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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16431-8.txt b/16431-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8557f2c --- /dev/null +++ b/16431-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11315 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Richard Wagner, by John F. Runciman + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Richard Wagner + Composer of Operas + +Author: John F. Runciman + +Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16431] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD WAGNER *** + + + + +Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +RICHARD WAGNER + +COMPOSER OF OPERAS + +BY + +JOHN F. RUNCIMAN + +LONDON +G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. +1913 + + + + +TO +HAROLD HODGE + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +It is now one hundred years since Richard Wagner was born, thirty +since he died. In every land he has his monument in one shape or +another; his music-dramas can be heard all the world over; all the +ancient controversies as to their merits or demerits have died down. +The Bayreuth theatre, the outward and visible sign of his inner +greatness, has risen to the point of its most splendid glory and +lapsed into the limbo of tenth-rate things. Every one who really cares +for the art of music, and especially the art of opera (of which art +music is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and +opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to +simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I +trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous +eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain +and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to +describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time to +consider and to sort out (so to say) the reams that have been written +and printed about Wagner: the bulk of it has had to be thrown on the +scrap-heap: what there was of value has, I hope, been utilised. + +An author who plans a book on an artist or an artistic question must +be wary, especially at the beginning of his adventure. To start away +with a theory, whether new or old, and to yield to the seductive +temptation to convince humanity of its truth--this is to lay a trap +and to take the path that leads straight into it. Theories should be +kept for scientific matters. A work proving that parallel straight +lines never meet need not land the writer in self-contradictions; and +another writer may prove that they must and do meet, and still avoid +getting tangled amongst his own arguments. I even read a book once in +which it was clearly shown that the earth was flat; and, granted a +ludicrous premise, one could but admire the irrefragable logic with +which the conclusion was reached. With regard to art, be your premises +sound or grotesque, the result is the same--muddle. Logic, science, +philosophy, applied to art, spell certain disaster. With mingled pain +and amusement I have noted how more than one writer on music, setting +out in triumphant high spirits to demonstrate this or that, has before +his third chapter demonstrated just the contrary: I have never seen +anything else occur. + +Wagner wrote so much about himself and his art, and appeared so fully +satisfied with his explanations of why he became just what he became +and of why his art was just what it was, that naturally for nearly a +generation his critics fell into one or other of two errors. Either +they accepted his theorisings unreservedly or as unreservedly they +rejected them. In the second case they had to face the difficulty of +coining, shaping, a theory of their own; in either case shipwreck +nearly always promptly ensued; and on the whole, if Wagner had to be +theorised about, one would prefer to have it done by Wagner. He +himself knew the tiny value of his theorisings about his art, for he +declared that when he wrote _Tristan and Isolda_ he found he had +already left his theories far behind. This discovery might well have +served as a warning both to Wagner and to the hosts of his +commentators. Unluckily Wagner was far too fond of theorising, +moralising and generally talking of himself and his works, and he +reckoned he had a big propagandist work to do; so he went on +scribbling to the end. As for the commentators, they neglected the +warning and took Wagner's later doings as an example, with the result +that the library shelves of Europe are stopped and blocked with as big +a heap of rubbish as ever was provoked by great works of art since the +world began to turn round. For Wagner there is an ample excuse: he +honestly thought it necessary to spread his ideas abroad; his aims and +intentions had been so misunderstood, and so stupidly, wickedly, +recklessly misrepresented, that he did not believe his music-dramas +would ever find acceptance until he had cleared the way by explaining +himself. Little good came of it--in fact, the only good result was +that some of his writings fell into the hands of Ludwig II of Bavaria, +and thus led to the ending of his days of misery, and indirectly to +Bayreuth. For the commentators no word of extenuation can be said. +Those, perhaps, of the period 1867-77 were justified in pressing their +master's claims on the public at large, for the support of the public +at large had to be won, and the best way of winning it seemed to lie +in advocating those claims, in season and out of season, through the +agency of the newspaper-press; but the rest of the herd have proved +themselves an unqualified nuisance and a hindrance to a right +understanding of Wagner. + +This herd I would not willingly join. In the following pages no +general theory concerning Wagner will be found. I shall indulge in no +theorisings whatever, but stick to the facts, facts which can now be +ascertained with certainty. My endeavour will be to tell a plain, +unvarnished tale of what Wagner did and of what he suffered, of the +environment amidst which he grew up and laboured and struggled: with +all that he said and wrote I shall deal as briefly as may be, +regarding his endless loquacity of mouth and pen as of interest only +when it throws real light on the artist. Least of all shall I waste +the reader's patience on the morals that may be drawn from his musical +works. The moral to be drawn from his prose works is simply that a +man, even a stupendously great man, may write far too much; the moral +to be drawn from his musical works every man may find out for himself: +for myself, I have found none, any more than I could ever find a moral +in a play of Æschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare. + +There are plenty of authorities for the statements now to be made. We +have the exhaustive _Life_ by Glasenapp and W. Ashton Ellis; then +there is Wagner's own work, _My Life_, lately translated into +English; finally there are the _Letters_. Many of these are of no +interest or value whatever, dealing only with details concerning +scores and proof-sheets and petty money matters. Many, on the other +hand, notably those to Uhlig, are invaluable to every one who wishes +to understand Wagner. Extensive use is made of them in this book, +though, as they are easily accessible, I have forborne to quote more +than is absolutely necessary. _My Life_ I think but little of, and +have not relied greatly on it. + +Wagner the reformer will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not +"reform" the opera form--the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed no +reforming--he simply developed it. He did reform operatic performances +by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of slovenliness +and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid indifference; +and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not theorize about +these matters, but point out what he achieved by making a continuous +appeal to indubitable, indisputable facts. + +I am indebted to Messrs. H. Grevel & Co. for kind permission to print +extracts from Mr. Shedlock's translation of Wagner's _Letters_, and to +Messrs. Novello for similar permission regarding quotations from the +libretti of the operas. Two words may be said about the quotations, +both words and music, of the operas: in some cases, when I could +neither find nor make an adequate translation of verses, I have stuck +to the original German; with regard to the music, I have given as +little as possible. Both musical and verbal citations are meant for +reference--there is only one exception, the Sailors' Song from the +opening of _Tristan_. Catalogues of Wagner's themes have for long been +issued by several publishers; but they are of small assistance in +helping one to understand Wagner. + +J.F.R. + + + + +CONTENTS + +I EARLY LIFE + +II EARLY BOYHOOD + +III EARLY LIFE (_continued_) + +IV JUVENILE WORKS + +V PARIS + +VI 'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN' + +VII DRESDEN + +VIII 'TANNHÄUSER' + +IX 'LOHENGRIN' + +X EXILE + +XI 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA' + +XII 'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG' + +XIII KING LUDWIG + +XIV 'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND THE RHINEGOLD' + +XV 'THE VALKYRIE' + +XVI 'SIEGFRIED' + +XVII 'THE DUSK OF THE GODS' + +XVIII 'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN + +INDEX + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +PORTRAIT OF WAGNER (_Photogravure_) + +WAGNER'S BIRTHPLACE: THE SIGN OF THE RED +AND WHITE LION, ON THE BRÜHL, LEIPZIG + +THE WAGNER THEATRE AT BAYREUTH + +LISZT +(_From life and on stone by N. Hanhart_) + +WAGNER +(_From the portrait by A.F. Pecht_) + +KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA + +WAGNER IN 1877 + +PALAZZO VENDRAMIN CALERGI, VENICE, WHERE +WAGNER DIED, FEB. 13, 1883 + +CARL TAUSIG + + + + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY LIFE + + +I + +As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and +musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the +Red and White Lion on the Brühl in old Leipzig. The precise date was +May 22; and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before, +at the church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard +Wagner. The events and circumstances of the period have furnished the +imaginative with many striking portents with regard to the future +mighty composer; and, to do the prophets full justice, after the +event--long after the event--they have widely opened their mouths and +uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house, describing a beast +such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a drowsy people +that the monstrous dragon of _Siegfried_ was about to take the road +leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth. The spring foretold the songs in +_Tannhäuser_ and the _Valkyrie_; the summer, the nights in King +Mark's Cornish castle-garden and amongst the fragrant lime-trees in +the streets of ancient Nuremberg; the horrors of the war raging at the +very gates of Leipzig and Napoleon's flight, the advent of the +preacher who was to earn a long exile by advising the Saxon soldiers +not to shoot their brethren. Events provided material for these and +many another score of prognostications: only, fortunately, no one read +events rightly at the time, and something fresh was left for the +biographers to expend their ingenuity upon. + +Richard Wagner came of a German lower middle-class stock. There is not +amongst his ancestry a single man distinguished in letters or any art. +His uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not +be remembered had he not been Wagner's uncle. Only by patient research +has it been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much +as play the organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast, +and he too would have been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner's +father. His stepfather--though this seems hardly to the point--was an +actor and portrait-painter; and his one claim to remembrance is that +he was Wagner's stepfather. So, however scientifically minded we may +be, however strongly disposed to account for the sudden appearance of +a stupendous genius by the cheap and easy method of pointing to some +distinguished ancestor and talking pompously of the laws of heredity, +in Wagner's case we are baffled and beaten. He came like a +thunderbolt out of a blue sky. We must be content with the fact that +he came. His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials +both; and bearing in mind Wagner's frank detestation of officialdom, +the scientist can scarcely draw much comfort from that. + +The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a +few years later than Haydn. In 1769 he married the daughter of a +charity-school master or caretaker; and in 1770, the year of +Beethoven's birth, his first child, christened Carl Friedrich Wilhelm, +was born. Four years later Adolph arrived. Gottlob was a douanier, an +exciseman, at the Rannstadt gate of Leipzig, and passed his days, I +dare say, as honestly as an exciseman can, in examining incoming +travellers to see that they did not bring with them so much as an egg +that had not paid duty. He died in 1795. Meantime, Carl Friedrich had +received a thoroughly sound education, and he became deputy-registrar +to the Leipzig town court. In 1789 he married Johanna Rosina Pätz +(whose name, it seems, is susceptible of many spellings). + +The scientific mind may after all find consolation in the +all-illuminating truth that Friedrich and all his children were more +or less passionately addicted to the theatre and attracted by it. It +was Friedrich's one hobby; and though Friedrich's brother Adolph had a +horror of it, the feeling was not aroused by it as an artistic +institution, but as an agency for the intellectual, moral and worldly +ruin of young men and women. In his leisure Friedrich arranged +dramatic performances and took part in them, and, as amateurs go, he +appears to have been highly successful. Histrionic persons were +constant guests at his house on the Brühl--amongst them notably one, +Ludwig Geyer, who became a fast friend of the family and played an +important rôle, off the stage, with regard to that family soon after +Richard's birth. Friedrich, during his later years, cannot have had +much spare time for amateur theatricals or any other amusement. +Napoleon was fighting his last desperate fights against the combined +forces of reactionary Europe; all the powers of feudalism had combined +to crush an emperor who had no royal blood in his veins; he raged over +Germany like an infuriated beast with a genius for military tactics, +scattering armies which dispersed only to join together and face him +again. While Richard was in his cradle the whole of Saxony was filled +with the squalor and misery and loathsome terrors of war. Leipzig was +occupied by the French; Marshal Davoust was left there as commandant, +with power of life and death, and all the other privileges of a +military governor; and in the deputy-registrar of the law-court he +found the man for the post of provisional chief of the police "of +public safety." Who kept the public safe from the police I am unable +to say. Fighting was going on perpetually in the neighbourhood; the +dead and dying lay scattered in all directions; the stench bred +epidemics more murderous than all Napoleon's cannon. Friedrich must +have found his hands full day and night. Richard was baptized on +August 16; the following day Napoleon won a victory which cost him +dear; the 18th, being Sunday, was observed as such by a soldiery in +need of a rest; on the 19th Napoleon was a beaten man, and ran to save +his skin past the windows of the house of the Red and White Lion on +the Brühl. Richard's mother had been trembling for her own safety and +that of her children and husband; but when, as she herself afterwards +told, she saw the dreaded conqueror bolt in haste without his hat, she +breathed again. Whether she and the family were any better off under +the deliverers is a question that does not concern us here: the point +is that she thought she was. It was all one to Richard, who, aged +three months, slept peacefully on. + +After the deliverance Friedrich's work became even heavier than +before. The town through its length and breadth was shattered and +dilapidated; whole families were homeless and packed like rabbits in +hutches; the slaughtered dead, men and beasts, could not be buried +quick enough; black death stalked abroad in the guise of what was +called hospital typhus--an epidemic fever of some kind. After the +French flight, I take it, provisional chief-policeman Wagner had +returned to his deputy-registrarship; but his toils were none the +lighter for that. He exhausted himself; the appalling fever attacked +him and he had no strength to resist it; and he died on November 22, +exactly six months after the birth of Richard. Wagner's ill-luck, his +wicked fairy, struck her first blow while his age had to be reckoned +in months; she went on striking, and never ceased to strike, until he +was beginning to grow a little weary and his age was reckoned in +decades of years, and in terms of masterpieces accomplished and +insults and ill-usage by no means patiently borne. It must have seemed +hard to his widowed mother, after the uncertainties and horrors of the +last years, that when at last a period of happy peace seemed about to +dawn, uncertainties and griefs and worries of a fresh sort should come +upon her. + +Whether Frau Wagner ever actually drew any pension from the good +burghers of Leipzig or the greedy state officials of Saxony seems, +when all is said, very uncertain. In such times of stress and struggle +great crown officers, laudably anxious about their own interests and +the interests of their families, are apt to be rather careless, not to +say callous, about the smaller fry. However, pension or no pension, +with the aid of relatives and friends the Wagners pulled through. +Chief and best amongst the friends was Ludwig Geyer. + +A few words must be said about him. Born in 1780, he was ten years +Carl Friedrich's junior. An actor who had taken up painting, or a +painter who had taken up acting, in both arts he had won at any rate a +local reputation. We know what was thought of his histrionic gifts +from more or less competent contemporaries; but what to think of his +paintings I do not know, for two reasons: I do not trust my own +judgment in such a matter, and if I did, I have never seen any of +Geyer's work. Of this, however, I am very sure: he cannot have been a +good painter unless nature had worked a miracle in sending a good +painter to Germany in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. German +artists of the period must be classified not as sheep and goats, but +as bad goats and worse goats. But if he was not a fine painter he was +what is better, or, at any rate, more useful to the rest of human +kind, a fine character: a noble, generous, self-sacrificing man. In +haste on hearing of Carl Friedrich's death he came from Dresden to +attend to the burying of the dead and the nourishing of the living. +The details of this first period of Richard's ill-fortune do not +amount to a great deal and are unimportant, since our subject is +Richard, and his mother, brother and sisters only so far as their +lives and characters influenced Richard. Albert, the eldest of the +children, was now fourteen years old; he was at the Royal school in +Meissen, and there he remained. Rosalie went to dwell with a friend of +Geyer's, a lady who lived at Dresden. Louise was adopted by a Frau +Hartwig, also at Dresden. Richard in his cradle remained with his +mother and the younger members of the tribe in Leipzig. + +And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man +slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell +dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his +health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements +of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his +income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved +really a stroke of good fortune. Glasenapp, basing his calculations +on I know not what authorities or documents, computes that his +earnings as an actor at this time came to £156 a year, and there seems +every reason to think he was at least fairly well paid for his +portraits. It was not enough to be shared between two families, or, we +had better say, to be devoted to the up-keep of two homes. He +determined rapidly on a bold stroke. That he was in love with Frau +Wagner is more than any one can declare with confidence; but she was +an amiable, bright woman, a good mother and thrifty housekeeper; and +it is likely enough that she had inspired a deep affection in a +singularly loving man. After the recovery of Albert the widow had gone +for a change to Dresden; and there Geyer resolved to marry her--and +resolved quickly; for Carl Friedrich died in November 1813, and early +in 1814 the marriage took place. Soon after, the new Frau Geyer +returned to Leipzig; then the whole family migrated to Dresden, where +Richard was to pass from babyhood into boyhood and spend the first +fourteen years of his life. + + +II + +The Geyer-Wagner family set up their tent in the Moritz-strasse in +Dresden, which belonged to the seventeenth or eighteenth century--was +in fact almost mediæval. Life must have been atrociously narrow and +trammelled to any free spirit. But Germany did not produce many of +that sort at the time, and those she did produce were quickly +silenced in gaol. Whether Geyer had yearnings for outward liberty +cannot be said; but if he had he gave no expression to them, being +himself a court player and a semi-court painter. Undoubtedly the main +thing to him was that in the drowsy court air he could at least earn +the means of bringing up adequately the large family he had taken on +his shoulders. He played constantly in all sorts of parts, and in his +off hours painted; he also wrote a number of theatre pieces of varying +type and importance--none of which concern us here. His wife enjoyed a +period of peace in which to attend to her husband, children and house, +as a faithful hausfrau should. If Geyer was industrious and much +occupied, he nevertheless found time to cultivate friendships, and +some of them in later days were continued by Richard. + +The whole life of the circle went on around the theatre or in it; it +must have been their whole world, for of culture other than of the +theatre there is no indication--save one or two half-hearted remarks +of Geyer's at a slightly later period. They admired Goethe and +Schiller, of course, and knew their theatre works; they knew of the +Romantics in so far as they affected the theatre; it seems to have +been only through the theatre they saw anything or could see anything. +Breathing the theatrical atmosphere constantly, one after another of +Geyer's step-children caught the theatre malady (for it will be +admitted that men or women must have something the matter with them if +they deliberately choose a theatrical life); and within a few years +three of them were appearing on the stage. Albert left school and went +to the university to study medicine; after a very brief struggle he +gave this up, studied singing, and in 1819 or 1820 made his debut as a +light-opera tenor. Before this Geyer had warned him against taking +such a course; but apparently he was obdurate. On May 2 of the former +year Rosalie had first appeared as an actress in a piece by Geyer; +still earlier Louise had also begun acting child-parts. There must +have been a good deal of family discussion and commotion about these +things. It had been the wish of Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should, +or perhaps might, take to the stage as a profession, but in no case +until she had attained the age of sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph, +as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the +sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct +of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps +the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after +another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. Geyer +kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie, though she had +been long preparing, made no public appearance until she reached +sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family occupation. How +all this affected the family generally, and especially Richard, we +shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned that +Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed +at Eisleben to Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not +pulled stagewards. + + +III + +Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous +hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard +did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise +us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music +was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while +they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded +music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the +precocity is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy +practising on a dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had +become the most celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a +few not wholly irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous +babyhood were repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did +not know what a dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries +regarding the source of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are +swallowed cheerfully to this day because so many authors accept them; +and I would point out that the first author, No. I, was simply copied +recklessly by author No. II, that author No. III, maybe a little less +recklessly, copied No. II because he was supported by No. I; and thus +the game went on until the simple minds of a generation think that +what fifty writers have said must be true. Ten thousand times more has +been written about Wagner than all that Handel provoked, and even less +honest investigation has been made--result, a gigantic series of +tales, genuine or mythical, based on what amounts to no authority +whatever. Unless these are verifiable I leave them to the care of +others, and pass on. So with regard to Wagner's childhood we know he +showed himself no wonderful genius. We do know that he lived amidst +folk whose whole conversation must have been of the theatre and drama, +actors and actresses; that he was petted and taken about by his +stepfather, and as soon as he was old enough, or sooner, went to the +theatre while rehearsals were going on. "The Cossack," as Geyer called +him, grew up a lively, quick-witted child, active and full of +mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the hedge" and sliding +down banisters--much indeed like many other children who afterwards +for want of leisure neglected to compose a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_. The +theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly from the same +life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty existence, one in +which one's days, weeks, months and years are frittered away; they +pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them. When performances +are not over until late, no one rises early; then come the rehearsals; +then the evening performance again--and so home and to bed. Long +intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous work can hardly be +used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or idling in cafés. +Save for those who have risen high in popular favour--or, during +Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses--it is an +uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often +terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of +grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in +the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean +squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced +idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite +right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to +the _cabotin_. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed +from the _cabotin_. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must +have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his +work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen +going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own +home. + +When in 1817 Weber arrived at Dresden to set up a real German opera, +it seemed he must have landed in exactly the wrong place to carry out +his plans. Only by a series of miracles did they get partially carried +out; and here, as we know, he composed two works, _Der Freischütz_ and +_Euryanthe_, destined in after years to exert greater power over +Richard's genius than any other music save Beethoven's--a power not +inferior to that of Beethoven's music in some respects. Weber +inevitably became a friend of the Geyers, and before Richard was much +older he knew the great person to speak to and set him up in his heart +as a demi-god. But as yet Richard was only picking up a little +knowledge and trying, very faintly trying, to play the piano. + +Meanwhile, Geyer's health was failing, though no one then foresaw what +was to come. He acted, he painted, he wrote plays, he saw to the +debuts of Albert and Rosalie; he tried a cure here and a cure there. +In 1821 he moved to a larger house at the corner of the Jüdenhof and +the Frauengasse, and rejoiced to have a larger studio for his +picture-work. In July he went to Breslau and returned ill, tried +Pillnitz and came back appearing a little better, and promptly got +worse. On the evening of September 29 he heard Richard strumming the +"Jungfernkranz," and asked his wife whether it was possible the boy +had any gift for music; the following evening he died. The next +morning Richard was told by his mother that his father would fain have +made something of him; and, like young Teufelsdröckh, Wagner for long +fancied something would be made of him. + + +IV + +So, less than eight years after, Ludwig Geyer followed his friend Carl +Friedrich Wagner to the grave, like him to a premature grave. He left +only one child of his own, Augusta Cäcilie (born February 26, 1815); +but he made Friedrich's widow his wife and her children were as his +children; and he toiled hard for their comfort and planned unceasingly +for their welfare; and when on an October morning he was left in his +last peaceful home to rest, it must have seemed to his widow as though +happiness was to be denied her until she joined him. The winter of +1813 had been black enough, but at once she had Geyer; in 1821 there +was no second Geyer. Adolph Wagner may have seen in the tragedy a +marked instance of the folly of having anything to do with the stage +or actors. Possibly he did not realize that precisely through Geyer's +connection with the theatre, and only to a comparatively small extent +by means of his reputation as an artist, his sister-in-law and nephews +and nieces suffered less than might have been anticipated. For on the +morning following Geyer's death Rosalie swore to take his place as +provider for the family, and that promise she kept. + +When Richard was six months old, fate, as we have seen, struck her +first blow, placed the first obstacle in the path of a successful +infantile career, and swiftly sent Geyer to his aid. Now, when he was +just turned eight, she snatched away Geyer, and had already Rosalie in +readiness to help him. And, in fact, throughout Wagner's life fate +seemed never to tire of delivering staggering blows with one hand, and +with the other hand, at the same moment or a moment later, giving him +compensation, often ample, sometimes on a scale of lordly generosity. +From the beginning to the end of his seventy years no man ever had +worse or better luck than Wagner. It is perfectly clear that fate +meant him to write the _Mastersingers_ and _Tristan_, and at times she +was cruel to him only to be kind to humanity. It is true she seems to +have made a mistake when she allowed him to complete _Parsifal_--but +that matter lies as yet many chapters ahead. + +It would appear that Frau Geyer had a pension of some sort; since May +1 Rosalie had been engaged with the Royal Court players of Dresden; +Albert and Louise both had engagements at Breslau--one of Geyer's last +acts had been to see Albert safely fixed there; it is probable, if not +certain, that Adolph Wagner--who, after all, was fairly well off--lent +a helpful hand: and the family, if not in the modest affluent +circumstances they enjoyed while Geyer lived, at any rate tasted none +of the bitterness of poverty. Glasenapp states that Geyer's "stock of +pictures" had gone up in value after his death; but as he just +previously tells us of Geyer's lack of time and of "would-be sitters" +waiting their turn, we cannot see how the stock can have been very +large. Let us hope, however, that it was, and that Geyer in his grave +went on helping those he loved. Julius was safely bestowed at +Eisleben; and the widow had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Cäcilie to +look after--quite enough, it is true, and calling for all the +resources of her housewifery to make ends meet; but, still, nothing +like the burden Geyer had taken up so courageously a few years before. +How much Rosalie and Albert could spare out of the small salaries paid +in those--and still paid in these--days by German theatres is a matter +entirely for conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the +main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at +the first glance one is puzzled to know however the family managed to +pull through at all and avoid the workhouse. + +At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, +he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to +persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one +Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he +had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he +was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in +discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a +time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response +to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would +do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to +Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as +Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and is common +enough when a widowed mother has married a second time. Several such +cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls at Wagner's +double name, as though at some period he had gone under an alias, are +purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a desperate case. + +With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of +boyhood--his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other +members of his family--though they will by no means drop out of the +story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to +his marrying days. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +EARLY BOYHOOD + + +I + +So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to +this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of +Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism, +court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely +conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the +theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all +details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early +experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman +learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of +course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the +spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a +flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he +can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work +comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations +at the instance of those who have been through the proper early +training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he +knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the +result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was +effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and +what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of +the _Ring_ proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly +without trouble in every opera-house of Europe. + +This training--for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the +career before him--now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in +Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so +now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had +rather to consider his family than him; but now the little +individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, +from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an +overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also +leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or +lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the +mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most +stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether +unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate +sketch of the activities and escapades of these days: this would +involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits of the labours +of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, +would yield us nothing essential and might drive the reader to an +untimely end. Out of the strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious +fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour +only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful. + +Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the +classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical. +True, he learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty +and how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the +pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a +special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that +at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a +holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary +school curriculum. It is just possible--just, I say--that had the +family remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the +Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the +composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the +might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very far +from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather was +dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a +fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be +employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great +awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest +drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright, +self-confident boy. + +I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great +engineer having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a +great painter having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines. +Always, from the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without +reflection, instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he +is destined to follow as a man; and though some potential great poets +may be thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by +far the more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or +brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves +and every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature +shaped them to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a +startling exception to the nearly universal rule; but he is no +exception. The theatre was his first love, and to the theatre he ever +remained faithful: only through the theatre did his genius manifest +itself; apart from the theatre it may be doubted whether he could have +developed into the consummate technical musician of _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_. Music was his second love, music associated with +drama; and throughout his long career we find him engaged, first, in +getting his drama true, poignant and effective, and then in allying it +with music. Third in his affections came philosophy; and at this time +of day it need scarcely be remarked that he always considered himself +a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to the last with philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper and gallons of good ink have +been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most +magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the +writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the +mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look +through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink, +effort--not always to be called mental--sympathy and love have been +used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and +Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I believe there are +still some human beings who turn for guidance to Wagner the +philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something about the +subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly matter--in +fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a little +consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove the +word-tissue of his dramas. + + +II + +There is not much, then, to detain us during this period. Rosalie and +Albert had their engagements, Rosalie being the mainstay of the +family. On May 1, 1824 Clara made her debut. Uncle Adolph, ceaseless +in objurgations touching every one who had any connection with the +court or trade theatres of the day, had to accept the situation; and, +apparently in desperation, or because he found life intolerable with +two nagging females in the house where he dwelt, quietly went in 1824 +and married Sophie, a sister of his friend Amadeus Wendt. +Thenceforward he lived in peace at a house called "The Hut," visiting +his two nagging ladies every day, however. One was his sister, +Friederike, the other Jeannette Thomä. He was a studious, retiring +man, and in the course of time produced some books that are worthless, +or all but worthless, now. Of course the Bayreuth worshippers and +idolizers of the Wagner family will have it that he, being one of the +family, was inevitably a man of superlative gifts; but as I have +already indicated, there is nothing to justify such an assumption. A +cultivated man of sound sense he must have been; and it is true he was +in some slight touch with a few of the stronger artistic and literary +spirits in that very dull and disheartening period; it is true that he +influenced, wholly for good, Richard a few years afterwards. When that +is said all is said. + +Richard is said to have studied English, but how much he actually +learnt I never could ascertain. I have been told with solemn +mysteriousness at Bayreuth that, like the parrot, he could have +rattled off our tongue with tremendous volubility had he chosen; but +the fact that he never chose lends colour to the supposition that in +reality he had no choice. However, in the original or in translations +he read Shakespeare; and it may be presumed that he knew Goethe and +Schiller almost by heart. Naturally he determined to rival them. In +that heyday of the big Romantic movement he just as naturally +determined to rival or to beat them by piling terror on terror, horror +on horror. At that period the latest word in the theatre was melodrama +of the wildest sort, and a play which did not contain a few murders, +ghosts, enchanted woods and haunted castles had not the faintest +chance of success. According to Wagner's own account he made a +handsome bid for success; for nearly all the _dramatis-personæ_ came +to an untimely end, and a spectre told one, not yet finished off, that +if he moved another step his nose would then and there crumble to +powder. + +While this masterwork was in process of construction, circumstances so +altered that Frau Geyer thought it wisdom to quit Dresden and return +to Leipzig. Albert, Rosalie, Louise and Clara were in various towns +fulfilling engagements; she was left alone with the younger children. +In 1826 Rosalie had gone to Prague; Albert and Clara were in Augsburg; +Louise had been in Breslau, had tried Berlin, then finally took a +permanent post at the theatre in Leipzig. So a move was determined on, +and the family made another migration in 1827. Richard stayed on for +some time, in connection with his schooling, I presume; then he +followed, incidentally taking the most momentous step in his young +life. + +These five years had been for him profitable. He got the best part of +his education at Dresden, where he had skilful and sympathetic +masters; and almost, one may say, without knowing it he had received +an informal musical education which was profoundly to affect him as +soon as he started writing operas. I mean that he constantly attended +the opera while Weber was conductor, and Weber, who had been a friend +of Geyer's, used to call at the house to pass the time of day with the +widow. Richard looked up to him with awe and worshipped every bar of +his music; and this, together with a knowledge of the road Richard was +soon to take and of what he was to become, makes one wonder that he +had not already decided to compose another _Freischütz_. But, as I +have said, the theatre--that is, the theatre with the spoken +drama--was his first love; and evidently it had a wondrous hold on +him, for after spending a rapturous evening with _Freischütz_--first +given in Leipzig in 1822--he would return contentedly to his tragedy. +It took a stronger spirit even than Weber's to awaken the musical side +of his nature. But unconsciously the foundation had been laid, as we +shall have ample reason to understand before long. These years at +Dresden, too, are noteworthy, inasmuch as they saw the beginning of +some friendships, at least one of which was to prove lifelong and +invaluable to Richard. + + +III + +When the family settled again in Leipzig one Ludwig van Beethoven died +(March 1827), and Wagner heard of this composer, it is said, for the +first time. It is all but unimaginable, yet there seems no reason to +doubt it. After all, that was not an age of halfpenny morning and +evening papers, and if composers were boomed the deed was accomplished +tranquilly in the houses of great society leaders, dukes and +archbishops, and the general public knew little of what was going on. +I dare say even in our newspaper age many a clever boy of fourteen has +never heard of Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom +nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: +the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber +would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded +mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed +personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped +Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the +existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The +great hour was at hand. + +First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and +disappointment. At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters, +and had worked hard. His own account of the methods, temper, and +intellectual qualifications of his masters seems to me eminently +reasonable. Their aim was to bring out whatever was best in their +pupils. His account of his first masters at Leipzig similarly bears +the stamp of truthfulness. They were a set of conceited academics +with only two ideas in the world: first, that they were the very +finest flower of Teutonic culture; second, that they must so impose +their personalities on the boys, so impress them with their ideal, +that every pupil would carry to his dying hour the stamp of the +culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond +the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were +frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived--as they +always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect +cleverness--the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or +outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in +achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told me he had +calculated that the Nicolai school turned out in ten years more +complete, complacent blockheads than any other school in Germany had +turned out in half-a-century; and my friend gave me many notable +instances of men who had soon won the proud distinction of being +unmistakable pupils of the Nicolai school. There were rebels, and +Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had +been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to +imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, _i.e._ a +pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the +period, they degraded him to the third. No doubt there were protests: +one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man +could refrain from declamation under a grievance; but with such +impervious skulls and thick hides protests would be unavailing. The +mischief was done: he was numbered amongst the rebels, the lost souls, +the unhappy beings who dared to have notions of their own. He +neglected his studies and sought refuge in his drama. I wonder if he +found, or made, an opportunity of satirizing his precious professors +in it. + +At home his life cannot have been much better. Good Hausfrau Geyer +cannot have understood where the shoe pinched: she can only have seen +how he was wasting his time. The tragedy was discovered and there seem +to have been solemn family deliberations regarding the probable fate +of the reprobate. His Uncle Adolph seems to have acted as the great +consoler. He, at any rate, knew better than to think a boy was on the +way to the bottomless pit simply because he could not get on with a +gang of dull pedagogues. Now and later he lectured Richard in a kindly +if sententious way; and he must have fostered the boy's natural strong +spirit of revolt. Adolph loathed authority, especially the authority +of irresponsible court officials; and in some of his preserved letters +he lashes these gentry, the scum of humanity and the parasites of +courts, with scathing sarcasm. His sarcasm had no practical result, +because the officials never saw it--if they had they would have +shrugged their fat shoulders and gone to draw their comfortable +salaries. But he taught Wagner that officialdom is the curse of the +human race; and in after years that certainly had some practical +results--at the moment calamitous to Wagner; in the long run +beneficial to him and the human race. Perhaps of all forms of +authority that which Adolph found least tolerable, that which he +taught Richard to loathe and hate and spit upon, was official +authority in art matters. Nowadays, when public opinion counts for +something, when those who pay the taxes insist on having some small +say as to the way in which they are spent, the intendant of a German +theatre is by no means the lordly court-parasite he was once. Yet even +now he often flouts his paymasters, feeling fairly secure under court +protection. We can easily imagine the high-and-mighty jack-in-office +he must have been in Adolph's time. + +Wherever he made his power felt it blasted honest art and checked +honest art endeavour. It was fitting that Richard should have dinned +into him--as I have no doubt he did--his uncle's views on these +heroes; for later Richard had a fair amount of fighting to do with +them, and in the end it was he more than any other one man who broke +their power for ever by appealing to the great public. This attitude +is due to Richard's preaching and example; and he learnt it from Uncle +Adolph. In one other respect Adolph's influence was good: he opened +out to Richard's vision immense fields of literature that the +youngster had never heard of. I have previously mentioned that all the +culture of the Geyer family came through the theatre. To this Richard +added a small school-acquaintance with the classics; and now came +Adolph to show him a huge, truly vital literature--poetry and prose +dealing with the life of our own epoch. Adolph wrote reminding him of +how finely Weber Had cultivated himself, of his breadth, of his +outlook on history and mankind. It is evident that Adolph, seeing the +irresistible bent of the Wagners towards the theatre, and fearing that +Richard might in time learn to be content with a life of ignorant +theatre tittle-tattle, did his best to save him, not so much by +warning him against the theatre--which he certainly knew to be +useless--as by showing how many great and interesting things the world +holds. The preaching did not fall on deaf ears; and Richard always +declared that in this regard he was incalculably indebted to his +uncle. One of Richard's most strongly marked characteristics was the +tenacity with which he held any idea that once entered his mind; and +it is worthy of note that about this period he read E.T.A. Hoffmann's +collected fantasies and Tieck's _Tannhäuser_. From the first he +unmistakably got the minstrels' contest in his own _Tannhäuser_; from +the second, Tannhäuser's coming home after being cursed by the Pope. + +So things went on. Richard's mother, Richard, Louise, Ottilie and +Cäcilie formed the household; Uncle Adolph and Aunt Sophie lived not +far off; and they had plenty of friends. They lived at first in the +Pichhof outside the Halle gate and later removed into the town. +Richard wandered about the city, seeking the scenes of his babyhood; +and his mother pointed out to him the spot where she saw Napoleon +rush off, without his hat, to make his: escape after the battle of +liberation, while Richard was in his cradle. The Rannstadt gate, where +his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing, +though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion +on the Brühl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the +Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange +animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, +incidentally responsible for the notorious _Judaism in Music_ of 1850, +and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got +his own way in most things, and the seeds were sown of the +self-confidence, egotism, selfishness--call it what you will--that was +to carry him through unheard-of difficulties and troubles in later +life, and was often, unfortunately, to show as an objectionable, even +odious, feature in his character. He still laboured at his tragedy, +killing off his personages and turning their noses into dust with the +careless facility and cheerfulness of buoyant boyhood. He had always +been fond of roaming the country, and he continued to nourish that +love of the pleasant earth which forced him to keep up the habit all +his life and resulted in the glorious pictorial music of the _Ring_. +He struggled in vain to conquer the piano-keys, and, indifferent to +the fable of the fox and the grapes, came to the satisfying conclusion +that the instrument was not worth mastering. We must remember that +through Louise he was in constant touch with the theatre, and it is +evident that he kept up the connection after her marriage to +Brockhaus the bookseller in 1828, for when the theatre was entirely +reformed next year Rosalie came as a principal lady and Heinrich Dorn, +who speedily became his friend, as conductor. Drama, literature, +school-tasks, open-air rambles, talks with Uncle Adolph--these +constituted his life. Now another element was to enter and overwhelm +all the rest. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +EARLY LIFE (CONTINUED) + + +I + +In the second half of the eighteenth century some enthusiasts at +Leipzig had founded a series of concerts, with a very small orchestra, +which were given in "Apel's house"; in 1781 they migrated to the +Gewandhaus, and by this name the concerts were afterwards known. In +still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and +neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke +came and they became the most slovenly in the world--in this fine +quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could +hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no +modern music could get a hearing there. However, that did not greatly +matter; and the world owes the Gewandhaus concerts an everlasting debt +of gratitude. + +Richard, we know, had never heard of Beethoven, had never heard a bar +of his music. At the Gewandhaus the symphonies were regularly played, +and to one of the performances he went, contented, with his head full +of his play, not dreaming of what was to happen to him ere the morrow. +Here are his own words: "I only remember that one evening I heard a +symphony of Beethoven's, for the first time, that it set me in a +fever, and on my recovery I had become a musician." This is from one +of his stories, but it describes with sufficient closeness what +actually happened. We know that saturated solutions of some salts at a +touch solidify into a mass of crystals, and as far as intentions were +concerned this, figuratively, happened to Richard: his purpose was +instantly set--he would be a musician--nay, he felt he _was_ a +musician. As to his proceedings, however, a better simile would be +that of a liquid into which you drop a little of another liquid and +immediately a violent commotion with much heat is set up. Beethoven's +music touched his young being, and a fermentation began which drove +him forthwith to make himself a perfectly equipped technical musician. +Almost like Teufelsdröckh and St. Paul, he was "converted" in the +twinkling of an eye. + +The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius. The +bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the +dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while +the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of +Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded. +Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and +Beethoven took his place. When he started to compose seriously it was +Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained: +Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst +Beethoven wrote only utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and +it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre +music. But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse +to, compose came. He had heard, probably, all Weber's operas without +any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven's +symphonies, and the incidental music to _Egmont_, he at once realized +that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to +write it. Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a +thing as the technique of the novelist's trade, and believing in the +omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and +we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when +the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written. + +When the incidental music to--whatever the name of his play +was--obstinately refused to be written, young Wagner may have said +something, though it is not on record; but having a finer instinct +than Carlyle he perceived the necessity of acquiring the technique of +his new trade. So he got possession of Logier's _Method_; in a few +days made a complete study of it; then he set to work in earnest +--with, alas! no more satisfactory fruits. Something that might serve, +however, was achieved, and the ambitious composer went on to a fresh +struggle. He had heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, so, taking +Goethe's _Laune des Verliebten_, he started a kind of fantasia, +concocting words and music together. An account of Wagner's youth +would be incomplete without some mention of these brave doings; they +show clearly how strong the instinct which led him on to the _Ring_ +was in him at this early time--to what an unusual degree the child was +father of the man. But to take seriously his tragedy and these first +musical attempts, made at the unusually advanced age of sixteen, even +if I had seen them--which I have not: I do not know whether they are +in existence--would be preposterous. + +Richard began to see that he could make no headway, and he persuaded +his family to let him take lessons from Gottlieb Müller, who must have +been a bad teacher for such a boy. Nothing was learnt. Richard was +told he must not do this and must not do that, and he was not told +what he might or should do; in the end both he and Müller grew +disgusted and the lessons were abandoned. I dare say Müller was in a +humdrum way a good coach; he could have prepared candidates for our +absurd academic examinations; but for an artistic genius, bursting +with inarticulate ideas and inchoate purposes he was worse than +useless. So Richard had to muddle along as he best might, while his +good relatives doubted whether he would ever be able to do anything at +all, until by good fortune he tried Theo. Weinlig. Weinlig saw what +was wrong and what was wanted; instead of Müller's "you must not do +this or that: it is against 'rule,'" he explained matters and showed +Richard that if he once learnt the tricks of the trade he would be +able to compose just as he liked; in six months Richard had become an +expert contrapuntist and could fugue it with students who had toiled +for years. "Now," said Weinlig at the last, "you will probably never +want to write a fugue, but the knowledge that you can will give you +confidence." According to the late Mr. Dannreuther his words were, +"You have learnt to stand on your own legs." So it came to pass that +Richard's ambition was fulfilled: he was a musician. + +In the life of a being so extraordinary as Wagner it is not surprising +that he took many steps, each of which seemed the most momentous in +his career; but I think on the whole we must reckon this one, from the +amateur enthusiast to the fully equipped professional musician, the +most important. How long he would have been about it but for Weinlig's +timely aid cannot be said. He was steeping himself in Beethoven. He +could not play the piano, but he could read scores: Heinrich Dorn +declared that he copied those of the overtures with his own hands. He +arranged the Ninth Symphony and offered it to Schott, who declined it, +of course. Another arrangement, for four hands, was afterwards +accepted by Breitkopf, in exchange, it would seem, for a copy of the +full score of the same work. Possibly he had borrowed the copy he +worked from--or thumbed it until it fell to pieces. Dorn said he never +came across such a Beethoven enthusiast, and he felt sure something +would come of it. We know something did come of it. Weinlig had taught +him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and +counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each +masterpiece an easier task; and to Weinlig the world owes a huge debt +of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death +in 1842 he dedicated _The Love-feast of the Apostles_ to his widow. + + +II + +Richard, when he was some years older, said bluntly he cared little +for his family; and some of the Wagner-mad Bayreuth host point out +that the family did little for him and did not understand him. One +might ask why they should be expected to do much: they had plenty to +do in looking after themselves. But no questions and no appeals to +sweet reasonableness are needed, for the very patent fact is that his +family helped him to the uttermost limit of their means. Geyer first, +his widowed mother afterwards, then Rosalie and his brother Albert, +without a doubt Louise--all did their best to make his young existence +comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that +epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of +such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them, +and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was +fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own +with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a +little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first +appointment. Long after then he drained their resources and the +resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner, +as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish; +and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of +Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical +process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his +selfishness--namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for +to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very +charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without +Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the +difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his +quality; but it is pitiable to find writers--Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis, +Chamberlain and Wolzogen--sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to +glorify the defect as the quality. + +In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as +a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn +was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years +make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the +influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the +younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre--to his own +confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture +in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a _Paukenschlag_, +every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful. +That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess. +Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us +hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two +to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but +first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life. + +The Paris revolution of 1830 set all youthful Europe in a ferment. The +students of Leipzig university were not behind, and though Wagner did +not yet belong to the sacred circles he mixed much with them, hearing +them talk and doubtless doing not a little talking himself. At one +stroke, he says, he became a revolutionist; and, within his own +meaning of the word, a revolutionist he remained all his life. When we +deal with the period during which his revolutionary ideas got him into +serious trouble it will be time to discuss his views: for the present +we need only note that the conduct of the Leipzig students in various +riotous scenes that took place filled him more than ever with +admiration for them, and with a determination to enrol himself amongst +them as early as possible. He had quitted the Nicolai and gone to the +more congenial Thomas school; but he would not wait to finish his +course there. On February 28, 1831 he had his wish and matriculated. +He was, I say, spoilt in everything. Most German musicians who +received any education worth speaking of at that time got it because +of the ambition of infatuated parents to see their children turn out +successful lawyers or win high official positions, for Germans have a +touching trust in their government and its power of providing for +their children. Richard, however, had no taste either for law or +officialism--he knew indeed that lawyers and officials are the +parasites and curse of our civilization. He had evidently taken to +heart his Uncle Adolph's admonitions--"Remember how wide was the +culture of C.M. von Weber," etc.; and he entered the university with +the intention, as he imagined, of acquiring some of that culture. But +I fancy he deceived himself. As a schoolboy, as we have just noted, he +aspired to the glory of studentship; having won to that he seems to +have rested content. Certainly he did no work, attended no lectures. +His days and nights were devoted to two things, composition and +politics. With Apel and others whom he used to meet at a café he +denounced governments, police officials and the rest of it; at home he +composed overtures and finally a great symphony in C major. It is hard +to say which of his two occupations he took the more seriously. + +The artist was growing up strong within him; but the injustice and +robbery he saw perpetrated on every side of him, the wholesale theft +of Poland by Russian officials--by which I mean the Tsar, his +ministers, his generals, soldiers, subservient judges and police--set +his blood aboil; and I suppose that, like other boys of his years, as +well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put +the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this +time that I have come across is there any hint of the poetic +atmosphere in which he should have lived. Surely in those days before +his health broke down, with his fervid imagination, his intimacy with +the masterworks of music and poetry, he must have drawn in a richer +air than the reek of a Leipzig café, his inner vision must have seen a +diviner light than the common light of the stodgy Leipzig streets, +with his inner ear he must have heard a music sweeter than the hoarse +arguments of students half-filled with lager-beer. In the accounts of +this time there is not--to use the phrase colloquially--a touch of +romance. Even his letters are stodgy. My surmise is that just as in +his boyhood the musical part of his nature lay latent and unsuspected +until Beethoven's music awoke it, so now the poetic part lay fallow +awhile, and he worked away at the technical side of his music, +mastering form and conventional development of themes, and in his +leisure spent his excess of energy in talking politics and +metaphysics. The C Symphony of the period can now be seen by all and +has often been played; and it supports my view very forcibly. When I +say there is no hint of Wagner in it I do not mean that the +phraseology does not resemble that of the later Wagner--one could +hardly expect that; I do mean that from _Die Feen_ onward there is +always atmosphere, always emotion and colour, in his music; while the +symphony is as bald, as unpoetical, as any mean street in Kennington. +I do not doubt that he had his poetic dreams, because with such a +nature he could not help it; but he must have been temporarily +indifferent to them, absorbed in mastering the purely technical part +of his business. If we compare the letters of the time with, say, +Keats's and Shelley's, it is startling to find him enthusing over the +affairs of the parish and seemingly turning his back on the great +thoughts of life, on life's colour, romance, poetry--call it what we +like. About the Poles he is enthusiastic and fiery enough. Hundreds of +these heroes passed through Leipzig, living on charity as they went to +their new homes in all quarters of the globe--where many of their +descendants live on charity to this day. Richard wept over their +griefs, and got the idea for a "Polonia" overture; and his ardour was +sufficiently hot to last out until 1836, when he wrote the work at +Königsberg. Or it may be that he had forgotten all about the Poles +till he got into the vicinity of their dismembered country. Richard +himself confesses to leading a dissipated life during this period; but +probably he exaggerated when in after years he began to realize the +brevity of life and to regret wasted hours. His guide, counsellor, +friend, and, I doubt not, inspirer of most of his great achievements, +Praeger, tells a fine story of this part of his life; and one can have +no hesitation in calling it a pack of lies. On the other hand, forger +though he was, Praeger is quite as worthy of credence as those writers +who want us to believe that Wagner as a boy of fourteen had a fully +developed character and clearly foresaw the _Ring_ and _Tristan_ as +things before him, only waiting to be accomplished. Richard was still +a boy, impulsive to the point of madness, a hotheaded fanatic, with +his character still in the making, his artistic purposes neither +defined nor capable of being defined. He was not yet a great man. But +he had the makings of a great man in him; and in the meantime it is +much that he gained the affection of most of the people he came +across. In fact it was as true now as ever it was in later life that +of those with whom he came in contact most became his friends and the +rest his enemies: few could disregard him or remain indifferent. + +His apprenticeship was by no means run out in 1832. He had written and +heard performed some overtures, and he set to work and completed the +big Symphony in C major, "in the style of Beethoven"; and this done he +went for a holiday and to gain some little experience in Vienna. That +he could afford such a trip, when at the age of nineteen he could not +contribute a penny to the household expenses, bears out what I have +said about the assistance he received from his family. He contributed +nothing, and, considering his headstrong temper, only a courageous or +reckless man would have prophesied that he would ever be able to +contribute anything. However, to Vienna he went, and heard +_Zampa_--many more times than he wished. He heard Strauss' waltzes and +liked them; he saw Raymund's forgotten achievements and waxed eloquent +about them too. He seems to have learnt nothing but a lively contempt +for a frivolous people who had forgotten how lately Beethoven had died +amongst them--only five years before; a people who danced and made +merry and went philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off +its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was +light-hearted and gay then; and having seen what there was to be seen +he went back to Leipzig _via_ Prague. Here he sketched _Die Hochzeit_; +met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all +events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a +fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown +professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as +principal of the Prague conservatoire. + +He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was +performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and +Aria were sung by one Henriette Wüst at a "declamatorium" in the +Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given +at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following +year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by +a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play, +_King Enzio_, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly +while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a +"declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of +spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear +on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck--afterwards +Schumann--played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious +idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his +directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as +thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when +one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to +rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic +and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians +like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London, +owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had +thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics +what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins +(and with him J.W. Davison of the _Times_) knew Wagner to be a great +musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was +not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was +not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered +when solid incomes are at stake. + +At the Gewandhaus--and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through +a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn _allegro_--Richard got his +first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may +be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be +done. He knew the ninth symphony by heart, and was also entranced by +the blended loveliness and strength of Mozart's symphonies: played +here, all the effects and points he could plainly see in the score +disappeared. He knew better, even thus early, than to think the two +great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which +looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you +like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped +through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of +colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and +soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit. + +At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for +writing operas of his own. _Masaniello_ in its way opened his eyes as +much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the +clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with +brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in +amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and +picturesqueness of his music: in _Masaniello_ the music made its +effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The +same thing he felt in _William Tell_. These two men, Auber and +Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the +theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor +lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even +Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried +them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their +skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at +once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of _Die +Hochzeit_. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but +immediately he proceeded to another opera, _Die Feen_, which he +completed at Würzburg. The book of _Die Hochzeit_ is dated December 5, +1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was +given; on the 12th he replied to his brother Albert--now singer, +actor and stage-manager at the Würzburg theatre--accepting an +invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his +destination towards the end of the month. + + +III + +Wagner had scarcely time to look around him before his brother Albert +offered him the post of chorus-master. The salary was magnificent--£1 +(of our money) per month for about six months in the year; the work +was hard. We need only note with regard to it that he here heard, and +in the process of drilling his choristers undoubtedly got to know very +well, all the popular successes of the day. His own account is that he +liked them; and it is significant that during this period he heard +Meyerbeer's _Robert the Devil_. At the moment it does not seem to have +affected his compositions; but in a very few years Meyerbeer's +example, if not his music, had a most marked influence in shaping his +career. For the present he worked at _Die Feen_, and as soon as the +theatre closed and Albert and his wife went elsewhere to perform in +the off-season--just as German, French, Italian and American singers +come to Covent Garden now during the summer--he had plenty of time. By +New Year's day of '34 the work was complete. Parts of it were rendered +by some Music Union; but soon Richard left Würzburg, having gained +much experience if not any money. He was offered a post at Zurich; +but though that town was destined to be his home for years long +afterwards, it evidently did not tempt him then, for he returned to +Leipzig. + +Here at once began one of those squalid intrigues which drive serious +opera-composers crazy. Several of Richard's pieces had been played; he +had occupied one responsible position and been asked to take another; +he had the finished score of his opera; and he was young and by nature +sanguine to the verge of lunacy. He thought he had only to call on the +Intendant of the opera with his masterpiece and its production would +be assured. He did call, and soon he received a promise that his work +would be done. But Leipzig was now Mendelssohn's stronghold and no +rival could be tolerated. One of the great man's friends and admirers, +Hauser, determined that the work should not be done. He opined that +Wagner did not know how to compose nor how to orchestrate; he found +the music lacking in warmth. This from a worshipper of Mendelssohn +seems a little amusing to-day; but it had a result bad for Wagner in +1834. Underground work went on; and while Wagner waited with what +patience he could muster--and I expect that was not much--hoping every +day to hear that rehearsals had commenced, his score was quietly put +on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of +operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than +barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the +beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much +a few years ago. It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did +not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely +they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession +in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should +be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the +Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two +great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could +tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When +Brendel published the notorious _Judaism in Music_ it is true many +Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some +Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel +should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals, +and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans +for it to be desirable for _them_ to raise the cry of persecution. +Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I +come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the +reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all +protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I +dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish. + +Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the +negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be +wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his _Die +Feen_ overture made a hit. He heard Schröder-Devrient in Bellini's +_Montechi e Capuleti_, and found to his astonishment that a great +singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high +value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich +Laube--the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so +scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for +themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he +was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the _Zeitung für +die Elegante Welt_--- a curious title for a journal which frequently +praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for +another holiday, this time to Teplitz, where he sketched _Das +Liebesverbot_, his second opera to get finished and the first to be +performed--performed, by the way, in a very unusual fashion. Obviously +his spirits were not damped: obviously, also, the family which is +supposed not to have assisted him assisted him to the extent, at any +rate, of enabling him to take a holiday he could not pay for. He had +as yet not earned sufficient for his travelling expenses from Leipzig +to Würzburg and back, to say nothing of holiday trips. As on this trip +he planned _Das Liebesverbot_ his thanks were due to his family for +being able to begin that work. It is true he had Apel as a friend, but +he had not yet formed the habit of borrowing right and left, nor is +there any hint in his correspondence of Apel having paid his expenses. + +I wish now to pass rapidly over two fresh adventures--the +conductorship at Magdeburg and that at Königsberg; but first let me +point out how the boy's was changing to a man's character. It is +plain that he worked very hard at Würzburg, for the score of _Die +Feen_ is a big one, and teaching his chorus must have occupied many +hours a day. It is equally plain that he set to work with the greatest +vigour on the new opera. Now, Nietzsche declared that Wagner by sheer +will and energy "made himself a musician." That is pure nonsense; but +it points to an important characteristic--namely, Wagner did not, even +at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and +impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work. +For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were +almost incredible. + + +IV + +At this point the reader must be asked to bear in mind that the +operatic companies with which Wagner was connected in these early +days--until he left Riga in 1839 and set sail for Paris _via_ +London--were unlike anything in existence to-day. Dickens in _Nicholas +Nickleby_ and Thackeray in _Pendennis_ gave us pictures of the old +stock theatrical companies, with all their good-fellowship, jealous +rivalries, lack of romance and understanding of the dramatic art, and +abundance of dirt. One has only to read Wagner's accounts of the +enterprises at Würzburg, Magdeburg, Königsberg, and even at Riga, or +to glance at his letters of the period, to see that these concerns +differed in no essential from the companies ruled over by Mr. +Crummles and Miss Costigan's manager. Life went on in an utterly +careless way: the rehearsal for the day over, the company met in cafés +or beer-gardens and stayed there until it was time to move, in view of +the evening performance; any one who had a shilling spent it, while +those who had no shillings accepted their friends' hospitality and +hoped for the good time coming. Ladies quarrelled and then kissed; +gentlemen threatened to kill each other in honourable duel and sank +their differences deep in lager; one member left, another joined, some +members seemed to go on for ever; the great times were always coming +and never came. There was a company of this sort, the head being one +Bethmann, that wintered at Magdeburg and in the spring and summer +months played at Lauchstädt and Rüdelstadt; and Wagner got the +position of conductor--the first real position he had yet held, for +the Würzburg office, after all, was a very small affair. He now went +out to conquer the world for himself; he became nominally +self-dependent, though neither now nor in the future was he really so. +He did the usual round with his troop, arriving at Magdeburg in +October; and arriving there, he tells us, he at once plunged into a +life of frivolity. This may be true, but we must again note the +stupendous industry which enabled him to finish _Das Liebesverbot_ in +so short a time. The most important event in Richard's life about this +time was his engagement to Minna Planer. She is said to have been a +handsome young woman; and, as impecuniosity is everlastingly an +incentive to marriage, of course he married her. In the meantime he +thoroughly enjoyed directing all the rubbish of the day, the season +ended and he returned to Leipzig. + +The next season barely began before Bethmann, according to custom, +went bankrupt; the company disbanded, and Richard was left with a +young wife and nothing to live on. An engagement at Königsberg proved +no better; but at last the conductorship of the opera at Riga was +offered to him, so off he went eagerly, never dreaming, we may +suppose, of the extraordinary adventures that lay before him. Here in +outward peace he was to remain until 1839, rehearsing and directing +operas; but here also he was inspired with the first idea that showed +he had grown into the Richard Wagner we all know. He toiled away at +the theatre, nearly driving the singers crazy with the ceaseless work +he demanded from them; and to his family, when they had news from him +or of him, it must have seemed as though he had already one foot on +the ladder and it was only a matter of time for him to climb to the +dizzy height of Hofkapellmeister of one of the larger opera-houses. No +one, however, who had only known Richard prior to this period could +realize how rapidly the new environment was to form and ripen his +character. + +He was now about twenty-three years of age and a master of his trade. +He had written two operas and saw little likelihood of either being +played--for his advantage, at least. He had composed some instrumental +things, but he knew that the theatre and not the concert-room was his +vocation. He must have reflected that even writers of successful +operas had died in poverty, either utterly abject, as Mozart died, or +comparative, as Weber died. On the other hand Rossini had made a +fortune and Meyerbeer was making one. What then? Well, Wagner wanted +neither to die poor nor to die at all: all his life he claimed from +the world luxuries as a right. He felt his powers at least equal to +Rossini's and far superior to Meyerbeer's (though at this time he +ranked Meyerbeer high). His artistic conscience was not so sensitive +as it afterwards became: he actually liked the sparkling French and +Italian stuff which was so popular. So, then, he would challenge +Meyerbeer on his own ground! And as all the musical fashions had to +come from Paris he would go to Paris and make a bid for fortune. Such +must have been the process of reasoning which led Wagner to take his +first great step in life. + +For the present it is sufficient to say that out of Bulwer Lytton's +novel _Rienzi_ he took material to weave a libretto that would afford +opportunities for a great spectacular opera; and set to work and wrote +two acts of the music. Finally he took ship from Pillau to London, +bringing with him his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching +Paris ultimately. And on that journey I must leave him for the +present, pausing a little to consider the music he had composed up to +this time (not including the incomplete _Rienzi_). + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE WORKS + + +With the exception of _Die Feen_, nothing composed by Wagner prior to +_Rienzi_ calls for serious attention, nor would receive any attention +whatever were not the author's name Wagner. He himself did not +distress his soul about the fate of his early works: he knew too well +their value; but when a Wagner cult came into existence these things +of small importance were acclaimed, one by one as they came to light, +as things of, at any rate, the highest promise. Not even that can +justly be claimed for them. _Die Feen_ has a certain atmosphere and a +set artistic purpose which may, in the light of his subsequent +achievements, be taken as an indication, a small hint, that the +subsequent achievements were possible. So much, but not more, may be +conceded. _Das Liebesverbot_ is known to me only from descriptions and +brief quotations, but these suffice to show that here is not the true +Wagner. Of the orchestral music--the overtures and the symphonies--I +have heard oftenest and studied most closely the C major Symphony. Let +us take it first. + +Already I have referred to the absence of what, in the popular +acceptation of the word, might be called the "romantic" element in +Wagner's daily life during this period, and the symphony supports my +suggested explanation. In the letters, in accounts written by Dorn and +others, we find fire, enthusiasm, even a good deal of blatherskite and +wild vapouring, but scarcely a hint of "poetry," of the special +poetical sense, of the poet's outlook on life: and in his music he was +chiefly occupied in mastering the technical side of the craft, +assimilating, and at the same time emancipating himself from, the +lessons with Weinlig, and, absorbed in the task, simply letting +romance, poetry, imagination, fancy and the rest go hang; his +practical outward life was devoted to talking what he thought was +politics and drinking lager. + +Though the symphony is worth looking at because it shows how far +Wagner had then got, the general interest in it has for thirty years +been its history. It has led to a deal of unnecessarily acrimonious +and barren dispute. Wagner's disagreeable diatribes aimed subsequently +at the Jews were, and are, in part attributed to Mendelssohn's +behaviour regarding it. It was sent to Mendelssohn; and that +industrious gentleman never referred to the subject. Wherefore we are +asked two things--to contemn the Jew and accept the symphony as a +manifestation of tremendous genius. Possibly Mendelssohn never clapped +eyes on the symphony. Had he done so, one would have expected him to +pay Wagner a superficial, insincere compliment about the score, and +imply that something might be done, etc. We have Richard's written +word for it that Mendelssohn never referred to Wagner's work. All the +same, what I believe may have been the case, and what Wagner most +certainly would not have believed to be the case, is that Mendelssohn +saw it, and saw nothing in it, and put it on one side, and totally +forgot it. The symphony was lost for long years; but some one +discovered the parts somewhere, and a score was made, and at the very +end of his life Wagner directed a private performance of it. He +dismissed it with a humorously disparaging remark, and we need have +heard no more about it, had not sundry gentlemen who refuse to accept +any Wagner save the inspired prophet of their own imaginings insisted +on having it performed in public. + +I have, I say, heard it fairly often and beg to testify that it is a +miracle of dullness. The themes are not good of their sort, the sort +being, as he said, the sort that are useful for contrapuntal working. +That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by +lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils +could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither +grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got +along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the +finale. Here we find at least sturdiness if not much character. + +This criticism of his boyish work is not a disparagement of Wagner: +one might as well, indeed, disparage Shakespeare, or Beethoven, or the +sun and all the stars in heaven. The symphony tells us, as plainly as +words could tell, two things. First, that as far as craftsmanship is +concerned he fell between two stools: had his aim been lower, it would +have been also less confused, and the result would have turned out +better. That is, had he thought only of composing a well-constructed +symphony, with skilful, easy-running counterpoint, he might have +produced a more obviously clever if more superficial work. That aim +was missed by the fact that the Wagner who knew Beethoven by heart was +not at all content to achieve mere cleverness: he, too, wanted to +write a great symphony. But that ambition also was vague and robbed of +its force by his instinctive struggle to acquire a thorough technique. +So he showed himself neither a great poet-composer nor a contrapuntal +adept. The second fact so plainly stated in the symphony is that he +had not discovered what was to be the real driving force of his +invention throughout his creative career--the inspiration of a +dramatic or pictorial (not poetic) idea. The poetic idea is the +inspiration of the composer of pure, "absolute," music--the poetic +idea which is interpenetrated by the musical idea, the musical idea +that is interpenetrated by the poetic idea, the two being one and +indivisible. As this book proceeds the reader will see how, before +Wagner could shape fine music at all, he needed the +pictorial-dramatic-musical idea (if so cumbrous a phrase may be +allowed). From the very first he never succeeded in the attempt to +compose pure music of notable quality. As years went on he tried again +and again, but only such things as the _Kaisermarsch_, the +_Huldigungsmarsch_ and the _Siegfried Idyll_ are of any value, and +these, we may note, were meant to be played in a quasi-theatrical +environment. Immense crowds, flags, waving banners, uniforms, +flashing swords, snorting chargers and so on set Wagner to work on the +first as surely as the picture of the Hall of Song suggested the march +in _Tannhäuser_; the same is the case with the second; the _Siegfried +Idyll_, of course, was written for performance at the bedroom door or +window of Madame Cosima on that lady's birthday. A distinct picture +was in the composer's mind's-eye; and besides, the themes came out of +an opera already composed. + +_Die Feen_--_The Fairies_--is based on a version of the child's tale +of _Beauty and the Beast_, Gozzi's _La Donna Serpente_. In Gozzi's +form a lady is changed to a serpent: the handsome and valiant prince +comes along and all ends well. Wagner had not then dreamed of the +_Nibelung's Ring_ with its menagerie of nymphs who could sing under +water, giants, dwarfs, bears, frogs, crocodiles, "wurms," dragons and +birds with the gift of articulate speech; and he would have nothing to +do with the serpent. The lady must be changed into a stone. Further, +Wagner had now got hold of the notion that haunted him for the rest of +his life--a notion he exploited for all it was worth, and a good deal +more--the notion that woman's function on the globe is to "redeem" +man. So the prince changes the lady back from a stone to a woman, and +then, like Goldsmith's dog, to gain some private ends, goes mad. The +lady is equal to the occasion: she promptly redeems him--that is, +cures him--and all ends well. + +Here, at worst, we have the picture, or series of pictures, demanded +by Wagner's genius; here also is a dramatic idea of sorts. His +imagination immediately flamed. The music is not like that of the +symphony, dry and barren wood: on the contrary, it contains many +passages of rare beauty and feeling. There is little of the fairy-like +in it. To Wagner's criticism of Mendelssohn's _Midsummer Night's +Dream_ overture, that here we had not fairies but gnats, one might +retort that in his own opera we have not fairies but baby elephants at +play. But throughout there is a quality almost or quite new in music, +a feeling for light, a strange, uncanny light. It is worth noticing +this, because it is just this sense of all-pervading light which marks +off _Lohengrin_ from all preceding operas. The hint came, it goes +without saying, from Weber; but there is a vast difference between the +unearthly light of Weber and the fresh sweetness of _Lohengrin_, and +here, in his first boyish exploit, we find Wagner trying to utilise in +his own way Weber's hint. + +For a boy of twenty the opera is wonderfully well planned. Whether, +had it been written by Marschner, we should take the trouble to look +at it twice is a question I contentedly leave others to solve. But, as +it is by Wagner, we do take the trouble to look at it many times, and +the main thing we learn is that from the beginning the composer could +write his best music for the theatre, while for the concert-room he +could only grind out sluggish counterpoint. In addition we may see +that it is a work of much nobler artistic aim than _Rienzi_. +Preposterous as is the idea of a woman sacrificing herself to "save" +a man, it is an idea, and it stirred the depths of young Wagner's +emotional nature. In _Rienzi_, as we shall see in a later chapter, +there is no idea of any sort; that opera did not spring from his +heart, nor, properly speaking, from his head, but simply and wholly +from a hungry desire for fame and fortune. + +The clumsiness of the music is due to several causes. He modelled it, +he says, upon three composers, Beethoven, Spontini and Marschner--the +second and third being by far the more potent influences. Now, +gracefulness is not a characteristic of either of them. Then we must +consider that Wagner was not yet one-tenth fully grown, and it is the +hobbledehoy who is so heavy on his feet, not the athlete with all his +muscles completely trained: Wagner needed years of training before he +gained the sure, light touch of _Lohengrin_ and the _Mastersingers_. +His very deadly earnestness over the "lesson" of his opera and his +desire to express his feeling accurately and logically led to his +overweighting small melodies with ponderous harmonies. The +orchestration of the day was heavy. The art of Mozart had been +forgotten; Weber scored cumbrously--as was inevitable; Spontini and +Marschner scored cumbrously also, partly because they could not help +it, partly because they wanted to fill the theatre with sound. Wagner +naturally followed them. But it may be noted that the orchestration of +_The Fairies_ is not so widely different from that of the _Faust_ +overture composed a short while afterwards. A sense of the contrasts +to be obtained by alternating word-wind and strings is peculiarly +his. Mozart and Beethoven had alternated them, but on the simple plan +adopted in their violin sonatas: in those sonatas the violin is given +a passage and the piano accompanies, then the same passage is given to +the piano and the violin accompanies; in all the symphonies of Mozart, +and the earlier ones of Beethoven, virtually the same plan is +followed, strings and wind standing for violin and piano. Wagner from +the first discarded this mechanical notion; wind and strings are +played off against one another, but there are none of these mechanical +alternations, one holding the bat while the other has the ball. On the +whole _The Fairies_ is very beautifully scored. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +PARIS + + +I + +The late Sir Charles Hallé, probably retailing a story he had heard, +relates in his reminiscences that when Heine heard of a young German +musician coming from Russia to Paris to try his luck with an empty +pocket, a half-finished opera and a few introductions from +Meyerbeer--amongst them one to a bankrupt theatre--he clasped his +hands and raised his eyes to heaven, in silent adoration before such +unbounded and naïve self-confidence; and probably he had not then +learnt the whole truth of the matter. The journey from Riga, _via_ the +Russian frontier into Germany, and thence by Pillau, the Baltic, the +North Sea, London, the Channel and Boulogne, is surely the maddest, +most fantastic dream ever turned into a reality. That he turned the +dream into a reality shows how completely Wagner's character was now +formed: in no essential does the Wagner who built Bayreuth in the +'seventies differ from the Wagner of '39. He had unshakable tenacity +of purpose and perfect faith in his own genius; he was absolutely sure +he could accomplish the impossible; he took the wildest risks. As a +creative artist his development had just begun; but the qualities +which were in after years to enable him to force his creations on an +indifferent world were all there, ripe and strong. + +The problem of getting away from Russia was by no means simple, but +may be passed over in a few words. Wagner's income in Riga had not +been large--300 roubles--and it had been mostly swallowed up by his +German creditors; and even in the town he managed to owe money. ("Was +ever poet so trusted?" asked Dr. Johnson, referring to Goldsmith). Had +he given notice of his intended departure his Riga creditors could +have stopped him; so when the company returned to Riga after their +annual summer series of representations in Mittau Wagner did not +return. He made what is, I believe, called a "bee-line" for the +frontier, met there a friend, one Möller, who helped him to dodge the +sentries and patrols, and in a few days reached Arnau. Very little +later, in July 1839, he, Minna and Robber the dog took ship at Pillau +and set sail for England. The date is one of the most memorable in the +lives of the musicians--quite as worthy of remembrance as the day on +which Haydn boarded the packet at Calais. Haydn's powers had been +ripened in the sunshine of Mozart's genius, but it is doubtful +whether, save for England, the twelve great symphonies would have been +written; Wagner's powers were beginning to ripen, but it is hardly +doubtful that the _Dutchman_ would never have been written but for the +voyage to England. + +If he could have afforded it he probably would have travelled to Paris +by land. But travelling by land was quite out of the question; money +was then, as ever, scarce with Richard, and he realized that the +longest way round was the shortest--nay, the only--way there. He had +over three weeks of life on the ocean wave, and did not like it and +had no reason to like it. Uproarious storms raged unceasingly; the +ship was driven amongst the Norwegian crags for shelter; and the gloom +of these black, forbidding sea-precipices and fiords took possession +of his soul, mixing and giving pictorial shape to the weird old legend +of the phantom sailor doomed for ever to wander on the grey seas. +Glasenapp points out in an admirable passage that Sandwike, where +Daland goes ashore, is the name of the place where Wagner's ship put +in and he and the crew were regaled by a lonely miller with rum. There +is no rum in the _Dutchman_, but the atmosphere, terror and mystery of +the seas and rocky fiords of Norway are all there; and it was these +that inspired the _Dutchman_. He knew the tale in Heine's form of it, +and had thought of adapting it; but it was the sea gave the idea birth +in his imagination: without the sea the _Dutchman_ is inconceivable. +The _Dutchman_, the whole of the _Ring_ and the _Mastersingers of +Nuremberg_ are all operas in which the scenic environment is the +inspiration. Depend upon it, ere the ship had freed the Sound, and got +into the comparative safety of the open North Sea, the _Dutchman_ +legend had formed itself in his mind ready for dramatic treatment. + +Ultimately--to be precise, three and a half weeks after getting on +board--the family reached London, all three spent with sea-sickness +and want of food. They needed and took a rest, first staying near the +Tower and then in Soho. There is nothing to relate of Wagner's +experiences during his first London visit, save the episode of his +lost dog. The late Mr. Dannreuther got the story wrong and has since +been faithfully followed by biographers in saying the dog was away +several days, and on his return was hugged nearly to death by his +master; but in _My Life_ Wagner says the animal was lost for only a +few hours. But as he was intensely fond of animals all his life--he +always had two or three about him--the incident must have impressed +him. Anyhow, when he next came to London, fifteen years after, he +mentioned it to Mr. Dannreuther, and also pointed out to him where he +had lived and the points of interest he had seen. But nothing of the +slightest significance occurred, and soon he started for Paris by way +of Boulogne. When he reached Boulogne he stayed there a month for the +sake of the sweet company of Meyerbeer--which seems not a little funny +to-day. + +Wagner was only twenty-six years of age; like a rustic who has +suddenly been carried out of the dullness and darkness of his village +into some tawdry café of the town, and is dazzled and mistakes the +gilt wood for solid gold, so had Wagner been filled with admiration by +Meyerbeer's brilliant shoddy. It must be admitted that for sheer +theatricalism that gentleman beat any composer who preceded him. +Bellini's, Auber's and Spontini's scores are thin compared with his; +even Auber's grandest ensembles lack his sham magnificence. Wagner's +artistic conscience had not ripened to the point at which conscience +is an absolute, unfailing, unerring touchstone. He had been impressed +with Meyerbeer's showiness and superficial sparkle: it had not yet +occurred to him to test the music with the touchstone of truth. It is +not at all hard for me to believe that he had at this time a sincere +admiration for the Jewish autocrat of the opera world. He was passing +through that stage: he had not yet passed through it; in scheming +_Rienzi_ he had started, so to speak, with an immense rush to follow +Meyerbeer, and for some time the momentum acquired in that first rush +kept him going. When disillusionment came--well, we shall see. + +He was an obscure German kapellmeister, and had never been conductor +in a theatre which did not suffer bankruptcy or where something worse +did not occur. Meyerbeer had certainly never heard his name, and +Wagner was aware of his: he had heard of Meyerbeer's name, and even if +he had not admired the musician he cannot at that period have been +insensible to the man's supremacy in the opera trade. And when we add +to this latter fact, the other fact, that he _did_ admire the +musician, it is easy to understand the feelings with which he +approached this emperor of the barren Sahara of opera. To the emperor +he got an introduction--whether or not in the way Praeger relates is +not worth inquiring into--and the emperor received him not merely with +courtesy, but with what appears to have been something a great deal +warmer than courtesy. He hearkened to the two finished acts of +_Rienzi_, and beginning with an expression of admiration for the +beautiful clear handwriting, presently grew interested in the music +and ended by commending it heartily. Wagner departed for Paris with +the autocrat's letters in his pocket and, as I have said, little +money, but a breast packed with glorious hopes. The most successful +opera-composer of the day had declared that he would succeed, and +guaranteed his belief by giving him those precious introductions. One +was to the direction of the Grand opera, one to Joly, director of the +Renaissance Theatre, another to Schlesinger, the publisher, another +again to Habeneck, the director of the Conservatoire. Of these the +letter to Habeneck proved useful to Wagner from the artistic point of +view; that to Schlesinger useful pecuniarily. The others were useless, +and were never meant to be of any service. Had Meyerbeer told Wagner +to go back to Germany it is just possible Wagner might have gone. +Instead, Meyerbeer sent him into a _cul de sac_--to starve, or get out +as he best could. In the whole history of the art of the world no more +cruel swindle was ever played on an obscure artist by a man occupying +a brilliant position. + +For, figuratively, Wagner had not been in Paris twenty minutes before +he discovered that to be presented by the omnipotent Meyerbeer meant +nothing--absolutely nothing. Every one received him with the greatest +politeness; every one appeared to promise great things; no one did +anything. At the opera he had not the remotest chance, of course, +being young, unknown, a German, and without social influence. The +Renaissance speedily shut its doors, being bankrupt. Through Habeneck +he learnt to understand the Ninth Symphony even better than he had +understood it before; for the Conservatoire orchestra had rehearsed it +until, almost unconsciously, they discovered the real melody, or what +Wagner calls the melos. This is a question I shall go into later when +dealing with Wagner's own conducting; for the present it suffices to +mention the bare fact, as we can trace directly to these +performances--or, rather, rehearsals--the _Faust_ overture which +Wagner soon afterwards composed. Habeneck gave a performance of his +_Columbus_ overture; and in no other way was the acquaintance of any +value. So, as his little money was speedily gone, he had to live for a +while on what his relatives and friends could give him, and afterwards +by what he could earn by writing for Schlesinger's _Gazette Musicale_. +This is what Meyerbeer's introductions were worth. + + +II + +However, he found and made friends, some, though not all, as poor as +himself. Laube, his crony of earlier years, was there and introduced +him to Friedrich Pecht, a student of painting, and to Heine. This last +was very suspicious of Wagner at first, because he did not believe +Meyerbeer would exert himself on behalf of any one possessing the +slightest ability. It is obvious that he soon discovered that he was +both right and wrong. Wagner had ability, and Meyerbeer, far from +helping him, had ingeniously dug a trap to keep a possible rival +quiet. Wagner made the acquaintance of Berlioz, and promptly uttered +the criticism he adhered to always--one that I humbly subscribe +to--that Berlioz, with all his imagination, energy and wealth of +orchestral resource, had no sense of beauty. Berlioz, he remarked, +lived in Paris "with nothing but a troop of devotees around him, +shallow persons without a spark of judgment, who greet him as the +founder of a brand-new musical system, and completely turn his head." +To a certain degree this judgment came home to roost in Wagner's later +years in Bayreuth; but he was saved by the fact that, being a great +musician, he also drew genuine musicians to him. If Bayreuth was +crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before +Richard and found the weirdest meanings in his simplest melodies, and +who now write lengthy books about Richard's son Siegfried, yet we must +remember that the men who carried the news of Richard's true greatness +through Europe were Liszt, Bülow, Tausig, Jensen, Cornelius and many +smaller men--smaller men, but real musicians. Now, it was long since +pointed out that amongst his entourage Berlioz had no one possessing +an understanding of the art of music. Literary men and painters were +there in abundance: that is, they called on him; and because his +musical ideas or ideas for music seemed so vast they assumed that his +musicianship must be vast also; but those whose judgment would have +been trustworthy, and whose help worth having, stayed away altogether; +and when the celebrated personages had paid their call and gone their +several ways he was left to the flattery of a pack of incompetent +fools. This is not to exaggerate--it is simply to explain the +loneliness and sad tragedy of the end of Berlioz's life. He must in +his heart have known the bitter truth. One friend of Wagner's must not +be omitted--Lehrs. From him Wagner obtained what is called the middle +high-German _Sängerkrieg_, from which he extracted ere returning to +Germany the whole world of _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_; and this we +must consider later. We may note that his youngest sister Cäcilie, +Geyer's only child, had married Avenarius, who resided in Paris for a +time as agent for Brockhaus, the Leipzig publisher. + + +III + +The whole story of this first visit to Paris is sordid, squalid, +miserable to a degree; and I don't know that we can be surprised. When +Wagner sailed from Pillau he had not had a single work of any +importance performed. Nay, more, he had not written a work of any +importance. _Die Feen_ had never been given; _Das Liebesverbot_ had +been given--under ridiculous circumstances and with the most +disastrous results; his symphony had been played, but by this time +score and parts had probably disappeared. Mendelssohn had received +them in Leipzig and never once referred to them. Anyhow, none of these +things were striking enough to have attracted much attention even in +Germany; and they certainly would have excited no interest in busy, +bustling Paris--the home of the Rossini and Meyerbeer opera, of +quadrilles, vaudevilles and the rest. But for the happy, or rather +unhappy, chance of meeting Meyerbeer in Boulogne, he would have +entered the city without a line to any one of position. His money, as +I have just said, gave out almost at once, and thenceforth he had to +keep the wolf from the door by slaving at any odd jobs which would +bring in a few pence. On more than one occasion he was reduced, +literally, to his last penny. With marvellous resiliency of spirits he +managed not only to pull through, but to complete _Rienzi_, then to +write one great opera and begin planning two very great ones. We have +accounts--mostly written long after the event--of merry meetings and +suppers; but against them we must set the dozens of despairing letters +and scribbled notes in which he complains of his luck and his lot. +Yet, I say, how can we feel surprise? Why, he could not even play the +piano well enough to give an opera-director any fair notion of his +music; and perhaps that is just as well, so far as Paris was +concerned, for the taste of the day was such that the better his +compositions were understood the less they were liked. Hallé remarks +that when he talked of his operatic dreams at this time he was +commonly regarded as being a little, or more than a little, "off his +head." + +It became evident at the outset that all hopes anent the opera must +fall to the ground. He met Scribe, the omnipotent libretto-monger of +the day, and of course nothing came of it. The spectacle of _Rienzi_ +was on far too large a scale for the work to be possible at the +Renaissance, so, much against the grain, he offered Anténor Joly _Das +Liebesverbot_. He waited two months for a decided refusal or a +qualified acceptance, but heard nothing. At last a word from Meyerbeer +seemed to have settled the matter. One Dumersau, who translated the +words into French, was very enthusiastic about the music and made Joly +enthusiastic too; everything looked bright for the moment, and Wagner +moved from the slum where he had been living to an abode a little less +slum-like, in the Rue du Helder. On the day he moved the Renaissance +went bankrupt again. I say again, because Joly became bankrupt +punctually every three months--a fact which explains Meyerbeer's +readiness to help him in that quarter. In desperation he seized the +chance of earning a little money by writing the music for a vaudeville +production, _La Descente de la Courtille;_ but here again his luck was +out: a more practised hand took the job from him. He composed what he +considered simple songs adapted to the Parisian taste, and they were +found too complicated and difficult to sing. To earn mere bread he +arranged the more popular numbers of popular operas for all sorts of +instruments and combinations of instruments, and in one of his notes +we find him bewailing the sad truth that even this work was coming to +an end for a time. However, he wrote on for Schlesinger's _Gazette +Musicale_; for Lewald's _Europa_ (German) and the Dresden +_Abendzeitung_--though the work for the second two did not commence +till later on. This toil perhaps brought him bread: it did nothing +more; Minna had to pawn her trifles of jewellery; there seemed not a +ray of hope gleaming on the horizon. The performance of his old +_Columbus_ overture did him a precious deal of good--especially as at +the second performance--at a German concert arranged by +Schlesinger--the brass were so frightfully out of tune that people +could not make out what it was the composer would be at. It is +needless to tell the ten times told miserable tale in further detail +at this time of day; and I will now confine myself to the few facts +that bear upon the fuller life that soon was to open before him. + + +IV + +A new opera-house had been a-building in Dresden, a royal court +theatre; and a chance in Paris being denied to _Rienzi_, Wagner, +staggering along under the burden of his crushing woes, thought +perhaps his grand spectacular work would be the very thing to suit the +Dresdeners about the time of the opening. True, there remained three +acts to compose and orchestrate--but what was that to a Richard +Wagner! Only one other composer has achieved such astounding feats. +Mozart, amidst multitudinous worries, sat down and wrote his three +glorious symphonies "as easily as most men write a letter." Wagner was +born to achieve the impossible: he had already done it in getting to +Paris at all; and now, as a sheer speculation, on the very off-chance +of a Saxon court theatre accepting a work by a Saxon composer, +harassed by creditors, despondent under repeated disappointments, +drudging hours a day at hack-labour, he went to work and composed and +instrumentated the last three acts of the most brilliant opera that +had been written up to that date--1841. On February 15 of that year he +began; on November 19 he ruled the last double-bar and wrote finis. +That done, he dispatched the complete score and a copy of the words to +Dresden, with a letter to von Lüttichau, the intendant. Again the +delays seemed interminable; his letters, especially those to Fischer +and Heine, are packed with inquiries about the fate of his opera--he +could get no answer at all for a long while, and after it was +definitely accepted the usual troubles occurred through the whims and +caprices of singers. Even his idol and divinity, Schröder-Devrient, +great artist though she was on the stage, played the very prima +donna--which is about as bad a thing as can be said of any woman--off +the stage so far as _Rienzi_ was concerned. Being a prima donna first +and an artist afterwards, she thought nothing of dashing Wagner's +hopes by expressing a desire to appear in some other opera before +_Rienzi_; and as the delay meant a prolongation of the actual misery +and possible starvation at Paris we can picture Wagner's impotent +rage and despair. + +On October 14, 1841, we find him writing to Heine: + + "... Herr von Lüttichau has definitely consented to my opera + being put on the stage after Reissiger's. That is all very good; + but how many questions does not this answer suggest! For + instance: does the general management propose to place my work + upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant + effect? On this point W----writes me: 'The general management + will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable + manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to + me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from + Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me--that is the + best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on + my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be + fairly engrossing his attention, should be much occupied about + me. But what alarms me is the absolute silence of our Devrient! + I think I have already written a dozen letters to her: I am not + exactly surprised at her sending me no single line in answer, + because one knows how terrible a thing letter-writing is to many + people. But that she has never even indirectly sent me a word, + nor let me have a hint, makes me downright uneasy. Good heavens! + So much depends upon her--it would really be a mere humanity on + her part if she, perhaps through her lady's-maid, had sent me a + message to this effect: 'Make your mind easy! I am taking an + interest in your affair!'--certainly everything which I have + learnt here and there about her behaviour with regard to me + gives me every reason to feel comfortable; for instance, she is + said to have declared some while ago in Leipzig that she hoped + my opera would be brought out in Dresden. This token would have + fully quieted me, if it had only come directly to my ears or + eyes: hearsay, however, is far too uncertain a thing. + + "A month ago I likewise wrote to her, and earnestly begged her + to let me have only a line with the name of the lady-singer whom + she would like to be cast for the part of Irene, so that I might + make a formal list to propose to the management. No answer! Oh, + my best Herr Heine, if your kindness would only allow you a few + words in which to make me acquainted with the intentions of the + adored Devrient! Does she really wish to sing in my opera?--that + is the question. + + "Good heavens! only to know how all this stands! I have written + to Herr Tichatschek, and commended myself to his amiability: + shall I be able to count on this gentleman?" + +Again, on January 4 of the following year: + + "Should it really come to this, that my opera must be laid aside + for the whole winter, I should indeed be inconsolable; and he or + she who might be to blame for this delay would have incurred a + grave responsibility--perhaps for causing me untold sufferings. + I cannot write to Madame Devrient; for that I am much too + excited, and I know too well that my letters make no impression + upon her. But if I have not yet worn out your friendly feeling + toward me, and if I can be assured that you rely upon my fullest + gratitude, I earnestly beg of you to go to Madame Devrient. Tell + her of my astonishment at the news that it is she who hinders my + opera from at length appearing; and that I am in the highest + degree disturbed to learn that she by no means feels that + pleasure in and sympathy for my work which so many flattering + assurances had led me to believe. Give her an inkling of the + misery she would prepare for me, if (as I have now good reason + to fear) a performance of _Rienzi_ could not after all take + place this year! But what am I saying? Though you may be the + most approved friend of Madame Devrient, even you will not have + much influence over her. Therefore, I do not know at all what I + should say, what I must do, or what advise! My one great hope I + place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von + Lüttichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger. If Devrient cannot + give up her Armida, if she cannot afford me the sacrifice of a + whim, then all my welfare rests only on the promptness with + which this opera is brought out, and my own is taken up. I + therefore fervently pray Reissiger to hurry: and you--I beseech + you--do the same with Devrient. By punctuality and diligence + everything can still be set right for me; for the chief thing + is--only that my opera should come out before Easter (that is to + say, in the first half of March). I am truly quite exhausted! + Alas! I meet with so little that is encouraging, that it would + really be of untold import to me if, at least in Dresden, things + should go according to my wish!" + +These excerpts afford some notion of the struggles and disappointments +of this time--struggles that were to be repeated when, more than +twenty years later, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ were produced in +Munich. More need not be quoted, for the story is always the +same--delays caused by intrigues and the whims and caprice of singers, +and the indifference of inartistic directors. + +It should be said that Meyerbeer seems, for the only time, really to +have helped Wagner in getting _Rienzi_ accepted, for a letter of his +to von Lüttichau recommending the opera, has been preserved; wherefore +let us gladly acknowledge this deed, which was a good, if a very +small, one. He again paid a visit to Paris, and this time gave Wagner +a word of introduction to Pillet, who had assumed the post of director +of the Opéra. Owing to this introduction the _Flying Dutchman_ was +written. Wagner sketched a scenario and let Pillet have it. The +customary procrastination set in, and at last Pillet flatly told +Wagner he could not produce an opera by him: he was young, a German, +and so on and so on; and in a word he liked the scenario and had +determined to have it set by one Dietsch--which is not a very +French-sounding name. He offered Wagner twenty pounds for it, and if +the offer was not accepted--well, Wagner might do what he chose. +Wagner took it. + +He completed his libretto, took lodgings at Meudon, then a lovely +suburb of Paris, hired a piano and sat down to compose his _Dutchman_. +He gives a graphic account of his tremors whilst awaiting the piano: +he feared that during the degrading struggle for bread the power of +composing might have deserted him. The instrument arrived, he sat +down, and shouting for joy, struck out the sailors' chorus. In seven +weeks the draft was complete--it is dated September 13, 1841. Want of +funds compelled him to leave Meudon and resume his treadmill +toil--this time in the Rue Jacob in Paris; but he began to score his +opera in the autumn and by the end of the year it was entirely +finished. He sent it to the Berlin Opera, and at once began to cast +round for another subject. He had demonstrated to his own complete +satisfaction that grand historical themes were the only useful +material for a thoroughly "up-to-date" (date 1842--seventy years ago) +composer; and while doing what may be called foraging work he had hit +upon the story of _The Saracen Young Woman_. We may presume that this +appealed to him in a mood of reaction after the intensely personal +quality of the _Dutchman_. That mood sent him back in the direction of +_Rienzi_. About the _Dutchman_ he never had the slightest illusion. He +knew it to be so far ahead of the time that nothing in the way of a +popular success was to be hoped for it. On the other hand, he had +perfect faith--a faith justified by the subsequent event--in _Rienzi_; +and since the Wagner of 1842 was by no means the Wagner of 1862, or +even of 1852, since also he had been half-starved for a couple of +years and money seemed to him a highly desirable thing, he naturally, +inevitably, was drawn towards a subject which promised as well, from +the box-office point of view, as _Rienzi_. + +However, there is--or was in Wagner's case--a divinity that shapes our +ends. Much as he hungered after comforts, luxuries and the flesh-pots +of Egypt, the dæmon within his breast was too strong for him. He had +planned a new work, more or less on the lines of _Rienzi_, and perhaps +some lucky or unlucky accident might have sent him the inspiration to +start with the music. But just at this juncture Lehrs' copy of the +_Sängerkrieg_ attracted his attention: the complete drama of +_Tannhäuser_, and the first vague notion of _Lohengrin_, flashed upon +him. As he said, and as I have repeated, a new world was opened before +his amazed eyes. The _Saracen Young Woman_ and the rest all went to +the wall; and when on April 7, 1842, he set out for Dresden he had +different plans altogether in his head. Before he could start +Schlesinger advanced the money for more cornet-à-piston arrangements +of opera-airs, and he had to take the scores of those operas amongst +his luggage. + +As yet I have said nothing about his acquaintance with Liszt. It began +at this time, and of course was destined to have wonderful results, +but for the moment it was of no importance. Wagner was an unknown +composer; Liszt was a world-famous pianist. Wagner, moreover, had +written only _Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_, and was unable even to play +them on the piano. He probably made only the slightest impression on +Liszt. The incident is worth noticing in this chapter, because, though +this Paris episode seems to be nothing but a series of disasters, it +is an instance of the good that came of it. Wagner undoubtedly learnt +a lot about the stage; he got to know Liszt; he had the world of +_Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ opened out to him. When he went off to +Dresden and touched German soil once more he swore he would never +again leave his fatherland. But he had learnt what his fatherland was +quite unable to teach him. His friends said his character changed +entirely during this period. Undoubtedly it did change: the Wagner who +had aimed only at worldly, commercial success, changed into Wagner the +artist whose sincerity carried him through all troubles to the +crowning triumph--and discomfiture--of Bayreuth. I have referred +before to the fact of the old momentum keeping him going in a certain +direction even after he knew that direction to be a wrong one; and the +same thing was to occur again, as we shall see in a moment. After +writing the _Dutchman_ he actually deliberated as to the wisdom of +doing another _Rienzi_. The claims of his stomach were, naturally +after a two years of semi-starvation, very strong, and another +_Rienzi_ might have meant easily earned bread-and-butter. But the +Paris change was fundamental; and even if he had tried to do another +_Rienzi_ he could not possibly have done it. Without his knowing it, +the artist in him had triumphed over the merely commercial composer. