are not always as infallible as their owners would pretend them to be.
Meyerbeer once went to Stuttgart to conduct the first performance of one of his operas at the court theater. During the rehearsal of the work, he found fault with the clarinet player because he played a certain melody on the B flat clarinet when it was written for a clarinet in A. He requested the player to substitute an A clarinet. The clever performer bent forward and placed the instrument on the rack at his feet, then took it up again, blew through it, as if to warm up another clarinet, and began anew on the same B flat instrument. "Listen, gentlemen, listen," cried Meyerbeer; "there is the A clarinet tone color I had in mind!"