James Zehm writes:

>However Alan Bullock (a.o.) mentions in his biography that
>Hitler in around 1910, still without having any education, borrowed his
>friend Hanisch's piano and started, inspired by Wagner, to compose a play,
>"Wieland", about the blacksmith with the same name, after first having made
>some musical experiments.  I cannot think much good about such a project
>from someone without education, but I wonder if anyone could provide more
>info on this.  I would find it very interesting to know.

Ian Kershaw mentiones this in his new biography, "Hitler: 1889-1936:
Hubris," part of a larger discussion of Hitler's impulsiveness,
shiftlessness and general inability to finish what he started.

Kershaw's account seems to differ a bit from your recounting of Bullock,
however. Here's what he writes:

   "Systematic preparation and hard work were as foreign to the young
   Hitler as they would be to the later dictator. ... (H)is time was
   largely spent in the dilettante fashion, as it had been in Linz,
   devising grandiose schemes shared only with the willing (August
   'Gustl') Kubizek (a music student friend of Hitler's in Vienna) --
   fantasy plans that usually arose from sudden whims and bright ideas
   and were dropped almost as soon as they had begun.

   ... A chance remark by Kubizek that he had heard in one of his music
   lectures that Wagner's writings included a brief sketch for a musical
   drama of 'Weiland the Smith' led to Hitler immediately looking up
   the saga in a book he had on 'Gods and Heroes,' then starting to
   write the same night. The following day, sitting at the piano, Hitler
   told Kubizek he was going to turn 'Wieland' into an opera. He would
   compose the music and Kubizek would write it down. For days, despite
   difficulties which the patient Kubizek raised along with hesitant
   remarks on Adolf's limited musical expertise, he was engrossed in
   the work, eating, drinking, and sleeping little. But after a while
   he 'spoke less and less of it, and in the end did not mention it at
   all.' " (Kershaw, pp. 39-40)

Kershaw also discusses Hitler's amateurish music criticism and his devotion
to "the Wagner Cult" (his words, not mine).  "Adolf's passion for Wagner ...
knew no bounds," he writes.  In Vienna, Hitler and Kubizek saw Lohengrin,
"which remained Hitler's favourite," 10 times.  "For him," Kubizek later
wrote, "a second-rate Wagner was a hundred times better than a first-class
Verdi."

There's more in Kershaw's book on Hitler and Wagner, much of which is very
interesting indeed. (I just started reading it over the weekend. I'm about
250 pages into it.) Hope this helps.

Regards,
Bob Chen
Los Angeles, CA