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN' + + +I + +Were _Rienzi_ an opera of the highest artistic importance, I suppose I +should have read ere now Bulwer Lytton's novel of that name. As it is, +I must confess my utter inability to wade through that pretentious and +dreary achievement. And it does not matter. Skimming over the novel, I +have gathered enough of the plot to see that Wagner took only the plot +and nothing else from Lytton. What else he could have taken I cannot +guess, unless it was a copious stream of high-falutin', and at this +period Wagner's own resources of the sort were ample. What he wanted +was a plot that would afford him an opportunity of planning a +spectacular opera on the largest possible scale, and this he found in +Lytton. + +Two claims, or rather, a claim and a counter-claim, have been, and +constantly are, made with regard to _Rienzi_. The first is that it was +inspired by Meyerbeer and a copy of one of his works--which one I do +not know; the counter-claim is that Meyerbeer had no part in the +business, and that on the contrary he learnt more from Wagner than +Wagner could possibly have learnt from him. Now the notion, I take it, +of composing a grand work for the Paris stage was suggested by +Meyerbeer's stupendous success--of that, indeed, I cannot admit there +is the faintest shadow of a doubt. Starting from Paris, where they +were concocted together with Scribe, Meyerbeer's operas went the round +of the opera-houses of Europe, and save in one or two quarters +Meyerbeer lorded it over the opera-houses of Europe. It may be true +enough that some of his mighty works had not been played at Riga--it +may even be true that Wagner had not seen the scores. But that I feel +less sure about; and, anyhow, if he had not seen them he was bound to +have heard of them. The talk of musical Europe was not likely to be +unknown to a man who both read and wrote in the musical papers. As +soon as Wagner conceived the idea he wrote to Scribe concerning it; +and, as we know, Scribe quite naturally left his communication +unanswered. We find, then, that this, not more than this, though +certainly not less, is the extent of Wagner's indebtedness to +Meyerbeer: that Meyerbeer, by writing clap-trap for a large stage, +with showy, tawdry effects, had gained enormous popularity and +corresponding wealth, and thus unconsciously had thrown out a hint +that budded and blossomed into _Rienzi_. How little beyond this bare +hint Wagner got from Meyerbeer we shall see when we examine the music. +A word must be said about the counter-claim. In his age Wagner at +Bayreuth, although he had fine musicians as his friends, had round him +many gentry who told him--greatly daring, to his face--not only that +he owed no artistic debt to any one, but that, on the whole, most +other composers owed him a good deal. One can excuse the weary old +man, sorely battered in life's battles, lapping up a little of this +sweet flattery; but it is hard to forgive the stupidity that still +makes the great composer appear ridiculous thirty years after his +death. This legend of Meyerbeer borrowing or thieving from Wagner is +sheer rubbish; in all Wagner's music there is not a bar which could +have been of use to Meyerbeer. The most rowdy tunes in _Rienzi_ he +could easily equal: anything ever so remotely approaching the +beautiful he did not want. What! was he to run the chance of failure +by writing, or copying, one really expressive measure? + +It needed the cruel disillusionment of the Paris days, it needed also +the time needful for Wagner's normal growth, before he was driven to +see that the music-drama, or something that ultimately evolved itself +into the music-drama, was the form that he needed for his deepest +utterances. _Rienzi_ is old-fashioned opera, barefaced, blatant and +unashamed. Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and +marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more +deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide +opportunities for these. Both in _Die Feen_ and in _Das Liebesverbot_ +his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic. +Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market. The subject +was eminently suitable. The personage Rienzi was intended for a great, +heroic figure and the music written for a brilliant tenor. The +indispensable love-element was provided by Irene, a soprano (though +it can well be sung by a mezzo), and Adriano, son of a patrician, a +mezzo-soprano (almost a contralto part)--which would be amazing did we +not know Wagner's aim. A woman-man carries us back to the days of +Handel and Gluck, and shows how little sincere Wagner was at the time, +how absorbingly bent he was on tickling the ears of the Parisians. The +villains of the piece, Colonna and Orsini, with their patrician +followers, are true stage-villains of melodrama in some +situations--proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they +whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was +determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their +voices and their skill in every kind of music--heroic or noisy, +pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few +minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and +the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera +is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's +time on an exhaustive analysis. We shall have enough to do of that +kind of thing when we come to the beginning of Wagner's riper work, +the _Dutchman_: time and space would only be wasted if we examined +_Rienzi_ very closely. + +The curtain rises on a street in Rome; it is night, and in the +foreground Rienzi's house can be discerned. Orsini and his companions +run up a ladder to a window, enter, and come out carrying Irene, +Rienzi's sister. She screams for help quite in the Donna Anna manner; +Colonna and his companions come in and fall to blows--why, is not too +clear--with Orsini and his men. Adriano, Colonna's son, rescues Irene. +Crowds of the common people rush in, wildly asking one another what +the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the +name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, +sees what has occurred, and in a speech--uttered mainly in the driest +of dry recitative--taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and +their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The +nobles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their +quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to +wait their time, and he will lead them to destroy their oppressors. +They quietly disperse; Rienzi, Adriano and Irene have a scene; Rienzi +recognises in his sister's rescuer the son of his brother's murderer, +Adriano, and the latter, who has fallen in love with Irene, promises +to take Rienzi's part, and the three sing a trio as cold, undramatic +and commonplace as anything in Donizetti. There are two passages in it +which possess life: a variant of a theme from _Euryanthe_, and a theme +distinctly suggestive of the Wagner of _Tristan_. Then Rienzi goes +off, ostensibly to prepare for battle, but in reality to leave the +scene clear for Adriano and Irene to sing a rather maudlin love-duet. +A trumpet-call is heard; people rush in from all sides; Rienzi +addresses them; and after choruses, partly double-choruses, all go off +to fight the patricians. There is plenty of bustle; there is +tremendous vigour; and the scene affords chances for the stage manager +to manipulate big crowds effectively. But we must remember that the +thing had been quite as well done by Auber in _Masaniello_: even the +energy is not the true Wagnerian energy divine: it does not show +itself through the stuff of the music, but in the common rumty-tumpty +rhythms of the day, often offensively vulgar, and in the noisy +instrumentation. Any one can write for a big chorus and orchestra, +with plenty of trumpets and drums: to fill the music itself with +energy is a task that Wagner could not cope with as yet. + +So far the characters have been consistent. In the second act they all +show signs of weakness. Messengers of peace enter: Rienzi has +conquered and freed the people from an unbearable yoke; he is +congratulated by the messengers who have wandered through the +country--a pilgrimage that in the fourteenth century might well have +occupied them for years--and everywhere peace prevails. The music here +has a certain charm and freshness, but no more can be said for it. +Wagner wanted a contrast to the imposing displays of the first act, so +he simply put in this unnecessary scene. The patricians enter and +whine, begging for mercy; Rienzi, now Tribune, joins the senators; and +Colonna, Orsini and the rest begin to plot his death. Adriano, amongst +them unnoticed at first, expostulates--begs them not to stain their +hands and souls with the blood of the vanquisher who has treated them +so magnanimously. They scorn him as a deserter of his own class; they +leave, and he swears to save "Irenens Bruder." He has become +sentimentalist; but some of the music of the scene has strength. Then +the people conveniently flock in; ambassadors come from all corners of +the earth to acknowledge Rienzi; Adriano warns him that mischief is +breeding, and Rienzi calmly smiles; there is a most elaborate ballet, +occupying many pages of the score and full of trumpery tunes; Orsini +stabs Rienzi, and all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi +shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the +conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and +Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, +turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the +people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he +prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much +very Italian stuff in the music; but on the whole this scene is the +strongest in the opera. Of the real Wagner there is still small sign. + +He had completed these two acts when he set out for Paris. Once he +realized how poor were the prospects of getting his work played there, +his ardour for bigness and noise seems to have cooled. There are no +more double choruses; everything is planned on a smaller scale. The +three remaining acts in their present form (for he afterwards +shortened the opera) can be, and often are, compressed into two, or +even one. They can be described in a few words. The people begin to +distrust Rienzi; the patricians recommence plotting; Rienzi leads the +people to victory against them, and Colonna, with the others, is +killed. Adriano again wobbles and swears vengeance; the capitol is set +on fire with Rienzi and Irene inside; at the last moment Adriano +repents and rushes in to die with them; the building falls with a +crash, destroying the three; and as the curtain falls the +patricians--such as are left--seeing the people leaderless, fall upon +and scatter them. There are pages on pages that one can scarcely +believe came from Wagner's pen; in terrific theatrical situations the +most trivial Italian tunes are poured out in copious profusion. The +war hymn is sheer rowdyism; the great broad melody which forms part of +the prayer, and on which the introduction of the overture is based, +stands out from a weltering sea of orchestral bangs, noises and +screams and skirls of the strings. But there are numberless chances +for fine voices to be heard; and at that time of day these were even +more prized than they are to-day. The sparkle, the fireworks, the +sheer noise of the choruses, carried every one away. In Dresden Wagner +became the man of the hour. He had aimed at a success of this sort, +and he attained it, though by no means so quickly as he had expected, +nor in the quarter where a success would have been profitable. + +It is not needful to say much more about the music. It shows a variety +of influences; it shows also that Wagner, before he was thirty, was, +as I have already said, a perfect master of the tricks of the trade. +In huge imposing effects he out-Meyerbeered Meyerbeer, out-Spontinied +Spontini. If his tunes have not the superficial gracefulness of +Bellini it is because Wagner, in spite of himself, was driven by his +dæmon to aim at expressiveness, and, as in the _Dutchman_ a very short +time afterwards, fell between two stools. His tunes lack the fluency +of the Italians because he did, in a half-hearted way, want to utter +genuine feeling; they are not finely, accurately and logically +expressive as they are in _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_, because the +Italian influence, and the necessity of writing to please the gallery, +perpetually held him back. The contours of the melodies are dictated +from outside, consciously copied from alien models: in the later works +they are shaped by the inner force of his own mind, and though the +Weber idiom is prevalent, he used it unconsciously, as children in +learning to speak acquire the accent of the elders about them or the +dialect of the neighbourhood in which they are reared. I say the tunes +lack external grace, and I might go further: all the themes, all the +passages that follow (rather than grow out of) the themes, are +characterized by a certain clumsiness. This followed, as night the +day, from the attempt to copy and to be original at the same time. He +could not obey his instinct and write directly and simply: he must +needs warp and twist the obvious, and disguise, even from himself, its +essential commonplaceness. A remarkable instance is his use of the +Dresden Amen in _Rienzi_ as compared with his use of it in +_Tannhäuser_. In the latter it is plain, diatonic and immensely--in +the best sense--effective; in _Rienzi_, in spite of the vigour of its +presentation, the effect is weakened by the way in which it is bent +away to a chromatic something which is neither frankly Italian nor +honestly German. Again, he composed with an audience in his mind's eye +that could only take in one melody or theme at a time. The melody +might be in an upper part, a middle, or in the bass. In one or another +it always is, and the rest of the musical tissue is only +accompaniment. Hence a heaviness, a lumbering motion of the harmonies, +which is irritating to our ears now that we are accustomed to webs he +spun in later days when music no longer consisted to him of top parts +and bottom parts, but of a broad stream of parts, all of equal +importance, and all flowing along together, preserving each its +individuality, and each individual blending with the others to produce +the total effect. In _Rienzi_ the bass often remains the same for bars +together, while in an upper part a florid tune flourishes its tail, so +to speak, for the public amusement. An ugly trick he indulged in at +this time was giving to the voice the notes of the instrumental +bass--a remnant of the eighteenth-century way of writing for the bass +voice. + +Artistically _Rienzi_ was a sin. Remembering that _Die Feen_ had been +written years before, it is useless to contend that Wagner did not +know he was aiming at something lower than the best he could produce. +He never again fell away from his highest and truest self, though he +was sorely tempted. + + +II + +The simple, terrible old legend of the Flying Dutchman had in it no +elements of drama. The irascible mariner of ancient times, vainly +struggling to round Cape Horn (or some other cape) against a head +wind, swore in his wrath that he would succeed if he tried until the +Day of Judgment; a lightning flash in the sky proclaimed that he was +taken at his word; thenceforward his ship sailed the seas without +stopping; it never could reach any port, and release would only come +at the last day. The crew died and their ghosts worked the vessel; the +vessel rotted and the ghostly crew continued to work a phantom ship; +only Vanderdecken, the skipper, seems to have lived on in the flesh. +Other ships passed through the phantom as though it was a cloud; and +the living crews shuddered, and cursed the dead. Before this thing of +terror and mystery could form a part of any drama, adventures had to +be invented and grafted on to it. As with the legend of the Wandering +Jew, this was done in a hundred, perhaps a thousand, instances; and +never had a good piece of work been the result. Whether Heine did or +did not himself devise the form in which the legend is used in his +reminiscences of Herr von Schnabalewopski it is not worth troubling to +find out. It is enough that in Heine, Wagner found the story more or +less as he employed it. It is an odd compound--odd at this time of day +at least--of the hard old superstition with soft German sentimentality +of the Romantic period. A good Angel, thinking the Dutchman's fate +too hard, interceded for him; and though his sentence could not be +wholly remitted, a bargain was struck. Once in seven years +Vanderdecken could land and spend a certain time ashore. If during +this interval of peace he could find a maiden who would love him +faithfully to death, he would be released: his wanderings would be +o'er, and death would swallow him up. How the maiden's fidelity could +be tested does not appear. + +Wagner would have it that with the _Dutchman_ he ceased to be a mere +stringer of opera verses and became the full poet. The work does not +support that view; nor is the construction of the plot one whit better +than a hundred others put together by hacks before he was born. Each +act is crammed with conventional tricks out of the hack's common +stock; in each scene, from the very first, characters come on or go +off, not because it is inherent in the action that they should do so, +but because without such helps the librettist, or "poet," could not +have got along. The curtain rises on a rocky Norwegian fiord where a +sailing-vessel has found shelter from a storm that is raging on the +open sea. Daland, the skipper, has gone ashore to survey the land and +to find out, if he can, whither his ship has been driven. He +recognizes the spot: it is Sandwike, and the tempest has blown him +"sieben Meilen" out of his course. However, he is glad enough to be +safe; and seeing signs of better weather goes into his cabin to wait, +leaving a watchman on guard. This is the first specimen of the old +stage-craft; Daland had to be got rid of, so, instead of attending to +any damage the waves may have caused the ship, he goes quietly +downstairs to take a snooze. The watchman tries to keep himself awake +by singing. But it is no use. The librettist is inexorable: the stage +is wanted for some one else; and the watchman's song merely acts as a +soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores. In the distance appears +the ship of the Flying Dutchman--"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der +Mast"--she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by +Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore. It is the seventh year, +and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will +redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland +awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, +hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon +grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger +home with him, and if his daughter Senta proves satisfactory, +Vanderdecken is to have her as his bride in return for infinite +treasure out of the hold of the strange vessel. Daland has been shown +a sample, and is overjoyed with his bargain: a distinguished-looking +husband for his daughter and the husband's wealth for himself. The +wind changes to a favourable one; Daland sets out first, leaving the +Dutchman to follow in a boat which we may well believe goes faster, +for it is driven by the devil and carries a private hurricane wherever +it goes. The convenient veering of the wind need not be taken as +forced on the stage manager by the librettist, for Daland foretells +it at the very beginning of the act. + +I do not wish to treat so noble a work as the _Flying Dutchman_ with +any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and +the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and +ultra-conventionality of _Rienzi_ to the richness and simplicity and +directness of _Tristan_, we must realize clearly that in its present +stage the craftsmanship was little in advance of Scribe's. In some +respects he was very far in advance of Scribe. The whole thing springs +from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast +doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of hell +as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his +torments, and at last finding her. But Wagner had not yet evolved or +invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in +the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities which +seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now +they compel us to smile. He could no more have constructed the +framework of the _Dutchman_ without shoving on and pulling off his +puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music +without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera +which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond. The +conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way. Throughout +the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman +story: mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are +scared when they are told of him. Yet when the very ship described in +the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with +its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest +astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the +ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who +he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no +attention to so weird a craft. + +In the next act we have a room in Daland's house. A number of girls +are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs +on the wall--that of Vanderdecken. From earliest girlhood she has +heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her +hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind +and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity +occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which +men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned +and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more +or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in +taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, +from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure. The +Dutchman is there to give character and atmosphere to the piece, but +dramatically he is nothing more than Senta's opportunity personified. +The girls spin on; a kind of forewoman, Mary, upbraids Senta with +idling and staring at the picture and dreaming away her life--for the +girl is quite open about her sympathy with the accursed seafaring +man. She wants Mary to sing the _Flying Dutchman_ ballad; Mary curtly +refuses; "Then," rejoins Senta, for all the world like a leading lady +in a melodrama giving the cue for the band to begin the royalty-song, +"I'll sing it myself"; and, despite protests, she does. It recounts, +of course, the story of the Dutchman prior to his meeting with Daland. +At the end she announces her intention of saving him; and while the +women are expostulating, Eric rushes in to add his voice to theirs. He +tells them Daland's ship is in sight; and all save he and Senta scurry +off to make preparations. Eric wishes to marry her, and pleads his +cause; she asks him what his griefs are compared with those of the +doomed man whose picture hangs on the wall. He (rightly) thinks her +semi-demented, and tells a dream he had: of the Dutchman entering, of +Senta at once giving herself to him, and then sailing away. His story +has a result precisely contrary to what he intended and hoped: her +ecstasy becomes more violent than ever; he (the Dutchman) seeks her +and she will share his grief with him. Eric rushes off in despair and +horror; Senta subsides; she prays that the Dutchman may be able to +find her--and her father and Vanderdecken enter. + +She stands mazed, not greeting her father nor uttering a word, gazing +at the stranger. Now Daland, I have already remarked, has noticed no +resemblance between this man and the picture, and he cannot understand +his daughter's silence. Finally she salutes him and asks about +Vanderdecken; and Daland, in haste, discloses his plan. Neither +Vanderdecken nor Senta speaks; so, with a stroke of the old-fashioned +opera trickery, Wagner makes Daland feel himself _de trop_ and go +away. Vanderdecken at once begins his story, and the pair sing a duet, +which I will deal with shortly; for the moment I need only remind the +reader that Senta's mind was made up in advance. When the Dutchman, +almost warningly, reminds her that it is nothing less than a life's +devotion he demands, she proudly answers, "Whoever you are, whatever +the curse on you, I will share your life and your doom." The +librettist now having need of his services for the finale, Daland +enters, and the act winds up with a showy trio. + +No further comment is needed on this act: in structure, like the +first, it is only old-fashioned opera. It is in the third act that the +inherent weakness of the story for operatic purposes shows with almost +disastrous results. Only the sheer force of the music averts a +complete breakdown. The problem was to show Senta literally faithful +unto death. Evidently it was impossible for Vanderdecken to claim and +carry off his bride forthwith. Had that been possible the work might +have terminated with a short scene to form the real finale of the +second act. But Vanderdecken had asked for a wife, and Daland would +not have dreamed of letting his daughter go until the proper ceremony +had taken place. Besides, Wagner was writing an opera with the very +practical view of a performance in the theatre; and in those days of +lengthy operas (_Rienzi_ at first played five and a half hours) the +public would have grumbled if they did not get enough for their +money. No manager would have looked at a work no longer than the first +and second acts of the _Dutchman_. The final scene could not be made +very lengthy; so the composer determined to pad out the act with pure +irrelevant music, and the librettist had to find him words. In a piano +score now before me the essential part of the act, the scene in which +Senta redeems the Dutchman, occupies twenty-four pages; and these are +preceded by fifty pages of choruses of sailors, maidens and ghosts. +Allowing for the larger space occupied by choruses on the printed +page, we are half-way through the act before serious business begins. +It must be owned that Wagner has done his work superbly, even making +use of it to a certain extent. Girls bring provisions and drinks for +Daland's crew, and there is a lot of chorus and counter-chorus and +dancing. Then both men and girls call upon the Dutch crew. There is no +response. The ship lies wrapt in gloom; and, half afraid, the girls +and Daland's men taunt them with being dead. But suddenly the hour +arrives for the Dutchman to sail. With perfect calm all around, a +hurricane shakes her sails and shrieks and pipes in the rigging, and +the waters roar and foam; the crew come to life and call for their +captain in a series of unearthly choruses. Daland's men, +horror-struck, make the sign of the cross; the spectres give a +"taunting laugh" and subside; once again all is peace, and the +sinister vessel lies there, the air seeming to thicken and grow +blacker about her. + +The women have gone off; the sailors occupy themselves with eating +and drinking; and Senta, pursued by Eric, comes on. He has heard of +the intended marriage, and begs passionately that she shall not +sacrifice herself, ending with a cavatina--a cavatina by Richard +Wagner!--in vain. But Vanderdecken has heard all from the +wings--another bit of old-fashioned stage trickery, like the +"asides"--and resolves that Senta shall not sacrifice herself. "For +ever lost," he cries, realizing that he is renouncing his last chance. +Senta declares her determination to follow him--she will redeem him +whether he wishes it or not; in a regular set trio she, he and Eric +thrash the matter out; she is not to be shaken; Eric gives a +despairing cry which brings on the women folk and the sailors. The +Dutchman says farewell, pipes up his spectral crew, who heave the +anchor, and he goes on board. As the ship moves off Senta throws +herself into the water; the ship falls to pieces; the sun rises, and +in its beams the "glorified forms" of the pair are seen mounting the +skies. Senta has had her way: she has worked out her destiny and +"saved" the wanderer. The curtain falls. + +This is the first of the genuine Wagner dramas, the first, therefore, +from which the Wagnerians have drawn, or into which they have read, +"lessons." As we get on I shall try to show that no moral can be +tacked on to any of Wagner's works. But supposing that he did wish to +teach us something in the _Dutchman_, what on earth can it be? Not, +surely, that one should not swear rash oaths in a temper? We have all +done that and needed no redeemer. There is no touch of essential +veracity in the old legend, a bit of puerile medieval fantasy; there +is no sort of proportion between the trivial offence and the appalling +punishment; even in an age which thought to oppose the will of the +Almighty the rankest blasphemy it can never have been considered +eternally just that a righteous and merciful Creator should deal out +such a punishment. Besides, in the ancient legend, as in Wagner's +book, the Almighty has little to do with the matter: it is the foul +fiend who snaps up Vanderdecken in his momentary lapse. Again, after +the first act Vanderdecken is second to Senta. Even the belated +attempt to show him heroic in his determination to sail off alone to +his doom has no dramatic point; it has no bearing on his salvation, +for nothing happens until Senta jumps into the sea, and we feel sure +nothing would have happened if she had not jumped. _That_ lesson, at +any rate--a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best--is not set +forth in the _Dutchman_. The only other possible one is that +self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I +say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of +Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such +self-sacrifice is not worthy, not beautiful; but, on the contrary, a +very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there +no lesson in the _Dutchman_, but the whole idea is so absurd that only +the power of the music enables us to swallow it at all. The condition +on which the Dutchman can be saved is purely arbitrary; what +difference ought it to make to him that some one, for the sake of an +idea, sacrifices herself? The "good angel" who proposed it must have +been temporarily out of her senses, and the Creator when he agreed +must have been nodding. And the whole business is smeared over with +German mawkish sentimentality--this business, I mean, of Senta +_loving_ the Dutchman. Had he seen and loved her, and resolutely +sailed off without her, and found his salvation in that, there would +be some semblance of reason; but the fumbling attempt to make +something of the man at the last moment is futile, and we are left +with nothing but sentimental sickliness, nauseating and revolting. In +a word, then, we must take the _Dutchman_ libretto as it is, +unreasonable, false: only a series of occasions for writing some fine +music. That it is nothing more than such a series I have endeavoured +to establish at all this length; because if it is worth understanding +Wagner at all, and if we wish to understand him, we must realise the +point he started from in his half-conscious groping after the opera +form which he only found in its full perfection in his _Tristan_ +period. + + +III + +In the music the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly +from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the +operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the +strength and beauty of much of the _Dutchman_ is one of those things +almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the +blatant clamour, of _Rienzi_ there is not a hint. The opera is by no +means all on the highest level, but a good third of it is, and there +are pages which Richard never afterwards surpassed. A dozen passages +are prophetic of the Wagner of _Tristan_ and the _Ring_. Let me begin +by quoting a few of these. The phrase (_a_, page 118) immediately +suggests _Tristan_, as it screams higher and higher with +ever-increasing intensity of passion; a variant of it (_b_) is charged +with the same feeling, and is used in the same way. The feeling is not +the same as in _Tristan_; both are used when Eric makes his last +despairing appeals to Senta. But look at (_c_). Compare it with one of +the themes (_d_) expressive of Wotan's anguish, and then recollect +that (_c_) is used when Vanderdecken, in veiled speech, tells Daland +of his woes. When Vanderdecken is yearning for Senta's love, and +trembling lest by telling the truth he should frighten her, we get +(_e_), afterwards developed with such poignant effect in the first and +last acts of _Tristan_. Vanderdecken enters with Daland, and Senta, +almost stunned, sets eyes on him for the first time. The musical +phrase is (_f_), which, simplified and more direct in its appeal, was +to be used when Siegmund and Sieglinda first gaze on one another. Then +the passage (_g_) is one which the reader will find mentioned in my +chapter on _Tristan_ (p. 263) as standing for quite a multitude of +things in the _Ring_. A curious case is the little phrase (_h_) which +occurs in the middle of the watchman's song. Of no significance here, +of what tremendous import it is in the first act of _Tristan_. + +None of these phrases or passages is developed with the power and +resource characteristic of Wagner's later work; but it is astonishing +that after the baldness and noise of _Rienzi_ he should have gone +straight on to invent such music at all. He was still groping his way, +and had to trust to the conventional framework of opera construction +to a large extent; that is, each act is divided into set numbers, even +when the numbers are based on music which has been heard before and to +which, therefore, a definite meaning has become attached. He could not +yet trust himself in an open sea of music, as he did in _Tristan_; +rather, we have a chain of lakes, the music sometimes overflowing out +of one into another. The marvellous continual development of themes +with intricate interweavings and incessant transmogrifications--all +this was part of the technique of the _Tristan_ period. Neither in the +_Dutchman_ nor in _Tannhäuser_ nor in _Lohengrin_ is there any sign of +it. Of what may be called leitmotivs there are only three, the +Dutchman (_i_) and Senta (_j_), while a portion of the second (_k_) +may be regarded as a third, for it is used by itself, independently. +One little group of notes (_l_) I have seen described as a leitmotiv; +and if it is one, I should like to know what it stands for. As can be +seen, it is a bit of the Senta theme (fourth bar of _j_); and in the +overture a long connecting passage is built on it. But it also forms +part of the chorus of sailors in the first act, part of the watchman's +song in a varied form, part of another sailors' chorus (_m_); it is +the very backbone of the spinning chorus; and lastly, a large portion +of the spectral sailors' chorus is made up of it. I have no +explanation to offer--unless it be that Wagner, bent on suggesting the +sea throughout the opera, felt that this phrase helped him to sustain +the atmosphere. The sea, indeed, throughout the _Dutchman_, is the +background, foreground, the whole environment of the drama; in this +wild legend which came out of the sea, every action is related to the +sea, and one might say that the sea's voice is echoed in every one's +speech. The sea music, therefore, based on Senta's ballad--apart from +the leitmotivs which that contains--is of the very first importance. +The easiest way to get a firm grasp of the _Dutchman_ is to analyse +this ballad. Then in passing rapidly over the score afterwards we +shall see at a glance the structure of the whole, and how the new +thematic matter is either welded into this sea music or stodgily +interpolated. The song is too long to be transcribed here; but every +reader must have in his possession a copy at this time of day. There +are ten bars of introduction: in the eleventh, to the Dutchman theme, +Senta sings the "Yo-ho-ho"; at the fifteenth, with a glorious swing +and rush she dashes into the ballad-- + + "Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an, + Blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast? + Auf hohem Bord der bleiche Mann, + Des Schilfes Herr, wacht ohne Rast." + +This consists of eight bars--a four-bar section repeated. Then we get +the storm music, four bars of which I quote (_n_), and this is freely +employed throughout the opera. The storm subsides, and at bar +thirty-nine Senta sings to her own theme-- + + "Doch kann dem bleichen Manne Erlösung einstens noch werden, + Fänd' er ein Weib, das bis in den Tod getreu ihm auf Erden." + +leading into the second part (_k_) to the words-- + + "Ach! Wann wirst du, bleicher Seemann, sie finden? + Betet zum Himmel dass bald + Ein Weib Treue ihm halt'!" + +The three themes are of very unequal power. The first is one of the +landmarks in musical history; neither Wagner himself nor any of the +other great masters ever hit upon a more gigantic theme, terrible in +its direct force at its announcement, still more terrible as it is +used in the overture and later in the drama. The second, Senta, is a +piece of sloppy German sentimentality: this is not a heroine who will +(rightly or wrongly) sacrifice herself for an idea, but a hausfrau who +will always have her husband's supper ready and his slippers laid to +warm on the stove shelf. It is significant that Senta herself in her +moment of highest exaltation does not refer to it: Wagner often +calculated wrong, but he never felt wrong. The third, the grief and +anguish of the condemned sailor, and pity for him, is one of the most +wonderful things in music; for blent with its pathos is the feeling of +a remoter time, the feeling that it all happened in ages that are +past, the feeling for "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long +ago." This sense of the past, the historic sense--call it what you +will--was thus strong in Wagner at this early period, and it grew even +stronger later on, finding its most passionate expression in _Tristan_ +and its loveliest expression in the _Mastersingers_. The faculty to +shape pregnant musical themes is the stamp of the great master. The +early men are supposed to have "taken church melodies" and worked them +up into masses: what they did was to take meaningless strings of +notes, bare suggestions, and give them form and meaning by means of +rhythm (for only boobies talk of the old church music not possessing +rhythm). The later composers sometimes followed the same +procedure--which is equivalent to a sculptor "taking" a block of +marble and hewing out a statue; but more and more they trusted to +their own imaginations. In either case the "mighty line" results; and +there is not a great composition in the world which has not great +themes; and, _vice versa_, when the themes are trivial the work +evolved from them is invariably trivial. I see modern works full of +cleverness and colour: I do not waste much time on them; there cannot +be anything in them, and they will not survive. Along with some weak +motives--or, to be more accurate, motives which are musically weak but +dramatically a help--Wagner has a huge list of tremendous ones, each a +landmark. However, this by way of digression. + +Music evolved from this ballad forms, as I have said, the structural +outline of the opera. The overture is almost entirely shaped out of +it, being one of that sort which is supposed to foreshadow the opera, +to tell the tale in music before we see it enacted on the stage. From +the _Dutchman_ onward Wagner nearly always constructed his +introductions--whether to whole operas or to single acts or even +scenes--on this plan, largely discarding the purely architectural +forms. Here, for example, we have at the outset the blind fury of the +tempest, taken and developed from (_n_), with the Dutchman theme. The +storm reaches its height, and there is a brief lull, and Vanderdecken +seems to dream of a possible redeemer; the elements immediately rage +again, with the wind screaming fiercely through sails and ropes, and +waves crashing against the ship's sides; he yearns for rest (_k_), +seems to implore the Almighty to send the Day of Judgment; and at +length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption +of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of +incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; +but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that +counts: the roar of the billows, the "_hui!_" of the wind, the dashing +and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's +men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," add even more colour. The motion of +the sea is kept up, partly with fresh musical material, until at last +it all but ceases; the watchman sings his song of the soft south wind +and falls asleep. Then the sky darkens, the Flying Dutchman comes in, +and the storm music rages once more. It is woven into Vanderdecken's +magnificent scena (surely the greatest opera scena written up to +the year 1842); and then disappears. In its place we get pages of +(for Wagner) wearisome twaddle. The reason is obvious. For the purpose +of explaining the subsequent movement of the drama there is a lot of +conversation which Weber, in the Singspiel, would have left to be +spoken, and Mozart would have set to dry recitative. Wagner was +determined that his music should flow on; but the inspiration of the +sea was gone, and he could only fill up with uninspired stuff. He had +not yet mastered his new musico-dramatic art; indeed, I much doubt +whether he realized its possibilities. In his _Tristan_ days he knew +how to avoid explanations on the stage; nothing in _Tristan_ needs +explanation; in the _Mastersingers_ and the _Ring_ his resources--his +inventiveness and technical mastery of music--were unbounded, and an +intractable incident he simply smothered in splendid music. Here, the +bargaining of Daland and Vanderdecken is a very intractable incident, +and in trying to make the best of it he made the worst. That is, he +would have saved us an appalling _longueur_ had he given us two +minutes of frank recitative in place of twenty minutes of make-believe +music--music in the very finest kapellmeister style of the period. +Even the passage quoted (_c_) is made nothing of. There are one or two +fine dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his ship +is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden," +with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very +dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the +composer's imagination. The sweet wind carries off the mariners to +their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar +of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the +point of, say, the quieter bits of Mendelssohn's _Hebrides_, but it +runs delicately along, and it more than serves. + +The figure (_l_), which has been so prominent in the overture and +sailors' choruses, is equally noticeable in the next act. The spinning +chorus, in fact, may be said to grow out of it. There is no break +between the two acts (Wagner's first intention was to go straight on, +making the _Dutchman_ an opera in one long act); the introduction to +the second is a continuation of the conclusion of the first. The +figure is repeated several times in a long diminuendo, changing the +key from B flat to A major, so we never cease to feel the presence of +the eternal sea. Inside the skipper's old-world house one is conscious +that the waves are plashing not far from the walls, and that the air +is salt and fresh there. There is a pervading dreamy atmosphere: again +we are carried away into far-off times; the scene has the unreality of +a dream, a dream of the sea. Mlle. Senta quickly shatters that +illusion with her passion and living young blood; but in memory one +always has this cottage, where women pass the days in singing, where +there are no clocks, and time can only be measured by the waves as +they break on the shore. The maiden's spinning song is small scale +music; nothing ambitious is wanted, and nothing ambitious is +attempted. As a bit of music it is infinitely superior to the clumsy +wooden bridal chorus in _Lohengrin_; the touch is light, the melodies +fresh and dainty, and the subdued hum of the wheels and the bustle are +suggested throughout without becoming monotonous. Not for a musical, +but for a purely theatrical, reason we get a snatch of (_k_); Senta is +not spinning; she is engaged in staring at the picture. After much +chattering she sings the ballad, and at the end declaims her intention +of saving the Dutchman to the music which is employed when she +actually accomplishes that feat. When Eric rushes in, the orchestra +has the usual operatic storm-in-a-teacup sort of stuff; the chattering +chorus of women getting ready for Daland's reception is neither here +nor there; Eric's expostulations are insignificant, and the air he +sings--with interruptions on the part of Senta--is by no means equal +to the better parts of the opera. Here Wagner has again been faced by +the difficulty he met in the first act: a prosaic scene had to be set +to poetic music, and the task was beyond him. Eric is one of the most +frightfully conventional personages in opera; he bores and exasperates +one to madness. He warbles away in the approved Italian tenor fashion +while one's enthusiasm is growing cold and one's interest waning. His +dream, however, in which he sees Senta meet the Dutchman, embrace him +and sail away with him, has a genuine ring. The atmosphere is strange, +almost nightmareish, with the Dutchman theme sounding up at intervals, +dreamlike. With the exception of the mere mention of this motive in +the score, the music is new, is not evolved out of previous passages; +but when Eric has finished we hear the Senta theme, both sections. +The Dutchman and Daland enter, and we hear (_f_) three times in all; +but there is no development of it. Daland's air is entirely fresh +matter; as is the opening of the big duet between the Dutchman and +Senta. + +We are now approaching the supreme moment of the drama. The Dutchman's +recitative-like beginning--declamation of the same type, and with the +same accent, as some recitative in the song-tournament in +_Tannhäuser_--is noble in the highest degree; we have a recurrence of +the dream-atmosphere at Senta's words, "Versank ich jetzt in +wunderbares Träumen?"--for though her fanaticism is all too real, when +her opportunity comes she is for the moment incredulous. It hardly +does to consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture. +Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into +some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away +her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of +hairs can alter the plain fact-- + + "Wirst du des Vaters Wahl nicht schelten? + Was er versprach, wie?--dürft' es gelten?" + +However, he has the honesty to warn her of her probable fate. She +rises to the occasion. She may be as mad as a hatter, but in the music +she is given to "Der du auch sei'st," her lunacy becomes sublimity. Up +to the moment of writing this white-hot glowing passage Wagner had +never reached the sublime: now for a few minutes he sustains it. +Again the breath of the sea is brought in when the Dutchman a second +time warns her, and the sea music roars as a sinister accompaniment. +Senta only becomes the more exalted. "Wohl kenn' ich Weibes heil'ge +Pflichten," she sings to music which is absolutely the finest page in +the opera. The pure white flame of a deathless devotion is here. I +doubt whether Wagner ever again in his life had such an ethereal +moment: it is sheer fervour and sweetness, unmixed with the hot human +passion of _Tristan_ or the smoky philosophies of the _Ring_. To wish +Senta had a reasonable cause for her ecstasy of self-immolation is, of +course, to wish the _Dutchman_ were not the _Dutchman_. In truth, we +must take the scenes as they come without inquiring too curiously; the +storm music which goes with the wanderer, and the moments of glorious +splendour that come to the redeeming woman, are things worth living to +have written and worth living to hear. + +The music of the last act I shall pass quickly over. The seamen's and +women's choruses are not particularly striking; the spectral choruses +certainly are. The sea music is here turned into something unearthly, +frightful; these damned souls have no hope of being saved, and in +their misery they scoff and mock and laugh hideously. More new musical +matter, some of it of a very fine quality, is introduced when Eric +again appeals to Senta; and the figure (_a_) is developed with +stupendous effect. In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off, +Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the +second--nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely +confined her to recitative. + +The _Flying Dutchman_, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a +manufacture, not, like _Tristan_, a growth. Much of the music does not +rise above the level of Spontini or Marschner; there are wearisome +pages, there are heavy chords repeated again and again with violin +figurations on top, there are lines of the verse repeated to fit in +with the conventional melodies in four-bar lengths. It was only a few +years before that Wagner, at Riga, had written enthusiastically about +Bellini and his melody, a type of melody he felt to be fresh and +expressive compared with the dry-as-dust mixture of Viennese melody +(_i.e._ the Haydn and Mozart type) and stodgy German counterpoint +which formed the bulk of Marschner's and Spontini's music; and here we +see him in the very deed of trying his hand at it. Very often the +result, it must be admitted, is lamentable. There was no Italian +suppleness and grace in Wagner's nature: when he was in deadly +earnest, and striving to express himself without thinking of models, +he wrote gorgeous stuff; when the inspiration waned, or when he +deluded himself with the belief that what he supposed to be +Bellini-like tunes really expressed the feeling of the moment, then he +gave us pages as dry and dreary as Spontini and Marschner at their +worst. Besides those I have already mentioned there are in the love +duet--if it can be called a love duet--mere figurations over bar on +bar on leaden-footed, heavy chords; and these figurations are not true +melody. These tunes in regular four-bar lengths are melody of an +amorphous sort; only when they were tightened up, made truer, more +pregnant--in a word, when they were so shaped as to stand really and +truly for the thought and feeling in the composer--did they become the +beautiful things we find in _Lohengrin_, foretelling the sublime +things we find in _Tristan_. Eric's tunes are as colourless as +Donizetti's. All this we may joyfully admit, knowing how much there is +to be said on the other side, and seeing in the _Dutchman_ only a +foretaste of Wagner's greatest work. A really great work it assuredly +is. We have the magnificent sea-music, and, in spite of outer +incoherences, the smell and atmosphere of the sea maintained to the +last bar of the opera. In his music at least Vanderdecken is a deeply +tragic figure. There is the ballad, by very far the finest in music; +there is Senta's declaration of faith. Whenever it was possible for +the composer to be inspired he instantly responded. Had he not lived +to write another note his memory would live by the _Dutchman_. It is +an enormous leap from _Rienzi_. There brilliancy is attained by huge +choruses and vigorous orchestration and rhythms that continually verge +on the vulgar. In the _Dutchman_ it is the stuff and texture of the +music that make the effect. Play _Rienzi_ on a piano, and you have +nothing; play the _Dutchman_, and you have immediately the roar of the +sea, the Dutchman's loneliness and sadness, Senta's exaltation. I have +spoken of Wagner having finished his apprenticeship when he went to +Magdeburg, and in a sense he had; but perhaps in the fuller sense he +finished it only with the _Dutchman_. He made mistakes, and thanks +largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared +to take another and a vaster leap--from the _Dutchman_ to +_Tannhäuser_. He cast the slough of the old Italian opera form. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + +Some characteristics of his harmony and instrumentation will most +conveniently be considered later. For the present I wish to draw my +reader's attention rather to Wagner the musico-dramatist than to +Wagner the technical musician. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +DRESDEN + + +I + +When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger +which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The +first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown +lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with +many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to +be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and +we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and +grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual +insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live +in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before +he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north, +learning of the success of _Rienzi_, and little dreaming his profits +to be £45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the +conductorship of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any, +better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that +whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes +to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The +third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from the modern opera. +That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with +that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But +Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose +inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang +around a Court. + +Wagner did not wish to be kapellmeister--on the contrary, wished most +vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, +how he hoped to earn bread--he who had had only one opera produced, +and gained £45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such +questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his +operas--scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and +writing--he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr. +Micawber, whose contemporary, of course, he was. He flirted with von +Lüttichau, the intendant of the theatre, a fine specimen of a court +barbarian. Wagner neither would nor wouldn't; and it was only when the +theatre found it could not well do without him, and asked him to say +definitely if he would, that he accepted the offer. We can imagine how +poor, stupid, unimaginative Minna would rejoice at the news. She ought +to have married a pork butcher, or would have behaved admirably as the +mistress of a beerhouse or café; but as the wife of a man of genius--! +To be the wife of the kapellmeister of one of Germany's principal +opera-houses--a court opera-house--that was almost, if not quite, as +good; and for the time she rested content with her lot. And we may +believe that Richard, too, felt a double gratification, even against +his deepest and truest instincts. The salary lifted a burden off his +shoulders for a while; and was he not appointed to the very post his +idol Weber had occupied? Nevertheless, things soon came to pass which +show how the Richard who set off from Pillau to Paris with his bare +travelling expenses, and the Richard who was to do yet madder things +hereafter, was the Richard of this middle period. This von Lüttichau +said it was the rule of the court that a new conductor should serve a +year on trial. Wagner was quite brutally reminded that the mighty +Weber had been compelled to do so; and he was told _he_ must do so. He +point-blank refused; sent the Lüttichau man a long explanation--which, +I dare say, was never read--of why he couldn't accept such terms; +spoke of the necessity of getting some sort of order and discipline +into an orchestra which Reissiger had allowed to go to pieces, etc., +etc. But he had to his credit, as we have seen, the triumphs of +_Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_; and it shows how much he was wanted that +Lüttichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without +murmuring--a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official, +a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn +in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that +he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for +life. This was the least of his troubles. + +Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest +of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the +misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though +these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man +who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary +stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar +with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a +spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz--known +as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last +waltz"--must have been the fruit of a lucky accident--or perhaps he +did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not +come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing +is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression +made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on +Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how +entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got +through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay +regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned, +because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the +result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met +Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the +opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the +conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked +Wagner--possibly in a fit of consternation, thinking it might be +_his_ night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart +conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not +so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing, +smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat +and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The +bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who regard their +posts as more or less sinecures, wanted to go on in the old slovenly +fashion, rehearsing carelessly, hastily, or not at all, and quite +satisfied so long as they got through. During the first weeks of the +new regime the principal first violin declined to follow Wagner's +directions, and, moreover, had the impudence to tell our arrogant +Richard he was wrong, and, above all, to tell him in von Lüttichau's +presence. Wagner, having the pen of a too-ready writer--like old +Sebastian Bach before him--sent in one of his long letters; and with +that the trouble ceased for the moment. But similar episodes seem to +have been of frequent occurrence during his six years of +conductorship. Still, he introduced discipline into the band, and, on +the whole, got on well with his men. With genuine artists, even of the +humblest sort, he was always on good terms. He had a fine fund of good +humour and sanguine cheerfulness, a ready wit and a kind heart; he won +the respect due to a man who really knew his work, knew what he +wanted, and how it could best be attained. What he wanted was +performances worthy of the house to which he had come as conductor. +Tricks were played on him, so that he had to direct operas which had +been insufficiently rehearsed or not at all rehearsed; and the press +made the most of shortcomings which he realized better than the +critics. + +He had compensations. August Roeckel became his assistant at the +theatre and a close personal friend; he had Heine, Fischer, Uhlig and +others amongst his intimates; and by what was undoubtedly the most +artistic section of the community he was made much of. The Liedertafel +chose him as its first Liedermeister. For the unveiling of a statue to +Friedrich August I he organized a gigantic musical festival, writing +for the occasion a hymn. Mendelssohn had composed something for the +event; and the whole affair made the Dresden folk open their mouths as +well as their ears. For the Liedertafel he wrote the _Love-feast of +the Apostles_, which was performed on July 6 of this year (1843) with, +so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious +press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment +of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a +Mendelssohnian psalm--and they would have grumbled even had they got +it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a +crime not to imitate him. + +At this time he appears to have been happy with Minna; the good lady +had all she wanted; and the rift within the lute did not show until +Wagner later on began to kick against the pricks. Perhaps the greatest +pleasure that he had at this time--perhaps the greatest he had had in +his life--came through old Spohr the violinist, then conductor (and +king) of the Cassel opera. Spohr had heard _Rienzi_ at Dresden, and, +antiquated stick though he was--as any one might guess who knows his +_Last Judgment_ or _Calvary_--he yet recognized in Wagner an original +and deeply sincere musician. He wrote, after seeing the _Flying +Dutchman_, "I believe I know my mind sufficiently to say that among +the dramatic composers of our day I consider Wagner the most gifted." +He produced the _Dutchman_ at Cassel, directing the representation +himself, and sent Wagner a letter which lifted that young man into the +seventh heaven of delight. Wagner always cherished the recollection of +this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician, +and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long +afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in +all literature. His answer to Spohr shows that at this time there were +no serious differences in the household; he speaks in terms of the +greatest affection of his wife, and regrets that she is not there to +share his joy. The Cassel performance took place June 5, 1843. It was +unsolicited: Spohr himself had asked for the score; and this had a +double or triple value to Wagner. Spohr's authority was immense +throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the +_Dutchman_, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every +other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere, +though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, and the +score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it +unopened. By the way, Berlioz was in Dresden at the time, doing +mountebank tricks with the orchestra, and after hearing, the +_Dutchman_ he went so far as to speak well of it. Liszt was +enthusiastic over _Rienzi_. + +When Spohr's letter arrived Minna was at Teplitz, ill; Wagner joined +her there immediately his holiday began, but not before writing to +Lehrs (July 7) that the book of _Tannhäuser_ was finished. Whether +Lehrs received the letter I do not know, for he died on July 13. It +will be remembered that it was Lehrs who gave Wagner the _Sängerkrieg_ +from which he drew both _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. Before dealing +with these operas, Wagner's first very great ones, we must pass in +review the remainder of the Dresden days, ending with the insurrection +of May 1849 and the flight to Switzerland. + + +II + +Nothing in Wagner's life has been less perfectly understood, or more +completely and wilfully misunderstood, than his share in this May +insurrection of 1849. He was never at any time a politician; of +politics he knew nothing, and he held the trade in profound, +undisguised contempt. He wrote much about the State, and in every +paragraph contrived to show the astounding breadth of his +ignorance--an ignorance of that kind which Dr. Johnson might have +described as not natural but acquired. Everlastingly he prattles +about the State until he throws us into a condition of imbecile +confusion. Then we resolutely sit down to his prose writings and track +his meaning or meanings. And at last we perceive this: the State in +his mind, the State he talked and wrote about, was something purely +ideal, such a State as has never existed, and at the present day, +nearly seventy years after Wagner's solitary plunge into practical +politics, seems as unlikely as ever to come into existence. He wanted +(1) an all-wise absolute monarch who should work the will of all his +subjects, no matter how conflicting their interests might be; (2) some +millions of these subjects to think alike on every conceivable +question--to think, that is, as Wagner thought; these millions to make +sublime sacrifice of themselves that Wagner's art-schemes might +prosper. All this, be it noted, was to be the barest basis and +beginning of the perfect State. How this point could be reached by our +imperfect human race was a question he scorned to discuss: he simply +assumed that it could be reached, and proceeded to further argument. +The point had to be attained in the first place; then humanity--by +which he meant German humanity--was to move upward, working out the +beast, talking German philosophy, reading what is called German poetry +(though Shakespeare might be tolerated), looking at what is called +German painting, listening to German music, dreaming thin, mystical +German dreams and munching thick German sausages. Thus should the +inhabitants of a small subsidiary State, whose kings could be, and +had been, made and unmade by other kings, create for themselves a new +heaven on earth and become the wonder of the world. + +It is very like sheer lunacy. But this account is no exaggeration of +Wagner's doctrine and plans. The one truth which emerges and speaks +unequivocally is that Richard, deeply dissatisfied with the theatre of +the day, and tracing its sad degeneracy to the corrupt state of +society, wished to see society upraised, not that men and women might +live more happily, but that a finer, nobler theatre might flourish. +The most magnificent egotist of the century, it seemed to him the +prime concern of mankind that Richard Wagner's works should be +understood and loved. Being an egotist also, if I may say so, on a +national scale, he thought humanity could only be redeemed by German +art. Disregarding the fact that Germany has had no painters, no poet +of the first rank, no genuine dramatist, and that before "our art," as +he persistently calls music, had got a root in Germany, three great +schools had flourished, the English, the Flemish and the +Italian--disregarding all this, he looked for the regeneration of the +human species by means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is +comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it +that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is +that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have +evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner +propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he assumed that +it could regenerate itself by wishing, or willing, and that then the +thousand years of peace would commence, with Richard as +conductor-in-chief. He could not see that humanity cannot jump out of +its shadow and regenerate itself, any more than gentlemen of +intelligence gone wrong on one point can see that Bacon could not have +written Shakespeare's plays, or that perpetual motion is a crazy +impossibility. + +It is curious to picture the share Richard took in the Dresden ferment +of 1848-49. Of course, all Europe was in a condition of excitement; +and the powers that were got their guns ready, and their men. +Political liberty was the thing aimed at: the "outs" wanted to be in. +Every right-thinking man must be in sympathy with the "outs." The +governments of Europe were in the hands of shameless place-seekers; +the working men, the merchants, all other classes were supposed to +labour and pay taxes for the benefit of these gentry. Money was +squandered on useless court-flummery while men were toiling sixteen +hours a day for bread. The aristocracy were resolved that this state +of affairs should continue; the average citizens were resolved that it +should not. What did Wagner propose?--obedience to the puppet king and +a reformed opera! It is small wonder that he was considered a +visionary. He made at least one speech, talking about the State, +meaning thereby something very different from the meaning his audience +attached to the word; he heard speeches, and undoubtedly in all +sincerity read his own thoughts into them. He thought the millennium +was at hand. When the fighting began he joined the revolutionists; +though I can nowhere find proof that he shouldered a musket. Had he +done so it is extremely probable he would have shot the man behind +him. It is hard to get at the truth about these days of May. Perhaps +he did help to escort supplies; but with his excitable brain we must +remember that what he thought he saw and what he actually did see may +be two very different things. A good many other people who were in +Dresden at the time have let their pretty fancies run away with them; +for their accounts of Wagner's doings contradict one another to such +an extent that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. I must confess +to a boundless distrust of "recollections" set down or spoken at any +length of time after the event. Ask, reader, ask any of your friends +to give an account of some striking occurrence of a year ago. In +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will not tally with yours. You +may be wrong or your friend may be wrong: in either case some one's +memory has played a trick. In this book I have omitted many a dozen +picturesque touches, simply because there is no proof of their truth +and every probability that they are false. It is perhaps enough to +remember that the hopes of liberty were crushed, that Roeckel, +Wagner's assistant and friend, was taken and afterwards sentenced to a +long term of imprisonment, and that Wagner had to run for safety. From +every point of view it was as well he got away from Dresden. If he had +not got away he would have shared Roeckel's martyrdom. Had the +revolution succeeded, a terrible disillusionment would have been his +share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no +more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be +set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of +liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys +could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he +afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had +had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might +have vegetated happily, in the Reissiger way, for life. Minna would +have been content. Being Richard Wagner, he felt his soul strangled; +and that Minna had for some time been worrying about what he might do +next is shown by his remark to a friend--that other people had their +enemies outside their houses: _his_ enemy sat at his own table. + + +III + +Things had not gone well at the theatre. In spite of performances +never before equalled in the town--nay, probably because of them--he +had enemies all around, especially in the Jew-controlled press. His +carefulness about rehearsals was called fussiness; his determination +that the singers should not at their own sweet pleasure mar fine +operas with interpolations, alterations and "liberties" generally, was +called interference with their rights. Even when he played +Beethoven's Pastoral and Ninth Symphonies, as they had never been +given before, he was impertinently taken to task by press scribblers +for departing from the Mendelssohn tradition. I have already expressed +the opinion that _Judaism in Music_ was a huge mistake; yet one must +own that when one considers how the Jews consistently attacked him for +venturing to challenge inferior Jew composers and conductors on their +own ground, the thing seems almost excusable. At any rate, it is +surprising that he dealt so tenderly with Mendelssohn. There is one +point always to be borne in mind. Wagner was assailed at this time not +so much _quâ_ composer as _quâ_ conductor. Now we of the generation of +to-day--the younger members, anyhow--are so accustomed to really able +conductors, that it is somewhat difficult to realize what things were +like throughout Europe in 1843-49. Perhaps the nearest approach to a +true idea may be formed by those who heard our own precious +Philharmonic Society under the late Cusins. As in London in the +'eighties, so in Dresden in the 'forties. Callous indifference to the +beauty of fine music and complete slovenliness in every detail of the +rendering of it went hand in hand. If Europe to-day is stocked with +competent conductors, that is a debt we owe to Wagner. Himself one of +the greatest conductors who has lived, he almost created a new art, +and by his immediate and direct example and through his pupils Bülow, +Richter, Levi and Seidl, not to mention his influence on Liszt, he +certainly created the school which has now ousted the older +inartistic men. It was precisely this fact that maddened the older men +and their friends. + +Another discomforting circumstance was Wagner's intense Germanism. It +was through his efforts that Weber's remains were brought from the +Roman Church in Moorfields and re-interred in Dresden (December, +1844); for the ceremony he compiled some funeral music and delivered +an oration. He was not content to claim Germany for the Germans: he +claimed all Europe, or at least all European art, for the Germans. The +Germans themselves were contentedly jogging on with the hybrid music +of Spontini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Wagner +never tired of telling them to create an art of their own, or really +he would have to do it for them. He did as well as talked and wrote; +he produced the nearest thing he could find to pure German opera--for +instance, Marschner's _Adolph von Nassau_ in 1845. Of course, he +ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period +appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an +atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon +his nerves and hastened the catastrophe--that of his taking active +part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies +outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to +court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor +should--no wonder he gave a sigh of relief at quitting Dresden. + +He had no option. The Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were +paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary +rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty +minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully +obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary to do +dirty work and to call the doing of it doing your "duty": duty is a +fine word that has covered a million crimes since it was invented. +Bakunin, who said Richard Wagner was "a visionary"--obviously meaning +a harmless fool--and many others got long terms of imprisonment. +Wagner had left the town without leave, and for that offence he was +dismissed from his post at the opera. Next, the police issued a +warrant for his arrest. + +He had gone quietly to visit Liszt at Weimar, meaning to "lie low" +till the storm had blown by. He was apparently quite unconscious of +having broken any laws. Liszt was not so easy in his mind. He made +inquiries: found that Wagner must bolt at once: it is supposed he +somehow "squared" the local police official to defer executing the +warrant; he got a passport in a false name, and six days after his +arrival Richard set out again on his travels. What need be recorded +about the journey to Zurich and the getting of Minna there, will best +be described when I come to tell of his settling down in his new abode +and the years he spent there. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +'TANNHÄUSER' + + +I + +Wagner alternated between what we may call the worldly--the sensual or +animal, or love of outward show--and the magical, mystical or +religious. After _Die Feen_, a story of magic, he went to _Das +Liebesverbot_, a story of lust; then he went on to a drama of warring +ambitions, with the outer brilliant show of armed men, gorgeous +processions, conflagrations and what not in the way of spectacle. +After that we have the _Dutchman_, strange and remote and mysterious, +with some pages of passionless ecstasy as its culminating point. The +reaction came, and he wrote _Tannhäuser_, the opera we are now to +examine. It is largely based on sheer animal passion, though another +reaction takes place before the end is reached. That reaction proceeds +further in _Lohengrin_, which is sheer mysticism. _Tristan_ is pure +human passion--Tristan's soul is the antithesis of Lohengrin's. The +_Ring_ is, from beginning to end, a gorgeous spectacle, a +glorification of the grandeur and loveliness of the earth, the +splendour and beauty and strength of human life. Not even Wotan's +renunciation takes away a jot from its note of praise of +humanity--one might even say praise of the joy of living. _Parsifal_ +is a denial of the value and richness and worthiness of human life: +the world is pushed away; and the hero attains perfect peace by +shutting himself up in a monastery with no women to disturb him. John +Willett recommended his son, when he went to London, to climb to the +top of the Monument--"there are no young women up there, sir"--and +Wagner evidently agreed with John Willett. Parsifal is left to pass +his days in walking, with the most preposterous steps ever seen on or +off the stage, in idle processions from nowhere to nowhere without any +object beyond walking, in making meals off invisible food, in +impressing his fellow-monks with puerile chemical and electrical +experiments, and perhaps, for a change, in going out to see trees and +rocks taking a constitutional. If to say this is to be flippant, well +then, I am flippant. The drama of _Parsifal_ is the least intelligent, +the most pretentious to intellectuality,-the most absurd and +ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music. Or, if we must +needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to +ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its +infamy. At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is +going on in every European capital as to whether _Parsifal_ can or +cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth +clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon +as possible. Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather +mock-religious, character of the Bayreuth performances, the +hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be +only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will +wish to say Bayreuth nay. + +These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very +abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a +time. The _Dutchman_ was conceived before _Rienzi_ was finished; +_Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ were slowly shaping themselves in his +imagination while he scored the _Dutchman_; the _Mastersingers_ +libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after +_Tannhäuser_ was finished, and before _Lohengrin_ was begun; the +composition of the _Ring_, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ went on +simultaneously. He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and +emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold. +First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way +for moments into another, so that the description I have given above +of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main +accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that +which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he +did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little +about _Parsifal_, because it, and not the _Mastersingers_, is the true +contrary and complement to _Tannhäuser_. _Parsifal_ is pitilessly +logical, _Tannhäuser_ wildly illogical; _Parsifal_ preaches the gospel +of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental +and moral growth: _Tannhäuser_ preaches nothing at all, but is an +affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations +between the two sexes, with a totally uncalled-for and incredible +falling away or repentance at the end, on the part of one who has in +no way sinned--to wit, Tannhäuser; the music of _Parsifal_ is sickly, +tired, with mystical chants that make one's gorge rise in disgust; the +music of _Tannhäuser_ is strong, healthy, full of manly passion--even +at its saddest it is free of the nauseating whining of _Parsifal_. + + +II + +Tannhäuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel, led away by an +exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone +to live with Venus in the Hörselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries +to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is +shattered, and he is in the free open spring air. A shepherd boy plays +on his pipe and chants a song to spring; a procession of old pilgrims +to Rome passes; Tannhäuser, feeling his exaggeration of passions, sane +enough in themselves, to be a sin, praises the Almighty for his +deliverance from what seems now to him like an evil dream. Hunters' +horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhäuser's former +friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to +persuade him to return to his former life with them, but in vain, +until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of +the Landgrave's daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at +his unaccountable disappearance. Tannhäuser, at first incredulous, in +the end joyfully agrees to go back to the Wartburg, where the +Landgrave's castle can be seen, and the merry clatter of hunting horns +is heard on all sides as the curtain falls. It will be seen that there +is no vestige of the old stage trickery of the _Dutchman_ here: all +seems natural because all is inevitable; of songs and concerted pieces +we get plenty, but they grow spontaneously out of the drama: the drama +is not twisted and delayed for the sake of getting them in. + +In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight's return; she +enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness; +Tannhäuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long +love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament. +The popular march is played; the hall becomes crowded; the Landgrave +makes a speech--satisfying to German audiences, no doubt, because it +praises German valour and music--and in announcing the subject on +which the minstrels shall enlarge, he hints that perhaps Tannhäuser in +his contribution will let them know in what mysterious lands he has +sojourned during his long absence. The theme is, What is love, and how +do we recognize it? The prize will be given by the Princess, and it +shall be anything the successful singer chooses--that is, it shall be +the Princess. Wolfram stands up first and praises a mild platonic +attachment as being true love, and his sentiments win much applause. +Tannhäuser sings passionately of the joys of burning fleshly desire, +though as yet his language is a little veiled. The audience, who are +the judges, make no sign; Elisabeth alone shows that in her heart she +goes with Tannhäuser and not with Wolfram. Walther, in turn, tells +Tannhäuser that he knows nothing of sincere love; Tannhäuser grows +angry, and scoffingly tells him that if he wants cold perfection he +had better worship the stars; but he, Tannhäuser, wants warm, living +flesh and blood and healthy desires in the woman he loves. Biterolf +calls Tannhäuser a shameless blasphemer, and challenges him to combat; +Tannhäuser replies bitterly; the surrounding nobles want to silence +him; his anger becomes rage, and his rage madness; Wolfram tries to +calm every one, but Tannhäuser is now too far gone, and in "wildest +exaltation" he chants the hymn he sang to Venus in the first act. +"Only in the Venusberg can one experience the joys of true love," he +shouts; the ladies rush out in terror, leaving only Elisabeth; the men +attack Tannhäuser. He would be killed, but Elisabeth suddenly +interposes--all stand aghast at the bare notion of her interceding for +so shameless a wretch; but in the end she gets her way. "Who would not +yield who heard the heavenly maid?" they sing; during a momentary +stillness the voices of young pilgrims following the elder to Rome are +heard; Tannhäuser is pardoned on condition of joining them and +confessing to the pope and gaining his forgiveness; and, being a man +of uncontrollable passions, with fits of abject depression as low as +his ecstatic flights are high, he humbly acquiesces. The curtain comes +down in the second act as he goes off. + +The third act is, I say, quite illogical unless one accepts as a +truism, as Wagner accepted it, the patent absurdity that by +sacrificing him-or herself one being can save the soul of another +being. But Wagner was not a German of the Romantic epoch for nothing. +He believed the absurdity with a fervour now laughable, and was +especially enthusiastic when the sacrificed person was a woman: woman, +to his mind, was the redeemer of man: that was her _métier_. Senta +redeems Vanderdecken; in his last work Kundry redeems Parsifal by +thoughtfully dying so as to leave that unamiable idiot to lead the +higher life of the monastery, as I have described it. And somehow +Elisabeth is to redeem Tannhäuser--also, it appears, by dying at an +appropriate moment. In the fit of depression and degradation following +his mad outburst the hero goes to Rome, interviews the pope, and +confesses all to him. "If you have dwelt with Venus," says the Lord's +vicar, "you are for ever cursed; God will not forgive you until my +staff of dry wood blossoms." At this sentence of eternal doom +Tannhäuser, in the legend as Wagner found it, returned to the +Hörselberg: in the story, as Wagner shaped it, he gets as near as the +Wartburg on his road back to Venus. By the roadside, as in the second +scene of the first act, Elisabeth is praying before the shrine where +Tannhäuser had knelt to thank heaven for his deliverance; Wolfram +watches near. Both await the pilgrims from Rome. These arrive--and +Tannhäuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says +Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from +all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while +Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are +heard; Tannhäuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to +Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at +the Tournament of Song--only now the madness is the madness of +despair, not excessive exaltation--he calls on Venus. From the heart +of the mountain she answers; the scene grows wilder and wilder; he +sees Venus awaiting him; the air is filled with strange odours and +stranger music. Wolfram struggles to prevent Tannhäuser going to +Venus; Venus calls him clearly and more clearly; suddenly Wolfram +says, "A maiden is even now making intercession for you at God's +throne--Elisabeth!" "Elisabeth!" echoes Tannhäuser--stunned and +astonished. The mists clear away; from behind the scenes a requiem for +Elisabeth's soul is heard; Venus gives a final wail, "Woe! lost to +me!" and sinks into the earth; slowly morning dawns, and a funeral +train bearing Elisabeth on a bier slowly comes in. "Holy Elisabeth, +pray for me," Tannhäuser cries, and, sinking down, he dies. More +pilgrims enter, bearing the pope's staff, which has miraculously +blossomed in token that God's mercy is greater than man's, and that +Tannhäuser is pardoned; all sing a song of praise, and the opera +terminates. + +At the Dresden performances in 1845 this ending was cut, but that +Wagner reckoned it of the utmost importance is shown by a letter +written to Uhlig in 1851: "The reason for leaving out the announcement +of the miracle, in the Dresden change, was quite a local one: the +chorus was always bad, flat and uninteresting; also an imposing scenic +effect--a splendid, gradual sunrise was wanting." Now, in the +twentieth century, it is indeed hard to understand how an intellect so +keen as our Richard's, a dramatic and poetic instinct almost +infallible with regard to all other things, could have failed to see +and feel the absurdity of Elisabeth's death being necessary to +Tannhäuser's salvation. Was it the only way to get rid of the lady--a +_pis aller_?--a last remnant of the old-fashioned technique? In the +original legend Tannhäuser goes back to Venus: that would be +ineffective and leave Elisabeth's future unprovided for. On the other +hand, Wagner would never have selected the story for operatic +treatment at all had it not instantly shaped itself in his mind as it +now stands: he was, I say, obsessed by this notion of man's redemption +by woman; it was part of his creed and not to be questioned. So I +think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed +for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us +realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as +the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity. +Allowing for the time occupied in mediæval days by the journey from +Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into +leaf and flower long, long before Elisabeth's death. While she was +waiting for Tannhäuser to come in with the first band of pilgrims, the +second band was already on its way with the token of his pardon. We +need not be too inquisitive and wonder why Tannhäuser should be +expected back with the first band when he had set out with the second, +and why Elisabeth could not at least exercise a little patience and +wait for the second. The point is that she does not wait, but goes +home to die, and, dying, is supposed--as Wolfram explicitly states--to +redeem a sinner who is already redeemed. Her sacrifice is an act of +suicidal insanity due to her lacking the common sense to reflect that +Tannhäuser might arrive with the second contingent; it is foolish and +superfluous. + +This is the sole flaw in a very fine opera book. _Tannhäuser_ is the +noblest expression in music of the glory and worth of human life. An +assertion of the glory and worth of human life is bound to be, as +_Tannhäuser_ is, tragic; life and the value of life can only be +realized when we see life in conflict with death and overcome by +death. All the great tragedies are assertions of the joy of living, in +the deepest sense of the phrase--in the sense in which _Samson +Agonistes_ or Handel's _Samson_ are such assertions. Tannhäuser +suffers defeat and is glorious, like Samson in his overthrow. Even +Elisabeth, a trifle mawkish though she may be, has loved life, and +only at the finish, when fate (or, as she would say, heaven) decides +against her, does she resign herself and renounce what cannot be hers. +This is the first of Wagner's operas the plot of which is virtually +all his own; for precisely the combination of the legend of Tannhäuser +with the Tournament of Song makes it what it is and was--Wagner's +invention. All the stale old devices of explanatory asides are gone, +as are the convenient goings-off and comings-on of the _dramatis +personæ_ at the sweet will of the composer who wants here a duet and a +trio there. The drama is self-explanatory--the librettist does not +shove on a character to explain it for him; as it unfolds, the +musician is given ample opportunities for all the songs or concerted +pieces that the heart of composer could long for--he has not by main +force and at all costs (in the way of unreasonableness) to drive +opportunities into the drama. + + +III + +In 1842 Wagner finished first _Rienzi_ and then the _Dutchman_; in +April of 1845, that is to say three years later, _Tannhäuser_ was +complete, and in October of that year it was produced at Dresden. Its +success or non-success with the public and those strange animals the +critics does not greatly concern us to-day. Wagner's own account of +the proceedings is not very trustworthy. The opera was cut and +doctored to suit the singers--notably Tichatscheck; the first +performance seems to have missed fire, and at the second the house was +empty; at the third it was full; and, but for the intrigues of some +of the musicians and scribblers, and the insanity of the management, +it appears probable--one has a right to use so moderate a word--that +before long it might have won in Dresden the success it presently won +throughout Europe. That, I say, is not a matter for the twentieth +century to worry about; but the twentieth century is bound to marvel +over the obtuseness of the middle nineteenth in not recognizing the +advent of the greatest power that had yet meddled with high and +serious opera. (I do not mean that Wagner's was a greater musical +power than Mozart's and Beethoven's. But Mozart never had a libretto +to compare with Wagner's; and _Fidelio_, though serious enough in all +conscience, is not an opera at all.) In three years, 1842-45, the +growth of Wagner's strength was astounding, incredible. One sees at +once how the old stage devices have departed from the libretto, and +with them the fragmentary and jerky style of music; the intermittent +inspiration of the _Dutchman_ is replaced by an unchecked torrent of +inspired music. All the little suggestions of Bellini and Donizetti +are clean gone; the amorphous melody of the _Dutchman_ is gone, or +metamorphosed by being charged with energy, colour and meaning; every +phrase has character, and communicates a very definite shade of +feeling; in every phrase we feel how intense has been the inner +thought and emotion, and with what terrible directness these are +communicated to us. I say terrible directness because it is in +_Tannhäuser_ that we first find the godlike Wagner hurling his +thunderbolts. It was Spohr who spoke of the godlike or titanic energy +of the music, and this energy finds expression, not as it did in +_Rienzi_, in noisy orchestration, big ensembles and thumping rhythms, +but, in a far greater degree than in the _Dutchman_, in the stuff of +the music itself. We find no more lumpish harmonies and basses of +leaden immovability: the basses stalk about with arrogant +independence, and the harmonic progressions, even when most daring and +perilous, are superbly poised. The old awkwardnesses, due to the +endeavour to copy and to be original at the same time, have +disappeared. Wagner wrote _Tannhäuser_ entirely to express and to +please himself: he had given up the notion of being original; he was +bent only on being himself. + +He boasted that here, at last, was a sheer German opera. Well, that is +not in itself very much. Personally, I would rather be an Englishman +than a German; and few of us will be prepared to accept the view that +because a work of art, or so-called work of art, happens to be by a +German, it must therefore be a great work of art, or even a work of +art at all. Richard never lived down the tendency, natural in one, I +suppose, of a conquered tribe (the Saxons), to incorporate and +identify himself with his conquerors, and he glorified everything +Prussian as German, and everything German as perfect; but, even so +late as 1852, I cannot imagine that he quite understood what he meant +when he held forth on the subject of German art, its non-existence, +and--of all things--its supremacy. He certainly felt very keenly what +many members of every half-grown nation must feel--the necessity of +acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to +create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding +of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race, +an entity. Which, precisely, of the German races he would have +accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say. But the point is +that Wagner longed to create, and in _Tannhäuser_ thought he had +created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that +he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself. He +had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner, +and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially +Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression. +Paradoxically, _Tannhäuser_, while one of his least original +compositions--owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to +another--is one of his most original. He spoke the matter that was in +his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the +Weber idiom. + +Before examining the means by which the varying atmospheres of the +different scenes are got, I ask the reader to notice the way in which +the rather pointless, inexpressive melody of the _Dutchman_ appears +now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable. Compare +the musical illustration (_o_) on page 119 with (_a_) at the end of +this chapter. The type of tune is the same, but the first is +commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it occurs; +the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly +expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant +Tannhäuser. Compare Daland's song in the _Dutchman_ with Wolfram's +description of how Elisabeth has pined, or Senta's last passages in +the final scene with Elisabeth's salute to the hall of song. We feel +at once how, by dropping Italian, French and mediocre German models, +and writing in the way that came natural to him, Wagner at once became +a composer of the first rank, from whom great expressive melodies +sprang spontaneously. The noble passages in the _Dutchman_ were drawn +out of him, despite his conscious or unconscious imitation of what +were considered the best models of the day, by sheer force of feeling; +and I pointed out how, when the situation gave him a chance, he took +it. In _Tannhäuser_ he has become a splendid artist whose brain +refused to shape the commonplace. Later on his style was to become +more individual, more purely his own; but so far he had now got--and +it was a very long way. The pilgrims' chorus melody, which first +appears in the overture, is, to my mind, very Weberesque. It is not +particularly strong--for Wagner--and hardly bears the weight of the +brass with which it is afterwards thundered out; but think of it and +of Rienzi's prayer! The second part, of course, is Wagner at a sublime +height, but of that presently. What I wish is to give examples of how +he has discarded all the involutions, convolutions, twiddles and +twaddles of melody, and gone back to the simplicity and directness of +Weber and Beethoven. His earlier manner and type of tune, the +operatic manner of his day, had, I make no doubt, its origin in the +advisability, not to say the necessity, of writing so as to please +singers who could sing in the Italian style and no other. Wagner had +now ceased to think of singers' whims. He had a matter to find +utterance for, and he went to work in the most direct way, considering +nothing but his artistic aim. We know he conceived _Tannhäuser_ at a +white heat, and in a condition of white heat wrote the words; and +though he afterwards cooled down and had, he said, to "warm up" to his +work again, yet he warmed up so effectually that he composed at +furious speed, haunted by a terror lest he should not live to complete +the opera. This fervour alone might account for his artistic +development in the _Tannhäuser_ period. It drove him to find the +secret of the one true mode of expression--the law of simplicity, the +unvarying rule that anything more than is needed for the expression of +the thing to be expressed is bad art, and, in the long run, +ineffective. With greater simplicity in the melody came the greatest +possible simplicity in the harmony. There is a kind of awkwardness to +be found in the music of all the pundits which almost defies analysis. +The progressions are correct enough, are good enough grammar, yet the +result is more disconcerting, even distressing, to the ear than a +schoolboy's first efforts. Of this style of harmony the Italians were +masters, and too often in his _Rienzi_ days Wagner, thinking of his +"melody" (for at that time by "melody" he meant Bellini melody), +showed how little they could teach him in this respect. With the +simpler "melody" went the harmony--complicated as you like when the +occasion called, but never more complicated than the occasion +warranted. Compare with the war-chorus and march in _Rienzi_ the march +in the second act of _Tannhäuser_, and the difference will be seen. +This march, by the way, ought to have been signed "after C.M. von +Weber." + + +IV + +_Tannhäuser_ was written in an epoch of long or big works of every +description. Think of the length of the novels of Thackeray and +Dickens; think of the interminable _Ring and the Book_! Our immediate +ancestors were a long-enduring, often long-suffering, generation. +Perhaps they liked good value for their money. If so, Richard gave +them what they wanted. He himself must have felt he had done so in +_Tannhäuser_, for fond though he was of his own music, he allowed it +to be cut freely. Even as it stands, the finale of the second act is +preposterous: the ripe and perfect artist who planned _Tristan_ would +never have done such a thing. But with regard to the finales--and they +are all too long--it certainly appears that Wagner deliberately made +use of crowds of people and masses of tone to carry through and +emphasize his dramatic purpose. In the first act every one is rejoiced +to have Tannhäuser amongst them, and Tannhäuser himself has much to +say on finding himself free of the Hörselberg nightmare, and in +familiar, homely, human scenes once more. The anger of the nobles in +the second, Elisabeth's grief and intercession for her lover, her +self-abasement--it is part of the drama to make us feel these things +and time is required. The finale of the last act I give up altogether. +Nor can I understand why Elisabeth's prayer should be so long drawn +out. Elisabeth has "nothing to do with the case." However, Wagner +thought she had; so we can only be thankful when she finishes, and +after Wolfram's song the action recommences with the entry of +Tannhäuser. The opera is planned on a huge scale, and in such works +_longueurs_ are apt to occur. + +The overture foretells the drama that is to ensue, but not +consecutively as in the _Dutchman_. We have the pilgrims' hymn, the +second section of which is one of those things of which one can truly +say that only Richard Wagner could have penned them. The accent of +grief is intensely passionate, yet it remains solemn, sublime. Then +the Bacchanal music and Tannhäuser's chant in praise of Venus are +heard; but all the tumult dies down, and the pilgrims end the piece +not as it began, but triumphantly. We have here, as I have said, the +great Wagner, working confidently and with ease on a vast scale. The +curtain rises; and if we could not see the scene the music would tell +us of the billows of hot rose mist, and the dancers working themselves +up to frenzy. There is a hush, and the sweetest song ever sung by +sirens is heard, full of languor and soft seductiveness. When +Tannhäuser starts up declaring he has heard the village chime in his +dreams, it is as if a breath of cool air, laden with the fragrance of +wild flowers, blew into that hot, steaming cavern. Music of +unimaginable beauty and freshness sings of the pleasant earth--the +green spring, the nightingale. When Venus coaxes him, he responds with +one of the world's greatest songs--the hymn to Venus. Her "Geliebter, +komm" is another piece of magic. The very essence of sensuality is in +it, and never was sin made to seem so lovely. One great theme follows +another. "Hin zu den kalten Menschen flieh'" is almost Schubertian in +its spontaneity. The music never flags; there are scarcely any of the +old formulas--not even, for example, to express Venus's anger; the +fund of melody seems inexhaustible. Three main points may be observed. +First, the dramatic propriety of every phrase is perfect--the music +wanted for each successive situation fitly to express the emotion of +the situation is infallibly forthcoming; the music invariably reveals +the inwardness of the situation. Second, in spite of following the +drama, move by move, so to speak, the continuity of the musical flow +is absolute; phrase seems to grow out of phrase (the drama being true +and the music always exactly expressive of the essence of the drama, +this follows as night the day); and partly by reason of this, and +partly owing to the simplicity of the themes and tunes, the total +effect is one of stately breadth. Third, the wealth of invention, the +constructive power, and the command of technical devices, place Wagner +in the first rank of sheer musicians. True, he could not write a +symphony such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote; but neither could +they have written a music-drama; the music-drama was his form, the +symphony theirs. + +In the next scene we have music of a different sort. A shepherd-boy +pipes and sings one of those songs which, for freshness and purity, +seem unapproachable--the watchman's song in the first act of the +_Dutchman_ is another example. The piping goes on while the elder +pilgrims chant a sort of marching tune as they pass--part of it is the +second section of the great hymn already described--the boy shouts +"Good luck!" after them, and Tannhäuser, in an ecstasy of relief and +restfulness after the unceasing whirl of lust and fleshly delights +from which he has found deliverance, pours forth his soul in a +wonderful phrase. It is repeated afterwards when Tannhäuser very +guardedly tells Elisabeth of the wonder of his deliverance; and indeed +it is expressive of a mood that became more and more characteristic of +Wagner as he grew older, as though he got momentary glimpses of some +blessed isle of rest where peace and relief from all earthly troubles +could be found. A few years later we find him writing to Liszt of his +longing for death as an escape; and though his appetite remained good, +and he seemed bent on having the best of everything on his table, we +can well believe that, overstrung by nature, in constant poor health, +and making stupendous demands on his nervous energy (like his own +Tannhäuser), doing everything too much, he had moments--nay, days--of +reaction and feelings which he expressed quite sincerely in his +letters. This brief passage touches the sublime. The hunters enter, +and from the moment Wolfram begins his really beautiful song about +Elisabeth, it remains on Wagner's highest level. The finale is a set +piece, of course, and is in free and joyous contrast to the lurid heat +and sensual abandonment of the first scene. While the trees wave in +the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen +blow away at their horns--and Tannhäuser has returned to his former +healthy life. + +In the second act we have Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song, +very charming; a duet with Tannhäuser, very fine in parts, but not a +true love-duet; the popular march; and then the tournament. Now, +Wolfram's bid for favour seems to me both too literal and too long. He +does what undoubtedly the minstrels of old did--freely declaims his +verses, occasionally twanging his harp. He grows indeed almost fervent +in his praise of the quiet life, of adoring your beloved at a safe +distance and never disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about +human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share +Tannhäuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as +Tannhäuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a +dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme +shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhäuser begins praise of the +thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned--too much so +for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat in +Wolfram's manner, but with much more energy. Again there is, as it +were, a glimpse of the Venusberg fire in the orchestra, and Tannhäuser +sings another song, more intense, again, in passion than his first, +and ending with an aggressively fierce declaration of his creed. +Biterolf challenges him; the Venusberg music boils up once more--we +almost see the vision that is about to break on Tannhäuser's inner +sight; he sings more passionately still the joys of a human love; +Wolfram again contends, giving us this time a really glorious song, +and the storm breaks: the Venusberg is before Tannhäuser's eyes; the +violins sweep to their highest register, and remain there boiling and +dancing in a kind of divine fury; and in mad exaltation he chants his +hymn to Venus. Then the commotion occurs as I have described. + +Let us consider this scene a moment. For theatrical effect, in the +best sense, it is in most respects one of the greatest Wagner wrote. +There is the pomp of the entry of the knights and ladies, and +afterwards of the minstrels; the Landgrave's music is effective, which +is more than can be said for that usually allotted to the heavy father +in an opera; the business of arranging the order in which the +competitors shall stand up is accompanied by fragments of the graceful +march--or, rather, processional--to which the minstrels had entered, +and these come as a welcome preparation of the ear for the essential +part of the scene. Wolfram's first effort, I say, I can hardly +tolerate, considered as a piece of composition; yet, shortened, it +would be admirably in place. From the moment Tannhäuser begins all is +perfect. Tannhäuser's music grows in intensity, and Wagner is careful +not to give us a setback by allowing the other singers to throw +Wolfram-ian cold douches over us; on the contrary, they get excited, +too; and the orchestra is let loose with them by degrees, until in the +last outburst it is blazing and crackling as though it had gone as +completely mad as Tannhäuser himself. The whole thing, with the +reservation I have made, must be admitted to be consummately managed +from the composer's as well as from the dramatist's point of view. + +What follows needs little discussion. Wagner knew quite well how to +represent a row on the stage without passing beyond the limits of what +is music. Here we have ample energy, but nothing demanding closer +notice until Elisabeth's interposition. Then at once we get stuff on a +high level. The culmination is reached in a series of melodies hardly +to be matched for pathetic beauty; the orchestra seems to throb with +emotion--a device which Wagner often employed extensively in the +_Ring_--the chorus join in, and a wondrous effect is obtained. The +ensemble is the last piece of this description Wagner was destined to +write. It is pure emotion, and not dramatic--that is, not +theatrical--and its warrant is that the drama at the moment is nothing +but a drama of emotions in conflict. The only musical-and-dramatic +effect now occurs where the voices of the young pilgrims are heard: it +is electrical. + +Wagner gave a title to the prelude of Act III, "Tannhäuser's +Pilgrimage," and it differs only in that from his other preludes and +overtures. To those who know what is to follow it tells a story more +or less distinctly, while those who hear it for the first time must +feel the atmosphere and emotion, and thus be prepared for the drama. +It is built up of the pilgrims' marching song and one of Elisabeth's +melodies and a most expressive theme which depicts Tannhäuser +painfully getting over the weary miles, with a sad heart, to seek the +pope's pardon; then comes in the Dresden Amen--the significance of +which will appear presently--then a crash followed by a mournful +phrase (taken entire from Beethoven), and some recitative-like +passages leading direct to the rising of the curtain. As music it is a +splendid thing, and, as I have said, it tells its tale plainly, when +one knows the tale. Almost immediately we hear the pilgrims' hymn of +rejoicing, with which the overture begins--the hymn of those whose +sins have been taken away. The pilgrims pass; Tannhäuser is not +amongst them, and Wagner there gives Elisabeth a phrase which makes +one think that he had Schröder-Devrient in his mind when he wrote the +part. That gifted lady used--Berlioz said abused--the device of +occasionally speaking, not singing, a few words; and here, where +Elisabeth, in despair, says, "Er kehret nicht zurück," Wagner gives +her notes that can be either spoken or sung, and certainly are most +effective when spoken. The part, by the way, was not "created" by the +Schröder-Devrient, but by Johanna Wagner, the daughter of that brother +Albert who had given him his first post in a theatre. I have nothing +further to say about the Prayer, nor about the "Star of Eve" song. As +night gathers over the autumn scene and Tannhäuser enters, the music +at once leaps to life. Not that we have not heard some very lovely +things, notably a quotation in the orchestra from one of Wolfram's +competition songs; the star shines out, and Wolfram, his harp now +silent, sits gazing dreamily up in the direction Elisabeth has taken +homeward to die. But now we get a renewal of the furious energy of the +tournament scene. As Tannhäuser declares his intention of returning to +Venus, the music crackles and roars for a moment; then it subsides to +broken phrases of utter despair as he describes his journey to Rome. +The Dresden Amen accompanies him at first with ethereal effect, and +afterwards with the utmost grandeur, as he tells how he knelt before +the Rood to pray--in a few bars every aspect of St. Peter's is brought +to our minds, and the atmosphere and colour. Wagner himself never +surpassed the declamatory passage of the pope's curse. Bach and Mozart +knew how to write recitative, but they rarely attempted to fill it +with anything approaching the intensity of meaning with which this +terrible recitative is filled. Then, again, the music boils, and with +unearthly effects the themes from the Hörselberg scene sound out, now +from behind the scenes, now from the orchestra; the thing grows madder +and more mad, until suddenly Wolfram perceives the bier bearing +Elisabeth being carried down. "Elisabeth!" he cries, and a requiem is +heard from behind the scenes. As a stage effect I know only one thing +to match it. In _Hamlet_ the hero has been philosophizing to his +heart's content, when a funeral procession approaches-- + + _Hamlet_: What, the fair Ophelia? + + _Queen_: Sweets to the sweet, farewell.... + +Every one knows the magic of that stroke: the abrupt change of key, +the instant disappearance of bitterness, and the introduction of +pathos and pure beauty; so here the Venusberg music disappears like a +flame that is blown out. "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser echoes, and the +chorus chants solemnly "Der Seele Heil," etc. "Henry, thou art +redeemed," cries Wolfram; and then we have the final scene, the entry +of the young penitents with the pope's staff. The final chorus is +effective enough, though it suggests the audience getting up and +looking for their hats. + +As a whole, the music of _Tannhäuser_ is characterized by intense +energy, the greatest definiteness, and richness and gorgeousness of +colouring. Inviting as must have been the opportunities offered in the +opening scene of indulging in a riot of voluptuous colour, the +definiteness is never lost. Through the whirling, dancing-mad +accompaniment runs a fibre of strong, clean-cut, sinewy melody. The +picture is drawn with firm strokes as well as painted with a full +brush. Or perhaps the better analogy would be to describe each scene +as an architecturally constructed fabric; and each is also so +constructed as to lead inevitably into the next. Hence, as already +pointed out, the artistic restraint and breadth in scenes where, with +such heat of passion at work, we might fear spasmodic jerkiness. + +When _Tannhäuser_ was published, Wagner sent the score to Schumann, +and Mendelssohn also saw it. The comment of the latter was +characteristic: he liked a canon entry in the finale of the second +act; and indeed it was too much to hope that the successful purveyor +of oratorios should like or in the least understand so mighty, fresh +and passionate an opera. He did not understand Beethoven, and +virtually admitted as much without realizing how completely he had +committed himself. Moreover, opera was a form of art with which he had +no real sympathy. It is true his friend Devrient tells us that he was +anxious to write one, and would have done so had not his fastidious +taste prevented him ever finding a libretto to his liking--which is +equivalent to saying a man would have painted a fine picture could he +only have secured a good subject. In some respects Schumann was even +more antipathetic. Wagner, all who knew him declare, never ceased +talking; Schumann was a silent man--sometimes in a café a friend might +speak to him: Schumann would turn his back to the friend and his face +to the wall, and continue to imbibe lager. Wagner would talk for an +hour, and, getting no response, go away; he would afterwards declare +Schumann an "impossible" man, out of whom not a word could be got; +while Schumann would declare he could not tolerate Wagner, "his tongue +never stops." Schumann had no dramatic instinct, and no comprehension +for opera; in _Genoveva_--as, in fact, in his so-called dramatic +cantatas--he failed utterly: he went straight through the words, +setting them to music _pur et simple_, taking no thought for dramatic +propriety. The score of _Tannhäuser_ simply puzzled him; he saw in it +only the music _pur et simple_, considered as which it was, of course, +very bad. It was not bad in all the ways he thought, however. His +remark about the clumsy orchestration long ago returned to roost. For +the rest, when he saw the opera performed he changed part of his mind, +and wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in +place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some +time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it +muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time--and I +have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was +Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach +himself to--a peripatetic barnacle. Later, he found Brahms, as all the +world soon found out, and revised his early notions of the greater +musician. But at first he was all enthusiasm and gush, and wrote +articles "explaining" _Tannhäuser_. However, his views are of no +importance to-day. Liszt, generous soul, had the opera played at +Weimar at the earliest possible moment. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +'LOHENGRIN' + + +I + +_Lohengrin_ was first drafted in 1845--for Wagner during this period +allowed no grass to grow under his feet. He was a member of a coterie +that met at Angell's restaurant, and there on November 17 he read the +complete libretto to his friends and acquaintances. Schumann was +amongst them, and he bluntly asserted that such a libretto could not +be set. Others were more favourable, but many were doubtful. However, +that made little difference to Richard. He knew his own strength and +trusted his instinct; and however much he was urged to alter the +_dénouement_, he stuck to his guns and his libretto. + +In point of structure the libretto of _Lohengrin_ closely resembles +that of its predecessor. There are even fewer set pieces, there are +more fragmentary speeches. The drama is so contrived as to let in the +set pieces naturally: of the old forced operatic business of sending +out or bringing in characters as seems advisable there is not a sign. +The story is on the whole simpler than that of _Tannhäuser_. Lohengrin +is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the +Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and +where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow +born to the favoured ones. He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan +to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, who falsely accuse her of +having murdered her brother; he fights for her and overcomes the +accusers, first exacting a promise that she will never ask him his +name nor where he comes from. She promises, yielding herself +unconditionally to him; and so ends Act One. Next Ortrud, wife of +Telramund, gets Elsa's ear, begging for mercy, and contrives to poison +the girl's mind with doubts regarding Lohengrin; and when later the +wedding procession is nearing the church, Telramund himself accuses +Lohengrin before the king and all the crowd of sorcery and witchcraft. +Nothing happens at the moment; Telramund is pushed on one side, and +the procession goes its way. But in the next act, when Lohengrin and +Elsa are left alone she can no longer restrain her curiosity nor +conceal her fears: in spite of his warnings she questions him. At the +moment Telramund and other nobles rush in to assassinate him; he kills +Telramund, orders the other nobles to bear the body into the judgment +hall, and tells Elsa he must leave her. In the next scene he reveals +himself, and the swan returns to take him away. Ortrud mocks him and +tells how she, after all, has triumphed, for she changed Elsa's +brother into a swan; Lohengrin kneels and prays; the swan disappears +and the missing brother springs up; a dove descends and is attached by +Lohengrin to the boat, and he goes back to Montsalvat. + +Now I would ask the reader if this story is reasonable, if any +"meaning" or moral can be read into it. On the face of it Lohengrin's +conditions are preposterous. Yet he is bound by the laws of the magic +domain he comes from; he trusts Elsa and does battle on her behalf +without any proof of her innocence; and she has no patience to wait +for him to explain matters. On the other hand, he hears her prayer in +a magical way, and comes drawn in a magic boat; and she has a perfect +right to assume that he would not have fought for her if he had not +known by his arts that she was innocent. It was just over this +_dénouement_, this forsaking of Elsa because of her inquisitiveness, +that many of Wagner's friends boggled; and nothing that he then or +afterwards wrote in defence of it seems to me worth a moment's serious +consideration. Mr. Ernest Newman suggests that perhaps Wagner was +using the savage's notion that in giving up your name you are placing +yourself in some one's power; but there is not a hint of that in the +drama. The thing to me is simply a fairy story. We must accept +Lohengrin and the conditions in which he lives, moves and has his +being. He is not his own master: somewhere far away he has an +all-powerful over-lord who, for no useful purpose to be comprehended +by mortal, sent him to rescue Elsa under these conditions. And I say +that, far from having a meaning, a "purpose," _Lohengrin_ is pure +romance, as innocent of moral ideas as any genuine mediæval romance. +Wagner's "explanations," like Bishop Berkeley's, take a great deal of +explaining; and though Glasenapp, Wolzogen and the rest have covered +many reams of paper in doing it, we are not an inch nearer to +perceiving a grain of sense in the whole affair. There is only one +part of it which can be, in one sense, explained--Wagner's intense +acrimony in his treatment of the female puppet Elsa. Even in 1845 he +had grown restive under the insults and stupidity of court officials +and the Press, and doubtless he had threatened often enough to quit +for ever the degraded German theatre. He never could see that the +German theatre had never been any better than it then was, but on the +contrary, a great deal worse; he never realized that it was on the +up-grade, and that he was to be instrumental in elevating it. He was +like a mechanic called in (by destiny) to repair a rickety machine, +who because it won't go when he "wills" it, kicks it to pieces. The +Reissigers and the rest were simply parts of the machine that were out +of order: time and patience were required to eliminate them and put in +sound working parts. Wagner could not understand this any more than he +could understand why all German (or rather, Saxon) mankind should not +at once be perfect, think alike and form the ideal State. So, as he +could not kick the Dresden Court Opera to pieces, he long meditated +quitting it--so much he explicitly affirmed afterwards--and he must +have worried Minna sadly. She understood neither his qualities nor his +defects, his ideals nor the short-sighted impatience which rendered it +impossible for him ever to attain them: she saw only too clearly that +at any moment he might kick over the traces, and that the starvation +and misery of the Paris episode would have to be faced again. We can +readily picture him coming in raging after a conflict at the theatre +with official imbecility, and Minna, instead of sympathizing, +counselling him to be wise and temporize. His exasperation grew, and +only the events of 1849 prevented a rupture--so much seems +certain--and he vented his spleen by making Elsa a stupid, shallow, +faithless creature who feels no gratitude towards the hero who saved +her from being burnt, but by maddening female pertinacity, +wrong-headedness and wilfulness destroys her own and his happiness. As +the reader will perceive later, I by no means defend Wagner in this +domestic squabbling, but something must be said for him; I don't say, +either, that he created Elsa to express his views about his wife, but +I do say that his feelings account for the excess of his rancour +against his own creation. So pitiable a specimen of feminine +inquisitiveness, bad temper and ungenerosity has never been put on the +stage as the heroine of a grand opera. Possibly Lohengrin saw this; +and, neglecting his recent marriage-vow, he went back to Montsalvat, +where, as we know, there were no women. All this would have to be said +in the course of this book; and I say it now because it helps us to +understand a defect in the art of a beautiful opera. + +A beautiful opera _Lohengrin_ certainly is--the most beautiful of all +Wagner's operas. The story of it is a fairy story, as I have said, and +superficially a very ordinary sort of fairy story. We have the +distressed maiden in the hands of persecutors, the knightly hero who +rescues her, the maiden's faithlessness, and the contemptuous +departure of the hero. But Wagner has clothed the whole of this +work-a-day mediæval legend in a wondrous atmosphere of mystical +beauty, and that beauty springs from the thought of the river. + + +II + +It is necessary to discuss as briefly as may be the leitmotiv, because +with _Lohengrin_ Wagner first began to use it with serious purpose. In +the _Dutchman_ two themes may be rightly described as leitmotivs; in +_Tannhäuser_ not one theme may be rightly so described. While in +_Lohengrin_ Wagner showed himself as much as ever the inspired +musician, he made for the first time use of the leitmotiv for dramatic +as well as musical ends. There we find three leitmotivs: one intended +by the power of association of ideas to evoke on the instant the +vision of Montsalvat and the Grail; a second to recall the thought and +emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions +which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her. +The first (_a_, p. 191) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner +invented; the third (_d_)--not second--is a thing any one might have +concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use +as Wagner uses it; the second (_c_) is by way of being a study for the +best of the _Parsifal_ themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that +the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely +exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state +of decrepitude. + +The leitmotiv (_a_) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a +little bit (_b_) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from +the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than +anything else, which gives _Lohengrin_ the vividness of reality +combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of +the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off +mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as +delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his +brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but +the land of ever-enduring dawn--a land that other poets have dreamed +of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end +Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this +strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would +tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that +reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is +conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to +inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in +obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly +as a needle drawn by a magnet. + +The prelude opens with a series of chords, ascending, all on A. Handel +might have done this: none of the Viennese composers could, or perhaps +I should rather say, would, have done it. Beethoven got as near to the +naked truth as ever composer did in dealing with the emotions of +humanity; Mozart, too, worked his miracles; Weber, non-Viennese +though he was, gave us weird, fantastic pictures of fairy adventures +in the darkness of grim woods, but nothing more. It was left for +Wagner to give us in a few bars a picture, such as no painter could +have painted, of the blue heavens on an almost unimaginably fine day. +The blue sky, the thin, clear air, the sunlight, are all given us in +the first few bars. It is far from my wish to intrude my personal +history into these pages, but I wish to give a convincing example of +an episode of a sort familiar to all those who have experimented with +Wagner's music. A relative of mine, who had spent many of his earlier +years in travelling the southern Atlantic and the Pacific in sailing +vessels, heard me play on the piano, as an illustration of some +argument I was foolish enough to advance, these opening bars of the +_Lohengrin_ prelude. He immediately said, "That takes me back into the +Trades"--the sweet days of perfect peace in southern climes, where the +sky was blue for day after day and week after week, where the wind +sang cheerfully without change for weeks on end, where a delicious sun +made all men (no matter what the feeling was on those foul old ships) +feel good-natured and good-hearted. That is to say, my relative at +once felt the magical truthfulness of Wagner's touch: the sweet, clear +air, the sunlight; and that is the atmosphere Wagner wanted to +establish at the beginning of this most magical of operas. Out of the +blue sky comes the Montsalvat (not necessarily the Grail) motive; it +descends with ever-gathering fulness, through key after key, until at +last it culminates in a tremendous climax for the brass: then comes a +wondrous cadence, falling slowly, as a mountain stream falls over +slabs of smooth-worn mountain rock, until we get back to the original +atmosphere. The Montsalvat vision has faded away into the blue whence +it came. Wagner afterwards achieved some marvellous things, but none +more marvellous than this. + +The curtain rises: there is a rum-tum-tum by the orchestra. We are at +once in the discord of a turbulent armed camp: the fury of Telramund +against those who are not convinced of his evidently prejudiced view +that Elsa holds the lands he wishes to hold, is made to resound in the +orchestra as not the most expert Italian composer could make it +resound by the voices. When Elsa enters to defend herself the music +changes its character utterly; it is the embodiment of the sweetness +of young feminine kindly nature; and it is odd that Wagner, when +writing this music, which he fancied was the most German ever written, +should have gone so far as, in some of its finest parts, to steal bits +of the Austrian hymn, composed, as we may remember, by not even an +Austrian, but a Croatian, pure Slav, composer. Elsa's account of her +dream is not dramatic as Wagner, by the time he wrote his next work, +would have understood the term--in shape it is an Italian aria, and +everything is at a standstill until it is finished--yet it occurs +fittingly, and prepares us by ethereal music for the music of a +gentleman who is very unethereal. In form the whole scene is as near +as may be a regular Italian opera scene. King Henry the Fowler and his +nobles show mighty patience in sitting or standing it out to the end. +The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of +suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery +impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all +done with Wagner's consummate skill in writing purely theatrical +music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is +worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the +Lohengrin, "as hero," theme in its full splendour. Then comes the +fighting music, which, like all fighting music, is mediocre stuff, and +the gorgeous set piece, the finale. This last is quite old-fashioned +opera, but it is not forced in: it happens inevitably. The themes are +mainly new, but the Lohengrin heroic theme is worked in triumphantly. +Technically there is no advance or change in _Lohengrin_: the +counterpoint and interweaving of themes of _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_ were to come a few years later. Indeed, there is less +of Wagner the contrapuntal virtuoso in _Lohengrin_ than in +_Tannhäuser_. + + +III + +In the music, as in the drama, the second act presents a total +contrast to the first. The music of the first is throughout full of +sunlight. At times it may be strident, violent, rather tumultuous; but +sweetness is the prevailing note, and as soon as Elsa comes on we have +the sheer loveliness of first her answers to the king, and then of +her vision; then comes Lohengrin, bringing with him the breath of the +land of eternal dawn, and of the shining river down which he was drawn +by the swan; then after the (rather theatrical) prayer, a few moments +of noise while the fighting is being arranged and carried out; then, +so to speak, the glorious midday sunshine of the finale. The second +act opens with two sinister phrases heard in the darkness (_e_ and +_f_)--Ortrud is planning vengeance, and the theme of Lohengrin's +warning and threat to Elsa is presently heard; that warning gives her +the hint as to the way of achieving vengeance. Ortrud and Telramund, +outcast, crouch there in the night; Ortrud deeply scheming, Frederick, +poor dupe, madly fuming, while the lights blaze at the palace windows, +and the trumpets sound out as the feast proceeds within. He rages, and +a theme (_f_) quoted is abruptly transformed into (_g_) as he bitterly +casts upon Ortrud the blame for their downfall. The vocal parts are +neither recitative nor true song; the orchestral tide is developed in +much the same symphonic style as in _Tannhäuser_. We are still no +nearer to the perfect blending of the orchestral stream and the vocal +parts that we get in _Tristan_ and in the _Mastersingers_. The style +is not homogeneous: the stream is broken by theatrical exclamations +and snatches of recitative that not only break the flow, but differ in +character from the rest. But the elasticity of motion is a great +advance on _Tannhäuser_: Wagner was coming to his own, and much of +_Tannhäuser_ strikes one as cumbrous and heavy in comparison. That +sinister atmosphere of mystery is never lost; the gloom and the +wretched crouching figures, the fierce anger and Ortrud's alternate +cajoling and threatening may be said, without exaggeration, to sound +from the orchestra with as powerful an effect on the imagination as +the sights and sounds on the stage. Most magnificent is the descending +chromatic passage that accompanies Ortrud as she casts her spell again +over Frederick. It resembles closely an Erda theme of the _Ring_--as +is quite natural, for one chromatic scale cannot but resemble another. +The significance of the resemblance is that the strange harmonies are +also much alike, and the central idea is the same in the two cases: +the idea of old Mother Earth, her everlasting stillness in strange +places, her never-ceasing internal workings, her mysterious power. In +the _Ring_ there is nothing baneful in the conception: it is Nature at +work in her sleep amongst the silent hills: mysterious, indeed, but +doing no evil. Here it is the earth as conceived by the mediæval mind, +the earth to which the coming of the White Christ had banished all the +gods of the older world, there to become the malevolent, malignant +divinities of the new world, and believed in as such by the first +adherents of the new religion. Frederick was a Christian, mediæval +style, and he implicitly believes that Ortrud can call up wicked +spirits, and by their aid weave enchantments when the God of the East +is not looking. The same may be said of the king, and indeed all the +characters in _Lohengrin_: again I say the opera is a fairy drama in +which these things must be assumed and accepted. That wondrous +passage must have sounded doubly wonderful in the ears of two +generations back; blent with that second sinister Ortrud theme, it +accomplishes as much in a dozen or so bars as Weber could accomplish +in as many pages. That Ortrud theme seems to wind round Frederick's +soul until at last he is wholly in his wife's grip; and the scene ends +with an invocation to "ye Powers that rule our earthly lot"--the +malignant gods of the underworld. We, knowing the kind of music Wagner +had in his mind when he wrote the libretto of _Lohengrin_, can easily +understand Schumann's dismay when this scene was read to him: nothing +of the sort had been composed before. + +Suddenly Elsa appears on the balcony, and the character of the music +changes at once: all now is sweetness and light. Her serenade (to +herself) is a simple and very lovely thing, making full half of its +effect through its contrast with the harshness, agitation and gloom of +all that has gone before. There is a master-touch when Ortrud calls +softly, "Elsa": by one stroke, an abrupt strange chord, the whole +atmosphere is for the moment altered: the dreariness of the call is +unforgetable. There are many hints of Ortrud's purpose given out more +and more plainly till the climax is reached in her invocation to +Wotan, chief of the malignant divinities. (It is strange to think that +when he wrote this Wagner must already have had the other and more +celebrated Wotan in his thoughts.) Much of Elsa's melody is of a very +Weberesque quality--and is none the worse for it: far better that than +the touches of Bellini, Marschner and Spontini that abound in the +earlier operas. One or two other points may be noted. At the words +"Rest thee with me" we get a tune which might have grown out of one +previously heard and one in the bedroom scene--not only does the tune +resemble the others closely, but the rhythm of the phrases Elsa +addresses to Ortrud is the same as that of the phrases with which +Lohengrin seems to caress Elsa. There is, of course, no "significance" +in the sense in which the word is used by the Wagnerians. The short +duet following contains a divine melody, but Ortrud's "aside" is a +fairly lengthy one--forty bars--and is a bit of conventionalism which +Wagner soon discarded. The melody is played again as Elsa leads her +enemy into the house; Frederick returns to curse Ortrud and Lohengrin +in the same breath; all the sweetness goes out of the music as Elsa +disappears from view, and the scene closes as it opened, in gloom. + +As daylight breaks Wagner indulges in one of the effects he was fond +of at this period. The reveille is sounded from a turret, and an +answering call comes from a distance; and the two parties trumpet it +in alternation until every one is awakened. It is a quasi-musical +effect only: there is no invention: the trumpet chords serve the +purpose and nothing more. He never reverted to this rather bald method +of filling up time while his people are being got on the stage: +compare this passage with, for instance, Hagen's call in _The Dusk of +the Gods_. The latter is rich and full of picturesque music: it means +something and is, in fact, an effective piece in a concert-room. Or +take the watchman with his cow-horn in the _Mastersingers_; the music +is redolent of the old world; it impresses the imagination more than +an entry in Pepys--"the watchman calling two of the morning and a +thick snow falling." In the _Lohengrin_ days his method still requires +these _longueurs_, these dry patches: later his mastery over his +material enabled him to deal his theatrical and his musical stroke at +the same time. As knights and retainers flock in, a long and elaborate +chorus is sung--a musical, not a dramatic, chorus, almost as much in +the _Rienzi_ manner as in the manner of _Tannhäuser_. It is curious to +observe how cautious and tentative Wagner was at this stage of his +growth. He was still groping, seeing only very dimly the destination +he would reach by the way he was taking. _Lohengrin_, had he followed +the plan he would certainly have adopted ten years later, would have +been terser, more closely dramatic, and would have made only a short +opera; there would have been fewer set numbers and a much smaller +quantity of the magnificent music. The whole idea, I have already +said, is not a dramatic one, but a musical one; and the advance on the +_Dutchman_ lies in the skill with which the musical opportunities seem +to grow out of the drama and are not pressed into it. In this respect +it is hardly an advance on _Tannhäuser_; indeed three of the great +ensembles have not an adequate dramatic motive. That at the end of the +first act, splendid music though it is, is a quite operatic finale, so +conventional that only when rendered in the conventional operatic +manner does it sound and appear impressive. It becomes, when done in +this manner, a kind of dance, for towards the finish all the crowd +should form in long lines and go twining about in a ballet figure. In +this opening chorus of knights and retainers in the Second Act (scene +ii) the musical inspiration is intense; but words are repeated as +irrationally as in a Handel oratorio chorus; and the same is the case +in the bridal procession music. Wagner still had a hankering after +imposing spectacle and brilliant choral writing. That bridal +procession and chorus are, of course, supremely beautiful music: music +and spectacle were aimed at and achieved, not music and drama, in the +later Wagnerian sense. + +The scene of the interruption of the procession first by Ortrud and +then by Frederick has always seemed to me superfluous as well as +stagey. The whole thing is pure melodrama of the kind that used to be +popular until a very few years ago; and the music is as melodramatic +as the two incidents. The scene is far too long, and is thus rendered +doubly nonsensical. Only a few minutes before, the Herald has +announced the King's decree: any one harbouring either of the +offenders "will share his [it ought to be their] doom with life and +limb." Yet the offenders themselves are allowed to break up an orderly +procession and to hurl angry diatribes at the very people they have +been banned for seeking to injure. For many minutes Ortrud, encouraged +by a furious orchestra, pours forth a stream of insult directed at +Lohengrin and Elsa: she is not immediately seized and carried off to +be tortured: the bystanders utter a few exclamations, and leave Elsa +to reply for herself. When the king and Lohengrin enter they content +themselves with gentle remonstrances: even Frederick draws from them +only dignified if somewhat scornful protests. There has been some +other rather futile business: a few conspirators planning to support +Frederick in attacking not only Lohengrin, but the king. The flower of +a loyal army look on at all this and go on their way, leaving +Frederick free to make an attempt on Lohengrin's life in the third +Act. Again I emphasise a point because it reveals exactly how far +Wagner's art had got at this period. Well might he feel it necessary, +before proceeding to other masterpieces, to discover where he stood, +what was his ideal, and how he might attain it. For, observe, he +wanted to depict in music an imperious, ambitious, unscrupulous and +wicked woman with a temper that in the end is her own undoing; he felt +the necessity of contrasting her with Elsa, sweet, gentle and +lamentably weak--Elsa, who is strong, or, rather, pertinacious, only +once, and at the wrong time; and, third, he felt that his act would +terminate rather tamely with a mere wedding-march. The result is this +noisy melodramatic scene, with its melodramatic music. It could not be +otherwise. Music cannot express anger--at best it can only suggest. By +anger I mean human anger--the god's wrath of a Wotan is a different +matter. Brünnhilda knows Wotan to be angry by the raging storm that +marks his path through the heavens, by the lightnings and thunders; +and we have all enough of our primitive ancestors in us to feel in +some degree as they felt--indeed, plenty of people to-day see in a +storm a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty. Human anger has +never been put into music. Why, Ortrud alternates her rantings (mere +recitative) with beautiful phrases of the same pattern as those sung +by Elsa! The music for the orchestra is turbulent rather than +forcible; it is incoherent in the old-fashioned way: essentially--in +spite of a free use of discords--it is as old-fashioned as anything in +_Don Giovanni_. Frederick and Lohengrin have hot words, and Telramund +is supposed to be a hotheaded idiot and Lohengrin a spotless, handsome +hero; and lo! with due regard for the respective ranges of their +voices, they might sing each other's music and no harm done. When the +chorus enters a very imposing piece of music is wrought, largely out +of the Ortrud insinuating theme (_f_); but it is not dramatic music. +The ending with the resumption of the procession is one of Wagner's +noblest things. It is not in the customary sense of the phrase an +operatic finale, but a perfectly satisfying piece of music that +prepares us for a pause during which we can take breath before the +action of the drama is taken up again in the third Act. + + +IV + +In that act we have the central idea of the opera--the poetic and the +musical idea--clearly, definitely set forth--the idea of Montsalvat, +far away up the rippling river on which the white swan +floated--Montsalvat, the land of eternal dawn, where all things +remained for ever young, and the flowers and the corn grew always and +never faded nor fell to the sickle. It is the land Mignon aspired +to--"Oh let me for ever then remain young"--the impossible dream of +poets and millions of men and women who were not poets: Nirvana, with +a difference; that realm in which, tired with the struggles and fights +in the devious ways of this dark world, they should after death awake +refreshed in a serene light and pure air, thereafter to dwell for ever +in a state of untroubled blessedness, where all earth's puzzles solve +themselves, and life is seen to be complete. As Senta's ballad is the +germ of the _Dutchman_, so is Lohengrin's narrative, "In fernem Land," +the germ of this more beautiful opera. It plays a more important part +in _Lohengrin_ than does the ballad in the _Dutchman_. Without +exaggeration, the life, colour and emotion of the narrative wash +backwards and forwards over the _Lohengrin_ score, relieving scenes +that might be tedious and worrying--like those Ortrud scenes I have +just described--and making the beautiful pages still more beautiful. +The land of dawn, fresh and pure, the limpid river: these, the essence +of _Lohengrin_ and the pervading atmosphere, proceed from the +narrative. + +But much has to be got through before this point is reached. First, we +have the gorgeous prelude--the most brilliant Wagner wrote, and the +last he was to write that has no thematic connection with any portion +of the opera. Here we have no summary of the act, no hint of impending +disaster and tragedy, but simply a joyous, rattling preliminary to the +procession that escorts Lohengrin and Elsa to the bridal chamber. It +starts off with immense spirit, the music leaping straight up, +hesitating a moment on a cross-accent, then a noisy shake reaching its +highest note, and after a clash of the cymbals sliding off into the +more regular rhythm, broken slightly by occasional syncopations, in +which the piece as a whole is conceived. The melody in the bass that +follows, and the more tender strains of a middle section, are familiar +to every one nowadays--in fact, so familiar that we are likely to +overlook the intense originality of the whole thing. When we remember +the course the drama has now to take, the tragic beauty of its close, +we can perceive how exactly right Wagner's feeling was when he left +the plan he adopted throughout the _Dutchman_ and _Tannhäuser_--the +plan either of summing up or foreshadowing the ensuing scenes, or of +making the prelude part of the first scene. Of course the music at the +beginning of Act II is rather in the nature of an introduction than of +a distinct prelude; but Act III is not prefaced by so much as that. +Rather, it suggests that since Elsa and Lohengrin entered the church +all has been rejoicing, and that we catch only the tail-end of the +feast as the party comes on the stage. + +The wedding chorus I pass over as rather trivial; and it contains +between the middle section and the repetition the eight most trivial +bars Wagner put to paper--I do not except the weakest portions of +_Rienzi_. The opening of the great love scene--the most curious love +scene in the world--is pure deliciousness. Nothing of the passion, +flaming hot and terrible, of _Tristan_ is here; only a sense of sheer +delight and happiness. Melody after melody--of a very Weberesque +pattern, of course, but sweet, voluptuous--is poured forth; and a +graver tone comes into the music only when Elsa begins timidly to lead +up to the questionings of Lohengrin which are her aim. She hints at +what she wants, and Lohengrin gives her, to a very pretty tune, an +answer that can merely be called sublimely fatuous. Drawing her to the +window, he bids her breathe in the odours from the flowers in the +moonlit garden beneath. "But," he blandly adds, "don't ask whence +their sweet scent comes, or you will its wondrous charm destroy." The +song is, I say, a pretty one; indeed, it is so pretty that but for the +enchantment of each successive phrase no one could stand the monotony +of so long a series of four-bar phrases. Of that fault in _Lohengrin_ +I shall have more to say presently. More dramatic, living, and less +mechanical stuff follows at once: Elsa is not to be put off in that +way, and in agitated strains to an agitated but not spasmodic +accompaniment she presses on towards disaster. Lohengrin's warning +sounds out, sinister; Lohengrin pleads, always stupidly, but to music +of growing intensity and grip; the measures are no longer cut to a +pattern, not incoherent as they are in the squabbles of the second +Act; and at last a passage of Wagner at his theatrical best is +reached when he solemnly warns her again--"Greatest of trusts, Elsa, I +have shown thee." To another most lovely theme he tries again to +soothe her: she will not listen, and the Ortrud theme begins to writhe +in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the +spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and +nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a +fretful woman who cannot get her way--a woman driven mad by baseless +jealousy--in fancy she sees the swan coming to lead Lohengrin away +from her; with mournful and dreary effect a fragment of the swan theme +sounds from the orchestra. This simple touch is weird to a degree +never dreamed of by all the purveyors of operatic horrors; it is +unearthly, uncanny, in its wild beauty. The climax is immensely +powerful, but very simple, and, above all, sheer art of the theatre. +There is a crash as Frederick rushes in to be instantly killed; a bass +passage tears down the scale to the depths; and the horns sustain two +pianissimo chords, two notes in each; then silence, broken only by +soft drum-beats to make the silence felt. Elsa has fainted, and as she +revives we hear a bit of the duet--Lohengrin's tenderness as he tends +her, and a fleeting dream of Elsa's, perhaps, seem to blend in it. All +is finished. + +To compare this duet with that in _Tristan_ would be profitless but +for one reason. Wagner had not yet reached that perfect mastery of his +art which enabled him, so to speak, to fuse the dramatic and the +musical inspiration. We saw how in the _Dutchman_ the music rose to +its full height and splendour when the drama was sincere and true; in +_Tristan_ drama and music are inseparable. In _Lohengrin_, where the +inspiration is, if not wholly, at any rate mainly, musical, the drama +seems at times to be somewhat of a hindrance. I have mentioned the +fine dramatic or stage touches; but the finest things occur when the +pair, singly or together, are singing music that would be as effective +on a concert platform as on the stage. The art, that is, is far away +from the art of the _Tristan_ duet. At many points the situation is +saved by Wagner's stage dexterity: only when the music is almost as +completely self-moulded as in a symphony, or any other form of +"absolute" music, is it at its best. For practical purposes with +Wagner the songs are "absolute" music: the words were his own, and he +could alter them to suit the musical exigency. + + +V + +The opening of the next scene is spectacular, and the music is not +striking--for Wagner, though Marschner or Spontini might have owned it +with pride. The entry of the nobles bringing Frederick's corpse, the +entry also of Elsa, "like Niobe, all tears," are theatrically +powerful. Elsa's entry is a particularly beautiful example of what I +have previously called Wagner's dramatict use of the leitmotiv. There +are twenty bars of accompaniment, and in that space we have three +motives, so arranged that those who knew their significance, but had +never seen the earlier portions of the opera, might easily read the +whole of Elsa's sad history. As she is led in, stricken down and +miserable, the warning theme is heard; then that winding, insidious +theme associated with Ortrud; and last, four bars of the music heard +in the first act when she stands helpless before the king and has +nothing wherewith to answer her accusers: she is as miserable now as +she was then, and the cause of it Lohengrin's edict and her defiance +of it under Ortrud's influence. The device I have always maintained to +be a naïve one; but it may be used to a sublime end, as in the _Dusk +of the Gods_ funeral procession, or as here, to emphasize Elsa's +situation, and to remind us at once of her being the authoress of her +own destruction. This is followed by acclamations as Lohengrin enters, +and nothing further of note occurs until he declares that, for reasons +which he cannot give, he will not go forth to fight the foe with the +Brabantians; and this declaration is set to the same passage, or part +of it, in which he has lately warned Elsa not to question him (p. +175). The meaning of the words and the dramatic significance of this +musical phrase are beyond my understanding. If Lohengrin did not mean +to tell his secret the musical phrase might imply that he had no +intention of letting them ask for it. But he has come there with no +other intention than that of revealing everything--and, in a word, the +whole business is incomprehensible because there is nothing to be +comprehended--because it is sheer nonsense. How Wagner, even supposing +he had originally some other idea for the ending of the work, could +let so flat a contradiction of his final plan stand--this also is +more than I can understand; for in later years he saw his opera +performed. And at that I must leave the matter. Lohengrin presently +proceeds to disclose his secret in that wondrous "In fernem +Land"--surely the most superb thing of its sort ever written. The +vocal part is--as I have already pointed out, this is often the case +in Wagner--something between pure song and recitative; and here it is +of a quality he himself rarely matched--not even in _Tristan_. +Technically, it is a piece of descriptive music for instruments; but +the words which give it significance and point are set to phrases +themselves so beautiful, pathetic and inevitable that one feels that +the vocal part and the orchestral were begotten simultaneously in that +marvellous brain. In other chapters I will point to passages, +especially in the _Ring_, where quite obviously the voice part has +been laboriously worked in with instrumental music already conceived +in its final form; but that was in Wagner's later years, when the free +inspiration, enthusiasm and energy of his _Tristan_ and _Lohengrin_ +and _Mastersingers_ days had for ever departed. There is an accent of +passionate grief in Lohengrin's words to Elsa, and of remorse in +Elsa's wailings; but the most touching thing in this final scene is +the song in which he hands her his sword, horn and ring, to be given +to her brother should he return. The note of regret, especially in the +poignant "leb' wohl," reminds one irresistibly of Wotan's farewell to +Brünnhilda. The latter is broader, richer, vaster,--and yet the tender +simplicity of this is inexpressibly touching. After that the opera +proceeds to its conclusion in what one may call a normal manner: there +is nothing, anyhow, in the music that requires analysis. + + +VI + +_Lohengrin_ cannot be called Wagner's greatest achievement, but it is +a "fine," if not a "first careless rapture" whose freshness he never +quite recaptured. Yet, in a way, it is the most mannered of his works. +I know of no opera where one phrase, one harmony or set of harmonies, +or one violin figure is made to serve so many and such widely +different purposes; and not since the early seventeen hundreds had the +perfect cadence been so hard worked. Only two numbers are in other +than four-four time--the prayer and the wedding song. The melodies on +page upon page consist of regular four-bar lengths, commonly +terminating in a full close. We can admit all this--indeed, we must +admit it all--and then we are only bound the more to admire the vast +amount of variety Wagner got in spite of all the obstacles self-placed +in his way. His fondness for the diminished seventh, constantly +exploited throughout, was perhaps a fondness for his own adopted +child--for no one had ever properly employed it before: to him and to +every one at the time his use of it was new. Many points in his +prolonged passages which are simply arpeggios of the chord of the +diminished seventh must have seemed novel in the eighteen-forties, +though we hardly notice them now. The four-bar lengths send the +music along with a swing very different from the jerkiness of +contemporary opera music. The cadence is used only to attain, so to +speak, a fresh jumping-off place: there is no moment of real rest: +simultaneously with the attainment of a point of rest the new impulse +is felt, and away the thing flies again. But what compensates for all +these defects--and defects they are--is the perpetual presence of the +Montsalvat music: we are never long without hearing some of it. The +Montsalvat music is the source of the charm and fascination of the +opera, and its purity and freshness seem likely for ever to keep the +opera sweet. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +EXILE + + +I + +The journey to Zurich was a risky one. Wagner, the composer of what is +now the most popular of all operas, _Lohengrin_, might indeed pass +unnoticed, for the work had not been heard; but the composer of the +_Dutchman_ and of _Rienzi_, and perhaps of _Tannhäuser_, and above all +the organizer and conductor of the largest musical festival ever held +in Dresden, could not easily slip past unobserved. As a matter of +fact, few or none of the officials seemed very anxious to catch him; +still, thousands of innocent persons were being taken by the +Prussians, "tried," and sent to long terms of penal servitude for +having done nothing--it being argued, apparently, that any one against +whom nothing could be proved must of necessity be guilty of some +crime. Wagner's first idea was simply to keep out of the way until +things had quieted down. It took things more than a couple of years to +quiet down. Meantime a warrant was out for Richard's arrest. His +movements between Dresden, Chemnitz and Freiberg are of no interest +nowadays; but things became a little exciting from the day, May 13 +(1849), when he arrived at Liszt's. I have related how for a week or +so all seemed well, and Wagner thought himself safe, being out of +Saxony. He even intended witnessing a representation of _Tannhäuser_, +but the day before, if not sooner, the warrant was circulated in the +German fashion of those days, with a personal description which seems +to have been made purposely vague by some friendly hand, though more +naturally one would assume it to be due to official stupidity. Wagner +heard Liszt rehearsing something of his and was overjoyed, and also he +was so confident of his own security that he still wanted to stay to +hear _Tannhäuser_. Liszt would not hear of it; he packed his friend +off under an assumed name to some other friends; they procured a +passport, and he travelled to Zurich via Jena and Coburg. It should be +put on record that in the meantime he ran the risk of being captured +by lingering to have a last hour with his wife. Towards the end of the +month he reached Zurich, and had no more fear of the Prussian police. + +We have already seen how sick he had grown of Dresden, where he +complained of being slowly stifled; but Liszt proposed--nay, +insisted--on something worse than Dresden--Paris. Wagner was now a +penniless, homeless wanderer, as he had been when he set out from Riga +ten years before; and Liszt fondly believed that only by making a hit +in Paris could he command any enduring success in Germany, and thus +gain money to live on, wherever he might happen to be. Liszt was the +good genie who found the funds, and Wagner, having nothing better to +propose, was bound to obey. So he stayed three days in Zurich and set +out; and a deal of good he did! He knew absolutely that such work as +his could scarcely hope to get so much as a bare hearing, and the +event proved him to be right. He submitted scenarios of several operas +to a French poet, and there, for all practical purposes, the business +ended. Here is a fragment from a letter to Theodor Uhlig, dated +Zurich, August 9, '49-- + + "I am living here, helped in communistic fashion by Liszt, in + good spirits, and I may say prosperously, according to my best + nature; my only and great anxiety is about my poor wife, whom I + am expecting here very shortly. To my very great astonishment, I + find that I am a celebrity here; made so, indeed, by means of + the piano scores of all my operas, out of which whole acts are + repeatedly performed at concerts and at choral unions. At the + beginning of the winter I shall go again to Paris to have + something performed and to put my opera matter into order. You + cannot imagine what joy one finds in frugality if one knows that + thereby the noblest thing, freedom, is assured; you know how + long I was brewing in my blood the Dresden catastrophe, only I + had no presentiment of the exact hurricane which would drive me + thence; but you are thoroughly convinced that all the annuities + and restitutions in the world would not induce me to become + again what, to my greatest sorrow, I was in Dresden. I have just + a last remnant of curiosity, however, and you would give me much + pleasure in letting me know how matters stand with you. My wife + has never found leisure to give me news of Dresden, the + theatre, and the band. Do relieve this last Dresden longing. Do + you happen to know anything definite about the state of the + police inquiry? The fate of Heubner, Roeckel and Bakunin + troubles me much. Anyhow, these persons ought not to be + imprisoned. But don't let me speak of it! In this matter one can + only judge justly and adequately if one looks at the period from + a lofty point of view. Woe to him who acts with sublime purpose, + and then, for his deeds, is judged by the police! It is a grief + and a shame which only our times can show." + +He had no real intention of returning to Paris. Earlier in the same +letter he speaks of ending the speculating by his proposed _Jesus of +Nazareth_. Indeed, the slavery of working for the market in Paris was +even more repugnant to him than the liveried bondage in Saxony. +Previous to the writing of this letter Liszt had lent him twelve +pounds, and by the end of July he was back in Zurich, and though, much +against his will, he did go to Paris again, and, in fact, much +farther, Zurich was thenceforth for some years his headquarters. His +host at first was an honest musician Alexander Müller, who, I believe, +had known him in Würzburg long before; but he soon set up an +establishment of his own. + +His main purpose at this time was to try to clear in his brain the +confused mass of theories and speculations concerning music, and +especially opera, which had long been seething there. _Lohengrin_, the +reader must have observed, was not a road leading anywhere, but an +impasse; a step towards the attainment of his ideal it was not: it +was, on the whole, a step backwards, although it is a much more +beautiful work than _Tannhäuser_. Wagner's mind, like Thoreau's, +Carlyle's, Brahms', needed filtering--an operation that could only be +performed in perfect peace and loneliness. Thoreau went to Walden; +Carlyle to Craigenputtock; Brahms at any rate retired from public +musical life. They worked out their own salvation. Wagner felt he must +do the same; as we know, he did the same: hence many of those terrible +volumes of prose-writings. His mental condition is indicated in +another few sentences from the letter quoted above-- + + "Yet I must frankly confess that the freedom which I here inhale + in fresh Alpine draughts is intensely pleasing to me. What is + the ordinary care about the so-called future of citizen life + compared with the feeling that we are not tyrannized over in our + noblest aims? How few men care more for themselves than for + their stomachs? Now I have made my choice, and am spared the + trouble of choosing; so I feel free in my innermost soul, and + can despise what torments me from without; no one can withdraw + himself from the evil influences of the civilized barbarism of + our time, but all can so manage that they do not rule over our + better self." + +We may as well note one point at once. When Thoreau, Carlyle and +Brahms went into their respective wildernesses, they maintained +themselves, as they thought merely proper. In this respect Wagner's +views did not coincide with theirs. He exclaims scornfully, "How few +men care more for themselves than for their stomachs!" What he meant +was that he should care for himself while his friends cared for his +stomach. As he cared a very great deal for his stomach, his demands +upon his friends were exorbitant and continuous. True, he offered the +fruits of his brain to the world at large, but all save the faithful +liked not the security. The creator of _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_ +was quite justified in believing that he _ought_ to be supported, and +it may be that the respect we pay to the artists who starve it out is +only a complacent way of saying how pleased we are that no one asks us +to put our hands in our pockets. Nevertheless--! + +We must remember, however, that he had no money and no prospects, and +carried the burden of gigantic unfinished, un-begun projects; his +worldly situation was even more desperate than it had been in 1839. +The voyage from Pillau was a voyage into the unknown, undertaken in +the hope of securing something tangible--a performance of _Rienzi_ and +fame and money; the voyage on which he had set out was into an even +stranger unknown, a voyage into the world of ideas, without any +prospects whatever in the worldly sense. He was groping his way +confusedly towards something greater than he had hitherto +accomplished; but he knew neither what subject to select nor how to +treat it. Nature had laid this burden upon him: he took it up only +because he must; and, luckily for us, the giver of the burden had +granted him the arrogance, the courage, the imperviousness to the +estimation in which he might be held by others--if the reader likes it +better, the sheer cheek--to find the means of living while he carried +the burden to the appointed place and so achieved his end. When John +the Baptist went into the wilderness he found camel's hair to clothe +himself and wild honey to feed himself. Even these primitive luxuries +are not to be had for looking in modern Europe, and Wagner asked his +friends to supply a substitute for them. + +We find him suggesting to Liszt that a number of German princes might +combine to support him, and in return accept his works as he turned +them out; he suggested also that Liszt might himself guarantee him an +annuity. Liszt was from the beginning, and continued until the +appearance of King Ludwig in 1864, to be the most generous of helpers, +but he had ceased to go concertizing through Europe, and had not too +much money to spare. The Wesendoncks, Ritters, Wagner's own family, +all contributed as they could; but verily the man seemed to be a +bottomless abyss into which all the wealth of the world might be +dropped and still it would gape for more. If all his admirers in 1850 +had contributed a penny a month he might have been satisfied--if half +the number of his admirers in 1913 could have contributed a penny a +year he would have had more than even he could have spent. But no such +plan seemed to be feasible; and on Liszt fell the brunt, whilst the +others did what they could or thought fit to do. Wagner may +reasonably be defended against the charge of greed or luxury. He was +in chronic ill-health, and his stupendous exertions made it unlikely +he would ever be better. We can believe even Praeger when he tells us +that Wagner's skin was so sensitive that he could tolerate only the +finest silk next to it; for we know that from babyhood he was tortured +by eczema. Had he not coddled himself he would not have had the +strength and nerve to achieve anything at all. He never knew one day +where next day's food was to come from; he was a homeless exile. +Happiness he never knew: such men as Wagner are not created to be +happy. Publishers and opera-directors alike treated him scurvily. To +show his state of mind I quote a portion of another letter to Uhlig, +dated September, 1850, after the production of _Lohengrin_ at Weimar-- + + "Liszt spoke to me previously about an honorarium of thirty + louis d'or for _Lohengrin_--instead of which I had altogether + only 130 thalers. Further, he announced to me that I should + receive a commission to write _Siegfried_ for Weimar, and be + paid beforehand enough to keep me alive undisturbed until the + work was finished. Until now they preserve there the most + stubborn silence. Whether I should give _Siegfried_ to Weimar, + intending it to be produced there, is after all a question + which, as matters now stand, I would probably only answer with + an unqualified No! I need not begin to assure you that I really + abandoned _Lohengrin_ when I permitted its production at + Weimar. I certainly received a letter yesterday from Zigesar, + which informed me that the second performance--given, through + somewhat energetic remonstrance on my part, only after most + careful rehearsals, and without cuts--was a wonder of success + and of effect on the public, and that it was perfectly clear + that it was and would remain a "draw". Yet I need not give you + my further reasons when I declare that I should wish to send + _Siegfried_ into the world in different fashion from that which + would be possible to the good people there. With regard to this, + I am busy with wishes and plans which, at first look, seem + chimerical, yet these alone give me the heart to finish + _Siegfried_. To realize the best, the most decisive, the most + important work which, under the present circumstances, I can + produce--in short, the accomplishment of the conscious mission + of my life--needs a matter of perhaps 10,000 thalers. If I could + ever command such a sum I would arrange thus:--here, where I + happen to be, and where many a thing is far from bad--I would + erect, after my own plans, in a beautiful field, near the town, + a rough theatre of planks and beams, and merely furnish it with + the decorations and machinery necessary for the production of + _Siegfried_. Then I would select the best singers to be found + anywhere, and invite them for six weeks to Zurich. I would try + to form a chorus here, consisting, for the most part, of + amateurs; there are splendid voices here, and strong, healthy + people. I should invite in the same way my orchestra. At the new + year announcements and invitations to all the friends of the + musical drama would appear in all the German newspapers, with a + call to visit the proposed dramatic musical festival. Any one + giving notice, and travelling for this purpose to Zurich, would + receive a certain entrée--naturally, like all the entrées, + gratis. Besides, I should invite to a performance the young + people here, the university, the choral unions. When everything + was in order I should arrange, under these circumstances, for + three performances of _Siegfried_ in one week. After the third + the theatre would be pulled down, and my score burnt. To those + persons who had been pleased with the thing I should then say, + 'Now do likewise.' But if they wanted to hear something new from + me, I should say, 'You get the money.' Well, do I seem quite mad + to you? It may be so, but I assure you to attain this end is the + hope of my life, the prospect which alone can tempt me to take + in hand a work of art. So--get me 10,000 thalers--that's all!" + +His friends, I say, did their best; but Liszt, though his generosity +had no bounds, still clung to the odd idea that Wagner should do +something for himself; also he could not get it out of his head that +the something could only be done in Paris. So, in another of the Uhlig +letters, dated more than six months anterior to the above, we find him +writing, half wearily, half defiantly-- + + "I have never felt the consciousness of freedom so beneficent + as now, nor have I ever been so convinced that only a loving + communion with others procures freedom. If, through the + assistance of X., I should be enabled to look firmly at the + immediate future without any necessity to earn a living, those + years would be the most decisive of my life, and especially of + my artistic career; for now I could look at Paris with calmness + and dignity; whereas, before, the fear of being compelled by + outward necessity to make concessions, made every step which I + took for Paris a false one. Now it would stand otherwise. + Formerly it was thus: 'Disown thyself, become another, become + Parisian in order to win for yourself Paris.' Now I would say: + 'Remain just as thou art, show to the Parisians what thou art + willing and able to produce from within, give them an idea of + it, and in order that they may comprehend thee, speak to them so + that they may understand thee; for thy aim is just this--to be + understood by them as that which thou art,' I hope you agree + with this. + + "So on January 16, 1850, I go to Paris; a couple of overtures + will at once be put into practice; and I shall take my completed + opera scheme: it is _Wiland der Schmied_. First of all I attack + the five-act opera form, then the statute according to which in + every great opera there must be a special ballet. If I can only + inspire Gustave Vaez, and impart to him the understanding of my + intention, and the will to carry it through with me, well and + good, if not, I'll seek till I find the right poet. For every + difficulty standing in the way of the understanding I, and the + subject connected with me, are attacked by the Press; if it is + a question of clearing away without mercy the whole rubbish and + cleansing with fresh water--in that matter I am in my right + element, for my aim is to create revolution whithersoever I + come. If I succumb--well the defeat is more honourable than a + triumph in the opposite direction; even without personal victory + I am, in any case, useful to the cause. In this matter victory + will only be really assured by endurance; who holds out wins + absolutely; and holding out with me means--for I am in no way in + doubt about my force of will--to have enough money to strike + hard and without intermission and not to worry about my own + means of living. If I have enough money, I must at once see + about getting my pamphlet on art translated and circulated. + Well, that will be seen when I am on the spot, and I shall + decide according to the means at my disposal. If my money comes + to an end too soon, I confidently hope for help from another + quarter--_i.e._ from the social republic, which sooner or later + must inevitably be established in France. If it comes + about--well, here I am ready for it, and, in the matter of art, + I have solidly prepared the way for it. It will not happen + exactly as my good-natured friends wish, according to their + predilection for the evil present time, but quite otherwise, + and, with good fortune, in a far better way--for, as they wish, + I only serve myself--but as I wish to serve all." + +The history of this third Paris episode is distressing enough; but we +to-day, knowing what Paris was and what Wagner was, need not trouble +much about it. I have passed over it quickly; but yet another excerpt +from an Uhlig letter may be given to show how matters did _not_ +progress (dated Paris, March 13, 1850)-- + + "So, my Parisian art-wallowings are given up since I recognized + their profane character. Heavens, how Fischer will rejoice when + he hears I have become a man of order! Everything strengthened + me in my ardent desire for renunciation. After endless waiting, + I at last receive the orchestral parts of my _Tannhäuser_ + overture, and pay with pleasure fifteen francs carriage for + them. I then find that the parts have arrived much too soon, for + the Union Musicale has time for everything except for the + rehearsal of my overtures. I am, however, told that there may be + rehearsals at the end of this month, and actually under a + conductor who, in all the performances given under his + direction, carries out the happy idea of indicating _tempi, + nuances_, style in a manner quite different from that intended + by the composer; and with passionate conscientiousness, insists + on studying and conducting himself without ever allowing the + composer to expound his confused views about his own work. + Rocked in blissful dreams, I receive at last a letter of + Heine's, with an enclosure from Wigand--namely, a money-order + for ten louis d'or, which, from your letter, I had unfortunately + expected would come to twenty louis d'or. + + "In short, early to-morrow morning (at eight o'clock) I start + off with the intention of being back here at the end of the + month, for the possible rehearsals of my overture. + + "I am sorry for Heine and Fischer. Poor fellows! they picture me + floating along on a sea of Parisian hopes; they will be greatly + and painfully undeceived. Salute and console them. When my + cursed ill-humour of to-day has passed away, I will write to + Heine. To his fidelity must I present an earnest face. A + thousand greetings to my dear R----s, from whom I should so + much have liked to receive a line. The merchant M----, of + Dresden, will bring you something from me when he returns from + his great Parisian business trip; a good daguerreotype copy from + an excellent portrait which my friend Rietz has taken of me + here. + + "What more shall I write? I am all confusion about my hasty + departure. I have now only to write the verses to my _Wiland_; + otherwise the whole poem is finished--German, German! How my pen + flew along! This _Wiland_ will carry you all away on its wings; + even your friendly Parisian hopes. If K---- does not write soon, + I shall presume that he is raving too madly about Krebs. Krebs + is clever--so is Michalesi--what more do you want? But K---- + should restrain himself, and not give himself away so much as he + does, as with me! + + "Farewell! Another time you will receive a more sensible letter, + with a list of misprints in my last book. If people do not + comprehend me even after this work, if I am charged with + improprieties, I clearly see the reason; one cannot understand + my writings for the misprints. To my joy some one is playing + the piano overhead; but no melody, only accompaniment, which has + a charm for me, in that I can practice myself in the art of + finding melodies"-- + +And, finally, these few bitter lines, sent after his return to +Zurich-- + + "It is impossible for me to conduct my overture myself in Paris, + for this reason, that it will not be performed there at all, as + there was not proper time for rehearsal--perhaps "next year". I + received this answer on the eve of my departure from Paris, and + truly in a very pleasant quarter. I think I never laughed so + loud and so from the bottom of my heart as on that evening and + in that place." + +It will be seen that Wagner never ceased to work during all this +dreary time. He drafted his _Wieland the Smith_, made tentative shots +at what at length grew into the _Nibelung's Ring_, and poured forth an +enormous quantity of very prosy prose. Deferring a consideration of +this last, let me tell briefly what his everyday life was. Through a +little money from pamphlets, performing fees, etc., but mainly through +the generosity of friends, he managed to live; though, as I have said, +he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in +from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, +and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he +rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other +musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were +placed under his direction; and Hans von Bülow came to serve his +apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. +Wagner mentions a performance of the _Flying Dutchman_, which afforded +him pleasure; for though, as he himself says somewhere, the band +consisted of players more accustomed to play at dances than in grand +opera, and not a singer of celebrity took part, yet all were +painstaking, enthusiastic and sympathetic, and a fine representation +was the result. This was the work he did outside his own house; his +inside occupations I have mentioned. He lived with almost clockwork +punctuality. Every afternoon he walked, accompanied by his dog, +amongst the mountains, and to these walks may be attributed, I think, +the atmosphere and colour of the _Ring_ and its backgrounds. Wagner +was as great a master as has lived of pictorial music, and the hills +and ravines, the storms amongst the pines, were things he must have +craved to translate into terms of his own art. After all, he found +time also for a good deal of social intercourse, though the enormous +quantity of work he turned out makes this difficult to believe. But +Liszt visited him; Praeger undoubtedly did; Bülow, as said, was with +him for some time; the Wesendoncks, his greatest pecuniary benefactors +after a while, were there; Wille and his wife were there; Alexander +Ritter, son of Frau Ritter, who made Wagner a regular allowance from +1851 to 1856, became his firm friend, and afterwards married one of +his nieces; there were Baumgärtner and Sulzer--in fact, a bare list of +names would fill a few pages. We must not take Wagner's plaints in his +letters too seriously; he was an overworked, nervous man of moods; +like Mr. Micawber, he seems to have come home of an evening weeping +and declaring himself a ruined man, and in a few hours gone to bed +calculating the cost of throwing out bow windows to his house. +Throughout his life his resilience of spirit was one of his most +amazing characteristics: I have no doubt that in the depth of despair +he would write to Liszt swearing that he only wanted solitude; and in +an hour's time he would think it might be pleasant to spend an hour +with the Wesendoncks--and go. In the same way he longed earnestly for +death while spending all his friends' money on baths and cures and +doctors, and seeing to it that Minna provided the best of everything +for his table. The pile of work remains to show his life was one of +incredible industry. Between the end of 1848 and the end of 1854 he +wrote at least a dozen long pamphlets, and as many more that are not +so long; he wrote the words of the _Ring_ and composed and scored the +_Rhinegold_, and began the music of the _Valkyrie_. Further, he +revised the overture to Gluck's _Iphigenia in Aulis_, and +reconstructed his own _Faust_ overture. How on earth he managed his +interminable correspondence is more than I can guess. When we bear in +mind the calls upon his time by his superintendence of opera and +concerts, we cannot wonder that a man who did so much, and was born a +weakling, was rarely quite well, and incessantly complains of his +nerves. Yet these nerves, he wrote, gave him wonderful hours of +insight. + +There remains one thing to mention of these first Zurich years: his +operas were gradually spreading through Germany, and, especially, +Liszt had produced _Lohengrin_ at Weimar in 1850. It quickly became so +popular that before long Wagner could complain, or boast, that he was +the only German who had not heard it. His movements during these years +can easily be traced. Zurich remained his headquarters, but he went +hither and thither, mainly in search of health. But the chief cause of +his ill-health he carried with him--his irrepressible activity of +mind. Could some intelligent doctor have given him a dose to stop him +thinking for not less than one month, he would, I verily believe, have +enjoyed ten years of unbroken freedom from sickness. These flittings +are of no great interest in themselves; he never got far until his +famous expedition to London in the summer of 1855. But now it is time +to take a glance at the writings of the period. + + +II + +In the introduction I announced my intention of dealing with Wagner's +prose-writings only in so far as they reveal anything of value +concerning the artist. His theories have been explained and elucidated +to death; hundreds of books have been written about them; never was a +man so much explained; never did a man suffer more from the +explanations. The day when Wagner began, not to theorise, but to +publish his theorisings, was an unlucky one for him. He began with the +intention, and certainly in the hope, of making himself clear to +himself; as I have already remarked, he wanted to find what it was he +wanted to be at and how to get there; and if, having achieved his end, +he had put all his pages of reasoning in the fire, he would have done +himself no ill-service. But he needed money, and in the 'forties and +'fifties there were, strangely enough, numbers of people who would pay +money for such stuff. Anything dull, "philosophic" in tone, anything +full of long words, longer sentences, and meanings too profound to be +understood by mortal--anything of this sort was sure of a paying +audience, if small, in "philosophic" Germany, no matter how fallacious +were the premises, how wrong the history, how perverse the inferences. +Hundreds of people must have risen from reading Wagner's essays +feeling themselves very deeply intellectual. In his first Paris days +Wagner had at once flown to his prose-scribbling pen as an instrument +to procure him bread; now, in Zurich, while writing and arguing mainly +to free his own soul, he had an eye on the publisher and the public, +for he needed bread as much as ever he had needed it; and he needed +other things besides: all the luxuries he had grown accustomed to and +could have done without ten years earlier. He persuaded himself of the +validity of another reason why he should unload his prose-wares on the +world. He had written much at times in various papers with a +wholehearted wish to purify and advance art. Now he determined to be +himself John the Baptist walking, in defiance of the laws of nature, +miles in front of himself in the wilderness, crying out that he who +was to redeem German music and the German folk was coming. He actually +persuaded himself, I say, that by reading these lucubrations German +audiences would prepare themselves to understand his works--as yet in +process of incubation--at a first hearing! Fools we are, and slight; +but surely no man was ever a bigger fool than our poor Richard when he +thought that a great work of art could possibly or should be +understood at the first glance, and that the feat would be easy if +only one had read some theories of art beforehand. The contrary holds +true: if you have seen and felt Wagner's operas, you may understand +what he is talking about in his articles and pamphlets; but to read +these first is merely to bewilder yourself utterly when you go to see +the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very +brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be +remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been +well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there is, to my mind, only one +worth reading, Mr. Ernest Newman's valuable _Study of Wagner_. + +The French stories and articles are as good as anything Wagner wrote. +He had not yet fallen into the villainous German philosophic style, or +was restrained by the consciousness that he must write in a lingo that +could be translated into French. These pieces were written for bread +and bread alone in the terrible years of starvation, 1840-41. _An +End_ [of a German Musician] _in Paris_ is full of autobiography, and +intensely interesting on that account; it is interesting, too, because +of its display of the naïve arrogance which leads Germans to believe +the whole world was made for Germans. This German musician, for +instance, arrives in Paris, where scores of French musicians--Berlioz +amongst them--are roughing it, if not actually starving in the +streets; yet he expects the French to find him employment in +preference to their own countrymen, their own flesh and blood. One can +overlook that, however; and the story is pathetic and beautifully +written. _A Pilgrimage to Beethoven_ is, in its way, a masterpiece. It +also is full of self-revelation; some of it conscious, some +unconscious. _A Happy Evening_ is another charming thing; the skit on +how Rossini's _Stabat Mater_ came to be composed is amusing, and is +cruel with a cruelty that was justified. The other articles are of no +particular value, save, perhaps, that on the overture; they are of an +ephemeral character and were evidently concocted when the writer was +fully aware he was writing for French readers, and if he hurt French +feelings or vanity, a French editor wouldn't print, wouldn't publish, +wouldn't pay. + +The next production of any importance is his autobiographical sketch, +and of this nothing need be said. So much of it as seemed to me +needful has been utilized in this book. The account of the bringing +home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial +interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can +imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work. +Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way +through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English +officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech +delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is +characteristic--exceptionally so even for Wagner of this period, +1844--in its assertion of the Germanity of Weber and Weber's music; +and his deep joy that at last the German musician's bones should +repose in German earth. This topic of Germanism haunted Wagner for +years, and I may have a little to say about it later. The account of +the 1846 rendering of the Choral Symphony is the most masterly +exposition of the right and the wrong way of playing orchestral music +to be found in any language. Wagner's method was, after all, very +simple: the conductor had to understand and feel the music aright, and +then pains, pains, never-ending pains must be expended on coaxing, +persuading, bullying or in some other way getting the band to +reproduce precisely what he felt. + +We now reach the mass of theatrical and philosophical writings on +opera, drama, and, indeed, art generally. I need do nothing more than +give the fundamental basis of them all, the one point which he argues +in a thousand ways through them all. Wagner would have it, then, that +just about the time he came into the world, or a little later, +all--nothing less than all--the arts had gone as far as they could +separately, each alone. Art in ancient days, before there were _arts_, +was a fusion of music, dancing, poetry, statuary and painting--the old +drama. That each form of art might develop its full possibilities, +they separated and each went its own way. Wagner was mainly concerned +with music and with drama (poetic drama). Music reached its apogee +with Beethoven. Regardless of the fact that after Beethoven had +introduced words in the Choral Symphony, he went on composing music of +unequalled depth and splendour without words, Wagner insisted that he +felt the impossibility of doing more without words. We hear, said +Wagner, all these sounds going on, this stream of melody, and it is +very delightful to the ear; but unfortunately the highly organized +brain of modern man steps in and insists on knowing what is the +matter. What is the meaning of it all? asks the inquisitive intellect. +Words are necessary to satisfy the intellect. On the other hand, +poetic drama, in its endeavour to express pure feeling, could go no +further than Goethe and Schiller without becoming mere gush--a sort of +music that was not music. Wherefore music must be added. But this +combination of music and poetry was insufficient; we must have the +thing in visible form before the eye--the acted music-drama. Then the +actors must understand statuesque poses and get into them; they must +understand painting and contrive to form themselves, together with the +scenic background and accessories, into pictures. So once again we +should have the perfect fusion of all the arts, and live happily ever +after. + +To me there is almost more lunacy in this than in Wagner's political +tenets. It is a pack of fallacies. Here is my answer-- + +(i) As to an Art which was a perfect fusion of all the arts, it was +never done and never at any time attempted. + +(ii) The finest music yet created has no words to it: the meaning is +perfectly clear without words. + +(iii) The highest poetic drama needs no music. Without verging on +gush, it affords expression to the deepest and most intense feeling. + +(iv) Fine poetry has been written in the dramatic form, though it will +not bear acting and was not intended to be acted. But we may +cheerfully concede that genuine drama ought to be acted. + +(v) The function of scenery is to suggest atmosphere and nothing more. +It cannot be a picture; it can only be an imitation of a picture. + +(vi) An actor who tried to look like a statue going through a variety +of poses would only make the audience laugh; or we should think he had +been taken ill. + +At every point Wagner's reasoning goes to the ground. His basic facts +are no facts, and his reasoning is absurd. All the essays on music and +on drama and on the music-drama are as much an expression of himself +as his music-dramas. I have in earlier chapters gone so far as even to +labour the point that he could not get on in music without the aid of +drama; and as he could never look beyond himself nor imagine that +what he could not do--_i.e._ compose pure music--some one else--_e.g._ +Schumann or Brahms--could do, he went out with absolute confidence to +persuade the world that he was right and all others were wrong. To +those who may be interested in the study of Wagner, the mighty +creative artist, as a cerebral curiosity, I commend Mr. Newman's book +aforementioned. Mr. Newman points out that Wagner was so magnificently +self-centred that he attributed all opposition to "misunderstanding." +To him it was incomprehensible that any one should say, "Yes, I +perfectly understand your argument; but I beg leave not to agree with +you." Any one who said that at once aroused his suspicions; such an +one, thought Wagner, cannot possibly be sincere. Hence the hot +denunciations of all and sundry who differed from him; hence the +nightmare phantom of an organized body of "persecutors." Had he not +been blinded by his wrath, and looked a little closer, he might have +seen that the persecutors, far from being an organized body or +confederacy, were fighting angrily, bitterly, amongst themselves. Many +of them had this in common: they could not understand and did not like +Wagner's music. That is different from the "wilful misunderstanding" +Wagner moaned about. These musicians could not help themselves; as +Sancho Panza remarks, "Man is as God made him, and generally a good +deal worse." + +The essay which provoked the widest and fiercest hostility, especially +amongst the Jews, was the _Judaism in Music_. Wagner started from two +premises, (i) That the Jews, being alien in thought and feeling, could +not express themselves in _our (i.e._ German) art; and (2) that had +they thought and felt like Germans, they would have succeeded no +better; for music--that is, song--is idealized speech, and the +gurglings and bubblings which do duty for speech with the Jews cannot +be idealized into anything beautiful. The answer is that very great +music has been written by Jews; that music was an English, a Flemish +and an Italian art before the Germans knew anything about it; that if +music must be idealized German speech, with its guttural chokings, the +less we have of it the better. The Jews paid little attention to +Wagner's arguments, but objected to his "personalities." Now, the +reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are +those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own +expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or +"chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own +whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal +attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and some of the worst of these +can be traced to Jew scribblers. Yet on the publication of _Judaism in +Music_ in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, a wail went up from these +journalistic descendants of Elijah; and several prominent Jew +musicians signed and presented to the authorities of the Leipzig +conservatoire of music a petition praying that Brendel (the editor who +published the essay) might be dismissed from his post in the +conservatoire. These underhand tactics put the Jews out of court. +Nevertheless, Wagner's essay was a bad mistake. It is bad science, bad +history, bad argument; it did no person, no cause, any good, and it +worked a very great deal of harm. + +Wagner was at his best when writing about music or about musicians he +had known. A paper on Spontini, belonging to this period (Spontini +died in 1851), has a pleasant, generous note; and the account of the +pompous old gentleman's visit to Dresden a few years previous is +amusingly lifelike. The _Communication to my Friends_, a trifle +egotistical, is still full of interest. The article on musical +criticism is not so good as it might have been. Wagner had the utmost +contempt for the ordinary press criticism of the day: with that sort +of thing, he wrote Uhlig, one could not tempt the cat from behind the +stove. He knew what criticism should not be, but when he came to what +it should be his view was warped by the obsession that pure music had +reached its boundaries, and the future of music was involved with the +future of the music-drama. When his prejudices were not aroused, he +himself was the greatest critic who has lived: his programmes of the +Choral and Eroica Symphonies are masterpieces in their kind; and his +analysis of the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture can never be surpassed. +Stage-managers have found his directions for the performing of +_Tannhäuser_, _Lohengrin_ and the _Dutchman_ invaluable; they are also +sometimes read by conductors, and should be read by singers. They show +how in composing his operas Wagner meant every note he put to paper: +the most minute fibres of the musical growth are alive, a living part +of the organism. + + +III + +"I shall probably never come back to Germany." So wrote Wagner from +Paris on March 2, 1855, to his friend Wilhelm Fischer, stage-manager +and chorus-master at the Dresden opera. Wagner was then on his way to +London to direct a series of Philharmonic concerts. "It was a great +piece of folly for me to come to London...." So wrote Wagner from +London to Fischer a little--perhaps a month--later. It was, says Mr. +J.S. Shedlock in his admirable translation of the _Letters to Dresden +Friends_, "an unfortunate visit." But was it? and, if so, in what +sense? "The public of the Philharmonic concerts is very favourably +disposed towards me." "The orchestra has taken a great liking to me, +and the public approves of me." And as a matter of fact Wagner had no +reason to be dissatisfied with the visit, nor has Mr. Shedlock for +calling it "unfortunate." The whole situation is summed up in another +communication to Fischer, dated London, June 15, 1855-- + + "... The false reports about my quarrel with the directors of + the Philharmonic Society here and my consequent departure from + London are based upon the following incident-- + + "When I went into the cloak-room after the fourth concert, I + there met several friends, whom I made acquainted with my + extreme annoyance and ill-humour that I should ever have + consented to conduct concerts of such a kind, as it was not at + all in my line. These endless programmes, with their mass of + instrumental and vocal pieces, wearied me and tormented my + aesthetic sense; I was forced to see that the power of + established custom rendered it impossible to bring about any + reduction or change whatever; I therefore nourished a feeling of + disquietude, which had more to do with the fact that I had again + embarked on a thing of the sort--much less with the conditions + here themselves, which I really knew beforehand--but least of + all with my public, which always received me with friendliness + and approbation, often indeed with great warmth. + + "On the other hand, the abuse of the London critics was a matter + of perfect indifference to me, for their hostility only proved + to all the world that I had not bribed them, while it gave me, + on the contrary, much satisfaction to watch how they always left + the door open, so that had I made the least approach they would + have turned to different pitch; but naturally I thought of + nothing of the kind.... + + "On that evening I was really in a furious rage, that after the + A minor Symphony I should have had to conduct a miserable vocal + piece and a trivial overture of Onslow's; and, as is my way, in + deepest dudgeon I told my friends aloud that I had that day + conducted for the last time; that on the morrow I should send in + my resignation, and journey home. By chance a concert-singer, + R---- (a German-Jew youth) was present; he caught up my words + and conveyed them all hot to a newspaper reporter. Ever since + then rumours have been flying about in the German papers, which + have misled even you. I need scarcely tell you that the + representations of my friends, who escorted me home, succeeded + in making me withdraw the hasty resolution conceived at a moment + of despondency. + + "Since then we have had the _Tannhäuser_ overture at the fifth + concert; it was very well played, received by the public in a + quite friendly manner, but not yet properly understood. + + "All the more pleased was I, therefore, when the Queen, who had + promised (which is a rare event, and does not happen every year) + to attend the seventh concert, ordered a repetition of the + overture. Now, if in itself it was extremely gratifying that the + Queen should pay no regard to my highly compromised political + position (which had been dragged to light with great malignity + by the _Times_), and without hesitation assist at a public + performance under my direction, then her further behaviour + towards me afforded me at last an affecting compensation for all + the contrarieties and vulgar animosities which I had here + endured. + + "She and Prince Albert, who both sat immediately facing the + orchestra, applauded after the _Tannhäuser_ overture--with which + the first part concluded--with graciousness, almost amounting to + a challenge, so that the public broke out into lively and + prolonged applause. During the interval the Queen summoned me to + the _salon_, and received me before her court with the cordial + words, 'I am delighted to make your acquaintance; your + composition has enraptured me!' + + "In a long conversation, in which Prince Albert also took part, + she further inquired about my other works, and asked if it would + not be possible to have my operas translated into Italian, so + that she might be able to hear them, too, in London? I was + naturally obliged to give a negative answer, and, moreover, to + explain that my visit was only a flying one, as conducting for a + concert society--the only thing open to me here--was not at all + my affair. At the end of the concert the Queen and the Prince + applauded me again most courteously. + + "I relate this to you because it will afford you pleasure; and I + willingly allow you to make further use of this information, as + I see how much mistake and malice touching myself and my stay in + London has to be set right or defeated. + + "The last concert is on the 25th, and I leave on the 26th, so as + to resume in my quiet retreat my sadly interrupted work." + +Wagner was well paid for his work; he was well received in society; +the band liked him and the audiences liked him--the one cause of all +his grumbling was the character of the bulk of the music he had to +conduct. One might expect even a Wagner to prefer conducting a few +pieces of tedious stuff, even to put up with poor antediluvian Onslow, +rather than to return to his daily task of writing begging letters to +his friends from Zurich. Still, these are matters of taste, and each +to his own. + +To those who only know the Philharmonic to-day, in its more or less +repentant and reformed state, it may not seem odd that Wagner should +have conducted its concerts. But to those who remember it from, say, +twenty-five years ago to quite recent times, a certain incongruity is +apparent. Wagner, the sincere, fiery artist, the man devoted to, +swallowed up by, his art; the man who journeyed, with his wife and a +dog, all the way from Russia to Paris with his bare travelling +expenses in his pocket; who had been through a bloody revolution, and +was now a political refugee; who had written part of the _Ring_ and +had _Tristan_ "already planned in his head"; a conductor whose ideal +was nothing lower than perfection--this gentleman came from Zurich to +conduct a society whose membership was compact of trim and prim +mediocrity, and whose directors were mostly duffers. Can we wonder +that both sides were disappointed? These amiable directors never quite +recovered from the honour of having Mendelssohn to conduct for them; +and they undoubtedly looked upon Wagner as scarcely a next-best. The +days of oratorio had by no means finished yet; oratorio was the thing; +an instrumental concert was very well for a change once in a while, +provided there were plenty of Italian opera airs to sugar the nasty +pill; Haydn was the last word in symphony, the homage paid to +Beethoven being the merest lip-worship. The Philharmonic was certainly +no place for Wagner; yet, it must be insisted, there was no real +reason for grumbling on either side. Wagner got his money; the society +had one of the best seasons on its record. + +It is a pity that he who might have been the most valuable witness in +the matter should prove at every point to be the least trustworthy. +Ferdinand Praeger had known Wagner in his university days. They seem +to have been barely acquainted; but the moment Praeger found Wagner +was coming he scented advertisement for himself, as is usual with his +kind--the kind being the foreign professor settled in London. He will +have it that he arranged the whole business; but the terrible truth is +that he seems to have done no more than make his compatriot +comfortable in our dreary city. Certainly he did that, and Wagner +repaid it by inviting him to stay in Zurich, and the visit came off +duly. Sainton, who was by way of being a noted violinist, was head and +front of the offending from the directors' point of view--perhaps in +Wagner's view likewise. The directors were, to speak as the vulgar, in +a mortal stew. There was a small audience for orchestral functions in +those days, and Dr. Wylde, a worthy academic gentleman of no musical +distinction whatever, had started a rival series of concerts, and had +in this year, 1855, engaged no less a personage than Berlioz to +conduct. A rival was looked for; and since the directors knew little +or nothing of continental doings, as soon as Sainton told them one +Richard Wagner was their man, they agreed that negotiations should be +opened. Wagner came; and the visit ought to be interesting to English +musicians, for at Portland Terrace he scored part of the _Valkyrie_. +Moreover, he met Berlioz at dinner; but never those twain could meet +in other than a formal way. Neither liked the other; neither liked the +other's music; their rivalry in London mattered not two sous to the +one or one pfennig to the other, but they were both disappointed men +seeking appreciation and approbation on the continent. Wagner had +tried in Paris and Berlioz had tried in Germany. Wagner worked +stubbornly the whole time, and was mightily glad to get back to Zurich +in July. The episode is of small importance in Wagner's life; but the +attitude of the Press naturally filled him with disgust. He said if he +had paid the critics he would have received "favourable notices," and +when I reflect on the smallness of the critics' official salaries and +the splendour in which some of them lived I cannot but think he was +right: the money necessary to keep up big establishments had to be +found somewhere--where? + +During the next few years Wagner went many journeys, again mainly in +search of "cures," but never got far. He worked unceasingly at the +_Ring_, with the wildest plans in his head regarding performances. How +wild some of these must have seemed at the time may be judged from the +following paragraphs taken from a letter to Uhlig (Dec. 12, 1851). +This is, of course, earlier than the period we are now dealing with; +but he never departed from the idea, and it eventually took shape at +Bayreuth, a quarter of a century later. Here is the letter-- + + "For the moment, I can only tell you a little about the + intended completion of the great dramatic poem which I have now + in hand. Just reflect that before I wrote the poem, _Siegfried's + Death_, I sketched out the whole myth in all its gigantic + sequence, and that poem was the attempt--which, with regard to + our theatre, appeared possible to me--to give one chief + catastrophe of the myth, together with an indication of that + sequence. + + "Now, when I set to work to write out the music in full, still + keeping our modern theatre firmly in mind, I felt how incomplete + the proposed undertaking would be; the vast train of events, + which first gives to the characters their immense and striking + significance, would be presented to the mind merely by means of + epic narrative. + + "So to make _Siegfried's Death_ possible, I wrote _Young + Siegfried_; but the more the whole took shape, the more did I + perceive, while developing the scenes and music of _Young + Siegfried_, that I had only increased the necessity for a + clearer presentation of the whole story to the senses. I now see + that, in order to become intelligible on the stage, I must work + out the whole myth in plastic style. It was not this + consideration alone which impelled me to my new plan, but + especially the overpowering impressiveness of the subject-matter + which I thus acquire for presentation, and which supplies me + with a wealth of material for artistic fashioning which it would + be a sin to leave unused. Think of the contents of the narrative + of Brünnhilde, in the last scene of _Young Siegfried_; the fate + of Siegmund and Sieglind; the struggle of Wotan with his desire + and with custom (Fricka); the noble defiance of the Walküre; the + tragic anger of Wotan in punishing this defiance. + + "Think of this from my point of view, with the extraordinary + wealth of situations brought together in one coherent drama, and + you have a tragedy of most moving effect; one which clearly + presents to the senses all that my public needs to have taken + in, in order easily to understand, in their widest meaning, + _Young Siegfried_ and the _Death_. These three dramas will be + preceded by a grand introductory play, which will be produced by + itself on a special opening festival day. It begins with + Alberich, who pursues the three water-witches of the Rhine with + his lust of love, is rejected with merry fooling by one after + the other, and, mad with rage, at last steals the Rhine gold + from them. + + "This gold in itself is only a shining ornament in the depth of + the waves (_Siegfried's Death_, Act III, Sc. i), but it + possesses another power, which only he who renounces love can + succeed in drawing from it. (Here you have the plasmic motive up + to _Siegfried's Death_. Think of all its pregnant consequences.) + The capture of Alberich; the dividing of the gold between the + two giant brothers; the speedy fulfilment of Alberich's curse on + these two, the one of whom immediately slays the other--all this + is the theme of this introductory play. + + "But I have already chattered too much, and even that is too + little to give you a clear idea of the vast wealth of the + subject-matter.... + + "But one other thing determined me to develop this plan; viz. + the impossibility which I felt of producing _Young Siegfried_ in + anything like a suitable manner either at Weimar or anywhere + else. I cannot and will not endure any more the martyrdom of + things done by halves. With this my new conception I withdraw + entirely from all connection with our theatre and public of + to-day; I break decisively and for ever with the formal present. + + "Do you now ask me what I propose to do with my scheme?--First + of all to carry it out, so far as my poetical and musical powers + will allow. This will occupy me at least three full years. And + so I place my future quite in R----'s hands; God grant that + they may remain unfalteringly true to me! + + "I can only think of a performance under quite other conditions. + I shall erect a theatre on the banks of the Rhine, and issue + invitations to a great dramatic festival. After a year's + preparation, I shall produce my complete work in a series of + four days. + + "However extravagant this plan may be, it is, nevertheless, the + only one to which I can devote my life and labours. If I live to + see it accomplished, I have lived gloriously; if not, I die for + something grand. Only this can still give me any pleasure." + +His creditors from Dresden were everlastingly at his heels; even in +Dresden, with a substantial and regular salary, he could not keep out +of debt--though it must be remembered that older debts pursued him +from the Riga days, and even earlier. By April of 1856 the _Valkyrie_ +was scored and _Siegfried_ begun; next year he finished the first act +of the latter. His life, apparently, went on pretty much as before; +but the financial situation was rapidly becoming intolerable--even to +him. The famous invitation to write an opera for Rio de Janeiro +arrived, and he promptly set to work on the subject he had mentioned +in a letter to Liszt a few years before, _Tristan and Isolda_. His +health grew worse than ever, and somehow he found the means to spend +the winter in Venice. Then he settled for a while in Lucerne, and +completed _Tristan_. + +Afterwards he removed to Paris, where in 1860 he gave some concerts; +in the same year the score of _Tristan_ was issued; next year came the +_Tannhäuser_ fiasco at the opera, and later he heard _Lohengrin_, in +Vienna, for the first time; next he stayed for a while at Biebrich, +and finally settled in Vienna. + +This is all the biography of ten of the fullest years of his life that +we need trouble about at present. His everyday existence is only +diversified and variegated by little anecdotes not worth repetition. +He was everywhere, of course, the musical lion. And, speaking of +animals, he always had a few: it had been a real grief to him some +years before when his parrot died when it had just mastered a passage +of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. + +When he finished _Tristan_ in August of 1859, his prospects were, so +to speak, as bright as before. It may here be mentioned, by way of +showing how bright that was, that when, four years later, an attempt +was made to give _Tristan_ at Vienna, the work was abandoned after at +least fifty rehearsals. + +His letters, first to his faithful servitor Uhlig, who died in 1853 at +the age of thirty-one, and then to Fischer, are full of requests to +get scores copied, to send them here, there and everywhere, and to +collect honorariums. But, as I have said, for years he had hungry +creditors snapping at his heels, and they devoured most of the fruits +of his early genius. It is a fact to be faced that Wagner never in all +his life earned his livelihood. He earned more than average men +require to live comfortably upon; but he was unceasingly extravagant, +and denied himself nothing. He had been hungry in his early Paris +days; for the remainder of his life he bent himself to the task of +making up for that spell of famine. The precariousness of his income, +the insecurity of his position, fostered the habit of self-indulgence; +by nature the reverse of miserly, if he had money to-day he spent it, +reflecting that he might have none to-morrow. His debts, moreover, +were not entirely for what we may call personal extravagances. So +confident and sanguine was he that he had the full scores of his +operas published at his own expense; and the charges had to be met out +of what the operas brought him. And so when he had finished _Tristan_ +in 1859 the outlook was of the blackest. + +It was not less than a disaster that, during this period, 1849-59, +Wagner got to know the writings of Schopenhauer. In my first chapter I +pointed out how from his youth Wagner was fond of dabbling in +pseudo-philosophy, and this had strengthened rather than weakened its +hold on him as he grew older. For some time Feuerbach was his mentor. +It is idle to ask what he saw in Feuerbach. It has long been a +commonplace that rightly to understand an author you must meet him +half-way. Wagner did more than that: he went the whole way, and often +a long way beyond. What he read was not Feuerbach, but the thousand +ideas that the merest chance sentences of Feuerbach aroused in his +seething brain. Feuerbach, however, was sent about his business as +soon as Schopenhauer entered. Wagner immediately wrote +enthusiastically to Liszt, telling how peace and light had come into +his soul; and one might wonder what particular doctrine of the grumpy +old pseudo-philosopher had this remarkable effect. (This is to assume +it to have had the effect. As a bare matter of fact it hadn't. +Wagner's soul knew no peace until he died.) It was the great gospel of +Renunciation. After reading this, in his own way, Wagner realized, if +you please, that both _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ preached the same +doctrine; and one can only retort that, if they preach any doctrine at +all--which they don't, thank heaven!--it is not that. But +Schopenhauerism might easily have ruined _Tristan_--did not ruin it +only because Wagner himself, when writing it, was consumed with a +fervour of passion that is the negation of Schopenhauerism. It is +responsible, however, for many of the _longueurs_ of the _Ring_, as, +for instance, in Act II of the _Valkyrie_, when Wotan stops the action +to give Brünnhilde an elementary lesson in Schopenhauer-cum-Wagner +metaphysics. The funny thing is that Wagner never renounced anything: +to the end he was greedy, avid of life. He might have benefited by a +careful study of Schopenhauer's pungent phrases; but instead of thus +developing his own natural gift in that direction, his sentences +afterwards grew longer and more complicated than ever. His Beethoven +is a splendid essay; how much finer it might have been had he not +wasted so many pages on what he took to be Schopenhauer's science! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA' + + +I + +For those who have ears, eyes and understanding _Tristan and Isolda_ +is Wagner's most perfect work, is the finest opera in the world. +Unluckily there are in the world far too many persons who are not +content to have a work of supreme art, but must needs read into it +old, stale platitudes: when they have proved it to be an exposition of +these platitudes they conceive that they have deserved the gratitude +of the people for interpreting the artist and of the artist for having +interpreted him, having made his meaning clear. As I have written +elsewhere of _Tristan_, "Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft +and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all clear as the +day"; but the commentators have rushed in with their comments between +the stage and the audience only to obscure everything and bamboozle +people who are at least as capable as themselves of understanding the +drama. The platitudes read into _Tristan_ are of two sorts, truisms +and lying commonplaces. To take one of the latter kind, some one many +long years ago got off the pretty phrase, "love and death are one"; +and poetasters and fiftieth-rate dramatists have ever since continued +to assert as a profound and original truth that love and death are +one. What on earth they understand by it, if they mean anything at +all, is much more than I can guess. But I know that love and death are +not one, that love is life, and death is death. We have had it pointed +out a thousand times that the "moral" of _Tristan_ is that these two +opposites are one; and in the latest books and articles about Wagner +the same game is kept merrily going. I can extract no such moral. +Perhaps some unfortunate essays and letters of Wagner gave the +commentators their cue and lead; for Wagner, when he put away his +music-paper and sat down to his writing-paper, often showed himself a +willing victim of catch-phrases; also many sentences of the drama can +be construed as paraphrases of this particular catch-phrase--for +example, "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod, sehnend verlangter +Liebestod." Such utterances as these, however, have a specific and +different meaning altogether, as will presently be seen. I can by no +means believe even Wagner capable of writing a three-act music-drama +to prove the truth of a catch-phrase or that he would have dreamed of +using such a catch-phrase as the motive of his music-drama. The +commonplaces drawn from _Tristan_ and gravely set forth as the +"meanings" of the operas are as numberless as sands on the sea-shore +and rather less valuable. That young women should not make a practice +of marrying old men, that illicit passions and intrigues may bring on +disaster, that it is madness to make love to another man's wife in a +garden, observable by all, that it is greater madness still to keep on +when a maidservant is screaming that some one is coming--these rules +of conduct are very well in their way and might commend themselves to +the denizens of Clapham; but, again, I hardly think Wagner would have +constructed a great music-drama to enunciate them. Nor did he +construct his music-drama to expound a philosophy. For a long time the +air was thick with arguments _pro_ and _con_ with regard to the amount +of Schopenhauer he had made use of in his libretto. Now, it is true +that both Tristan and Isolda indulge at times in something +approximating to the Schopenhauer terminology; but of Schopenhauer's +or any other philosophy I cannot find a trace. For that we must turn +to _Parsifal_. In _Tristan_ there are no "meanings"--none save the +very plain meaning of the drama and the meaning of the music, which is +plainer still. + +It seems to me desirable in this way to clear off misunderstandings +and to indicate with precision my point of view. When Wagner wrote +_Tristan_ he wrote a tragic opera of passion and treachery and death, +and only as a tragic opera can I regard it. Every sentence in it is +accounted for by the course the drama takes; no further explanation is +called for; and I shall certainly not waste my readers' time by +picking out a few words here and there and trying to construe them +into a metaphysical exposition: there is quite enough to digest +without that. Even the longing for death which Tristan expresses as +the only cure for the woes of an impossible life arises from the +drama; Tristan no more preaches Schopenhauer than he preaches Buddhism +when he exclaims "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod." Wagner chose the +subject of _Tristan_ not to expound anything, but for the prosaic +reason that he wanted to raise money and the subject seemed the most +promising for the purpose. This is put beyond a doubt by a letter to +Liszt dated July 2, 1858. Everything seemed to work against him; +_Rienzi_ proved a failure when it was put on at Weimar, and nothing +could be hoped for in that quarter; the pecuniary situation was +desperate. He had received a commission from the Emperor Pedro I of +Brazil for an opera, and thought _Tristan_ a likely theme. As early as +December of 1854 he had written to Liszt mentioning it as planned in +his head; and in this letter of '58 he says, "... I saw no other way +open to me but to negotiate with Härtel, and I chose for this subject +_Tristan_, then scarcely begun, because I had nothing else. They +offered to pay me half the honorarium (two hundred louis d'or)--that +is, one hundred louis d'or--on receipt of the score of the first act, +and I made all the haste I could to complete it. That is why this poor +work was hurried on in such a business-like manner." It seems rather +comical now that the world's most magnificent, and certainly most +profound, musical tragedy should have been commenced to be sung by an +Italian company in such an out-of-the-way spot as Rio de Janeiro and +in the hope of pleasing semi-barbarian ears; and it is rather a pity +it never found its way there. One thing is certain: the press +criticisms could not have been more foolish than those that greeted +the opera when it was produced in Munich. + +Exactly where Wagner got the idea from I cannot say. Of course, in +one shape or another the legend exists in every European literature; +and probably he had been familiar with it for years. Praeger's story +of Wagner getting hold of Gottfried von Strassburg's interminable +version in the summer of 1855 and conceiving the thing in a flash +might very well be true; only, unluckily for Praeger, the letter to +Liszt in the previous year shows it to be in another sense a story. By +September 1857 the poem was done, and Wagner at once set to work on +the music. He had sketched the first act by the end of the same year, +and in the early part of '59 the whole opera was complete. We have +just seen one reason for pressing forward "this poor work ... in such +a business-like manner"; but even without the pecuniary inducement I +fancy he would have composed quickly. _Tristan_ is one of those works, +like Carlyle's _French Revolution_, which one feels had either to be +written rapidly or not at all. The music seems to have welled forth in +a red-hot torrent, and his pen could not choose but fly over the +paper. None the less we are compelled to marvel at the industry, the +concentrated and continuous and patient energy of the man; for the +_Tristan_ score is as complicated as any ever written, and the mere +number of notes to be set down might well have appalled him. Handel +could write a _Messiah_ in three weeks and Mozart a _Don Giovanni_ +overture in a few hours; but their scores are mere skeletons compared +with _Tristan_, a score which neither Handel nor Mozart could copy in +a much longer time than three weeks. We may hope that Wagner received +his remaining hundred louis d'or, for the Brazilian scheme came to +nothing, and he had to wait seven long years before _Tristan_ got its +first performance. But for the "kingly friend," mad Ludwig II, it +would not have been performed at all; and afterwards other theatres +found it too difficult, or the directors, with true inborn official +insolence, seemed to glory in not so much as looking at the score. We +will now look at it. + +Out of one or another of the various versions of the legend Wagner +extracted the core--the plain, direct story of the passion of a pair +of tragic lovers. Tristan and Isolda love one another with a devouring +love, and circumstances will not allow them to be united; they find a +refuge in death from an existence intolerable without love; and this +is essentially the whole story. In its older form the tale consisted +mainly of what to the modern mind are excrescences--the intrigues, +fights, adventures and what not so dear to the mediæval mind. Wagner +sheared away this mass of overgrowth; or perhaps it would be truer to +say he hewed his way to the statue within, from out of the old stuff +picked out the elements that made just the drama as it had shaped +itself in his brain. Here is the story. Tristan, nephew of King Mark +of Cornwall, had gone a-warring in Ireland and had there slain Morold, +the betrothed of Isolda; and to Isolda he sends as a present Morold's +head. He is himself wounded, and by chance it is Isolda, "a skilful +leech," who nurses him back to health. She has found in Morold's head +a splinter of a sword-blade, and finds it was broken out of Tristan's +weapon. Full of anger, she raises the sword to slay the sick man: he +opens his eyes, and "the sword dropped from my fingers"--her doom is +upon her: henceforth she loves the slayer of her lover. Though Tristan +loves her he does not ask for her, but with many protestations of +gratitude and friendship sails away to Cornwall. Next occurs one of +those things at which most of us are apt to boggle: Tristan goes home, +it would appear, only to suggest that his aged uncle should marry +Isolda the peerless beauty; Mark consents, and sends Tristan to ask +for her. Tristan afterwards confesses that ambition led him to do +this; but in any case it was very close to a deed of downright +treachery, unless the fact was that Tristan did not suspect Isolda's +love for him, or thought his station too humble. Wagner's language is +ambiguous, and probably he intended his meaning to be the same. Isolda +has no two opinions about his conduct. It had been her duty to kill +him in the first place, and her love, her destiny, Frau Minna--call it +what you will--betrayed her; and now she is betrayed by the man whose +life she saved. Had she spoken one word in her father's castle Tristan +would not have returned to Cornwall: in all likelihood his head would +have been sent as an acknowledgment of Morold's. Her fury knows no +bounds; her grief and sense of ignominious humiliation almost defy +expression; her contempt for Tristan, when she finds words for it, is +scathing. All this we learn as the opera proceeds; but we should know +the facts of the history before seeing the work the first time, else +the first act is bewildering, for matters have arrived just at this +point when the curtain rises. + + +II + +The prelude is the only operatic prelude in the world which is an +integral, organic part of the drama; it cannot be omitted without +detriment to the drama. In several of Mozart's operas the overture, by +means of a modulation, is made to lead without a break into the first +scene; Gluck had done precisely the same thing; Wagner, in the +_Mastersingers of Nuremberg_, did the same thing. But in the cases of +Gluck and Mozart and of Wagner in the _Mastersingers_, if by chance +the parts of the overture were missing, the opera could start away and +go on merrily, and we should miss nothing but the preliminary pleasure +of hearing the overture. In the case of _Tristan_, where Wagner's art +of combining the music and drama in an indivisible whole was at its +culminating point--a point from which it gradually receded--this is +not conceivable. If the band parts of the _Tristan_ prelude were +mislaid it would be well to omit the first act altogether. What Wagner +tried to do in the _Flying Dutchman_--to make the whole opera a solid +thing from which not one bar might be subtracted without ruining the +whole effect--he achieved once, and once only, in _Tristan_. + +What may seem an irrelevancy turns on this very point. There is no +necessity for reasoning about a work of art; yet there is both +pleasure and mental profit in doing so in certain instances. If there +is any necessity at all for understanding Wagner's mind and Wagner's +art, we may as well do it as thoroughly as we can. Therefore the +reader will perhaps bear with me patiently if I point out something he +has doubtless discovered for himself, namely, that _Tristan_ is +Wagner's only opera in which music and drama had birth simultaneously +in his brain. He himself, in several significant passages in his prose +writings, indicated this. He said that when, after several years +devoted to expounding his theories in essays,--mainly, he said, to +make these theories clear to himself: mainly, I think, for the +accruing cash--he began _Tristan_, he immediately found he had left +the theories far behind. That is, he constructed his dramas, without +thinking of theories or traditions, simply as a common-sense +dramatist-musician should, building up the whole edifice with two +hands at once, the dramatist's pen in one hand, the musician's in the +other. He also said that when he set down the words the music was +already (in an amorphous state--we must presume he meant) in his +brain. It was to this effect he wrote in _Opera and Drama_ the most +skilful defence ever put together by a creative artist--or rather not +so much a defence as a plea for his particular form of art, or perhaps +an explanation of the form. + +This is entirely different from his procedure with the _Ring_, or +indeed any of his works, not even excepting the _Dutchman_. The +_Dutchman_, he said, grew out of Senta's ballad; but I have already +shown that this statement was a mere piece of self-deception: not the +whole of the _Dutchman_, not one-tenth of it, grows out of Senta's +ballad; Senta's ballad is not an oak-trunk with all the solos, duets, +choruses and the rest growing out as branches with leaves grow from a +trunk--it is a scaffold-pole upon which these things are tacked in an +almost unparalleled fervour of imagination. That Wagner recognized +this is plainly seen in the prose remarks he penned, in very cold +blood, in his after years, when he looked at his first really fine +work as though it had come from the hand of some other composer. Gluck +had not one-thousandth part of Wagner's sheer genius, or, born into +the nineteenth century, he might have done the thing as Wagner did it +in _Tristan_; Mozart had not one-hundredth part of Wagner's +intellectual power, or, born into the nineteenth century, he might +have done it. Wagner alone did it. _Tristan_ is a feat accomplished +once and for all; at this moment it is impossible to imagine such a +feat ever being done again. Those of us who live on for another five +hundred years may see something like it; but even then _Tristan_ will +not be old-fashioned--not older-fashioned, at any rate, than +_Antigone_ or _Hamlet_, and perhaps less old-fashioned than _Macbeth_ +or _Lear_. The breath, the spirit, which is eternal life, is in it, +and it can only perish when the human race perishes. + +Far too much theorising has been done about Wagner, and I would not +add my quota did I not hope that this small contribution would save +complicated explanations, now that I come to deal with the concrete, +so to say, with the very stuff of _Tristan_, the words and the music. +We are to be prepared for a drama of human passion in sharpest +conflict with a dispassionate, indifferent, even antagonistic world. +The passion is the naked elemental thing, the love of a man for a +woman and a woman for a man; and these twain, had they lived on an +island by themselves, might have been happy or unhappy, and felt the +passion fade away and no one a penny the worse. As it is, everything +seems to oppose them; shock after shock comes upon them; until in the +end they are content, feel themselves blest, to be allowed to pass out +of life. We are shown them in four clearly defined phases: first, +loving one another but the love unconfessed; second, the love admitted +and the world opposing it; third, love at its height and the world +breaking in upon it; last, love beaten in the fight and retreating to +the realms of death. Throughout the drama there is no musical theme +representing the idea of the antagonistic world. There are a dozen +love-themes and two death-themes and a great number of what in a +symphony would be called subsidiary themes. By far the most important +theme in the whole opera is that with which the prelude opens, one +made up of a couple of phrases (_a_, p. 274). + +I shall not for the moment discuss the full significance of the themes +as subsequently unfolded: it suffices now to note the use they are +put to in this prelude. A continuation of this love subject presently +is announced (_b_); then the poison motive (_c_); and finally yet +another love theme. A tremendous climax is worked up: the very ecstasy +and madness of love; it dies down, and the prelude ends with a +sinister and tragic phrase (_d_), leading straight to a sea-song sung +from the masthead of a vessel, on which the curtain rises. + +No melody ever sang more clearly of the sea; no melody was ever less +like a sailor's chanty. I have quoted words and tune in full (_f_). +The words set the drama a-going; out of the phrase marked (_g_) the +main body of the music of the first scene is spun. Isolda very +naturally thinks an insult is aimed at herself: it is the spark that +sets a light to the explosive material that has been accumulating in +her heart for heaven knows how long. She curses the ship, Tristan, and +every one concerned in the conspiracy that is to rob her of the man +she loves and hand her over as a slave to the old man she has never +seen. Brangaena, her maid, scared out of her wits, begs to know the +truth; Isolda screams for air, which she assuredly seems to need; the +curtains at the back of her pavilion are opened, and there, on the +stern of the vessel, stands Tristan, the enemy whom she loves. From +the masthead comes again the sailor's song. This time it does not +immediately arouse Isolda to fury; for now her purpose is set--to kill +Tristan: take her revenge and end her own life of misery. "Once +beloved, now removed, brave and bright, coward knight. Death-devoted +head, death-devoted heart," she sings, gazing at Tristan; and at the +last words we hear the tremendous death-or murder-theme (_h_), a theme +whose sinister meaning is afterwards unfolded. She sends Brangaena to +order Tristan to come into her tent. He bitterly avoids understanding +her meaning; Brangaena becomes more urgent; Kurvenal, Tristan's +servant, a faithful watch-dog, asks to be allowed to reply; Tristan +says he can. Kurvenal bellows out a song praising Tristan as the +heroic slayer of Isolda's betrothed, Morold. Brangaena precipitately +retreats and closes the curtains; Isolda and she face one another in +the tent, the second nearly prostrate with dismay, the first boiling +with wrath and shame at the insult hurled at her. She now tells +Brangaena the whole of the preceding history--her nursing of Tristan +and his monstrous treatment of her--and finishes with another curse. +Brangaena tries to soothe her; Isolda, outwardly quietened, inwardly +is planning how to carry out her purpose; Brangaena unknowingly +suggests the means. "In that casket is a love potion: drink that, you +will love your aged bridegroom and be happy once again." She opens the +casket; "not that phial," says Isolda, "the other." The poison motive +(_c_) sounds under the agitated upper strings: "the deadly draught," +Brangaena shrieks: at this point the shouting of the sailors is heard +as they begin to shorten sail; Kurvenal enters brusquely and bellows +at Isolda the order to prepare to land. She refuses to move until +Tristan has come in to ask her pardon "for trespass black and base." +Here she begins to speak in terrible double-meanings: it is not +Tristan's discourtesy on the voyage he must apologise for, but the +more tragic occurrences leading up to his bearing her away to +Cornwall. She orders Brangaena to prepare the draught, and awaits her +victim. + +She stands there outwardly composed while one of the finest passages +in the whole of the world's music betrays her inward anxiety and +suspense (_i_). It is useless to describe the scene in any detail: the +words are simple and seemingly direct; the marvellous music alone +reveals their fateful, fearful significance. Isolda asks Tristan to +sink the ancient quarrel between them--caused by the slaying of +Morold--and drink a cup together; he knows perfectly well a large part +of her meaning--that she means to poison him. Whether she herself +intends what presently occurs no one can tell: I doubt whether Wagner +knew much or cared at all. Tristan knows how great is the crime he +must make amends for: not merely Morold's death, but the winning of +Isolda's heart, the desertion, the cruel coming to claim her as his +uncle's bride; he says he will drink--only in oblivion can he find +refuge from the toils in which he has involved himself; he lifts the +cup to his lips, drinks, and as he drinks Isolda, crying "Betrayed, +even here," snatches the cup from him and drains it. + +Brangaena has betrayed her: the cup contains not the poison but the +love-potion. In this stroke there is no fairy-tale or pantomime +foolery. The course the drama now pursues is determined not by a magic +draught, a harmless infusion of herbs, but by the belief of the +lovers that they have taken poison and are both doomed. Whether +Tristan had previously known Isolda to love him does not matter: he +knows it now. It has been remarked that the language is ambiguous: or +rather, Isolda in her rage may easily be supposed to go beyond the +truth when she speaks of having exchanged love-vows with Tristan. She +knows that he loves her. They have only a few minutes to live and to +love: why not speak? They stand gazing at one another in a state of +tremulous emotion, and at last rush into each other's arms. The hoarse +voices of the sailors are heard outside hailing King Mark; the ship +has reached land; Brangaena enters, and is horrified to find that +_both_ have taken the potion; the pair cling to one another; a stream +of the most passionate music in existence sweeps on: Brangaena tries +to attire Isolda in the royal cloak; Kurvenal shouts to Tristan that +the king is coming; Tristan can understand nothing--"What king?" he +asks; the deck is crowded with knights; and the curtain falls as the +lovers embrace and the trumpets announce the arrival of King Mark. + +Before dealing more fully with the music of this act let me quote a +few words I wrote elsewhere on the dramatic course of the whole opera. +"The end of each act sees the lovers in a situation which is at heart +the same, though in externals different. Rapt in each other, they care +nothing about the sailors, attendants, approaching crowds, and the +rest, at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they +scarcely understand Mark's passionate affection--they only know it is +an enemy of their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees +them from life, which means an incessant trouble and interruption to +them. The tragedy deepens and grows more intense with each successive +scene; each separates them more widely from life and all that life +means, until in the last act the divorce is complete. This is the +purpose of the drama: this _is_ the drama...." When Wagner conceived +Tristan he was as fine a master of stage-craft as has ever lived; and +certainly by very far the finest who ever wrote "words for music." The +first scene prepares us to understand clearly and to grasp firmly the +forces that are presently to be let loose and run the drama on to its +tragic dénouement; and after that, scene follows scene with absolute +inevitability. + + +III + +During Wagner's five years of theorising after quitting Dresden in +1849 he had thought of subjects and written parts of the _Ring_. +Tristan is the greatest work he completed. A reservoir full of music +must have accumulated in his brain; and he seems now to have opened +the sluices. Never did a more fiery impetuous stream flow from any +composer: never was there, in a word, more inspired music. The +profusion of the material is wonderful, and even more wonderful is the +concentrated quality of that material. In the _Ring_ and +_Parsifal_--as in _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_--there are _longueurs_; +in _Tristan_ there are none: not a bar can be cut; there is not a bar +that does not hold us. In a paradoxical mood, or irritated, by being +obstinately, wilfully, stupidly regarded as one of the trade setters +of opera-texts, Wagner declared to Bülow that "one thing is certain, I +am not a musician." This has been interpreted as meaning, "I am no +musician," whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a +musician: which, in a sense, he was. He was not a greater genius than +Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor +than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but +he was something different from both species of men--a dramatist who +could not get the drama out of himself without the aid of music, and a +musician who could not beat out his music without the aid of drama. +Music and drama had simultaneous birth in the case of _Tristan_, and +it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately. There is no +other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural +foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less +importance. + +Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common +criticism of Wagner's music was that it possessed no melody. Happily +at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when +we hear the first act of _Tristan_ the first thing to strike us must +surely be its richness in melody. It teems with tunes--it is an +unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of +the act. At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might +easily grow wearying to the nerves, and then comes a long song, such +as Brangaena's remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the +ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst. That is the first +thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound +and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present. The +body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in +the sailor-song (_g_); this goes through a hundred transformations, +and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing +and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and +the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards +Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they +will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when +Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the +meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's +first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and +again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never +losing its original colour. Wagner's mastery of the art of pictorial +suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and +enforcing the actors' emotion, is here at its supremest height. In the +_Ring_ he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with +simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well +could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own +effect. But the burning passion with which _Tristan_ is filled +necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone +amongst musicians had the art and strength to employ. Other +composers, notably Weber and Mendelssohn, had given the world grand +scenic music; but where they left off Wagner began. Their picture is +an end in itself: Wagner's are settings for the dramatic action. + +There are not many leitmotivs in _Tristan_, and they are used for +ideas and passions--never for personages. Tristan, Isolda, Mark, +Brangaena and Kurvenal have none of them a representative theme. Each +act has its own themes--a multitude of them--each carried through the +act in which it appears, and nowhere else employed; only (_a_) and +(_h_) appear throughout the opera. Some small use is made of (_c_), +but once the poisoning episode is done with the subject ceases to have +any significance. That marked (_h_) is of great importance. Its effect +is terrible when Isolda is enticing, or compelling, Tristan to drink +the cup. The sailors break in with their "Yo, heave ho!" and Tristan, +bewildered, asks, "Where are we?" Isolda, with sinister purpose, +replies, "Near to the end!" The intense originality, due to their +being closely allied to the dramatic meaning, of all the themes should +be noted: only one, the second part of the love-theme (_a_), suggests +any other music. It is reminiscent of the introduction of Beethoven's +Sonata "Pathétique," and, after all, the phrase was not new when +Beethoven employed it. + + + +IV + +We have seen in this first act, if not the birth of love, at any rate +the avowal. The scene is laid on the sea, fresh, breezy, salt, +bracing, suggestive of infinite energy and possibilities. We are now +to witness it in its ripeness: not by any means a healthy ripeness, +but ecstatic to the point of frenzy, burning to the point of madness, +tumultuous, unbridled passion and lust; and, as these violent delights +have violent ends, ending in tragedy. When the curtain rises the +picture is in exquisite contrast with that presented in the first act. +Well did Wagner know the value of the scenic environment; he always +got it just and true and, from the artistic point of view, in sympathy +with the prevailing emotion. The demands on the scene-painters and +stage-machinists are nothing in _Tristan_ compared with those made in +the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_; but when the directions are complied with, +as I understand they occasionally are (I have seen them carried out +once), nothing more gorgeously effective can be dreamed of. Instead of +the morning air of Act I we have a warm summer night in a luxuriant +garden; on the left is a castle with steps leading up to the door, and +a burning torch makes the dark night darker; trees at the back and on +the right are massed black against the dark sky; in the centre under a +tree there is a seat for the convenience of the lovers. At the very +first glance we are taken into the atmosphere for a great +love-scene--the most magnificent love-scene ever conceived; and also +we are carried ages back--back to a time that never existed. This +old, world-old feeling, this sense of the past, is present to some +degree in the first act; but here the music makes it of overwhelming +power, and just as in the first act the sea is always present, so here +the sense of a remote period is never allowed to leave us. + +When the first chord of the brief, passionate introduction was first +heard in a theatre nearly half a century ago, it sent a shudder +through every professional class-room in every conservatoire in +Europe, and the theme is perhaps the most important in the act (_j_); +and the cutting, almost raucous chord lets us know at once that big +doings are at hand. Another theme follows--one of impatience and sick +anxiety: it is that which is played again when Isolda, hardly able to +contain herself while waiting for Tristan, wildly waves her +handkerchief, beckoning to him. Another and most lovely melody is +heard (_k_); and then some of the love-music which is played when he +does come and rushes to her arms. This leads straight to the rising of +the curtain, and Brangaena is seen on the steps by the torch, keeping +watch and listening to the horns of a hunting party; the sounds are +growing fainter in the distance. + +Isolda enters, and Brangaena vainly tries to dissuade her from meeting +Tristan. This night hunt, she swears, is a scheme of Melot's for the +betrayal of Tristan, his foe. Isolda laughs. Melot is Tristan's +friend, and the night hunt was arranged that the lovers might meet. +They dispute to some of Wagner's loveliest melodies. The theme (_k_) +flows along as an accompaniment, and becomes more prominent when +Isolda says she can no longer hear the horns; she hears the gentle +plash of the brook running from the fountain--as "in still night alone +it laughs on my ear"--the party of hunters must be many miles off. The +signal for Tristan is the extinguishing of the torch, and the music +associated with this deed now is used again in the last act in another +form. Brangaena prays her mistress not to put it out: it means death, +she says, and as a sort of subsidiary death-theme this melody is +afterwards used. Isolda is too completely mastered by desire to +listen. When Brangaena curses herself for having changed the magic +drinks she is laughed at. To music filled with passion and of perfect +beauty she says the whole business was arranged by Venus, goddess of +love, and we hear yet another love-theme (_l_); then to the crash of +what we must call the torch-theme, blent with the death-theme from Act +I, she throws down the torch and frantic with impatience awaits her +lover. + +He enters, and after some delirious pages not to be described in words +the pair fall to talk in Schopenhauerian terminology about the light +and the dark. But the passion never goes out of the music. On the +contrary, it grows in intensity, for the madness of the meeting is +nothing to the white-hot passion we get later; and in spite of the +terminology the meaning of both Tristan and Isolda is perfectly clear. +Light has been, and is, the enemy of their love; in the garish light +of day Tristan, filled with daylight dreams of ambition, first made +over to Mark, so to speak, his rights in Isolda; "is there a pain or a +woe that does not awaken with daylight?" he asks; and now, declared +lovers, they may only meet in the dark: during the day they must be +distant strangers. They know whither fate is driving them: Isolda has +said as much to Brangaena: "she may end it ... whatsoe'er she make me, +wheresoe'er take me, hers am I wholly, so let me obey her solely." +They are embodiments of sheer passion; love is the most selfish of +passions, and placed as they are, realising that they live only for +and in that passion, they have no thought for any one else, regarding +the outer world, the world of daylight, as their foe. Isolda does not +hesitate to remind Tristan of his perfidy in the days of light; and +he, far from defending himself, finds it quite sufficient to remark +that he had not then come under the sway of night: that is, they have +no ordinary human affection for each other. If they had, neither would +lead the other into such danger. Shakespeare did not, could not, make +his lovers live so entirely in their passion as this: he had no music +to express himself by, and had to speak through human beings. So when +Romeo says, "let me stay and die," Juliet instantly hurries him away. +Tristan and Isolda know they are wending to death, and are content. + +Their feelings subside into soft languor, and then they sing the +sublime hymn to night. Brangaena's voice is heard from the +watch-tower, warning them of approaching danger; and they heed her +not. Again she sings to them that the danger is imminent--night is +departing; Tristan, resting his head on the bosom of his mistress, +simply says, "Let me die thus." The catastrophe is at hand. The duet +reaches its glorious climax; Brangaena gives a shriek from her tower; +Kurvenal rushes in yelling "Save yourselves," but it is too +late--Mark, Melot and the other huntsmen come in quickly, and--the +game is up. The red dawn slowly breaks; Tristan hides Isolda with his +cloak; Melot turns to Mark and says, "Did I not tell you so?"--his +ruse has succeeded quite well enough. And now follows a scene which +has proved a stumbling-stock to many. + +The ordinary dramatist or play-monger would drop the curtain on this +dénouement; and undeniably it would be what is called an effective +"curtain." However, effective curtains were not Wagner's business in +planning _Tristan_; he had long since passed through that stage. He +could not after such a curtain--the sort of curtain that ends many an +opera--have carried out the plan of _Tristan_--to show us the lovers +realising their impossible situation in life and deliberately seeking +death as the refuge. Tristan and Isolda care nothing for shame and +disgrace: they care only for their love, and their love relentlessly +drives them into their grave. Mark has a great affection for them +both, and precisely on that account he is their enemy. He begins a +long expostulation: "How is it that the two people dearer to him than +all the world have so betrayed his trust?" It is lengthy, and must +needs be so; each proof he gives them of his love only more clearly +defines his real significance and relation to them. Tristan does not +fear Melot: he dreads Mark's affection. He (Tristan) calls out, +"Daylight phantoms! morning visions, empty and vain--away, begone!" +but Mark continues, putting in a dozen ways the same question, "Why, +why have they done this?" It is not the behaviour of a barbaric king; +but we must remember that Wagner's Mark is not, and is not intended to +be, the legendary Mark any more than Tristan and Isolda are the +legendary Tristan and Isolda: he is the personification of human +affection, a thing to which they, enthralled by elemental love, are +indifferent--detest, indeed, as interfering with their love. When he +ends Tristan knows he has no explanation to offer--none that Mark +could possibly understand: human affection and elemental human passion +are unintelligible to one another. He replies that he cannot answer +Mark's "Why?" and turning to Isolda asks whether she will follow him +whither he is now going--the land of eternal night. He, not Mark, +plans his death. Isolda answers straightway that she will follow. +Tristan and Melot fight, but Tristan allows his treacherous foe to run +the sword through him, and he falls. _Then_ we get the curtain; +Tristan has done with this world and has started out for another, and +the drama has taken a second step towards its goal. + +This, held for long to be bad craftsmanship, is consummate, daring +craftmanship. _Tristan_ is a drama of spiritual conflicts; and those +who do not like that sort had better try something by the trade +playwrights of to-day. + + +V + +The music of the first act is largely fierce, angry, turbulent, often +bitter music, blent and merging into music expressive of fierce +desire, the hunger of the man after the woman, of the woman after the +man. There is one moment of sweet longing--the moment after Isolda and +Tristan have drunk the fatal potion; but instantly the torrent breaks +forth, and though it is in a way sweet, the sweetness is mixed with +fire; the stream is as a stream of molten lava, scalding, consuming. +The note of the music to the second act is utterly different; there is +fire, indeed, a golden fire; there is greedy impatience and +restlessness; but the fire does not scorch nor scald, the impatience +is not despairing, the love is not--as it certainly is in the first +act--that passion which is but one remove from deadly hate. Almost at +the beginning of the first act Isolda, devoured by a longing for +revenge, schemed to murder Tristan, and she does not falter in her +purpose until he has taken the drink; the reaction has all the +violence of a cataclysm; all is delirium; there is not a moment of +happy lingering over the joy of a possible; new life; there is no time +for that, no thought of it. All is burning wrath and hate and equally +burning lust and greed for the possession of the beloved one's body. +In the second act the anger has died out, and in the whirl of the +music, though at its maddest, there is a fulness, an assured sense of +coming satisfaction; and the excitement settles down into long, +drawn-out, luscious, voluptuous strains as the lovers, held in each +other's arms, exchange the sweet confidences usual (I suppose) on such +occasions. + +Musically the act may be regarded--conveniently, though roughly and +crudely--as a kind of symphony, in four sections which to an extent +overlap. We have section one from the first bar of the prelude to +Tristan's entry; section two, the impassioned duet; three, from the +hymn to night until the lovers are discovered; and four, from that +point to the end. Many of the themes are worked right through, but the +sections vary vastly in colour, atmosphere and feeling. The variety +unified into a completely satisfying whole is astounding. Amongst the +really great musicians only four possessed the organising brain in +this degree--Wagner himself, Beethoven, Handel and Bach. This act is +even more completely an organic whole than the first; every part +performs its functions and retains its individuality, yet all the +parts are co-ordinated. I have seen miraculous pieces of machinery in +which each part seemed to be alive and doing its duty independent of +the others; yet all working together to achieve one purpose. The score +of _Tristan_ is as marvellous--indeed, more so, for the purpose is not +a mechanical one, but the expression, with rigid fidelity to truth, of +the most subtle and exquisite feelings. + +I have said earlier that in evolving his purely musical structures +Wagner adopted one plan. He not only used the subjects of his operas +for the overtures, or (as in the present case) of the preludes to the +acts, but he makes them tell a story dramatically. Merely to use +themes for an opera as conventional subjects to be treated in symphony +form had been done; but Wagner never dreamed of adopting a form and +imposing it on his material from outside; with him the form is +determined by the material and the significance the material bore in +his mind. This is very different from deliberately writing a symphonic +poem--deliberately sitting down in cold blood and setting to work to +illustrate a story. _That_ method is antithetical to Wagner's; a +symphonic poem writer is simply a setter of opera texts, one who +follows with devout care the book of words put before him--with this +difference, that the opera-writer must, to some extent at least, +consider his words, his singers, his stage, while the composer of +symphonic poems can do just as he pleases and consider no one's +convenience, shortening this section or lengthening that as the +musical exigencies demand, while making use of some tale or a poem as +an excuse for writing in a form which in itself is unintelligible and +illogical. So far as Wagner could he let music and drama grow up +together; then to start with the right atmosphere he took certain +themes and spun a piece of music from them, letting the themes, as I +have said, unfold themselves logically and determine the form. The +result is always a fine piece of music; and thousands of listeners +have derived artistic enjoyment from the _Mastersingers_ overture, +the _Lohengrin_ prelude and _Tristan_ prelude without troubling to +trace the story as it is plainly told. In the prelude to Act II here, +for example, no one need seek a story, though it is obvious enough. +First we have the daylight theme, peremptorily, harshly announced; +then the impatience of Isolda, then her longing, then her thoughts of +love and her hopes of fulfilment, and just before the curtain rises +the crash which accompanies the extinction of the torch. + +I have already alluded to the old-world atmosphere got at once by the +horn calls and the lovely passage in which Isolda sings of the brook +"laughing on" in the still night; but in this first scene, which is by +comparison a mere introduction to the duet, we find a thousand +beautiful things. At this period of his life Wagner was by no means so +economical as he afterwards became; he squandered his pearls with +prodigal hands. In a few pages are enough melodies and themes to set +up a Puccini--or for that matter a Strauss or an Elgar--for life. The +blending of the death-theme with one of the love-themes, when Isolda +speaks of love's goddess, "the queen who grants unquailing hearts ... +life and death she holds in her hands," is one of the miracles of +music--stern beauty made up of defiance of fate and careless +voluptuousness. In the very next melody to make its appearance, the +second bar after the change to the key of A, we may note what I think +is the first sign of one of the many mannerisms of Wagner's "third +period," as we call it--the period extending from _Tristan_ to the +finishing of the _Ring_ (_Parsifal_ being as the tail to the dog, or +perhaps the tin-kettle tied to the tail). It is the phrase quoted +(_l_). Those five notes of the second bar were to be made to serve +many purposes hereafter; and the Wagnerites will insist that this was +done for a high artistic reason. Perhaps it was; but to me it seems +that it is found so frequently sometimes because Wagner wanted to +utter precisely the same emotion as he had employed it for earlier, +and sometimes because, like all other composers, at times he found his +invention flagging. In the second scene of this act of _Tristan_ it +plays a conspicuous part, and is indeed one of the most pregnant love +motives of the drama--perhaps the most prolific of subsidiary themes +and passages. + +The big duet beats description, and its structure must only be +discussed briefly. A figure which forms part of the music played while +Isolda impatiently awaits Tristan is turned into the whirling +accompaniment to impassioned and incoherent exclamations as they first +embrace; then to the seething mass of tone is added (_l_), and +gradually out of chaos and confusion emerges one clean-cut melody +after another. The daylight-theme which begins the introduction is +Protean in the shapes it assumes, and the emotions, now hot passion, +now the gentlest tenderness, it is made to express. The ferment +settles down, and we get the hymn to night and a series of melodies +which are love's own voice speaking. The dreamy voluptuousness that +pervades these duets comes from songs written by Wagner as studies. +They were not over highly esteemed by his friends, but he had his +revenge. This night in the garden--with the black night above and the +black trees around, the flowers, the musical brooklet, and the voice +of the caller heard at times from the roof--is the greatest thing of +the kind in all music: in all the arts, I know only the balcony scene +in _Romeo and Juliet_ which may be said to approach it. Melody upon +melody, delicate and sweet to the ear as the perfume of night flowers +and grasses to the nostrils, floats past; until at last the sheer +delight of the thing seems to work up the lovers to a state of +heavenly rapture, and in the final verse of the hymn to night they +pray only to be removed from the dangers of returning day; and here +the strains swell to an intensity of yearning for peace quite +unprecedented in music. And, as we know, their prayer is immediately +answered in a fashion they were hardly prepared for. + +Mark's address is deeply touching; and it is odd that when attacked by +Melot Tristan's accents are almost his. The sublime is again touched +when Tristan asks Isolda to follow him and in her answer. Melot then +stabs him, and the curtain drops to one of Mark's reproachful phrases +thundering from the orchestra. This, then, is Tristan's answer to +Mark's questioning--told in the music, not in the words. + + +VI + +Who first uttered that immortal piece of nonsense, Love and death are +one, I cannot say. The Greek conception of Death as Eros with an +inverted torch is quite different: it is a kind of _Tod als Freund_ +idea; we are called out of life by an irresistible force or god, which +god must be love, else he would not want us. The inverted torch is the +sign that shows whither he calls us. It had a mighty fascination for +many fine minds of the second-rate sort last century; and judging from +the phraseology of _Tristan_ it seems to have captured Wagner. He was +everlastingly bewildering himself with cheap catch-phrases which +happened, through suggestion or otherwise, to stir his emotions. He +took up one philosophical and political system after another, only to +abandon them in turn; but they left a kind of sediment in his mind, +and one never feels sure that the pellucid stream of his music-drama +will not the next moment be gritty to the palate with some of this +outworn stuff. The bits of Schopenhauer's broken brickbats embedded in +the libretto of _Tristan_ serve their turn, though a finer and more +poetical way of saying the same things might have been found. But +Wagner did not find that more poetical way, so let us rejoice that +through this uncouth lingo Wagner managed to get into a sort of verse +the idea that night was the friend of Tristan's love and day its +enemy, and that in the end everlasting night is best of all. In his +letters, however, we find him playing with the love and death notion, +though he must have known that love is not death, but life; that if +love and death are one, then death and love are also one, and to be in +love is to be in death, to be dead--which is preposterous: corpses +don't love. Presently we shall see that Isolda died in a state of +exaltation akin to the state of being in love; but that does not +establish the thesis. Blake, for hours before he died, shouted till +the ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God: +does that prove that mysticism and death are one? Mr. Chamberlain, in +his exegesis of _Tristan_, will have it that Wagner composed the opera +to demonstrate the truth of a very trite and ridiculous lie. The fact +is, Wagner's was far more a feeling, emotional, imaginative brain than +a thinking one, and in the hazy, steamy, overheated thinking part he +often let idle phrases play about without himself firmly grasping +their meaning or want of it. Anyhow, if he had done what Mr. +Chamberlain and many others say he did, we should have found it in the +last act. Instead, there is not a word on the subject. Wagner's +thinking might be misty: his dramatic instinct was supremely right and +sure. + +In the first act Isolda and Tristan enjoy their love only for a few +minutes; the world, daylight, breaks in and separates them. In the +second they revel in it for hours; the world, daylight, again +separates them. In the last the world again breaks in; but Tristan has +already found his refuge in death, and Isolda, obedient to her +promise, follows him, and they are joined, safe from the annoyances of +the "phantoms of the day," in "the impregnable fortress," the grave. +The action, as in the preceding portions of the drama, is of the +simplest. On his bed of pain and sorrow Tristan lies wounded and +unconscious. Kurvenal has got him away from Mark's court in Cornwall +to his own castle in Brittany; and now he has been brought out into +the castle yard for coolness and air. It is hot, sultry, close; the +sea in the distance seems to burn; the castle is dilapidated and +overgrown with weeds. Kurvenal watches by his master; from outside the +saddest melody ever conceived is heard on a shepherd's pipe. Presently +the shepherd looks over the wall and asks how the master fares, does +he still sleep? If he awakes it will only be to die, replies Kurvenal; +unless the lady leech (Isolda) comes there is no hope. A moment after +Tristan comes out of his coma, wanders in his mind a little, but at +last understands where he is and that Isolda will come. At that news +he works himself into a condition of unbounded excitement, fancies he +sees the ship bringing Isolda, but at the sound of that sad, droning +pipe melody, and when Kurvenal tells him it is a signal that no ship +is yet in sight, he lapses into unconsciousness again. Then he wakes +up, goes over the whole history of his love for Isolda, and faints +once more; once more he half awakes and as in a dream sees the ship +decked with flowers speeding over the summer sea. Suddenly the +shepherd strikes in with a lively tune: "Isolda is at hand," cries +Kurvenal. "Hasten to bring her," shouts Tristan, and Kurvenal does so. +Tristan, left to himself, goes mad for sheer joy, staggers off his +couch, tears his bandages off so that his wound bleeds afresh, and +Isolda rushes in just in time to catch him in her arms, where he dies +murmuring "Isolda." She laments over his body and sinks down beside +it. Another alarm is given; Kurvenal barricades the gate; Mark, Melot +and the rest break it down, and there is a terrible hand-to-hand +fight; Kurvenal is run through with a spear, and creeps to his +master's side, to die, groping for his hand. Brangaena enters, and she +and Mark try to explain how she has told the whole story of the potion +to Mark; how Mark has come, too late, to unite the lovers. Isolda does +not listen; presently she rises to sing the matchless death-song; she +sees Tristan before her, smiling, transfigured, his love envelopes her +as in billows; she is his now, at last, for aye; and, exhausted, she +again sinks down beside Tristan, and dies. + +There is thus in _Tristan_ next to no action--no more than serves to +turn spiritual forces loose and helps to interpret various spiritual +states. The spectator is interested, indeed, in the _doings_ of the +people on the stage only in the first act. Isolda's command to Tristan +to come before her, Tristan's evasions, Kurvenal's rude answer, the +rough gibing bit of sailor chorus, the episode of the two chalices +--the love potion and the poison--the scene between Isolda and Tristan +in which he offers her his sword and tells her to take her revenge by +killing him forthwith, the drinking, the wild embraces and the arrival +of the ship in port amidst the clatter of triumphant trumpets--such +things might have been, and were, done by Wagner in his _Tannhäuser_ +days. But consider how little is done in the second act and in the +third. These two portions of the music-drama are more symphonic than +operatic, and it is small wonder that in the days when good folk +expected to see opera when they went into an opera-house, they thought +they had been diddled when they were given _Tristan_ for their money. +If anything so new and unexpected were sprung upon us to-day we should +raise the same cry as was raised when _Tristan_ was given nearly half +a century ago. The introduction opens with a phrase (_m_) of threefold +meaning. It is clearly derived from the second phrase of the first +love-theme (_a_, page 274); it is a realistic representation in music +of Tristan's stertorous breathing; it expresses his delirious state of +mind--chiefly, however, in the upward-drifting thirds and fourths with +which it ends at each occurrence. Then comes the music associated with +his suffering and the "lady leech." The whole passage is then +repeated, and afterwards we get the shepherd's pipe (_n_). This forms +the prelude, and the music of the short scene with the shepherd is +practically the same. Some new matter is brought in, for dramatic +rather than sheer musical purposes, as Tristan awakens; but the next +subject that I need call attention to is the noble one which comes in +when Kurvenal assures him he is safe in his own castle (_o_). The +whole of Tristan's subsequent ravings are made up of reminiscences, +more or less distorted, of various passages out of the first and +second acts, as he goes over, as in a dream, his recent life--the +sight of Isolda, the scene on the ship and that in the garden. Another +new theme to be noted is blazed out by the orchestra when Kurvenal +tells him Isolda has been sent for. When he sinks back exhausted and +no ship is in sight the shepherd's pipe keeps wandering through his +brain with strange, weird, terrible effect, mixing with fragments of +other themes; he gathers strength, and his despair rises to frenzy as +he curses himself--"'Twas I by whom [the draught] was brewed"--to a +phrase overwhelming in its intensity of expression (_p_), and again +collapses. + +Presently follow a few pages of perhaps the divinest music to be found +in Wagner's scores, Tristan's dream of Isolda crossing the summer sea. +To an evenly pulsing gentle accompaniment we hear first the second +part of a love-theme (_q_), then fragments of others, till the point +of supernal, Mozartean beauty is touched at "full of grace and loving +mildness." The pathos of it is almost intolerable: no one could stand +the strain another second, when after the cry, "Ah, Isolda, how fair +art thou," he rouses himself to anger because Kurvenal cannot see on +the rolling waters what he with his inner vision sees so bright and +clear. How any one could, even at a first hearing, fail to realize +that the composer of this sublime passage was by far, infinitely far, +the mightiest and tenderest composer of opera music who has +lived--this is a phenomenon that passes our comprehension nowadays. +The scene where the shepherd sounds his pipe to signal the coming of +the boat, and Tristan, his delight wrought up until it grows into +anguish, goes mad and tears off his bandages, baffles description. It +is made up of the love music of the first and second acts, the +melodies being metamorphosed in marvellous fashion. At the last he +sees Isolda throwing down the torch as she did in Act II, and as +darkness comes over his eyes we hear the same music combined with the +love-themes. There is only one thing of the kind to match Isolda's +lament--Donna Anna's grief over her father's body in _Don Giovanni_. +The rest of the act is largely made up of music which has been heard +before. The death-song is an extended and glorified version of the +hymn to night; and the close is of sad, tragic sweetness. The lovers +are joined together and at peace--but in the everlasting darkness of +the grave. + +Any one who has heard _Tristan_ a few times will begin to notice that, +despite the endless variety of the music, it possesses an odd +homogeneity. After hearing it fifty or a hundred times one begins to +feel it to be comparable--if such a comparison could be made--to an +elaborate oration delivered in one breath. The whole thing, complete +in every detail, must (one thinks) have come bodily into the +composer's mind in one inconceivable moment of inspiration and +insight. Of course we know it was not so. A god may think a world into +being in that way: a mortal requires time and unflagging energy to +produce a masterpiece. We know that Wagner incorporated his own +studies in his masterpiece; we can see how theme is evolved from +theme. But the unity is so complete that if some sketches were to come +to light showing that the last form of some of the music was in +existence before the portions from which it seems to be evolved, I +should not be in the least surprised, so perfect is the unity, so +inevitably does every note fall into its proper place to express the +feeling of the occasion. I take it that when he drafted the words he +had before him a prophetic shadow of what the music was to be; and +when he came to compose, the uninterrupted white heat of inspiration +and enormous cerebral energy and intellectual grip of his matter, and +the boundless invention which provided that matter for him, so to +speak, so that he had only to pick it up ready made, enabled him to +make that more or less dim, prophetic shadow a living, concrete +reality. Never, from the first bar to the last, does the inspiration +fail him; there is not a phrase that says less, or says it less +adequately than the situation demands, than he has led us to expect. +Old Spohr, when he heard _Tannhäuser_, though his ears rebelled +against the unaccustomed discords, spoke about the Olympian +inspiration and energy he felt in the work; and this criticism--and +very just and fine criticism it was: as just and fine as it was +unexpected from an old-world musician such as Spohr--is equally +applicable to _Tristan_. In its power and perfection it seems the +handiwork of one of the gods. The very truth of every phrase, and the +fulness of utterance with which every phrase expresses the emotion of +the moment, has given rise to a common delusion or absurdity: that in +the Wagnerian opera every phrase is evolved or developed out of the +previous one. If Wagner ever thought of adopting such an insane +procedure he would have been puzzled to know how and where to start. +He might, perhaps, have evolved the first from the last, and thus got +a perfect rounded whole--a serpent with its tail in its mouth. As a +matter of prosaic, or poetical, fact, Wagner, in all his work, +incessantly introduces fresh matter, and dozens of themes appear, are +worked out, and disappear entirely. + +Now, when all this overgrowth of rubbishy comment is being swept away, +and those who contemned Wagner are disappearing with those who +battened on him and his memory, _Tristan and Isolda_ remains, a +world-masterpiece, the most powerful, beautiful, sweet and tender +embodiment to be found in any art of elemental human love in all its +splendour, loveliness, fearfulness, terror and utter selfishness. +Thousands of years hence, when Europe has sunk under the waves and +fresh continents have arisen, perhaps a stray copy by hazard preserved +in the Fiji Islands will come to light, will be deciphered by pundits, +and a new race will see in it a primitive but consummate work of art, +and the pundits will argue themselves black in the face about the name +of the composer, whether he was Wagner or another man of the same +name. In the meantime millions of our epoch will have understood it, +loved it, and seen in it a thousand times more than we see in it +to-day, and many thousand times more than I could say in the preceding +pages. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + + +VII + +By way of a footnote to this chapter I may be allowed to add a few +words about the smaller characters. All that Wagner took from the old +legends was the suggestion for the two lovers who sinned and perished +for their sin. Crudely or coarsely, gentlemanly (as in Tennyson), +refined and spiritualized, that idea is the central idea of every form +of the tale. To these two people Wagner added Brangaena and Kurvenal, +and, taking only the name of King Mark, he created a new personage, +unlike any of the older versions of the man, necessary for the +exposition of his idea. Brangaena is the most difficult part to sing +and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress. She has not +a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last +recitative. Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely +appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable +pathos. His phrase to Tristan, "The wounds from which you languish +here all shall end their anguish," is as touching in its rough, +uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master. That is +all Kurvenal is--a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it +requires a very great artist to interpret it. David Bispham's +impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen. Mark's +reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are +also very hard to render. In fact, only fine opera singers can take +any of these parts without coming to grief. The invisible sailor must +be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with +no little skill. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG' + + +I + +The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing +_Tristan_, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The +struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard +and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few +victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next +chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the +reader, to consider the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ immediately after +_Tristan_. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the +second opera in its true chronological order. The _Nibelung's Ring_ +was still in abeyance; _Tristan_ finished, Wagner, in search of means +of subsistence--the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast +giving out--undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, +Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861 +his last hopes of a Paris success with _Tannhäuser_ were extinguished; +his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of +debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as +bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a +simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours +of gloom fulfilled." The _Mastersingers_ had been sketched, as we +know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the +character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an entirely +different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he +worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he +was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the +outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer +world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but +given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once +became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of +the _Mastersingers_ his contentment should endure any length of time. +No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels +again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862 +that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in +the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say, +will occupy us presently. + +In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many +another city, a guild of minstrels--at once poets and musicians. The +name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as +for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing +_Tannhäuser_, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic +pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the _Mastersingers_ +that hangs from _Tannhäuser_ I beg the reader not to ask me. There is +this similarity: the central scene of each is a minstrel-contest; +there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the +other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of +resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not +developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the +want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a +benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he +went ahead and wrote the poem. + +All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a +skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the +prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his +daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on +record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number +of entries--as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not +compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was +that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter. +There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and +Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the +_Mastersingers_, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and +goodly sport is expected. Hans Sachs himself, though past middle-age, +loves her, and might well hope to win; Beckmesser, another master of +the guild, means to do his best; and a young knight, Walther von +Stolzing, has just become infatuated with her and she with him. He +cannot strive in the contest, however, not being a master; and when he +submits to a trial the guild rejects him with scorn. Things have +arrived at this point at the end of the first Act. In the next, +Walther and Eva, desperate, resolve to fly under cover of darkness; +Sachs overhears them planning and sings a curious sort of +warning-song, letting them know that he is on the look-out and will +prevent the elopement; Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva, and David, an +apprentice, thinks he has come after _his_ (David's) sweetheart and +falls to fisticuffs with him; there is a street row, amidst which Eva +escapes into her father's house, while Sachs pulls Walther into his. +In the third Act Eva, who has already told Sachs quite plainly enough +that if only a master may win her, and Walther cannot become a master, +she prefers him to any other, practically repeats her hint. But +Walther has composed another song and Sachs has devised a scheme: if +Walther sings his song he is certain to be the victor, and Sachs has +determined that by hook or by crook he must sing it. Beckmesser grabs +the song, under the impression it is by Sachs; Sachs, without +committing himself, tells him to make use of it at the contest if he +can. The people gather to watch and hear and judge; Beckmesser makes a +muddle of the song and is laughed off the scene; then Sachs pleads +Walther's case, and he is allowed, though not a master, to sing. He +triumphs, and by one stroke is admitted to the guild and wins the +prize. Virtually the play ends here. Sachs' winding-up address can +only be dealt with in connection with the music. + + +II + +The personality, the soul, of Sachs, its conflict with itself, its +victory over itself and renunciation--undoubtedly Wagner felt this to +be the centre of the action of the play, and undoubtedly without it he +could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It +gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour +is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would +be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and +then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into +one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of +old Nuremberg--a vision as indissolubly blent with music as was the +vision of the river and the swan with the music of _Lohengrin_. One +may say truly that once the germ of the dramatic action was in +Wagner's brain he needed the musico-pictorial inspiration of the +scenic environment and atmosphere before the thing took final shape +and he could compose the music. He says explicitly this was so in the +case of the _Dutchman_; in _Tannhäuser_ it is perhaps a little less +obviously the case. But even in that second of the great operas we +need only read his directions for the right performing of it to see of +what importance to him were the different scenes--the hot, steaming +cave of Venus, the fresh spring morning by the roadside, the great +hall of song--about which he was very particular--the autumn woods in +the last act. In his letters to Uhlig this comes out very plainly: for +instance, he gives as his reason for cutting down the finale of the +last act that it was impossible at Dresden to get a glorious sunrise, +with which the work should end. I have already laid sufficient stress +on the true source of _Lohengrin_; in _Tristan_ adequate and +appropriate scenery is absolutely demanded to sustain the atmosphere; +and here, in the _Mastersingers_, music and a series of pictures go +together, and the pictures seem to inspire the music--or rather, music +and pictures are parts of the first inner vision. + +Mediæval Nuremberg, with its thousand gable-ends, its fragrant +lime-trees and gardens, its ancient customs, its processions of the +guilds and crafts, its watchman with his horn and lantern, calling the +hour, its freshness and quaint loveliness by day and its sweetness on +soft summer nights--it is these Wagner employed all his superb +musico-pictorial art to depict; they are the background to the purely +human element of the play, and at the same time they help to express +that element. If the _Mastersingers_ was a little less successful as a +work of art we should still have to regard it as an amazing _tour de +force_. The opera is far too great for that term--one at once of +praise and of reproach. The music is full of the spirit of a past +world; but the feeling of that world is not got by the use of +artificially archaic phrases or harmonies. Kothner's reading of the +rules of correct minstrelsy is one of the exceptions, and the +night-watchman's crying of the hour is another; but these, as Lamb +said of Coleridge's philosophic preaching, are "only his fun." The +melodies are often quite Weberesque in contour; the harmonies are +either plain work-a-day ones or modern--so modern that no one had used +them before. Nor it is by the sadness of the music alone that he gains +his end: some of the merriest scenes belong, by reason of the music, +to mediæval times. By his art, the intensity of his feeling for those +times, and the fidelity with which he could express every shade of +feeling, he conjures up this vision out of the dead and dusty past, +makes the dead and dusty past live again, takes us clean into it and +keeps us there a whole evening without for a moment letting the spell +be broken. It is significant that the very title he gave his work is a +peremptory warning to us of what to expect: it is not _Hans Sachs_, +nor _Walther von Stolzing_, nor even the _Mastersinger_, etc., but in +the plural form, the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_. This is not to cast +doubt on Wagner's sincerity when he declared that he only got the +creative impulse to go on with his work when he had conceived Sachs as +Sachs now stands: it is only to say that his extraordinary sense of +colour, atmosphere, and his historical sense, led him to do much more +than he thought he was doing and perhaps realized he had done. + +The overture as plainly as the title of the opera proclaims the +composer's purpose: it sums up the solid and pompous old burghers, the +impudent apprentices, the love of Walther and Eva, and says nothing +about Sachs. As an afterthought, in fact, Sachs is left for the +prelude to the third act. As a piece of music, detachable from the +opera, and by no means an integral part of it as is the case with the +_Tristan_ prelude, the overture transcends every other work of +Wagner's. As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ +fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of +musical art--not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the +musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to +produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty. The energy of +the thing is almost superabundant; the gorgeous colouring is dazzling; +and every minutest fibre of it lives. The first theme is another +landmark in musical history. The harmonisation is extraordinary, not +only for its gigantic strength, but for the free employment of +chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so +employed throughout the _Mastersingers_ that it sounds diatonic. +Throughout _Tristan_ and in the Venusberg music of _Tannhäuser_ +chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; but here we have +music that is as solid, equable, serene as a Handel eight-part chorus. +With consummate skill the stream of music is, so to say, led on to the +theme that always accompanies the mastersingers, as distinguished from +the citizens, of Nuremberg; next Walther's song is extemporised upon +(no other phrase serves) for a couple of minutes--the most passionate +page in the opera--and after that come the apprentices. We shall +presently observe that Wagner in this opera made light-hearted fun of +the pundits, and as if to show them that he had a right to do so he +played with the devices that to them were a very serious business +indeed. What to them was an end--I mean all the tricks of +counterpoint--was to him a means to expression: more expressive music +was never dreamed of in a musician's imagination, and at the same time +he accomplished with ease part-writing that the most skilful +contrapuntists could only perform by labouring long at expressionless, +stale old themes first contrived before the Flood to "work well," as +the phrase goes. The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner +takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the +length, so that it sounds four times as fast. The effect is +unexpectedly droll, the music skips about in the most irresponsible +way, and (when one knows what it is meant for) depicts the gambols of +the herd of young rascals who come on the scene in the first act. This +contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when +the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an +accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers' +music. There is a good deal of _tour de force_ about this, but the +result justifies the means: the superb melody swings over the +ponderous bass, both melody and bass singing out clear and strong +amidst an animated, bustling and whirling sea of merry tunes. + +Composers generally left the composition of the overture till last--as +it were doing the thing only because an overture had to be +written--but Wagner knew the importance of his work and must have +composed this one very early; for in 1862, five years earlier than +the completion of the opera and six before the first representation, +he directed a performance of it in the Gewandhaus at Leipzig. He never +was a favourite in that stodgy city, the headquarters of musical +Judea, and the audience is said to have been scanty. In fact, he +himself said that, although he gave concerts only to gain money, he +never made any profits until he went to Russia. The audience, if +small, was enthusiastic. But, without entertaining any delusions about +persecution and the deliberate ignoring of his work, it is easy to see +that such music as this could not possibly be understood at once. +Though this overture is clarity itself to our ears, it is terribly +complicated, and the style was absolutely new. I doubt whether the +players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for +here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures +which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time. There +was no "form"--no statement of first and second subject, no +working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no +recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains +were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the +part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring--these were a +mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting. +Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst +them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his +nights to raising a stone wall of misunderstanding between the +composer's music and the ears of the audience; and at this game Wagner +was an adept. The generation rising up to-day finds it hard to see +what an earlier generation found to carp at in Wagner's music; in +fifty years' time the war between Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites will +be inexplicable, and the story of it may not improbably be regarded as +grossly exaggerated, if not a pure myth. Men of my generation know +very well it was an ugly and stupid reality; we know also it was +brought about by the Wagnerites. Not Wagner's "discords," his "lack of +melody," his "formlessness" and so on hindered an almost instantaneous +appreciation of his music, but the "explanations" of the music. Things +easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were +"explained" as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the +"revolution" Wagner had brought about in music. No wonder many good +folks were distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it, +believing the Wagnerites' claim that their master had rejected all the +rules observed by previous composers. Wagner's own account of this +overture is enough to turn a man's hair grey and to break a woman's +heart. Had he only written a good deal less prose--or none at all! + +The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest +song in existence. Nearly all the characters are supposed to be +singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the +second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of +themselves and a bad song provokes a street riot; the opera winds up +with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song. If there +must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero. We hear snatches of +it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory +with a choral accompaniment. There are interludes, of course--Wagner +knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained; +but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the +clear-cut songs interspersed are parts. Even in the 'sixties, when +nothing later than _Lohengrin_ was known, the charge was brought +against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung +--the _Mastersingers_ was his answer. The overture leads into the +first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the +musical texture as the opera proceeds. We see part of the inside of a +church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending +to her devotions. Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the +custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of +hymn-tunes--a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid +use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and +makes them serve as a voice for Walther's feelings on seeing Eva for a +second time: on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in +love with each other. The next real song-music begins to flow with the +entry of the singers' guild; but meantime there has been some music of +the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of _Tristan_. +Recitative--often broken sentences and mere ejaculations--merges +imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way +to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly +continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment. The apparatus, in a +word, is precisely the same as in _Tristan_. In this first scene +Walther pleads his suit with Eva and her maidservant Magdalena; then +we have the apprentices, amongst them Magdalena's sweetheart David, to +some rollicking choruses and to their own music--the burghers' music +played four times as fast; and next David instructs Walther in the +rules to be observed if he wishes to compose a master-song and to be +admitted to the guild. Here Wagner indulges in positively uproarious +satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint +and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less +ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music +Wagner wrote in his _Rienzi_ days, with sneers at the Jewish composers +of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he +wants to learn how to sing, not to cobble boots. + +The entry of the masters is a scene that only Wagner could have +executed. A stream of Mozartian melody ripples on as the men shake +hands and go through the conventional business of the gathering of +people on the stage: what in the operas of the day--a dozen instances +might be mentioned--is wearisome stodge is here turned into a thing of +surpassing beauty. These shifting shadows of the old world become for +the moment alive; yet we see them as though across the centuries +through the magical web of music. The steady swaying motion of the +accompaniment--and, of course, the whole charm lies in the +accompaniment--has a curious resemblance to the duet of the Don and +Zerlina in the first act of _Don Giovanni_, though Mozart's score is +simplicity itself compared with this. This use of a kind of rocking +figure led many younger musicians astray; and I make a comparison +between their use of it and Wagner's with no intention of being odious +to any one, but to show exactly where Wagner's superiority lay. Take a +composer of very fine genius, Anton Dvoràk, and look at a beautiful +number (beautiful in a primitive, almost savage way) in his _Stabat +Mater_, the _Eia, mater_. The theme of this (_a_, page 318) is a +descendant, with several of Wagner's subjects, and three or four at +least of Sir Edward Elgar's, of the opening of Handel's "Ev'ry +valley." Dvoràk's form of it is quite original, but he never gets any +further: he cannot develop his subject. He adds an echoing, antiphonal +phrase; but even with this help he gets no further. At a first hearing +of this really very sincere and for moments entrancing work one hopes +for the best at the end of the first dozen bars; but better is not to +be. The theme becomes an accompanying figure to some not very engaging +choral passages: in the invention of the theme the whole force seems +to have gone out of the man: he has no power of achieving a climax +save by the addition of instruments: a growing climax to him means +nothing more than growing noise, and the grand climax is only the +noisiest passage of all. The one figure is repeated over and over +again, always with more instruments, until at last the complete +battery of the modern orchestra is hard at it, and Dvoràk's resources +are at an end. Now look at our mighty Wagner. He takes the simplest of +figures (_b_), plays with it, with seeming carelessness, for a while, +then adds what is, technically, a counterpoint to it; he develops that +counterpoint, adds melody on melody--always keeping his figure going, +that the thing may be held together--until, after a rich and ever +broadening and deepening tide of music, he gets his climax at the +predetermined dramatic moment; and the climax does not consist of +noise, but is in the stuff of the music. Development, real +development, is not mere juggling with musical subjects, but +continuous invention of melodies, and the driving-force behind it is +the ceaseless craving of the spirit to express itself fully. + +Even more striking than this instance is the treatment of a figure +heard first when Pogner announces to the assembled mastersingers his +intention of giving his daughter Eva as the prize in next day's +contest. "To-morrow is Midsummer Day," he sings, and this figure (_c_) +sounds from the orchestra. It is made up of two distinct sections. +That formed by the first two bars is used largely as an accompaniment, +but it continually comes round to the third and fourth bars, and +counterpoints are added until at last we are far away from the +beginning, though, as in the example discussed above, the figure welds +all together into a coherent whole for the intellect to grasp apart +from the appeal the music makes to "the feeling." This "feeling" of +Wagner's was absolutely right, it was infallible; and in consequence +we find a curious state of affairs is promptly established. The rich, +joyous strain of music, lull of the feeling of summer, immediately +becomes what was, so to say, at the back of Wagner's mind--the sense +of a spring not known to ordinary mortals, the everlasting spring of +Montsalvat, a spring full of promise and just as full of regrets, the +spring Tennyson sings of-- + + Is it regret for buried time + That keenlier in sweet April wakes? + +The enchanting flood of music wells up from the orchestra, and the +vocal writing for Pogner is in Wagner's most lordly manner: there is +not a hint of the mechanical "faking" which characterises similar +passages in the _Ring_. If it was necessary to think that one part was +written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done +first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its +intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems +impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived +simultaneously. The interweaving becomes ever more marvellous as the +speech proceeds, the burgher theme in a varied form being added, until +at last, with the acclamations of the masters, it culminates in a +passage at once dramatically true, supremely beautiful and as +elaborate in its texture as any Bach fugue. We used to hear much of +the necessity for ambitious young composers to devote years to the +study of text-book counterpoint--indeed, the failure of many youthful +gentlemen to achieve anything on the grand scale has often been +attributed to their lack of diligence, their want of patience with +professorial instruction: yet here we have music which, from the +scientific point of view, is as perfect as any in the world, composed +by a daring soul who had no more than six months' teaching. It may be +remarked in passing that Spohr, in his naïve way a good enough +fugue-writer, never received any instruction at all: in point of +effectiveness his fugues beat anything coming from the Jadassohn and +Hauptmann pupils. + +With the re-entry of Walther and his proposal as a member of the guild +by Pogner, we get another of these great phrases, half-theme, +half-accompanying figure, and then Walther's spring song. He describes +how, sitting by the hearth in winter, he first learnt the art of +minstrelsy from reading "das alte Buch" of the greatest of minstrels, +Walther von der Vogelweide; then when the winter had passed he heard +the birds in the green trees singing the selfsame song. Thematically +this is much richer than the spring-song in, for instance, the +_Valkyrie_, and for the best of reasons--that in the _Valkyrie_ is +incidental, part of a long duet woven from quite other material, while +that in the _Mastersingers_ is itself the material of a large portion +of the opera. The tune of the first stanza in the _Valkyrie_ is only +referred to once again throughout the work; and by far the most +expressive part is made out of a love-theme previously heard. In the +_Mastersingers_ song there is subject-matter enough to make a whole +opera. From this point it is impossible to quote themes--they are far +too long. In this respect a writer on music is at a disadvantage with +a writer on literature; the latter can cite long passages to establish +a case or illustrate his meaning; the unfortunate musical writer must +refer his readers to scores, and it is inconvenient to sit amidst a +pile of these--and Wagner's are the longest and weightiest in +existence--and dive now here, now there, to follow the author without +danger of mistaking him. The most important passage in Walther's song +begins at bar 13 (counting from the beginning of the nine-eight +measure); and it is developed in as masterly a fashion as any of the +earlier subjects, only now the style is symphonic, in the Viennese +way, as the others were contrapuntal. The whole thing is full of the +yearning spirit of spring; and, not at all strangely, bears a marked +family likeness to Siegfried's song about his mother in the _Ring_. +Throughout the deliberations of the masters the music remains at a +high level: there are no _longueurs_; dry recitative and barren +attempts to treat prose poetically alike are absent. Kothner's +delivery of the rules of the art are good-natured fun; Wagner, with +his parody of eighteenth-century mannerisms, laughing at the wiseacres +who wished to tie down modern musicians to the procedure of their +forbears. Walther's trial song, with its gorgeous instrumentation, and +the rush of the winds of March through budding woods, is even finer +than the first; and it contains passages which are employed with +exquisite effect in the next Act. There occurs a deal of what can only +be called musical horseplay as Beckmesser, the pedant type, hidden +behind a curtain, marks Walther's "mistakes"; then comes the only +phrase (_d_) in the opera which can be said to be definitely associated +with Hans Sachs. It stands first for Sachs' honest longing for the +_new_; and afterwards it is made to express the longing in his soul +for other things. With the consummate craftsmanship Wagner possessed +at this period he adds to the score the utterance of the masters' +disapproval, of Sachs' approval, of Beckmesser's pedantic +maliciousness, of the riotous fooling of the apprentices, until we +have them all hard at work united in accompanying Walther's song in +what is nothing more nor less than a grand operatic finale. The thing +is justified theatrically, so to speak, rather than truly +dramatically; for though the masters manifest dissatisfaction by their +ejaculations, and the 'prentices, seeing the way the wind blows, get +out of hand, and chant their scoffing song in the most uproarious +fashion, Walther, inspired by a sense that he is right and a +determination not to be put down, continues his song to the end. Then +he proudly quits the room and the rest follow in confusion, leaving +Sachs for a moment to show his vexation; then the curtain drops. + + +III + +The music of this Act is of the highest order of beauty and never +falls to the level of mere prettiness; from the first note to the +last it is vigorous, sturdy. The combination of strength with delicacy +and gentleness is extraordinary: one feels that the reserve of this +strength behind it all must be unlimited. The orchestration is like +the music: it is always exactly appropriate to the music. One +characteristic of the themes should be noted: with the solitary +exception of that expressive of the deep longing in the heart of Sachs +(_d_) all are singable. Even the burgher motive can be sung and is +sung. When we consider the other operas we perceive that this is by no +means always the case. The _Dutchman's_ motive is not so much sung as +jodelled by Senta; the Montsalvat music is rather orchestral than +vocal; all the motives in _Tristan_ are either orchestral or +declamatory. In saying this I do not at all underrate the other +operas: simply I wish to point out the very marked difference in the +quality of the music. The _Mastersingers_ is a long song, and the +first act the first verse of it. Such a profusion of melodies has +never been scattered over one act of an opera--not songs simply +pleasing to the ear, but constituting subjects surcharged with feeling +and capable of unfolding, as the opera goes on, into fresh forms of +the rarest beauty and splendour. We cannot lay our finger on a +superfluous bar, not one that can be cut without badly injuring the +whole work. This criticism applies to the other two acts. As new +material is introduced it is all singable; though harmonious effects +are freely used they are all there to enforce the melody. The swan, or +river, phrase in _Lohengrin_ is, of course, purely an effect of +harmony; but in this glorification of song Wagner seemed determined to +trust entirely to song and use his harmonic resources and +devices--which were inexhaustible--another day. Only once does he +resort to them: in the third act when Walther tells Sachs he has had a +lovely dream, by a single unexpected chord he gets the dream +atmosphere he wanted. At the same time the harmonies throughout are +freer, more daring, than they are even in _Tristan_. They are managed +with consummate mastery, the sharp collisions of the many winding +voices of the orchestra occurring infallibly in precisely the right +place. As I have said, not Bach himself managed a score of many parts +with finer mastery, nor gives one a more satisfying sense of complete +security; not Bach, nor Handel, nor Mozart was a greater +contrapuntist; instructively, instinctively, he knew the way his +stream of music was going, and so mighty a craftsman had he grown that +to achieve new harmonies and harmonic progressions by the interweaving +of many melodies, each individual and expressive, seems almost like +child's-play to him. But the old saying, easy reading means hard +writing, is true in the case of the _Mastersingers_. We have only to +glance at Wagner's letters to see the labour all his later works cost +him, and his incessant complaints about the state of his nerves are +significant. The writing of the _Mastersingers_ was spread over six +years. It does not matter whether it was written easily or with +difficulty--the marvel is that it was written at all. + + +IV + +The first act is the song of spring, the second one of a beauteous +summer night. The night slowly falls, and lights are seen at the +windows of the gabled houses. The apprentices put up the shutters of +the shops and bar the doors. We have old Nuremberg before our eyes; by +Sachs' door is the inevitable elder-tree, by Pogner's the just as +inevitable lime; and as surely as Schumann caught the scent of flowers +from a piece of Chopin's, do we catch the fragrance of those trees in +Wagner's music. The 'prentices, hard at work, merrily chant +"Midsummer's Eve" ("Johannestag"--not a precise translation), and +banter David concerning that very serious matter, his courtship of +Magdalena, the accompaniment being spun largely from the midsummer +theme of the first act. The atmosphere, sweet, clear, redolent of the +old world, and seeming to sparkle with excitement about the coming +joys of the morrow, is first created by a prelude scarce thirty bars +long. Through more than half of this section we get shakes and +arpeggios on one (technical) discord (_e_), with snatches of the +midsummer theme, and the exhilaration of the eve of a holiday given to +us in this very simplest of ways shows the miracle worker in his +happiest mood. Like the opening of the _Rhinegold_, this brief prelude +is an exemplification of Wagner's advice to young composers--never +travel out of the key you are in if you can say in it what you have to +say. The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal--in fact, the +whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the +note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But +presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is +Beckmesser or no one. Dramatically the scene is of the lightest, but +Wagner seizes the opportunity to paint a musical picture of Nuremberg +as Pogner holds forth on the festivities arranged for the morrow; +never did he give us anything more delightful than this picture of a +mediæval city, anything more beautifully or more fully charged with +the sense of the past. They go in, and shortly Sachs comes out; he +tells David to arrange his tools and get away to bed, and sits down, +intending to work outside. The hammering motive (_f_) sounds out +vigorously for a couple of minutes; but Sachs is already dreaming of +Walther's song, and presently we get a phrase of it in a shape of +superb beauty--the fifty times distilled essence of spring is in +it--then another bit of it is taken and used as an accompaniment with +most enchanting effect: one feels the cool night breeze touching +Sachs' cheek, and, as in the introduction, one scents the aroma of +lime and elder-- + + "The elder scent floats round me; so mild, so rich it falls, + Its sweetness weighs upon me; words from my heart it calls...." + +With its gently rocking motion and the tremolando in the bass it is as +beautiful in its way as the opening scene, already discussed, of the +second Act of _Tristan_--the picture of the brook running through the +darkness from the fountain in King Mark's castle garden. Sachs +abruptly ceases, and sets to work; and the hammering phrase is heard +again, now combined with the beginning of another subject, liker than +ever to Siegfried's great song--the very harmonies as well as the +general rhythm are the same--and this subject is developed before long +into the Cobbler's song. But "and still that strain I hear"; and he +stops and dreams again over Walther's song. "Springtime's behest, +within his breast, on heart and voice there was laid," he sings; and +to music compact of sheer loveliness he praises the song, terminating +with a passage which I take to be nine bars of vocal writing as fine +as can be found in the whole of music--"The bird who sang this morn." + +Eva steals out from her father's door, and at once the dramatic motive +of the action deepens. We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the +night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's +heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element +comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether +there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and +she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love. +Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the +other shaped from a fragment of Walther's first song; these two are +gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in +expressiveness, until Eva's secret is no secret from the audience, +though Sachs himself is supposed not to be at first quite sure about +it. When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase +(_d_), and its full significance is brought out. The real Hans Sachs, +we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young +girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily. That, obviously, was +too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera--every one would +have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been +pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the +libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this: that Wagner +created a soul for _his_ Sachs. Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending +of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the +haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for +his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a +pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and +disastrous cad. In the trial scene he has already half divined +Walther's object, and the theme (_d_) in its application hints not +only at his longing to grasp "the new" in Walther's song, but also his +longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to +renounce her in favour of the younger suitor. Towards the end of the +opera, when Sachs brings the young pair together he says (to music +quoted from _Tristan_) he would not play the part of King Mark and +thus invite his Isolda to find a Tristan. I ask the reader to compare +this phrase with one form of the first love-theme in _Tristan_ (_g_). +The essential notes are the same; but as a melody is made to sound +another and different thing by varying the harmonies, there is in the +Sachs phrase a touch of sadness, nearly hopelessness, but no hint of +it in the _Tristan_ form. The true meaning is not obvious when it +first occurs: Sachs seems simply to be the appreciator of true art and +to be standing up for the true artist Walther against the barren +pedant Beckmesser. + +And I beg leave here to make a digression. I have spoken of Wagner's +obsession by the notion that he could by his union of drama, music, +pictorial art, etc., make his work clear enough to be understood at a +first performance: in his letters he referred to a plan for giving the +_Ring_ only once and then burning the theatre and the score--he did +not add the composer and the artists. Unfortunately this view has been +taken as a tenable one by good critics, and it has been argued +seriously that such a phrase as (_d_) is meaningless, because its +significance becomes apparent only in the second act. No great work of +art can be seen at one glance--least of all Wagner's. If a painter +puts before us a picture, say, of Perseus and Andromeda, we know at +any rate what it is about; and there is no difficulty in understanding +a Madonna. But, with the exception of the _Dutchman_, Wagner reshaped +all his subjects so that, for instance, an acquaintance with the +Nibelung legends is rather a hindrance than a help to a swift +understanding of the _Ring_. At first his King Mark is a puzzle to +those who know the Arthurian legends; and in the same way, if the +Sachs of history is confounded with Wagner's Sachs, we are at once +utterly at sea. But a knowledge of Wagner's Sachs can scarcely be +acquired from the words alone: more is told us in the music than in +the words; and before we can grasp the drama as well as Wagner's use +of phrases we must hear the opera many, many times. I deny that this +is an illegitimate mode of appeal to an audience; I deny that the +indispensability of knowing an opera thoroughly before you judge it is +to imply that it is less than a very great work of art; I affirm that +the nobler, profounder, more beautiful a work of art, the more +necessary it is to be able to look at every passage with a full +consciousness of all that is to come after, as well as of what has +gone before. Wagner himself was compact of contradictions, and so, +while trying to create his operas in such fashion that a single +performance would suffice to reveal their splendour, he took the +precaution to write detailed explanations which might serve the same +purpose as many previous performances; and he also wrote explanations +of Beethoven's symphonies. + +Throughout this long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never +lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding +us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance +is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly +spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser. +A scene of such length, constructed on such a plan, could have been +carried through by no other composer than Wagner--the sweetness, +variety and dramatic strength and truth are Wagner at his ripest and +best. After Eva's heart has been opened to us he takes up (_d_), and +though Sachs is a little grumpy--the effort to resign Eva inevitably +though insensibly showing itself--we learn all about him and share +his secret, too, in a very short while. Then Magdalena calls Eva and +tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her +place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera. +Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin +to one of the greatest in _Euryanthe_. As we get on we find it harder +to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing. The gentle +evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning +the masters who compose and sing only by rule--and, by the way, what +would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and +sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?--works +himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise +is heard in the distance, the watchman's cow-horn. A minute's silence, +and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music--expressive of the +love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote +past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk +to look after their lights and fires: it is ten o'clock (late hours) +in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs. Sachs has +heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off +disaster in one shape at any rate: he places a light so that they +cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but +that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to +perform his serenade. From this point Wagner, without ever ceasing to +be the consummate artist or allowing the old-world atmosphere to +weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out +for a holiday. He begins his splendid song, a parable: Eve was well +enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the +Lord sent a shoemaker to save her. The words are in the very spirit of +the Middle Ages: a materialistic, naïve, literal handling of spiritual +things; but the most devout of believers can find no cause of offence. +The song opens, as I have mentioned, in the rhythm (4-4 instead of +3-4) of the Sword scene, the harmonies being practically the same. The +tune is one of Wagner's finest: indeed, if we did not know what he +could do, if we could not hear the opera once in a while, we should +refuse to believe that such dignity and beauty of utterance could be +kept up alongside of the grave old cobbler's humorous bedevilment. +Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva--mistaking Magdalena at the window in +Eva's dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser's new +shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the +insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for +every mistake. Before this is arranged there is a long altercation, +and as the heat of the men's temper dies down that sweet love melody +of the old world creeps in again; but then the farce commences. +Beckmesser's song is almost outrageous caricature; the parody of the +academics of Wagner's day who made no mistakes from the academic point +of view, and yet could write nothing that sounded right, is +excruciatingly funny; then David, under the impression that the chief +of the academics is serenading Magdalena, comes out, goes in to fetch +a stick, comes out again armed, and sets to work with it upon +Beckmesser; the good burghers have been annoyed by Beckmesser's +caterwauling and Sachs' hammering; out they come to keep their streets +in order; and the tumult begins in serious earnest. Every one hits at +every one else, as Irishmen hit, it is said, at Donnybrook Fair; +Beckmesser is sadly injured; Sachs kicks David indoors, Eva and +Magdalena are got in to Pogner's; Sachs gets Walther in with him also; +the row dies down. No one save Sachs and David knows how it started; +no one knows why it ends. It is--allowing for the lapse of four +centuries--rather like a cab accident in London or any other great +city: ladies in night attire look out of windows, and, seeing their +husbands engaged in deadly warfare, in the very spirit of Miss Miggs +begin to empty pails of cold water over the combatants +indiscriminately. Apparently this cools the ardour of everybody. One +by one the crowd makes for shelter; the watchman's horn is heard a few +streets away; and when he arrives with his lantern and stick a few +minutes later the alley and platz are deserted. The moon shines out on +the lovely scene; the old man chants his call--it is eleven of the +night; all the world should be in bed; all the lights and fires should +be out; he goes off, leaving us the wondrous picture of old Nuremberg +sleeping in the heart of old Germany; and the curtain slowly falls. A +very ineffective "curtain" it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in +the 'sixties, and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; +but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of +the dramatic works of the world. + +It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a +scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now. I have +referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested +throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this +mastery. Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and +also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with +nobility. Sachs' song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its +joviality we feel the greatness of the man--a man so great in +character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving +banners are needed to make him impressive: he remains, even while he +works at his last and sings a sort of club-dinner song, the simple +cobbler-poet, great by reason of his sincerity and his artist-soul. +The street scrimmage is the most realistic thing of the sort ever +attempted, not to say achieved. It is customary to describe the music +as a fugue, and, if that is so, no more unfugue-like fugue was ever +penned. It begins with a parody of a fugue, the answer being announced +before the subject--that is, what purports to be the answer occurs a +fifth instead of a fourth below; then what purports to be the subject +is re-announced one tone above its first statement, and answered, as +before, a fifth below. Then the melody of Beckmesser's grotesque is +brought in and treated contrapuntally, with what theorists call free +imitation in the accompaniment. Fugue, real or tonal, there is none. + + +V + +This midsummer night's orgy over, we next have midsummer day. The +curtain rises; the early morning sun shines through the windows of +Sachs' house; Sachs sits there, a book on his knees, but dreaming, not +reading. But before the rising of the curtain there is a prelude to +tell us of his musings. When we know the opera this piece is easy +enough to follow. He thinks over the events of the past night, and +passes through thought into dream, getting clean away from earth into +a serener air--and coming slowly back to earth again. Structurally +this piece is on the same plan as others of the preludes--that of the +third act of _Tannhäuser_, for example. It is nonsense to say the +piece is meaningless because it cannot be fully grasped at a first +hearing: I have already spoken of the fallacy involved in that +contention--the fallacy that a work of art should be completely +comprehensible at a first hearing. It is equally nonsensical to decry +the "literary" method of composition: that method was the method of at +least two others of the great composers, Haydn and Beethoven, who +"worked to a story." In fact, all these unreasonable reasoners who +tell us these fine incontrovertible pieces of absurdity place +themselves on the same level as the pundits who pointed out that +because Wagner used the piano when composing, therefore he could not +compose--forgetting Haydn's explicit statement that he always composed +at the piano; forgetting how Mozart spent hours and days at the piano +in doing the creative work of a new opera; forgetting that Beethoven +used the piano even when he could no longer hear it (see Schindler's +or Ries' account of the composition of the "Appassionata" sonata). As +a mere piece of music, a succession of tones and combinations of +tones, the rare quality of this prelude cannot but be felt; and though +we may not at once grasp its full significance, no one can miss the +sequence of the emotions expressed--the grave reflection of the +opening, the hymn-like succeeding passage, the gradual mounting of the +music into a beauteous, calm morning air, some realm of ecstatic peace +far above the clouds, the gradual return to the mood of the opening. +When we do know what it is all about the expression of the different +stages of feeling is felt to be more precise--that is all. + +The prelude prepares for Sachs' monologue, a profound thing, and one +moreover entirely new--had Shakespeare been a musician he might have +done something like it. Then David the Irresponsible enters, and we +get some more of Wagner's exquisite fooling; next we have Walther with +his "dream," out of which the Prize-song is made. This is a long +scene--perhaps a little too long--for Wagner seems to have been +determined that if the audience did not feel the beauty of his melody +it should not be for want of hearing it often enough. As Walther +sings Sachs takes it down in tablature, calling out to him what +sections are next required. Sachs then declares that this is indeed a +master-song, and will win Walther the prize he so much desires; he and +Walther go off to attire themselves for the contest, and Beckmesser +limps in. In dumb show he describes his aches and pains and shows how +he is thinking of his thrashing of the night before; and what he does +not say the orchestra says very plainly for him. There is far too much +of it--for English tastes, at any rate--before he is alarmed by +discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs' handwriting. He +snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great +ceremony, and there is a row--Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and +suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other. Let +me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner's stage +craftsmanship at its best. There is nothing conventional in the way +Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser his chance: what more +natural than that they should go to prepare themselves? Nor is the +finding of the manuscript one of those things that give people who +don't like opera cause to blaspheme: Sachs simply left it on the table +to dry until he returned for it. Compare this scene with that in +Verdi's _Falstaff_, where that fat hero, hiding behind a screen, must +be supposed not to hear an elaborate ensemble number sung by the other +characters--an instance which one might presume to be intended to make +the "aside" so ridiculous that no one would ever dare to use it again. +Wagner, for the time, at any rate, had ceased to make demands on the +credulity of his audiences or their meek acceptance of a preposterous +convention. The business is kept up too long, as I have just +confessed; and this is perhaps explained by Wagner's evident desire to +make fun of the men who for years had called him a charlatan, a bad +musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his +living. Still, it is a small blot on a big opera. The music for such +incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the +cases of a _tour de force_. But even its inferiority is made to serve +a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of +Eva and her conversation with Sachs. Beckmesser has gone away joyfully +with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song +by Sachs--who has told him he can do what he likes with it--and +revealing the fact that, despite all his boasting, in his heart he +knows the cobbler to be immeasurably his superior. In music hardly to +be matched for sensuous beauty Eva's trembling perturbation and hopes +and fears are exquisitely suggested; then with the arrival of Walther, +and also of Magdalena and David, we get a little more fooling, +followed by one of Wagner's loveliest and most amazing feats, the +quintet. If only for one reason it is amazing. Only a few years before +the notes were set down, and certainly only a year or two before the +thing was planned in the libretto, he had vehemently declared, in +essays and letters, that never again would he compose anything in the +operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; henceforth +music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first +opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to +his first act--which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to +his second act--which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in +the middle of his third act--which according to his own theories at +any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came +to compose _Tristan_ he discovered he had gone far beyond his +theories. The justification for the quintet is its beauty and the fact +that it finds expression for the feeling of the moment. All the same, +I have heard it encored more than once; and an encore in the middle of +the act of a Wagner music-drama, or even music-comedy, is almost +inconceivable. + + +VI + +The two pairs, Walther and Eva, and David and Magdalena, having been +joined together, and David having been freed from his 'prentice +servitude by a hearty box on the ear, the quintet having been sung and +(as just remarked) sometimes encored, Wagner gathers himself together +for a gigantic scene as characteristic of his genius as anything he +conceived: no one, indeed, but Wagner could have done or would have +thought of attempting such a scene. He has shown us the masters of +Nuremberg in conclave, the apprentices romping and joking, the crowd +in the street losing its head; and how he gives us a picture of the +town on a fête-day, with the trade-guilds marching to the +singing-contest. The tailors, the shoemakers, the bakers and the +butchers all file past, chanting the merits of their various callings, +finally gathering on the meadow outside the town to await the arrival +of the chief burghers. It is a picture, not a dramatic scene, and to +judge only from the text might suggest the _Rienzi_ way of planning +things. It is not, however, a spectacle in the sense in which we apply +that word to some of the _Rienzi_ scenes; there is nothing pompous +about it, no recourse is made to gorgeous costumes. The artisans march +past in their holiday clothes, each guild bearing its banner; the +banners wave in the bright sunlight, and there is plenty of colour as +well as of bustle and gaiety; but all is homely in style--there is not +a noble person in the crowd--and the thing is carried through by the +vividly imagined music, the energy and sparkle of it, the positive +splendour of the orchestration. The various guild-choruses are full of +humour, the many ridiculous things being saved from lapsing into mere +horseplay and nonsense by the endless series of beautiful tunes. This +part of the business ends with a waltz which shows that Wagner might, +had he chosen, have been the finest writer of dance-music in Europe, +and driven the Strausses and the rest from the field. + +The signal is given of the masters' approach, and as Sachs comes on +the whole crowd presses to greet him with a setting of his own song to +Martin Luther. The transition from the jollity of the dancing to the +solemnity, nay, sublimity, of this chorus is managed with perfect +deftness: there is no incongruity. It is this song that passed through +Sachs' brain when we found him absorbed in meditation at the beginning +of the act. The poem--written by the historical Sachs--is itself +beautiful, and Wagner has made it immortal; only he at his ripest and +best could combine in an opera-chorus such strength with such +sweetness, combine the directness of a part-song with the free play of +parts, with never a touch of formalism. It must be held to be one of +the most superb things in an opera which is as nearly perfect as ever +opera is likely to be. + +This over, we are gradually prepared for the ridiculous and +preposterous again. Beckmesser is to make his bid for Eva's hand with +what he supposes to be a song by Sachs; and to an accompaniment of +music which, lively and graceful enough, is purposely of no very +distinctive character. The preparations are made. By the time he +mounts the heap of turf to address his audience we are ready for him. +Of course he makes a fine ass of himself. He has not had time to +memorise the poem of the song, and with extravagant fun Wagner makes +him change the poetical and serious words into words of most ludicrous +significance. Walther's melody he has not got hold of at all, and in a +state of intense nervousness tries to fit the words to the burlesque +tune of his previous night's serenade. The accents all fall in the +wrong place; and as he stumbles miserably along the crowd begins to +titter. Wagner of course was parodying and satirising the pedants of +his own day, especially the composers of psalms who could not set a +straightforward Bible sentence without making nonsense of it. Readers +acquainted with the ordinary musical setting of a portion of the +Church of England service, or the average organist's anthem, will know +what I mean: the average organist seems to consider it a point of +artistry, if not indeed of honour, to accentuate the words so as to +leave the meaning as little intelligible as possible; and in many +cases--I have some before me now--he contrives to make them +nonsensical. It was this sort of thing, perpetrated by the very men +who denied him any musical gift, that Wagner held up to derision in +Beckmesser's song. The tittering swells into a roar, and at last +Beckmesser, cursing Sachs for a deceiver and false friend, flies. With +that, fooling ends. To music of a rare sweet gravity Sachs invites the +"volk" to hearken to the song when given by the man who composed it. +Walther steps up and sings; as he goes on the people again make +themselves heard, but to praise, not to deride; towards the finish +their voices form a choral accompaniment, and we have the counterpart +to the finale of the first act. Walther wins the day and Eva; and, +slightly against his will, he is made a Master. There is an address +from Sachs, in which he exhorts Walther and all present not to despise +art, but to honour it as being (for this is what his speech amounts +to) the heart's blood of national life. Preachments are not usually +stimulating, but this one is mercifully brief, and is accompanied by +fine, melodious strains. With its contrapuntal weaving it leads to +the final chorus, and also it puts Sachs back again into the position +from which the importance of Walther's song has thrust him: it is a +last reminder that the opera is a glorification of song, and that the +masters have a sacred trust--to guard song pedantry and commercialism. +The work closes with a grand chorus made up of familiar music, a +glorious blaze and riot of orchestral and choral colour. + + +VII + +The second section of this chapter contains what I have to say by way +of summing up. Let me repeat that the _Mastersingers_ is notable for +the endless flow of beautiful melodies, neither broken and scrappy +nor, on the other hand, approaching monotony: there is infinite +variety combined with magnificent breadth; for the nobility hidden +under homeliness--a characteristic most marked in Sachs' music; for +miraculous colouring now pitched in a low and tender key, now blazing +as in the last finale; for the picture of Nuremberg in the old time, +and for the vigour and fun with which the old life is depicted. It is +Wagner's one cheerful opera, and from some points of view, perhaps, +his most perfect; nowhere else did he try to keep on a high and even +level of pure song for so long; it does not strain our nerves, and +will bear hearing perhaps more frequently than anything else he wrote. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +KING LUDWIG + + +In resuming Wagner's biography we may conveniently take it up after +the completion of _Tristan_ in August, 1859. I summarised the events +leading up to his beginning on the _Mastersingers_; but it is +necessary to go over some of the ground in a little more detail to +show in what a terrible plight Wagner had been landed when King Ludwig +II of Bavaria sent for him. He was bankrupt financially, in health and +in hope. Like the nose of his boyish hero, everything turned to dust +the moment he touched it. Concerts in Paris nearly brought utter +ruin--would have brought utter ruin had not a woman friend and admirer +come to the rescue. He gained no money by his concert tour until, as +he said, he got to St. Petersburg, and there the amount cannot have +been stupendous. He laboured with brain, heart and hand to give the +world masterpieces; the world responded by not responding at all--by +taking absolutely no notice. In Paris he made many valuable friends, +but they were useless to him for the realisation of his projects. They +might help him from moment to moment, and did help him to remain alive +and to avert calamities: a secure and peaceful living they could not +guarantee him: they could not assist him in getting his works +properly performed, or performed at all. I have already discussed the +mistaken policy, on his part, of writing so much about himself, and +the futility of his German friends taking up the pen on his behalf. +The friends meant well, and there was nothing else they could do; but +at the time their efforts resulted in nothing. He published the words +of the _Mastersingers_ and of the _Ring_, and the consequence was only +that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity +as the second to music. It is hard to say who did him the greatest +amount of harm--his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies +on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days. +Whatever was done for him, whatever he did for himself, whatever was +done against him, it seemed all one: he walked steadily on into the +thickest of grimy fogs. By romping over Europe like any itinerant +conductor of this day, he might earn an uncertain livelihood: as for +any prospect of getting on with his _Mastersingers_, his _Ring_ and a +score of other plans bubbling in his head, that was a receding +prospect indeed: every year, every month, made the prospect still more +remote. His music was either misunderstood or disliked: certainly the +man's writings and the writings of his friends resulted in _him_ being +disliked. When he settled in Vienna after the triumphs of his earlier +operas he speedily discovered this sad truth, but did not discover the +reason why. His life had been a long tragedy, and with this collapse +of his Vienna hopes he seemed to touch the lowest depths. + +So he got away from Vienna, and one day had a visitor. This gentleman +said, in effect, that King Ludwig II had just ascended the throne, and +would be glad of a call. Instantly the grimy fog cleared away; all was +splendid sunshine: in that sunshine Richard was henceforth to bask and +the fruits of his genius were to ripen. He went to Munich, and there +were prompt results. In 1865 _Tristan_ was (at last) produced; he was +enabled to make a new start on the _Mastersingers_, which was +eventually produced in Munich in 1868. But in Munich, as elsewhere, +the inevitable occurred. Wagner suddenly became the "favourite," quite +as in mediæval times, of a not very popular king, one of a line noted +for mental and moral deficiency; and, without consulting any of the +powers that had ruled for a long time in Bavaria, in his mad +enthusiasm he set about "reforming" everything. Apparently he wanted +within twenty-four hours to set up a Saxon Utopia in the midst of a +people who hated the Saxons. He wanted to establish a new opera-house, +where perfect artists were to give perfect performances for audiences +that did not pretend to be perfect. As such performances could not +possibly pay, the audiences, besides putting down the price of +admittance, had, as taxpayers, to make good the deficits. King Ludwig +was supposed to do it; but where on earth was Ludwig's money to come +from if not out of the taxpayers' pockets? Then there was to be +founded a genuine school of music--an excellent scheme, but one, +again, which could not possibly be profitable, or for some time earn +enough to cover its expenses. Who was to pay?--of course King Ludwig: +that is, the taxpayers. And Wagner was not only known (with absolute +certainty) to wish to divert from the pockets of "placemen" funds they +had learnt to consider their perquisites, with a view of turning +Munich into a musical paradise on earth: it seemed to many that he was +gaining such an ascendancy over the feeble mind and will of the king +that shortly he would be dictator of the country. That view was not +well-founded: Wagner, dreamer though he was, had a strong practical +vein in his character: if he saw that one of his dreams could be +realised he realised it at the first opportunity; if he saw it could +not be realised he explained it in an article and left others to make +the first effort at realisation. The man who created Bayreuth was not +the man to imagine altogether vainly that he could, per favour of a +king, whom he must have known to be utterly weak, turn some millions +of citizens and villagers into an Utopian nation of art-lovers and so +on. But hatred surrounded him everywhere; the machinery of the state +came early to a standstill, and, finally, the king had to ask him to +withdraw for a longer or shorter while. + +This is the plain truth of an affair concerning which there has been +an immense amount of lying on both sides. The scandals about the +personal relations of the king and Wagner I leave to the vampires; as +for the gentry who will have it that Wagner was "persecuted" out of +Munich by Jews, Christians, journalists and bank-managers, I leave +them to anybody who likes to take them up. That Wagner had to quit +Munich was a sad thing in his life--a very sorrow's crown of sorrow; +and it was a bad thing for German music. It put back the clock many +years. But, sad though it was for Wagner, in the long run it proved +good for him. He would have composed little more in such a city--a +city so misgoverned and misguided as Munich: his days would have been +filled with bitterness, his nerves would have been quickly shattered +by intrigues. He was now amply provided for; a villa--the celebrated +"Triebschen"--was taken for him on the shores of Lucerne, and here he +settled and remained for some years. Here he finished the _Ring_ and +planned Bayreuth. + +Another thing which contributed to his unpopularity was his relations +with his own and another man's wife. Hans von Bülow, his pupil, had +married Liszt's daughter Cosima: that lady became infatuated with +Wagner, and Wagner with her, and they virtually eloped together. +Minna's cause was eagerly taken up by musicians, operatic people +generally, and journalists, though none of them cared a rap about +Minna. The most scandalous stories were circulated, and Wagner came to +be thought not only a charlatan cadger living on the State funds, but +one who used those funds to satisfy his carnal and other appetites. +His silk dressing-gowns, his gorgeous apartments, his sybarite +feastings, were the common talk of the newspapers: while he was +slaving, as the saying goes, twenty-six hours out of twenty-four, the +common fancy was taught to picture him as taking his ease in +unheard-of luxury. + +These matters have nearly all been indirectly dealt with already, and +as we come to review the situation, this is what we find. Minna was an +impossible wife for such a man: she never could understand why he +could not have remained quietly at his post in Dresden, indifferent to +good or bad opera representations, and unambitious concerning the +proper artistic production of his own works. When calamity followed +calamity, to her all the trouble seemed due to Richard's +pig-headedness; and she would at once have grown cheerful and +good-natured had he burned his finished and unfinished scores and +written "something popular." She was, I say, impossible. Cosima, for +her part, found Bülow impossible. A splendid character in many ways, +he was as wayward and quarrelsome a man as has lived. So Richard and +Minna drifted apart, and Bülow and Cosima drifted apart, and in the +end Richard and Cosima drifted together. The censures that still are +passed at times on their conduct are hypocritical and grotesque. The +people who pass them are usually people who think that the Ten +Commandments were made only to be observed by the poorer classes, or +by other people, not themselves, and are willing enough to excuse +offences against the marriage laws when they are committed by folks of +exalted social position. The whole truth about the Richard-Cosima +affair will evidently never be known; no one has told; three of the +four concerned have passed away; and those writers to-day who pretend +to know most are precisely those whom I suspect of knowing least. + +The charge of living in luxurious surroundings is well enough +founded--Wagner undoubtedly did love them: he said so himself. What +did the luxury amount to? A few carpets, chairs, a silk dressing-gown, +and sufficient to eat and drink! He certainly worked hard enough for +them and had a right to them. It is odd to think that most of those +who brought these charges against him themselves grasped at as much +luxury as they could get: had King Ludwig spent his money on _them_ +there would have been no objections raised, and doubtless they would +have given us _Rings_ and _Mastersingers_. This must be the judgment +of every sane person. + +However, Wagner settled peacefully at Triebschen, and remained there +until the Bayreuth idea took solid and visible shape. He completed the +_Mastersingers_ and _Siegfried_, and made progress with the _Dusk of +the Gods_. When Minna died in 1868 he immediately married Cosima. The +idea of what ultimately became Bayreuth took shape. Bayreuth was first +thought of for a very prosaic reason. The town theatre at that time +possessed the largest stage in Germany, and in many respects was far +ahead of every other German theatre, and this drew the attention of +Wagner and his friends to the spot. Various causes combined to make +the idea of giving the first performances of the _Ring_ in this +theatre an utter impracticability, and Wagner reverted to his old pet +idea of building a theatre for himself. An eminent architect, +Gottfried Semper, cheerfully helped at planning a building which +should unite the utmost artistic usefulness with the smallest possible +expense. The house is long out-of-date, but in the 'seventies it +seemed a marvel. The seats were so arranged that every one commanded, +theoretically, the same view of the stage; the stage was fitted with +the most modern machinery, lights and so on. The orchestra was sunk, +so that the movements of the conductor and his fiddlers should not +distract the attention of the audience; the auditorium was darkened, +so that everything happening on the stage could be seen with the +greatest possible clearness. When the good burghers of a decaying +mediæval town found what was going to happen to them they rejoiced, +for they foresaw invasions of millions of aliens who would not hurt +them but would pay out handsomely, and renew the days of the town's +prosperity. Sites were granted free of cost, both for Wagner's own +house--Villa Wahnfried--and the Festival Theatre. When the foundation +of the latter was laid, brass bands and processions took an important +part in the proceedings. + +From the very start the enterprise was looked on as a commercial one. +Wagner's house was built, but work at the theatre had soon to be +stopped for want of money. Numerous Wagner societies were started to +raise it; concerts innumerable were given with the same object; the +composer himself laboured incessantly; and eventually it was possible +to resume building. But the very means, or some of the means, adopted +to raise money aroused fierce antagonism amongst the musicians who +did not believe in Wagner, or had been attacked by him and his +disciples, and put into their hands a weapon of counter-attack. +"Begging" was a term freely employed; and a thousand newspapers were +found willing--nay, anxious--to insinuate or to state boldly that the +money was badly needed to enable the composer to live on a sumptuous +scale. When, in the summer of 1876, the first cycle of the _Ring_ was +given, no artistic undertaking could have made a worse start. People +did not know what they were asked to see and to hear; they did know +that all these scandalous rumours had been flying about for years, +that the "entertainment" was not ordinary opera, that the opening of +Bayreuth was to mark the beginning of a millennium--a new moral, +religious, political and goodness knows what sort of era. Bayreuth +from the first had attracted a very disagreeable set of persons, men +whom fathers would not allow to speak to their daughters--or to their +sons. Wagner himself had invited ridicule by claiming that his theatre +was not to be a mere opera-house, but, as he told Sir Charles Hallé, +the centre of the intellectual and artistic world. "A noble ambition!" +scornfully replied the pianist. In a word, nothing was done to +conciliate; everything was done to create resentment and opposition. +King Ludwig's unpopularity must not be forgotten. Not Bavarians only, +but all the German-speaking peoples, knew Bavarian national finances +to be in a deplorable, desperate condition, and it seemed to them +scandalous that State funds should be used--as, rightly or wrongly, +was thought--for Ludwig's own gross, unspeakable pleasures. While the +Germans were thus alienated, Wagner immediately after 1871 had stirred +up the wrath of the French by speaking of the German army as the +"world-conquerors"; he had angered the English musicians by the many +remarks concerning them uttered by or attributed to him after his +exploits with the Philharmonic society. He had written against the +Jews, and though their finest musicians were with him, the bulk were +against him. + +That the performances were in many respects admirable, indeed without +any precedent, we are bound to believe. The artists, great and little, +had toiled for months to attain perfection. Most of the orchestra, +headed by Wilhelmj, had slaved without payment that there might be no +deficiencies in their department. The stage machinery, crude though it +seems to us nowadays when we read of it, was on all sides reckoned +marvellous. Interminable rehearsals had been held, Wagner supervising +them all. In the end, even the anti-Wagnerites who went to curse, +admitted that unheard-of results had been achieved: they would not +give in about the music, which remained, in their crass ears, "without +form or melody"; and we may therefore the more readily accept their +testimony as to Wagner's supremacy as a musical director. The late Mr. +Joseph Bennett's reports--and he was till his last breath a violent +anti-Wagnerite--are typical: they may be read in the files of the +_Daily Telegraph_, and are well worth reading. But, alas! when those +heartless people called accountants came to add up their mysterious +sums and to put figures on the credit side and on the debit side, they +proved incontestably that an appalling deficit was the most obvious +result of the whole proceedings; and if Wagner had any doubts, the +steady inflowing tide of bills to be met must have finally convinced +him. To pay the deficit, dresses and scenery had to be sold; and for a +time, at any rate, it was clear the theatre could not open again. +Wagner, in his old age, had to commence once again giving concerts, in +London amongst other places, to raise funds. Ludwig had done much, and +dared go no further. A huge subscription was arranged, and a large +amount of money had been collected, when help came from somewhere, +whereupon the subscriptions were returned. The detractors and +slanderers who had shouted that all the money asked for in the name of +Bayreuth was really destined to pay for Wagner's and King Ludwig's own +private amusements received, if a vulgar phrase is allowable, a +violent blow in their noisy mouths. Wagner paid no further heed to +them, but went on working out his plans. The old dream referred to in +his letters to Uhlig had been realised; he had his ideal theatre, he +had given ideal performances, and he reckoned he had given the Germans +an art. And now let us see what that art was. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND 'THE RHINEGOLD' + + +I + +In the case of few artists is there an account of the creation of +their works worth serious consideration. In the colloquial as well as +the true sense of the word they are apt to be imaginative, and such a +story as Edgar Allen Poe's of the composition of the _Raven_ is not so +much imaginative as imaginary. The creative artist is usually the last +man in the world to give a veracious history of the genesis of his +creations, for the simple reason that he does not know, and, during +the later process of trying to find out, for his own private +satisfaction, he is given to invent theories--or, let us say, +hypotheses--which eventually he may come to believe pure fact. In +music the act of creation is often done in a hypnotic state. Goethe +mentions that his earlier songs were written in a state of +clairvoyance. Many much more recent poets seem to have achieved their +hugest popular successes whilst in a comatose state. Some, who also +managed to secure a success with the public, apparently conceived and +executed their mighty works in a state of hallucination--having +somehow got the idea into their heads that they were poets. Handel, +Mozart and Beethoven are three musicians who are known--if history may +be at all believed--to have composed in a hypnotic state: Handel would +sit for hours, unconscious of what went on around him; Mozart could +not be trusted with a knife at dinner--when he had a dinner; Beethoven +would pour cold water over his hands until the tenants beneath raised +violent objections. No such tales are related of Bach, of Haydn, of +Gluck, of Weber, nor of Wagner. If ever a man knew precisely what he +had been doing, even if he was not self-conscious at the moment of +doing it, that man was Wagner. He stands apart, therefore; apart from +some of the greatest composers. His case, I take it, is analogous to +that of a man who cannot remember a friend's address and thinks of it +that night in a dream: how he chances to dream he cannot tell, but he +knows what he has dreamt, and when. + +It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently +characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace +with some certainty the growth of the _Nibelung's Ring_, both drama +and music, from its birth to its final execution. The history of the +building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily +complicated and entangled matter. Some of it had to be related earlier +in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled +up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us +begin with a few dates-- + +1848. Had studied the Nibelungen saga and +sketched the plan of the whole gigantic + work much as it now stands. + +1850-51. Discusses _Siegfried's Death_ in letters + to Uhlig and Liszt. Begins the poem in + another form, which he abandons. + +1852. Writes the poem for the work practically in + its final form; privately printed the + following year. + +1853. Begins _Rhinegold_. + +1854. Completes _Rhinegold_. + Begins the _Valkyrie_, and sketches _Siegfried_ + at the same time. + +1856. Completes _Valkyrie_. + Begins composition of _Siegfried_. + Completes first and begins second act of + _Siegfried_, and interrupts it to start work + on _Tristan_. + +1859. _Tristan_ completed. + +1867. _Mastersingers_ completed. + Composition of _Siegfried_ resumed. + _Siegfried_ completed. + _Dusk of the Gods_ begun. + _Dusk of the Gods_ completed. + +1876. The _Ring_ given at Bayreuth. + +Wagner was thus occupied with the _Ring_ for fully twenty-five years. +The _Rhinegold_ followed _Lohengrin_, but there was a gap of five +years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and +during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change. +In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the +_Rhine__gold_ and the _Valkyrie_; in the first there is little of the +passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others. While composing the +_Rhinegold_ his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had +the _Rhinegold_ been a better subject for the purpose they might have +reached maturity while writing it. But there is no human element in +it, and without that Wagner could not get on. We have already seen +that he abandoned the idea of the _Mastersingers_ for years--until, in +fact, he had created a soul for Sachs: then he went ahead and gave us +a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg. In the same way, +though he wrote some fine music in the _Rhinegold_, in richness, +splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the _Valkyrie_, where +he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be +called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human. He could not +compose unless he had the double inspiration, the human soul and the +pictorial environment. If I had to select three of Wagner's works to +live with I should take the _Valkyrie_, _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_. In them we find inspiration and craftmanship in +absolute proportion; in the later dramas of the _Ring_ we shall see +how craftsmanship outran inspiration--sometimes with results that can +only be called deplorable. This matter must be reserved for discussion +until we deal with the operas separately. + +The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it +took to write--for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a +single breath--but to the nature of the subject and the very German way +in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that +subject. In Chapter X, p. 193 and onward, the reader will recollect +certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to +these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this +gigantic opera. The letter on p. 227 is most characteristic of a +German. _Siegfried's Death_ did not explain enough, so an explanation +had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second +explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state +as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the _Rhinegold_, +was written--and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set +himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on +his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just +as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas +could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in +the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate +repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The +poem--or, more properly, the four opera-books--must now be summarised, +and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over +the same ground twice, or more than twice. + + +II + +The central figure of the _Ring_, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He +is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The +luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some +mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the +hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be +rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the +minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now, +this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the +guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of +the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama +inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of +how the _dénouement_ came about, of the causes which brought it about, +which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive +attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at +all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been +arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this +sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to +hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a +violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily +abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles +to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form +the subject of three of the four dramas. + +The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into +a Ring--the _Nibelung's Ring_--gives absolute power to its possessor. +It is accursed; the curse being what I have just mentioned--that the +power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his +nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely +free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions, +could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even +Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He +makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero: +the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed +it. + +After this description of the main dramatic motive of the _Ring_, +those--if there are any now alive--who are unfamiliar with the work +may have no desire to see it, whilst those who know it may imagine +that I am purposely misrepresenting it. I beg both classes of readers +to be patient. If this were the whole _Ring_ it would indeed be a +barren, bleak and desolate affair. This is nothing more than the frame +which contains the dramas which make the _Ring_ the great work it +is--the dramas with their wealth of passion and colour, their hundred +varied emotions and scenes of love and tragedy. Before proceeding to +deal with them separately, let me again mention one point. There is +the flat contradiction between the Wotan who knows that when the +moment arrives his reign must automatically end, and the Wotan who +hopes to go on reigning by getting possession of the Ring through the +agency of a fearless hero who has struck no bargain with the powers +who are stronger than the gods. That contradiction is inherent in the +saga, and had Wagner been able to eliminate it--as he tried by diving +through the saga and to the myth behind--the very essence and +atmosphere of the drama would have been eliminated also. The idea of +predetermined destiny colours that drama throughout; the whole thing +might be the old Scandinavian way of stating a problem older than +Scandinavia, that of free-will and predestination. + + +III + +The curtain rises, and we are in the depths of the Rhine; water-nymphs +sport about; Alberich, an evil being of the river, tries in vain to +catch them. The water grows brighter with the rising of the sun, and +the Rhinegold is seen to glow on the summit of a high rock. Defeated +in his attempts to capture a nymph, Alberich scales the rock, seizes +the gold and makes off with it. The silly creatures have told him that +their innocent toy, shaped into a ring, would confer upon its +possessor power to rule the whole world, on condition that he +surrendered love; and love being something Alberich is incapable of +understanding, though he is amorous enough, he willingly pays the +price for the sake of the power--that is, the power costs him nothing. +The light-giving gold being raped, darkness falls on the river. + +The next scene is on a plateau; beyond it lies the valley of the +Rhine; further off is a mountain; light mists hover over the summit; +and, as they clear away in the early morning sunshine, a gorgeous +castle, Valhalla, gradually becomes visible. Wotan and Fricka his +wife lie in slumber. Fricka wakes first, and is startled, not to say +horrified, by the apparition. The Giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have +built the castle, and the promised payment is Freia, Fricka's sister, +whose apples all gods and goddesses must eat every day, else they will +fade and perish. Fricka tries to awaken Wotan: in his dreams he talks +of endless, omnipotent power, and of his castle, to be peopled by +heroes to fight for him against the brute forces of the earth. When he +is aroused he gazes at the building in deepest joy: _now_ his ambition +will be gratified. In vain Fricka expostulates, repeating (in homely +phrase), "What about Freia?" Wotan smiles a superior smile: he has +arranged that matter, and all will be well. + +This is the beginning of Wotan's tragedy, the huge drama of which the +others constitute the working out. From this scene to the end we are +to see Wotan gradually forced into a corner. He has to learn by slow +degrees that you cannot have anything without paying the price. It is +in vain he argues with Fricka. She stands for law--inexorable law. She +seems a disagreeable woman, and it would be much more pleasant for +everybody concerned if she could be induced to hold her tongue and let +things take their course. So is what we call the law of gravitation a +disagreeable thing; all the same, we know that if we fall off a +house-roof we shall break our necks. In the Scandinavian cosmogony +Wotan holds sway only by treaties, bargains struck with the powers +that only sustain him so long as he sticks to his word, and are +capable of thrusting him down if he breaks his word. Even omnipotence +may be bought too dearly, and Wotan is not destined to taste the +sweets of even a quarter of an hour's omnipotence. In vain he tries to +evade responsibility, to get something for nothing; and his tragedy is +consummated when in _Siegfried_ he realises that omnipotence can never +be his. Then he renounces it. + +This is by way of being a digression; but, for a clear understanding +of this main drama of the _Ring_, it is absolutely necessary that we +should see the source of Wotan's troubles, and here it is: that Fricka +will not allow him, figuratively, to jump off a house-top without +breaking his neck. What she tells him swiftly proves true. Freia flies +in, pursued by the Giants, who demand to be paid. "You rule by +treaties alone," they say. Wotan looks anxiously round for Loge, the +treacherous god of fire and lies. He has promised to find something +that the Giants will accept instead of Freia; and when he enters he +confesses to failure--there is nothing, in the estimation of an +earth-born creature, that is equal to a woman. But he tells of the +theft of the gold; the Giants listen greedily, and they agree to take +it, if Wotan can get it, instead of Freia. Wotan has a double motive: +he does not want all the gold, or, indeed, any of it, save the Ring +shaped by the Nibelung; that he determines to grasp, else the Nibelung +will become _his_ master. He has trusted to lies and trickery, and has +been swindled; but so overpowering is his thirst for universal rule +that he again trusts himself to Loge. The Giants hold Freia as a +hostage; presently all the gods begin to lapse into a comatose +state--they have not eaten of her apples that day--and in desperation +Loge and Wotan set out for the Nibelung's abode. The Nibelungs are the +slaves and sons of toil; they labour incessantly for Alberich; him +only does Wotan fear: he must get the Ring from them at all costs. The +pair descend into the Nibelung's cave. The Ring is already forged, and +the Tarnhelm--the cap of invisibility--is made which enables him to +render himself invisible or to change himself into any animal he +wishes. By a trick Wotan gets Alberich into his power, carries him to +the upper earth, and only lets him go free after he has surrendered +Tarnhelm, Ring and all the hoard of gold. Then the turn of the Giants +comes. The pile of gold they demand must hide Freia from sight; and in +the end she can still be seen, and Wotan must sacrifice the one thing +precious to him, the Ring. That is accursed, and no sooner have Fafner +and Fasolt got it than they quarrel; Fafner kills Fasolt, and goes off +with all to change himself into a dragon and to hide himself in a +cavern with his treasure. Wotan, in his extremity, has summoned Erda, +the wisdom of the earth, and she has counselled him to give up the +Ring, and it is with horror that he sees how wise she was. But his +ambition is boundless; he cannot give up the idea of reigning supreme; +and when things seem at their worst he has a sudden inspiration--that, +already mentioned, of raising up a hero who will freely take the Ring +from Fafner, and, by letting Wotan have it, free of treaties, enable +him to reign supreme. The thought is told us only in the music, and +in the music only in the light of the later operas of the series. Then +the gods cross a rainbow bridge, somewhat hastily thrown up by Donner, +the god of storms, and enter Valhalla; and underneath the dreary wail +of the Rhinemaidens is heard as they lament their loss. With this the +_Rhinegold_ closes. + + +IV + +Now let us consider the music of the _Rhinegold._ + +Already the discrepancy of styles has been referred to. The +_Rhinegold_, coming between _Lohengrin_ and _Tristan_, suffers from an +odd sort of pettiness of phrase--a pettiness which in all probability +we should not feel if we did not judge it by _Tristan_. The wide sweep +of the tide of music that we find in the _Valkyrie_ is absent; there +is a tendency to shorten the measures, a hesitation between boldly +going on, as in his later manner, and the symmetrical four-bar +measures of _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. The opening of the second +scene is in structure that of a Handel opera air: we have the +ritornello, and presently the same music is repeated as the +accompaniment of Wotan's salute to his castle. This smallness of +design, it must be remembered, is only comparative: compared with +anything of the sort done before, the design is big and broad. The +Wagner of the _Valkyrie_, of _Tristan_ and of the _Mastersingers_, has +not acquired full mastery of his new art; there are still plenty of +full closes, and, though words are not repeated, the effect at times +would hardly be more conventional if they were. + +But in all the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner's walks +amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the _Ring_ to +Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly +concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The _Rhinegold_ +ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in +each Act of the _Valkyrie_ there is a storm; the Third Act of +_Siegfried_ opens with a storm; there is one storm in the _Dusk of the +Gods_. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the +driving of thunder-clouds--these are the pictorial inspiration of the +_Ring_ as surely as old Nuremberg is the pictorial inspiration of the +_Mastersingers_. These Scandinavian gods are the divinities of river +and wood and mountain, and Wagner made full use of them. The _Ring_ is +far too lengthy, and the main drama is apt to get forgotten; the +repetitions, due to Wagner's desire not to let it be forgotten, are +wearisome. But one thing can never be forgotten--the sense of the open +air, the freshness of nature, the loveliness and health of the green +earth: that sense keeps the gigantic, overgrown thing sweet and an +endless delight. + +The opening is as sublime in its simplicity as the first bars of the +_Lohengrin_ prelude. As the curtain rises on the depths of the Rhine, +"greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below," the lowest E flat +booms softly out (it has to be done by an organ pedal-pipe), the deep +voice of the river as it rolls massively on its course towards the +sea; and the effect is overwhelming. A theme then makes its appearance +in its first vague form, a theme which in one shape or another Wagner +uses throughout the four operas for the elemental beings--here, the +water nymphs, afterwards Erda. The mass of tone swells out; the music +becomes more active; and at last the voices of the Rhinemaidens are +heard. The whole of this is one of Wagner's most delightful things. It +is another illustration of his rule that a composer should never leave +a key as long as he can say what he wants while staying in it; for +some hundreds of bars there is no change, and then only a slight one. +With the entry of Alberich modulations begin. Here we have the +wonderful inventive Wagner: that figure, in the inner part of the +musical tissue, would alone stamp him as a great composer: the +composer who could invent such a theme could not possibly be a small +composer. The mock-coaxing of the nymphs might be a parody of the +Venusberg scene in _Tannhäuser_; and later on there occurs a passage +that might be a parody on parts of _Tristan_. When Alberich steals the +gold we get that degenerate form of the Valhalla theme repeated again +and again, and the full effect of the device is only felt when, with +the change of scene, we hear the passage in all its nobility and +splendour. Wotan's greeting to his new castle is rather grandiose than +really fine: one feels the theatrical baritone; one feels also that +the quality of homeliness which makes Sachs a great character is sadly +lacking. In the _Valkyrie_ this unpretentiousness, so to speak, is +always present, and the music gains proportionately in +impressiveness. Wotan's opening phrase, grand and sweeping though it +is, somehow evokes a vision of an Italian opera baritone expanding his +chest, with arms extended in the direction of the more expensive +seats: this is neither the mighty Wotan of the _Valkyrie_, nor even of +the underground scene in this opera. + +Nor is the vocal writing, in another respect, that of the greatest +Wagner. I have already spoken of the perfect fusion of vocal and +orchestral parts which we find in _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_. +To that perfection Wagner had not attained when he began the _Ring_; +and much of this first speech of Wotan consists of notes written +simply to fit in with the Valhalla theme. That theme shows traces of +its descent from the Alberich motive--the greed for power--in that it +does not bear real development, but only variation; it is, in fact, +not a musical subject in the sense in which, say, the _Tristan_ +subjects are musical subjects, but is, properly speaking, a figure. +But shaped to a stately rhythm and richly harmonised, and moreover +gorgeously orchestrated, it glitters with sufficient magnificence. +Fricka's remonstrances are at first querulous, but with the passage +beginning "Um des Gatten Treue besorgt" we get one of Wagner's +matchless bits of lovely melody. The entry of Freia, flying from the +Giants, is theatrically effective, and here we find for the first time +the phrase, already alluded to in the chapter on _Tristan_, which +throughout the _Ring_ is made to serve so many purposes. In this scene +I still feel the halting between the _Lohengrin_ style and later, the +indecision--nay, the uncertainty--in the handling of the musical +material. There are no regular four-bar measures and full closes as in +the earlier work; but a great deal is nothing more than dry recitative +disguised. The first scene of the _Rhinegold_ is purely symphonic: +even if Alberich's spasmodic, jerky exclamations seem to be written in +to fit the nature of this being, his whole mode of speech--harsh, +unmusical--renders the fact less glaring; and the tide of music flows +steadily on, reaching climax upon climax, until the final crash when +he disappears with the gold. Wagner did not find it possible to get +this continuity when he came to set to music the arguments amongst +Wotan, Fricka and Freia: there are short cantilenas, but they are +constantly broken by recitative. + +With the entry of the Giants the music makes, so to say, a fresh +start. The old themes are welded to or interwoven with new material, +and a perfect symphonic whole results, one that can be listened to +with delight without stage accessories. I do not mean that music +intended for the theatre should stand the test of playing away from +the theatre, but that here Wagner, while writing strictly and +immensely effective theatre music, has got such a grip of his art that +he can combine the two things, dramatic truth, and symphonic beauty +and cohesion. The flood sweeps on, undisturbed in its flow by the +entry of the other deities, or by the introduction of themes full of +significance in the light of their after development. But another fact +must not go unnoticed. There is in the _Rhinegold_ little of the +spring freshness of the _Valkyrie_. The melody associated with +Freia's apples is supremely beautiful; but it is a mere short phrase, +several times repeated, and the mass of music in which it is embedded +smells more of the study and the lamp than of the mountains and the +woods. The Froh theme, too, is a trifle flat: it does not effervesce +or sparkle: the "dewy splendour" of the _Valkyrie_ music is not on it. +This is not to be hypercritical: it is to compare, as one must, a +great achievement with an achievement in all respects very much, +immeasurably, greater. Had we only the _Rhinegold_, with all its +plentiful lack of inspiration and its theatricality, it would rank +very high; but Wagner himself in the _Valkyrie_ set the standard by +which inevitably it must be judged. + +When Wotan and Loge descend to the Nibelung's cave to steal the +treasure Wagner frankly lets himself loose. Here we have the +hobgoblins of the Teutonic imagination and the rude, boisterous, +humorous Wotan of the Scandinavian imagination--the Odin who tried to +drink the sea dry and laughed to find he could not. As the +once-celebrated Sir Augustus Harris declared, "This is pantomime." +Perhaps the scene is unduly protracted, but the music goes on merrily +enough. The renewed altercation with the Giants calls for little +remark. When, however, the Giants demand the Ring and Wotan calls up +Erda, the wisdom of the earth, a passage occurs which, though more or +less of an irrelevant interpolation, gives Wagner a chance of putting +forth his strength. Erda rises to most mysterious music, counsels +Wotan to surrender the Ring, and sinks down again to her sleep; and +one forgets the irrelevancy in the thrill of this vision of the Mother +Earth, the spirit that sleeps amongst the everlasting hills. Finally +the composer gets his great chance, and shows that, like Handel and +his own Donner, he "could strike like a thunderbolt." The gods are all +disheartened; mists have gathered; Donner--our old friend Thor--raises +his hammer and smashes something; there is a flash of lightning and a +peal of thunder; the mists and clouds clear away; and we see there the +rainbow bridge over which the gods wend on their way to Valhalla. We +have Wagner the sublime pictorial musician. The Rainbow motive is +perhaps not very graphic in itself, but it serves as a basis for a +delicious passage--evening calm and sunset after storm--comparable +only with a parallel passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The +storm itself is Wagner in the plenitude of his power. It is short: it +is not "worked up": in a few strokes, brief and telling as Donner's +own hammer-strokes, the whole thing is done. Then the Valhalla music, +glorified by a gorgeous accompaniment, is heard again, only +interrupted by the wail of the Rhinemaidens below, sorrowing for the +loss of their pretty, harmless toy. Wotan hears the cry, and passes on +to feast in his castle. Grim care goes with him; but he has the +consoling idea of the free hero and the irresistible sword. So ends +the _Rhinegold_--Fricka content to have both Wotan and Freia; the +other gods not much concerned about anything; Wotan full of +apprehensions and also of determination--determination to rule without +paying the price of rulership. + + +V + +I have attempted nothing more than a broad and rough description of +the _Rhinegold_. The opera was planned as a prelude, and suffers from +the defects of the plan, as well as from the fact that it was written +before Wagner's new method was ripe. He wrote to Liszt that the music +came up "like wild," or, as an irreverent critic once observed, like +mould on a pot of jam; and the second description is truer than the +speaker thought. The _Rhinegold_ has aged faster than any other of the +great works. Alongside of the sublime we find the petty; after phrases +as sweet and fresh as raindrops on young spring leaves we find stodgy, +"made," music; the atmosphere is not preserved. But gigantic +possibilities are opened out. The Rhine music is afterwards used to +splendid ends; the Spear motive, which makes its first appearance in +rather a trivial form--it might be a quotation from Weber or +Spohr--becomes later one of the crowning glories of the _Ring_; the +Fire music--the Loge theme--comes out at once in its full +magnificence. It is fair criticism to say that had Wagner written the +opera again after finishing the _Valkyrie_ he might have wrought up +his material into a perfect work of art. A mere mortal, even the +greatest mortal, could hardly be expected to attempt the task, and the +_Rhinegold_ is a little less than perfect. Moreover, it is +superfluous. We can follow the _Valkyrie_, _Siegfried_ and the _Dusk +of the Gods_ quite well without it. Still, it is a part of Wagner's +scheme, and for many a long year will be enjoyed for its power and +beauty, a power and beauty that seem small only in comparison with the +greater operas. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +'THE VALKYRIE' + + +I + +The _Rhinegold_ suffers from a plethora of undeveloped themes, some of +which are treated at length as the _Ring_ proceeds. Of all announced +only two remain unchanged, the Valhalla and the Fire themes. The +first, I have just remarked, is not susceptible of development, and is +only slightly varied throughout the _Ring_; the second does not demand +development, but is varied much as Beethoven varied his melodies in +his last pianoforte sonatas. The most important of those that are +metamorphosed is the Spear motive. The Spear is the symbol at once of +Wotan's sovereignty and of his bondage. On its shaft, the world +ash-tree stem, are graven the mystic laws by virtue of which he rules; +did he break these laws his power would be gone from him. The essence +of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and so we first hear its +representative theme when the Giants come to claim Freia as payment +for the building of the Burg: it makes its appearance quietly, +unobtrusively, almost apologetically, and might be, as I have said, a +fragment from Spohr or Weber. Its treatment in a simple snatch of +two-part canon, one part following the other at half-a-bar's distance, +seems like a mild gibe at those who only live for and by conventions. +When it reappears in the Second Act of the _Valkyrie_ it is +altogether a different thing: here we have Wotan the ruler determined +at all costs to rule and using to the full the power the Spear confers +on him. Like many of the greatest musical subjects, it is simple +beyond the daring of the minor composers, merely an unbroken scale +descending in heavy, emphatic steps to the lower octaves: it is +authority personified, will that brooks no opposition. This motive, +the Valhalla motive and the fire motive are the principal ones carried +into the _Valkyrie_ from the _Rhinegold_; and an immense amount of new +musical matter is introduced. We see no more of the inferior deities: +we hear the stroke of Donner's hammer in a storm _Lied_, and Loge +appears as consuming flame in the last act; but, excepting Wotan, only +Fricka is seen again in human shape. The stage is now occupied by +human beings, raised up, it is true, by Wotan himself, and by some +other mysterious beings, also raised up by Wotan, one of whom, _the_ +Valkyrie, Brünnhilda, is condemned in the final scene to become human. + +Two dramas, the huge encircling tragedy of Wotan in conflict with his +wife Fricka, the goddess of laws and covenants, especially the +covenant of marriage, and the subsidiary tragedy of Siegmund and +Sieglinda, are combined in perfect proportions in the _Valkyrie_. The +story at first sounds a little complicated; but the reader, bearing in +mind what has already been said of Wotan's Master-idea, can have no +difficulty whatever in following it. The Master-idea, we know, is to +raise up a hero who, acting freely, independent of and ever defying +the gods, will wrest the Ring from Fafner. Wotan, then, has descended +from his Valhalla, and, taking an earthly wife, begotten two children, +Siegmund and Sieglinda, who know themselves to be of the tribe of the +Volsungs. These he deserts. Sieglinda is taken captive and made the +loveless wife of Hunding; Siegmund, alone in the world, wanders hither +and thither, meeting ill-luck everywhere--ill-luck prepared by his +father. At last, in attempting to rescue a maiden from some raiders, +he is forced to fly. As he runs through the depths of an unknown +forest a storm breaks upon him, and he takes shelter, utterly +exhausted, in the house of Hunding. At this point the curtain rises. + +The scene is the inside of Hunding's dwelling, built round a great +ash-tree; on the right the fire burns on the hearth. The steady roar +of the storm outside is heard, broken by shocks as the wind buffets +the trees and the house and by the plashing of the rain. The room is +empty; presently the door is roughly dashed open from outside and +Siegmund staggers in. "Whatever this house may be, I must rest here," +he says, and throws himself on the hearth. (We must bear in mind that +the hearth was sacred: if my enemy took refuge on mine I might starve +him out, but so long as he stayed there I might not hurt him.) +Sieglinda enters; the two do not recognise one another; he calls for +water; she brings him mead. Presently they fall to talking; and it is +seen that the inevitable must happen. Hunding enters abruptly; they +sit down to supper; Siegmund discloses his identity, so far as he +knows it--all but his name; Hunding recognises the very man he has +been chasing, and gives him shelter for the night, but warns him that +in the morning he, without a weapon, must fight. He calls for his +night-draught, sends Sieglinda into the sleeping-room, and follows +her. She glances repeatedly from Siegmund to a spot on the ash-trunk; +but he does not take her meaning. + +There follows a strange and beautiful scene. Siegmund lies down to +rest; the fire glimmers fitfully, then blazes up, revealing at the +point on the trunk at which Sieglinda had gazed a shining sword-hilt, +the blade embedded in the trunk. Still Siegmund does not understand, +and the fire dies down; he is beginning to slumber when Sieglinda +enters and calls him. He starts up; she has put a sleeping-powder in +Hunding's cup, and they are safe; and thus begins the greatest +love-duet, next to the _Tristan_, in the world. Sieglinda tells how +when she, full of grief, was wedded to Hunding, a grey old man, with +one eye, clad in a blue cloak, came in uninvited, drove the sword +Nothung into the ash-tree, and said that it should belong to the hero +strong enough to draw it out. From all parts warriors came, but none +could move it. Sieglinda feels that the appointed man has come; +Siegmund grasps the weapon and triumphantly pulls it out. Then they +reveal their names, and recognise one another as brother and sister, +and the Act ends. + +This is the first step towards Wotan's discomfiture. The significance +of the Sword theme in the _Rhinegold_ at the moment when he has the +Master-idea will now be apparent. The sword was so endowed by Wotan +that only a fearless hero could use it; therefore, when Siegmund draws +it from the wood, Wotan, watching from Valhalla, knows he has +succeeded in raising up the hero he needed. Siegmund had been tested +by all manner of misfortune; no harder life could have been his; Wotan +had never aided him, but thrown disasters in his path; and had he +failed or succumbed Wotan's device would have failed. But freely, +independently, with no help from the god, he had come through all, and +now his own strength enabled him to take the sword to--to what?--to +work Wotan's will! That is, in creating Siegmund, even in testing him, +in preparing for him a weapon that none could stand against, Wotan, +far from successfully accomplishing his purpose, was accomplishing his +ruin. Disillusionment comes swiftly. The first deed of his hero is to +break two of the most sacred laws of heaven--laws binding on Wotan +until he gets the Ring--for he carries off another man's wife, who is, +moreover, his own sister. The punishment for that is matter for the +next Act. At the end of the first we have seen that Wotan's +Master-idea is a delusion. He might as well go and kill Fafner himself +and take the Ring as breed a hero to do it for him with the aid of a +magic sword. If he did so it would be by virtue of the power conferred +on him by the runes on the Spear; and by those runes--those +laws--Siegmund must be, and is, promptly judged and punished. + + +II + +Before the rising of the curtain we have the first and one of the +greatest of the ear-pictures of the _Valkyrie_. There is no preamble; +at once the strings begin in repeated quavers to sustain (virtually) a +long D, while the basses start off with a figure many times +repeated--a figure which is simply a bold variant of the bass figure +in Schubert's _Erl-king_. So, for that matter, is the long D. Schubert +drew a fine picture of storm in black wood; but he was limited by the +form he wrote in and the instruments he wrote for. The energy, +superhuman energy, of the thing is amazing: the storm throbs in the +forest: one feels the pulse of the storm-god; the _sforzando_ shocks +and shrieks add to the terrific wildness of the scene. Pitilessly, +ever higher and higher, the wind shrieks, always to that beating bass, +until, amid the clatter and screaming, we hear Donner, exulting in his +mad strength and swinging his mighty hammer as he rides. The lightning +crackles vividly in the orchestra, the thunder rolls, crashes and +growls, and the thunder-god can almost be heard betaking himself off +to continue his riot afar. Then a labouring, panting and struggling +phrase--scarcely a theme--is heard as the storm slightly lulls; the +curtain rises and we see Hunding's dwelling, and Siegmund bursts in. + +The music of the earlier portion of the first scene is not of the same +intrinsic quality, nor need it be. We have the setting before our +eyes, and the stupendous power of what has just been heard leaves in +our minds a vivid impression of what is going on out of doors. +Sieglinda comes in, surprised to find a stranger there at all, +especially on so wild a night; Siegmund asks for water; she brings it; +finding he is likely to fetch trouble on her head, he is for going. +But there is sympathy between them, and various Volsung motives and +phrases of the rarest beauty and expressiveness tell us why; and she +tells him to wait. "Hunding I will await here," says Siegmund. It is +in this scene that a passage occurs like one which I have referred to +in the chapter on the _Dutchman_--the phrase is marked (_f_) on p. +118. The _Dutchman_ phrase is longer and at the same time less +poignant; here it is brief and extraordinarily expressive; there it is +not developed, nor, after some repetitions, heard again; here it is +made the most of musically and appears so late as in the _Dusk of the +Gods_. But the situations are analogous. Senta gazes, rapt, on +Vanderdecken; Sieglinda and Siegmund look on one another and passion +begins to dawn. This is worth noting as showing that Wagner used the +leitmotiv spontaneously, so to speak, and not always as the result of +deliberate calculation. Like all the other composers, he had his +mannerisms: having invented a melody to find utterance for a feeling +or set of feelings, when similar feelings had to be expressed again it +was natural to him to use again the first melody, or something very +like it. No composer, not even Beethoven, was more resolutely bent on +writing _truthful_ music; and having once found the music to express +certain shades of feeling, he was like a writer who, having said +something as well as he can say it, prefers repeating himself to +trying to achieve a superficial appearance of variety. Wagner, I +think, repeated himself quite unconsciously very often: when the +repetition is conscious of course we have at once the genuine +leitmotiv; but it is the maddest of errors to see in every resemblance +between phrases the deliberate employment of the leitmotiv. + +The pair have drunk mead together and stand looking at one another; +the storm has died away; and from the orchestra come passages of +wondrous delicacy, tenderness and freshness, scored by a perfect +master. Suddenly the clanking of a horse's hoofs is heard; "Hunding!" +exclaims Sieglinda; the door is again thrown open and the black, +ferocious barbarian stalks in. His theme is, figuratively, as black, +gloomy, sinister and forbidding as himself; and the heavy, sullen +tones of the battery of tubas which announces it intensify its +effectiveness a hundredfold. Hunding is no villain of the piece, but a +simple, surly chief of a tribe of savage fighters, and Wagner's music +exactly describes him. Save for Siegmund's recital of his woes, the +remainder of the scene remains sullen and gloomy; Siegmund, however, +has some touching passages, and notably a phrase of unearthly +strangeness when he tells how he came back to his hut and found his +father gone, only a wolf-skin lying there; and a bit of the Valhalla +motive in the orchestra thrills one with its suggestiveness. One is +carried into the dimmest recess of a forest where man has never been, +far back in a period so old that it is ridiculous to call it ancient. +Throughout the music is in Wagner's grandest manner; the vocal writing +is perfect; and though there are plenty of theatrical strokes, they +are done in a nobler way than the mere opera way of _Tannhäuser_ and +_Lohengrin_. In a word, the music is big: the breadth and sweep are +enormous: the greatest Wagner has arrived, the Wagner who has gone far +beyond the hesitations and littlenesses even of the _Rhinegold_. +Hunding is characterised more clearly and with more decisive strokes +than Hagen in the last opera of the _Ring_, partly because there is +more genuine inspiration in the _Valkyrie_, partly, perhaps, because +Hunding is a much simpler personage. + +That strange scene where Siegmund lies on the hearth again, and, +realising his desperate situation, calls on his father the Volsung for +aid, is musically and dramatically splendid in its colour and force. +As he thinks of Sieglinda a feeling of spring again comes into the +music; thus is strengthened the beautiful music she is given; then +comes the avowal of love, and the flying open of the door. Outside, +the trees are seen in the moonlight, the dripping green leaves +glistening; and Siegmund sings a spring-song never to be beaten for +freshness (though, as I have pointed out, not equal in musical +significance to Walther's song in the _Mastersingers_); there comes +the magnificent scene of the plucking out of the Sword; the +recognition of the two as brother and sister; and the final +impassioned outburst which ends the scene as with a blaze of fire. + +This Act will ever be accounted one of Wagner's most magnificent and +fully inspired. The superb vocal writing, the beauty and sheer +strength of the orchestral parts, the gorgeous colouring, and the +human passion blent with the sense of the green yet fiery spring, all +go to make up a thing unique in opera. A tide of life rushes through +it all; and the man's technical accomplishment was so fine and +complete that he found immediate incisive expression for every shade +of emotion, or complex blend of emotions, and every sensation. The +jealous, savage ferocity of Hunding is there; Siegmund's and +Sieglinda's despair, hope and final burst of ecstatic joy; and at the +same time we seem to smell the fresh, wet earth and leaves and to see +the sparkling moonlight. + + + +III + +The Second Act opens in a wild and rocky place amongst the mountains. +Siegmund and Sieglinda have fled; Hunding is in hot pursuit; and now +Wotan stands, the mighty war-god, brandishing his spear, and calling +his daughter Brünnhilda, the Valkyrie, to favour and aid Siegmund. She +joyfully assents and goes off, and Wotan exults. He persists in +deceiving himself: Brünnhilda, his own daughter, was created to +execute his purposes: the Runes make him accountable for her actions, +just as he is now for Siegmund's and in the later operas for +Siegfried's. As in the _Rhinegold_, Fricka instantly bids him remember +what and _how_ he is. As the goddess of covenants, laws, she wants +vengeance wreaked on Siegmund and Sieglinda: they have broken the most +sacred of all covenants in the eyes of a woman, the marriage covenant. +Vainly Wotan pleads that the Valkyrie works unaided: she presses him, +until at last he swears a sacred oath on his spear that Siegmund shall +die. Brünnhilda comes in, whooping her war-call, but her voice drops +at the sight of Fricka. Fricka, who thoroughly despises all the +Valkyrie maidens as being born out of true wedlock, tells her to take +her orders from Wotan, and goes off triumphant. Wotan, deeply +despondent, terrifies Brünnhilda with his grief; she casts down her +spear and shield and kneels before him, imploring him to tell the +cause. + +Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: +Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian +terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been +explained amply in the _Rhinegold_ and in the scene we have just +witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again--with dreary +and soporific effect. Brünnhilda, as love incarnate, pleads for the +man and woman whose only crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws +are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; +he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. +Sadly Brünnhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is +subject to--for how should love know aught of greed for power?--picks +up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to +warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save +in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen +one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard +she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the +woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he +cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps--the Valkyrie having +thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Brünnhilda +advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come to call thee hence"; he raises +his head, sees her, and knows his fate. This is the final crushing +blow; the Volsung had always deserted him; but he had found the magic +sword and thought the promised help would not fail him in his worst +need. (Truly the gods treat us as toys to be broken at pleasure!) He +refuses to go, and speaks blasphemy of the high gods; Brünnhilda is +horrified: here she is going to take him to Valhalla to feast on +delights for ever--and he scorns her. He ridicules Valhalla and Wotan +and the serving-maidens: he wonders who the Valkyrie is, so beautiful +and cold and stern. The scene is one of the fullest dramatic +intensity: at last Siegmund asks whether, if he goes to Valhalla, he +will find his wife there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," is +the answer: Siegmund for the moment is crushed, but again rebels, and +takes his sword to kill first Sieglinda and then himself. Brünnhilda +is overcome with admiration: _this_, at any rate, this love she can +understand; she tells him to prepare to fight Hunding and she will +help him. + +The next scene is unmatched, even in Wagner, for its terror and the +swiftness with which the climax comes on. Clouds gather; Hunding's +horn is heard and his voice; Siegmund leaves Sieglinda and goes off +cheerfully and confidently to meet his foe. Thicker gather the clouds; +thunder peals and lightnings flash; the antagonists are heard calling +as they seek each other in the darkness; Sieglinda speaks in her +dreams; as she awakes, Hunding and Siegmund are seen in the dim light +high up amongst the rocks; Brünnhilda encourages Siegmund, guarding +him with her spear; he is about to strike Hunding down; there is an +angry red glare, and Wotan shatters the sword with his spear; Hunding +runs his spear through Siegmund; Sieglinda shrieks and falls +insensible to the ground. Slowly the red light fades; "Go, tell Fricka +I have sent you," Wotan says bitterly, and at his nod Hunding falls +dead; Brünnhilda has run round, picked up the shards of the Sword, +and, gathering Sieglinda in her arms, rushed away. There is a moment +of suspense; the tragedy is accomplished; and now Wotan must punish +Brünnhilda for disobeying his commands; and amidst thunders and +lightnings, in flaming wrath, he rides off, and the curtain falls. + +The drama of Siegmund and Sieglinda is ended; the second inner drama, +that of Wotan and Brünnhilda, is begun. Love, the best part of Wotan's +nature, has risen against him in his endeavour to rule; she cannot +prevent him destroying the creatures he has made, but she can defy +him. That sort of rule would be intolerable, so love shall be put away +from him and he will still rule. And, love being discarded, there is +no reason why he should not still get the Ring, by fair or foul means, +and reign--loveless indeed, but in no fear of Fafner or the Nibelung, +black Alberich. + + +IV + +As a musical structure the Second Act divides more easily and clearly +than the first into sections: the sections, indeed, are boldly +defined. First there is a prelude formed of the scene in which Wotan, +rejoicing in the coming combat, directs Brünnhilda to see to it that +Hunding is slain; and this is followed by what may be regarded as the +main first movement--the dispute between Wotan and Fricka, terminating +in his taking the oath; then comes his monologue, addressed, of +course, to Brünnhilda ("In talking to thee it is with myself I seem to +speak," to transcribe approximately what he says); Brünnhilda's +warning to Siegmund follows, and then the finale, the catastrophic +climax with Siegmund's death. + +The prelude opens with the same fiery impetuosity as that to the First +Act. It is largely made up of what in the guide-books used to be +called the "Flight motive"--as though a serious composer would or +could invent a motive of Running away!--and as the opening bar may be +taken as a variation of the Sword theme, and the thing ends with what +we learn to be a tune associated with the Valkyries, a really fertile +and picturesque mind may see in it a musical account of Siegmund +flying with the Sword and pursued, for good or evil, by the Valkyrie. +What we really feel in it is the harshness of the opening discords, +the agitation, the power, all forming a fitting prelude to what we see +when the curtain rises, the barren rocks, and Wotan, exultant, calling +Brünnhilda. His phrases have, indeed, a glorious vigour, as have +Brünnhilda's in her answer. Her war-whoop plays an important part in +the Third Act. Fricka's music is royally imperious at first: such +declamation had never been thought of in the world before; but there +is rare beauty of an austere kind--the beauty of holiness--afterwards, +as she momentarily drops her dignity and pleads her cause. She gains +the day and departs, and after Wotan's tedious meditation comes the +most magnificent music of all. We hear the Fate theme--a strange +phrase that seems to question destiny without ever getting an +answer--and a subject taken bodily from Mendelssohn and made into a +new thing filled with a curious blending of wistful and tender pity, +mystery and power. It gives us a glimpse into the very heart of +Brünnhilda, obeying her father because she must, and revolting against +the task. Siegmund's declamation is a fine example of Wagner's finest +vocal writing at this period--the style which I have referred to as +something between recitative and true song. That is, it remains +metrical without the slightest tendency to fall into regular four-bar +measure, or any other regular measure; yet it decidedly is not +recitative. But as the prevailing mood becomes more exalted, so does +the music become more lyrical, and the ending of the dialogue, when +Brünnhilda's emotion swamps every other consideration than rescuing +the lovers, is sheer song. The orchestral part is symphonic +throughout, with a few dramatic pauses. One of the most wonderful of +these is at Brünnhilda's reply: "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more." +There is no wailing, no sadness, in the accompaniment--only simple +chords; and the simple voice-phrase, evidently intended to be +half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different +order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the +melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be +remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is +none of the contrapuntal intricacy of _Tristan_: the pictorial +requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, +both--if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned--for the abstract colour +of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use of +chords permitted. Wagner never ceases to make us feel that the drama +passes amidst the wild mountains and woods: the drama is poignant +enough in all conscience, and the scenery is an aid to it. We have the +purely pictorial Wagner with the gathering storm--the voices calling +amongst the clouds. The sinister growling of the approaching thunder +is heard, and, still more sinister, the harsh notes of Hunding's +horn; the orchestra rages louder and louder, Sieglinda mutters in her +dream, the Valkyrie's call is heard encouraging Siegmund, the crash as +the Sword is splintered, and then an awful silence. The action has +been long delayed, but the catastrophe arrives with appalling +swiftness at the end, and the music is equal to the opportunity. It is +not wholly theatre music: that passage in the bass, galloping up and +down the scale against a _tremolando_ accompaniment, is in itself fine +music; even Hunding's rough cow-horn makes a musical effect. When +Wotan's fury breaks forth and he rides off in godlike wrath--even here +the music is glorious, taken simply as music. Had all the _Ring_ been +done with the superb mastery of this and the preceding Act, we should +have an art creation to be set above every other art achievement in +the world--above anything done by Æschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare. + + +V + +Like the First Act, the Third begins with a storm of rain, wind, +thunder and lightning; like First and Second, it opens with a display +of energy before which all listeners are as leaves in the wind. As +panoramic displays translated into music all the three introductions +are likely enough to be misunderstood; so at the outset let us +carefully bear in mind Wagner's intention at the beginning of the last +Act of the _Valkyrie_--to show, with unequalled force and splendour, +the strength of the god, soon to be shown as nothing before the +strength of Brünnhilda. Brünnhilda, let us always remember, stands for +human love, affection--not love in the _Tristan_ sense--but that love +of which Goldsmith sang that He "loved us into being"; the love of +human being for human being so strong that not for so many thousands a +year as a judge, so many pitiable hundreds a year as a magistrate, +immortality as an omnipotent ruler or a Wotan, will it perpetuate or +permit a wrong on a human being. To win omnipotence Wotan has +inflicted wrong upon wrong--wrong upon wrong on those he had created +for his purpose, on those the fine part of his nature loved. The fine +part of his nature revolts and conquers him. He struggles on, shorn of +nine-tenths of his strength, and it is not until the Third Act of +_Siegfried_ that he sees himself beaten and acknowledges it; but the +ending of the gods, which really began with Wotan's first grasp at +universal power, is first in this last Act of the _Valkyrie_ clearly +foretold. Wotan comes on clothed in thunders and lightnings to punish +Brünnhilda because she fought on the side of the higher instead of the +lower part of his nature--his higher self is cast from him, only (he +thinks) to unite later with a force (a hero) independent of him to +gain him his sovereignty. + +The tempest rages and roars; the Valkyries arrive "by ones, by twos, +by threes," at the Valkyries' Rock; and presently, in hotter haste +than the rest, Brünnhilda comes in, bringing Sieglinda. She tells her +(Brünnhilda's) sisters how she has defied Wotan, the All-father; they +are scandalised, and desert her; Sieglinda feebly begs her to take no +more trouble--there is nothing left to live for; Brünnhilda tells her +she carries within her the seed of the highest hero of all the world; +Sieglinda is filled with joy, revives, and flies to the cave in the +wood where Siegfried is destined to be born. Wotan comes on with his +thunders and lightnings and calls for Brünnhilda; at last she answers, +and he announces her punishment: she shall be deprived of her godhood +and left on the mountains to become the wife and slave of the first +man that passes. The other maidens wail in protest; in anger he bids +them begone; Brünnhilda, overcome with shame, sinks at his feet. The +storm slowly dies away; Brünnhilda rises and pleads her cause--"Is +this crime of mine so shameful?--in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I +simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost +heart." At first Wotan will scarcely hear her; gradually he relents. +But he cannot go back on his oath, on the sentence he has pronounced; +and in the end he yields her this much--that she shall lie guarded by +a wall of fire, only to be claimed by a hero who, not fearing his +spear, will pass through the fire. Then he bids her an everlasting +farewell; lays her to sleep in her armour, covered by her shield, her +weapon by her side; calls up the fire, and casting a last sad look on +her, his favourite child, goes slowly off as the curtain falls. + +The drama here is of the most poignant kind; the scenic surroundings +are of the sort Wagner so greatly loved--tempest amidst black +pine-woods, with wild, flying clouds, the dying down of the storm, +the saffron evening light melting into shadowy night, the calm +deep-blue sky with the stars peeping out, then the bright flames +shooting up; and the two elements, the dramatic and the pictorial, +drew out of him some pages as splendid as any even he ever wrote. The +opening, "the Ride of the Valkyries," is a piece of storm-music +without a parallel. There is no need here for Donner with his hammer: +the All-father himself is abroad in wrath and majesty, and his +daughters laugh and rejoice in the riot. There is nothing uncanny in +the music: we have that delight in the sheer force of the elements +which we inherit from our earliest ancestors: the joy of nature +fiercely at work which is echoed in our hearts from time immemorial. +The shrilling of the wind, the hubbub, the calls of the Valkyries to +one another, the galloping of the horses, form a picture which for +splendour, wild energy and wilder beauty can never be matched. + +Technically, this Ride is a miracle built up of many of the +conventional figurations of the older music. There is the continuous +shake, handed on from instrument to instrument, the slashing figure of +the upper strings, the kind of basso ostinato, conventionally +indicating the galloping of horses, and the chief melody, a mere +bugle-call, altered by a change of rhythm into a thing of superb +strength. The only part of the music that ever so remotely suggests +extravagance is the Valkyrie's call; and it, after all, is only a +jodel put to sublime uses. Out of these commonplace elements, elements +that one might almost call prosaic, Wagner wrought his picture of +storm, with its terror, power, joyous laughter of the storm's +daughters--storm as it must have seemed to the first poets of our +race. The counterpoint is not so obviously wonderful as in _Tristan_ +and the _Mastersingers_, but only a contrapuntist equal to Bach and +Handel could have written such counterpoint. We may gain a clearer +idea of what this means if we compare, not to the disadvantage of one +or the other, this Ride with Berlioz's "Ride to the Abyss." At first +sight, Berlioz seems the more daring. He trusts to a persistent rhythm +and to orchestral effects. There is no inner structure--the separate +parts, or batteries of parts, have no individuality: nothing of the +sort is attempted or indeed wanted. The horses gallop on like mad +things: their pace cannot be checked; themes, properly speaking, there +are none--we hear the screeches of fearsome wild-fowl, the excitement +and the noise increase, until at last the catastrophe is reached, and +the final climax is the terrible gibberish-chant of all the devils in +hell. Regarded as sheer music, the thing gets as far by the twentieth +bar as ever it gets. The piece is as near to pure colour in music as +can be attained. Why, Wagner with his counterpoint seems old-fashioned +and formal by comparison! The four constituents, the wild laughter of +the shakes of the wood-wind, the slashing figure of the strings, the +galloping figure of the bass, the Ride theme--had these been used by +any one save Wagner the result would have been unendurably wooden. But +Wagner had unlimited harmonic resources at his disposal; and he had +the determination and the gift to achieve perfect truth in his +delineation of a storm. Delineation, I say, for here we have drawing +as well as colour. Of colour there is plenty: notice, for example, the +use of the brass against the descending chromatics; but the colour is +mainly harmonic. In a sense Wagner was not an innovator: so long as +the methods of his mighty predecessors served him he sought no +others--effects, whether of orchestration or of melody, were to him +simply means: never for a second was he beguiled into regarding them +as ends; and every musician knows that plenty of them came at his +call, more readily and spontaneously than in the case of any of the +later musicians. + +It is worth looking at the plan of this Ride--which is, be it +remembered, only the prelude to the gigantic drama which is to follow. +After the ritornello the main theme is announced, with a long break +between the first and second strains; and again a break before it is +continued. Then it sounds out in all its glory, terse, closely gripped +section to section, until the Valkyries' call is heard; purely +pictorial passages follow; the theme is played with, even as Mozart +and Beethoven played with their themes, and at the last the whole +force of the orchestra is employed, and his object is attained--he has +given us a picture of storm such as was never done before, and he has +done what was necessary for the subsequent drama--made us feel the +tremendous might of the god of storms. A few of my readers may know +Handel's "Horse and his Rider" chorus--how he piles mass on mass of +tone until in the end we seem to see a whole irresistible sea rushing +over Pharaoh and his host. Wagner does a thing perfectly analogous; +but as I have remarked with regard to Weber and Mendelssohn and their +picturesque music, where Handel, having painted his tremendous +picture, had achieved his end and was satisfied and left off, is just +the point where Wagner begins what to him is much the more important +thing, the drama. The omnipotent master of Valhalla comes on apace: +the storm is a mere indication of what is coming. + +A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this. +Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and +it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has +done. Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and +station at great length. This may be a vestige of the older +stage-craft: certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas +that followed the _Valkyrie_. It is not for even the minor personages +of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience +into their confidence. But, as I say, words were indispensable, and +Wagner found the best he could--I suppose. The defect is a tiny one; +none the less it is a defect. + +With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced. The +godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme +sounds out--if, indeed, we may call it a theme--and then we get a lull +after all the hurly-burly. Brünnhilda and Sieglinda come in; +Brünnhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl +disturbed the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and +horror. The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the +opera--Brünnhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one +after another refusing in very conventional phrases. The scene is +indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate: music +has no tones to express primness. With the voice of Sieglinda the +music at once begins to live in Wagner's own curious fashion. She has +nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to +be left alone to die. Wagner well knew when the drama could make its +effect almost unaided--when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic +music in the older style would be to overdo things. Sieglinda's +phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to +be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung. Bathos is avoided: +the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched. In fact the +technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous +act. But with Brünnhilda's announcement to Sieglinda we get the great +lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the +last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_, and we get the mightiest of the +Siegfried themes. With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes +the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame; +then comes his denunciation of Brünnhilda, another specimen of the +lyrical Wagner. Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down +of the storm. We can _see_ the setting sun and the departing +storm-clouds in the music, and with these we are made to feel the +abating wrath of the god. And then comes the noblest piece of +recitative in all music. The words in which Brünnhilda appeals to her +father have already been (roughly) quoted: to give an idea of the +musical phrases would require too many pages of this book. The Sleep +theme enters as Wotan sees a way to the great compromise--the +compromise foredoomed to bring him to ruin. He will put Brünnhilda to +sleep to await the hero; but he will hedge her in with fire so that +the hero shall be a true one. With the indescribable finesse, +subtlety, of his own particular art, Wagner lets us feel how +Brünnhilda, in begging to be protected in this (rather unusual) way, +is reading only her own father's thought: he seems for a long time to +contend, but at last yields. The music steadily increases in force and +passion, and at each stage where one would think the composer could +strike no harder he immediately does it. More and more of the divine +fury pours into the music, until the climax is reached in the bars +preceding the Farewell. + +In the meantime we have had the wonderful Eternal Love theme--not +sexual love, but the mystic force that created the worlds and holds +them in their courses: in all Wagner there is no nobler and sweeter +passage than that in which Brünnhilda first sings it. The vivid +musical description of the crackling flames which are to surround her +is another of an unequalled series of marvels. The Farewell I have +already compared with that at the end of _Lohengrin_: the voice part +is at times in Wagner's own style of song-recitative, but a great deal +of it is sheer simple melody. No master has excelled, or perhaps +matched, Wagner in the art of expressing the most profound and +poignant pathos without ever a suspicion of letting it lapse into +bathos; and this he does by--what at first it may seem ridiculous to +say of so opulent and luxurious a genius as Wagner's--by his +instinctive artistic austerity. The word is not too strong to be +applied to the resolute simplicity which enabled him to write such +melodies as those of which I am now speaking and the Farewell in +_Lohengrin_: the temptation to let himself go, to wallow in sadness +and to wring our bowels must have been almost too tremendous to be +resisted by the man who within a year or so planned _Tristan_. In art, +harrowing our feelings never pays, and his self-repression has its +exceeding great reward: we could not feel more with Wotan's desolating +grief--one stroke more and we should rebel: we should know that our +most sacred feelings were being exploited--that an endeavour was being +made to gain our applause for a work of art by an illegitimate appeal +at one particular moment to those feelings. I have dwelt a little on +this because we all know _Tristan_ and its author, and though there is +little self-repression in that work--where it is not required--and +physically there was little but self-indulgence in its author's +nature, it is well to realise that the artist rose immeasurably +superior to the man. It must have come to us all at one time or +another with something of a shock to find that the voluptuous Wagner +of _Tannhäuser_ could be as austere as Milton. Austerity is not +barrenness--not the barrenness that would result from imitating the +austerity of the old church composers with their hundred rules and +regulations: the harmony is as free as could be wished; at the needful +moment the melodies pass without hesitation from key to key; but when +we have long known them and learnt to understand them we find them at +heart to be idealised folk-tunes--simple and indescribably pathetic, +as the situation demands. + +An instance of Wagner's subtle feeling is the passage where Wotan +"kisses away" Brünnhilda's godhood and lays her to sleep, as one with +the rocks and stones of mother earth, Erda, whose music accompanies +the act. Wotan, like Alberich, has renounced love; so just previously +we have heard the corresponding passage from the _Rhinegold_. We have +the lulling Sleep theme, and then comes the Fire-music, a thing +unmatched--and, so far as I know, never attempted--in all music. The +mighty Spear strikes the ground to the mighty Spear theme; the earth +seems to shiver as the fire comes up; then the flames mount, yellow +against the deep blue sky; the Loge music sparkles in the orchestra, +the strings sustain a continuous whizz and roar, and over it all, and +at times in it or under it, swings that lulling Sleep theme. If it is +not too futile a word to use, the Siegfried "heroic" theme, as Wotan +uses it in commanding the fire (Loge) that only the noblest hero ever +born shall pass to Brünnhilda, is the most pompous form in which it +appears throughout the _Ring_; but the situation warrants it, demands +it. Amidst the roar of the fire and with the divine lulling phrase, +fragments of the Farewell are heard; and twice, as Wotan looks back on +his daughter, we hear the Fate theme--the Scandinavian sense that this +tragedy _mysteriously had to be_: the mighty god and lord of the +universe himself knows and feels that the things preordained must +happen. He goes slowly off; the central tragedy is virtually +accomplished; to the end the fire blazes and sparkles, and the curtain +descends on a soft chord. The revolving seasons will pass; strange +events will happen in the outer world of men; Brünnhilda will sleep +there, the guarding fire seen from afar by awe-stricken warrior +tribes. + +The spring freshness of the music, its vivid pictorial quality, the +intense human feeling expressed, its profound sense of the past and +the mystery of things, the godlike power, place it hardly second, if +indeed second, to _Tristan_. There are love-duets in music which may +be compared with those in _Tristan_: there is nothing with which the +music of the _Valkyrie_ may be compared. The grandeur of Handel's +picture-painting in _Israel in Egypt_ is a different quality +altogether. Handel is unapproachable; but he worked with a different +aim, in a different way, and in a different material. Wagner's music +is beautiful and sublime, and he blent the human element with the +others in a fashion no other musician has attempted. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +'SIEGFRIED' + + +I + +In a letter to Liszt Wagner says he would not have undertaken the toil +of completing so gigantic a work as the _Ring_ but for his love of +Siegfried, his ideal of manhood. It is as well, from one point of +view, that his love of his ideal was so intense, for in consequence we +have the _Ring_; but from another point of view it is not so well, for +the youth Siegfried is the least lovable, perhaps the most inane and +detestable character to be found in any form of drama. He is a +combination of impudence, stupidity and sheer animal strength--mere +bone and sinew; his courage comes from his stupidity. The courage and +strength and impudence carry him through to his one victory; then his +stupidity leads him straight to destruction. He possesses not one fine +trait: he is as weak in will and intellect as he is strong in muscle. +In the 'fifties and 'sixties not only Germans but men of all other +nationalities seem to have vainly imagined they had solved all the +problems of this very difficult world by assuming and proclaiming that +might is right. Bismarck acted on this belief; our own Carlyle, +Tennyson and Ruskin preached it; and Wagner, being a feeble creature +physically, fell naturally, inevitably, a victim to the old delusion, +and set to work to glorify the strong man. There is a further +explanation. I need not do more than refer to an idea which took +definite form during the eighteenth century, that as many of the +defects and problems of modern life spring from the very conditions +under which our civilisation alone is possible, a return to a state of +nature, without government, clothes, or even houses to live in, would +be a return to the garden of Eden before the Fall. We see this notion +working in Wagner's mind continually in the prose writings, and in his +last opera we see Parsifal, the "pure fool," "redeeming" an +over-civilised world. To glorify the idiot absolute in this fashion +was to out-Rousseau Rousseau--though Wagner would have scorned the +suggestion. In _Siegfried_ he goes by no means so far; but he goes +quite far enough. Siegfried is no idiot; but he certainly is an +unamiable, truculent savage. He has been reared by a dwarf and +cripple, Mime, and the first we see of him is on his entry with a wild +bear in leash, which beast he drives at his terrified foster-father. +The justification is that he feels instinctively that Mime is bad, low +and cunning--and it does not justify him: Mime, with an ulterior +purpose, it is true, has saved him from death by starvation in his +infancy, and nurtured him, and the least Siegfried could do was to +leave the abject creature in peace. It is true also that he is mending +Siegfried's sword--but this is to anticipate. I cannot accept +Siegfried as a specimen of the highest heroic humanity. The boldness +of a man who because of his dull wits cannot realise danger is of no +use in this world under any imaginable conditions. Siegfried knows no +fear. There is a story of two officers conversing during a battle. One +asked, "Are you afraid?" Reply: "If you were as afraid as I am you +would run away." One, the tale assumes, had a finely organised brain, +the other brute force and insensibility. Which is the nearer approach +to an ideal of noble manhood? Wagner's _Siegfried_ answers, brute +ferocity. Judged by his own standard how would Wagner himself +stand?--as splendidly organised a brain as that possessed by any man +born into the nineteenth or any other century? + + +II + +The continuous clink-clink-clink of a metalworker's hammer is heard; +the curtain rises, and we first see through an opening at the back of +the stage the bright green shining forest; as our eyes grow accustomed +to the darkness in the front we gradually perceive a rude smithy in a +cave, with an anvil, a forge with a smouldering fire, and a deformed +dwarf, Mime, at work trying to piece together the shards of the broken +sword. That sword was Siegmund's, shattered by a blow of Wotan's +spear; and long ago it was to this cave Sieglinda fled, bearing with +her the fragments. Siegmund and Sieglinda are long dead, Sieglinda +after giving birth to Siegfried; not far off is Hate-cave, where the +dragon Fafner lies guarding his precious gold amongst it the Ring; +far away Brünnhilda sleeps on the mountain, surrounded by her wall of +fire. There she lay on the evening of Siegmund's death; there she has +lain since. The world has gone on its way; Siegmund and Sieglinda have +departed; Siegfried has grown to manhood; year by year the young +shoots in the forest have sprouted and the leaves spread to the +sunlight: as we see the forest now, so was it on that fateful day, and +so it has been as the successive summers came. Siegmund lived, died, +and his memory has almost perished; save to the dwarf, the very name +of Sieglinda is unknown; other men have lived and died: nature only +goes on her course, the trees each year bringing forth fresh leaves to +repair last year's losses, as though the lives and deaths of brave men +and women were nothing to her. The earth is sweet and pleasant, but +nature must attend to her own affairs, and her indifference to the +affairs of men, her unchangeableness amidst all the vicissitudes of +men's lives, compel us to realise in such a scene as this at once her +own eternal youthfulness and man's brief, ephemeral existence. At one +stroke Wagner creates the atmosphere for his drama, and gives us as no +other artist has ever given it a sense of the unfathomable mystery of +the world and of life. + +The dwarf taps away with his hammer; he longs to patch up the sword +that Siegfried may kill the dragon and he, Mime, get the hoard; he +bewails his weakness, but he does his best. All his labour proves +useless--the sword refuses to be mended; and in comes Siegfried with +his bear. The bear is driven off into the woods; there is a long +altercation and an explanation; Siegfried cannot believe that, as he +has been told, Mime is his father, and he learns the truth. He softens +into something approaching manhood as he hears of his mother's death; +and finally rushes off into the forest, leaving Mime again to his +task. Then follows a scene to be accounted for in only one way. First, +the scene: Mime sits in despair, and there enters an old man with his +slouch-hat drawn down over one eye, wearing a dark blue cloak (it +ought to be dotted with stars), and carrying a spear or staff in his +hands. He gains the sacred hearth, converses with Mime, and finally +bets him his head that he cannot answer three questions. Much to my +surprise when I first saw the score of _Siegfried_, these form merely +an excuse for going again over the ground covered in the _Rhinegold_ +and the _Valkyrie_. The Scandinavian hegemony is expounded, and other +matters are gracefully touched on; the only point is made when the +last question is propounded and Mime cannot answer: Who is it shall +forge the sword, slay Fafner, take the hoard, pass through the fire +and take Brünnhilda for his wife? The old man laughs, leaves Mime his +head, but tells him it will fall to the hero who can do all these +things, the hero who knows not fear. He goes off; thunder is heard; +strange lights flicker amongst the trees; and Mime falls into an +ecstasy of terror, suffering all the agonies of a waking nightmare, +until the spell is abruptly broken by the entry of Siegfried. Why we +should have the two previous dramas of the _Ring_ told again in this +way is the puzzle. In the letter to Uhlig (p. 227) Wagner had plainly +given his reasons for writing the _Rhinegold_ and the _Valkyrie_--to +set before the audience clearly and vividly the events leading up to +_Siegfried's Death_, in action, not in narrative. We have seen them in +action, and lo! we get them in narrative! Wagner's idea must have been +to show us Wotan, realising how matters had passed beyond his control, +going about the world as the Wanderer, watching the development of +things and awaiting the inevitable day. He gives us the very awe and +thrill of our Scandinavian forbears with the apparition of the +grey-bearded man in his cloak coloured like deep night--the terrible +god that they believed walked the earth and might enter their +homesteads at any moment. Of course, as we shall see presently, the +answer to the third question prepares the next stage of the drama. But +as to why the whole story of the _Ring_ should be repeated--well, even +gods must have something to talk about if they wish to talk at all; +and the scene serves to sustain and to intensify the atmosphere in +which the whole drama is enacted, the atmosphere of the old sagas. But +I cheerfully concede that it is far too long, and in many respects an +artistic error. + +The real drama of _Siegfried_, considering it as a separate, +self-contained opera, is now prepared for, and forthwith begins. We +know Siegfried and the task before him; we know Mime and _his_ +task--to find out if Siegfried can be made to fear, and if he cannot, +to encourage him to kill the dragon, win the gold, and then to poison +him. He tries Siegfried with stories of terror, asks him if he has +never felt afraid of this, that and the other; and finding that this +is the veritable Hero, makes his preparation. Siegfried takes the +splinters of the sword--the splinters no smith can weld +together--files them to dust, melts the dust, re-casts the sword and +finishes it. Meantime Mime, working on, brews his poisonous broth, +muttering to himself about his purpose. At the end Siegfried tests the +sword and proves it true by splitting the anvil. All sorts of +allegorical meanings may be found in this gigantic scene; but the +plain meaning is that to a hero, unique, unparalleled in the history +of the world, a patched-up weapon, used previously by lesser men, is +useless: his sword must be new, and only he himself can forge it. + + +III + +Before dealing further with the drama of _Siegfried_ I wish, for a +reason, to say a few words about the music of this First Act. From +_Tannhäuser_ onward Wagner showed in the music of his operas a +complete mastery of what can only be called the business-artistic side +of his art, or perhaps a complete knowledge of effectiveness. In so +long an affair as an opera, and especially a Wagner opera, +effectiveness depends largely on contrast, not simply between scene +and scene of an act, but also in a more marked degree between act and +act of an opera. In the _Dutchman_ there is none of this larger +contrast, and could hardly be, for the _Dutchman_ was originally +planned as an opera in one act. There is contrast enough, but he +contrasts set-piece with set-piece, scene with scene, not act with +act. In _Tannhäuser_ he works on the bigger scale and contrasts act +with act: the opening of the Second reveals a totally different mood +from that of the First, and the Third is entirely different from +either. This is true of the _Valkyrie_; but the _Rhinegold_, like the +_Dutchman_, is all of a piece, and is, moreover, the prelude to a huge +drama. When we come to _Siegfried_ we see at once how he was planning +his music on a still vaster scale: the atmosphere of _Siegfried_ is in +contrast, almost violent contrast, with that of the _Valkyrie_. The +music of the last act of the _Valkyrie_ is of a different character +altogether from that of the beginning of _Siegfried_. This is not +merely due to the development of Wagner's genius and his technical +power, but can be shown to be deliberately planned. Indeed, it ought +not to need any demonstration, knowing as we do know his knowledge and +grip of what is effective in the theatre. It would be absurd to +suppose that he was not perfectly well aware that every one would yawn +if after hearing the _Valkyrie_ his audience found _Siegfried_ to be +simply a continuation of the _Valkyrie_, found the two operas to be +virtually the same work with the scissors put through the score at an +arbitrarily chosen point. Consider the scenery of the two operas: +First Act of the _Valkyrie_, Hunding's hut with the smouldering fire; +Second, a rocky defile in the mountains and no particular weather; +Third, storm round the Valkyries' rock, black flying clouds, the pines +tossing their branches to the tempest, and, at the end, a peaceful +evening sky and then the yellow flames shooting up against it. We must +note the change to the beginning of _Siegfried_: a dark cave, and +outside it the forest, green, fresh and bright; Second Act, the +entrance to Hate-cave, time, night, long before dawn, and at the end a +summer morning, with the sun shimmering on the grass and the trees +gently murmuring in the wind; Third, a rocky ravine in the early +morning, grey storm-clouds scudding past, the wind whistling; at the +end, a mountain top, Brünnhilda sleeping, the peaceful trees, a horse +quietly grazing, morning sunlight. This sequence shows how carefully +the matter was schemed; and we may now turn to the music. + +When the same leitmotivs are largely employed throughout a long +operatic work there must be a superficial, or, if I may say so, +external, monotony in the character of the music. A first glance at +the scores reveals to the eye the same series of notes and chords +repeated again and again; to any but the most attentive listener a +first hearing leaves the impression of the same themes and passages +endlessly repeated. But any one who leaves the theatre on an evening +after the _Valkyrie_ bearing with him a vivid memory of the brilliance +and sweetness of the close must at the very least be struck by the +sombre colouring of the opening of _Siegfried_ the following evening. +I do not mean the orchestral colouring, but the intrinsic thing, the +music itself. The tapping of the hammer on steel goes on, and in mock +seriousness the orchestra gives out a series of prolonged sighs or +groans of the most lugubrious character, reaching a climax as poor +miserable Mime at last gives up his job in despair. Mime, we must +remember, is a half-comic personage; and were his music allotted to +some heroic man facing an impossible task it would be much the same, +save that Wagner would not have so exaggerated the hysterical emotion. +To depict a being facing an impossible task with no noble, but with +only an ignoble, motive requires such an exaggerated mode of +expression. Mime's grief is real enough, but the cause of it +contemptible. After a considerable deal in this mournful key comes the +sudden entry of the bright young savage Siegfried, driving the bear. +His first theme is simply a bugle hunting call: Siegfried was then +nothing but a hunter, a wild child of the forest. But as he gets on +with what he has to say Wagner warms up to his work, and we get many +inspired pages, some of them showing the tendency to indulge in +counterpoint of the finest sort which manifested itself more fully in +the _Mastersingers_, though here the movement is fuller of rude +impetuosity. The movement--for it is a distinct movement--in which +Siegfried describes how he had often looked into the smooth-running +brook, and seeing his reflection there knew he did not resemble Mime, +who therefore could not be his father--for the cub is like the +bear--is one of Wagner's loveliest, and full of a delicate pastoral +feeling (again, in contrast with everything in the _Valkyrie_). The +Wanderer music is sublime. The theme was borrowed from Liszt, and +Liszt ought to have been grateful, for the possibilities of his own +musical subject were surely unfolded to him for the first time. In the +music here, even more than in the vision of the stage, we have the +grey Wanderer of the Scandinavian imagination--the mystery of wood, +mountain, river and ravine, with human sadness superadded, is clearly +communicated to us. Passing over the repetitions from the preceding +operas, concerning which I have already said sufficient, we come to +the nightmare music, where Wagner once more manifests that miraculous +gift of depicting, in terms of music, light and colour, a personal +emotion. We can see the flickering lights glaring amongst the trees +and feel Mime's terror. + +The forge scene is one of Wagner's most stupendous efforts--for really +inspired, not mechanical, energy it is by far the greatest thing in +the opera. As Siegfried sets to work pulling the bellows, his first +call "Nothung!" (the name of the Sword) is practically the same as the +cobbler's song in the _Mastersingers_; but immediately after it goes +off into a sheer song of spring and the joy of spring; while the +bellows groan and the fire roars the feeling of growing green forest +life overflows into the music, and the intoxicating exhilaration is +expressed as only Wagner himself had expressed it before. When the +hammering business begins we again find a likeness to the Sachs music, +but what a dissimilarity from the petty tapping of Mime! Mime's +theme, and that of all the Nibelung smiths, is characteristic enough; +they are not contemptible in themselves, though through them we find +the whole tribe of these smiths to be contemptible; and the tremendous +swing of this second section of Siegfried's song makes every other +smith's song seem by comparison contemptible. Finally, when Nothung is +ready for action there is a coruscation of light from the orchestra as +the Sword theme, which, of course, we have heard long before, and the +Siegfried-the-hunter theme are blared out and the anvil is split. + +Many other points must be left until later. I wish for the present to +give a notion of Wagner's powers at the time he wrote the earlier +portions of _Siegfried_. Had the whole opera been equal to these +portions it might have ranked with the _Valkyrie_. But though his +powers were not yet on the wane, as we get on we shall see that the +subject was getting a little stale. He had not the smallest hope of +seeing his work performed. If ever a man wrote purely for posterity it +was Wagner at this period; and though the general inspiration remained +as deep and powerful as ever, we cannot be surprised if the continuous +white heat of the _Valkyrie_ was checked and broken very often. The +surprising thing is that so circumstanced he achieved so much. + + +IV + +The story of the next Act is so simple that I shall deal with it and +the music at the same time. Near Hate-cave black Alberich, who first +steals the gold, ceaselessly watches: he cannot gain the gold, but its +attraction is irresistible. So he watches while we hear the snarling +music associated with him; and we can feel all the old-time horror of +the malignant semi-deities of the black forests and streams and caves. +Mime and he dispute angrily: Siegfried is about to slay the dragon, +the "Wurm," and the question is who is to have the gold. The music is +all of the sort that Wagner alone after Weber could write--wild, full +at times of frenzied energy, full also, if so forced a phrase may be +permitted, of black colour--black-green made audible as was the thick +darkness that might be felt made to be felt by Handel. Anger cannot be +directly expressed in music; but these dreary snarling noises from the +orchestra and the peculiar use made of the human voice--a use to be +referred to later--enable Wagner to indicate it indirectly in a way +effective on the stage. (We may note once again the contrast between +two successive scenes--the brilliance, the straightforward vigour of +the close of Act I, and these tortuous phrases at the beginning of Act +II.) Day begins to lighten, and Siegfried enters; he reclines on a +green bank and hearkens to a bird carolling amidst the rustling +branches. He tries to imitate its notes on a reed cut with his sword, +that emits strange noises; and at last, annoyed by his lack of +success, he petulantly blows a blast on his horn. This arouses Fafner, +who grumbles and discloses his hiding-place; and presently an +extraordinary reptile, one the like of which never was on sea or land, +comes forth to destroy the intruder. Siegfried (like the ordinary +audience) seems disposed to laugh, but when the monster opens its +giant jaws and sends out flames and steam, and red lights begin to +glare in its eyes, he sees serious matters are at hand. He prepares +for combat, and the battle is terrific, if not very convincing. At +last, however, he penetrates the odd brute in a vital part; it rolls +over and makes dying prophecies; at the last it asks its conqueror's +name and, having learnt it, groans that name once and dies. Siegfried +thereupon penetrates into the cave and returns with the hoard; then he +throws himself once more upon the green bank. + +If the reader thinks I treat this episode rather flippantly, let me +promptly admit that this is so. It is pantomime of the most grotesque +sort, not serious opera. The dragon would not frighten a child. The +whole thing is an artistic mistake: the fight should take place with +the beast wholly or nearly out of sight: an occasional lash of the +tail, with plenty of smoke and red fire, would be much more effective +than this construction of lath and pasteboard. The music hardly ever +reaches a high level. There is not in existence any fine music +descriptive of any form of fighting; and here slashing passages on the +strings, blares of the brass, shrieks of the wood-wind, do not cover +the inevitable failure of invention. Fafner's dying speech is better, +for Wagner had something urgent to say on his own account: he wishes +to urge on us the significance of Siegfried's coming career; and he +does it with immense impressiveness. The day of the Ending of the gods +comes a little nearer when Siegfried takes possession of the Ring and +places it on his finger. As was arranged from the beginning of time, +things are taking their course; Fate, answering none who questions, +works out her plans silently, mysteriously, inexorably. A sense of our +darkness regarding our destiny fills the music with a profound +emotion. + +If there has been too much of the pantomimic grotesque so far, Wagner +soon offers us compensations. The music now is amongst his freshest +and most fragrant. A reservation must be made touching the absolute +perfection of its beauty, but only a minute one. When first the bird +sang sweetly in the branches outspread above Siegfried's head we heard +the beginning of the piece known in the concert room as "Forest +Voices," the most exquisite sylvan picture ever done in music. A low +rippling figure, or rather part-figure and part-melodic theme, is +heard: it mounts higher, descends again, sways about, swells and dies +away; other melodies are interwoven with it; it becomes more rapid in +its motion, and grows louder until we feel the wind getting up and the +leaves dancing, and then comes the voice of the bird. This may sound a +little high-falutin', but is the only way in which I can render my +impression. The picture is so absolutely convincing that many readers +who, like myself, first heard the thing in a concert room will +remember that with the one hint conveyed by the title no scenery was +needed to make its meaning and feeling quite clear. The bird-voice is +managed with consummate art: a penny toy would have enabled the +composer to give a faithful imitation of bird-song--and would have +spoilt the faithfulness of the whole picture. So Wagner has translated +the real bird-song into terms of art, and thereby given us its spirit +while sufficiently suggestive of the original. It is not sustained for +long. Siegfried, as I have described, tries to cut a reed so as to +imitate it, and there is some innocent fooling as he only gets odd +squeaks out of his instrument; then comes the combat with the Dragon, +and he returns to his place. The one tender spot in his nature, +awakened by the thought of his mother, who died for him, is touched by +the bird-song and the sweet morning; he is filled with vague, +sorrowful yearnings--and presently the bird sings again. But after +killing the monster he had touched its blood--it burnt his finger, +which he instinctively put in his mouth; and the taste of the blood +endows him with the faculty of understanding the speech of beasts and +birds. So now when the bird sings it is a human voice uttering words. +It is with regard to this I make a reservation. The abrupt entrance of +the human voice startles one: the picture is for a moment distorted, +made artificial. After a few hearings one grows accustomed to the +incongruity; but I still think Wagner would perhaps have done better +to let Siegfried tell us what he hears. This is, however, a mere +guess; and it savours of impudence to suggest what so great a composer +as Wagner should have done. The bird first warns Siegfried against +Mime. Mime crawls in with his basin of poisoned soup, meaning to offer +his "son" some refreshment after the labours of the morning. In +whining accents, verging on the ludicrous--for I have said that Mime +is semi-comic--he professes his love; but the dragon's blood also +enables Siegfried to understand what he means, and, just as Beckmesser +in singing the stolen song utters words very different from those he +means, so Mime in what he intends to be affectionate strains tells us +his real purpose. Siegfried plays with him as a cat plays with a +mouse, and at last plunges the sword into him--and from a thicket +comes the malignant laugh of Alberich, barked to Mime's own hammering +phrase. Disgusted, Siegfried returns to his resting place, but the +bird again engages his attention: it sings of the maiden afar off on +the mountain sleeping hedged in by the fire through which he alone can +break. Siegfried's longings take definite form: he will win the +maiden; the bird promises to lead him; it flutters off; he follows; +the curtain drops. + +Thus ends one of Wagner's most splendid scenes--certainly the finest +in this opera. The passion of the music, its vivid picturesque +quality, its freshness, go to make it one of the many things of +Wagner's for which no parallel can be found. Wagner's technique had +now reached that supreme height which made _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_ possible; and the spontaneous energy of his +inspiration was unabated. The Act, we may remember, was actually +completed after those two operas, but it was planned and partially +executed before. + + +V + +During the long interval that elapsed between the execution of the +earlier portion of the Second Act of _Siegfried_ and the resumption of +his work many things happened to Wagner. He composed _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_; he went through his worst years of utter despair; he +was taken up by King Ludwig. As I have mentioned, he went to +Triebschen to complete the _Ring_ for the sake of his conception of +the hero Siegfried--and he went there a jaded man. And there is an +unmistakable quality in the music of his Third Act. In _Tristan_ and +the _Mastersingers_ we have the perfectly mature Wagner; inspiration, +invention and technical accomplishment are perfectly balanced. What we +feel immediately in the third act of _Siegfried_ is a certain +over-ripeness--as if the writing of music had become too easy. As we +proceed I shall give some instances of this, though not so many as +might be given. + +Siegfried is now on the point of reaching the height of his fortunes. +He has the Sword, has killed the Dragon, secured the Ring and the +magic cap which will enable him to change himself into any shape he +pleases. Following the fluttering bird he comes to a pass on the +mountain-side and encounters Wotan who, we know, had sworn that none +who feared his Spear should pass through the fire. He endeavours to +stop the Hero, who shatters the Spear. Siegfried passes on; the flames +leap up at his approach and subside as he boldly goes on. He finds +Brünnhilda sleeping, awakes her with a kiss, overcomes her resistance, +and the opera concludes with a triumphant love-duet. This is the +skeleton of what is, dramatically if not musically, the most important +of the three acts. + +The curtain rises on this mountain pass in a dark dawn: an angry cold +wind whistles and screams, and wild wet clouds are flying. Wotan +stands there; presently he summons Erda, who rises, as in the +_Rhinegold_, with a "frosty light" about her; he asks her what will be +the upshot of the day's doings. Her answer is no answer, and Wotan +replies for her: Siegfried will pass and take Brünnhilda--and then the +End of the gods. The dramatic object of this scene I have never been +able to grasp. Both Wotan and Erda know what the end will be; and I +can only take it that Wagner, fully aware that each of the constituent +operas of the _Ring_ would certainly be performed separately, wanted +to make his intention and the whole plot clear to those who had not +seen the earlier parts of the work. Musically it shows signs of that +over-ripeness I have just spoken of. The introduction is magnificent: +the leaping figure on the strings, the subject that serves for Erda +here (and elsewhere in different shapes for all the elemental beings), +mounting up against it, the phrase expressive of Wotan's anguish +(from Act II of the _Valkyrie_), the Spear theme rising by degrees and +ever increasing force, the whole leading up to the Wanderer +music--these at once tell a story and paint a picture of tempest +amongst the wild mountainous rocks. Had Schopenhauer heard this music +it would have justified his remark about the use of clouds. From the +moment that Wotan begins his invocation the quality falls: the motive +is, for Wagner, a poor, mechanical thing; and an appearance of life is +only kept up by marked rhythms, forced changes of key, and noisy +orchestration. Erda's music is not on the highest level. The colour is +there, and an atmosphere is gained largely through the employment of +music previously heard; but the vocal phrases are not true song, nor +that blending of true song with recitative of which we have already +noticed so many examples. + +With the approach of Siegfried, however, at once the superb artist +shows himself: a complete piece made from the fire-music, the +bird-music, and Siegfried the hunter's theme is begun, to be +interrupted for a while, then resumed and worked up into a glorious +thing. The interruption is the scene between Siegfried and his +grandfather the Wanderer. It brings the tragedy of Wotan more vividly +than ever before us, and is from every point of view not only +justified but necessary. Siegfried scoffs at the old dotard, who loves +the boy as his own flesh and blood (if one may say this of a pagan +god) doomed to death by his forbear's ambition and errors. At last +Siegfried, impatient to go on, smashes the Spear and ascends the path +to where we see the distant glow of the flames. The music is supremely +noble and touching, with just a hint here and there of over-facility: +I mean chiefly that the vocal phrases are not tense and full of +character as are those in the _Valkyrie_: they seem to have been _put +in_ to fit the orchestral web. In an earlier chapter I spoke of this +weakness in the _Ring_; and from this point onward till the end of +Wagner's writing days, unless he was writing undisguised song, the +liability to this weakness increased. The over-ripeness shows itself +also in the structure of the music: the parts lack definition (as +microscopists would say). Formalism is not at all a desirable thing; +but if we examine the great works, differing widely in character, +_Tristan_, the _Mastersingers_ and the _Valkyrie_, we find the utmost +distinctness combined with perfect freedom and expressiveness. Even as +early as the Second Act of _Siegfried_ the freedom threatens to +degenerate into sloppiness--or, to put it rather more mildly, at least +into vagueness. Perhaps he felt this himself; for certainly at the end +of the act we are discussing, and often in the _Dusk of the Gods_, he +gives us straightforward song. At best his song-recitative is sublime; +at worst it is insufferably tedious. + +The gorgeous journey to the mountain-top is resumed as Siegfried +disappears amongst the rocks and Wotan goes off. We are now done with +him: his last ineffectual stand for supremacy having collapsed, as he +fore-knew it would, he returns to Valhalla to await the end. There is +darkness for a while; then light returns, and we find the scene that +of the termination of the _Valkyrie_. The mountain-top is sunlit; +Brünnhilda's horse Grani is contentedly at graze; Brünnhilda, covered +with her shield, her spear by her side, sleeps, motionless. Siegfried +comes over some rocks at the back of the stage, gazes around him in +wonder, finally discovers Brünnhilda, and with a kiss awakens her. At +first the godhood has not quite gone out of her, and "Woe! woe!" she +cries, as she realises her fate. But womanhood is strong within her; +she yields; hails Siegfried as the highest hero of all the world, and +the opera ends. + +The music is nearly throughout the superb Wagner. The long ascending +violin passage which accompanies Siegfried's amazed gazing at the +wonders around him, chief amongst them Brünnhilda, is imagined with +absolute truth; Brünnhilda's Greeting to the sun is Wagner in the +plenitude of his powers, blending music which depicts her outspread +arms with human rapture in an incomparable way; Siegfried's masterful +and passionate entreaties are quite in the strain of Tristan, though +the Scandinavian atmosphere prevails; Brünnhilda's awe-stricken song, +"O Siegfried, highest hero," interprets the birth of love in a woman's +breast with, again, absolute truth; and that the man who had lately +written _Tristan_ could write such a finale is not the least +astounding of Wagner's feats. + +The Siegfried Idyll, made of the Siegfried Themes, is, in a word, the +most beautiful thing he ever wrote. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +'THE DUSK OF THE GODS' + + +I + +This, the last of Wagner's really great works, was composed in hot +haste for the first Bayreuth festival. True, the festival did not take +place until some time after its completion; but at the moment Wagner +anticipated an immediate performance. There is nothing more pathetic, +nothing sadder, than the picture of the mighty world-composer +struggling against petty odds to complete what might have been a +world-masterpiece, and failing because of his hurry. He was sixty +years of age; worn by constant combat; worried even then by stupid +persecutions and the uncertainties of life; and he went on, if not +joyfully, at least indomitably, unconquerably. The result is a work +gigantic in idea, but far too rapid and facile in the execution. His +pen seems to have run of its own accord; the scenes are spread out to +a length positively appalling; pages on pages show no trace of +inspiration. Yet the _Dusk of the Gods_ is an opera no other composer +could have achieved; and with all its defects it will be a high and +holy joy to generations not yet born. + +The last hour of the old gods has come; the Norns spin their web on +the Valkyries' rock; it breaks, and they sink into the earth, knowing +that all is finished. Dawn breaks, and Siegfried and Brünnhilda come +out of their cavern; Siegfried must now go forth to deeds of +derring-do, for, like Lovelace, "how could he love her, dear, so much, +loved he not honour more?" She bids him go, and he goes; the flames +immediately spring up again round her dwelling--for what reason Wagner +does not explain. Neither does he explain why Brünnhilda does not +travel with her husband--the explanation is made only too obvious +afterwards. He travels to the Rhine, and there meets Hagen, Günther +and Günther's sister Gutruna. Hagen, the son of Alberich, is more or +less like Mime, a half-super-natural being, malignant, diabolical, +with only one idea, that of getting possession of the gold, and, above +all, of the Ring. He knows of Siegfried's "deed," and knows that +Siegfried is coming that way; but he keeps the story to himself, and +tells Günther and Gutruna of the fearless hero and of Brünnhilda +sleeping on the mountain-top encircled by fire. Günther desires the +woman, Gutruna the man. But only Siegfried can pass through the fire. +Pat to the moment he arrives, and enters leading Grani. Hagen offers +him drink which contains a powder which destroys his memory; he +forgets all about Brünnhilda, but not, apparently, about the magic +cap; he gazes in rapture at Gutruna, and in a few minutes the pact is +made--Siegfried shall take Günther's form and win Brünnhilda for him; +in return he will have Gutruna, who is more than willing. The two men +go off together, and the scene changes again to the Valkyries' rock. +Brünnhilda sits alone looking at the Ring; Waltraute, one of the +Valkyries, rushes in and demands that Ring. She relates how for want +of it Wotan, dreading that it may fall into the hands of Alberich, +sits gloomy and silent in Valhalla. But Brünnhilda is now wholly woman +and has no sympathy with the gods; she refuses the Ring, and Waltraute +goes off in despair. The flames begin to flicker and dance; +Siegfried's horn is heard; and presently he enters in Günther's form, +or at least as nearly in it as can be managed on the stage. He claims +and seizes Brünnhilda, sends her into the sleeping-chamber, and, +swearing truth to his new friend Günther, follows with his drawn sword +ready to place between him and his bride. + +So the act closes. Brünnhilda's horror and shame are unspeakable; she +cannot understand; Wotan had promised her the great hero, and this +promise is broken and a last humiliation inflicted on her. The act is +intolerably long; even were every moment crowded with Wagner's most +glorious music the strain on our attention would be terrific. But the +music is by no means uniformly of Wagner's best; for pages on pages +his sheer craftsmanship fairly gallops away with him. The Norn scene +is as purely theatrical as anything he wrote; the atmosphere is, so to +speak, artificially weird. The scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilda +is more inspired; and the journey to the Rhine is one of Wagner's +finest bits of picture-painting. The change of feeling towards the end +is superb: a sense of foreboding and dread comes into the music and +prepares us for the coming disaster. But when the curtain rises on +the hall of the Gibichungs we at once get more artificiality and +theatricality. In using the word theatrical I do not mean there is any +return to, for instance, the _Rienzi_ style: the music is theatrical +in Wagner's own later way: it seems to fit the situation, but the +appearance is an appearance only: the stuff is superficial: the +feeling of the moment is not expressed--the music, in a word, is +essentially the same as that of many inferior but clever opera +composers, only, of course, the Wagner idiom is always there. The +Waltraute scene is fine, being largely made up of old material; but I +cannot say much for the scene between Brünnhilda and Siegfried. In +this first act two important themes are introduced, the Tarnhelm theme +and that of the draught of forgetfulness. The first is of the +theatrical type: it is a leitmotiv of the same sort as Lohengrin's +warning to Elsa; the other is a miracle, one of the wonders of music. +It gives one in a brief phrase Siegfried's dazed sense that something +has gone from him, a strange sense of loss; and it has the pathos the +moment demands. As for the draught of forgetfulness itself, it cannot +be explained as symbolical of anything; it must be accepted as we +accept the Tarnhelm and the Rhinemaidens and black Alberich. + + +II + +In the Second Act the scene is again the Gibichungs' hall. Siegfried +and Günther are away, and Hagen watches by night; his father, +Alberich, crawls up from the river and counsels him as to how to get +possession of the Ring; then he disappears as dawn begins to show. The +music is weird and sinister in Wagner's finest manner. Siegfried comes +in and says Günther and his bride will soon arrive, and goes off with +Gutruna, happy as a child; in a magnificent piece of music, largely +constructed of a harsh phrase associated with Hagen, he (Hagen) calls +up the clansmen and women; a pompous bit of chorus greets Günther and +Brünnhilda, and then once more we are plunged into a sea of +theatricality. To her amazement, Brünnhilda finds Siegfried there with +his new bride, unmindful of her. In rage she denounces him and +declares he has shared the joys of love with her; he denies it; but +Günther is shamed, and has no doubt that Siegfried has played him +false. Siegfried goes merrily off, and Günther, Hagen and Brünnhilda +swear that he must die. In the music we get any amount of physical +energy and dramatic emphasis; but we know this is no longer the Wagner +of the _Valkyrie_. I pass over the Act briefly now, because I can only +repeat what I have said before. Of course all the consummate skill of +the master is there. + +The Third Act opens by the river-side. Siegfried has wandered away +from a hunting party, and is attracted by the song of the +Rhinemaidens--a regular set piece in the oldest-fashioned of forms, +but marvellously beautiful. The nymphs try to coax him to throw them +the Ring, which he had wrested from Brünnhilda; he refuses, and they +tell him that this day he must die. The other hunters come in, and +Siegfried is asked to tell of his adventures, and as he does so Hagen +offers him a cup of wine into which he dropped another powder; +Siegfried's memory gradually returns, and to Günther's horror he +relates how he first scaled the mountain, passed the fire and won +Brünnhilda. He means on the first occasion, but it shames Günther once +again. Hagen points in the air and asks Siegfried what he sees above +him; two black ravens fly over. Siegfried turns to look at them, and +Hagen instantly thrusts a spear into his back; the ravens wing their +way to Valhalla to tell Wotan that the fatal hour has come. In a +sublime passage Siegfried the dying hero sings of Brünnhilda, and +dies. Every one save Hagen is horror-stricken; the body is picked up +and carried downward through the moonlit mists over the mountain, and +the gorgeous funeral march is played. This is built up on Wagner's +customary plan: it tells the story of the Volsung race, now ended by +the death of Siegfried. + +In the second scene of the Act there is one fine passage--Brünnhilda's +long address--and the rest is manufactured with dexterity and quite +uninspired. The body is brought in; Hagen wishes to take the Ring, and +a thrill is sent through us as the dead man's arm rises threateningly. +Günther interferes, and Hagen kills him; Brünnhilda comes on and sees +clearly everything; Gutruna claims Siegfried as hers--"he never was +yours; he is mine," Brünnhilda replies, and (by trick of true +stage-craft) Gutruna is seen to kneel down by the side of her dead +brother. She is absolutely alone--even Siegfried, dead, is taken from +her, and she instinctively creeps to the only thing that is in any +sense hers. Brünnhilda orders the funeral fire to be built; the body +is put on it and consumed: Brünnhilda mounts Grani and scatters the +ashes, and with them the Ring, into the river; the waters rise, and +Hagen rushes after the Ring, to be drawn down; Wotan's power went when +the spear was shattered, and now that the Ring is returned to the +Rhine no other power controls Loge. He flares up, and we see Valhalla +on high in flames. + +So ends the _Dusk of the Gods_ and the whole gigantic cycle. A noble +race has come and gone, and the world is prepared to make a fresh +start. I have discussed the music as we went along, and there is +nothing more to add. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN + + +I + +After Wagner had completed the _Ring_, a work which, in regard to its +gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he +was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous +musician--more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or +Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph +than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had +dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have +dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as +his lackey--and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth +festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person +could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors +to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much +of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all; +Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of _his_ +Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take +these three because they are three of the most successful financial +composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be +added. That is what they would have done: made a little money they +did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more +successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or +ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in +proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they +were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub, +it may be remarked, was a preciously comfortable one, and he made no +pretence about it being anything else. He was a successful man of +business; in spirit he was broken, exhausted, defeated. + +That is the first point to be considered; the next is a corollary. +This man of dashed, broken hopes still needed the driving force of +either human passions, griefs or sorrows, or of great human ideals, +before he could compose ten notes. It is no desire of mine to scoff at +the Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian notions working in Wagner's brain +when he planned the _Ring_, and wrote its finest music; in art--as in +business, if it comes to that--one judges by results and results only. +But we can see that it was these ridiculous ideas, as perhaps I have +already pointed out, that were the postilion's whip to Wagner's +Pegasus. Of some men it can be said that no one knows anything of the +postilion's whip: of every artist concerning whom a fair tail of facts +is available and consultable we find a very distinct whip. We may +laugh at the idea of the "stories" to which Beethoven worked: who +would laugh at the Fifth Symphony would not even be laughed at. And I +have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that when Wagner set +to work on _Parsifal_ his most eager and greedy desire was to show the +world that he desired nothing. Knowing Bayreuth a failure, fancying +his whole life a failure, from a particular point of view, one idea +seized hold on him--- the idea that those who did not like his music +were in a pitiable condition, and compassion exhorted him to rescue +them, to redeem them. He meant to heap coals of fire upon a generation +that refused to recognise him as a prophet. He did it--with a double +vengeance: he made the detractors come to his knees and he made a +fortune out of them--them alone. For Bayreuth never became a +profitable investment for Jewish money until the one great Christian +drama of modern times was produced there. + +_Parsifal_, in one form or another, had long fermented in Wagner's +brain. At first it was--incongruous though the thing may seem--either +_Jesus of Nazareth_ or _Wieland the Smith_; then _Parzival_ grew out +of the Siegfried idea; and at length, stimulated by the attentions and +help of poor Ludwig, he settled on _Parsifal_. These are matters not +of opinion, but of historical fact. Ludwig, when not masquerading in +woman's clothing, or ordering it from Paris, or appearing at private +performances in one opera or another, suffered from great attacks of +religion; and, unhappily for the art of music, what appealed to his +diseased brain from one side appealed to Wagner's tired brain from the +other side. Ludwig asked him to complete _Parsifal_ and he did so. I +doubt whether without the royal request he ever would have done so. +But in doing so he, as Americans say, "struck lucky." Throughout +Western Europe you have only to bawl the word "religion" and your +fortune is made; in America it is the same; on the two continents +innumerable fortunes have been made by bawling the word "religion." So +Wagner's conviction, Ludwig's desire, and advertisement possibilities, +all coincided; and thenceforth Bayreuth flourished--financially, if +not artistically or morally. + +I shall devote little attention to _Parsifal_. The plot would disgrace +Wagner's memory if we did not know it to be the work of his tired-out +old age. The central idea is that of Renunciation; and I will give the +reader a skeleton, but a fair skeleton, of the plot, and ask him, Who +renounces anything? who gains anything by renouncing? or loses +anything by not renouncing? and, above all, what is any one called on +to renounce? + +At the Montsalvat of _Lohengrin_--ah! what a different +Montsalvat--Amfortas, lord of the tribe of monks, has flirted with a +lady, and a magician, Klingsor, has seized the sacred spear with which +Christ's side was pierced and inflicted on Amfortas an incurable +wound. That is the state of affairs when the curtain rises. Gurnemanz, +a faithful warder, talks with sundry squires, not yet fully degraded +to the order of knighthood, and tells them how through a certain +wondrous woman Amfortas fell from his high estate. The wondrous woman, +Kundry, disguised as a sort of Indian squaw, enters, coming, she says, +from far lands; exhausted, she flings herself in a thicket to +sleep--sleep--she says. Gurnemanz does not know who she is--nor, for +that small matter, do I--but she comes and serves these knight-monks +faithfully for whiles and then disappears; and generally, it seems, +during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured +pearl of a saint of a knight. Enter Parsifal, "the pure +fool"--Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He +carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides +of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any +wrong--wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains +in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts +into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the +reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my +explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that +only the "pure fool" taught by suffering could redeem suffering +Amfortas: mankind, that is, could only be made perfect by a perfect +idiot. Gurnemanz thinks he has found the required man--and he has, if +only he knew it--and he takes him on the most curious promenade in the +history of mankind--to the Hall of the Grail. The two men do not walk: +it is the scenery that walks. "Here," says Gurnemanz, "time and space +are one." + +Arrived there, we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than +anything we know of mediæval Christianity: a sort of mosque with a +huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart's Cocoa-rooms tables and +benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque. The pure fool is pushed +aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then +the service begins. It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord's Supper. When +the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away, +Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it all. "Nothing," +Parsifal replies, and is immediately turned out of doors. + +The origin of the guileless fool has already been indicated: this--as +it seems to us to-day--idiotic notion of the eighteenth century +started Wagner on the notion that if a modern child, with all the +developed brain of a modern child, could suddenly be transplanted into +a state of nature, all would be well with the world. What could +possibly happen? But it is silly to ask the question: the whole +juvenile population of the earth would have to be so transplanted, and +they would have to find a new earth to live on--at least an earth not +frequented by modern men and women. + +In the next Act we are taken to Klingsor's magic castle. Klingsor +calls up Kundry and changes his castle into an enchanted garden full +of flower-maidens; Parsifal comes in, and, though curious about the +maidens, does not know what they would be at; he angrily drives them +off; Kundry calls him. She tells him of the death of his mother who +had loved him so dearly; he again weeps and learns the meaning of +compassion; Kundry kisses him, and he learns the meaning of sex and +temptation. In horror he casts her from him; Klingsor throws the spear +at him--the sacred Spear with which Christ's side was wounded, stolen +by Klingsor from Montsalvat--it remains suspended above his head; he +seizes and waves it, and at once garden, flower-maidens and all are +reduced to withered stalks and leaves. Parsifal returns, an +"enlightened" fool, and by touching the wound of Amfortas, cures him, +becoming himself head of the order. + +The whole affair is a spectacle which I must say is disgusting to +healthy minds. The insinuations are frightful. Consider, reader, +seriously for a moment: Parsifal--Siegfried grown to manhood--knows +and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is +he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with +suffering--acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never +suffered--that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity. +Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that +the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to +please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion. + +Of the music it is not necessary to say more than that some of it is +fine. For the most part it lacks virility, though there are passages +of marvellous loveliness. The flower-maidens' waltz shows what Wagner +could do in that way; the Good Friday music, dating back to the +_Lohengrin_ days, is sweet and fresh. But the quasi-religious music +has no charms for me. + +Of course the prelude is in its way, but only in its way, a beautiful +thing. One almost hears the beating of angels' wings; the remnant of +old church melody, fitted into the most modern of modern rhythms, +sings out; the old _Tannhäuser_ and _Rienzi_ Dresden Amen comes out +pompously if not very effectively. On the whole a splendid _tour de +force_ is accomplished. But as soon as the singers are introduced we +feel the lack of the inspiration of former days; the writing is not +vocal writing at all; it is simply notes chosen at will or at random +to fit in with the chord sequences that were constantly shaping +themselves in Wagner's brain--not sequences that sprang, as he himself +would have expressed it, from "the feeling." The woes of Amfortas are +described by the orchestra with a coldness that would have surprised +or stunned Wagner in his _Tristan_ days: had Meyerbeer done it no +paper would have carried his hot words. When Parsifal shoots the Swan, +Gurnemanz has two or three moments of true emotion: the rest ought to +be silence and is rubbish. The parody of the Lord's Supper is +deplorable: we have already heard enough of the music in the prelude +without having to go through it again. Klingsor's magic music is mere +theatricalism; about Kundry's account of Parsifal's mother I remain in +some doubt: it is certainly beautiful, but to those of us who know the +corresponding scene in _Siegfried_ it is rather beggarly. Parsifal's +denunciation of Kundry after she has kissed him has not a word of the +old truthful Wagner in it: Wagner had written so magnificently about +the ecstatic state of Palestrina and such of the other church +composers as he knew, that he must, absolutely must, have realised +that his _Parsifal_ stuff was essentially untrue. Theatrically, the +end of the Second Act sounds true; but it will not bear rehearing. The +opening of the Third Act, again, is false; and the ending of the whole +business is tawdry stuff such as Meyerbeer might have been proud to +sign. Technically, the old man retained his hand; but to compare this +decrepit stuff with the music of the _Valkyrie_ would be preposterous, +and I have no wish to write more about it. + + +II + +_Parsifal_ having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to +arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans +bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he +imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a +financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful +unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony +in C, worked away at his _Parsifal_ arrangements; his heart ruptured +and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded +life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can +do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death +sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man +could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a +prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest +detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid +her hair by his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests +there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending? +We must regard _Parsifal_ as the last sad quaverings of a beloved +friend: after that came peace, immortal peace. + + +III + +Amongst musicians of the first rank stand four commanding, tremendous +figures. First comes Handel, by far the greatest personality of them +all: him I beg permission to think the greatest man who has yet +lived--greater than Cæsar or Napoleon. After him came Gluck, a +triumphant bourgeois; then Beethoven, whose domination was the result +of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose +supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or +a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time; +he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pugnacity +landed him in bankruptcy, and enabled him finally to win a fortune by +oratorio when no one would listen any longer to his operas. Gluck was +from the first a popular composer: there were rows, it is true, but +they did not concern him; he had always an assured public. Beethoven +had throughout his working life an ample pension and the friendship of +princes. Wagner had no such friends until he was sixty years old; he +had no pension; he offended every opera director in Germany by telling +those gentry that they knew nothing of their business; he got mixed up +with revolutionists, and, mainly because he was a man of unusual +ability, was regarded as dangerous by every bureaucrat. He was fast +becoming a popular composer; and he left his successes behind him and +went on to change opera in a fashion never attempted by Gluck or any +other composer. He was the most consummate contrapuntist of his age: +therefore the critics and professors declared he knew nothing about +counterpoint. He wrote the loveliest melodies of the nineteenth +century: therefore it was generally agreed that the gift of melodic +invention had been denied him by a merciful Providence, who reserved +that gift for the Jews and their friends. He could hold neither his +tongue nor his pen; if a bull may be excused, he replied before he was +attacked, he hit back before he was struck. Proud as Satan, and +through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and +yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his +friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with +his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising +about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring +he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even +one single opera of the _Ring_ to be given, and then allowing single +operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself--there never was in +the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of +universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813. + +All this we may joyfully concede, knowing how much may be said on the +other side. Wagner not only was the most stupendous personage born +into the nineteenth century: he was also one of the noblest, most +generous men that have lived. There is not a mean trait in his +character. He endured privation, actual starvation; he was shamefully +treated; his wife did not believe in his genius; his simplest actions +were misinterpreted; frantic endeavours were made to hound him out of +the public life of opera; his publishers took advantage of his poverty +to try to rob him; the scores of his masterpieces were returned +unopened from theatres--in some cases they were not returned, and he +had infinite difficulty to secure them; moreover, he was ill all his +life: yet he never lost faith in mankind, and when he became, +comparatively, a well-to-do man he went on doing generous deeds as +though nothing had happened. With humbugs and pretenders he would have +no dealings; but no genuine young artist ever asked his help in vain. +He spared even that rancorous decadent Nietzsche; he owned his +obligations to that soul of chivalry, Liszt. He spared that mediocre +person Meyerbeer; he treated Mendelssohn with almost exaggerated +courtesy. He fought a terrific fight with all the forces of reaction +and stupidity, and he came through untainted, unstained; if he sorely +belaboured the charlatans, he had all the finest musicians, and all +other fine artists, on his side. The composer who won and held the +friendship and esteem of such men as Liszt, Cornelius, Jensen, Tausig +and Bülow, not to mention the admiration of our own Swinburne, is not +a man to be dismissed by enumerating his defects. Some of us, I +suppose, will admit that we may possibly have our defects: none of us, +so far as I know, can possibly claim his great qualities. + +He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he +let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily +life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible +personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an +angel and the understanding of an archangel to put up with him. We see +that every one did put up with him; every one who knew him had the +same faith in his genius as he himself had; every one who knew +him--really knew him--loved him. Those who did not know him belaboured +him in the press or by word of mouth, and much honour and profit did +they get by it. He stands unsmirched by the mud thrown by his +detractors; he stands undamaged even by the adulation of his admirers. + +Let us consider for a moment what the man's personal character and +momentum enabled him to achieve. Finely endowed personalities like +Mozart and Chopin did much: did they write a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_? +The question needs no answer. Did they or the still mightier Beethoven +dream of creating a Bayreuth? In the midst of years of privation +Richard Wagner planned and partly executed the _Ring_; he completed +_Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_; as quite a young man he had dreamed +of a Bayreuth; as an old man he turned his dream into a reality. He +had his lieutenants--big men always have their lieutenants--but the +idea, the purpose, and the force behind were his and nobody else's +than his. Bayreuth does not stand for very much to-day; in the +'seventies it stood for a fierce attack on the general sloppiness of +opera performances all the world over, for the setting up of an ideal +to which there is no parallel in the history of the art of music. +Nothing but the personal force of this one man accomplished this +thing--personal force accompanied by a wholehearted devotion to his +art. I suppose the inventors of steam-engines and the builders of +giant dams have an ideal, too, in their crazy craniums, but they +invent and work with a very definite idea of personal gain. Wagner +hoped for no gain, and he gained little, though, as I have said, as +much as he wanted. He was helped by the only noble-hearted king born +into the nineteenth century; but he found that king and inspired him. +He risked everything for his idea; if his works have grown to be +valuable assets since his death, they were not during his lifetime. By +unheard-of energy while suffering privation--even of the ordinary +necessities of life--he went on and created masterpieces, and then by +creating Bayreuth set up a standard of musical execution that no one +before him had thought possible. All the great conductors of the last +fifty years are, musically, his offspring. Without him we should have +been without a Richter, or Richter's introducer to the English, an +Alfred Schulz-Curtius; without these two men we should have no Robert +Newman or Henry J. Wood. Wagner's influence has been further-reaching +than many of us think; and that influence was due not more to the +consummate skill of the musician than to the character of the man. + +Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human--in +painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose. He made what we consider +mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of +passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?--but how few they +are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the +centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were +the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not +know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in +Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book +by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the +ages have produced--the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart, +Beethoven and Michael Angelo: a man it is an honour to have known as +it is a disgrace to have scorned--the one man born into the last +century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise. + + + + +INDEX + +_Abendzeitung_ (Dresden), 75 + +Apel, August, 41, 51 + +Auber, D.F.E., + _Masaniello_, 47, 89; + compared with Meyerbeer, 67, 68 + +Avenarius, Eduard, + marries Cäcilie Geyer, 72 + +Bakunin, Michael, 136, 196 + +Baumgärtner, Wilhelm, 209 + +Bayreuth, 71, 323, 325-329, 400, 407, 409, 410 + +Beethoven, Ludwig van, 25, 26, 330, 331, 347, 350, 356, 371, 408, 416; + his influence on Wagner, 33-35, 42, 62; + arrangements of, by Wagner, 37; + _Fidelio_, 148 + +Bellini, Vincenzo, 50, 92, 116, 150, 178 + +Bennett, Joseph, 328 + +Berlioz, Hector, + Wagner's criticism on, 71; + tragedy of his life, 72; + praises the _Flying Dutchman_, 128; + in London, 225; + his relations with Wagner, 226; + his "Ride to the Abyss," 370 + +Bethmann, Heinrich, 52, 54 + +Bispham, David, 277 + +Brahms, Johannes, 164 + +Brangaena, 245-248 + +Brazil, + Wagner receives a commission from, 230, 237 + +Brendel, Karl Franz, 50, 218 + +Brockhaus, Friedrich, + marries Louise Wagner, 32 + +Bülow, Cosima von, + and Wagner, 60, 323-325 + +Bülow, Hans von, 71, 250, 418; + serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, 208; + married to Cosima Liszt, 323, 324 + + +_Communication to my Friends_, 219 + +Cornelius, Peter, 71, 418 + +Cusins, W.G., 46, 134 + + +Dannreuther, Edward, 37, 67 + +Davison, J.W., 46 + +Dietsch, Pierre, 80 + +Dorn, Heinrich, 32, 37, 39, 40, 57 + +_Dusk of the Gods, The_, 178, 188, 325, 356, 373, 398; + analysis and criticism, 400-406 + +Dvoràk, Anton, + compared with Wagner, 291, 292 + + +Elgar, Sir Edward, 291 + +_End in Paris, An_, 212, 213 + +_Europa_, 75 + + +_Feen, Die_, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 60-63. 72, 86, 93, 137 + +Feuerbach, Ludwig, 232, 408 + +Fischer, Wilhelm, 76, 126, 205, 206, 220, 231 + +_Flying Dutchman, The_, 65, 66, 80, 81, 127, 128, 137, 170, + 187, 219, 243, 356, 385; + analysis and criticism, 94-120; + produced at Zurich, 208 + + +_Gazette Musicale, La_, 70, 75 + +Gewandhaus Concerts, 33, 45, 46 + +Geyer, Cäcilie, 14, 16, 30, 72 + +Geyer, Ludwig, 4, 6-14; + marries Frau Wagner, 8; his death, 14 + +Geyer, goldsmith at Eisleben, 11, 17 + +Glasenapps _Life of Wagner_, 8, 16, 19, 39, 66, 167 + +Gluck, 416, 417; + his _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture revised by Wagner, 209, 219 + +Goethe, J.W. von, _Die Laune des Verliebten_, 35 + +Götterdämmerung. _See_ Dusk of the Gods + +Gottfried von Strassburg, _Tristan_, 238 + +Gozzi, _La Donna Serpente_, 60 + + +Habeneck, F.A., 69, 70 + +Hallé, Sir Charles, 64, 73, 327 + +Handel, G.F., 11, 330, 331, 390, 416; + the "Horse and his Rider" chorus, 371, 372; + _Israel in Egypt_, 377 + +Hanslick, Eduard, 164 + +_Happy Evening, A_, 213 + +Harris, Sir Augustus, 346 + +Hauser, Franz, 49 + +Heine, Heinrich, 64, 66, 70, 76-78, 94, 126, 205, 206 + +Heubner, Otto, 196 + +_Hochzeit Die_, 45, 47 + +Hoffmann, E.T.A., 30 + +_Huldigungsmarsch_, 59 + + +Jensen, Adolf, 71, 418 + +_Jesus of Nazareth_, 196 + +Jews, Wagner and the, 49, 50, 57, 217-219 + +Joly, Anténor, 69, 74 + +_Judaism in Music_, 31, 50, 134, 217-219 + + +_Kaisermarsch_, 59 + +Kittl, Friedrich, 45 + + +Laube, Heinrich, 51, 70 + +Lehrs, F. Siegfried, 72, 82, 128 + +Leitmotiv, discussion of the, 170, 356, 357 + +Lewald, August, 75 + +_Liebesverbot, Das_, 51, 53, 56, 72, 74, 86, 137 + +Liszt, Cosima. _See_ Wagner, Cosima + +Liszt, Franz, 71, 128, 156, 237, 238, 348, 378, 388; + his first acquaintance with Wagner, 82, 83; + helps him to escape to Zurich, 136, 194; + produces _Tannhaüser_ at Weimar, 164; + sends him to Paris, 194; + his generosity and friendship, 195, 196, 199, 202, 208, 418; + produces _Lohengrin_, 200, 201, 210 + +_Lohengrin_, 72, 82, 128, 137, 196, 197, 219, 332, 341, 358, 375; + analysis and criticism, 165-192; + the leitmotiv first introduced, 170; + produced by Liszt at Weimar, 200, 201, 210 + +_Love-feast of the Apostles, The_, 38, 126 + +Ludwig II, King, 239, 319, 321, 322, 327-329, 395, 409, 410, 413 + +Lüttichau, von, 76, 77, 79, 80, 122, 123, 125 + +Lytton, Bulwer, _Rienzi_, 55, 84 + + +Marschner, Heinrich August, 61, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187; + his _Adolph von Nassau_, 135 + +_Mastersingers, The_, 109, 111, 179, 279, 319-321, 325, 333, + 341, 344, 358, 387, 388, 395, 398; + the story, 280, 281; + the influence of Nuremberg, 282, 283; + the overture, 284-288; + analysis and criticism, 288-318; + produced at Munich, 321 + +Mendelssohn, Felix, 33, 49, 57, 58, 73, 126, 364, 372, 407, 418; + _Midsummer Night's Dream_ overture, 61; + _Hebrides_, 112; + his comment on _Tannhäuser_, 163 + +Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 55, 407, 414, 415, 418; + _Robert the Devil_, 48; + his treatment of Wagner, 67-71, 73, 74, 80; + his influence on _Rienzi_, 84-86 + +Müller, Alexander, 196 + +Müller, Gottlieb, 36 + +_My Life_, 67 + + +Napoleon I, his flight from Leipzig 4. 5, 31 + +Newman, Mr. Ernest, 130, 167, 212, 217 + +_Nibelung's Ring, The_. See _Ring_ + +Nicolai School, Leipzig, 27 + +Nietzsche, Friedrich, 52, 418 + + +Overtures: "Polonia," 43; + D minor, 45; + C major, 45; + _King Enzio_, 45; + _Faust_, 62, 70, 209; + _Columbus_, 70, 75 + + +_Parsifal_, 16, 138-140, 170, 379; + analysis and criticism, 409-416 + +Pätz, Johanna Rosina, 3 + +Pecht, Friedrich, 70 + +Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, commissions an opera from Wagner, 230, 237 + +Philharmonic Society, the, 33, 45, 46, 134; + concerts conducted by Wagner, 220-226 + +_Pilgrimage to Beethoven, A_, 213 + +Pillet, Léon, 80 + +Planer, Minna, marries Wagner, 53, 54. +_See_ Wagner, Minna. + +Poe, Edgar Allen, 330 + +Poland, Wagner's sympathy with, 41, 43 + +Praeger, Ferdinand, 43, 68, 200, 208, 225, 238 + + +Raymund, his "magic dramas," 44 + +Reinecke, Carl, 33, 45, 46 + +Reissiger, Gottlieb, 77, 79, 123-125 + +_Rhinegold, The_, 209, 299, 350, 351, 354, 358, 376, 383, 385, 396; + composition of, 332-334; + analysis and criticism, 337-349 + +_Rienzi_, 55, 61, 62, 68, 69, 73, 74, 81, 82, 117, 127, 128; + completed and sent to Dresden, 75-80; + accepted, 80; + Meyerbeer's influence on, 84, 85; + analysis and criticism, 86-93; + its success, 91, 121; + a failure at Weimar, 237 + +Rietz, Julius, portrait of Wagner by, 206 + +_Ring of the Nibelung, The_, 105, 111, 137,176, 207-209, 226-230, + 320, 323, 325, 378; + first cycle given at Bayreuth, 327-329; + summary of its growth, 330-334; + analysis of its main dramatic motive, 334-337; + Schopenhauer's criticism, 342, + _see_ also the separate operas + +Ritter, Alexander, 208 + +Ritter, Frau, 199, 208 + +Roeckel, August, 126, 132, 133, 196 + +Rossini, G.A., 55, 407; + _William Tell_, 47; + _Stabat Mater_, 213 + + +Sainton, Prof., 225 + +_Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg_, 72, 82, 128 + +_Saracen Young Woman_, 81, 82 + +Schlesinger, Maurice, 69, 70, 75, 82, 121 + +Schopenhauer, + his influence on Wagner, 231-233, 236, 265, 408; + his criticism on the _Ring_, 342, 397 + +Schröder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, 50, 76-79, 160 + +Schubert's _Erl-king_, 355 + +Schumann, Clara, 45 + +Schumann, Robert, 51; + on _Tannhäuser_, 163, 164; + on _Lohengrin_, 165, 177 + +Scribe, Eugène, 74, 85, 97 + +Semper, Gottfried, 325 + +Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 20 + +Shedlock, Mr. J.S., 220 + +_Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-230, 325, 332, 414; + analysis and criticism, 378-399 + +_Siegfried's Death_, 227-230, 332, 334, 383 + +_Siegfried Idyll_, 59, 60 + +Spohr, Ludwig, 294, 350; + produces the _Flying Dutchman_ at Cassel, 127; + on _Tannhäuser_, 149, 272 + +Spontini, Gasparo, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187; + Wagner's essay on, 219 + +Strauss, Johann, 44 + +Sulzer, Jakob, 209 + +Symphony in C major, 41, 42, 44, 45, 56-59, 72, 73, 415 + +Swinburne, A.C., 415, 418 + + +_Tannhäuser_, 30, 60, 72, 82, 92, 128, 137-140, 219, + 341, 343, 358, 376, 384. 385; + analysis and criticism, 140-164; + production and reception, 147, 148; + opinions on, 163, 164; + produced by Liszt at Weimar, 164 + +Tausig, Karl, 71, 418 + +Thomä, Jeannette, 23 + +Tichatschek, 78, 147 + +Tieck, Ludwig, _Tannhäuser_, 30 + +Tomaschek, Wenzel, 45 + +"Triebschen," 323, 395 + +_Tristan_, 105, 106, 109, 111, 137, 187, 333, 341, 343, 344, + 353, 365, 375. 377, 395, 398, 399, 414; + rehearsed at Vienna and abandoned, 231; + folly of commentators on, 234-236, 266; + intended for Rio, 230, 237; + completed, 230, 238; + produced at Munich (1865), 237, 239, 321; + origin of, 237, 238; + preliminaries of the story, 239-241; + analysis and criticism, 241-277 + + +Uhlig, Theodor, 126, 145, 195, 200, 202, 205, 219, 226, 231, 283, 329, 383 + + +Vaez, Gustave, 203 + +_Valkyrie, The_, 209, 226, 230, 294, 332, 333, 341, 343, 344, 383, + 385, 388, 389, 398; + analysis and criticism, 350-377 + +Verdi's _Falstaff_, 311 + +Victoria, Queen, and Wagner, 222, 223 + +Villa Wahnfried, 326 + + +Wagner, Adolph, 2, 3, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 41 + +Wagner, Albert, 7, 8, 10, 16, 22, 24, 48 + +Wagner, Carl Friedrich, father of Richard, 2-5; + his death, 5, 8 + +Wagner, Clara, 10, 16, 22, 24 + +Wagner, Cosima, second wife of Richard, 60, 323-325, 419 + +Wagner, Friederike, 23 + +Wagner, Gottlob Friedrich, 3 + +Wagner, Johanna, daughter of Albert, 160 + +Wagner, Johanna Rosina, mother of Richard, 3, 5, 6, 8, 14,15, 16, 24, 28 + +Wagner, Julius, 10, 11, 16 + +Wagner, Louise, 7, 10, 24, 30, 31, 32 + +Wagner, Minna, first wife of Richard, 53, 54, 65, 121, 122, 126, 127, + 128, 133, 168, 169, 195, 207, 323-325 + +Wagner, Ottilie, 16, 30 + +Wagner, Richard (for Works see under separate headings), + birth and ancestry, 1-3; + absence of precocity, 11 12; + schooldays at Dresden, 17-24; + early training in theatrical matters, 18-19; + his love of the theatre, 21; + Weber's influence, 25; + at school at Leipzig, 26, 40; + his debt to his uncle, 28-30, 41; + unable to play the piano, 31, 37, 73; + "converted" by Beethoven, 33-35; + early compositions, 35. 36. 45; + studies under Weinlig, 36-38; + his arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, 37; + helped by his family 38, 44, 51; + his egotism, 39; + matriculates, 40; + his revolutionary fervour, 40, 41, 43; + visits Vienna, 44; + at Prague, 45; + works performed at the Gewandhaus concerts, 45; + chorus-master at Würzburg, 48; + returns to Leipzig, 49; + his industry, 52, 53, 209, 298; + his marriage, 53, 54; + obtains conductorships at Magdeburg, 53, Königsberg, and Riga, 54; + sails to London, 55, 64-67; + meets Meyerbeer at Boulogne, 67-69; + disappointments in Paris, 69-75; + goes to Dresden, 82, 83; + first acquaintance with Liszt, 82, 83; + Kapellmeister at Dresden, 122-126, 133-135; + his relations with Minna, 126, 127, 133, 168-169, 323, 324; + his political views, 128-131; + his share in the May insurrection of 1849, 128, 131, 132, 136; + his Germanism, 135, 149, 150, 214; + flees to Zurich, 136, 193, 194; + goes to Paris, 194, 195; + returns to Zurich, 196; + friendship of Liszt, 194, 196, 199; + his demands on his friends, 198-200; + his ill-health, 200; + his scheme for producing _Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-229; + third visit to Paris, 203-207; + life in Zurich, 207-210; + his prose-writings, 210; + speech at the re-interment of Weber, 214; + his theory on the fusion of the arts, 214-216; + unable to comprehend opposition, 217; + directions for performing his operas, 219; + visit to London, 220-226; + settles in Vienna, 230, 320; + his extravagance, 231; + influence of Schopenhauer, 231-233, 236, 265; + disappointments and failures, 278, 319, 320; + the chief Wagnerite, 287; + invited to Munich by King Ludwig, 319, 321; + ambitious schemes, 321, 322; + obliged to leave Munich, 322, 323; + retires to "Triebschen," 323, 395; + elopes with Cosima von Bülow, 323, 324; + marries Cosima, 325; + Bayreuth, 325-329; + his worship of brute force, 378, 379; + completion of the _Ring_, 400, 407; + outward success, 407; + his death, 415; + his character and achievement, 416-421 + +Wagner, Rosalie, 7, 10, 15, 16, 22, 24, 32, 39 + +Wagner, Siegfried, 71 + +Wagner, Sophie (Wendt), 23 + +Wagnerites, the, 287 + +Walther von der Vogelweide, 294 + +Weber, Carl Maria von, 13, 55, 350, 372, 390; + his influence on Wagner, 13, 25, 34, 35, 41, 61, 92, 150, + 153, 177, 185, 284; + his re-interment at Dresden, 135, 213 214; + _Euryanthe_, 13, 38, 305; + _Der Freischütz_, 13, 25 + +Weber, Dionys, 45, 46 + +Weinlig, Theodor, 36-38, 57 + +Wendt, Sophie, marries Adolph Wagner, 23 + +Wesendoncks, the, 199, 208 + +Wieck, Clara, _see_ Schumann, Clara + +Wigand, Otto, 205 + +_Wiland der Schmied_, 203, 206, 207 + +Wilhelmj, August, 328 + +Wille, Dr. and Frau, 208 + +Wüst, Henriette, 45 + +Wylde, Dr. Henry, 225 + + +_Young Siegfried_, 227-229 + + +Zigesar, von, 201 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Richard Wagner, by John F. 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Runciman + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Richard Wagner + Composer of Operas + +Author: John F. Runciman + +Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16431] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD WAGNER *** + + + + +Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1><a name="Page_-13" id="Page_-13" />RICHARD WAGNER</h1> + +<h3>COMPOSER OF OPERAS</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>JOHN F. RUNCIMAN</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 125px;"> +<img src="images/bell.png" width="125" height="156" alt="Publisher''s emblem" title="Publisher's emblem" /> +</div> + +<h4>LONDON<br /> +G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.<br /> +1913</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 308px;"><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece" /> +<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="308" height="490" alt="Portrait of Wagner" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Portrait of Wagner</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="Page_-12" id="Page_-12" /><a name="Page_-11" id="Page_-11" />TO<br />HAROLD HODGE</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="Page_-10" id="Page_-10" /><a name="Page_-9" id="Page_-9" />INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p>It is now one hundred years since Richard Wagner was born, thirty +since he died. In every land he has his monument in one shape or +another; his music-dramas can be heard all the world over; all the +ancient controversies as to their merits or demerits have died down. +The Bayreuth theatre, the outward and visible sign of his inner +greatness, has risen to the point of its most splendid glory and +lapsed into the limbo of tenth-rate things. Every one who really cares +for the art of music, and especially the art of opera (of which art +music is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and +opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to +simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I +trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous +eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain +and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to +describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time to +consider and to sort out (so to say) the reams that have been written +and printed about Wagner: the bulk of it has had to be thrown on the +scrap-heap: what there was of value has, I hope, been utilised.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_-8" id="Page_-8" />An author who plans a book on an artist or an artistic question must +be wary, especially at the beginning of his adventure. To start away +with a theory, whether new or old, and to yield to the seductive +temptation to convince humanity of its truth—this is to lay a trap +and to take the path that leads straight into it. Theories should be +kept for scientific matters. A work proving that parallel straight +lines never meet need not land the writer in self-contradictions; and +another writer may prove that they must and do meet, and still avoid +getting tangled amongst his own arguments. I even read a book once in +which it was clearly shown that the earth was flat; and, granted a +ludicrous premise, one could but admire the irrefragable logic with +which the conclusion was reached. With regard to art, be your premises +sound or grotesque, the result is the same—muddle. Logic, science, +philosophy, applied to art, spell certain disaster. With mingled pain +and amusement I have noted how more than one writer on music, setting +out in triumphant high spirits to demonstrate this or that, has before +his third chapter demonstrated just the contrary: I have never seen +anything else occur.</p> + +<p>Wagner wrote so much about himself and his art, and appeared so fully +satisfied with his explanations of why he became just what he became +and of why his art was just what it was, that naturally for nearly a +generation his critics fell into one or other of two errors. Either +they accepted his theorisings unreservedly or as unreservedly they +rejected them. In the second case they had to face the difficulty of +<a name="Page_-7" id="Page_-7" />coining, shaping, a theory of their own; in either case shipwreck +nearly always promptly ensued; and on the whole, if Wagner had to be +theorised about, one would prefer to have it done by Wagner. He +himself knew the tiny value of his theorisings about his art, for he +declared that when he wrote <i>Tristan and Isolda</i> he found he had +already left his theories far behind. This discovery might well have +served as a warning both to Wagner and to the hosts of his +commentators. Unluckily Wagner was far too fond of theorising, +moralising and generally talking of himself and his works, and he +reckoned he had a big propagandist work to do; so he went on +scribbling to the end. As for the commentators, they neglected the +warning and took Wagner's later doings as an example, with the result +that the library shelves of Europe are stopped and blocked with as big +a heap of rubbish as ever was provoked by great works of art since the +world began to turn round. For Wagner there is an ample excuse: he +honestly thought it necessary to spread his ideas abroad; his aims and +intentions had been so misunderstood, and so stupidly, wickedly, +recklessly misrepresented, that he did not believe his music-dramas +would ever find acceptance until he had cleared the way by explaining +himself. Little good came of it—in fact, the only good result was +that some of his writings fell into the hands of Ludwig II of Bavaria, +and thus led to the ending of his days of misery, and indirectly to +Bayreuth. For the commentators no word of extenuation can be said. +Those, perhaps, of the period 1867-77 were justified in pressing their +<a name="Page_-6" id="Page_-6" />master's claims on the public at large, for the support of the public +at large had to be won, and the best way of winning it seemed to lie +in advocating those claims, in season and out of season, through the +agency of the newspaper-press; but the rest of the herd have proved +themselves an unqualified nuisance and a hindrance to a right +understanding of Wagner.</p> + +<p>This herd I would not willingly join. In the following pages no +general theory concerning Wagner will be found. I shall indulge in no +theorisings whatever, but stick to the facts, facts which can now be +ascertained with certainty. My endeavour will be to tell a plain, +unvarnished tale of what Wagner did and of what he suffered, of the +environment amidst which he grew up and laboured and struggled: with +all that he said and wrote I shall deal as briefly as may be, +regarding his endless loquacity of mouth and pen as of interest only +when it throws real light on the artist. Least of all shall I waste +the reader's patience on the morals that may be drawn from his musical +works. The moral to be drawn from his prose works is simply that a +man, even a stupendously great man, may write far too much; the moral +to be drawn from his musical works every man may find out for himself: +for myself, I have found none, any more than I could ever find a moral +in a play of Æschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>There are plenty of authorities for the statements now to be made. We +have the exhaustive <i>Life</i> by Glasenapp and W. Ashton Ellis; then +there is <a name="Page_-5" id="Page_-5" />Wagner's own work, <i>My Life</i>, lately translated into +English; finally there are the <i>Letters</i>. Many of these are of no +interest or value whatever, dealing only with details concerning +scores and proof-sheets and petty money matters. Many, on the other +hand, notably those to Uhlig, are invaluable to every one who wishes +to understand Wagner. Extensive use is made of them in this book, +though, as they are easily accessible, I have forborne to quote more +than is absolutely necessary. <i>My Life</i> I think but little of, and +have not relied greatly on it.</p> + +<p>Wagner the reformer will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not +"reform" the opera form—the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed no +reforming—he simply developed it. He did reform operatic performances +by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of slovenliness +and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid indifference; +and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not theorize about +these matters, but point out what he achieved by making a continuous +appeal to indubitable, indisputable facts.</p> + +<p>I am indebted to Messrs. H. Grevel & Co. for kind permission to print +extracts from Mr. Shedlock's translation of Wagner's <i>Letters</i>, and to +Messrs. Novello for similar permission regarding quotations from the +libretti of the operas. Two words may be said about the quotations, +both words and music, of the operas: in some cases, when I could +neither find nor make an adequate translation of verses, I have stuck +to the original <a name="Page_-4" id="Page_-4" />German; with regard to the music, I have given as +little as possible. Both musical and verbal citations are meant for +reference—there is only one exception, the Sailors' Song from the +opening of <i>Tristan</i>. Catalogues of Wagner's themes have for long been +issued by several publishers; but they are of small assistance in +helping one to understand Wagner.</p> + +<p>J.F.R.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" /><a name="Page_-3" id="Page_-3" />CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>EARLY LIFE</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>EARLY BOYHOOD</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>EARLY LIFE</b> (<i>continued</i>)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>JUVENILE WORK</b>S</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>PARIS</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>DRESDEN</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'TANNHÄUSER'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'LOHENGRIN'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>EXILE</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>KING LUDWIG</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND THE RHINEGOLD'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'THE VALKYRIE'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'SIEGFRIED'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'THE DUSK OF THE GODS'</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a></td><td align='left'><b>'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><a href="#INDEX"><b>INDEX</b></a></td></tr> +</table> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_-2" id="Page_-2" /><a name="Page_-1" id="Page_-1" />LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + + +<table style="font-weight: bolder;"><tr><td><p> +<a href="#frontispiece">PORTRAIT OF WAGNER</a><br /> +(<i>Photogravure</i>)<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp008">WAGNER'S BIRTHPLACE</a>:<br /> + The Sign of the Red And White Lion, on The Brühl, Leipzig<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp138">THE WAGNER THEATRE</a><br /> + at Bayreuth<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp194">LISZT</a><br /> +(<i>From life and on stone by N. Hanhart</i>)<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp226">WAGNER</a><br /> +(<i>From the portrait by A.F. Pecht</i>)<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp322">KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA</a><br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp332">WAGNER IN 1877</a><br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp408">PALAZZO VENDRAMIN CALERGI, VENICE</a>,<br /> + where Wagner died, Feb. 13, 1883<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#fp418">CARL TAUSIG</a><br /> +<a name="Page_0" id="Page_0" /><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" /> +</p></td></tr></table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>EARLY LIFE</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and +musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the +Red and White Lion on the Brühl in old Leipzig. The precise date was +May 22; and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before, +at the church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard +Wagner. The events and circumstances of the period have furnished the +imaginative with many striking portents with regard to the future +mighty composer; and, to do the prophets full justice, after the +event—long after the event—they have widely opened their mouths and +uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house, describing a beast +such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a drowsy people +that the monstrous dragon of <i>Siegfried</i> was about to take the road +leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth. The spring foretold the songs in +<i>Tannhäuser</i> and the <i>Valkyrie</i>; <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" />the summer, the nights in King +Mark's Cornish castle-garden and amongst the fragrant lime-trees in +the streets of ancient Nuremberg; the horrors of the war raging at the +very gates of Leipzig and Napoleon's flight, the advent of the +preacher who was to earn a long exile by advising the Saxon soldiers +not to shoot their brethren. Events provided material for these and +many another score of prognostications: only, fortunately, no one read +events rightly at the time, and something fresh was left for the +biographers to expend their ingenuity upon.</p> + +<p>Richard Wagner came of a German lower middle-class stock. There is not +amongst his ancestry a single man distinguished in letters or any art. +His uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not +be remembered had he not been Wagner's uncle. Only by patient research +has it been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much +as play the organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast, +and he too would have been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner's +father. His stepfather—though this seems hardly to the point—was an +actor and portrait-painter; and his one claim to remembrance is that +he was Wagner's stepfather. So, however scientifically minded we may +be, however strongly disposed to account for the sudden appearance of +a stupendous genius by the cheap and easy method of pointing to some +distinguished ancestor and talking pompously of the laws of heredity, +in Wagner's case we are baffled and beaten. He came like a +thunder<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" />bolt out of a blue sky. We must be content with the fact that +he came. His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials +both; and bearing in mind Wagner's frank detestation of officialdom, +the scientist can scarcely draw much comfort from that.</p> + +<p>The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a +few years later than Haydn. In 1769 he married the daughter of a +charity-school master or caretaker; and in 1770, the year of +Beethoven's birth, his first child, christened Carl Friedrich Wilhelm, +was born. Four years later Adolph arrived. Gottlob was a douanier, an +exciseman, at the Rannstadt gate of Leipzig, and passed his days, I +dare say, as honestly as an exciseman can, in examining incoming +travellers to see that they did not bring with them so much as an egg +that had not paid duty. He died in 1795. Meantime, Carl Friedrich had +received a thoroughly sound education, and he became deputy-registrar +to the Leipzig town court. In 1789 he married Johanna Rosina Pätz +(whose name, it seems, is susceptible of many spellings).</p> + +<p>The scientific mind may after all find consolation in the +all-illuminating truth that Friedrich and all his children were more +or less passionately addicted to the theatre and attracted by it. It +was Friedrich's one hobby; and though Friedrich's brother Adolph had a +horror of it, the feeling was not aroused by it as an artistic +institution, but as an agency for the intellectual, moral and worldly +ruin of young men and women. In his leisure Friedrich arranged +<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" />dramatic performances and took part in them, and, as amateurs go, he +appears to have been highly successful. Histrionic persons were +constant guests at his house on the Brühl—amongst them notably one, +Ludwig Geyer, who became a fast friend of the family and played an +important rôle, off the stage, with regard to that family soon after +Richard's birth. Friedrich, during his later years, cannot have had +much spare time for amateur theatricals or any other amusement. +Napoleon was fighting his last desperate fights against the combined +forces of reactionary Europe; all the powers of feudalism had combined +to crush an emperor who had no royal blood in his veins; he raged over +Germany like an infuriated beast with a genius for military tactics, +scattering armies which dispersed only to join together and face him +again. While Richard was in his cradle the whole of Saxony was filled +with the squalor and misery and loathsome terrors of war. Leipzig was +occupied by the French; Marshal Davoust was left there as commandant, +with power of life and death, and all the other privileges of a +military governor; and in the deputy-registrar of the law-court he +found the man for the post of provisional chief of the police "of +public safety." Who kept the public safe from the police I am unable +to say. Fighting was going on perpetually in the neighbourhood; the +dead and dying lay scattered in all directions; the stench bred +epidemics more murderous than all Napoleon's cannon. Friedrich must +have found his hands full day and night. Richard was baptized on +August 16; the following <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" />day Napoleon won a victory which cost him +dear; the 18th, being Sunday, was observed as such by a soldiery in +need of a rest; on the 19th Napoleon was a beaten man, and ran to save +his skin past the windows of the house of the Red and White Lion on +the Brühl. Richard's mother had been trembling for her own safety and +that of her children and husband; but when, as she herself afterwards +told, she saw the dreaded conqueror bolt in haste without his hat, she +breathed again. Whether she and the family were any better off under +the deliverers is a question that does not concern us here: the point +is that she thought she was. It was all one to Richard, who, aged +three months, slept peacefully on.</p> + +<p>After the deliverance Friedrich's work became even heavier than +before. The town through its length and breadth was shattered and +dilapidated; whole families were homeless and packed like rabbits in +hutches; the slaughtered dead, men and beasts, could not be buried +quick enough; black death stalked abroad in the guise of what was +called hospital typhus—an epidemic fever of some kind. After the +French flight, I take it, provisional chief-policeman Wagner had +returned to his deputy-registrarship; but his toils were none the +lighter for that. He exhausted himself; the appalling fever attacked +him and he had no strength to resist it; and he died on November 22, +exactly six months after the birth of Richard. Wagner's ill-luck, his +wicked fairy, struck her first blow while his age had to be reckoned +in months; she went on striking, and <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" />never ceased to strike, until he +was beginning to grow a little weary and his age was reckoned in +decades of years, and in terms of masterpieces accomplished and +insults and ill-usage by no means patiently borne. It must have seemed +hard to his widowed mother, after the uncertainties and horrors of the +last years, that when at last a period of happy peace seemed about to +dawn, uncertainties and griefs and worries of a fresh sort should come +upon her.</p> + +<p>Whether Frau Wagner ever actually drew any pension from the good +burghers of Leipzig or the greedy state officials of Saxony seems, +when all is said, very uncertain. In such times of stress and struggle +great crown officers, laudably anxious about their own interests and +the interests of their families, are apt to be rather careless, not to +say callous, about the smaller fry. However, pension or no pension, +with the aid of relatives and friends the Wagners pulled through. +Chief and best amongst the friends was Ludwig Geyer.</p> + +<p>A few words must be said about him. Born in 1780, he was ten years +Carl Friedrich's junior. An actor who had taken up painting, or a +painter who had taken up acting, in both arts he had won at any rate a +local reputation. We know what was thought of his histrionic gifts +from more or less competent contemporaries; but what to think of his +paintings I do not know, for two reasons: I do not trust my own +judgment in such a matter, and if I did, I have never seen any of +Geyer's work. Of this, however, I am very sure: he cannot have been <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" />a +good painter unless nature had worked a miracle in sending a good +painter to Germany in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. German +artists of the period must be classified not as sheep and goats, but +as bad goats and worse goats. But if he was not a fine painter he was +what is better, or, at any rate, more useful to the rest of human +kind, a fine character: a noble, generous, self-sacrificing man. In +haste on hearing of Carl Friedrich's death he came from Dresden to +attend to the burying of the dead and the nourishing of the living. +The details of this first period of Richard's ill-fortune do not +amount to a great deal and are unimportant, since our subject is +Richard, and his mother, brother and sisters only so far as their +lives and characters influenced Richard. Albert, the eldest of the +children, was now fourteen years old; he was at the Royal school in +Meissen, and there he remained. Rosalie went to dwell with a friend of +Geyer's, a lady who lived at Dresden. Louise was adopted by a Frau +Hartwig, also at Dresden. Richard in his cradle remained with his +mother and the younger members of the tribe in Leipzig.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;"><a name="fp008" id="fp008" /> +<img src="images/fp008.jpg" width="352" height="513" alt="Wagner's Birthplace" title="Wagner's Birthplace" /> +<span class="caption">Wagner's Birthplace</span> +</div> + +<p>And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man +slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell +dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his +health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements +of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his +income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved +really a stroke of good <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" />fortune. Glasenapp, basing his calculations +on I know not what authorities or documents, computes that his +earnings as an actor at this time came to £156 a year, and there seems +every reason to think he was at least fairly well paid for his +portraits. It was not enough to be shared between two families, or, we +had better say, to be devoted to the up-keep of two homes. He +determined rapidly on a bold stroke. That he was in love with Frau +Wagner is more than any one can declare with confidence; but she was +an amiable, bright woman, a good mother and thrifty housekeeper; and +it is likely enough that she had inspired a deep affection in a +singularly loving man. After the recovery of Albert the widow had gone +for a change to Dresden; and there Geyer resolved to marry her—and +resolved quickly; for Carl Friedrich died in November 1813, and early +in 1814 the marriage took place. Soon after, the new Frau Geyer +returned to Leipzig; then the whole family migrated to Dresden, where +Richard was to pass from babyhood into boyhood and spend the first +fourteen years of his life.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The Geyer-Wagner family set up their tent in the Moritz-strasse in +Dresden, which belonged to the seventeenth or eighteenth century—was +in fact almost mediæval. Life must have been atrociously narrow and +trammelled to any free spirit. But Germany did not produce many of +that sort at the <a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" />time, and those she did produce were quickly +silenced in gaol. Whether Geyer had yearnings for outward liberty +cannot be said; but if he had he gave no expression to them, being +himself a court player and a semi-court painter. Undoubtedly the main +thing to him was that in the drowsy court air he could at least earn +the means of bringing up adequately the large family he had taken on +his shoulders. He played constantly in all sorts of parts, and in his +off hours painted; he also wrote a number of theatre pieces of varying +type and importance—none of which concern us here. His wife enjoyed a +period of peace in which to attend to her husband, children and house, +as a faithful hausfrau should. If Geyer was industrious and much +occupied, he nevertheless found time to cultivate friendships, and +some of them in later days were continued by Richard.</p> + +<p>The whole life of the circle went on around the theatre or in it; it +must have been their whole world, for of culture other than of the +theatre there is no indication—save one or two half-hearted remarks +of Geyer's at a slightly later period. They admired Goethe and +Schiller, of course, and knew their theatre works; they knew of the +Romantics in so far as they affected the theatre; it seems to have +been only through the theatre they saw anything or could see anything. +Breathing the theatrical atmosphere constantly, one after another of +Geyer's step-children caught the theatre malady (for it will be +admitted that men or women must have something the matter with them if +they deliberately <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" />choose a theatrical life); and within a few years +three of them were appearing on the stage. Albert left school and went +to the university to study medicine; after a very brief struggle he +gave this up, studied singing, and in 1819 or 1820 made his debut as a +light-opera tenor. Before this Geyer had warned him against taking +such a course; but apparently he was obdurate. On May 2 of the former +year Rosalie had first appeared as an actress in a piece by Geyer; +still earlier Louise had also begun acting child-parts. There must +have been a good deal of family discussion and commotion about these +things. It had been the wish of Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should, +or perhaps might, take to the stage as a profession, but in no case +until she had attained the age of sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph, +as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the +sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct +of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps +the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after +another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. Geyer +kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie, though she had +been long preparing, made no public appearance until she reached +sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family occupation. How +all this affected the family generally, and especially Richard, we +shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned that +Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed +at Eisleben to <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" />Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not +pulled stagewards.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous +hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard +did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise +us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music +was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while +they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded +music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the +precocity is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy +practising on a dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had +become the most celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a +few not wholly irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous +babyhood were repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did +not know what a dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries +regarding the source of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are +swallowed cheerfully to this day because so many authors accept them; +and I would point out that the first author, No. I, was simply copied +recklessly by author No. II, that author No. III, maybe a little less +recklessly, copied No. II because he was supported by No. I; and thus +the game went on until the simple minds of a <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" />generation think that +what fifty writers have said must be true. Ten thousand times more has +been written about Wagner than all that Handel provoked, and even less +honest investigation has been made—result, a gigantic series of +tales, genuine or mythical, based on what amounts to no authority +whatever. Unless these are verifiable I leave them to the care of +others, and pass on. So with regard to Wagner's childhood we know he +showed himself no wonderful genius. We do know that he lived amidst +folk whose whole conversation must have been of the theatre and drama, +actors and actresses; that he was petted and taken about by his +stepfather, and as soon as he was old enough, or sooner, went to the +theatre while rehearsals were going on. "The Cossack," as Geyer called +him, grew up a lively, quick-witted child, active and full of +mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the hedge" and sliding +down banisters—much indeed like many other children who afterwards +for want of leisure neglected to compose a <i>Ring</i> or a <i>Tristan</i>. The +theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly from the same +life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty existence, one in +which one's days, weeks, months and years are frittered away; they +pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them. When performances +are not over until late, no one rises early; then come the rehearsals; +then the evening performance again—and so home and to bed. Long +intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous work can hardly be +used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or idling in cafés. +Save for those <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" />who have risen high in popular favour—or, during +Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses—it is an +uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often +terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of +grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in +the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean +squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced +idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite +right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to +the <i>cabotin</i>. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed +from the <i>cabotin</i>. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must +have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his +work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen +going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own +home.</p> + +<p>When in 1817 Weber arrived at Dresden to set up a real German opera, +it seemed he must have landed in exactly the wrong place to carry out +his plans. Only by a series of miracles did they get partially carried +out; and here, as we know, he composed two works, <i>Der Freischütz</i> and +<i>Euryanthe</i>, destined in after years to exert greater power over +Richard's genius than any other music save Beethoven's—a power not +inferior to that of Beethoven's music in some respects. Weber +inevitably became a friend of the Geyers, and before Richard was much +older he knew the great person to speak to and set him up in his heart +as a demi-god. <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" />But as yet Richard was only picking up a little +knowledge and trying, very faintly trying, to play the piano.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Geyer's health was failing, though no one then foresaw what +was to come. He acted, he painted, he wrote plays, he saw to the +debuts of Albert and Rosalie; he tried a cure here and a cure there. +In 1821 he moved to a larger house at the corner of the Jüdenhof and +the Frauengasse, and rejoiced to have a larger studio for his +picture-work. In July he went to Breslau and returned ill, tried +Pillnitz and came back appearing a little better, and promptly got +worse. On the evening of September 29 he heard Richard strumming the +"Jungfernkranz," and asked his wife whether it was possible the boy +had any gift for music; the following evening he died. The next +morning Richard was told by his mother that his father would fain have +made something of him; and, like young Teufelsdröckh, Wagner for long +fancied something would be made of him.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>So, less than eight years after, Ludwig Geyer followed his friend Carl +Friedrich Wagner to the grave, like him to a premature grave. He left +only one child of his own, Augusta Cäcilie (born February 26, 1815); +but he made Friedrich's widow his wife and her children were as his +children; and he toiled hard for their comfort and planned unceasingly +for their welfare; and when on an October <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" />morning he was left in his +last peaceful home to rest, it must have seemed to his widow as though +happiness was to be denied her until she joined him. The winter of +1813 had been black enough, but at once she had Geyer; in 1821 there +was no second Geyer. Adolph Wagner may have seen in the tragedy a +marked instance of the folly of having anything to do with the stage +or actors. Possibly he did not realize that precisely through Geyer's +connection with the theatre, and only to a comparatively small extent +by means of his reputation as an artist, his sister-in-law and nephews +and nieces suffered less than might have been anticipated. For on the +morning following Geyer's death Rosalie swore to take his place as +provider for the family, and that promise she kept.</p> + +<p>When Richard was six months old, fate, as we have seen, struck her +first blow, placed the first obstacle in the path of a successful +infantile career, and swiftly sent Geyer to his aid. Now, when he was +just turned eight, she snatched away Geyer, and had already Rosalie in +readiness to help him. And, in fact, throughout Wagner's life fate +seemed never to tire of delivering staggering blows with one hand, and +with the other hand, at the same moment or a moment later, giving him +compensation, often ample, sometimes on a scale of lordly generosity. +From the beginning to the end of his seventy years no man ever had +worse or better luck than Wagner. It is perfectly clear that fate +meant him to write the <i>Mastersingers</i> and <i>Tristan</i>, and at times she +was cruel to him only to be kind to humanity. It is true <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" />she seems to +have made a mistake when she allowed him to complete <i>Parsifal</i>—but +that matter lies as yet many chapters ahead.</p> + +<p>It would appear that Frau Geyer had a pension of some sort; since May +1 Rosalie had been engaged with the Royal Court players of Dresden; +Albert and Louise both had engagements at Breslau—one of Geyer's last +acts had been to see Albert safely fixed there; it is probable, if not +certain, that Adolph Wagner—who, after all, was fairly well off—lent +a helpful hand: and the family, if not in the modest affluent +circumstances they enjoyed while Geyer lived, at any rate tasted none +of the bitterness of poverty. Glasenapp states that Geyer's "stock of +pictures" had gone up in value after his death; but as he just +previously tells us of Geyer's lack of time and of "would-be sitters" +waiting their turn, we cannot see how the stock can have been very +large. Let us hope, however, that it was, and that Geyer in his grave +went on helping those he loved. Julius was safely bestowed at +Eisleben; and the widow had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Cäcilie to +look after—quite enough, it is true, and calling for all the +resources of her housewifery to make ends meet; but, still, nothing +like the burden Geyer had taken up so courageously a few years before. +How much Rosalie and Albert could spare out of the small salaries paid +in those—and still paid in these—days by German theatres is a matter +entirely for conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the +main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at +the first glance one is puzzled to <a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" />know however the family managed to +pull through at all and avoid the workhouse.</p> + +<p>At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, +he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to +persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one +Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he +had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he +was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in +discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a +time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response +to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would +do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to +Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as +Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and is common +enough when a widowed mother has married a second time. Several such +cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls at Wagner's +double name, as though at some period he had gone under an alias, are +purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a desperate case.</p> + +<p>With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of +boyhood—his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other +members of his family—though they will by no means drop out of the +story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to +his marrying days.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" /><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" />CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>EARLY BOYHOOD</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to +this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of +Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism, +court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely +conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the +theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all +details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early +experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman +learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of +course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the +spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a +flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he +can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work +comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations +at the instance of those who have been through the proper early +training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he +knew <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" />by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the +result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was +effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and +what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of +the <i>Ring</i> proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly +without trouble in every opera-house of Europe.</p> + +<p>This training—for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the +career before him—now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in +Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so +now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had +rather to consider his family than him; but now the little +individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, +from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an +overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also +leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or +lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the +mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most +stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether +unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate +sketch of the activities and escapades of these days: this would +involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits of the labours +of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, +would yield us nothing essential and might drive the reader to an +untimely end. Out of the <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" />strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious +fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour +only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful.</p> + +<p>Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the +classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical. +True, he learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty +and how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the +pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a +special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that +at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a +holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary +school curriculum. It is just possible—just, I say—that had the +family remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the +Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the +composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the +might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very far +from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather was +dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a +fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be +employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great +awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest +drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright, +self-confident boy.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" />I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great +engineer having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a +great painter having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines. +Always, from the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without +reflection, instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he +is destined to follow as a man; and though some potential great poets +may be thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by +far the more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or +brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves +and every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature +shaped them to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a +startling exception to the nearly universal rule; but he is no +exception. The theatre was his first love, and to the theatre he ever +remained faithful: only through the theatre did his genius manifest +itself; apart from the theatre it may be doubted whether he could have +developed into the consummate technical musician of <i>Tristan</i> and the +<i>Mastersingers</i>. Music was his second love, music associated with +drama; and throughout his long career we find him engaged, first, in +getting his drama true, poignant and effective, and then in allying it +with music. Third in his affections came philosophy; and at this time +of day it need scarcely be remarked that he always considered himself +a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to the last with philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper and gallons of good ink have +<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" />been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most +magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the +writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the +mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look +through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink, +effort—not always to be called mental—sympathy and love have been +used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and +Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I believe there are +still some human beings who turn for guidance to Wagner the +philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something about the +subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly matter—in +fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a little +consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove the +word-tissue of his dramas.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>There is not much, then, to detain us during this period. Rosalie and +Albert had their engagements, Rosalie being the mainstay of the +family. On May 1, 1824 Clara made her debut. Uncle Adolph, ceaseless +in objurgations touching every one who had any connection with the +court or trade theatres of the day, had to accept the situation; and, +appar<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" />ently in desperation, or because he found life intolerable with +two nagging females in the house where he dwelt, quietly went in 1824 +and married Sophie, a sister of his friend Amadeus Wendt. +Thenceforward he lived in peace at a house called "The Hut," visiting +his two nagging ladies every day, however. One was his sister, +Friederike, the other Jeannette Thomä. He was a studious, retiring +man, and in the course of time produced some books that are worthless, +or all but worthless, now. Of course the Bayreuth worshippers and +idolizers of the Wagner family will have it that he, being one of the +family, was inevitably a man of superlative gifts; but as I have +already indicated, there is nothing to justify such an assumption. A +cultivated man of sound sense he must have been; and it is true he was +in some slight touch with a few of the stronger artistic and literary +spirits in that very dull and disheartening period; it is true that he +influenced, wholly for good, Richard a few years afterwards. When that +is said all is said.</p> + +<p>Richard is said to have studied English, but how much he actually +learnt I never could ascertain. I have been told with solemn +mysteriousness at Bayreuth that, like the parrot, he could have +rattled off our tongue with tremendous volubility had he chosen; but +the fact that he never chose lends colour to the supposition that in +reality he had no choice. However, in the original or in translations +he read Shakespeare; and it may be presumed that he knew Goethe and +Schiller almost by heart. Naturally he <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" />determined to rival them. In +that heyday of the big Romantic movement he just as naturally +determined to rival or to beat them by piling terror on terror, horror +on horror. At that period the latest word in the theatre was melodrama +of the wildest sort, and a play which did not contain a few murders, +ghosts, enchanted woods and haunted castles had not the faintest +chance of success. According to Wagner's own account he made a +handsome bid for success; for nearly all the <i>dramatis-personæ</i> came +to an untimely end, and a spectre told one, not yet finished off, that +if he moved another step his nose would then and there crumble to +powder.</p> + +<p>While this masterwork was in process of construction, circumstances so +altered that Frau Geyer thought it wisdom to quit Dresden and return +to Leipzig. Albert, Rosalie, Louise and Clara were in various towns +fulfilling engagements; she was left alone with the younger children. +In 1826 Rosalie had gone to Prague; Albert and Clara were in Augsburg; +Louise had been in Breslau, had tried Berlin, then finally took a +permanent post at the theatre in Leipzig. So a move was determined on, +and the family made another migration in 1827. Richard stayed on for +some time, in connection with his schooling, I presume; then he +followed, incidentally taking the most momentous step in his young +life.</p> + +<p>These five years had been for him profitable. He got the best part of +his education at Dresden, where he had skilful and sympathetic +masters; and almost, <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" />one may say, without knowing it he had received +an informal musical education which was profoundly to affect him as +soon as he started writing operas. I mean that he constantly attended +the opera while Weber was conductor, and Weber, who had been a friend +of Geyer's, used to call at the house to pass the time of day with the +widow. Richard looked up to him with awe and worshipped every bar of +his music; and this, together with a knowledge of the road Richard was +soon to take and of what he was to become, makes one wonder that he +had not already decided to compose another <i>Freischütz</i>. But, as I +have said, the theatre—that is, the theatre with the spoken +drama—was his first love; and evidently it had a wondrous hold on +him, for after spending a rapturous evening with <i>Freischütz</i>—first +given in Leipzig in 1822—he would return contentedly to his tragedy. +It took a stronger spirit even than Weber's to awaken the musical side +of his nature. But unconsciously the foundation had been laid, as we +shall have ample reason to understand before long. These years at +Dresden, too, are noteworthy, inasmuch as they saw the beginning of +some friendships, at least one of which was to prove lifelong and +invaluable to Richard.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>When the family settled again in Leipzig one Ludwig van Beethoven died +(March 1827), and <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" />Wagner heard of this composer, it is said, for the +first time. It is all but unimaginable, yet there seems no reason to +doubt it. After all, that was not an age of halfpenny morning and +evening papers, and if composers were boomed the deed was accomplished +tranquilly in the houses of great society leaders, dukes and +archbishops, and the general public knew little of what was going on. +I dare say even in our newspaper age many a clever boy of fourteen has +never heard of Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom +nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: +the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber +would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded +mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed +personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped +Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the +existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The +great hour was at hand.</p> + +<p>First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and +disappointment. At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters, +and had worked hard. His own account of the methods, temper, and +intellectual qualifications of his masters seems to me eminently +reasonable. Their aim was to bring out whatever was best in their +pupils. His account of his first masters at Leipzig similarly bears +the stamp of truthfulness. They were a set <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" />of conceited academics +with only two ideas in the world: first, that they were the very +finest flower of Teutonic culture; second, that they must so impose +their personalities on the boys, so impress them with their ideal, +that every pupil would carry to his dying hour the stamp of the +culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond +the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were +frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived—as they +always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect +cleverness—the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or +outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in +achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told me he had +calculated that the Nicolai school turned out in ten years more +complete, complacent blockheads than any other school in Germany had +turned out in half-a-century; and my friend gave me many notable +instances of men who had soon won the proud distinction of being +unmistakable pupils of the Nicolai school. There were rebels, and +Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had +been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to +imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, <i>i.e.</i> a +pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the +period, they degraded him to the third. No doubt there were protests: +one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man +could refrain from declama<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" />tion under a grievance; but with such +impervious skulls and thick hides protests would be unavailing. The +mischief was done: he was numbered amongst the rebels, the lost souls, +the unhappy beings who dared to have notions of their own. He +neglected his studies and sought refuge in his drama. I wonder if he +found, or made, an opportunity of satirizing his precious professors +in it.</p> + +<p>At home his life cannot have been much better. Good Hausfrau Geyer +cannot have understood where the shoe pinched: she can only have seen +how he was wasting his time. The tragedy was discovered and there seem +to have been solemn family deliberations regarding the probable fate +of the reprobate. His Uncle Adolph seems to have acted as the great +consoler. He, at any rate, knew better than to think a boy was on the +way to the bottomless pit simply because he could not get on with a +gang of dull pedagogues. Now and later he lectured Richard in a kindly +if sententious way; and he must have fostered the boy's natural strong +spirit of revolt. Adolph loathed authority, especially the authority +of irresponsible court officials; and in some of his preserved letters +he lashes these gentry, the scum of humanity and the parasites of +courts, with scathing sarcasm. His sarcasm had no practical result, +because the officials never saw it—if they had they would have +shrugged their fat shoulders and gone to draw their comfortable +salaries. But he taught Wagner that officialdom is the curse of the +human race; and in after years that <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />certainly had some practical +results—at the moment calamitous to Wagner; in the long run +beneficial to him and the human race. Perhaps of all forms of +authority that which Adolph found least tolerable, that which he +taught Richard to loathe and hate and spit upon, was official +authority in art matters. Nowadays, when public opinion counts for +something, when those who pay the taxes insist on having some small +say as to the way in which they are spent, the intendant of a German +theatre is by no means the lordly court-parasite he was once. Yet even +now he often flouts his paymasters, feeling fairly secure under court +protection. We can easily imagine the high-and-mighty jack-in-office +he must have been in Adolph's time.</p> + +<p>Wherever he made his power felt it blasted honest art and checked +honest art endeavour. It was fitting that Richard should have dinned +into him—as I have no doubt he did—his uncle's views on these +heroes; for later Richard had a fair amount of fighting to do with +them, and in the end it was he more than any other one man who broke +their power for ever by appealing to the great public. This attitude +is due to Richard's preaching and example; and he learnt it from Uncle +Adolph. In one other respect Adolph's influence was good: he opened +out to Richard's vision immense fields of literature that the +youngster had never heard of. I have previously mentioned that all the +culture of the Geyer family came through the theatre. To this Richard +added a small school-acquaintance with the classics; <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" />and now came +Adolph to show him a huge, truly vital literature—poetry and prose +dealing with the life of our own epoch. Adolph wrote reminding him of +how finely Weber Had cultivated himself, of his breadth, of his +outlook on history and mankind. It is evident that Adolph, seeing the +irresistible bent of the Wagners towards the theatre, and fearing that +Richard might in time learn to be content with a life of ignorant +theatre tittle-tattle, did his best to save him, not so much by +warning him against the theatre—which he certainly knew to be +useless—as by showing how many great and interesting things the world +holds. The preaching did not fall on deaf ears; and Richard always +declared that in this regard he was incalculably indebted to his +uncle. One of Richard's most strongly marked characteristics was the +tenacity with which he held any idea that once entered his mind; and +it is worthy of note that about this period he read E.T.A. Hoffmann's +collected fantasies and Tieck's <i>Tannhäuser</i>. From the first he +unmistakably got the minstrels' contest in his own <i>Tannhäuser</i>; from +the second, Tannhäuser's coming home after being cursed by the Pope.</p> + +<p>So things went on. Richard's mother, Richard, Louise, Ottilie and +Cäcilie formed the household; Uncle Adolph and Aunt Sophie lived not +far off; and they had plenty of friends. They lived at first in the +Pichhof outside the Halle gate and later removed into the town. +Richard wandered about the city, seeking the scenes of his babyhood; +and his mother pointed out to him the spot where she <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" />saw Napoleon +rush off, without his hat, to make his: escape after the battle of +liberation, while Richard was in his cradle. The Rannstadt gate, where +his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing, +though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion +on the Brühl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the +Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange +animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, +incidentally responsible for the notorious <i>Judaism in Music</i> of 1850, +and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got +his own way in most things, and the seeds were sown of the +self-confidence, egotism, selfishness—call it what you will—that was +to carry him through unheard-of difficulties and troubles in later +life, and was often, unfortunately, to show as an objectionable, even +odious, feature in his character. He still laboured at his tragedy, +killing off his personages and turning their noses into dust with the +careless facility and cheerfulness of buoyant boyhood. He had always +been fond of roaming the country, and he continued to nourish that +love of the pleasant earth which forced him to keep up the habit all +his life and resulted in the glorious pictorial music of the <i>Ring</i>. +He struggled in vain to conquer the piano-keys, and, indifferent to +the fable of the fox and the grapes, came to the satisfying conclusion +that the instrument was not worth mastering. We must remember that +through Louise he was in constant touch with the theatre, and it is +evident that he kept up the connection <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" />after her marriage to +Brockhaus the bookseller in 1828, for when the theatre was entirely +reformed next year Rosalie came as a principal lady and Heinrich Dorn, +who speedily became his friend, as conductor. Drama, literature, +school-tasks, open-air rambles, talks with Uncle Adolph—these +constituted his life. Now another element was to enter and overwhelm +all the rest.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" /><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" />CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>EARLY LIFE (CONTINUED)</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>In the second half of the eighteenth century some enthusiasts at +Leipzig had founded a series of concerts, with a very small orchestra, +which were given in "Apel's house"; in 1781 they migrated to the +Gewandhaus, and by this name the concerts were afterwards known. In +still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and +neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke +came and they became the most slovenly in the world—in this fine +quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could +hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no +modern music could get a hearing there. However, that did not greatly +matter; and the world owes the Gewandhaus concerts an everlasting debt +of gratitude.</p> + +<p>Richard, we know, had never heard of Beethoven, had never heard a bar +of his music. At the Gewandhaus the symphonies were regularly played, +and to one of the performances he went, contented, with his head full +of his play, not dreaming of what was to happen to him ere the morrow. +Here are his own words: "I only remember that one evening I heard <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" />a +symphony of Beethoven's, for the first time, that it set me in a +fever, and on my recovery I had become a musician." This is from one +of his stories, but it describes with sufficient closeness what +actually happened. We know that saturated solutions of some salts at a +touch solidify into a mass of crystals, and as far as intentions were +concerned this, figuratively, happened to Richard: his purpose was +instantly set—he would be a musician—nay, he felt he <i>was</i> a +musician. As to his proceedings, however, a better simile would be +that of a liquid into which you drop a little of another liquid and +immediately a violent commotion with much heat is set up. Beethoven's +music touched his young being, and a fermentation began which drove +him forthwith to make himself a perfectly equipped technical musician. +Almost like Teufelsdröckh and St. Paul, he was "converted" in the +twinkling of an eye.</p> + +<p>The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius. The +bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the +dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while +the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of +Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded. +Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and +Beethoven took his place. When he started to compose seriously it was +Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained: +Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst +Beethoven wrote only <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" />utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and +it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre +music. But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse +to, compose came. He had heard, probably, all Weber's operas without +any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven's +symphonies, and the incidental music to <i>Egmont</i>, he at once realized +that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to +write it. Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a +thing as the technique of the novelist's trade, and believing in the +omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and +we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when +the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written.</p> + +<p>When the incidental music to—whatever the name of his play +was—obstinately refused to be written, young Wagner may have said +something, though it is not on record; but having a finer instinct +than Carlyle he perceived the necessity of acquiring the technique of +his new trade. So he got possession of Logier's <i>Method</i>; in a few +days made a complete study of it; then he set to work in earnest +—with, alas! no more satisfactory fruits. Something that might serve, +however, was achieved, and the ambitious composer went on to a fresh +struggle. He had heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, so, taking +Goethe's <i>Laune des Verliebten</i>, he started a kind of fantasia, +concocting words and music together. An account of Wagner's youth +would be <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" />incomplete without some mention of these brave doings; they +show clearly how strong the instinct which led him on to the <i>Ring</i> +was in him at this early time—to what an unusual degree the child was +father of the man. But to take seriously his tragedy and these first +musical attempts, made at the unusually advanced age of sixteen, even +if I had seen them—which I have not: I do not know whether they are +in existence—would be preposterous.</p> + +<p>Richard began to see that he could make no headway, and he persuaded +his family to let him take lessons from Gottlieb Müller, who must have +been a bad teacher for such a boy. Nothing was learnt. Richard was +told he must not do this and must not do that, and he was not told +what he might or should do; in the end both he and Müller grew +disgusted and the lessons were abandoned. I dare say Müller was in a +humdrum way a good coach; he could have prepared candidates for our +absurd academic examinations; but for an artistic genius, bursting +with inarticulate ideas and inchoate purposes he was worse than +useless. So Richard had to muddle along as he best might, while his +good relatives doubted whether he would ever be able to do anything at +all, until by good fortune he tried Theo. Weinlig. Weinlig saw what +was wrong and what was wanted; instead of Müller's "you must not do +this or that: it is against 'rule,'" he explained matters and showed +Richard that if he once learnt the tricks of the trade he would be +able to compose just as he liked; in six months Richard had become an +expert contrapuntist and could <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" />fugue it with students who had toiled +for years. "Now," said Weinlig at the last, "you will probably never +want to write a fugue, but the knowledge that you can will give you +confidence." According to the late Mr. Dannreuther his words were, +"You have learnt to stand on your own legs." So it came to pass that +Richard's ambition was fulfilled: he was a musician.</p> + +<p>In the life of a being so extraordinary as Wagner it is not surprising +that he took many steps, each of which seemed the most momentous in +his career; but I think on the whole we must reckon this one, from the +amateur enthusiast to the fully equipped professional musician, the +most important. How long he would have been about it but for Weinlig's +timely aid cannot be said. He was steeping himself in Beethoven. He +could not play the piano, but he could read scores: Heinrich Dorn +declared that he copied those of the overtures with his own hands. He +arranged the Ninth Symphony and offered it to Schott, who declined it, +of course. Another arrangement, for four hands, was afterwards +accepted by Breitkopf, in exchange, it would seem, for a copy of the +full score of the same work. Possibly he had borrowed the copy he +worked from—or thumbed it until it fell to pieces. Dorn said he never +came across such a Beethoven enthusiast, and he felt sure something +would come of it. We know something did come of it. Weinlig had taught +him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and +counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each +masterpiece an easier task; and to <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" />Weinlig the world owes a huge debt +of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death +in 1842 he dedicated <i>The Love-feast of the Apostles</i> to his widow.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Richard, when he was some years older, said bluntly he cared little +for his family; and some of the Wagner-mad Bayreuth host point out +that the family did little for him and did not understand him. One +might ask why they should be expected to do much: they had plenty to +do in looking after themselves. But no questions and no appeals to +sweet reasonableness are needed, for the very patent fact is that his +family helped him to the uttermost limit of their means. Geyer first, +his widowed mother afterwards, then Rosalie and his brother Albert, +without a doubt Louise—all did their best to make his young existence +comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that +epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of +such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them, +and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was +fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own +with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a +little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first +appointment. Long after then he <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" />drained their resources and the +resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner, +as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish; +and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of +Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical +process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his +selfishness—namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for +to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very +charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without +Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the +difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his +quality; but it is pitiable to find writers—Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis, +Chamberlain and Wolzogen—sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to +glorify the defect as the quality.</p> + +<p>In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as +a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn +was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years +make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the +influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the +younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre—to his own +confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture +in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a <i>Paukenschlag</i>, +every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful. +That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess. +<a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" />Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us +hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two +to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but +first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life.</p> + +<p>The Paris revolution of 1830 set all youthful Europe in a ferment. The +students of Leipzig university were not behind, and though Wagner did +not yet belong to the sacred circles he mixed much with them, hearing +them talk and doubtless doing not a little talking himself. At one +stroke, he says, he became a revolutionist; and, within his own +meaning of the word, a revolutionist he remained all his life. When we +deal with the period during which his revolutionary ideas got him into +serious trouble it will be time to discuss his views: for the present +we need only note that the conduct of the Leipzig students in various +riotous scenes that took place filled him more than ever with +admiration for them, and with a determination to enrol himself amongst +them as early as possible. He had quitted the Nicolai and gone to the +more congenial Thomas school; but he would not wait to finish his +course there. On February 28, 1831 he had his wish and matriculated. +He was, I say, spoilt in everything. Most German musicians who +received any education worth speaking of at that time got it because +of the ambition of infatuated parents to see their children turn out +successful lawyers or win high official positions, for Germans have a +touching trust in their government and its power of providing <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" />for +their children. Richard, however, had no taste either for law or +officialism—he knew indeed that lawyers and officials are the +parasites and curse of our civilization. He had evidently taken to +heart his Uncle Adolph's admonitions—"Remember how wide was the +culture of C.M. von Weber," etc.; and he entered the university with +the intention, as he imagined, of acquiring some of that culture. But +I fancy he deceived himself. As a schoolboy, as we have just noted, he +aspired to the glory of studentship; having won to that he seems to +have rested content. Certainly he did no work, attended no lectures. +His days and nights were devoted to two things, composition and +politics. With Apel and others whom he used to meet at a café he +denounced governments, police officials and the rest of it; at home he +composed overtures and finally a great symphony in C major. It is hard +to say which of his two occupations he took the more seriously.</p> + +<p>The artist was growing up strong within him; but the injustice and +robbery he saw perpetrated on every side of him, the wholesale theft +of Poland by Russian officials—by which I mean the Tsar, his +ministers, his generals, soldiers, subservient judges and police—set +his blood aboil; and I suppose that, like other boys of his years, as +well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put +the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this +time that I have come across is there any hint of the poetic +atmosphere in which he should have lived. Surely in those days before +his health broke down, with his fervid imagination, <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" />his intimacy with +the masterworks of music and poetry, he must have drawn in a richer +air than the reek of a Leipzig café, his inner vision must have seen a +diviner light than the common light of the stodgy Leipzig streets, +with his inner ear he must have heard a music sweeter than the hoarse +arguments of students half-filled with lager-beer. In the accounts of +this time there is not—to use the phrase colloquially—a touch of +romance. Even his letters are stodgy. My surmise is that just as in +his boyhood the musical part of his nature lay latent and unsuspected +until Beethoven's music awoke it, so now the poetic part lay fallow +awhile, and he worked away at the technical side of his music, +mastering form and conventional development of themes, and in his +leisure spent his excess of energy in talking politics and +metaphysics. The C Symphony of the period can now be seen by all and +has often been played; and it supports my view very forcibly. When I +say there is no hint of Wagner in it I do not mean that the +phraseology does not resemble that of the later Wagner—one could +hardly expect that; I do mean that from <i>Die Feen</i> onward there is +always atmosphere, always emotion and colour, in his music; while the +symphony is as bald, as unpoetical, as any mean street in Kennington. +I do not doubt that he had his poetic dreams, because with such a +nature he could not help it; but he must have been temporarily +indifferent to them, absorbed in mastering the purely technical part +of his business. If we compare the letters of the time with, say, +Keats's and Shelley's, <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" />it is startling to find him enthusing over the +affairs of the parish and seemingly turning his back on the great +thoughts of life, on life's colour, romance, poetry—call it what we +like. About the Poles he is enthusiastic and fiery enough. Hundreds of +these heroes passed through Leipzig, living on charity as they went to +their new homes in all quarters of the globe—where many of their +descendants live on charity to this day. Richard wept over their +griefs, and got the idea for a "Polonia" overture; and his ardour was +sufficiently hot to last out until 1836, when he wrote the work at +Königsberg. Or it may be that he had forgotten all about the Poles +till he got into the vicinity of their dismembered country. Richard +himself confesses to leading a dissipated life during this period; but +probably he exaggerated when in after years he began to realize the +brevity of life and to regret wasted hours. His guide, counsellor, +friend, and, I doubt not, inspirer of most of his great achievements, +Praeger, tells a fine story of this part of his life; and one can have +no hesitation in calling it a pack of lies. On the other hand, forger +though he was, Praeger is quite as worthy of credence as those writers +who want us to believe that Wagner as a boy of fourteen had a fully +developed character and clearly foresaw the <i>Ring</i> and <i>Tristan</i> as +things before him, only waiting to be accomplished. Richard was still +a boy, impulsive to the point of madness, a hotheaded fanatic, with +his character still in the making, his artistic purposes neither +defined nor capable of being defined. He was not yet a great man. But +he <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" />had the makings of a great man in him; and in the meantime it is +much that he gained the affection of most of the people he came +across. In fact it was as true now as ever it was in later life that +of those with whom he came in contact most became his friends and the +rest his enemies: few could disregard him or remain indifferent.</p> + +<p>His apprenticeship was by no means run out in 1832. He had written and +heard performed some overtures, and he set to work and completed the +big Symphony in C major, "in the style of Beethoven"; and this done he +went for a holiday and to gain some little experience in Vienna. That +he could afford such a trip, when at the age of nineteen he could not +contribute a penny to the household expenses, bears out what I have +said about the assistance he received from his family. He contributed +nothing, and, considering his headstrong temper, only a courageous or +reckless man would have prophesied that he would ever be able to +contribute anything. However, to Vienna he went, and heard +<i>Zampa</i>—many more times than he wished. He heard Strauss' waltzes and +liked them; he saw Raymund's forgotten achievements and waxed eloquent +about them too. He seems to have learnt nothing but a lively contempt +for a frivolous people who had forgotten how lately Beethoven had died +amongst them—only five years before; a people who danced and made +merry and went philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off +its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was +light-hearted and gay then; and <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" />having seen what there was to be seen +he went back to Leipzig <i>via</i> Prague. Here he sketched <i>Die Hochzeit</i>; +met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all +events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a +fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown +professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as +principal of the Prague conservatoire.</p> + +<p>He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was +performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and +Aria were sung by one Henriette Wüst at a "declamatorium" in the +Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given +at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following +year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by +a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play, +<i>King Enzio</i>, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly +while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a +"declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of +spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear +on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck—afterwards +Schumann—played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious +idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his +directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as +thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" />Until lately, when +one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to +rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic +and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians +like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London, +owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had +thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics +what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins +(and with him J.W. Davison of the <i>Times</i>) knew Wagner to be a great +musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was +not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was +not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered +when solid incomes are at stake.</p> + +<p>At the Gewandhaus—and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through +a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn <i>allegro</i>—Richard got his +first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may +be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be +done. He knew the ninth symphony by heart, and was also entranced by +the blended loveliness and strength of Mozart's symphonies: played +here, all the effects and points he could plainly see in the score +disappeared. He knew better, even thus early, than to think the two +great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which +looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you +like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" />carelessly romped +through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of +colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and +soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit.</p> + +<p>At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for +writing operas of his own. <i>Masaniello</i> in its way opened his eyes as +much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the +clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with +brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in +amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and +picturesqueness of his music: in <i>Masaniello</i> the music made its +effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The +same thing he felt in <i>William Tell</i>. These two men, Auber and +Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the +theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor +lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even +Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried +them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their +skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at +once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of <i>Die +Hochzeit</i>. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but +immediately he proceeded to another opera, <i>Die Feen</i>, which he +completed at Würzburg. The book of <i>Die Hochzeit</i> is dated December 5, +1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was +given; on the 12th he replied to his brother <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" />Albert—now singer, +actor and stage-manager at the Würzburg theatre—accepting an +invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his +destination towards the end of the month.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Wagner had scarcely time to look around him before his brother Albert +offered him the post of chorus-master. The salary was magnificent—£1 +(of our money) per month for about six months in the year; the work +was hard. We need only note with regard to it that he here heard, and +in the process of drilling his choristers undoubtedly got to know very +well, all the popular successes of the day. His own account is that he +liked them; and it is significant that during this period he heard +Meyerbeer's <i>Robert the Devil</i>. At the moment it does not seem to have +affected his compositions; but in a very few years Meyerbeer's +example, if not his music, had a most marked influence in shaping his +career. For the present he worked at <i>Die Feen</i>, and as soon as the +theatre closed and Albert and his wife went elsewhere to perform in +the off-season—just as German, French, Italian and American singers +come to Covent Garden now during the summer—he had plenty of time. By +New Year's day of '34 the work was complete. Parts of it were rendered +by some Music Union; but soon Richard left Würzburg, having gained +much experience if not any money. He was offered a post at Zurich; +<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" />but though that town was destined to be his home for years long +afterwards, it evidently did not tempt him then, for he returned to +Leipzig.</p> + +<p>Here at once began one of those squalid intrigues which drive serious +opera-composers crazy. Several of Richard's pieces had been played; he +had occupied one responsible position and been asked to take another; +he had the finished score of his opera; and he was young and by nature +sanguine to the verge of lunacy. He thought he had only to call on the +Intendant of the opera with his masterpiece and its production would +be assured. He did call, and soon he received a promise that his work +would be done. But Leipzig was now Mendelssohn's stronghold and no +rival could be tolerated. One of the great man's friends and admirers, +Hauser, determined that the work should not be done. He opined that +Wagner did not know how to compose nor how to orchestrate; he found +the music lacking in warmth. This from a worshipper of Mendelssohn +seems a little amusing to-day; but it had a result bad for Wagner in +1834. Underground work went on; and while Wagner waited with what +patience he could muster—and I expect that was not much—hoping every +day to hear that rehearsals had commenced, his score was quietly put +on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of +operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than +barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the +beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much +a few years ago. <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" />It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did +not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely +they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession +in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should +be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the +Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two +great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could +tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When +Brendel published the notorious <i>Judaism in Music</i> it is true many +Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some +Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel +should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals, +and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans +for it to be desirable for <i>them</i> to raise the cry of persecution. +Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I +come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the +reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all +protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I +dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish.</p> + +<p>Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the +negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be +wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his <i>Die +Feen</i> overture made a hit. He heard Schröder-Devrient in Bellini's +<i>Montechi e Capuleti</i>, and <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" />found to his astonishment that a great +singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high +value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich +Laube—the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so +scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for +themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he +was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the <i>Zeitung für +die Elegante Welt</i>—- a curious title for a journal which frequently +praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for +another holiday, this time to Teplitz, where he sketched <i>Das +Liebesverbot</i>, his second opera to get finished and the first to be +performed—performed, by the way, in a very unusual fashion. Obviously +his spirits were not damped: obviously, also, the family which is +supposed not to have assisted him assisted him to the extent, at any +rate, of enabling him to take a holiday he could not pay for. He had +as yet not earned sufficient for his travelling expenses from Leipzig +to Würzburg and back, to say nothing of holiday trips. As on this trip +he planned <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> his thanks were due to his family for +being able to begin that work. It is true he had Apel as a friend, but +he had not yet formed the habit of borrowing right and left, nor is +there any hint in his correspondence of Apel having paid his expenses.</p> + +<p>I wish now to pass rapidly over two fresh adventures—the +conductorship at Magdeburg and that at Königsberg; but first let me +point out how the boy's <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" />was changing to a man's character. It is +plain that he worked very hard at Würzburg, for the score of <i>Die +Feen</i> is a big one, and teaching his chorus must have occupied many +hours a day. It is equally plain that he set to work with the greatest +vigour on the new opera. Now, Nietzsche declared that Wagner by sheer +will and energy "made himself a musician." That is pure nonsense; but +it points to an important characteristic—namely, Wagner did not, even +at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and +impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work. +For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were +almost incredible.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>At this point the reader must be asked to bear in mind that the +operatic companies with which Wagner was connected in these early +days—until he left Riga in 1839 and set sail for Paris <i>via</i> +London—were unlike anything in existence to-day. Dickens in <i>Nicholas +Nickleby</i> and Thackeray in <i>Pendennis</i> gave us pictures of the old +stock theatrical companies, with all their good-fellowship, jealous +rivalries, lack of romance and understanding of the dramatic art, and +abundance of dirt. One has only to read Wagner's accounts of the +enterprises at Würzburg, Magdeburg, Königsberg, and even at Riga, or +to glance at his letters of the period, to see that these concerns +differed in no essential <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" />from the companies ruled over by Mr. +Crummles and Miss Costigan's manager. Life went on in an utterly +careless way: the rehearsal for the day over, the company met in cafés +or beer-gardens and stayed there until it was time to move, in view of +the evening performance; any one who had a shilling spent it, while +those who had no shillings accepted their friends' hospitality and +hoped for the good time coming. Ladies quarrelled and then kissed; +gentlemen threatened to kill each other in honourable duel and sank +their differences deep in lager; one member left, another joined, some +members seemed to go on for ever; the great times were always coming +and never came. There was a company of this sort, the head being one +Bethmann, that wintered at Magdeburg and in the spring and summer +months played at Lauchstädt and Rüdelstadt; and Wagner got the +position of conductor—the first real position he had yet held, for +the Würzburg office, after all, was a very small affair. He now went +out to conquer the world for himself; he became nominally +self-dependent, though neither now nor in the future was he really so. +He did the usual round with his troop, arriving at Magdeburg in +October; and arriving there, he tells us, he at once plunged into a +life of frivolity. This may be true, but we must again note the +stupendous industry which enabled him to finish <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> in +so short a time. The most important event in Richard's life about this +time was his engagement to Minna Planer. She is said to have been a +handsome young woman; and, as impecuniosity is everlastingly <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" />an +incentive to marriage, of course he married her. In the meantime he +thoroughly enjoyed directing all the rubbish of the day, the season +ended and he returned to Leipzig.</p> + +<p>The next season barely began before Bethmann, according to custom, +went bankrupt; the company disbanded, and Richard was left with a +young wife and nothing to live on. An engagement at Königsberg proved +no better; but at last the conductorship of the opera at Riga was +offered to him, so off he went eagerly, never dreaming, we may +suppose, of the extraordinary adventures that lay before him. Here in +outward peace he was to remain until 1839, rehearsing and directing +operas; but here also he was inspired with the first idea that showed +he had grown into the Richard Wagner we all know. He toiled away at +the theatre, nearly driving the singers crazy with the ceaseless work +he demanded from them; and to his family, when they had news from him +or of him, it must have seemed as though he had already one foot on +the ladder and it was only a matter of time for him to climb to the +dizzy height of Hofkapellmeister of one of the larger opera-houses. No +one, however, who had only known Richard prior to this period could +realize how rapidly the new environment was to form and ripen his +character.</p> + +<p>He was now about twenty-three years of age and a master of his trade. +He had written two operas and saw little likelihood of either being +played—for his advantage, at least. He had composed some instrumental +things, but he knew that the theatre and not <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" />the concert-room was his +vocation. He must have reflected that even writers of successful +operas had died in poverty, either utterly abject, as Mozart died, or +comparative, as Weber died. On the other hand Rossini had made a +fortune and Meyerbeer was making one. What then? Well, Wagner wanted +neither to die poor nor to die at all: all his life he claimed from +the world luxuries as a right. He felt his powers at least equal to +Rossini's and far superior to Meyerbeer's (though at this time he +ranked Meyerbeer high). His artistic conscience was not so sensitive +as it afterwards became: he actually liked the sparkling French and +Italian stuff which was so popular. So, then, he would challenge +Meyerbeer on his own ground! And as all the musical fashions had to +come from Paris he would go to Paris and make a bid for fortune. Such +must have been the process of reasoning which led Wagner to take his +first great step in life.</p> + +<p>For the present it is sufficient to say that out of Bulwer Lytton's +novel <i>Rienzi</i> he took material to weave a libretto that would afford +opportunities for a great spectacular opera; and set to work and wrote +two acts of the music. Finally he took ship from Pillau to London, +bringing with him his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching +Paris ultimately. And on that journey I must leave him for the +present, pausing a little to consider the music he had composed up to +this time (not including the incomplete <i>Rienzi</i>).</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" /><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" />CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>JUVENILE WORKS</h3> + + +<p>With the exception of <i>Die Feen</i>, nothing composed by Wagner prior to +<i>Rienzi</i> calls for serious attention, nor would receive any attention +whatever were not the author's name Wagner. He himself did not +distress his soul about the fate of his early works: he knew too well +their value; but when a Wagner cult came into existence these things +of small importance were acclaimed, one by one as they came to light, +as things of, at any rate, the highest promise. Not even that can +justly be claimed for them. <i>Die Feen</i> has a certain atmosphere and a +set artistic purpose which may, in the light of his subsequent +achievements, be taken as an indication, a small hint, that the +subsequent achievements were possible. So much, but not more, may be +conceded. <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> is known to me only from descriptions and +brief quotations, but these suffice to show that here is not the true +Wagner. Of the orchestral music—the overtures and the symphonies—I +have heard oftenest and studied most closely the C major Symphony. Let +us take it first.</p> + +<p>Already I have referred to the absence of what, in the popular +acceptation of the word, might be called the "romantic" element in +Wagner's daily <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" />life during this period, and the symphony supports my +suggested explanation. In the letters, in accounts written by Dorn and +others, we find fire, enthusiasm, even a good deal of blatherskite and +wild vapouring, but scarcely a hint of "poetry," of the special +poetical sense, of the poet's outlook on life: and in his music he was +chiefly occupied in mastering the technical side of the craft, +assimilating, and at the same time emancipating himself from, the +lessons with Weinlig, and, absorbed in the task, simply letting +romance, poetry, imagination, fancy and the rest go hang; his +practical outward life was devoted to talking what he thought was +politics and drinking lager.</p> + +<p>Though the symphony is worth looking at because it shows how far +Wagner had then got, the general interest in it has for thirty years +been its history. It has led to a deal of unnecessarily acrimonious +and barren dispute. Wagner's disagreeable diatribes aimed subsequently +at the Jews were, and are, in part attributed to Mendelssohn's +behaviour regarding it. It was sent to Mendelssohn; and that +industrious gentleman never referred to the subject. Wherefore we are +asked two things—to contemn the Jew and accept the symphony as a +manifestation of tremendous genius. Possibly Mendelssohn never clapped +eyes on the symphony. Had he done so, one would have expected him to +pay Wagner a superficial, insincere compliment about the score, and +imply that something might be done, etc. We have Richard's written +word for it that Mendelssohn never referred to Wagner's work. All the +same, <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" />what I believe may have been the case, and what Wagner most +certainly would not have believed to be the case, is that Mendelssohn +saw it, and saw nothing in it, and put it on one side, and totally +forgot it. The symphony was lost for long years; but some one +discovered the parts somewhere, and a score was made, and at the very +end of his life Wagner directed a private performance of it. He +dismissed it with a humorously disparaging remark, and we need have +heard no more about it, had not sundry gentlemen who refuse to accept +any Wagner save the inspired prophet of their own imaginings insisted +on having it performed in public.</p> + +<p>I have, I say, heard it fairly often and beg to testify that it is a +miracle of dullness. The themes are not good of their sort, the sort +being, as he said, the sort that are useful for contrapuntal working. +That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by +lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils +could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither +grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got +along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the +finale. Here we find at least sturdiness if not much character.</p> + +<p>This criticism of his boyish work is not a disparagement of Wagner: +one might as well, indeed, disparage Shakespeare, or Beethoven, or the +sun and all the stars in heaven. The symphony tells us, as plainly as +words could tell, two things. First, that as far as craftsmanship is +concerned he fell between two stools: had his aim been lower, it would +<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" />have been also less confused, and the result would have turned out +better. That is, had he thought only of composing a well-constructed +symphony, with skilful, easy-running counterpoint, he might have +produced a more obviously clever if more superficial work. That aim +was missed by the fact that the Wagner who knew Beethoven by heart was +not at all content to achieve mere cleverness: he, too, wanted to +write a great symphony. But that ambition also was vague and robbed of +its force by his instinctive struggle to acquire a thorough technique. +So he showed himself neither a great poet-composer nor a contrapuntal +adept. The second fact so plainly stated in the symphony is that he +had not discovered what was to be the real driving force of his +invention throughout his creative career—the inspiration of a +dramatic or pictorial (not poetic) idea. The poetic idea is the +inspiration of the composer of pure, "absolute," music—the poetic +idea which is interpenetrated by the musical idea, the musical idea +that is interpenetrated by the poetic idea, the two being one and +indivisible. As this book proceeds the reader will see how, before +Wagner could shape fine music at all, he needed the +pictorial-dramatic-musical idea (if so cumbrous a phrase may be +allowed). From the very first he never succeeded in the attempt to +compose pure music of notable quality. As years went on he tried again +and again, but only such things as the <i>Kaisermarsch</i>, the +<i>Huldigungsmarsch</i> and the <i>Siegfried Idyll</i> are of any value, and +these, we may note, were meant to be played in a quasi-theatrical +<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" />environment. Immense crowds, flags, waving banners, uniforms, +flashing swords, snorting chargers and so on set Wagner to work on the +first as surely as the picture of the Hall of Song suggested the march +in <i>Tannhäuser</i>; the same is the case with the second; the <i>Siegfried +Idyll</i>, of course, was written for performance at the bedroom door or +window of Madame Cosima on that lady's birthday. A distinct picture +was in the composer's mind's-eye; and besides, the themes came out of +an opera already composed.</p> + +<p><i>Die Feen</i>—<i>The Fairies</i>—is based on a version of the child's tale +of <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>, Gozzi's <i>La Donna Serpente</i>. In Gozzi's +form a lady is changed to a serpent: the handsome and valiant prince +comes along and all ends well. Wagner had not then dreamed of the +<i>Nibelung's Ring</i> with its menagerie of nymphs who could sing under +water, giants, dwarfs, bears, frogs, crocodiles, "wurms," dragons and +birds with the gift of articulate speech; and he would have nothing to +do with the serpent. The lady must be changed into a stone. Further, +Wagner had now got hold of the notion that haunted him for the rest of +his life—a notion he exploited for all it was worth, and a good deal +more—the notion that woman's function on the globe is to "redeem" +man. So the prince changes the lady back from a stone to a woman, and +then, like Goldsmith's dog, to gain some private ends, goes mad. The +lady is equal to the occasion: she promptly redeems him—that is, +cures him—and all ends well.</p> + +<p>Here, at worst, we have the picture, or series of <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" />pictures, demanded +by Wagner's genius; here also is a dramatic idea of sorts. His +imagination immediately flamed. The music is not like that of the +symphony, dry and barren wood: on the contrary, it contains many +passages of rare beauty and feeling. There is little of the fairy-like +in it. To Wagner's criticism of Mendelssohn's <i>Midsummer Night's +Dream</i> overture, that here we had not fairies but gnats, one might +retort that in his own opera we have not fairies but baby elephants at +play. But throughout there is a quality almost or quite new in music, +a feeling for light, a strange, uncanny light. It is worth noticing +this, because it is just this sense of all-pervading light which marks +off <i>Lohengrin</i> from all preceding operas. The hint came, it goes +without saying, from Weber; but there is a vast difference between the +unearthly light of Weber and the fresh sweetness of <i>Lohengrin</i>, and +here, in his first boyish exploit, we find Wagner trying to utilise in +his own way Weber's hint.</p> + +<p>For a boy of twenty the opera is wonderfully well planned. Whether, +had it been written by Marschner, we should take the trouble to look +at it twice is a question I contentedly leave others to solve. But, as +it is by Wagner, we do take the trouble to look at it many times, and +the main thing we learn is that from the beginning the composer could +write his best music for the theatre, while for the concert-room he +could only grind out sluggish counterpoint. In addition we may see +that it is a work of much nobler artistic aim than <i>Rienzi</i>. +Preposterous as is the idea of a woman sacrificing herself to "save" +<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" />a man, it is an idea, and it stirred the depths of young Wagner's +emotional nature. In <i>Rienzi</i>, as we shall see in a later chapter, +there is no idea of any sort; that opera did not spring from his +heart, nor, properly speaking, from his head, but simply and wholly +from a hungry desire for fame and fortune.</p> + +<p>The clumsiness of the music is due to several causes. He modelled it, +he says, upon three composers, Beethoven, Spontini and Marschner—the +second and third being by far the more potent influences. Now, +gracefulness is not a characteristic of either of them. Then we must +consider that Wagner was not yet one-tenth fully grown, and it is the +hobbledehoy who is so heavy on his feet, not the athlete with all his +muscles completely trained: Wagner needed years of training before he +gained the sure, light touch of <i>Lohengrin</i> and the <i>Mastersingers</i>. +His very deadly earnestness over the "lesson" of his opera and his +desire to express his feeling accurately and logically led to his +overweighting small melodies with ponderous harmonies. The +orchestration of the day was heavy. The art of Mozart had been +forgotten; Weber scored cumbrously—as was inevitable; Spontini and +Marschner scored cumbrously also, partly because they could not help +it, partly because they wanted to fill the theatre with sound. Wagner +naturally followed them. But it may be noted that the orchestration of +<i>The Fairies</i> is not so widely different from that of the <i>Faust</i> +overture composed a short while afterwards. A sense of the contrasts +to be <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" />obtained by alternating word-wind and strings is peculiarly +his. Mozart and Beethoven had alternated them, but on the simple plan +adopted in their violin sonatas: in those sonatas the violin is given +a passage and the piano accompanies, then the same passage is given to +the piano and the violin accompanies; in all the symphonies of Mozart, +and the earlier ones of Beethoven, virtually the same plan is +followed, strings and wind standing for violin and piano. Wagner from +the first discarded this mechanical notion; wind and strings are +played off against one another, but there are none of these mechanical +alternations, one holding the bat while the other has the ball. On the +whole <i>The Fairies</i> is very beautifully scored.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" /><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" />CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>PARIS</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The late Sir Charles Hallé, probably retailing a story he had heard, +relates in his reminiscences that when Heine heard of a young German +musician coming from Russia to Paris to try his luck with an empty +pocket, a half-finished opera and a few introductions from +Meyerbeer—amongst them one to a bankrupt theatre—he clasped his +hands and raised his eyes to heaven, in silent adoration before such +unbounded and naïve self-confidence; and probably he had not then +learnt the whole truth of the matter. The journey from Riga, <i>via</i> the +Russian frontier into Germany, and thence by Pillau, the Baltic, the +North Sea, London, the Channel and Boulogne, is surely the maddest, +most fantastic dream ever turned into a reality. That he turned the +dream into a reality shows how completely Wagner's character was now +formed: in no essential does the Wagner who built Bayreuth in the +'seventies differ from the Wagner of '39. He had unshakable tenacity +of purpose and perfect faith in his own genius; he was absolutely sure +he could accomplish the impossible; he took the wildest risks. As a +creative artist his development had just begun; but the qualities +which were in after years <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" />to enable him to force his creations on an +indifferent world were all there, ripe and strong.</p> + +<p>The problem of getting away from Russia was by no means simple, but +may be passed over in a few words. Wagner's income in Riga had not +been large—300 roubles—and it had been mostly swallowed up by his +German creditors; and even in the town he managed to owe money. ("Was +ever poet so trusted?" asked Dr. Johnson, referring to Goldsmith). Had +he given notice of his intended departure his Riga creditors could +have stopped him; so when the company returned to Riga after their +annual summer series of representations in Mittau Wagner did not +return. He made what is, I believe, called a "bee-line" for the +frontier, met there a friend, one Möller, who helped him to dodge the +sentries and patrols, and in a few days reached Arnau. Very little +later, in July 1839, he, Minna and Robber the dog took ship at Pillau +and set sail for England. The date is one of the most memorable in the +lives of the musicians—quite as worthy of remembrance as the day on +which Haydn boarded the packet at Calais. Haydn's powers had been +ripened in the sunshine of Mozart's genius, but it is doubtful +whether, save for England, the twelve great symphonies would have been +written; Wagner's powers were beginning to ripen, but it is hardly +doubtful that the <i>Dutchman</i> would never have been written but for the +voyage to England.</p> + +<p>If he could have afforded it he probably would have travelled to Paris +by land. But travelling by land was quite out of the question; money +was <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" />then, as ever, scarce with Richard, and he realized that the +longest way round was the shortest—nay, the only—way there. He had +over three weeks of life on the ocean wave, and did not like it and +had no reason to like it. Uproarious storms raged unceasingly; the +ship was driven amongst the Norwegian crags for shelter; and the gloom +of these black, forbidding sea-precipices and fiords took possession +of his soul, mixing and giving pictorial shape to the weird old legend +of the phantom sailor doomed for ever to wander on the grey seas. +Glasenapp points out in an admirable passage that Sandwike, where +Daland goes ashore, is the name of the place where Wagner's ship put +in and he and the crew were regaled by a lonely miller with rum. There +is no rum in the <i>Dutchman</i>, but the atmosphere, terror and mystery of +the seas and rocky fiords of Norway are all there; and it was these +that inspired the <i>Dutchman</i>. He knew the tale in Heine's form of it, +and had thought of adapting it; but it was the sea gave the idea birth +in his imagination: without the sea the <i>Dutchman</i> is inconceivable. +The <i>Dutchman</i>, the whole of the <i>Ring</i> and the <i>Mastersingers of +Nuremberg</i> are all operas in which the scenic environment is the +inspiration. Depend upon it, ere the ship had freed the Sound, and got +into the comparative safety of the open North Sea, the <i>Dutchman</i> +legend had formed itself in his mind ready for dramatic treatment.</p> + +<p>Ultimately—to be precise, three and a half weeks after getting on +board—the family reached London, <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" />all three spent with sea-sickness +and want of food. They needed and took a rest, first staying near the +Tower and then in Soho. There is nothing to relate of Wagner's +experiences during his first London visit, save the episode of his +lost dog. The late Mr. Dannreuther got the story wrong and has since +been faithfully followed by biographers in saying the dog was away +several days, and on his return was hugged nearly to death by his +master; but in <i>My Life</i> Wagner says the animal was lost for only a +few hours. But as he was intensely fond of animals all his life—he +always had two or three about him—the incident must have impressed +him. Anyhow, when he next came to London, fifteen years after, he +mentioned it to Mr. Dannreuther, and also pointed out to him where he +had lived and the points of interest he had seen. But nothing of the +slightest significance occurred, and soon he started for Paris by way +of Boulogne. When he reached Boulogne he stayed there a month for the +sake of the sweet company of Meyerbeer—which seems not a little funny +to-day.</p> + +<p>Wagner was only twenty-six years of age; like a rustic who has +suddenly been carried out of the dullness and darkness of his village +into some tawdry café of the town, and is dazzled and mistakes the +gilt wood for solid gold, so had Wagner been filled with admiration by +Meyerbeer's brilliant shoddy. It must be admitted that for sheer +theatricalism that gentleman beat any composer who preceded him. +Bellini's, Auber's and Spontini's scores are thin compared with his; +even <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" />Auber's grandest ensembles lack his sham magnificence. Wagner's +artistic conscience had not ripened to the point at which conscience +is an absolute, unfailing, unerring touchstone. He had been impressed +with Meyerbeer's showiness and superficial sparkle: it had not yet +occurred to him to test the music with the touchstone of truth. It is +not at all hard for me to believe that he had at this time a sincere +admiration for the Jewish autocrat of the opera world. He was passing +through that stage: he had not yet passed through it; in scheming +<i>Rienzi</i> he had started, so to speak, with an immense rush to follow +Meyerbeer, and for some time the momentum acquired in that first rush +kept him going. When disillusionment came—well, we shall see.</p> + +<p>He was an obscure German kapellmeister, and had never been conductor +in a theatre which did not suffer bankruptcy or where something worse +did not occur. Meyerbeer had certainly never heard his name, and +Wagner was aware of his: he had heard of Meyerbeer's name, and even if +he had not admired the musician he cannot at that period have been +insensible to the man's supremacy in the opera trade. And when we add +to this latter fact, the other fact, that he <i>did</i> admire the +musician, it is easy to understand the feelings with which he +approached this emperor of the barren Sahara of opera. To the emperor +he got an introduction—whether or not in the way Praeger relates is +not worth inquiring into—and the emperor received him not merely with +courtesy, but with what appears <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" />to have been something a great deal +warmer than courtesy. He hearkened to the two finished acts of +<i>Rienzi</i>, and beginning with an expression of admiration for the +beautiful clear handwriting, presently grew interested in the music +and ended by commending it heartily. Wagner departed for Paris with +the autocrat's letters in his pocket and, as I have said, little +money, but a breast packed with glorious hopes. The most successful +opera-composer of the day had declared that he would succeed, and +guaranteed his belief by giving him those precious introductions. One +was to the direction of the Grand opera, one to Joly, director of the +Renaissance Theatre, another to Schlesinger, the publisher, another +again to Habeneck, the director of the Conservatoire. Of these the +letter to Habeneck proved useful to Wagner from the artistic point of +view; that to Schlesinger useful pecuniarily. The others were useless, +and were never meant to be of any service. Had Meyerbeer told Wagner +to go back to Germany it is just possible Wagner might have gone. +Instead, Meyerbeer sent him into a <i>cul de sac</i>—to starve, or get out +as he best could. In the whole history of the art of the world no more +cruel swindle was ever played on an obscure artist by a man occupying +a brilliant position.</p> + +<p>For, figuratively, Wagner had not been in Paris twenty minutes before +he discovered that to be presented by the omnipotent Meyerbeer meant +nothing—absolutely nothing. Every one received him with the greatest +politeness; every one appeared to promise great things; no one did +anything. At the <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" />opera he had not the remotest chance, of course, +being young, unknown, a German, and without social influence. The +Renaissance speedily shut its doors, being bankrupt. Through Habeneck +he learnt to understand the Ninth Symphony even better than he had +understood it before; for the Conservatoire orchestra had rehearsed it +until, almost unconsciously, they discovered the real melody, or what +Wagner calls the melos. This is a question I shall go into later when +dealing with Wagner's own conducting; for the present it suffices to +mention the bare fact, as we can trace directly to these +performances—or, rather, rehearsals—the <i>Faust</i> overture which +Wagner soon afterwards composed. Habeneck gave a performance of his +<i>Columbus</i> overture; and in no other way was the acquaintance of any +value. So, as his little money was speedily gone, he had to live for a +while on what his relatives and friends could give him, and afterwards +by what he could earn by writing for Schlesinger's <i>Gazette Musicale</i>. +This is what Meyerbeer's introductions were worth.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>However, he found and made friends, some, though not all, as poor as +himself. Laube, his crony of earlier years, was there and introduced +him to Friedrich Pecht, a student of painting, and to Heine. This last +was very suspicious of Wagner at first, because he did not believe +Meyerbeer would <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" />exert himself on behalf of any one possessing the +slightest ability. It is obvious that he soon discovered that he was +both right and wrong. Wagner had ability, and Meyerbeer, far from +helping him, had ingeniously dug a trap to keep a possible rival +quiet. Wagner made the acquaintance of Berlioz, and promptly uttered +the criticism he adhered to always—one that I humbly subscribe +to—that Berlioz, with all his imagination, energy and wealth of +orchestral resource, had no sense of beauty. Berlioz, he remarked, +lived in Paris "with nothing but a troop of devotees around him, +shallow persons without a spark of judgment, who greet him as the +founder of a brand-new musical system, and completely turn his head." +To a certain degree this judgment came home to roost in Wagner's later +years in Bayreuth; but he was saved by the fact that, being a great +musician, he also drew genuine musicians to him. If Bayreuth was +crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before +Richard and found the weirdest meanings in his simplest melodies, and +who now write lengthy books about Richard's son Siegfried, yet we must +remember that the men who carried the news of Richard's true greatness +through Europe were Liszt, Bülow, Tausig, Jensen, Cornelius and many +smaller men—smaller men, but real musicians. Now, it was long since +pointed out that amongst his entourage Berlioz had no one possessing +an understanding of the art of music. Literary men and painters were +there in abundance: that is, they called on him; and because his +musical ideas or <a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" />ideas for music seemed so vast they assumed that his +musicianship must be vast also; but those whose judgment would have +been trustworthy, and whose help worth having, stayed away altogether; +and when the celebrated personages had paid their call and gone their +several ways he was left to the flattery of a pack of incompetent +fools. This is not to exaggerate—it is simply to explain the +loneliness and sad tragedy of the end of Berlioz's life. He must in +his heart have known the bitter truth. One friend of Wagner's must not +be omitted—Lehrs. From him Wagner obtained what is called the middle +high-German <i>Sängerkrieg</i>, from which he extracted ere returning to +Germany the whole world of <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i>; and this we +must consider later. We may note that his youngest sister Cäcilie, +Geyer's only child, had married Avenarius, who resided in Paris for a +time as agent for Brockhaus, the Leipzig publisher.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The whole story of this first visit to Paris is sordid, squalid, +miserable to a degree; and I don't know that we can be surprised. When +Wagner sailed from Pillau he had not had a single work of any +importance performed. Nay, more, he had not written a work of any +importance. <i>Die Feen</i> had never been given; <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> had +been given—under ridiculous circumstances and with the most +disastrous results; his symphony had been played, <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" />but by this time +score and parts had probably disappeared. Mendelssohn had received +them in Leipzig and never once referred to them. Anyhow, none of these +things were striking enough to have attracted much attention even in +Germany; and they certainly would have excited no interest in busy, +bustling Paris—the home of the Rossini and Meyerbeer opera, of +quadrilles, vaudevilles and the rest. But for the happy, or rather +unhappy, chance of meeting Meyerbeer in Boulogne, he would have +entered the city without a line to any one of position. His money, as +I have just said, gave out almost at once, and thenceforth he had to +keep the wolf from the door by slaving at any odd jobs which would +bring in a few pence. On more than one occasion he was reduced, +literally, to his last penny. With marvellous resiliency of spirits he +managed not only to pull through, but to complete <i>Rienzi</i>, then to +write one great opera and begin planning two very great ones. We have +accounts—mostly written long after the event—of merry meetings and +suppers; but against them we must set the dozens of despairing letters +and scribbled notes in which he complains of his luck and his lot. +Yet, I say, how can we feel surprise? Why, he could not even play the +piano well enough to give an opera-director any fair notion of his +music; and perhaps that is just as well, so far as Paris was +concerned, for the taste of the day was such that the better his +compositions were understood the less they were liked. Hallé remarks +that when he talked of his operatic dreams at this time he <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" />was +commonly regarded as being a little, or more than a little, "off his +head."</p> + +<p>It became evident at the outset that all hopes anent the opera must +fall to the ground. He met Scribe, the omnipotent libretto-monger of +the day, and of course nothing came of it. The spectacle of <i>Rienzi</i> +was on far too large a scale for the work to be possible at the +Renaissance, so, much against the grain, he offered Anténor Joly <i>Das +Liebesverbot</i>. He waited two months for a decided refusal or a +qualified acceptance, but heard nothing. At last a word from Meyerbeer +seemed to have settled the matter. One Dumersau, who translated the +words into French, was very enthusiastic about the music and made Joly +enthusiastic too; everything looked bright for the moment, and Wagner +moved from the slum where he had been living to an abode a little less +slum-like, in the Rue du Helder. On the day he moved the Renaissance +went bankrupt again. I say again, because Joly became bankrupt +punctually every three months—a fact which explains Meyerbeer's +readiness to help him in that quarter. In desperation he seized the +chance of earning a little money by writing the music for a vaudeville +production, <i>La Descente de la Courtille;</i> but here again his luck was +out: a more practised hand took the job from him. He composed what he +considered simple songs adapted to the Parisian taste, and they were +found too complicated and difficult to sing. To earn mere bread he +arranged the more popular numbers of popular operas for all sorts of +instruments and combinations of instru<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" />ments, and in one of his notes +we find him bewailing the sad truth that even this work was coming to +an end for a time. However, he wrote on for Schlesinger's <i>Gazette +Musicale</i>; for Lewald's <i>Europa</i> (German) and the Dresden +<i>Abendzeitung</i>—though the work for the second two did not commence +till later on. This toil perhaps brought him bread: it did nothing +more; Minna had to pawn her trifles of jewellery; there seemed not a +ray of hope gleaming on the horizon. The performance of his old +<i>Columbus</i> overture did him a precious deal of good—especially as at +the second performance—at a German concert arranged by +Schlesinger—the brass were so frightfully out of tune that people +could not make out what it was the composer would be at. It is +needless to tell the ten times told miserable tale in further detail +at this time of day; and I will now confine myself to the few facts +that bear upon the fuller life that soon was to open before him.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>A new opera-house had been a-building in Dresden, a royal court +theatre; and a chance in Paris being denied to <i>Rienzi</i>, Wagner, +staggering along under the burden of his crushing woes, thought +perhaps his grand spectacular work would be the very thing to suit the +Dresdeners about the time of the opening. True, there remained three +acts to compose and orchestrate—but what was that to a Richard +Wagner! Only one other composer <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" />has achieved such astounding feats. +Mozart, amidst multitudinous worries, sat down and wrote his three +glorious symphonies "as easily as most men write a letter." Wagner was +born to achieve the impossible: he had already done it in getting to +Paris at all; and now, as a sheer speculation, on the very off-chance +of a Saxon court theatre accepting a work by a Saxon composer, +harassed by creditors, despondent under repeated disappointments, +drudging hours a day at hack-labour, he went to work and composed and +instrumentated the last three acts of the most brilliant opera that +had been written up to that date—1841. On February 15 of that year he +began; on November 19 he ruled the last double-bar and wrote finis. +That done, he dispatched the complete score and a copy of the words to +Dresden, with a letter to von Lüttichau, the intendant. Again the +delays seemed interminable; his letters, especially those to Fischer +and Heine, are packed with inquiries about the fate of his opera—he +could get no answer at all for a long while, and after it was +definitely accepted the usual troubles occurred through the whims and +caprices of singers. Even his idol and divinity, Schröder-Devrient, +great artist though she was on the stage, played the very prima +donna—which is about as bad a thing as can be said of any woman—off +the stage so far as <i>Rienzi</i> was concerned. Being a prima donna first +and an artist afterwards, she thought nothing of dashing Wagner's +hopes by expressing a desire to appear in some other opera before +<i>Rienzi</i>; and as the delay meant a prolongation of the actual misery +and <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" />possible starvation at Paris we can picture Wagner's impotent +rage and despair.</p> + +<p>On October 14, 1841, we find him writing to Heine:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"... Herr von Lüttichau has definitely consented to my opera + being put on the stage after Reissiger's. That is all very good; + but how many questions does not this answer suggest! For + instance: does the general management propose to place my work + upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant + effect? On this point W——writes me: 'The general management + will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable + manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to + me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from + Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me—that is the + best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on + my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be + fairly engrossing his attention, should be much occupied about + me. But what alarms me is the absolute silence of our Devrient! + I think I have already written a dozen letters to her: I am not + exactly surprised at her sending me no single line in answer, + because one knows how terrible a thing letter-writing is to many + people. But that she has never even indirectly sent me a word, + nor let me have a hint, makes me downright uneasy. Good heavens! + So much depends upon her—it would really be a mere humanity on + her part if she, perhaps through her lady's-maid, had sent me a + message to <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" />this effect: 'Make your mind easy! I am taking an + interest in your affair!'—certainly everything which I have + learnt here and there about her behaviour with regard to me + gives me every reason to feel comfortable; for instance, she is + said to have declared some while ago in Leipzig that she hoped + my opera would be brought out in Dresden. This token would have + fully quieted me, if it had only come directly to my ears or + eyes: hearsay, however, is far too uncertain a thing.</p> + +<p> "A month ago I likewise wrote to her, and earnestly begged her + to let me have only a line with the name of the lady-singer whom + she would like to be cast for the part of Irene, so that I might + make a formal list to propose to the management. No answer! Oh, + my best Herr Heine, if your kindness would only allow you a few + words in which to make me acquainted with the intentions of the + adored Devrient! Does she really wish to sing in my opera?—that + is the question.</p> + +<p> "Good heavens! only to know how all this stands! I have written + to Herr Tichatschek, and commended myself to his amiability: + shall I be able to count on this gentleman?"</p></div> + +<p>Again, on January 4 of the following year:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Should it really come to this, that my opera must be laid aside + for the whole winter, I should indeed be inconsolable; and he or + she who might be to blame for this delay would have incurred a + grave responsibility—perhaps for causing me untold sufferings. + I cannot write to Madame Devrient; for <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" />that I am much too + excited, and I know too well that my letters make no impression + upon her. But if I have not yet worn out your friendly feeling + toward me, and if I can be assured that you rely upon my fullest + gratitude, I earnestly beg of you to go to Madame Devrient. Tell + her of my astonishment at the news that it is she who hinders my + opera from at length appearing; and that I am in the highest + degree disturbed to learn that she by no means feels that + pleasure in and sympathy for my work which so many flattering + assurances had led me to believe. Give her an inkling of the + misery she would prepare for me, if (as I have now good reason + to fear) a performance of <i>Rienzi</i> could not after all take + place this year! But what am I saying? Though you may be the + most approved friend of Madame Devrient, even you will not have + much influence over her. Therefore, I do not know at all what I + should say, what I must do, or what advise! My one great hope I + place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von + Lüttichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger. If Devrient cannot + give up her Armida, if she cannot afford me the sacrifice of a + whim, then all my welfare rests only on the promptness with + which this opera is brought out, and my own is taken up. I + therefore fervently pray Reissiger to hurry: and you—I beseech + you—do the same with Devrient. By punctuality and diligence + everything can still be set right for me; for the chief thing + is—only that my opera should come out before Easter (that is to + say, in the first half of March). I am truly quite exhausted! + Alas! <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" />I meet with so little that is encouraging, that it would + really be of untold import to me if, at least in Dresden, things + should go according to my wish!"</p></div> + +<p>These excerpts afford some notion of the struggles and disappointments +of this time—struggles that were to be repeated when, more than +twenty years later, <i>Tristan</i> and the <i>Mastersingers</i> were produced in +Munich. More need not be quoted, for the story is always the +same—delays caused by intrigues and the whims and caprice of singers, +and the indifference of inartistic directors.</p> + +<p>It should be said that Meyerbeer seems, for the only time, really to +have helped Wagner in getting <i>Rienzi</i> accepted, for a letter of his +to von Lüttichau recommending the opera, has been preserved; wherefore +let us gladly acknowledge this deed, which was a good, if a very +small, one. He again paid a visit to Paris, and this time gave Wagner +a word of introduction to Pillet, who had assumed the post of director +of the Opéra. Owing to this introduction the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> was +written. Wagner sketched a scenario and let Pillet have it. The +customary procrastination set in, and at last Pillet flatly told +Wagner he could not produce an opera by him: he was young, a German, +and so on and so on; and in a word he liked the scenario and had +determined to have it set by one Dietsch—which is not a very +French-sounding name. He offered Wagner twenty pounds for it, and if +the offer was not accepted—well, Wagner might do what he chose. +Wagner took it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" />He completed his libretto, took lodgings at Meudon, then a lovely +suburb of Paris, hired a piano and sat down to compose his <i>Dutchman</i>. +He gives a graphic account of his tremors whilst awaiting the piano: +he feared that during the degrading struggle for bread the power of +composing might have deserted him. The instrument arrived, he sat +down, and shouting for joy, struck out the sailors' chorus. In seven +weeks the draft was complete—it is dated September 13, 1841. Want of +funds compelled him to leave Meudon and resume his treadmill +toil—this time in the Rue Jacob in Paris; but he began to score his +opera in the autumn and by the end of the year it was entirely +finished. He sent it to the Berlin Opera, and at once began to cast +round for another subject. He had demonstrated to his own complete +satisfaction that grand historical themes were the only useful +material for a thoroughly "up-to-date" (date 1842—seventy years ago) +composer; and while doing what may be called foraging work he had hit +upon the story of <i>The Saracen Young Woman</i>. We may presume that this +appealed to him in a mood of reaction after the intensely personal +quality of the <i>Dutchman</i>. That mood sent him back in the direction of +<i>Rienzi</i>. About the <i>Dutchman</i> he never had the slightest illusion. He +knew it to be so far ahead of the time that nothing in the way of a +popular success was to be hoped for it. On the other hand, he had +perfect faith—a faith justified by the subsequent event—in <i>Rienzi</i>; +and since the Wagner of 1842 was by no means the Wagner of 1862, or +<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" />even of 1852, since also he had been half-starved for a couple of +years and money seemed to him a highly desirable thing, he naturally, +inevitably, was drawn towards a subject which promised as well, from +the box-office point of view, as <i>Rienzi</i>.</p> + +<p>However, there is—or was in Wagner's case—a divinity that shapes our +ends. Much as he hungered after comforts, luxuries and the flesh-pots +of Egypt, the dæmon within his breast was too strong for him. He had +planned a new work, more or less on the lines of <i>Rienzi</i>, and perhaps +some lucky or unlucky accident might have sent him the inspiration to +start with the music. But just at this juncture Lehrs' copy of the +<i>Sängerkrieg</i> attracted his attention: the complete drama of +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, and the first vague notion of <i>Lohengrin</i>, flashed upon +him. As he said, and as I have repeated, a new world was opened before +his amazed eyes. The <i>Saracen Young Woman</i> and the rest all went to +the wall; and when on April 7, 1842, he set out for Dresden he had +different plans altogether in his head. Before he could start +Schlesinger advanced the money for more cornet-à-piston arrangements +of opera-airs, and he had to take the scores of those operas amongst +his luggage.</p> + +<p>As yet I have said nothing about his acquaintance with Liszt. It began +at this time, and of course was destined to have wonderful results, +but for the moment it was of no importance. Wagner was an unknown +composer; Liszt was a world-famous pianist. Wagner, moreover, had +written only <i>Rienzi</i> and the <i>Dutchman</i>, and was unable even to play +<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" />them on the piano. He probably made only the slightest impression on +Liszt. The incident is worth noticing in this chapter, because, though +this Paris episode seems to be nothing but a series of disasters, it +is an instance of the good that came of it. Wagner undoubtedly learnt +a lot about the stage; he got to know Liszt; he had the world of +<i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i> opened out to him. When he went off to +Dresden and touched German soil once more he swore he would never +again leave his fatherland. But he had learnt what his fatherland was +quite unable to teach him. His friends said his character changed +entirely during this period. Undoubtedly it did change: the Wagner who +had aimed only at worldly, commercial success, changed into Wagner the +artist whose sincerity carried him through all troubles to the +crowning triumph—and discomfiture—of Bayreuth. I have referred +before to the fact of the old momentum keeping him going in a certain +direction even after he knew that direction to be a wrong one; and the +same thing was to occur again, as we shall see in a moment. After +writing the <i>Dutchman</i> he actually deliberated as to the wisdom of +doing another <i>Rienzi</i>. The claims of his stomach were, naturally +after a two years of semi-starvation, very strong, and another +<i>Rienzi</i> might have meant easily earned bread-and-butter. But the +Paris change was fundamental; and even if he had tried to do another +<i>Rienzi</i> he could not possibly have done it. Without his knowing it, +the artist in him had triumphed over the merely commercial composer.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" /><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" />CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>Were <i>Rienzi</i> an opera of the highest artistic importance, I suppose I +should have read ere now Bulwer Lytton's novel of that name. As it is, +I must confess my utter inability to wade through that pretentious and +dreary achievement. And it does not matter. Skimming over the novel, I +have gathered enough of the plot to see that Wagner took only the plot +and nothing else from Lytton. What else he could have taken I cannot +guess, unless it was a copious stream of high-falutin', and at this +period Wagner's own resources of the sort were ample. What he wanted +was a plot that would afford him an opportunity of planning a +spectacular opera on the largest possible scale, and this he found in +Lytton.</p> + +<p>Two claims, or rather, a claim and a counter-claim, have been, and +constantly are, made with regard to <i>Rienzi</i>. The first is that it was +inspired by Meyerbeer and a copy of one of his works—which one I do +not know; the counter-claim is that Meyerbeer had no part in the +business, and that on the contrary he learnt more from Wagner than +Wagner could possibly have learnt from him. Now the notion, I take it, +of composing a grand work <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" />for the Paris stage was suggested by +Meyerbeer's stupendous success—of that, indeed, I cannot admit there +is the faintest shadow of a doubt. Starting from Paris, where they +were concocted together with Scribe, Meyerbeer's operas went the round +of the opera-houses of Europe, and save in one or two quarters +Meyerbeer lorded it over the opera-houses of Europe. It may be true +enough that some of his mighty works had not been played at Riga—it +may even be true that Wagner had not seen the scores. But that I feel +less sure about; and, anyhow, if he had not seen them he was bound to +have heard of them. The talk of musical Europe was not likely to be +unknown to a man who both read and wrote in the musical papers. As +soon as Wagner conceived the idea he wrote to Scribe concerning it; +and, as we know, Scribe quite naturally left his communication +unanswered. We find, then, that this, not more than this, though +certainly not less, is the extent of Wagner's indebtedness to +Meyerbeer: that Meyerbeer, by writing clap-trap for a large stage, +with showy, tawdry effects, had gained enormous popularity and +corresponding wealth, and thus unconsciously had thrown out a hint +that budded and blossomed into <i>Rienzi</i>. How little beyond this bare +hint Wagner got from Meyerbeer we shall see when we examine the music. +A word must be said about the counter-claim. In his age Wagner at +Bayreuth, although he had fine musicians as his friends, had round him +many gentry who told him—greatly daring, to his face—not only that +he owed no artistic debt to any one, but that, on the whole, <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" />most +other composers owed him a good deal. One can excuse the weary old +man, sorely battered in life's battles, lapping up a little of this +sweet flattery; but it is hard to forgive the stupidity that still +makes the great composer appear ridiculous thirty years after his +death. This legend of Meyerbeer borrowing or thieving from Wagner is +sheer rubbish; in all Wagner's music there is not a bar which could +have been of use to Meyerbeer. The most rowdy tunes in <i>Rienzi</i> he +could easily equal: anything ever so remotely approaching the +beautiful he did not want. What! was he to run the chance of failure +by writing, or copying, one really expressive measure?</p> + +<p>It needed the cruel disillusionment of the Paris days, it needed also +the time needful for Wagner's normal growth, before he was driven to +see that the music-drama, or something that ultimately evolved itself +into the music-drama, was the form that he needed for his deepest +utterances. <i>Rienzi</i> is old-fashioned opera, barefaced, blatant and +unashamed. Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and +marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more +deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide +opportunities for these. Both in <i>Die Feen</i> and in <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> +his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic. +Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market. The subject +was eminently suitable. The personage Rienzi was intended for a great, +heroic figure and the music written for a brilliant tenor. The +indispensable <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" />love-element was provided by Irene, a soprano (though +it can well be sung by a mezzo), and Adriano, son of a patrician, a +mezzo-soprano (almost a contralto part)—which would be amazing did we +not know Wagner's aim. A woman-man carries us back to the days of +Handel and Gluck, and shows how little sincere Wagner was at the time, +how absorbingly bent he was on tickling the ears of the Parisians. The +villains of the piece, Colonna and Orsini, with their patrician +followers, are true stage-villains of melodrama in some +situations—proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they +whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was +determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their +voices and their skill in every kind of music—heroic or noisy, +pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few +minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and +the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera +is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's +time on an exhaustive analysis. We shall have enough to do of that +kind of thing when we come to the beginning of Wagner's riper work, +the <i>Dutchman</i>: time and space would only be wasted if we examined +<i>Rienzi</i> very closely.</p> + +<p>The curtain rises on a street in Rome; it is night, and in the +foreground Rienzi's house can be discerned. Orsini and his companions +run up a ladder to a window, enter, and come out carrying Irene, +Rienzi's sister. She screams for help quite <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" />in the Donna Anna manner; +Colonna and his companions come in and fall to blows—why, is not too +clear—with Orsini and his men. Adriano, Colonna's son, rescues Irene. +Crowds of the common people rush in, wildly asking one another what +the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the +name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, +sees what has occurred, and in a speech—uttered mainly in the driest +of dry recitative—taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and +their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The +nobles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their +quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to +wait their time, and he will lead them to destroy their oppressors. +They quietly disperse; Rienzi, Adriano and Irene have a scene; Rienzi +recognises in his sister's rescuer the son of his brother's murderer, +Adriano, and the latter, who has fallen in love with Irene, promises +to take Rienzi's part, and the three sing a trio as cold, undramatic +and commonplace as anything in Donizetti. There are two passages in it +which possess life: a variant of a theme from <i>Euryanthe</i>, and a theme +distinctly suggestive of the Wagner of <i>Tristan</i>. Then Rienzi goes +off, ostensibly to prepare for battle, but in reality to leave the +scene clear for Adriano and Irene to sing a rather maudlin love-duet. +A trumpet-call is heard; people rush in from all sides; Rienzi +addresses them; and after choruses, partly double-choruses, all go off +to fight the patricians. There is plenty of bustle; there <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" />is +tremendous vigour; and the scene affords chances for the stage manager +to manipulate big crowds effectively. But we must remember that the +thing had been quite as well done by Auber in <i>Masaniello</i>: even the +energy is not the true Wagnerian energy divine: it does not show +itself through the stuff of the music, but in the common rumty-tumpty +rhythms of the day, often offensively vulgar, and in the noisy +instrumentation. Any one can write for a big chorus and orchestra, +with plenty of trumpets and drums: to fill the music itself with +energy is a task that Wagner could not cope with as yet.</p> + +<p>So far the characters have been consistent. In the second act they all +show signs of weakness. Messengers of peace enter: Rienzi has +conquered and freed the people from an unbearable yoke; he is +congratulated by the messengers who have wandered through the +country—a pilgrimage that in the fourteenth century might well have +occupied them for years—and everywhere peace prevails. The music here +has a certain charm and freshness, but no more can be said for it. +Wagner wanted a contrast to the imposing displays of the first act, so +he simply put in this unnecessary scene. The patricians enter and +whine, begging for mercy; Rienzi, now Tribune, joins the senators; and +Colonna, Orsini and the rest begin to plot his death. Adriano, amongst +them unnoticed at first, expostulates—begs them not to stain their +hands and souls with the blood of the vanquisher who has treated them +so magnanimously. They scorn him as a <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" />deserter of his own class; they +leave, and he swears to save "Irenens Bruder." He has become +sentimentalist; but some of the music of the scene has strength. Then +the people conveniently flock in; ambassadors come from all corners of +the earth to acknowledge Rienzi; Adriano warns him that mischief is +breeding, and Rienzi calmly smiles; there is a most elaborate ballet, +occupying many pages of the score and full of trumpery tunes; Orsini +stabs Rienzi, and all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi +shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the +conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and +Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, +turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the +people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he +prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much +very Italian stuff in the music; but on the whole this scene is the +strongest in the opera. Of the real Wagner there is still small sign.</p> + +<p>He had completed these two acts when he set out for Paris. Once he +realized how poor were the prospects of getting his work played there, +his ardour for bigness and noise seems to have cooled. There are no +more double choruses; everything is planned on a smaller scale. The +three remaining acts in their present form (for he afterwards +shortened the opera) can be, and often are, compressed into two, or +even one. They can be described in a few words. The people begin to +distrust Rienzi; <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" />the patricians recommence plotting; Rienzi leads the +people to victory against them, and Colonna, with the others, is +killed. Adriano again wobbles and swears vengeance; the capitol is set +on fire with Rienzi and Irene inside; at the last moment Adriano +repents and rushes in to die with them; the building falls with a +crash, destroying the three; and as the curtain falls the +patricians—such as are left—seeing the people leaderless, fall upon +and scatter them. There are pages on pages that one can scarcely +believe came from Wagner's pen; in terrific theatrical situations the +most trivial Italian tunes are poured out in copious profusion. The +war hymn is sheer rowdyism; the great broad melody which forms part of +the prayer, and on which the introduction of the overture is based, +stands out from a weltering sea of orchestral bangs, noises and +screams and skirls of the strings. But there are numberless chances +for fine voices to be heard; and at that time of day these were even +more prized than they are to-day. The sparkle, the fireworks, the +sheer noise of the choruses, carried every one away. In Dresden Wagner +became the man of the hour. He had aimed at a success of this sort, +and he attained it, though by no means so quickly as he had expected, +nor in the quarter where a success would have been profitable.</p> + +<p>It is not needful to say much more about the music. It shows a variety +of influences; it shows also that Wagner, before he was thirty, was, +as I have already said, a perfect master of the tricks of <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" />the trade. +In huge imposing effects he out-Meyerbeered Meyerbeer, out-Spontinied +Spontini. If his tunes have not the superficial gracefulness of +Bellini it is because Wagner, in spite of himself, was driven by his +dæmon to aim at expressiveness, and, as in the <i>Dutchman</i> a very short +time afterwards, fell between two stools. His tunes lack the fluency +of the Italians because he did, in a half-hearted way, want to utter +genuine feeling; they are not finely, accurately and logically +expressive as they are in <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i>, because the +Italian influence, and the necessity of writing to please the gallery, +perpetually held him back. The contours of the melodies are dictated +from outside, consciously copied from alien models: in the later works +they are shaped by the inner force of his own mind, and though the +Weber idiom is prevalent, he used it unconsciously, as children in +learning to speak acquire the accent of the elders about them or the +dialect of the neighbourhood in which they are reared. I say the tunes +lack external grace, and I might go further: all the themes, all the +passages that follow (rather than grow out of) the themes, are +characterized by a certain clumsiness. This followed, as night the +day, from the attempt to copy and to be original at the same time. He +could not obey his instinct and write directly and simply: he must +needs warp and twist the obvious, and disguise, even from himself, its +essential commonplaceness. A remarkable instance is his use of the +Dresden Amen in <i>Rienzi</i> as compared with his use of it in +<i>Tannhäuser</i>. In the latter it is <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" />plain, diatonic and immensely—in +the best sense—effective; in <i>Rienzi</i>, in spite of the vigour of its +presentation, the effect is weakened by the way in which it is bent +away to a chromatic something which is neither frankly Italian nor +honestly German. Again, he composed with an audience in his mind's eye +that could only take in one melody or theme at a time. The melody +might be in an upper part, a middle, or in the bass. In one or another +it always is, and the rest of the musical tissue is only +accompaniment. Hence a heaviness, a lumbering motion of the harmonies, +which is irritating to our ears now that we are accustomed to webs he +spun in later days when music no longer consisted to him of top parts +and bottom parts, but of a broad stream of parts, all of equal +importance, and all flowing along together, preserving each its +individuality, and each individual blending with the others to produce +the total effect. In <i>Rienzi</i> the bass often remains the same for bars +together, while in an upper part a florid tune flourishes its tail, so +to speak, for the public amusement. An ugly trick he indulged in at +this time was giving to the voice the notes of the instrumental +bass—a remnant of the eighteenth-century way of writing for the bass +voice.</p> + +<p>Artistically <i>Rienzi</i> was a sin. Remembering that <i>Die Feen</i> had been +written years before, it is useless to contend that Wagner did not +know he was aiming at something lower than the best he could produce. +He never again fell away from his highest and truest self, though he +was sorely tempted.</p> + + +<h3><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" />II</h3> + +<p>The simple, terrible old legend of the Flying Dutchman had in it no +elements of drama. The irascible mariner of ancient times, vainly +struggling to round Cape Horn (or some other cape) against a head +wind, swore in his wrath that he would succeed if he tried until the +Day of Judgment; a lightning flash in the sky proclaimed that he was +taken at his word; thenceforward his ship sailed the seas without +stopping; it never could reach any port, and release would only come +at the last day. The crew died and their ghosts worked the vessel; the +vessel rotted and the ghostly crew continued to work a phantom ship; +only Vanderdecken, the skipper, seems to have lived on in the flesh. +Other ships passed through the phantom as though it was a cloud; and +the living crews shuddered, and cursed the dead. Before this thing of +terror and mystery could form a part of any drama, adventures had to +be invented and grafted on to it. As with the legend of the Wandering +Jew, this was done in a hundred, perhaps a thousand, instances; and +never had a good piece of work been the result. Whether Heine did or +did not himself devise the form in which the legend is used in his +reminiscences of Herr von Schnabalewopski it is not worth troubling to +find out. It is enough that in Heine, Wagner found the story more or +less as he employed it. It is an odd compound—odd at this time of day +at least—of the hard old superstition with soft German sentimentality +of the Romantic period. A good Angel, thinking the <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" />Dutchman's fate +too hard, interceded for him; and though his sentence could not be +wholly remitted, a bargain was struck. Once in seven years +Vanderdecken could land and spend a certain time ashore. If during +this interval of peace he could find a maiden who would love him +faithfully to death, he would be released: his wanderings would be +o'er, and death would swallow him up. How the maiden's fidelity could +be tested does not appear.</p> + +<p>Wagner would have it that with the <i>Dutchman</i> he ceased to be a mere +stringer of opera verses and became the full poet. The work does not +support that view; nor is the construction of the plot one whit better +than a hundred others put together by hacks before he was born. Each +act is crammed with conventional tricks out of the hack's common +stock; in each scene, from the very first, characters come on or go +off, not because it is inherent in the action that they should do so, +but because without such helps the librettist, or "poet," could not +have got along. The curtain rises on a rocky Norwegian fiord where a +sailing-vessel has found shelter from a storm that is raging on the +open sea. Daland, the skipper, has gone ashore to survey the land and +to find out, if he can, whither his ship has been driven. He +recognizes the spot: it is Sandwike, and the tempest has blown him +"sieben Meilen" out of his course. However, he is glad enough to be +safe; and seeing signs of better weather goes into his cabin to wait, +leaving a watchman on guard. This is the first specimen of the old +stage-craft; Daland had to be got rid of, so, instead of attending to +<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" />any damage the waves may have caused the ship, he goes quietly +downstairs to take a snooze. The watchman tries to keep himself awake +by singing. But it is no use. The librettist is inexorable: the stage +is wanted for some one else; and the watchman's song merely acts as a +soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores. In the distance appears +the ship of the Flying Dutchman—"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der +Mast"—she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by +Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore. It is the seventh year, +and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will +redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland +awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, +hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon +grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger +home with him, and if his daughter Senta proves satisfactory, +Vanderdecken is to have her as his bride in return for infinite +treasure out of the hold of the strange vessel. Daland has been shown +a sample, and is overjoyed with his bargain: a distinguished-looking +husband for his daughter and the husband's wealth for himself. The +wind changes to a favourable one; Daland sets out first, leaving the +Dutchman to follow in a boat which we may well believe goes faster, +for it is driven by the devil and carries a private hurricane wherever +it goes. The convenient veering of the wind need not be taken as +forced on the stage manager by the librettist, for <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" />Daland foretells +it at the very beginning of the act.</p> + +<p>I do not wish to treat so noble a work as the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> with +any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and +the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and +ultra-conventionality of <i>Rienzi</i> to the richness and simplicity and +directness of <i>Tristan</i>, we must realize clearly that in its present +stage the craftsmanship was little in advance of Scribe's. In some +respects he was very far in advance of Scribe. The whole thing springs +from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast +doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of hell +as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his +torments, and at last finding her. But Wagner had not yet evolved or +invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in +the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities which +seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now +they compel us to smile. He could no more have constructed the +framework of the <i>Dutchman</i> without shoving on and pulling off his +puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music +without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera +which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond. The +conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way. Throughout +the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman +story: mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are +scared <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" />when they are told of him. Yet when the very ship described in +the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with +its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest +astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the +ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who +he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no +attention to so weird a craft.</p> + +<p>In the next act we have a room in Daland's house. A number of girls +are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs +on the wall—that of Vanderdecken. From earliest girlhood she has +heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her +hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind +and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity +occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which +men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned +and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more +or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in +taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, +from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure. The +Dutchman is there to give character and atmosphere to the piece, but +dramatically he is nothing more than Senta's opportunity personified. +The girls spin on; a kind of forewoman, Mary, upbraids Senta with +idling and staring at the picture and dreaming away her life—for the +girl is quite open about her sym<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" />pathy with the accursed seafaring +man. She wants Mary to sing the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> ballad; Mary curtly +refuses; "Then," rejoins Senta, for all the world like a leading lady +in a melodrama giving the cue for the band to begin the royalty-song, +"I'll sing it myself"; and, despite protests, she does. It recounts, +of course, the story of the Dutchman prior to his meeting with Daland. +At the end she announces her intention of saving him; and while the +women are expostulating, Eric rushes in to add his voice to theirs. He +tells them Daland's ship is in sight; and all save he and Senta scurry +off to make preparations. Eric wishes to marry her, and pleads his +cause; she asks him what his griefs are compared with those of the +doomed man whose picture hangs on the wall. He (rightly) thinks her +semi-demented, and tells a dream he had: of the Dutchman entering, of +Senta at once giving herself to him, and then sailing away. His story +has a result precisely contrary to what he intended and hoped: her +ecstasy becomes more violent than ever; he (the Dutchman) seeks her +and she will share his grief with him. Eric rushes off in despair and +horror; Senta subsides; she prays that the Dutchman may be able to +find her—and her father and Vanderdecken enter.</p> + +<p>She stands mazed, not greeting her father nor uttering a word, gazing +at the stranger. Now Daland, I have already remarked, has noticed no +resemblance between this man and the picture, and he cannot understand +his daughter's silence. Finally she salutes him and asks about +Vanderdecken; and <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" />Daland, in haste, discloses his plan. Neither +Vanderdecken nor Senta speaks; so, with a stroke of the old-fashioned +opera trickery, Wagner makes Daland feel himself <i>de trop</i> and go +away. Vanderdecken at once begins his story, and the pair sing a duet, +which I will deal with shortly; for the moment I need only remind the +reader that Senta's mind was made up in advance. When the Dutchman, +almost warningly, reminds her that it is nothing less than a life's +devotion he demands, she proudly answers, "Whoever you are, whatever +the curse on you, I will share your life and your doom." The +librettist now having need of his services for the finale, Daland +enters, and the act winds up with a showy trio.</p> + +<p>No further comment is needed on this act: in structure, like the +first, it is only old-fashioned opera. It is in the third act that the +inherent weakness of the story for operatic purposes shows with almost +disastrous results. Only the sheer force of the music averts a +complete breakdown. The problem was to show Senta literally faithful +unto death. Evidently it was impossible for Vanderdecken to claim and +carry off his bride forthwith. Had that been possible the work might +have terminated with a short scene to form the real finale of the +second act. But Vanderdecken had asked for a wife, and Daland would +not have dreamed of letting his daughter go until the proper ceremony +had taken place. Besides, Wagner was writing an opera with the very +practical view of a performance in the theatre; and in those days of +lengthy operas (<i>Rienzi</i> at first played five and a half hours) the +<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" />public would have grumbled if they did not get enough for their +money. No manager would have looked at a work no longer than the first +and second acts of the <i>Dutchman</i>. The final scene could not be made +very lengthy; so the composer determined to pad out the act with pure +irrelevant music, and the librettist had to find him words. In a piano +score now before me the essential part of the act, the scene in which +Senta redeems the Dutchman, occupies twenty-four pages; and these are +preceded by fifty pages of choruses of sailors, maidens and ghosts. +Allowing for the larger space occupied by choruses on the printed +page, we are half-way through the act before serious business begins. +It must be owned that Wagner has done his work superbly, even making +use of it to a certain extent. Girls bring provisions and drinks for +Daland's crew, and there is a lot of chorus and counter-chorus and +dancing. Then both men and girls call upon the Dutch crew. There is no +response. The ship lies wrapt in gloom; and, half afraid, the girls +and Daland's men taunt them with being dead. But suddenly the hour +arrives for the Dutchman to sail. With perfect calm all around, a +hurricane shakes her sails and shrieks and pipes in the rigging, and +the waters roar and foam; the crew come to life and call for their +captain in a series of unearthly choruses. Daland's men, +horror-struck, make the sign of the cross; the spectres give a +"taunting laugh" and subside; once again all is peace, and the +sinister vessel lies there, the air seeming to thicken and grow +blacker about her.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" />The women have gone off; the sailors occupy themselves with eating +and drinking; and Senta, pursued by Eric, comes on. He has heard of +the intended marriage, and begs passionately that she shall not +sacrifice herself, ending with a cavatina—a cavatina by Richard +Wagner!—in vain. But Vanderdecken has heard all from the +wings—another bit of old-fashioned stage trickery, like the +"asides"—and resolves that Senta shall not sacrifice herself. "For +ever lost," he cries, realizing that he is renouncing his last chance. +Senta declares her determination to follow him—she will redeem him +whether he wishes it or not; in a regular set trio she, he and Eric +thrash the matter out; she is not to be shaken; Eric gives a +despairing cry which brings on the women folk and the sailors. The +Dutchman says farewell, pipes up his spectral crew, who heave the +anchor, and he goes on board. As the ship moves off Senta throws +herself into the water; the ship falls to pieces; the sun rises, and +in its beams the "glorified forms" of the pair are seen mounting the +skies. Senta has had her way: she has worked out her destiny and +"saved" the wanderer. The curtain falls.</p> + +<p>This is the first of the genuine Wagner dramas, the first, therefore, +from which the Wagnerians have drawn, or into which they have read, +"lessons." As we get on I shall try to show that no moral can be +tacked on to any of Wagner's works. But supposing that he did wish to +teach us something in the <i>Dutchman</i>, what on earth can it be? Not, +surely, that one should not swear rash oaths in a <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" />temper? We have all +done that and needed no redeemer. There is no touch of essential +veracity in the old legend, a bit of puerile medieval fantasy; there +is no sort of proportion between the trivial offence and the appalling +punishment; even in an age which thought to oppose the will of the +Almighty the rankest blasphemy it can never have been considered +eternally just that a righteous and merciful Creator should deal out +such a punishment. Besides, in the ancient legend, as in Wagner's +book, the Almighty has little to do with the matter: it is the foul +fiend who snaps up Vanderdecken in his momentary lapse. Again, after +the first act Vanderdecken is second to Senta. Even the belated +attempt to show him heroic in his determination to sail off alone to +his doom has no dramatic point; it has no bearing on his salvation, +for nothing happens until Senta jumps into the sea, and we feel sure +nothing would have happened if she had not jumped. <i>That</i> lesson, at +any rate—a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best—is not set +forth in the <i>Dutchman</i>. The only other possible one is that +self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I +say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of +Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such +self-sacrifice is not worthy, not beautiful; but, on the contrary, a +very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there +no lesson in the <i>Dutchman</i>, but the whole idea is so absurd that only +the power of the music enables us to swallow it at all. The condition +on which the <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" />Dutchman can be saved is purely arbitrary; what +difference ought it to make to him that some one, for the sake of an +idea, sacrifices herself? The "good angel" who proposed it must have +been temporarily out of her senses, and the Creator when he agreed +must have been nodding. And the whole business is smeared over with +German mawkish sentimentality—this business, I mean, of Senta +<i>loving</i> the Dutchman. Had he seen and loved her, and resolutely +sailed off without her, and found his salvation in that, there would +be some semblance of reason; but the fumbling attempt to make +something of the man at the last moment is futile, and we are left +with nothing but sentimental sickliness, nauseating and revolting. In +a word, then, we must take the <i>Dutchman</i> libretto as it is, +unreasonable, false: only a series of occasions for writing some fine +music. That it is nothing more than such a series I have endeavoured +to establish at all this length; because if it is worth understanding +Wagner at all, and if we wish to understand him, we must realise the +point he started from in his half-conscious groping after the opera +form which he only found in its full perfection in his <i>Tristan</i> +period.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In the music the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly +from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the +operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the +strength and beauty of much of the <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" /><i>Dutchman</i> is one of those things +almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the +blatant clamour, of <i>Rienzi</i> there is not a hint. The opera is by no +means all on the highest level, but a good third of it is, and there +are pages which Richard never afterwards surpassed. A dozen passages +are prophetic of the Wagner of <i>Tristan</i> and the <i>Ring</i>. Let me begin +by quoting a few of these. The phrase (<i><a href="#Page_118">a</a></i>, page <a href="#Page_118">118</a>) immediately +suggests <i>Tristan</i>, as it screams higher and higher with +ever-increasing intensity of passion; a variant of it (<i><a href="#Page_118">b</a></i>) is charged +with the same feeling, and is used in the same way. The feeling is not +the same as in <i>Tristan</i>; both are used when Eric makes his last +despairing appeals to Senta. But look at (<i><a href="#Page_118">c</a></i>). Compare it with one of +the themes (<i><a href="#Page_118">d</a></i>) expressive of Wotan's anguish, and then recollect +that (<i><a href="#Page_118">c</a></i>) is used when Vanderdecken, in veiled speech, tells Daland +of his woes. When Vanderdecken is yearning for Senta's love, and +trembling lest by telling the truth he should frighten her, we get +(<i><a href="#Page_118">e</a></i>), afterwards developed with such poignant effect in the first and +last acts of <i>Tristan</i>. Vanderdecken enters with Daland, and Senta, +almost stunned, sets eyes on him for the first time. The musical +phrase is (<i><a href="#Page_118">f</a></i>), which, simplified and more direct in its appeal, was +to be used when Siegmund and Sieglinda first gaze on one another. Then +the passage (<i><a href="#Page_118">g</a></i>) is one which the reader will find mentioned in my +chapter on <i>Tristan</i> (p. <a href="#Page_263">263</a>) as standing for quite a multitude of +things in the <i>Ring</i>. A curious case is the little phrase (<i><a href="#Page_118">h</a></i>) which +occurs in the middle of the watch<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" />man's song. Of no significance here, +of what tremendous import it is in the first act of <i>Tristan</i>.</p> + +<p>None of these phrases or passages is developed with the power and +resource characteristic of Wagner's later work; but it is astonishing +that after the baldness and noise of <i>Rienzi</i> he should have gone +straight on to invent such music at all. He was still groping his way, +and had to trust to the conventional framework of opera construction +to a large extent; that is, each act is divided into set numbers, even +when the numbers are based on music which has been heard before and to +which, therefore, a definite meaning has become attached. He could not +yet trust himself in an open sea of music, as he did in <i>Tristan</i>; +rather, we have a chain of lakes, the music sometimes overflowing out +of one into another. The marvellous continual development of themes +with intricate interweavings and incessant transmogrifications—all +this was part of the technique of the <i>Tristan</i> period. Neither in the +<i>Dutchman</i> nor in <i>Tannhäuser</i> nor in <i>Lohengrin</i> is there any sign of +it. Of what may be called leitmotivs there are only three, the +Dutchman (<i><a href="#Page_119">i</a></i>) and Senta (<i><a href="#Page_119">j</a></i>), while a portion of the second (<i><a href="#Page_119">k</a></i>) +may be regarded as a third, for it is used by itself, independently. +One little group of notes (<i><a href="#Page_119">l</a></i>) I have seen described as a leitmotiv; +and if it is one, I should like to know what it stands for. As can be +seen, it is a bit of the Senta theme (fourth bar of <i><a href="#Page_119">j</a></i>); and in the +overture a long connecting passage is built on it. But it also forms +part of the chorus of sailors in the first act, part of the watchman's +song <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" />in a varied form, part of another sailors' chorus (<i><a href="#Page_119">m</a></i>); it is +the very backbone of the spinning chorus; and lastly, a large portion +of the spectral sailors' chorus is made up of it. I have no +explanation to offer—unless it be that Wagner, bent on suggesting the +sea throughout the opera, felt that this phrase helped him to sustain +the atmosphere. The sea, indeed, throughout the <i>Dutchman</i>, is the +background, foreground, the whole environment of the drama; in this +wild legend which came out of the sea, every action is related to the +sea, and one might say that the sea's voice is echoed in every one's +speech. The sea music, therefore, based on Senta's ballad—apart from +the leitmotivs which that contains—is of the very first importance. +The easiest way to get a firm grasp of the <i>Dutchman</i> is to analyse +this ballad. Then in passing rapidly over the score afterwards we +shall see at a glance the structure of the whole, and how the new +thematic matter is either welded into this sea music or stodgily +interpolated. The song is too long to be transcribed here; but every +reader must have in his possession a copy at this time of day. There +are ten bars of introduction: in the eleventh, to the Dutchman theme, +Senta sings the "Yo-ho-ho"; at the fifteenth, with a glorious swing +and rush she dashes into the ballad—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an,<br /></span> +<span>Blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast?<br /></span> +<span>Auf hohem Bord der bleiche Mann,<br /></span> +<span>Des Schilfes Herr, wacht ohne Rast."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This consists of eight bars—a four-bar section repeated. Then we get +the storm music, four bars <a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" />of which I quote (<i><a href="#Page_119">n</a></i>), and this is freely +employed throughout the opera. The storm subsides, and at bar +thirty-nine Senta sings to her own theme—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Doch kann dem bleichen Manne Erlösung einstens noch werden,<br /></span> +<span>Fänd' er ein Weib, das bis in den Tod getreu ihm auf Erden."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>leading into the second part (<i><a href="#Page_119">k</a></i>) to the words—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Ach! Wann wirst du, bleicher Seemann, sie finden?<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Betet zum Himmel dass bald<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Ein Weib Treue ihm halt'!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The three themes are of very unequal power. The first is one of the +landmarks in musical history; neither Wagner himself nor any of the +other great masters ever hit upon a more gigantic theme, terrible in +its direct force at its announcement, still more terrible as it is +used in the overture and later in the drama. The second, Senta, is a +piece of sloppy German sentimentality: this is not a heroine who will +(rightly or wrongly) sacrifice herself for an idea, but a hausfrau who +will always have her husband's supper ready and his slippers laid to +warm on the stove shelf. It is significant that Senta herself in her +moment of highest exaltation does not refer to it: Wagner often +calculated wrong, but he never felt wrong. The third, the grief and +anguish of the condemned sailor, and pity for him, is one of the most +wonderful things in music; for blent with its pathos is the feeling of +a remoter time, the feeling that it all happened in ages that are +past, the feeling for "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long +ago." This sense of the past, the <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" />historic sense—call it what you +will—was thus strong in Wagner at this early period, and it grew even +stronger later on, finding its most passionate expression in <i>Tristan</i> +and its loveliest expression in the <i>Mastersingers</i>. The faculty to +shape pregnant musical themes is the stamp of the great master. The +early men are supposed to have "taken church melodies" and worked them +up into masses: what they did was to take meaningless strings of +notes, bare suggestions, and give them form and meaning by means of +rhythm (for only boobies talk of the old church music not possessing +rhythm). The later composers sometimes followed the same +procedure—which is equivalent to a sculptor "taking" a block of +marble and hewing out a statue; but more and more they trusted to +their own imaginations. In either case the "mighty line" results; and +there is not a great composition in the world which has not great +themes; and, <i>vice versa</i>, when the themes are trivial the work +evolved from them is invariably trivial. I see modern works full of +cleverness and colour: I do not waste much time on them; there cannot +be anything in them, and they will not survive. Along with some weak +motives—or, to be more accurate, motives which are musically weak but +dramatically a help—Wagner has a huge list of tremendous ones, each a +landmark. However, this by way of digression.</p> + +<p>Music evolved from this ballad forms, as I have said, the structural +outline of the opera. The overture is almost entirely shaped out of +it, being one of that sort which is supposed to foreshadow the <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" />opera, +to tell the tale in music before we see it enacted on the stage. From +the <i>Dutchman</i> onward Wagner nearly always constructed his +introductions—whether to whole operas or to single acts or even +scenes—on this plan, largely discarding the purely architectural +forms. Here, for example, we have at the outset the blind fury of the +tempest, taken and developed from (<i><a href="#Page_119">n</a></i>), with the Dutchman theme. The +storm reaches its height, and there is a brief lull, and Vanderdecken +seems to dream of a possible redeemer; the elements immediately rage +again, with the wind screaming fiercely through sails and ropes, and +waves crashing against the ship's sides; he yearns for rest (<i><a href="#Page_119">k</a></i>), +seems to implore the Almighty to send the Day of Judgment; and at +length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption +of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of +incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; +but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that +counts: the roar of the billows, the "<i>hui!</i>" of the wind, the dashing +and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's +men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," add even more colour. The motion of +the sea is kept up, partly with fresh musical material, until at last +it all but ceases; the watchman sings his song of the soft south wind +and falls asleep. Then the sky darkens, the Flying Dutchman comes in, +and the storm music rages once more. It is woven into Vanderdecken's +magnificent scena (surely the greatest opera scena written up to +the year 1842); <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" />and then disappears. In its place we get pages of +(for Wagner) wearisome twaddle. The reason is obvious. For the purpose +of explaining the subsequent movement of the drama there is a lot of +conversation which Weber, in the Singspiel, would have left to be +spoken, and Mozart would have set to dry recitative. Wagner was +determined that his music should flow on; but the inspiration of the +sea was gone, and he could only fill up with uninspired stuff. He had +not yet mastered his new musico-dramatic art; indeed, I much doubt +whether he realized its possibilities. In his <i>Tristan</i> days he knew +how to avoid explanations on the stage; nothing in <i>Tristan</i> needs +explanation; in the <i>Mastersingers</i> and the <i>Ring</i> his resources—his +inventiveness and technical mastery of music—were unbounded, and an +intractable incident he simply smothered in splendid music. Here, the +bargaining of Daland and Vanderdecken is a very intractable incident, +and in trying to make the best of it he made the worst. That is, he +would have saved us an appalling <i>longueur</i> had he given us two +minutes of frank recitative in place of twenty minutes of make-believe +music—music in the very finest kapellmeister style of the period. +Even the passage quoted (<i><a href="#Page_118">c</a></i>) is made nothing of. There are one or two +fine dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his ship +is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden," +with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very +dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the +composer's imagination. <a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" />The sweet wind carries off the mariners to +their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar +of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the +point of, say, the quieter bits of Mendelssohn's <i>Hebrides</i>, but it +runs delicately along, and it more than serves.</p> + +<p>The figure (<i><a href="#Page_119">l</a></i>), which has been so prominent in the overture and +sailors' choruses, is equally noticeable in the next act. The spinning +chorus, in fact, may be said to grow out of it. There is no break +between the two acts (Wagner's first intention was to go straight on, +making the <i>Dutchman</i> an opera in one long act); the introduction to +the second is a continuation of the conclusion of the first. The +figure is repeated several times in a long diminuendo, changing the +key from B flat to A major, so we never cease to feel the presence of +the eternal sea. Inside the skipper's old-world house one is conscious +that the waves are plashing not far from the walls, and that the air +is salt and fresh there. There is a pervading dreamy atmosphere: again +we are carried away into far-off times; the scene has the unreality of +a dream, a dream of the sea. Mlle. Senta quickly shatters that +illusion with her passion and living young blood; but in memory one +always has this cottage, where women pass the days in singing, where +there are no clocks, and time can only be measured by the waves as +they break on the shore. The maiden's spinning song is small scale +music; nothing ambitious is wanted, and nothing ambitious is +attempted. As a bit of music it is infinitely superior to the clumsy +wooden bridal <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" />chorus in <i>Lohengrin</i>; the touch is light, the melodies +fresh and dainty, and the subdued hum of the wheels and the bustle are +suggested throughout without becoming monotonous. Not for a musical, +but for a purely theatrical, reason we get a snatch of (<i><a href="#Page_119">k</a></i>); Senta is +not spinning; she is engaged in staring at the picture. After much +chattering she sings the ballad, and at the end declaims her intention +of saving the Dutchman to the music which is employed when she +actually accomplishes that feat. When Eric rushes in, the orchestra +has the usual operatic storm-in-a-teacup sort of stuff; the chattering +chorus of women getting ready for Daland's reception is neither here +nor there; Eric's expostulations are insignificant, and the air he +sings—with interruptions on the part of Senta—is by no means equal +to the better parts of the opera. Here Wagner has again been faced by +the difficulty he met in the first act: a prosaic scene had to be set +to poetic music, and the task was beyond him. Eric is one of the most +frightfully conventional personages in opera; he bores and exasperates +one to madness. He warbles away in the approved Italian tenor fashion +while one's enthusiasm is growing cold and one's interest waning. His +dream, however, in which he sees Senta meet the Dutchman, embrace him +and sail away with him, has a genuine ring. The atmosphere is strange, +almost nightmareish, with the Dutchman theme sounding up at intervals, +dreamlike. With the exception of the mere mention of this motive in +the score, the music is new, is not evolved out of previous passages; +but <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" />when Eric has finished we hear the Senta theme, both sections. +The Dutchman and Daland enter, and we hear (<i><a href="#Page_118">f</a></i>) three times in all; +but there is no development of it. Daland's air is entirely fresh +matter; as is the opening of the big duet between the Dutchman and +Senta.</p> + +<p>We are now approaching the supreme moment of the drama. The Dutchman's +recitative-like beginning—declamation of the same type, and with the +same accent, as some recitative in the song-tournament in +<i>Tannhäuser</i>—is noble in the highest degree; we have a recurrence of +the dream-atmosphere at Senta's words, "Versank ich jetzt in +wunderbares Träumen?"—for though her fanaticism is all too real, when +her opportunity comes she is for the moment incredulous. It hardly +does to consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture. +Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into +some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away +her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of +hairs can alter the plain fact—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Wirst du des Vaters Wahl nicht schelten?<br /></span> +<span>Was er versprach, wie?—dürft' es gelten?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>However, he has the honesty to warn her of her probable fate. She +rises to the occasion. She may be as mad as a hatter, but in the music +she is given to "Der du auch sei'st," her lunacy becomes sublimity. Up +to the moment of writing this white-hot glowing passage Wagner had +never reached the sublime: now for a few minutes he sustains it. +<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" />Again the breath of the sea is brought in when the Dutchman a second +time warns her, and the sea music roars as a sinister accompaniment. +Senta only becomes the more exalted. "Wohl kenn' ich Weibes heil'ge +Pflichten," she sings to music which is absolutely the finest page in +the opera. The pure white flame of a deathless devotion is here. I +doubt whether Wagner ever again in his life had such an ethereal +moment: it is sheer fervour and sweetness, unmixed with the hot human +passion of <i>Tristan</i> or the smoky philosophies of the <i>Ring</i>. To wish +Senta had a reasonable cause for her ecstasy of self-immolation is, of +course, to wish the <i>Dutchman</i> were not the <i>Dutchman</i>. In truth, we +must take the scenes as they come without inquiring too curiously; the +storm music which goes with the wanderer, and the moments of glorious +splendour that come to the redeeming woman, are things worth living to +have written and worth living to hear.</p> + +<p>The music of the last act I shall pass quickly over. The seamen's and +women's choruses are not particularly striking; the spectral choruses +certainly are. The sea music is here turned into something unearthly, +frightful; these damned souls have no hope of being saved, and in +their misery they scoff and mock and laugh hideously. More new musical +matter, some of it of a very fine quality, is introduced when Eric +again appeals to Senta; and the figure (<i><a href="#Page_118">a</a></i>) is developed with +stupendous effect. In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off, +Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the +<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" />second—nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely +confined her to recitative.</p> + +<p>The <i>Flying Dutchman</i>, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a +manufacture, not, like <i>Tristan</i>, a growth. Much of the music does not +rise above the level of Spontini or Marschner; there are wearisome +pages, there are heavy chords repeated again and again with violin +figurations on top, there are lines of the verse repeated to fit in +with the conventional melodies in four-bar lengths. It was only a few +years before that Wagner, at Riga, had written enthusiastically about +Bellini and his melody, a type of melody he felt to be fresh and +expressive compared with the dry-as-dust mixture of Viennese melody +(<i>i.e.</i> the Haydn and Mozart type) and stodgy German counterpoint +which formed the bulk of Marschner's and Spontini's music; and here we +see him in the very deed of trying his hand at it. Very often the +result, it must be admitted, is lamentable. There was no Italian +suppleness and grace in Wagner's nature: when he was in deadly +earnest, and striving to express himself without thinking of models, +he wrote gorgeous stuff; when the inspiration waned, or when he +deluded himself with the belief that what he supposed to be +Bellini-like tunes really expressed the feeling of the moment, then he +gave us pages as dry and dreary as Spontini and Marschner at their +worst. Besides those I have already mentioned there are in the love +duet—if it can be called a love duet—mere figurations over bar on +bar on leaden-footed, heavy chords; and these figurations are not true +melody. These tunes <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" />in regular four-bar lengths are melody of an +amorphous sort; only when they were tightened up, made truer, more +pregnant—in a word, when they were so shaped as to stand really and +truly for the thought and feeling in the composer—did they become the +beautiful things we find in <i>Lohengrin</i>, foretelling the sublime +things we find in <i>Tristan</i>. Eric's tunes are as colourless as +Donizetti's. All this we may joyfully admit, knowing how much there is +to be said on the other side, and seeing in the <i>Dutchman</i> only a +foretaste of Wagner's greatest work. A really great work it assuredly +is. We have the magnificent sea-music, and, in spite of outer +incoherences, the smell and atmosphere of the sea maintained to the +last bar of the opera. In his music at least Vanderdecken is a deeply +tragic figure. There is the ballad, by very far the finest in music; +there is Senta's declaration of faith. Whenever it was possible for +the composer to be inspired he instantly responded. Had he not lived +to write another note his memory would live by the <i>Dutchman</i>. It is +an enormous leap from <i>Rienzi</i>. There brilliancy is attained by huge +choruses and vigorous orchestration and rhythms that continually verge +on the vulgar. In the <i>Dutchman</i> it is the stuff and texture of the +music that make the effect. Play <i>Rienzi</i> on a piano, and you have +nothing; play the <i>Dutchman</i>, and you have immediately the roar of the +sea, the Dutchman's loneliness and sadness, Senta's exaltation. I have +spoken of Wagner having finished his apprenticeship when he went to +Magdeburg, and in a sense he had; but perhaps in the fuller sense he +<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" />finished it only with the <i>Dutchman</i>. He made mistakes, and thanks +largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared +to take another and a vaster leap—from the <i>Dutchman</i> to +<i>Tannhäuser</i>. He cast the slough of the old Italian opera form.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" /> +<img src="images/p118.png" width="400" height="649" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" /> +<img src="images/p119.png" width="400" height="639" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<p>Some characteristics of his harmony and instrumentation will most +conveniently be considered later. For the present I wish to draw my +reader's attention rather to Wagner the musico-dramatist than to +Wagner the technical musician.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" /><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" />CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>DRESDEN</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger +which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The +first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown +lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with +many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to +be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and +we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and +grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual +insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live +in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before +he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north, +learning of the success of <i>Rienzi</i>, and little dreaming his profits +to be £45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the +conductorship of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any, +better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that +whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes +to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The +third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" />the modern opera. +That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with +that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But +Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose +inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang +around a Court.</p> + +<p>Wagner did not wish to be kapellmeister—on the contrary, wished most +vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, +how he hoped to earn bread—he who had had only one opera produced, +and gained £45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such +questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his +operas—scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and +writing—he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr. +Micawber, whose contemporary, of course, he was. He flirted with von +Lüttichau, the intendant of the theatre, a fine specimen of a court +barbarian. Wagner neither would nor wouldn't; and it was only when the +theatre found it could not well do without him, and asked him to say +definitely if he would, that he accepted the offer. We can imagine how +poor, stupid, unimaginative Minna would rejoice at the news. She ought +to have married a pork butcher, or would have behaved admirably as the +mistress of a beerhouse or café; but as the wife of a man of genius—! +To be the wife of the kapellmeister of one of Germany's principal +opera-houses—a court opera-house—that was almost, if not quite, as +good; and for the time she rested content with <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" />her lot. And we may +believe that Richard, too, felt a double gratification, even against +his deepest and truest instincts. The salary lifted a burden off his +shoulders for a while; and was he not appointed to the very post his +idol Weber had occupied? Nevertheless, things soon came to pass which +show how the Richard who set off from Pillau to Paris with his bare +travelling expenses, and the Richard who was to do yet madder things +hereafter, was the Richard of this middle period. This von Lüttichau +said it was the rule of the court that a new conductor should serve a +year on trial. Wagner was quite brutally reminded that the mighty +Weber had been compelled to do so; and he was told <i>he</i> must do so. He +point-blank refused; sent the Lüttichau man a long explanation—which, +I dare say, was never read—of why he couldn't accept such terms; +spoke of the necessity of getting some sort of order and discipline +into an orchestra which Reissiger had allowed to go to pieces, etc., +etc. But he had to his credit, as we have seen, the triumphs of +<i>Rienzi</i> and the <i>Dutchman</i>; and it shows how much he was wanted that +Lüttichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without +murmuring—a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official, +a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn +in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that +he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for +life. This was the least of his troubles.</p> + +<p>Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre con<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" />ductors, the slackest +of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the +misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though +these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man +who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary +stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar +with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a +spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz—known +as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last +waltz"—must have been the fruit of a lucky accident—or perhaps he +did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not +come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing +is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression +made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on +Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how +entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got +through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay +regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned, +because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the +result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met +Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the +opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the +conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked +Wagner—possibly in a fit of con<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" />sternation, thinking it might be +<i>his</i> night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart +conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not +so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing, +smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat +and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The +bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who regard their +posts as more or less sinecures, wanted to go on in the old slovenly +fashion, rehearsing carelessly, hastily, or not at all, and quite +satisfied so long as they got through. During the first weeks of the +new regime the principal first violin declined to follow Wagner's +directions, and, moreover, had the impudence to tell our arrogant +Richard he was wrong, and, above all, to tell him in von Lüttichau's +presence. Wagner, having the pen of a too-ready writer—like old +Sebastian Bach before him—sent in one of his long letters; and with +that the trouble ceased for the moment. But similar episodes seem to +have been of frequent occurrence during his six years of +conductorship. Still, he introduced discipline into the band, and, on +the whole, got on well with his men. With genuine artists, even of the +humblest sort, he was always on good terms. He had a fine fund of good +humour and sanguine cheerfulness, a ready wit and a kind heart; he won +the respect due to a man who really knew his work, knew what he +wanted, and how it could best be attained. What he wanted was +performances worthy of the house to which he had come as con<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" />ductor. +Tricks were played on him, so that he had to direct operas which had +been insufficiently rehearsed or not at all rehearsed; and the press +made the most of shortcomings which he realized better than the +critics.</p> + +<p>He had compensations. August Roeckel became his assistant at the +theatre and a close personal friend; he had Heine, Fischer, Uhlig and +others amongst his intimates; and by what was undoubtedly the most +artistic section of the community he was made much of. The Liedertafel +chose him as its first Liedermeister. For the unveiling of a statue to +Friedrich August I he organized a gigantic musical festival, writing +for the occasion a hymn. Mendelssohn had composed something for the +event; and the whole affair made the Dresden folk open their mouths as +well as their ears. For the Liedertafel he wrote the <i>Love-feast of +the Apostles</i>, which was performed on July 6 of this year (1843) with, +so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious +press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment +of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a +Mendelssohnian psalm—and they would have grumbled even had they got +it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a +crime not to imitate him.</p> + +<p>At this time he appears to have been happy with Minna; the good lady +had all she wanted; and the rift within the lute did not show until +Wagner later on began to kick against the pricks. Perhaps the greatest +pleasure that he had at this time—perhaps <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" />the greatest he had had in +his life—came through old Spohr the violinist, then conductor (and +king) of the Cassel opera. Spohr had heard <i>Rienzi</i> at Dresden, and, +antiquated stick though he was—as any one might guess who knows his +<i>Last Judgment</i> or <i>Calvary</i>—he yet recognized in Wagner an original +and deeply sincere musician. He wrote, after seeing the <i>Flying +Dutchman</i>, "I believe I know my mind sufficiently to say that among +the dramatic composers of our day I consider Wagner the most gifted." +He produced the <i>Dutchman</i> at Cassel, directing the representation +himself, and sent Wagner a letter which lifted that young man into the +seventh heaven of delight. Wagner always cherished the recollection of +this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician, +and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long +afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in +all literature. His answer to Spohr shows that at this time there were +no serious differences in the household; he speaks in terms of the +greatest affection of his wife, and regrets that she is not there to +share his joy. The Cassel performance took place June 5, 1843. It was +unsolicited: Spohr himself had asked for the score; and this had a +double or triple value to Wagner. Spohr's authority was immense +throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the +<i>Dutchman</i>, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every +other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere, +though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" />and the +score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it +unopened. By the way, Berlioz was in Dresden at the time, doing +mountebank tricks with the orchestra, and after hearing, the +<i>Dutchman</i> he went so far as to speak well of it. Liszt was +enthusiastic over <i>Rienzi</i>.</p> + +<p>When Spohr's letter arrived Minna was at Teplitz, ill; Wagner joined +her there immediately his holiday began, but not before writing to +Lehrs (July 7) that the book of <i>Tannhäuser</i> was finished. Whether +Lehrs received the letter I do not know, for he died on July 13. It +will be remembered that it was Lehrs who gave Wagner the <i>Sängerkrieg</i> +from which he drew both <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i>. Before dealing +with these operas, Wagner's first very great ones, we must pass in +review the remainder of the Dresden days, ending with the insurrection +of May 1849 and the flight to Switzerland.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Nothing in Wagner's life has been less perfectly understood, or more +completely and wilfully misunderstood, than his share in this May +insurrection of 1849. He was never at any time a politician; of +politics he knew nothing, and he held the trade in profound, +undisguised contempt. He wrote much about the State, and in every +paragraph contrived to show the astounding breadth of his +ignorance—an ignorance of that kind which Dr. Johnson might have +described as not natural but acquired. <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" />Everlastingly he prattles +about the State until he throws us into a condition of imbecile +confusion. Then we resolutely sit down to his prose writings and track +his meaning or meanings. And at last we perceive this: the State in +his mind, the State he talked and wrote about, was something purely +ideal, such a State as has never existed, and at the present day, +nearly seventy years after Wagner's solitary plunge into practical +politics, seems as unlikely as ever to come into existence. He wanted +(1) an all-wise absolute monarch who should work the will of all his +subjects, no matter how conflicting their interests might be; (2) some +millions of these subjects to think alike on every conceivable +question—to think, that is, as Wagner thought; these millions to make +sublime sacrifice of themselves that Wagner's art-schemes might +prosper. All this, be it noted, was to be the barest basis and +beginning of the perfect State. How this point could be reached by our +imperfect human race was a question he scorned to discuss: he simply +assumed that it could be reached, and proceeded to further argument. +The point had to be attained in the first place; then humanity—by +which he meant German humanity—was to move upward, working out the +beast, talking German philosophy, reading what is called German poetry +(though Shakespeare might be tolerated), looking at what is called +German painting, listening to German music, dreaming thin, mystical +German dreams and munching thick German sausages. Thus should the +inhabitants of a small subsidiary State, whose kings could be, and +<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" />had been, made and unmade by other kings, create for themselves a new +heaven on earth and become the wonder of the world.</p> + +<p>It is very like sheer lunacy. But this account is no exaggeration of +Wagner's doctrine and plans. The one truth which emerges and speaks +unequivocally is that Richard, deeply dissatisfied with the theatre of +the day, and tracing its sad degeneracy to the corrupt state of +society, wished to see society upraised, not that men and women might +live more happily, but that a finer, nobler theatre might flourish. +The most magnificent egotist of the century, it seemed to him the +prime concern of mankind that Richard Wagner's works should be +understood and loved. Being an egotist also, if I may say so, on a +national scale, he thought humanity could only be redeemed by German +art. Disregarding the fact that Germany has had no painters, no poet +of the first rank, no genuine dramatist, and that before "our art," as +he persistently calls music, had got a root in Germany, three great +schools had flourished, the English, the Flemish and the +Italian—disregarding all this, he looked for the regeneration of the +human species by means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is +comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it +that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is +that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have +evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner +propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he assumed that +it <a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" />could regenerate itself by wishing, or willing, and that then the +thousand years of peace would commence, with Richard as +conductor-in-chief. He could not see that humanity cannot jump out of +its shadow and regenerate itself, any more than gentlemen of +intelligence gone wrong on one point can see that Bacon could not have +written Shakespeare's plays, or that perpetual motion is a crazy +impossibility.</p> + +<p>It is curious to picture the share Richard took in the Dresden ferment +of 1848-49. Of course, all Europe was in a condition of excitement; +and the powers that were got their guns ready, and their men. +Political liberty was the thing aimed at: the "outs" wanted to be in. +Every right-thinking man must be in sympathy with the "outs." The +governments of Europe were in the hands of shameless place-seekers; +the working men, the merchants, all other classes were supposed to +labour and pay taxes for the benefit of these gentry. Money was +squandered on useless court-flummery while men were toiling sixteen +hours a day for bread. The aristocracy were resolved that this state +of affairs should continue; the average citizens were resolved that it +should not. What did Wagner propose?—obedience to the puppet king and +a reformed opera! It is small wonder that he was considered a +visionary. He made at least one speech, talking about the State, +meaning thereby something very different from the meaning his audience +attached to the word; he heard speeches, and undoubtedly in all +sincerity read his own <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" />thoughts into them. He thought the millennium +was at hand. When the fighting began he joined the revolutionists; +though I can nowhere find proof that he shouldered a musket. Had he +done so it is extremely probable he would have shot the man behind +him. It is hard to get at the truth about these days of May. Perhaps +he did help to escort supplies; but with his excitable brain we must +remember that what he thought he saw and what he actually did see may +be two very different things. A good many other people who were in +Dresden at the time have let their pretty fancies run away with them; +for their accounts of Wagner's doings contradict one another to such +an extent that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. I must confess +to a boundless distrust of "recollections" set down or spoken at any +length of time after the event. Ask, reader, ask any of your friends +to give an account of some striking occurrence of a year ago. In +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will not tally with yours. You +may be wrong or your friend may be wrong: in either case some one's +memory has played a trick. In this book I have omitted many a dozen +picturesque touches, simply because there is no proof of their truth +and every probability that they are false. It is perhaps enough to +remember that the hopes of liberty were crushed, that Roeckel, +Wagner's assistant and friend, was taken and afterwards sentenced to a +long term of imprisonment, and that Wagner had to run for safety. From +every point of view it was as well he got away from Dresden. If he had +not got <a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" />away he would have shared Roeckel's martyrdom. Had the +revolution succeeded, a terrible disillusionment would have been his +share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no +more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be +set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of +liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys +could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he +afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had +had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might +have vegetated happily, in the Reissiger way, for life. Minna would +have been content. Being Richard Wagner, he felt his soul strangled; +and that Minna had for some time been worrying about what he might do +next is shown by his remark to a friend—that other people had their +enemies outside their houses: <i>his</i> enemy sat at his own table.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Things had not gone well at the theatre. In spite of performances +never before equalled in the town—nay, probably because of them—he +had enemies all around, especially in the Jew-controlled press. His +carefulness about rehearsals was called fussiness; his determination +that the singers should not at their own sweet pleasure mar fine +operas with interpolations, alterations and "liberties" generally, was +called interference with their rights. Even <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" />when he played +Beethoven's Pastoral and Ninth Symphonies, as they had never been +given before, he was impertinently taken to task by press scribblers +for departing from the Mendelssohn tradition. I have already expressed +the opinion that <i>Judaism in Music</i> was a huge mistake; yet one must +own that when one considers how the Jews consistently attacked him for +venturing to challenge inferior Jew composers and conductors on their +own ground, the thing seems almost excusable. At any rate, it is +surprising that he dealt so tenderly with Mendelssohn. There is one +point always to be borne in mind. Wagner was assailed at this time not +so much <i>quâ</i> composer as <i>quâ</i> conductor. Now we of the generation of +to-day—the younger members, anyhow—are so accustomed to really able +conductors, that it is somewhat difficult to realize what things were +like throughout Europe in 1843-49. Perhaps the nearest approach to a +true idea may be formed by those who heard our own precious +Philharmonic Society under the late Cusins. As in London in the +'eighties, so in Dresden in the 'forties. Callous indifference to the +beauty of fine music and complete slovenliness in every detail of the +rendering of it went hand in hand. If Europe to-day is stocked with +competent conductors, that is a debt we owe to Wagner. Himself one of +the greatest conductors who has lived, he almost created a new art, +and by his immediate and direct example and through his pupils Bülow, +Richter, Levi and Seidl, not to mention his influence on Liszt, he +certainly created the school which <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" />has now ousted the older +inartistic men. It was precisely this fact that maddened the older men +and their friends.</p> + +<p>Another discomforting circumstance was Wagner's intense Germanism. It +was through his efforts that Weber's remains were brought from the +Roman Church in Moorfields and re-interred in Dresden (December, +1844); for the ceremony he compiled some funeral music and delivered +an oration. He was not content to claim Germany for the Germans: he +claimed all Europe, or at least all European art, for the Germans. The +Germans themselves were contentedly jogging on with the hybrid music +of Spontini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Wagner +never tired of telling them to create an art of their own, or really +he would have to do it for them. He did as well as talked and wrote; +he produced the nearest thing he could find to pure German opera—for +instance, Marschner's <i>Adolph von Nassau</i> in 1845. Of course, he +ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period +appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an +atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon +his nerves and hastened the catastrophe—that of his taking active +part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies +outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to +court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor +should—no wonder he gave a sigh of relief at quitting Dresden.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" />He had no option. The Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were +paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary +rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty +minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully +obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary to do +dirty work and to call the doing of it doing your "duty": duty is a +fine word that has covered a million crimes since it was invented. +Bakunin, who said Richard Wagner was "a visionary"—obviously meaning +a harmless fool—and many others got long terms of imprisonment. +Wagner had left the town without leave, and for that offence he was +dismissed from his post at the opera. Next, the police issued a +warrant for his arrest.</p> + +<p>He had gone quietly to visit Liszt at Weimar, meaning to "lie low" +till the storm had blown by. He was apparently quite unconscious of +having broken any laws. Liszt was not so easy in his mind. He made +inquiries: found that Wagner must bolt at once: it is supposed he +somehow "squared" the local police official to defer executing the +warrant; he got a passport in a false name, and six days after his +arrival Richard set out again on his travels. What need be recorded +about the journey to Zurich and the getting of Minna there, will best +be described when I come to tell of his settling down in his new abode +and the years he spent there.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" /><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" />CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>'TANNHÄUSER'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>Wagner alternated between what we may call the worldly—the sensual or +animal, or love of outward show—and the magical, mystical or +religious. After <i>Die Feen</i>, a story of magic, he went to <i>Das +Liebesverbot</i>, a story of lust; then he went on to a drama of warring +ambitions, with the outer brilliant show of armed men, gorgeous +processions, conflagrations and what not in the way of spectacle. +After that we have the <i>Dutchman</i>, strange and remote and mysterious, +with some pages of passionless ecstasy as its culminating point. The +reaction came, and he wrote <i>Tannhäuser</i>, the opera we are now to +examine. It is largely based on sheer animal passion, though another +reaction takes place before the end is reached. That reaction proceeds +further in <i>Lohengrin</i>, which is sheer mysticism. <i>Tristan</i> is pure +human passion—Tristan's soul is the antithesis of Lohengrin's. The +<i>Ring</i> is, from beginning to end, a gorgeous spectacle, a +glorification of the grandeur and loveliness of the earth, the +splendour and beauty and strength of human life. Not even Wotan's +renunciation takes away a jot from its note <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" />of praise of +humanity—one might even say praise of the joy of living. <i>Parsifal</i> +is a denial of the value and richness and worthiness of human life: +the world is pushed away; and the hero attains perfect peace by +shutting himself up in a monastery with no women to disturb him. John +Willett recommended his son, when he went to London, to climb to the +top of the Monument—"there are no young women up there, sir"—and +Wagner evidently agreed with John Willett. Parsifal is left to pass +his days in walking, with the most preposterous steps ever seen on or +off the stage, in idle processions from nowhere to nowhere without any +object beyond walking, in making meals off invisible food, in +impressing his fellow-monks with puerile chemical and electrical +experiments, and perhaps, for a change, in going out to see trees and +rocks taking a constitutional. If to say this is to be flippant, well +then, I am flippant. The drama of <i>Parsifal</i> is the least intelligent, +the most pretentious to intellectuality,-the most absurd and +ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music. Or, if we must +needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to +ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its +infamy. At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is +going on in every European capital as to whether <i>Parsifal</i> can or +cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth +clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon +as possible. Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather +mock-religious, char<a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" />acter of the Bayreuth performances, the +hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be +only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will +wish to say Bayreuth nay.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 499px;"><a name="fp138" id="fp138" /> +<img src="images/fp138.jpg" width="499" height="366" alt="The Wagner Theatre at Bayreuth" title="The Wagner Theatre at Bayreuth" /> +<span class="caption">The Wagner Theatre at Bayreuth</span> +</div> + +<p>These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very +abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a +time. The <i>Dutchman</i> was conceived before <i>Rienzi</i> was finished; +<i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i> were slowly shaping themselves in his +imagination while he scored the <i>Dutchman</i>; the <i>Mastersingers</i> +libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after +<i>Tannhäuser</i> was finished, and before <i>Lohengrin</i> was begun; the +composition of the <i>Ring</i>, <i>Tristan</i> and the <i>Mastersingers</i> went on +simultaneously. He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and +emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold. +First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way +for moments into another, so that the description I have given above +of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main +accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that +which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he +did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little +about <i>Parsifal</i>, because it, and not the <i>Mastersingers</i>, is the true +contrary and complement to <i>Tannhäuser</i>. <i>Parsifal</i> is pitilessly +logical, <i>Tannhäuser</i> wildly illogical; <i>Parsifal</i> preaches the gospel +of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental +and moral <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" />growth: <i>Tannhäuser</i> preaches nothing at all, but is an +affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations +between the two sexes, with a totally uncalled-for and incredible +falling away or repentance at the end, on the part of one who has in +no way sinned—to wit, Tannhäuser; the music of <i>Parsifal</i> is sickly, +tired, with mystical chants that make one's gorge rise in disgust; the +music of <i>Tannhäuser</i> is strong, healthy, full of manly passion—even +at its saddest it is free of the nauseating whining of <i>Parsifal</i>.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>Tannhäuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel, led away by an +exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone +to live with Venus in the Hörselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries +to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is +shattered, and he is in the free open spring air. A shepherd boy plays +on his pipe and chants a song to spring; a procession of old pilgrims +to Rome passes; Tannhäuser, feeling his exaggeration of passions, sane +enough in themselves, to be a sin, praises the Almighty for his +deliverance from what seems now to him like an evil dream. Hunters' +horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhäuser's former +friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to +persuade him to return to his former life with <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" />them, but in vain, +until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of +the Landgrave's daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at +his unaccountable disappearance. Tannhäuser, at first incredulous, in +the end joyfully agrees to go back to the Wartburg, where the +Landgrave's castle can be seen, and the merry clatter of hunting horns +is heard on all sides as the curtain falls. It will be seen that there +is no vestige of the old stage trickery of the <i>Dutchman</i> here: all +seems natural because all is inevitable; of songs and concerted pieces +we get plenty, but they grow spontaneously out of the drama: the drama +is not twisted and delayed for the sake of getting them in.</p> + +<p>In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight's return; she +enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness; +Tannhäuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long +love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament. +The popular march is played; the hall becomes crowded; the Landgrave +makes a speech—satisfying to German audiences, no doubt, because it +praises German valour and music—and in announcing the subject on +which the minstrels shall enlarge, he hints that perhaps Tannhäuser in +his contribution will let them know in what mysterious lands he has +sojourned during his long absence. The theme is, What is love, and how +do we recognize it? The prize will be given by the Princess, and it +shall be anything the successful singer chooses—that is, it shall be +the Princess. Wolfram stands up first and praises a <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" />mild platonic +attachment as being true love, and his sentiments win much applause. +Tannhäuser sings passionately of the joys of burning fleshly desire, +though as yet his language is a little veiled. The audience, who are +the judges, make no sign; Elisabeth alone shows that in her heart she +goes with Tannhäuser and not with Wolfram. Walther, in turn, tells +Tannhäuser that he knows nothing of sincere love; Tannhäuser grows +angry, and scoffingly tells him that if he wants cold perfection he +had better worship the stars; but he, Tannhäuser, wants warm, living +flesh and blood and healthy desires in the woman he loves. Biterolf +calls Tannhäuser a shameless blasphemer, and challenges him to combat; +Tannhäuser replies bitterly; the surrounding nobles want to silence +him; his anger becomes rage, and his rage madness; Wolfram tries to +calm every one, but Tannhäuser is now too far gone, and in "wildest +exaltation" he chants the hymn he sang to Venus in the first act. +"Only in the Venusberg can one experience the joys of true love," he +shouts; the ladies rush out in terror, leaving only Elisabeth; the men +attack Tannhäuser. He would be killed, but Elisabeth suddenly +interposes—all stand aghast at the bare notion of her interceding for +so shameless a wretch; but in the end she gets her way. "Who would not +yield who heard the heavenly maid?" they sing; during a momentary +stillness the voices of young pilgrims following the elder to Rome are +heard; Tannhäuser is pardoned on condition of joining them and +confessing to the pope and gaining his forgiveness; <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" />and, being a man +of uncontrollable passions, with fits of abject depression as low as +his ecstatic flights are high, he humbly acquiesces. The curtain comes +down in the second act as he goes off.</p> + +<p>The third act is, I say, quite illogical unless one accepts as a +truism, as Wagner accepted it, the patent absurdity that by +sacrificing him-or herself one being can save the soul of another +being. But Wagner was not a German of the Romantic epoch for nothing. +He believed the absurdity with a fervour now laughable, and was +especially enthusiastic when the sacrificed person was a woman: woman, +to his mind, was the redeemer of man: that was her <i>métier</i>. Senta +redeems Vanderdecken; in his last work Kundry redeems Parsifal by +thoughtfully dying so as to leave that unamiable idiot to lead the +higher life of the monastery, as I have described it. And somehow +Elisabeth is to redeem Tannhäuser—also, it appears, by dying at an +appropriate moment. In the fit of depression and degradation following +his mad outburst the hero goes to Rome, interviews the pope, and +confesses all to him. "If you have dwelt with Venus," says the Lord's +vicar, "you are for ever cursed; God will not forgive you until my +staff of dry wood blossoms." At this sentence of eternal doom +Tannhäuser, in the legend as Wagner found it, returned to the +Hörselberg: in the story, as Wagner shaped it, he gets as near as the +Wartburg on his road back to Venus. By the roadside, as in the second +scene of the first act, Elisabeth is praying before the shrine where +Tannhäuser had knelt to <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" />thank heaven for his deliverance; Wolfram +watches near. Both await the pilgrims from Rome. These arrive—and +Tannhäuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says +Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from +all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while +Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are +heard; Tannhäuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to +Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at +the Tournament of Song—only now the madness is the madness of +despair, not excessive exaltation—he calls on Venus. From the heart +of the mountain she answers; the scene grows wilder and wilder; he +sees Venus awaiting him; the air is filled with strange odours and +stranger music. Wolfram struggles to prevent Tannhäuser going to +Venus; Venus calls him clearly and more clearly; suddenly Wolfram +says, "A maiden is even now making intercession for you at God's +throne—Elisabeth!" "Elisabeth!" echoes Tannhäuser—stunned and +astonished. The mists clear away; from behind the scenes a requiem for +Elisabeth's soul is heard; Venus gives a final wail, "Woe! lost to +me!" and sinks into the earth; slowly morning dawns, and a funeral +train bearing Elisabeth on a bier slowly comes in. "Holy Elisabeth, +pray for me," Tannhäuser cries, and, sinking down, he dies. More +pilgrims enter, bearing the pope's staff, which has miraculously +blossomed in token that God's mercy is greater than man's, and that +Tannhäuser is <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" />pardoned; all sing a song of praise, and the opera +terminates.</p> + +<p>At the Dresden performances in 1845 this ending was cut, but that +Wagner reckoned it of the utmost importance is shown by a letter +written to Uhlig in 1851: "The reason for leaving out the announcement +of the miracle, in the Dresden change, was quite a local one: the +chorus was always bad, flat and uninteresting; also an imposing scenic +effect—a splendid, gradual sunrise was wanting." Now, in the +twentieth century, it is indeed hard to understand how an intellect so +keen as our Richard's, a dramatic and poetic instinct almost +infallible with regard to all other things, could have failed to see +and feel the absurdity of Elisabeth's death being necessary to +Tannhäuser's salvation. Was it the only way to get rid of the lady—a +<i>pis aller</i>?—a last remnant of the old-fashioned technique? In the +original legend Tannhäuser goes back to Venus: that would be +ineffective and leave Elisabeth's future unprovided for. On the other +hand, Wagner would never have selected the story for operatic +treatment at all had it not instantly shaped itself in his mind as it +now stands: he was, I say, obsessed by this notion of man's redemption +by woman; it was part of his creed and not to be questioned. So I +think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed +for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us +realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as +the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity. +Allowing for the time occupied in <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" />mediæval days by the journey from +Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into +leaf and flower long, long before Elisabeth's death. While she was +waiting for Tannhäuser to come in with the first band of pilgrims, the +second band was already on its way with the token of his pardon. We +need not be too inquisitive and wonder why Tannhäuser should be +expected back with the first band when he had set out with the second, +and why Elisabeth could not at least exercise a little patience and +wait for the second. The point is that she does not wait, but goes +home to die, and, dying, is supposed—as Wolfram explicitly states—to +redeem a sinner who is already redeemed. Her sacrifice is an act of +suicidal insanity due to her lacking the common sense to reflect that +Tannhäuser might arrive with the second contingent; it is foolish and +superfluous.</p> + +<p>This is the sole flaw in a very fine opera book. <i>Tannhäuser</i> is the +noblest expression in music of the glory and worth of human life. An +assertion of the glory and worth of human life is bound to be, as +<i>Tannhäuser</i> is, tragic; life and the value of life can only be +realized when we see life in conflict with death and overcome by +death. All the great tragedies are assertions of the joy of living, in +the deepest sense of the phrase—in the sense in which <i>Samson +Agonistes</i> or Handel's <i>Samson</i> are such assertions. Tannhäuser +suffers defeat and is glorious, like Samson in his overthrow. Even +Elisabeth, a trifle mawkish though she may be, has loved life, and +only at the finish, when fate (or, as <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" />she would say, heaven) decides +against her, does she resign herself and renounce what cannot be hers. +This is the first of Wagner's operas the plot of which is virtually +all his own; for precisely the combination of the legend of Tannhäuser +with the Tournament of Song makes it what it is and was—Wagner's +invention. All the stale old devices of explanatory asides are gone, +as are the convenient goings-off and comings-on of the <i>dramatis +personæ</i> at the sweet will of the composer who wants here a duet and a +trio there. The drama is self-explanatory—the librettist does not +shove on a character to explain it for him; as it unfolds, the +musician is given ample opportunities for all the songs or concerted +pieces that the heart of composer could long for—he has not by main +force and at all costs (in the way of unreasonableness) to drive +opportunities into the drama.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In 1842 Wagner finished first <i>Rienzi</i> and then the <i>Dutchman</i>; in +April of 1845, that is to say three years later, <i>Tannhäuser</i> was +complete, and in October of that year it was produced at Dresden. Its +success or non-success with the public and those strange animals the +critics does not greatly concern us to-day. Wagner's own account of +the proceedings is not very trustworthy. The opera was cut and +doctored to suit the singers—notably Tichatscheck; the first +performance seems to have missed fire, and at the second the house was +empty; at the <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" />third it was full; and, but for the intrigues of some +of the musicians and scribblers, and the insanity of the management, +it appears probable—one has a right to use so moderate a word—that +before long it might have won in Dresden the success it presently won +throughout Europe. That, I say, is not a matter for the twentieth +century to worry about; but the twentieth century is bound to marvel +over the obtuseness of the middle nineteenth in not recognizing the +advent of the greatest power that had yet meddled with high and +serious opera. (I do not mean that Wagner's was a greater musical +power than Mozart's and Beethoven's. But Mozart never had a libretto +to compare with Wagner's; and <i>Fidelio</i>, though serious enough in all +conscience, is not an opera at all.) In three years, 1842-45, the +growth of Wagner's strength was astounding, incredible. One sees at +once how the old stage devices have departed from the libretto, and +with them the fragmentary and jerky style of music; the intermittent +inspiration of the <i>Dutchman</i> is replaced by an unchecked torrent of +inspired music. All the little suggestions of Bellini and Donizetti +are clean gone; the amorphous melody of the <i>Dutchman</i> is gone, or +metamorphosed by being charged with energy, colour and meaning; every +phrase has character, and communicates a very definite shade of +feeling; in every phrase we feel how intense has been the inner +thought and emotion, and with what terrible directness these are +communicated to us. I say terrible directness because it is in +<i>Tannhäuser</i> that we first find the godlike Wagner hurling his +<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" />thunderbolts. It was Spohr who spoke of the godlike or titanic energy +of the music, and this energy finds expression, not as it did in +<i>Rienzi</i>, in noisy orchestration, big ensembles and thumping rhythms, +but, in a far greater degree than in the <i>Dutchman</i>, in the stuff of +the music itself. We find no more lumpish harmonies and basses of +leaden immovability: the basses stalk about with arrogant +independence, and the harmonic progressions, even when most daring and +perilous, are superbly poised. The old awkwardnesses, due to the +endeavour to copy and to be original at the same time, have +disappeared. Wagner wrote <i>Tannhäuser</i> entirely to express and to +please himself: he had given up the notion of being original; he was +bent only on being himself.</p> + +<p>He boasted that here, at last, was a sheer German opera. Well, that is +not in itself very much. Personally, I would rather be an Englishman +than a German; and few of us will be prepared to accept the view that +because a work of art, or so-called work of art, happens to be by a +German, it must therefore be a great work of art, or even a work of +art at all. Richard never lived down the tendency, natural in one, I +suppose, of a conquered tribe (the Saxons), to incorporate and +identify himself with his conquerors, and he glorified everything +Prussian as German, and everything German as perfect; but, even so +late as 1852, I cannot imagine that he quite understood what he meant +when he held forth on the subject of German art, its non-existence, +and—of all things—its supremacy. He certainly <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" />felt very keenly what +many members of every half-grown nation must feel—the necessity of +acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to +create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding +of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race, +an entity. Which, precisely, of the German races he would have +accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say. But the point is +that Wagner longed to create, and in <i>Tannhäuser</i> thought he had +created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that +he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself. He +had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner, +and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially +Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression. +Paradoxically, <i>Tannhäuser</i>, while one of his least original +compositions—owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to +another—is one of his most original. He spoke the matter that was in +his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the +Weber idiom.</p> + +<p>Before examining the means by which the varying atmospheres of the +different scenes are got, I ask the reader to notice the way in which +the rather pointless, inexpressive melody of the <i>Dutchman</i> appears +now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable. Compare +the musical illustration (<i><a href="#Page_119">o</a></i>) on page <a href="#Page_119">119</a> with (<i><a href="#Page_164">a</a></i>) at the end of +this chapter. The type of tune is the same, but the first is +commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" />occurs; +the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly +expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant +Tannhäuser. Compare Daland's song in the <i>Dutchman</i> with Wolfram's +description of how Elisabeth has pined, or Senta's last passages in +the final scene with Elisabeth's salute to the hall of song. We feel +at once how, by dropping Italian, French and mediocre German models, +and writing in the way that came natural to him, Wagner at once became +a composer of the first rank, from whom great expressive melodies +sprang spontaneously. The noble passages in the <i>Dutchman</i> were drawn +out of him, despite his conscious or unconscious imitation of what +were considered the best models of the day, by sheer force of feeling; +and I pointed out how, when the situation gave him a chance, he took +it. In <i>Tannhäuser</i> he has become a splendid artist whose brain +refused to shape the commonplace. Later on his style was to become +more individual, more purely his own; but so far he had now got—and +it was a very long way. The pilgrims' chorus melody, which first +appears in the overture, is, to my mind, very Weberesque. It is not +particularly strong—for Wagner—and hardly bears the weight of the +brass with which it is afterwards thundered out; but think of it and +of Rienzi's prayer! The second part, of course, is Wagner at a sublime +height, but of that presently. What I wish is to give examples of how +he has discarded all the involutions, convolutions, twiddles and +twaddles of melody, and gone back to the simplicity and directness of +Weber and <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" />Beethoven. His earlier manner and type of tune, the +operatic manner of his day, had, I make no doubt, its origin in the +advisability, not to say the necessity, of writing so as to please +singers who could sing in the Italian style and no other. Wagner had +now ceased to think of singers' whims. He had a matter to find +utterance for, and he went to work in the most direct way, considering +nothing but his artistic aim. We know he conceived <i>Tannhäuser</i> at a +white heat, and in a condition of white heat wrote the words; and +though he afterwards cooled down and had, he said, to "warm up" to his +work again, yet he warmed up so effectually that he composed at +furious speed, haunted by a terror lest he should not live to complete +the opera. This fervour alone might account for his artistic +development in the <i>Tannhäuser</i> period. It drove him to find the +secret of the one true mode of expression—the law of simplicity, the +unvarying rule that anything more than is needed for the expression of +the thing to be expressed is bad art, and, in the long run, +ineffective. With greater simplicity in the melody came the greatest +possible simplicity in the harmony. There is a kind of awkwardness to +be found in the music of all the pundits which almost defies analysis. +The progressions are correct enough, are good enough grammar, yet the +result is more disconcerting, even distressing, to the ear than a +schoolboy's first efforts. Of this style of harmony the Italians were +masters, and too often in his <i>Rienzi</i> days Wagner, thinking of his +"melody" (for at that time by "melody" he meant Bellini melody), +showed <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" />how little they could teach him in this respect. With the +simpler "melody" went the harmony—complicated as you like when the +occasion called, but never more complicated than the occasion +warranted. Compare with the war-chorus and march in <i>Rienzi</i> the march +in the second act of <i>Tannhäuser</i>, and the difference will be seen. +This march, by the way, ought to have been signed "after C.M. von +Weber."</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p><i>Tannhäuser</i> was written in an epoch of long or big works of every +description. Think of the length of the novels of Thackeray and +Dickens; think of the interminable <i>Ring and the Book</i>! Our immediate +ancestors were a long-enduring, often long-suffering, generation. +Perhaps they liked good value for their money. If so, Richard gave +them what they wanted. He himself must have felt he had done so in +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, for fond though he was of his own music, he allowed it +to be cut freely. Even as it stands, the finale of the second act is +preposterous: the ripe and perfect artist who planned <i>Tristan</i> would +never have done such a thing. But with regard to the finales—and they +are all too long—it certainly appears that Wagner deliberately made +use of crowds of people and masses of tone to carry through and +emphasize his dramatic purpose. In the first act every one is rejoiced +to have Tannhäuser amongst them, and Tannhäuser himself has much to +say on finding himself free of the Hörselberg nightmare, and in +familiar, homely, human <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" />scenes once more. The anger of the nobles in +the second, Elisabeth's grief and intercession for her lover, her +self-abasement—it is part of the drama to make us feel these things +and time is required. The finale of the last act I give up altogether. +Nor can I understand why Elisabeth's prayer should be so long drawn +out. Elisabeth has "nothing to do with the case." However, Wagner +thought she had; so we can only be thankful when she finishes, and +after Wolfram's song the action recommences with the entry of +Tannhäuser. The opera is planned on a huge scale, and in such works +<i>longueurs</i> are apt to occur.</p> + +<p>The overture foretells the drama that is to ensue, but not +consecutively as in the <i>Dutchman</i>. We have the pilgrims' hymn, the +second section of which is one of those things of which one can truly +say that only Richard Wagner could have penned them. The accent of +grief is intensely passionate, yet it remains solemn, sublime. Then +the Bacchanal music and Tannhäuser's chant in praise of Venus are +heard; but all the tumult dies down, and the pilgrims end the piece +not as it began, but triumphantly. We have here, as I have said, the +great Wagner, working confidently and with ease on a vast scale. The +curtain rises; and if we could not see the scene the music would tell +us of the billows of hot rose mist, and the dancers working themselves +up to frenzy. There is a hush, and the sweetest song ever sung by +sirens is heard, full of languor and soft seductiveness. When +Tannhäuser starts up declaring he has heard the village chime <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" />in his +dreams, it is as if a breath of cool air, laden with the fragrance of +wild flowers, blew into that hot, steaming cavern. Music of +unimaginable beauty and freshness sings of the pleasant earth—the +green spring, the nightingale. When Venus coaxes him, he responds with +one of the world's greatest songs—the hymn to Venus. Her "Geliebter, +komm" is another piece of magic. The very essence of sensuality is in +it, and never was sin made to seem so lovely. One great theme follows +another. "Hin zu den kalten Menschen flieh'" is almost Schubertian in +its spontaneity. The music never flags; there are scarcely any of the +old formulas—not even, for example, to express Venus's anger; the +fund of melody seems inexhaustible. Three main points may be observed. +First, the dramatic propriety of every phrase is perfect—the music +wanted for each successive situation fitly to express the emotion of +the situation is infallibly forthcoming; the music invariably reveals +the inwardness of the situation. Second, in spite of following the +drama, move by move, so to speak, the continuity of the musical flow +is absolute; phrase seems to grow out of phrase (the drama being true +and the music always exactly expressive of the essence of the drama, +this follows as night the day); and partly by reason of this, and +partly owing to the simplicity of the themes and tunes, the total +effect is one of stately breadth. Third, the wealth of invention, the +constructive power, and the command of technical devices, place Wagner +in the first rank of sheer musicians. True, <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" />he could not write a +symphony such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote; but neither could +they have written a music-drama; the music-drama was his form, the +symphony theirs.</p> + +<p>In the next scene we have music of a different sort. A shepherd-boy +pipes and sings one of those songs which, for freshness and purity, +seem unapproachable—the watchman's song in the first act of the +<i>Dutchman</i> is another example. The piping goes on while the elder +pilgrims chant a sort of marching tune as they pass—part of it is the +second section of the great hymn already described—the boy shouts +"Good luck!" after them, and Tannhäuser, in an ecstasy of relief and +restfulness after the unceasing whirl of lust and fleshly delights +from which he has found deliverance, pours forth his soul in a +wonderful phrase. It is repeated afterwards when Tannhäuser very +guardedly tells Elisabeth of the wonder of his deliverance; and indeed +it is expressive of a mood that became more and more characteristic of +Wagner as he grew older, as though he got momentary glimpses of some +blessed isle of rest where peace and relief from all earthly troubles +could be found. A few years later we find him writing to Liszt of his +longing for death as an escape; and though his appetite remained good, +and he seemed bent on having the best of everything on his table, we +can well believe that, overstrung by nature, in constant poor health, +and making stupendous demands on his nervous energy (like his own +Tannhäuser), doing everything too much, he had moments—nay, days—of +reaction and feelings <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" />which he expressed quite sincerely in his +letters. This brief passage touches the sublime. The hunters enter, +and from the moment Wolfram begins his really beautiful song about +Elisabeth, it remains on Wagner's highest level. The finale is a set +piece, of course, and is in free and joyous contrast to the lurid heat +and sensual abandonment of the first scene. While the trees wave in +the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen +blow away at their horns—and Tannhäuser has returned to his former +healthy life.</p> + +<p>In the second act we have Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song, +very charming; a duet with Tannhäuser, very fine in parts, but not a +true love-duet; the popular march; and then the tournament. Now, +Wolfram's bid for favour seems to me both too literal and too long. He +does what undoubtedly the minstrels of old did—freely declaims his +verses, occasionally twanging his harp. He grows indeed almost fervent +in his praise of the quiet life, of adoring your beloved at a safe +distance and never disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about +human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share +Tannhäuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as +Tannhäuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a +dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme +shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhäuser begins praise of the +thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned—too much so +for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat in +Wolfram's man<a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" />ner, but with much more energy. Again there is, as it +were, a glimpse of the Venusberg fire in the orchestra, and Tannhäuser +sings another song, more intense, again, in passion than his first, +and ending with an aggressively fierce declaration of his creed. +Biterolf challenges him; the Venusberg music boils up once more—we +almost see the vision that is about to break on Tannhäuser's inner +sight; he sings more passionately still the joys of a human love; +Wolfram again contends, giving us this time a really glorious song, +and the storm breaks: the Venusberg is before Tannhäuser's eyes; the +violins sweep to their highest register, and remain there boiling and +dancing in a kind of divine fury; and in mad exaltation he chants his +hymn to Venus. Then the commotion occurs as I have described.</p> + +<p>Let us consider this scene a moment. For theatrical effect, in the +best sense, it is in most respects one of the greatest Wagner wrote. +There is the pomp of the entry of the knights and ladies, and +afterwards of the minstrels; the Landgrave's music is effective, which +is more than can be said for that usually allotted to the heavy father +in an opera; the business of arranging the order in which the +competitors shall stand up is accompanied by fragments of the graceful +march—or, rather, processional—to which the minstrels had entered, +and these come as a welcome preparation of the ear for the essential +part of the scene. Wolfram's first effort, I say, I can hardly +tolerate, considered as a piece of composition; yet, shortened, it +would be admirably in place. From the moment Tannhäuser <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" />begins all is +perfect. Tannhäuser's music grows in intensity, and Wagner is careful +not to give us a setback by allowing the other singers to throw +Wolfram-ian cold douches over us; on the contrary, they get excited, +too; and the orchestra is let loose with them by degrees, until in the +last outburst it is blazing and crackling as though it had gone as +completely mad as Tannhäuser himself. The whole thing, with the +reservation I have made, must be admitted to be consummately managed +from the composer's as well as from the dramatist's point of view.</p> + +<p>What follows needs little discussion. Wagner knew quite well how to +represent a row on the stage without passing beyond the limits of what +is music. Here we have ample energy, but nothing demanding closer +notice until Elisabeth's interposition. Then at once we get stuff on a +high level. The culmination is reached in a series of melodies hardly +to be matched for pathetic beauty; the orchestra seems to throb with +emotion—a device which Wagner often employed extensively in the +<i>Ring</i>—the chorus join in, and a wondrous effect is obtained. The +ensemble is the last piece of this description Wagner was destined to +write. It is pure emotion, and not dramatic—that is, not +theatrical—and its warrant is that the drama at the moment is nothing +but a drama of emotions in conflict. The only musical-and-dramatic +effect now occurs where the voices of the young pilgrims are heard: it +is electrical.</p> + +<p>Wagner gave a title to the prelude of Act III, "Tannhäuser's +Pilgrimage," and it differs only in <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" />that from his other preludes and +overtures. To those who know what is to follow it tells a story more +or less distinctly, while those who hear it for the first time must +feel the atmosphere and emotion, and thus be prepared for the drama. +It is built up of the pilgrims' marching song and one of Elisabeth's +melodies and a most expressive theme which depicts Tannhäuser +painfully getting over the weary miles, with a sad heart, to seek the +pope's pardon; then comes in the Dresden Amen—the significance of +which will appear presently—then a crash followed by a mournful +phrase (taken entire from Beethoven), and some recitative-like +passages leading direct to the rising of the curtain. As music it is a +splendid thing, and, as I have said, it tells its tale plainly, when +one knows the tale. Almost immediately we hear the pilgrims' hymn of +rejoicing, with which the overture begins—the hymn of those whose +sins have been taken away. The pilgrims pass; Tannhäuser is not +amongst them, and Wagner there gives Elisabeth a phrase which makes +one think that he had Schröder-Devrient in his mind when he wrote the +part. That gifted lady used—Berlioz said abused—the device of +occasionally speaking, not singing, a few words; and here, where +Elisabeth, in despair, says, "Er kehret nicht zurück," Wagner gives +her notes that can be either spoken or sung, and certainly are most +effective when spoken. The part, by the way, was not "created" by the +Schröder-Devrient, but by Johanna Wagner, the daughter of that brother +Albert who had given him his first post in a theatre. I have nothing +further to say about the <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" />Prayer, nor about the "Star of Eve" song. As +night gathers over the autumn scene and Tannhäuser enters, the music +at once leaps to life. Not that we have not heard some very lovely +things, notably a quotation in the orchestra from one of Wolfram's +competition songs; the star shines out, and Wolfram, his harp now +silent, sits gazing dreamily up in the direction Elisabeth has taken +homeward to die. But now we get a renewal of the furious energy of the +tournament scene. As Tannhäuser declares his intention of returning to +Venus, the music crackles and roars for a moment; then it subsides to +broken phrases of utter despair as he describes his journey to Rome. +The Dresden Amen accompanies him at first with ethereal effect, and +afterwards with the utmost grandeur, as he tells how he knelt before +the Rood to pray—in a few bars every aspect of St. Peter's is brought +to our minds, and the atmosphere and colour. Wagner himself never +surpassed the declamatory passage of the pope's curse. Bach and Mozart +knew how to write recitative, but they rarely attempted to fill it +with anything approaching the intensity of meaning with which this +terrible recitative is filled. Then, again, the music boils, and with +unearthly effects the themes from the Hörselberg scene sound out, now +from behind the scenes, now from the orchestra; the thing grows madder +and more mad, until suddenly Wolfram perceives the bier bearing +Elisabeth being carried down. "Elisabeth!" he cries, and a requiem is +heard from behind the scenes. As a stage effect I know only one thing +to match it. In <i>Hamlet</i> the hero has been philo<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" />sophizing to his +heart's content, when a funeral procession approaches—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span><i>Hamlet</i>: What, the fair Ophelia?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span><i>Queen</i>: Sweets to the sweet, farewell....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Every one knows the magic of that stroke: the abrupt change of key, +the instant disappearance of bitterness, and the introduction of +pathos and pure beauty; so here the Venusberg music disappears like a +flame that is blown out. "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser echoes, and the +chorus chants solemnly "Der Seele Heil," etc. "Henry, thou art +redeemed," cries Wolfram; and then we have the final scene, the entry +of the young penitents with the pope's staff. The final chorus is +effective enough, though it suggests the audience getting up and +looking for their hats.</p> + +<p>As a whole, the music of <i>Tannhäuser</i> is characterized by intense +energy, the greatest definiteness, and richness and gorgeousness of +colouring. Inviting as must have been the opportunities offered in the +opening scene of indulging in a riot of voluptuous colour, the +definiteness is never lost. Through the whirling, dancing-mad +accompaniment runs a fibre of strong, clean-cut, sinewy melody. The +picture is drawn with firm strokes as well as painted with a full +brush. Or perhaps the better analogy would be to describe each scene +as an architecturally constructed fabric; and each is also so +constructed as to lead inevitably into the next. Hence, as already +pointed out, the artistic restraint and breadth in scenes where, <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" />with +such heat of passion at work, we might fear spasmodic jerkiness.</p> + +<p>When <i>Tannhäuser</i> was published, Wagner sent the score to Schumann, +and Mendelssohn also saw it. The comment of the latter was +characteristic: he liked a canon entry in the finale of the second +act; and indeed it was too much to hope that the successful purveyor +of oratorios should like or in the least understand so mighty, fresh +and passionate an opera. He did not understand Beethoven, and +virtually admitted as much without realizing how completely he had +committed himself. Moreover, opera was a form of art with which he had +no real sympathy. It is true his friend Devrient tells us that he was +anxious to write one, and would have done so had not his fastidious +taste prevented him ever finding a libretto to his liking—which is +equivalent to saying a man would have painted a fine picture could he +only have secured a good subject. In some respects Schumann was even +more antipathetic. Wagner, all who knew him declare, never ceased +talking; Schumann was a silent man—sometimes in a café a friend might +speak to him: Schumann would turn his back to the friend and his face +to the wall, and continue to imbibe lager. Wagner would talk for an +hour, and, getting no response, go away; he would afterwards declare +Schumann an "impossible" man, out of whom not a word could be got; +while Schumann would declare he could not tolerate Wagner, "his tongue +never stops." Schumann had no dramatic instinct, and no comprehension +for opera; in <i>Genoveva</i>—as, in fact, in his so-called dramatic +cantatas—he failed utterly: he went straight through the words, +setting them to music <i>pur et simple</i>, taking no thought for dramatic +propriety. The score of <i>Tannhäuser</i> simply puzzled him; he saw in it +only the music <i>pur et simple</i>, considered as which it was, of course, +very bad. It was not bad in all the ways he thought, however. His +remark about the clumsy orchestration long ago returned to roost. For +the rest, when he saw the opera performed he changed part of his mind, +and wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in +place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some +time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it +muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time—and I +have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was +Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach +himself to—a peripatetic barnacle. Later, he found Brahms, as all the +world soon found out, and revised his early notions of the greater +musician. But at first he was all enthusiasm and gush, and wrote +articles "explaining" <i>Tannhäuser</i>. However, his views are of no +importance to-day. Liszt, generous soul, had the opera played at +Weimar at the earliest possible moment.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" /> +<img src="images/p164.png" width="400" height="113" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" /><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" />CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>'LOHENGRIN'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p><i>Lohengrin</i> was first drafted in 1845—for Wagner during this period +allowed no grass to grow under his feet. He was a member of a coterie +that met at Angell's restaurant, and there on November 17 he read the +complete libretto to his friends and acquaintances. Schumann was +amongst them, and he bluntly asserted that such a libretto could not +be set. Others were more favourable, but many were doubtful. However, +that made little difference to Richard. He knew his own strength and +trusted his instinct; and however much he was urged to alter the +<i>dénouement</i>, he stuck to his guns and his libretto.</p> + +<p>In point of structure the libretto of <i>Lohengrin</i> closely resembles +that of its predecessor. There are even fewer set pieces, there are +more fragmentary speeches. The drama is so contrived as to let in the +set pieces naturally: of the old forced operatic business of sending +out or bringing in characters as seems advisable there is not a sign. +The story is on the whole simpler than that of <i>Tannhäuser</i>. Lohengrin +is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the +Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and +where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow +born to the favoured ones. <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" />He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan +to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, who falsely accuse her of +having murdered her brother; he fights for her and overcomes the +accusers, first exacting a promise that she will never ask him his +name nor where he comes from. She promises, yielding herself +unconditionally to him; and so ends Act One. Next Ortrud, wife of +Telramund, gets Elsa's ear, begging for mercy, and contrives to poison +the girl's mind with doubts regarding Lohengrin; and when later the +wedding procession is nearing the church, Telramund himself accuses +Lohengrin before the king and all the crowd of sorcery and witchcraft. +Nothing happens at the moment; Telramund is pushed on one side, and +the procession goes its way. But in the next act, when Lohengrin and +Elsa are left alone she can no longer restrain her curiosity nor +conceal her fears: in spite of his warnings she questions him. At the +moment Telramund and other nobles rush in to assassinate him; he kills +Telramund, orders the other nobles to bear the body into the judgment +hall, and tells Elsa he must leave her. In the next scene he reveals +himself, and the swan returns to take him away. Ortrud mocks him and +tells how she, after all, has triumphed, for she changed Elsa's +brother into a swan; Lohengrin kneels and prays; the swan disappears +and the missing brother springs up; a dove descends and is attached by +Lohengrin to the boat, and he goes back to Montsalvat.</p> + +<p>Now I would ask the reader if this story is reasonable, if any +"meaning" or moral can be read into it. <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" />On the face of it Lohengrin's +conditions are preposterous. Yet he is bound by the laws of the magic +domain he comes from; he trusts Elsa and does battle on her behalf +without any proof of her innocence; and she has no patience to wait +for him to explain matters. On the other hand, he hears her prayer in +a magical way, and comes drawn in a magic boat; and she has a perfect +right to assume that he would not have fought for her if he had not +known by his arts that she was innocent. It was just over this +<i>dénouement</i>, this forsaking of Elsa because of her inquisitiveness, +that many of Wagner's friends boggled; and nothing that he then or +afterwards wrote in defence of it seems to me worth a moment's serious +consideration. Mr. Ernest Newman suggests that perhaps Wagner was +using the savage's notion that in giving up your name you are placing +yourself in some one's power; but there is not a hint of that in the +drama. The thing to me is simply a fairy story. We must accept +Lohengrin and the conditions in which he lives, moves and has his +being. He is not his own master: somewhere far away he has an +all-powerful over-lord who, for no useful purpose to be comprehended +by mortal, sent him to rescue Elsa under these conditions. And I say +that, far from having a meaning, a "purpose," <i>Lohengrin</i> is pure +romance, as innocent of moral ideas as any genuine mediæval romance. +Wagner's "explanations," like Bishop Berkeley's, take a great deal of +explaining; and though Glasenapp, Wolzogen and the rest have covered +many reams of paper in doing it, we are not an inch nearer <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" />to +perceiving a grain of sense in the whole affair. There is only one +part of it which can be, in one sense, explained—Wagner's intense +acrimony in his treatment of the female puppet Elsa. Even in 1845 he +had grown restive under the insults and stupidity of court officials +and the Press, and doubtless he had threatened often enough to quit +for ever the degraded German theatre. He never could see that the +German theatre had never been any better than it then was, but on the +contrary, a great deal worse; he never realized that it was on the +up-grade, and that he was to be instrumental in elevating it. He was +like a mechanic called in (by destiny) to repair a rickety machine, +who because it won't go when he "wills" it, kicks it to pieces. The +Reissigers and the rest were simply parts of the machine that were out +of order: time and patience were required to eliminate them and put in +sound working parts. Wagner could not understand this any more than he +could understand why all German (or rather, Saxon) mankind should not +at once be perfect, think alike and form the ideal State. So, as he +could not kick the Dresden Court Opera to pieces, he long meditated +quitting it—so much he explicitly affirmed afterwards—and he must +have worried Minna sadly. She understood neither his qualities nor his +defects, his ideals nor the short-sighted impatience which rendered it +impossible for him ever to attain them: she saw only too clearly that +at any moment he might kick over the traces, and that the starvation +and misery of the Paris episode would have to be faced again. We can +readily picture him coming in raging <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" />after a conflict at the theatre +with official imbecility, and Minna, instead of sympathizing, +counselling him to be wise and temporize. His exasperation grew, and +only the events of 1849 prevented a rupture—so much seems +certain—and he vented his spleen by making Elsa a stupid, shallow, +faithless creature who feels no gratitude towards the hero who saved +her from being burnt, but by maddening female pertinacity, +wrong-headedness and wilfulness destroys her own and his happiness. As +the reader will perceive later, I by no means defend Wagner in this +domestic squabbling, but something must be said for him; I don't say, +either, that he created Elsa to express his views about his wife, but +I do say that his feelings account for the excess of his rancour +against his own creation. So pitiable a specimen of feminine +inquisitiveness, bad temper and ungenerosity has never been put on the +stage as the heroine of a grand opera. Possibly Lohengrin saw this; +and, neglecting his recent marriage-vow, he went back to Montsalvat, +where, as we know, there were no women. All this would have to be said +in the course of this book; and I say it now because it helps us to +understand a defect in the art of a beautiful opera.</p> + +<p>A beautiful opera <i>Lohengrin</i> certainly is—the most beautiful of all +Wagner's operas. The story of it is a fairy story, as I have said, and +superficially a very ordinary sort of fairy story. We have the +distressed maiden in the hands of persecutors, the knightly hero who +rescues her, the maiden's faithlessness, and the contemptuous +departure of the <a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" />hero. But Wagner has clothed the whole of this +work-a-day mediæval legend in a wondrous atmosphere of mystical +beauty, and that beauty springs from the thought of the river.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>It is necessary to discuss as briefly as may be the leitmotiv, because +with <i>Lohengrin</i> Wagner first began to use it with serious purpose. In +the <i>Dutchman</i> two themes may be rightly described as leitmotivs; in +<i>Tannhäuser</i> not one theme may be rightly so described. While in +<i>Lohengrin</i> Wagner showed himself as much as ever the inspired +musician, he made for the first time use of the leitmotiv for dramatic +as well as musical ends. There we find three leitmotivs: one intended +by the power of association of ideas to evoke on the instant the +vision of Montsalvat and the Grail; a second to recall the thought and +emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions +which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her. +The first (<i><a href="#Page_191">a</a></i>, p. <a href="#Page_191">191</a>) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner +invented; the third (<i><a href="#Page_191">d</a></i>)—not second—is a thing any one might have +concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use +as Wagner uses it; the second (<i><a href="#Page_191">c</a></i>) is by way of being a study for the +best of the <i>Parsifal</i> themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that +the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely +exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state +of decrepitude.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" />The leitmotiv (<i><a href="#Page_191">a</a></i>) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a +little bit (<i><a href="#Page_191">b</a></i>) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from +the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than +anything else, which gives <i>Lohengrin</i> the vividness of reality +combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of +the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off +mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as +delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his +brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but +the land of ever-enduring dawn—a land that other poets have dreamed +of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end +Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this +strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would +tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that +reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is +conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to +inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in +obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly +as a needle drawn by a magnet.</p> + +<p>The prelude opens with a series of chords, ascending, all on A. Handel +might have done this: none of the Viennese composers could, or perhaps +I should rather say, would, have done it. Beethoven got as near to the +naked truth as ever composer did in dealing with the emotions of +humanity; Mozart, too, worked his miracles; Weber, non-Viennese +<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" />though he was, gave us weird, fantastic pictures of fairy adventures +in the darkness of grim woods, but nothing more. It was left for +Wagner to give us in a few bars a picture, such as no painter could +have painted, of the blue heavens on an almost unimaginably fine day. +The blue sky, the thin, clear air, the sunlight, are all given us in +the first few bars. It is far from my wish to intrude my personal +history into these pages, but I wish to give a convincing example of +an episode of a sort familiar to all those who have experimented with +Wagner's music. A relative of mine, who had spent many of his earlier +years in travelling the southern Atlantic and the Pacific in sailing +vessels, heard me play on the piano, as an illustration of some +argument I was foolish enough to advance, these opening bars of the +<i>Lohengrin</i> prelude. He immediately said, "That takes me back into the +Trades"—the sweet days of perfect peace in southern climes, where the +sky was blue for day after day and week after week, where the wind +sang cheerfully without change for weeks on end, where a delicious sun +made all men (no matter what the feeling was on those foul old ships) +feel good-natured and good-hearted. That is to say, my relative at +once felt the magical truthfulness of Wagner's touch: the sweet, clear +air, the sunlight; and that is the atmosphere Wagner wanted to +establish at the beginning of this most magical of operas. Out of the +blue sky comes the Montsalvat (not necessarily the Grail) motive; it +descends with ever-gathering fulness, through key after key, until at +last it culminates in a tremendous climax for the <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" />brass: then comes a +wondrous cadence, falling slowly, as a mountain stream falls over +slabs of smooth-worn mountain rock, until we get back to the original +atmosphere. The Montsalvat vision has faded away into the blue whence +it came. Wagner afterwards achieved some marvellous things, but none +more marvellous than this.</p> + +<p>The curtain rises: there is a rum-tum-tum by the orchestra. We are at +once in the discord of a turbulent armed camp: the fury of Telramund +against those who are not convinced of his evidently prejudiced view +that Elsa holds the lands he wishes to hold, is made to resound in the +orchestra as not the most expert Italian composer could make it +resound by the voices. When Elsa enters to defend herself the music +changes its character utterly; it is the embodiment of the sweetness +of young feminine kindly nature; and it is odd that Wagner, when +writing this music, which he fancied was the most German ever written, +should have gone so far as, in some of its finest parts, to steal bits +of the Austrian hymn, composed, as we may remember, by not even an +Austrian, but a Croatian, pure Slav, composer. Elsa's account of her +dream is not dramatic as Wagner, by the time he wrote his next work, +would have understood the term—in shape it is an Italian aria, and +everything is at a standstill until it is finished—yet it occurs +fittingly, and prepares us by ethereal music for the music of a +gentleman who is very unethereal. In form the whole scene is as near +as may be a regular Italian opera scene. King Henry the Fowler and his +nobles <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" />show mighty patience in sitting or standing it out to the end. +The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of +suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery +impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all +done with Wagner's consummate skill in writing purely theatrical +music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is +worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the +Lohengrin, "as hero," theme in its full splendour. Then comes the +fighting music, which, like all fighting music, is mediocre stuff, and +the gorgeous set piece, the finale. This last is quite old-fashioned +opera, but it is not forced in: it happens inevitably. The themes are +mainly new, but the Lohengrin heroic theme is worked in triumphantly. +Technically there is no advance or change in <i>Lohengrin</i>: the +counterpoint and interweaving of themes of <i>Tristan</i> and the +<i>Mastersingers</i> were to come a few years later. Indeed, there is less +of Wagner the contrapuntal virtuoso in <i>Lohengrin</i> than in +<i>Tannhäuser</i>.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In the music, as in the drama, the second act presents a total +contrast to the first. The music of the first is throughout full of +sunlight. At times it may be strident, violent, rather tumultuous; but +sweetness is the prevailing note, and as soon as Elsa comes on we have +the sheer loveliness of first her <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" />answers to the king, and then of +her vision; then comes Lohengrin, bringing with him the breath of the +land of eternal dawn, and of the shining river down which he was drawn +by the swan; then after the (rather theatrical) prayer, a few moments +of noise while the fighting is being arranged and carried out; then, +so to speak, the glorious midday sunshine of the finale. The second +act opens with two sinister phrases heard in the darkness (<i><a href="#Page_191">e</a></i> and +<i><a href="#Page_191">f</a></i>)—Ortrud is planning vengeance, and the theme of Lohengrin's +warning and threat to Elsa is presently heard; that warning gives her +the hint as to the way of achieving vengeance. Ortrud and Telramund, +outcast, crouch there in the night; Ortrud deeply scheming, Frederick, +poor dupe, madly fuming, while the lights blaze at the palace windows, +and the trumpets sound out as the feast proceeds within. He rages, and +a theme (<i><a href="#Page_191">f</a></i>) quoted is abruptly transformed into (<i><a href="#Page_191">g</a></i>) as he bitterly +casts upon Ortrud the blame for their downfall. The vocal parts are +neither recitative nor true song; the orchestral tide is developed in +much the same symphonic style as in <i>Tannhäuser</i>. We are still no +nearer to the perfect blending of the orchestral stream and the vocal +parts that we get in <i>Tristan</i> and in the <i>Mastersingers</i>. The style +is not homogeneous: the stream is broken by theatrical exclamations +and snatches of recitative that not only break the flow, but differ in +character from the rest. But the elasticity of motion is a great +advance on <i>Tannhäuser</i>: Wagner was coming to his own, and much of +<i>Tannhäuser</i> strikes one as cumbrous and heavy in comparison. That +sinister atmosphere of <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" />mystery is never lost; the gloom and the +wretched crouching figures, the fierce anger and Ortrud's alternate +cajoling and threatening may be said, without exaggeration, to sound +from the orchestra with as powerful an effect on the imagination as +the sights and sounds on the stage. Most magnificent is the descending +chromatic passage that accompanies Ortrud as she casts her spell again +over Frederick. It resembles closely an Erda theme of the <i>Ring</i>—as +is quite natural, for one chromatic scale cannot but resemble another. +The significance of the resemblance is that the strange harmonies are +also much alike, and the central idea is the same in the two cases: +the idea of old Mother Earth, her everlasting stillness in strange +places, her never-ceasing internal workings, her mysterious power. In +the <i>Ring</i> there is nothing baneful in the conception: it is Nature at +work in her sleep amongst the silent hills: mysterious, indeed, but +doing no evil. Here it is the earth as conceived by the mediæval mind, +the earth to which the coming of the White Christ had banished all the +gods of the older world, there to become the malevolent, malignant +divinities of the new world, and believed in as such by the first +adherents of the new religion. Frederick was a Christian, mediæval +style, and he implicitly believes that Ortrud can call up wicked +spirits, and by their aid weave enchantments when the God of the East +is not looking. The same may be said of the king, and indeed all the +characters in <i>Lohengrin</i>: again I say the opera is a fairy drama in +which these things must be assumed and accepted. That won<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" />drous +passage must have sounded doubly wonderful in the ears of two +generations back; blent with that second sinister Ortrud theme, it +accomplishes as much in a dozen or so bars as Weber could accomplish +in as many pages. That Ortrud theme seems to wind round Frederick's +soul until at last he is wholly in his wife's grip; and the scene ends +with an invocation to "ye Powers that rule our earthly lot"—the +malignant gods of the underworld. We, knowing the kind of music Wagner +had in his mind when he wrote the libretto of <i>Lohengrin</i>, can easily +understand Schumann's dismay when this scene was read to him: nothing +of the sort had been composed before.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Elsa appears on the balcony, and the character of the music +changes at once: all now is sweetness and light. Her serenade (to +herself) is a simple and very lovely thing, making full half of its +effect through its contrast with the harshness, agitation and gloom of +all that has gone before. There is a master-touch when Ortrud calls +softly, "Elsa": by one stroke, an abrupt strange chord, the whole +atmosphere is for the moment altered: the dreariness of the call is +unforgetable. There are many hints of Ortrud's purpose given out more +and more plainly till the climax is reached in her invocation to +Wotan, chief of the malignant divinities. (It is strange to think that +when he wrote this Wagner must already have had the other and more +celebrated Wotan in his thoughts.) Much of Elsa's melody is of a very +Weberesque quality—and is none the worse for it: far better that than +<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" />the touches of Bellini, Marschner and Spontini that abound in the +earlier operas. One or two other points may be noted. At the words +"Rest thee with me" we get a tune which might have grown out of one +previously heard and one in the bedroom scene—not only does the tune +resemble the others closely, but the rhythm of the phrases Elsa +addresses to Ortrud is the same as that of the phrases with which +Lohengrin seems to caress Elsa. There is, of course, no "significance" +in the sense in which the word is used by the Wagnerians. The short +duet following contains a divine melody, but Ortrud's "aside" is a +fairly lengthy one—forty bars—and is a bit of conventionalism which +Wagner soon discarded. The melody is played again as Elsa leads her +enemy into the house; Frederick returns to curse Ortrud and Lohengrin +in the same breath; all the sweetness goes out of the music as Elsa +disappears from view, and the scene closes as it opened, in gloom.</p> + +<p>As daylight breaks Wagner indulges in one of the effects he was fond +of at this period. The reveille is sounded from a turret, and an +answering call comes from a distance; and the two parties trumpet it +in alternation until every one is awakened. It is a quasi-musical +effect only: there is no invention: the trumpet chords serve the +purpose and nothing more. He never reverted to this rather bald method +of filling up time while his people are being got on the stage: +compare this passage with, for instance, Hagen's call in <i>The Dusk of +the Gods</i>. The latter is rich and full of picturesque music: it <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" />means +something and is, in fact, an effective piece in a concert-room. Or +take the watchman with his cow-horn in the <i>Mastersingers</i>; the music +is redolent of the old world; it impresses the imagination more than +an entry in Pepys—"the watchman calling two of the morning and a +thick snow falling." In the <i>Lohengrin</i> days his method still requires +these <i>longueurs</i>, these dry patches: later his mastery over his +material enabled him to deal his theatrical and his musical stroke at +the same time. As knights and retainers flock in, a long and elaborate +chorus is sung—a musical, not a dramatic, chorus, almost as much in +the <i>Rienzi</i> manner as in the manner of <i>Tannhäuser</i>. It is curious to +observe how cautious and tentative Wagner was at this stage of his +growth. He was still groping, seeing only very dimly the destination +he would reach by the way he was taking. <i>Lohengrin</i>, had he followed +the plan he would certainly have adopted ten years later, would have +been terser, more closely dramatic, and would have made only a short +opera; there would have been fewer set numbers and a much smaller +quantity of the magnificent music. The whole idea, I have already +said, is not a dramatic one, but a musical one; and the advance on the +<i>Dutchman</i> lies in the skill with which the musical opportunities seem +to grow out of the drama and are not pressed into it. In this respect +it is hardly an advance on <i>Tannhäuser</i>; indeed three of the great +ensembles have not an adequate dramatic motive. That at the end of the +first act, splendid music though it is, is a quite operatic finale, so +conventional that only when ren<a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" />dered in the conventional operatic +manner does it sound and appear impressive. It becomes, when done in +this manner, a kind of dance, for towards the finish all the crowd +should form in long lines and go twining about in a ballet figure. In +this opening chorus of knights and retainers in the Second Act (scene +ii) the musical inspiration is intense; but words are repeated as +irrationally as in a Handel oratorio chorus; and the same is the case +in the bridal procession music. Wagner still had a hankering after +imposing spectacle and brilliant choral writing. That bridal +procession and chorus are, of course, supremely beautiful music: music +and spectacle were aimed at and achieved, not music and drama, in the +later Wagnerian sense.</p> + +<p>The scene of the interruption of the procession first by Ortrud and +then by Frederick has always seemed to me superfluous as well as +stagey. The whole thing is pure melodrama of the kind that used to be +popular until a very few years ago; and the music is as melodramatic +as the two incidents. The scene is far too long, and is thus rendered +doubly nonsensical. Only a few minutes before, the Herald has +announced the King's decree: any one harbouring either of the +offenders "will share his [it ought to be their] doom with life and +limb." Yet the offenders themselves are allowed to break up an orderly +procession and to hurl angry diatribes at the very people they have +been banned for seeking to injure. For many minutes Ortrud, encouraged +by a furious orchestra, pours forth a stream of insult directed at +Lohengrin <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" />and Elsa: she is not immediately seized and carried off to +be tortured: the bystanders utter a few exclamations, and leave Elsa +to reply for herself. When the king and Lohengrin enter they content +themselves with gentle remonstrances: even Frederick draws from them +only dignified if somewhat scornful protests. There has been some +other rather futile business: a few conspirators planning to support +Frederick in attacking not only Lohengrin, but the king. The flower of +a loyal army look on at all this and go on their way, leaving +Frederick free to make an attempt on Lohengrin's life in the third +Act. Again I emphasise a point because it reveals exactly how far +Wagner's art had got at this period. Well might he feel it necessary, +before proceeding to other masterpieces, to discover where he stood, +what was his ideal, and how he might attain it. For, observe, he +wanted to depict in music an imperious, ambitious, unscrupulous and +wicked woman with a temper that in the end is her own undoing; he felt +the necessity of contrasting her with Elsa, sweet, gentle and +lamentably weak—Elsa, who is strong, or, rather, pertinacious, only +once, and at the wrong time; and, third, he felt that his act would +terminate rather tamely with a mere wedding-march. The result is this +noisy melodramatic scene, with its melodramatic music. It could not be +otherwise. Music cannot express anger—at best it can only suggest. By +anger I mean human anger—the god's wrath of a Wotan is a different +matter. Brünnhilda knows Wotan to be angry by the raging storm that +marks his path <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" />through the heavens, by the lightnings and thunders; +and we have all enough of our primitive ancestors in us to feel in +some degree as they felt—indeed, plenty of people to-day see in a +storm a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty. Human anger has +never been put into music. Why, Ortrud alternates her rantings (mere +recitative) with beautiful phrases of the same pattern as those sung +by Elsa! The music for the orchestra is turbulent rather than +forcible; it is incoherent in the old-fashioned way: essentially—in +spite of a free use of discords—it is as old-fashioned as anything in +<i>Don Giovanni</i>. Frederick and Lohengrin have hot words, and Telramund +is supposed to be a hotheaded idiot and Lohengrin a spotless, handsome +hero; and lo! with due regard for the respective ranges of their +voices, they might sing each other's music and no harm done. When the +chorus enters a very imposing piece of music is wrought, largely out +of the Ortrud insinuating theme (<i><a href="#Page_191">f</a></i>); but it is not dramatic music. +The ending with the resumption of the procession is one of Wagner's +noblest things. It is not in the customary sense of the phrase an +operatic finale, but a perfectly satisfying piece of music that +prepares us for a pause during which we can take breath before the +action of the drama is taken up again in the third Act.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>In that act we have the central idea of the opera—the poetic and the +musical idea—clearly, definitely <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" />set forth—the idea of Montsalvat, +far away up the rippling river on which the white swan +floated—Montsalvat, the land of eternal dawn, where all things +remained for ever young, and the flowers and the corn grew always and +never faded nor fell to the sickle. It is the land Mignon aspired +to—"Oh let me for ever then remain young"—the impossible dream of +poets and millions of men and women who were not poets: Nirvana, with +a difference; that realm in which, tired with the struggles and fights +in the devious ways of this dark world, they should after death awake +refreshed in a serene light and pure air, thereafter to dwell for ever +in a state of untroubled blessedness, where all earth's puzzles solve +themselves, and life is seen to be complete. As Senta's ballad is the +germ of the <i>Dutchman</i>, so is Lohengrin's narrative, "In fernem Land," +the germ of this more beautiful opera. It plays a more important part +in <i>Lohengrin</i> than does the ballad in the <i>Dutchman</i>. Without +exaggeration, the life, colour and emotion of the narrative wash +backwards and forwards over the <i>Lohengrin</i> score, relieving scenes +that might be tedious and worrying—like those Ortrud scenes I have +just described—and making the beautiful pages still more beautiful. +The land of dawn, fresh and pure, the limpid river: these, the essence +of <i>Lohengrin</i> and the pervading atmosphere, proceed from the +narrative.</p> + +<p>But much has to be got through before this point is reached. First, we +have the gorgeous prelude—the most brilliant Wagner wrote, and the +last he was to write that has no thematic connection with <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" />any portion +of the opera. Here we have no summary of the act, no hint of impending +disaster and tragedy, but simply a joyous, rattling preliminary to the +procession that escorts Lohengrin and Elsa to the bridal chamber. It +starts off with immense spirit, the music leaping straight up, +hesitating a moment on a cross-accent, then a noisy shake reaching its +highest note, and after a clash of the cymbals sliding off into the +more regular rhythm, broken slightly by occasional syncopations, in +which the piece as a whole is conceived. The melody in the bass that +follows, and the more tender strains of a middle section, are familiar +to every one nowadays—in fact, so familiar that we are likely to +overlook the intense originality of the whole thing. When we remember +the course the drama has now to take, the tragic beauty of its close, +we can perceive how exactly right Wagner's feeling was when he left +the plan he adopted throughout the <i>Dutchman</i> and <i>Tannhäuser</i>—the +plan either of summing up or foreshadowing the ensuing scenes, or of +making the prelude part of the first scene. Of course the music at the +beginning of Act II is rather in the nature of an introduction than of +a distinct prelude; but Act III is not prefaced by so much as that. +Rather, it suggests that since Elsa and Lohengrin entered the church +all has been rejoicing, and that we catch only the tail-end of the +feast as the party comes on the stage.</p> + +<p>The wedding chorus I pass over as rather trivial; and it contains +between the middle section and the repetition the eight most trivial +bars Wagner put <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" />to paper—I do not except the weakest portions of +<i>Rienzi</i>. The opening of the great love scene—the most curious love +scene in the world—is pure deliciousness. Nothing of the passion, +flaming hot and terrible, of <i>Tristan</i> is here; only a sense of sheer +delight and happiness. Melody after melody—of a very Weberesque +pattern, of course, but sweet, voluptuous—is poured forth; and a +graver tone comes into the music only when Elsa begins timidly to lead +up to the questionings of Lohengrin which are her aim. She hints at +what she wants, and Lohengrin gives her, to a very pretty tune, an +answer that can merely be called sublimely fatuous. Drawing her to the +window, he bids her breathe in the odours from the flowers in the +moonlit garden beneath. "But," he blandly adds, "don't ask whence +their sweet scent comes, or you will its wondrous charm destroy." The +song is, I say, a pretty one; indeed, it is so pretty that but for the +enchantment of each successive phrase no one could stand the monotony +of so long a series of four-bar phrases. Of that fault in <i>Lohengrin</i> +I shall have more to say presently. More dramatic, living, and less +mechanical stuff follows at once: Elsa is not to be put off in that +way, and in agitated strains to an agitated but not spasmodic +accompaniment she presses on towards disaster. Lohengrin's warning +sounds out, sinister; Lohengrin pleads, always stupidly, but to music +of growing intensity and grip; the measures are no longer cut to a +pattern, not incoherent as they are in the squabbles of the second +Act; and at last a passage of Wagner at his theatrical <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" />best is +reached when he solemnly warns her again—"Greatest of trusts, Elsa, I +have shown thee." To another most lovely theme he tries again to +soothe her: she will not listen, and the Ortrud theme begins to writhe +in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the +spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and +nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a +fretful woman who cannot get her way—a woman driven mad by baseless +jealousy—in fancy she sees the swan coming to lead Lohengrin away +from her; with mournful and dreary effect a fragment of the swan theme +sounds from the orchestra. This simple touch is weird to a degree +never dreamed of by all the purveyors of operatic horrors; it is +unearthly, uncanny, in its wild beauty. The climax is immensely +powerful, but very simple, and, above all, sheer art of the theatre. +There is a crash as Frederick rushes in to be instantly killed; a bass +passage tears down the scale to the depths; and the horns sustain two +pianissimo chords, two notes in each; then silence, broken only by +soft drum-beats to make the silence felt. Elsa has fainted, and as she +revives we hear a bit of the duet—Lohengrin's tenderness as he tends +her, and a fleeting dream of Elsa's, perhaps, seem to blend in it. All +is finished.</p> + +<p>To compare this duet with that in <i>Tristan</i> would be profitless but +for one reason. Wagner had not yet reached that perfect mastery of his +art which enabled him, so to speak, to fuse the dramatic and the +musical inspiration. We saw how in the <i>Dutchman</i> the music rose to +its full height and splendour <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" />when the drama was sincere and true; in +<i>Tristan</i> drama and music are inseparable. In <i>Lohengrin</i>, where the +inspiration is, if not wholly, at any rate mainly, musical, the drama +seems at times to be somewhat of a hindrance. I have mentioned the +fine dramatic or stage touches; but the finest things occur when the +pair, singly or together, are singing music that would be as effective +on a concert platform as on the stage. The art, that is, is far away +from the art of the <i>Tristan</i> duet. At many points the situation is +saved by Wagner's stage dexterity: only when the music is almost as +completely self-moulded as in a symphony, or any other form of +"absolute" music, is it at its best. For practical purposes with +Wagner the songs are "absolute" music: the words were his own, and he +could alter them to suit the musical exigency.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>The opening of the next scene is spectacular, and the music is not +striking—for Wagner, though Marschner or Spontini might have owned it +with pride. The entry of the nobles bringing Frederick's corpse, the +entry also of Elsa, "like Niobe, all tears," are theatrically +powerful. Elsa's entry is a particularly beautiful example of what I +have previously called Wagner's dramatict use of the leitmotiv. There +are twenty bars of accompaniment, and in that space we have three +motives, so arranged that those who knew their significance, but had +never seen the earlier portions of the opera, might easily <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" />read the +whole of Elsa's sad history. As she is led in, stricken down and +miserable, the warning theme is heard; then that winding, insidious +theme associated with Ortrud; and last, four bars of the music heard +in the first act when she stands helpless before the king and has +nothing wherewith to answer her accusers: she is as miserable now as +she was then, and the cause of it Lohengrin's edict and her defiance +of it under Ortrud's influence. The device I have always maintained to +be a naïve one; but it may be used to a sublime end, as in the <i>Dusk +of the Gods</i>funeral procession, or as here, to emphasize Elsa's +situation, and to remind us at once of her being the authoress of her +own destruction. This is followed by acclamations as Lohengrin enters, +and nothing further of note occurs until he declares that, for reasons +which he cannot give, he will not go forth to fight the foe with the +Brabantians; and this declaration is set to the same passage, or part +of it, in which he has lately warned Elsa not to question him (p. +<a href="#Page_175">175</a>). The meaning of the words and the dramatic significance of this +musical phrase are beyond my understanding. If Lohengrin did not mean +to tell his secret the musical phrase might imply that he had no +intention of letting them ask for it. But he has come there with no +other intention than that of revealing everything—and, in a word, the +whole business is incomprehensible because there is nothing to be +comprehended—because it is sheer nonsense. How Wagner, even supposing +he had originally some other idea for the ending of the work, could +let so <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" />flat a contradiction of his final plan stand—this also is +more than I can understand; for in later years he saw his opera +performed. And at that I must leave the matter. Lohengrin presently +proceeds to disclose his secret in that wondrous "In fernem +Land"—surely the most superb thing of its sort ever written. The +vocal part is—as I have already pointed out, this is often the case +in Wagner—something between pure song and recitative; and here it is +of a quality he himself rarely matched—not even in <i>Tristan</i>. +Technically, it is a piece of descriptive music for instruments; but +the words which give it significance and point are set to phrases +themselves so beautiful, pathetic and inevitable that one feels that +the vocal part and the orchestral were begotten simultaneously in that +marvellous brain. In other chapters I will point to passages, +especially in the <i>Ring</i>, where quite obviously the voice part has +been laboriously worked in with instrumental music already conceived +in its final form; but that was in Wagner's later years, when the free +inspiration, enthusiasm and energy of his <i>Tristan</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i> +and <i>Mastersingers</i> days had for ever departed. There is an accent of +passionate grief in Lohengrin's words to Elsa, and of remorse in +Elsa's wailings; but the most touching thing in this final scene is +the song in which he hands her his sword, horn and ring, to be given +to her brother should he return. The note of regret, especially in the +poignant "leb' wohl," reminds one irresistibly of Wotan's farewell to +Brünnhilda. The latter is broader, richer, vaster,—and yet the tender +simplicity of this is inexpressi<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" />bly touching. After that the opera +proceeds to its conclusion in what one may call a normal manner: there +is nothing, anyhow, in the music that requires analysis.</p> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p><i>Lohengrin</i> cannot be called Wagner's greatest achievement, but it is +a "fine," if not a "first careless rapture" whose freshness he never +quite recaptured. Yet, in a way, it is the most mannered of his works. +I know of no opera where one phrase, one harmony or set of harmonies, +or one violin figure is made to serve so many and such widely +different purposes; and not since the early seventeen hundreds had the +perfect cadence been so hard worked. Only two numbers are in other +than four-four time—the prayer and the wedding song. The melodies on +page upon page consist of regular four-bar lengths, commonly +terminating in a full close. We can admit all this—indeed, we must +admit it all—and then we are only bound the more to admire the vast +amount of variety Wagner got in spite of all the obstacles self-placed +in his way. His fondness for the diminished seventh, constantly +exploited throughout, was perhaps a fondness for his own adopted +child—for no one had ever properly employed it before: to him and to +every one at the time his use of it was new. Many points in his +prolonged passages which are simply arpeggios of the chord of the +diminished seventh must have seemed novel in the eighteen-forties, +though we hardly <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" />notice them now. The four-bar lengths send the +music along with a swing very different from the jerkiness of +contemporary opera music. The cadence is used only to attain, so to +speak, a fresh jumping-off place: there is no moment of real rest: +simultaneously with the attainment of a point of rest the new impulse +is felt, and away the thing flies again. But what compensates for all +these defects—and defects they are—is the perpetual presence of the +Montsalvat music: we are never long without hearing some of it. The +Montsalvat music is the source of the charm and fascination of the +opera, and its purity and freshness seem likely for ever to keep the +opera sweet.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" /> +<img src="images/p191.png" width="400" height="664" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" /><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" />CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>EXILE</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The journey to Zurich was a risky one. Wagner, the composer of what is +now the most popular of all operas, <i>Lohengrin</i>, might indeed pass +unnoticed, for the work had not been heard; but the composer of the +<i>Dutchman</i> and of <i>Rienzi</i>, and perhaps of <i>Tannhäuser</i>, and above all +the organizer and conductor of the largest musical festival ever held +in Dresden, could not easily slip past unobserved. As a matter of +fact, few or none of the officials seemed very anxious to catch him; +still, thousands of innocent persons were being taken by the +Prussians, "tried," and sent to long terms of penal servitude for +having done nothing—it being argued, apparently, that any one against +whom nothing could be proved must of necessity be guilty of some +crime. Wagner's first idea was simply to keep out of the way until +things had quieted down. It took things more than a couple of years to +quiet down. Meantime a warrant was out for Richard's arrest. His +movements between Dresden, Chemnitz and Freiberg are of no interest +nowadays; but things became a little exciting from the day, May 13 +(1849), when he arrived at <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" />Liszt's. I have related how for a week or +so all seemed well, and Wagner thought himself safe, being out of +Saxony. He even intended witnessing a representation of <i>Tannhäuser</i>, +but the day before, if not sooner, the warrant was circulated in the +German fashion of those days, with a personal description which seems +to have been made purposely vague by some friendly hand, though more +naturally one would assume it to be due to official stupidity. Wagner +heard Liszt rehearsing something of his and was overjoyed, and also he +was so confident of his own security that he still wanted to stay to +hear <i>Tannhäuser</i>. Liszt would not hear of it; he packed his friend +off under an assumed name to some other friends; they procured a +passport, and he travelled to Zurich via Jena and Coburg. It should be +put on record that in the meantime he ran the risk of being captured +by lingering to have a last hour with his wife. Towards the end of the +month he reached Zurich, and had no more fear of the Prussian police.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;"><a name="fp194" id="fp194" /> +<img src="images/fp194.jpg" width="352" height="439" alt="Liszt" title="Liszt" /> +<span class="caption">Liszt</span> +</div> + +<p>We have already seen how sick he had grown of Dresden, where he +complained of being slowly stifled; but Liszt proposed—nay, +insisted—on something worse than Dresden—Paris. Wagner was now a +penniless, homeless wanderer, as he had been when he set out from Riga +ten years before; and Liszt fondly believed that only by making a hit +in Paris could he command any enduring success in Germany, and thus +gain money to live on, wherever he might happen to be. Liszt was the +good genie who found the funds, and Wagner, having nothing better to +propose, was bound to obey. So he stayed <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" />three days in Zurich and set +out; and a deal of good he did! He knew absolutely that such work as +his could scarcely hope to get so much as a bare hearing, and the +event proved him to be right. He submitted scenarios of several operas +to a French poet, and there, for all practical purposes, the business +ended. Here is a fragment from a letter to Theodor Uhlig, dated +Zurich, August 9, '49—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am living here, helped in communistic fashion by Liszt, in + good spirits, and I may say prosperously, according to my best + nature; my only and great anxiety is about my poor wife, whom I + am expecting here very shortly. To my very great astonishment, I + find that I am a celebrity here; made so, indeed, by means of + the piano scores of all my operas, out of which whole acts are + repeatedly performed at concerts and at choral unions. At the + beginning of the winter I shall go again to Paris to have + something performed and to put my opera matter into order. You + cannot imagine what joy one finds in frugality if one knows that + thereby the noblest thing, freedom, is assured; you know how + long I was brewing in my blood the Dresden catastrophe, only I + had no presentiment of the exact hurricane which would drive me + thence; but you are thoroughly convinced that all the annuities + and restitutions in the world would not induce me to become + again what, to my greatest sorrow, I was in Dresden. I have just + a last remnant of curiosity, however, and you would give me much + pleasure in letting me know how matters stand with you. My wife + has never found <a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" />leisure to give me news of Dresden, the + theatre, and the band. Do relieve this last Dresden longing. Do + you happen to know anything definite about the state of the + police inquiry? The fate of Heubner, Roeckel and Bakunin + troubles me much. Anyhow, these persons ought not to be + imprisoned. But don't let me speak of it! In this matter one can + only judge justly and adequately if one looks at the period from + a lofty point of view. Woe to him who acts with sublime purpose, + and then, for his deeds, is judged by the police! It is a grief + and a shame which only our times can show."</p></div> + +<p>He had no real intention of returning to Paris. Earlier in the same +letter he speaks of ending the speculating by his proposed <i>Jesus of +Nazareth</i>. Indeed, the slavery of working for the market in Paris was +even more repugnant to him than the liveried bondage in Saxony. +Previous to the writing of this letter Liszt had lent him twelve +pounds, and by the end of July he was back in Zurich, and though, much +against his will, he did go to Paris again, and, in fact, much +farther, Zurich was thenceforth for some years his headquarters. His +host at first was an honest musician Alexander Müller, who, I believe, +had known him in Würzburg long before; but he soon set up an +establishment of his own.</p> + +<p>His main purpose at this time was to try to clear in his brain the +confused mass of theories and speculations concerning music, and +especially opera, which had long been seething there. <i>Lohengrin</i>, the +<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" />reader must have observed, was not a road leading anywhere, but an +impasse; a step towards the attainment of his ideal it was not: it +was, on the whole, a step backwards, although it is a much more +beautiful work than <i>Tannhäuser</i>. Wagner's mind, like Thoreau's, +Carlyle's, Brahms', needed filtering—an operation that could only be +performed in perfect peace and loneliness. Thoreau went to Walden; +Carlyle to Craigenputtock; Brahms at any rate retired from public +musical life. They worked out their own salvation. Wagner felt he must +do the same; as we know, he did the same: hence many of those terrible +volumes of prose-writings. His mental condition is indicated in +another few sentences from the letter quoted above—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Yet I must frankly confess that the freedom which I here inhale + in fresh Alpine draughts is intensely pleasing to me. What is + the ordinary care about the so-called future of citizen life + compared with the feeling that we are not tyrannized over in our + noblest aims? How few men care more for themselves than for + their stomachs? Now I have made my choice, and am spared the + trouble of choosing; so I feel free in my innermost soul, and + can despise what torments me from without; no one can withdraw + himself from the evil influences of the civilized barbarism of + our time, but all can so manage that they do not rule over our + better self."</p></div> + +<p>We may as well note one point at once. When Thoreau, Carlyle and +Brahms went into their re<a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" />spective wildernesses, they maintained +themselves, as they thought merely proper. In this respect Wagner's +views did not coincide with theirs. He exclaims scornfully, "How few +men care more for themselves than for their stomachs!" What he meant +was that he should care for himself while his friends cared for his +stomach. As he cared a very great deal for his stomach, his demands +upon his friends were exorbitant and continuous. True, he offered the +fruits of his brain to the world at large, but all save the faithful +liked not the security. The creator of <i>Lohengrin</i> and <i>Tannhäuser</i> +was quite justified in believing that he <i>ought</i> to be supported, and +it may be that the respect we pay to the artists who starve it out is +only a complacent way of saying how pleased we are that no one asks us +to put our hands in our pockets. Nevertheless—!</p> + +<p>We must remember, however, that he had no money and no prospects, and +carried the burden of gigantic unfinished, un-begun projects; his +worldly situation was even more desperate than it had been in 1839. +The voyage from Pillau was a voyage into the unknown, undertaken in +the hope of securing something tangible—a performance of <i>Rienzi</i> and +fame and money; the voyage on which he had set out was into an even +stranger unknown, a voyage into the world of ideas, without any +prospects whatever in the worldly sense. He was groping his way +confusedly towards something greater than he had hitherto +accomplished; but he knew neither what subject to select nor how to +treat it. Nature had laid this burden upon him: he took <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" />it up only +because he must; and, luckily for us, the giver of the burden had +granted him the arrogance, the courage, the imperviousness to the +estimation in which he might be held by others—if the reader likes it +better, the sheer cheek—to find the means of living while he carried +the burden to the appointed place and so achieved his end. When John +the Baptist went into the wilderness he found camel's hair to clothe +himself and wild honey to feed himself. Even these primitive luxuries +are not to be had for looking in modern Europe, and Wagner asked his +friends to supply a substitute for them.</p> + +<p>We find him suggesting to Liszt that a number of German princes might +combine to support him, and in return accept his works as he turned +them out; he suggested also that Liszt might himself guarantee him an +annuity. Liszt was from the beginning, and continued until the +appearance of King Ludwig in 1864, to be the most generous of helpers, +but he had ceased to go concertizing through Europe, and had not too +much money to spare. The Wesendoncks, Ritters, Wagner's own family, +all contributed as they could; but verily the man seemed to be a +bottomless abyss into which all the wealth of the world might be +dropped and still it would gape for more. If all his admirers in 1850 +had contributed a penny a month he might have been satisfied—if half +the number of his admirers in 1913 could have contributed a penny a +year he would have had more than even he could have spent. But no such +plan seemed to be feasible; and on Liszt fell the brunt, whilst the +others did what they <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" />could or thought fit to do. Wagner may +reasonably be defended against the charge of greed or luxury. He was +in chronic ill-health, and his stupendous exertions made it unlikely +he would ever be better. We can believe even Praeger when he tells us +that Wagner's skin was so sensitive that he could tolerate only the +finest silk next to it; for we know that from babyhood he was tortured +by eczema. Had he not coddled himself he would not have had the +strength and nerve to achieve anything at all. He never knew one day +where next day's food was to come from; he was a homeless exile. +Happiness he never knew: such men as Wagner are not created to be +happy. Publishers and opera-directors alike treated him scurvily. To +show his state of mind I quote a portion of another letter to Uhlig, +dated September, 1850, after the production of <i>Lohengrin</i> at Weimar—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Liszt spoke to me previously about an honorarium of thirty + louis d'or for <i>Lohengrin</i>—instead of which I had altogether + only 130 thalers. Further, he announced to me that I should + receive a commission to write <i>Siegfried</i> for Weimar, and be + paid beforehand enough to keep me alive undisturbed until the + work was finished. Until now they preserve there the most + stubborn silence. Whether I should give <i>Siegfried</i> to Weimar, + intending it to be produced there, is after all a question + which, as matters now stand, I would probably only answer with + an unqualified No! I need not begin to assure you that I really + abandoned <i>Lohengrin</i> when I <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" />permitted its production at + Weimar. I certainly received a letter yesterday from Zigesar, + which informed me that the second performance—given, through + somewhat energetic remonstrance on my part, only after most + careful rehearsals, and without cuts—was a wonder of success + and of effect on the public, and that it was perfectly clear + that it was and would remain a "draw". Yet I need not give you + my further reasons when I declare that I should wish to send + <i>Siegfried</i> into the world in different fashion from that which + would be possible to the good people there. With regard to this, + I am busy with wishes and plans which, at first look, seem + chimerical, yet these alone give me the heart to finish + <i>Siegfried</i>. To realize the best, the most decisive, the most + important work which, under the present circumstances, I can + produce—in short, the accomplishment of the conscious mission + of my life—needs a matter of perhaps 10,000 thalers. If I could + ever command such a sum I would arrange thus:—here, where I + happen to be, and where many a thing is far from bad—I would + erect, after my own plans, in a beautiful field, near the town, + a rough theatre of planks and beams, and merely furnish it with + the decorations and machinery necessary for the production of + <i>Siegfried</i>. Then I would select the best singers to be found + anywhere, and invite them for six weeks to Zurich. I would try + to form a chorus here, consisting, for the most part, of + amateurs; there are splendid voices here, and strong, healthy + people. I should invite in the same way my orchestra. At the new + year announce<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" />ments and invitations to all the friends of the + musical drama would appear in all the German newspapers, with a + call to visit the proposed dramatic musical festival. Any one + giving notice, and travelling for this purpose to Zurich, would + receive a certain entrée—naturally, like all the entrées, + gratis. Besides, I should invite to a performance the young + people here, the university, the choral unions. When everything + was in order I should arrange, under these circumstances, for + three performances of <i>Siegfried</i> in one week. After the third + the theatre would be pulled down, and my score burnt. To those + persons who had been pleased with the thing I should then say, + 'Now do likewise.' But if they wanted to hear something new from + me, I should say, 'You get the money.' Well, do I seem quite mad + to you? It may be so, but I assure you to attain this end is the + hope of my life, the prospect which alone can tempt me to take + in hand a work of art. So—get me 10,000 thalers—that's all!"</p></div> + +<p>His friends, I say, did their best; but Liszt, though his generosity +had no bounds, still clung to the odd idea that Wagner should do +something for himself; also he could not get it out of his head that +the something could only be done in Paris. So, in another of the Uhlig +letters, dated more than six months anterior to the above, we find him +writing, half wearily, half defiantly—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have never felt the consciousness of freedom so beneficent<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" /> + as now, nor have I ever been so convinced that only a loving + communion with others procures freedom. If, through the + assistance of X., I should be enabled to look firmly at the + immediate future without any necessity to earn a living, those + years would be the most decisive of my life, and especially of + my artistic career; for now I could look at Paris with calmness + and dignity; whereas, before, the fear of being compelled by + outward necessity to make concessions, made every step which I + took for Paris a false one. Now it would stand otherwise. + Formerly it was thus: 'Disown thyself, become another, become + Parisian in order to win for yourself Paris.' Now I would say: + 'Remain just as thou art, show to the Parisians what thou art + willing and able to produce from within, give them an idea of + it, and in order that they may comprehend thee, speak to them so + that they may understand thee; for thy aim is just this—to be + understood by them as that which thou art,' I hope you agree + with this.</p> + +<p> "So on January 16, 1850, I go to Paris; a couple of overtures + will at once be put into practice; and I shall take my completed + opera scheme: it is <i>Wiland der Schmied</i>. First of all I attack + the five-act opera form, then the statute according to which in + every great opera there must be a special ballet. If I can only + inspire Gustave Vaez, and impart to him the understanding of my + intention, and the will to carry it through with me, well and + good, if not, I'll seek till I find the right poet. For every + difficulty standing in the way of the understanding I, and the + subject connected with me, are attacked by the <a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" />Press; if it is + a question of clearing away without mercy the whole rubbish and + cleansing with fresh water—in that matter I am in my right + element, for my aim is to create revolution whithersoever I + come. If I succumb—well the defeat is more honourable than a + triumph in the opposite direction; even without personal victory + I am, in any case, useful to the cause. In this matter victory + will only be really assured by endurance; who holds out wins + absolutely; and holding out with me means—for I am in no way in + doubt about my force of will—to have enough money to strike + hard and without intermission and not to worry about my own + means of living. If I have enough money, I must at once see + about getting my pamphlet on art translated and circulated. + Well, that will be seen when I am on the spot, and I shall + decide according to the means at my disposal. If my money comes + to an end too soon, I confidently hope for help from another + quarter—<i>i.e.</i> from the social republic, which sooner or later + must inevitably be established in France. If it comes + about—well, here I am ready for it, and, in the matter of art, + I have solidly prepared the way for it. It will not happen + exactly as my good-natured friends wish, according to their + predilection for the evil present time, but quite otherwise, + and, with good fortune, in a far better way—for, as they wish, + I only serve myself—but as I wish to serve all."</p></div> + +<p>The history of this third Paris episode is distressing enough; but we +to-day, knowing what Paris was <a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" />and what Wagner was, need not trouble +much about it. I have passed over it quickly; but yet another excerpt +from an Uhlig letter may be given to show how matters did <i>not</i> +progress (dated Paris, March 13, 1850)—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"So, my Parisian art-wallowings are given up since I recognized + their profane character. Heavens, how Fischer will rejoice when + he hears I have become a man of order! Everything strengthened + me in my ardent desire for renunciation. After endless waiting, + I at last receive the orchestral parts of my <i>Tannhäuser</i> + overture, and pay with pleasure fifteen francs carriage for + them. I then find that the parts have arrived much too soon, for + the Union Musicale has time for everything except for the + rehearsal of my overtures. I am, however, told that there may be + rehearsals at the end of this month, and actually under a + conductor who, in all the performances given under his + direction, carries out the happy idea of indicating <i>tempi, + nuances</i>, style in a manner quite different from that intended + by the composer; and with passionate conscientiousness, insists + on studying and conducting himself without ever allowing the + composer to expound his confused views about his own work. + Rocked in blissful dreams, I receive at last a letter of + Heine's, with an enclosure from Wigand—namely, a money-order + for ten louis d'or, which, from your letter, I had unfortunately + expected would come to twenty louis d'or.</p> + +<p> "In short, early to-morrow morning (at eight <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" />o'clock) I start + off with the intention of being back here at the end of the + month, for the possible rehearsals of my overture.</p> + +<p> "I am sorry for Heine and Fischer. Poor fellows! they picture me + floating along on a sea of Parisian hopes; they will be greatly + and painfully undeceived. Salute and console them. When my + cursed ill-humour of to-day has passed away, I will write to + Heine. To his fidelity must I present an earnest face. A + thousand greetings to my dear R——s, from whom I should so + much have liked to receive a line. The merchant M——, of + Dresden, will bring you something from me when he returns from + his great Parisian business trip; a good daguerreotype copy from + an excellent portrait which my friend Rietz has taken of me + here.</p> + +<p> "What more shall I write? I am all confusion about my hasty + departure. I have now only to write the verses to my <i>Wiland</i>; + otherwise the whole poem is finished—German, German! How my pen + flew along! This <i>Wiland</i> will carry you all away on its wings; + even your friendly Parisian hopes. If K—— does not write soon, + I shall presume that he is raving too madly about Krebs. Krebs + is clever—so is Michalesi—what more do you want? But K—— + should restrain himself, and not give himself away so much as he + does, as with me!</p> + +<p> "Farewell! Another time you will receive a more sensible letter, + with a list of misprints in my last book. If people do not + comprehend me even after this work, if I am charged with + improprieties, I clearly see the reason; one cannot understand + my <a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" />writings for the misprints. To my joy some one is playing + the piano overhead; but no melody, only accompaniment, which has + a charm for me, in that I can practice myself in the art of + finding melodies"—</p></div> + +<p>And, finally, these few bitter lines, sent after his return to +Zurich—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is impossible for me to conduct my overture myself in Paris, + for this reason, that it will not be performed there at all, as + there was not proper time for rehearsal—perhaps "next year". I + received this answer on the eve of my departure from Paris, and + truly in a very pleasant quarter. I think I never laughed so + loud and so from the bottom of my heart as on that evening and + in that place."</p></div> + +<p>It will be seen that Wagner never ceased to work during all this +dreary time. He drafted his <i>Wieland the Smith</i>, made tentative shots +at what at length grew into the <i>Nibelung's Ring</i>, and poured forth an +enormous quantity of very prosy prose. Deferring a consideration of +this last, let me tell briefly what his everyday life was. Through a +little money from pamphlets, performing fees, etc., but mainly through +the generosity of friends, he managed to live; though, as I have said, +he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in +from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, +and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he +rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller <a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" />than any other +musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were +placed under his direction; and Hans von Bülow came to serve his +apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. +Wagner mentions a performance of the <i>Flying Dutchman</i>, which afforded +him pleasure; for though, as he himself says somewhere, the band +consisted of players more accustomed to play at dances than in grand +opera, and not a singer of celebrity took part, yet all were +painstaking, enthusiastic and sympathetic, and a fine representation +was the result. This was the work he did outside his own house; his +inside occupations I have mentioned. He lived with almost clockwork +punctuality. Every afternoon he walked, accompanied by his dog, +amongst the mountains, and to these walks may be attributed, I think, +the atmosphere and colour of the <i>Ring</i> and its backgrounds. Wagner +was as great a master as has lived of pictorial music, and the hills +and ravines, the storms amongst the pines, were things he must have +craved to translate into terms of his own art. After all, he found +time also for a good deal of social intercourse, though the enormous +quantity of work he turned out makes this difficult to believe. But +Liszt visited him; Praeger undoubtedly did; Bülow, as said, was with +him for some time; the Wesendoncks, his greatest pecuniary benefactors +after a while, were there; Wille and his wife were there; Alexander +Ritter, son of Frau Ritter, who made Wagner a regular allowance from +1851 to 1856, became his firm friend, and afterwards married one <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" />of +his nieces; there were Baumgärtner and Sulzer—in fact, a bare list of +names would fill a few pages. We must not take Wagner's plaints in his +letters too seriously; he was an overworked, nervous man of moods; +like Mr. Micawber, he seems to have come home of an evening weeping +and declaring himself a ruined man, and in a few hours gone to bed +calculating the cost of throwing out bow windows to his house. +Throughout his life his resilience of spirit was one of his most +amazing characteristics: I have no doubt that in the depth of despair +he would write to Liszt swearing that he only wanted solitude; and in +an hour's time he would think it might be pleasant to spend an hour +with the Wesendoncks—and go. In the same way he longed earnestly for +death while spending all his friends' money on baths and cures and +doctors, and seeing to it that Minna provided the best of everything +for his table. The pile of work remains to show his life was one of +incredible industry. Between the end of 1848 and the end of 1854 he +wrote at least a dozen long pamphlets, and as many more that are not +so long; he wrote the words of the <i>Ring</i> and composed and scored the +<i>Rhinegold</i>, and began the music of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. Further, he +revised the overture to Gluck's <i>Iphigenia in Aulis</i>, and +reconstructed his own <i>Faust</i> overture. How on earth he managed his +interminable correspondence is more than I can guess. When we bear in +mind the calls upon his time by his superintendence of opera and +concerts, we cannot wonder that a man who did so much, and was born a +weakling, was <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" />rarely quite well, and incessantly complains of his +nerves. Yet these nerves, he wrote, gave him wonderful hours of +insight.</p> + +<p>There remains one thing to mention of these first Zurich years: his +operas were gradually spreading through Germany, and, especially, +Liszt had produced <i>Lohengrin</i> at Weimar in 1850. It quickly became so +popular that before long Wagner could complain, or boast, that he was +the only German who had not heard it. His movements during these years +can easily be traced. Zurich remained his headquarters, but he went +hither and thither, mainly in search of health. But the chief cause of +his ill-health he carried with him—his irrepressible activity of +mind. Could some intelligent doctor have given him a dose to stop him +thinking for not less than one month, he would, I verily believe, have +enjoyed ten years of unbroken freedom from sickness. These flittings +are of no great interest in themselves; he never got far until his +famous expedition to London in the summer of 1855. But now it is time +to take a glance at the writings of the period.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>In the introduction I announced my intention of dealing with Wagner's +prose-writings only in so far as they reveal anything of value +concerning the artist. His theories have been explained and elucidated +to death; hundreds of books have been written about them; never was a +man so much explained; never did a man suffer more from the +explanations. The day when Wagner began, not <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" />to theorise, but to +publish his theorisings, was an unlucky one for him. He began with the +intention, and certainly in the hope, of making himself clear to +himself; as I have already remarked, he wanted to find what it was he +wanted to be at and how to get there; and if, having achieved his end, +he had put all his pages of reasoning in the fire, he would have done +himself no ill-service. But he needed money, and in the 'forties and +'fifties there were, strangely enough, numbers of people who would pay +money for such stuff. Anything dull, "philosophic" in tone, anything +full of long words, longer sentences, and meanings too profound to be +understood by mortal—anything of this sort was sure of a paying +audience, if small, in "philosophic" Germany, no matter how fallacious +were the premises, how wrong the history, how perverse the inferences. +Hundreds of people must have risen from reading Wagner's essays +feeling themselves very deeply intellectual. In his first Paris days +Wagner had at once flown to his prose-scribbling pen as an instrument +to procure him bread; now, in Zurich, while writing and arguing mainly +to free his own soul, he had an eye on the publisher and the public, +for he needed bread as much as ever he had needed it; and he needed +other things besides: all the luxuries he had grown accustomed to and +could have done without ten years earlier. He persuaded himself of the +validity of another reason why he should unload his prose-wares on the +world. He had written much at times in various papers with a +wholehearted wish to purify and advance art. Now he determined to be +him<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" />self John the Baptist walking, in defiance of the laws of nature, +miles in front of himself in the wilderness, crying out that he who +was to redeem German music and the German folk was coming. He actually +persuaded himself, I say, that by reading these lucubrations German +audiences would prepare themselves to understand his works—as yet in +process of incubation—at a first hearing! Fools we are, and slight; +but surely no man was ever a bigger fool than our poor Richard when he +thought that a great work of art could possibly or should be +understood at the first glance, and that the feat would be easy if +only one had read some theories of art beforehand. The contrary holds +true: if you have seen and felt Wagner's operas, you may understand +what he is talking about in his articles and pamphlets; but to read +these first is merely to bewilder yourself utterly when you go to see +the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very +brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be +remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been +well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there is, to my mind, only one +worth reading, Mr. Ernest Newman's valuable <i>Study of Wagner</i>.</p> + +<p>The French stories and articles are as good as anything Wagner wrote. +He had not yet fallen into the villainous German philosophic style, or +was restrained by the consciousness that he must write in a lingo that +could be translated into French. These pieces were written for bread +and bread alone in the terrible years of starvation, 1840-41. <i>An +<a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" />End</i> [of a German Musician] <i>in Paris</i> is full of autobiography, and +intensely interesting on that account; it is interesting, too, because +of its display of the naïve arrogance which leads Germans to believe +the whole world was made for Germans. This German musician, for +instance, arrives in Paris, where scores of French musicians—Berlioz +amongst them—are roughing it, if not actually starving in the +streets; yet he expects the French to find him employment in +preference to their own countrymen, their own flesh and blood. One can +overlook that, however; and the story is pathetic and beautifully +written. <i>A Pilgrimage to Beethoven</i> is, in its way, a masterpiece. It +also is full of self-revelation; some of it conscious, some +unconscious. <i>A Happy Evening</i> is another charming thing; the skit on +how Rossini's <i>Stabat Mater</i> came to be composed is amusing, and is +cruel with a cruelty that was justified. The other articles are of no +particular value, save, perhaps, that on the overture; they are of an +ephemeral character and were evidently concocted when the writer was +fully aware he was writing for French readers, and if he hurt French +feelings or vanity, a French editor wouldn't print, wouldn't publish, +wouldn't pay.</p> + +<p>The next production of any importance is his autobiographical sketch, +and of this nothing need be said. So much of it as seemed to me +needful has been utilized in this book. The account of the bringing +home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial +interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can +imagine the ardour with which he threw himself <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" />into this work. +Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way +through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English +officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech +delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is +characteristic—exceptionally so even for Wagner of this period, +1844—in its assertion of the Germanity of Weber and Weber's music; +and his deep joy that at last the German musician's bones should +repose in German earth. This topic of Germanism haunted Wagner for +years, and I may have a little to say about it later. The account of +the 1846 rendering of the Choral Symphony is the most masterly +exposition of the right and the wrong way of playing orchestral music +to be found in any language. Wagner's method was, after all, very +simple: the conductor had to understand and feel the music aright, and +then pains, pains, never-ending pains must be expended on coaxing, +persuading, bullying or in some other way getting the band to +reproduce precisely what he felt.</p> + +<p>We now reach the mass of theatrical and philosophical writings on +opera, drama, and, indeed, art generally. I need do nothing more than +give the fundamental basis of them all, the one point which he argues +in a thousand ways through them all. Wagner would have it, then, that +just about the time he came into the world, or a little later, +all—nothing less than all—the arts had gone as far as they could +separately, each alone. Art in ancient days, before there were <i>arts</i>, +was a fusion of music, dancing, poetry, statuary and painting—the old +drama. That <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" />each form of art might develop its full possibilities, +they separated and each went its own way. Wagner was mainly concerned +with music and with drama (poetic drama). Music reached its apogee +with Beethoven. Regardless of the fact that after Beethoven had +introduced words in the Choral Symphony, he went on composing music of +unequalled depth and splendour without words, Wagner insisted that he +felt the impossibility of doing more without words. We hear, said +Wagner, all these sounds going on, this stream of melody, and it is +very delightful to the ear; but unfortunately the highly organized +brain of modern man steps in and insists on knowing what is the +matter. What is the meaning of it all? asks the inquisitive intellect. +Words are necessary to satisfy the intellect. On the other hand, +poetic drama, in its endeavour to express pure feeling, could go no +further than Goethe and Schiller without becoming mere gush—a sort of +music that was not music. Wherefore music must be added. But this +combination of music and poetry was insufficient; we must have the +thing in visible form before the eye—the acted music-drama. Then the +actors must understand statuesque poses and get into them; they must +understand painting and contrive to form themselves, together with the +scenic background and accessories, into pictures. So once again we +should have the perfect fusion of all the arts, and live happily ever +after.</p> + +<p>To me there is almost more lunacy in this than in Wagner's political +tenets. It is a pack of fallacies. Here is my answer—</p> + +<p><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" />(i) As to an Art which was a perfect fusion of all the arts, it was +never done and never at any time attempted.</p> + +<p>(ii) The finest music yet created has no words to it: the meaning is +perfectly clear without words.</p> + +<p>(iii) The highest poetic drama needs no music. Without verging on +gush, it affords expression to the deepest and most intense feeling.</p> + +<p>(iv) Fine poetry has been written in the dramatic form, though it will +not bear acting and was not intended to be acted. But we may +cheerfully concede that genuine drama ought to be acted.</p> + +<p>(v) The function of scenery is to suggest atmosphere and nothing more. +It cannot be a picture; it can only be an imitation of a picture.</p> + +<p>(vi) An actor who tried to look like a statue going through a variety +of poses would only make the audience laugh; or we should think he had +been taken ill.</p> + +<p>At every point Wagner's reasoning goes to the ground. His basic facts +are no facts, and his reasoning is absurd. All the essays on music and +on drama and on the music-drama are as much an expression of himself +as his music-dramas. I have in earlier chapters gone so far as even to +labour the point that he could not get on in music without the aid of +drama; and as he could never look beyond <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" />himself nor imagine that +what he could not do—<i>i.e.</i> compose pure music—some one else—<i>e.g.</i> +Schumann or Brahms—could do, he went out with absolute confidence to +persuade the world that he was right and all others were wrong. To +those who may be interested in the study of Wagner, the mighty +creative artist, as a cerebral curiosity, I commend Mr. Newman's book +aforementioned. Mr. Newman points out that Wagner was so magnificently +self-centred that he attributed all opposition to "misunderstanding." +To him it was incomprehensible that any one should say, "Yes, I +perfectly understand your argument; but I beg leave not to agree with +you." Any one who said that at once aroused his suspicions; such an +one, thought Wagner, cannot possibly be sincere. Hence the hot +denunciations of all and sundry who differed from him; hence the +nightmare phantom of an organized body of "persecutors." Had he not +been blinded by his wrath, and looked a little closer, he might have +seen that the persecutors, far from being an organized body or +confederacy, were fighting angrily, bitterly, amongst themselves. Many +of them had this in common: they could not understand and did not like +Wagner's music. That is different from the "wilful misunderstanding" +Wagner moaned about. These musicians could not help themselves; as +Sancho Panza remarks, "Man is as God made him, and generally a good +deal worse."</p> + +<p>The essay which provoked the widest and fiercest hostility, especially +amongst the Jews, was the <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" /><i>Judaism in Music</i>. Wagner started from two +premises, (i) That the Jews, being alien in thought and feeling, could +not express themselves in <i>our (i.e.</i> German) art; and (2) that had +they thought and felt like Germans, they would have succeeded no +better; for music—that is, song—is idealized speech, and the +gurglings and bubblings which do duty for speech with the Jews cannot +be idealized into anything beautiful. The answer is that very great +music has been written by Jews; that music was an English, a Flemish +and an Italian art before the Germans knew anything about it; that if +music must be idealized German speech, with its guttural chokings, the +less we have of it the better. The Jews paid little attention to +Wagner's arguments, but objected to his "personalities." Now, the +reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are +those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own +expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or +"chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own +whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal +attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and some of the worst of these +can be traced to Jew scribblers. Yet on the publication of <i>Judaism in +Music</i> in the <i>Neue Zeitschrift für Musik</i>, a wail went up from these +journalistic descendants of Elijah; and several prominent Jew +musicians signed and presented to the authorities of the Leipzig +conservatoire of music a petition praying that Brendel (the editor who +published the essay) might be dismissed from his post in the +<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" />conservatoire. These underhand tactics put the Jews out of court. +Nevertheless, Wagner's essay was a bad mistake. It is bad science, bad +history, bad argument; it did no person, no cause, any good, and it +worked a very great deal of harm.</p> + +<p>Wagner was at his best when writing about music or about musicians he +had known. A paper on Spontini, belonging to this period (Spontini +died in 1851), has a pleasant, generous note; and the account of the +pompous old gentleman's visit to Dresden a few years previous is +amusingly lifelike. The <i>Communication to my Friends</i>, a trifle +egotistical, is still full of interest. The article on musical +criticism is not so good as it might have been. Wagner had the utmost +contempt for the ordinary press criticism of the day: with that sort +of thing, he wrote Uhlig, one could not tempt the cat from behind the +stove. He knew what criticism should not be, but when he came to what +it should be his view was warped by the obsession that pure music had +reached its boundaries, and the future of music was involved with the +future of the music-drama. When his prejudices were not aroused, he +himself was the greatest critic who has lived: his programmes of the +Choral and Eroica Symphonies are masterpieces in their kind; and his +analysis of the <i>Iphigenia in Aulis</i> overture can never be surpassed. +Stage-managers have found his directions for the performing of +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, <i>Lohengrin</i> and the <i>Dutchman</i> invaluable; they are also +sometimes read by conductors, and should be read by singers. They show +how in composing his operas Wagner meant every note he <a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" />put to paper: +the most minute fibres of the musical growth are alive, a living part +of the organism.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>"I shall probably never come back to Germany." So wrote Wagner from +Paris on March 2, 1855, to his friend Wilhelm Fischer, stage-manager +and chorus-master at the Dresden opera. Wagner was then on his way to +London to direct a series of Philharmonic concerts. "It was a great +piece of folly for me to come to London...." So wrote Wagner from +London to Fischer a little—perhaps a month—later. It was, says Mr. +J.S. Shedlock in his admirable translation of the <i>Letters to Dresden +Friends</i>, "an unfortunate visit." But was it? and, if so, in what +sense? "The public of the Philharmonic concerts is very favourably +disposed towards me." "The orchestra has taken a great liking to me, +and the public approves of me." And as a matter of fact Wagner had no +reason to be dissatisfied with the visit, nor has Mr. Shedlock for +calling it "unfortunate." The whole situation is summed up in another +communication to Fischer, dated London, June 15, 1855—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"... The false reports about my quarrel with the directors of + the Philharmonic Society here and my consequent departure from + London are based upon the following incident—</p> + +<p> "When I went into the cloak-room after the fourth concert, I + there met several friends, whom I made acquainted with my + extreme annoyance and ill-<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" />humour that I should ever have + consented to conduct concerts of such a kind, as it was not at + all in my line. These endless programmes, with their mass of + instrumental and vocal pieces, wearied me and tormented my + aesthetic sense; I was forced to see that the power of + established custom rendered it impossible to bring about any + reduction or change whatever; I therefore nourished a feeling of + disquietude, which had more to do with the fact that I had again + embarked on a thing of the sort—much less with the conditions + here themselves, which I really knew beforehand—but least of + all with my public, which always received me with friendliness + and approbation, often indeed with great warmth.</p> + +<p> "On the other hand, the abuse of the London critics was a matter + of perfect indifference to me, for their hostility only proved + to all the world that I had not bribed them, while it gave me, + on the contrary, much satisfaction to watch how they always left + the door open, so that had I made the least approach they would + have turned to different pitch; but naturally I thought of + nothing of the kind....</p> + +<p> "On that evening I was really in a furious rage, that after the + A minor Symphony I should have had to conduct a miserable vocal + piece and a trivial overture of Onslow's; and, as is my way, in + deepest dudgeon I told my friends aloud that I had that day + conducted for the last time; that on the morrow I should send in + my resignation, and journey home. By chance a concert-singer, + R—— (a German-Jew <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" />youth) was present; he caught up my words + and conveyed them all hot to a newspaper reporter. Ever since + then rumours have been flying about in the German papers, which + have misled even you. I need scarcely tell you that the + representations of my friends, who escorted me home, succeeded + in making me withdraw the hasty resolution conceived at a moment + of despondency.</p> + +<p> "Since then we have had the <i>Tannhäuser</i> overture at the fifth + concert; it was very well played, received by the public in a + quite friendly manner, but not yet properly understood.</p> + +<p> "All the more pleased was I, therefore, when the Queen, who had + promised (which is a rare event, and does not happen every year) + to attend the seventh concert, ordered a repetition of the + overture. Now, if in itself it was extremely gratifying that the + Queen should pay no regard to my highly compromised political + position (which had been dragged to light with great malignity + by the <i>Times</i>), and without hesitation assist at a public + performance under my direction, then her further behaviour + towards me afforded me at last an affecting compensation for all + the contrarieties and vulgar animosities which I had here + endured.</p> + +<p> "She and Prince Albert, who both sat immediately facing the + orchestra, applauded after the <i>Tannhäuser</i> overture—with which + the first part concluded—with graciousness, almost amounting to + a challenge, so that the public broke out into lively and + prolonged applause. During the interval the Queen summoned me to + the <i>salon</i>, and received me <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" />before her court with the cordial + words, 'I am delighted to make your acquaintance; your + composition has enraptured me!'</p> + +<p> "In a long conversation, in which Prince Albert also took part, + she further inquired about my other works, and asked if it would + not be possible to have my operas translated into Italian, so + that she might be able to hear them, too, in London? I was + naturally obliged to give a negative answer, and, moreover, to + explain that my visit was only a flying one, as conducting for a + concert society—the only thing open to me here—was not at all + my affair. At the end of the concert the Queen and the Prince + applauded me again most courteously.</p> + +<p> "I relate this to you because it will afford you pleasure; and I + willingly allow you to make further use of this information, as + I see how much mistake and malice touching myself and my stay in + London has to be set right or defeated.</p> + +<p> "The last concert is on the 25th, and I leave on the 26th, so as + to resume in my quiet retreat my sadly interrupted work."</p></div> + +<p>Wagner was well paid for his work; he was well received in society; +the band liked him and the audiences liked him—the one cause of all +his grumbling was the character of the bulk of the music he had to +conduct. One might expect even a Wagner to prefer conducting a few +pieces of tedious stuff, even to put up with poor antediluvian Onslow, +rather than to return to his daily task of writing begging letters to +his friends from Zurich. <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" />Still, these are matters of taste, and each +to his own.</p> + +<p>To those who only know the Philharmonic to-day, in its more or less +repentant and reformed state, it may not seem odd that Wagner should +have conducted its concerts. But to those who remember it from, say, +twenty-five years ago to quite recent times, a certain incongruity is +apparent. Wagner, the sincere, fiery artist, the man devoted to, +swallowed up by, his art; the man who journeyed, with his wife and a +dog, all the way from Russia to Paris with his bare travelling +expenses in his pocket; who had been through a bloody revolution, and +was now a political refugee; who had written part of the <i>Ring</i> and +had <i>Tristan</i> "already planned in his head"; a conductor whose ideal +was nothing lower than perfection—this gentleman came from Zurich to +conduct a society whose membership was compact of trim and prim +mediocrity, and whose directors were mostly duffers. Can we wonder +that both sides were disappointed? These amiable directors never quite +recovered from the honour of having Mendelssohn to conduct for them; +and they undoubtedly looked upon Wagner as scarcely a next-best. The +days of oratorio had by no means finished yet; oratorio was the thing; +an instrumental concert was very well for a change once in a while, +provided there were plenty of Italian opera airs to sugar the nasty +pill; Haydn was the last word in symphony, the homage paid to +Beethoven being the merest lip-worship. The Philharmonic was certainly +no place for Wagner; yet, it must be insisted, <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" />there was no real +reason for grumbling on either side. Wagner got his money; the society +had one of the best seasons on its record.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 385px;"><a name="fp226" id="fp226" /> +<img src="images/fp226.jpg" width="385" height="436" alt="Wagner" title="Wagner" /> +<span class="caption">Wagner</span> +</div> + +<p>It is a pity that he who might have been the most valuable witness in +the matter should prove at every point to be the least trustworthy. +Ferdinand Praeger had known Wagner in his university days. They seem +to have been barely acquainted; but the moment Praeger found Wagner +was coming he scented advertisement for himself, as is usual with his +kind—the kind being the foreign professor settled in London. He will +have it that he arranged the whole business; but the terrible truth is +that he seems to have done no more than make his compatriot +comfortable in our dreary city. Certainly he did that, and Wagner +repaid it by inviting him to stay in Zurich, and the visit came off +duly. Sainton, who was by way of being a noted violinist, was head and +front of the offending from the directors' point of view—perhaps in +Wagner's view likewise. The directors were, to speak as the vulgar, in +a mortal stew. There was a small audience for orchestral functions in +those days, and Dr. Wylde, a worthy academic gentleman of no musical +distinction whatever, had started a rival series of concerts, and had +in this year, 1855, engaged no less a personage than Berlioz to +conduct. A rival was looked for; and since the directors knew little +or nothing of continental doings, as soon as Sainton told them one +Richard Wagner was their man, they agreed that negotiations should be +opened. Wagner came; and the visit ought to be interesting to English +<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" />musicians, for at Portland Terrace he scored part of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. +Moreover, he met Berlioz at dinner; but never those twain could meet +in other than a formal way. Neither liked the other; neither liked the +other's music; their rivalry in London mattered not two sous to the +one or one pfennig to the other, but they were both disappointed men +seeking appreciation and approbation on the continent. Wagner had +tried in Paris and Berlioz had tried in Germany. Wagner worked +stubbornly the whole time, and was mightily glad to get back to Zurich +in July. The episode is of small importance in Wagner's life; but the +attitude of the Press naturally filled him with disgust. He said if he +had paid the critics he would have received "favourable notices," and +when I reflect on the smallness of the critics' official salaries and +the splendour in which some of them lived I cannot but think he was +right: the money necessary to keep up big establishments had to be +found somewhere—where?</p> + +<p>During the next few years Wagner went many journeys, again mainly in +search of "cures," but never got far. He worked unceasingly at the +<i>Ring</i>, with the wildest plans in his head regarding performances. How +wild some of these must have seemed at the time may be judged from the +following paragraphs taken from a letter to Uhlig (Dec. 12, 1851). +This is, of course, earlier than the period we are now dealing with; +but he never departed from the idea, and it eventually took shape at +Bayreuth, a quarter of a century later. Here is the letter—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"For the moment, I can only tell you a little about the<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" /> + intended completion of the great dramatic poem which I have now + in hand. Just reflect that before I wrote the poem, <i>Siegfried's + Death</i>, I sketched out the whole myth in all its gigantic + sequence, and that poem was the attempt—which, with regard to + our theatre, appeared possible to me—to give one chief + catastrophe of the myth, together with an indication of that + sequence.</p> + +<p> "Now, when I set to work to write out the music in full, still + keeping our modern theatre firmly in mind, I felt how incomplete + the proposed undertaking would be; the vast train of events, + which first gives to the characters their immense and striking + significance, would be presented to the mind merely by means of + epic narrative.</p> + +<p> "So to make <i>Siegfried's Death</i> possible, I wrote <i>Young + Siegfried</i>; but the more the whole took shape, the more did I + perceive, while developing the scenes and music of <i>Young + Siegfried</i>, that I had only increased the necessity for a + clearer presentation of the whole story to the senses. I now see + that, in order to become intelligible on the stage, I must work + out the whole myth in plastic style. It was not this + consideration alone which impelled me to my new plan, but + especially the overpowering impressiveness of the subject-matter + which I thus acquire for presentation, and which supplies me + with a wealth of material for artistic fashioning which it would + be a sin to leave unused. Think of the contents of the narrative + of Brünnhilde, in the last scene of <i>Young Siegfried</i>; the fate + of Siegmund and <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" />Sieglind; the struggle of Wotan with his desire + and with custom (Fricka); the noble defiance of the Walküre; the + tragic anger of Wotan in punishing this defiance.</p> + +<p> "Think of this from my point of view, with the extraordinary + wealth of situations brought together in one coherent drama, and + you have a tragedy of most moving effect; one which clearly + presents to the senses all that my public needs to have taken + in, in order easily to understand, in their widest meaning, + <i>Young Siegfried</i> and the <i>Death</i>. These three dramas will be + preceded by a grand introductory play, which will be produced by + itself on a special opening festival day. It begins with + Alberich, who pursues the three water-witches of the Rhine with + his lust of love, is rejected with merry fooling by one after + the other, and, mad with rage, at last steals the Rhine gold + from them.</p> + +<p> "This gold in itself is only a shining ornament in the depth of + the waves (<i>Siegfried's Death</i>, Act III, Sc. i), but it + possesses another power, which only he who renounces love can + succeed in drawing from it. (Here you have the plasmic motive up + to <i>Siegfried's Death</i>. Think of all its pregnant consequences.) + The capture of Alberich; the dividing of the gold between the + two giant brothers; the speedy fulfilment of Alberich's curse on + these two, the one of whom immediately slays the other—all this + is the theme of this introductory play.</p> + +<p> "But I have already chattered too much, and even that is too + little to give you a clear idea of the vast wealth of the + subject-matter....</p> + +<p> "<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" />But one other thing determined me to develop this plan; viz. + the impossibility which I felt of producing <i>Young Siegfried</i> in + anything like a suitable manner either at Weimar or anywhere + else. I cannot and will not endure any more the martyrdom of + things done by halves. With this my new conception I withdraw + entirely from all connection with our theatre and public of + to-day; I break decisively and for ever with the formal present.</p> + +<p> "Do you now ask me what I propose to do with my scheme?—First + of all to carry it out, so far as my poetical and musical powers + will allow. This will occupy me at least three full years. And + so I place my future quite in R——'s hands; God grant that + they may remain unfalteringly true to me!</p> + +<p> "I can only think of a performance under quite other conditions. + I shall erect a theatre on the banks of the Rhine, and issue + invitations to a great dramatic festival. After a year's + preparation, I shall produce my complete work in a series of + four days.</p> + +<p> "However extravagant this plan may be, it is, nevertheless, the + only one to which I can devote my life and labours. If I live to + see it accomplished, I have lived gloriously; if not, I die for + something grand. Only this can still give me any pleasure."</p></div> + +<p>His creditors from Dresden were everlastingly at his heels; even in +Dresden, with a substantial and regular salary, he could not keep out +of debt—though it must be remembered that older debts pursued him +from the Riga days, and even earlier. <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" />By April of 1856 the <i>Valkyrie</i> +was scored and <i>Siegfried</i> begun; next year he finished the first act +of the latter. His life, apparently, went on pretty much as before; +but the financial situation was rapidly becoming intolerable—even to +him. The famous invitation to write an opera for Rio de Janeiro +arrived, and he promptly set to work on the subject he had mentioned +in a letter to Liszt a few years before, <i>Tristan and Isolda</i>. His +health grew worse than ever, and somehow he found the means to spend +the winter in Venice. Then he settled for a while in Lucerne, and +completed <i>Tristan</i>.</p> + +<p>Afterwards he removed to Paris, where in 1860 he gave some concerts; +in the same year the score of <i>Tristan</i> was issued; next year came the +<i>Tannhäuser</i> fiasco at the opera, and later he heard <i>Lohengrin</i>, in +Vienna, for the first time; next he stayed for a while at Biebrich, +and finally settled in Vienna.</p> + +<p>This is all the biography of ten of the fullest years of his life that +we need trouble about at present. His everyday existence is only +diversified and variegated by little anecdotes not worth repetition. +He was everywhere, of course, the musical lion. And, speaking of +animals, he always had a few: it had been a real grief to him some +years before when his parrot died when it had just mastered a passage +of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.</p> + +<p>When he finished <i>Tristan</i> in August of 1859, his prospects were, so +to speak, as bright as before. It may here be mentioned, by way of +showing how bright that was, that when, four years later, an <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" />attempt +was made to give <i>Tristan</i> at Vienna, the work was abandoned after at +least fifty rehearsals.</p> + +<p>His letters, first to his faithful servitor Uhlig, who died in 1853 at +the age of thirty-one, and then to Fischer, are full of requests to +get scores copied, to send them here, there and everywhere, and to +collect honorariums. But, as I have said, for years he had hungry +creditors snapping at his heels, and they devoured most of the fruits +of his early genius. It is a fact to be faced that Wagner never in all +his life earned his livelihood. He earned more than average men +require to live comfortably upon; but he was unceasingly extravagant, +and denied himself nothing. He had been hungry in his early Paris +days; for the remainder of his life he bent himself to the task of +making up for that spell of famine. The precariousness of his income, +the insecurity of his position, fostered the habit of self-indulgence; +by nature the reverse of miserly, if he had money to-day he spent it, +reflecting that he might have none to-morrow. His debts, moreover, +were not entirely for what we may call personal extravagances. So +confident and sanguine was he that he had the full scores of his +operas published at his own expense; and the charges had to be met out +of what the operas brought him. And so when he had finished <i>Tristan</i> +in 1859 the outlook was of the blackest.</p> + +<p>It was not less than a disaster that, during this period, 1849-59, +Wagner got to know the writings of Schopenhauer. In my first chapter I +pointed out how from his youth Wagner was fond of dabbling <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" />in +pseudo-philosophy, and this had strengthened rather than weakened its +hold on him as he grew older. For some time Feuerbach was his mentor. +It is idle to ask what he saw in Feuerbach. It has long been a +commonplace that rightly to understand an author you must meet him +half-way. Wagner did more than that: he went the whole way, and often +a long way beyond. What he read was not Feuerbach, but the thousand +ideas that the merest chance sentences of Feuerbach aroused in his +seething brain. Feuerbach, however, was sent about his business as +soon as Schopenhauer entered. Wagner immediately wrote +enthusiastically to Liszt, telling how peace and light had come into +his soul; and one might wonder what particular doctrine of the grumpy +old pseudo-philosopher had this remarkable effect. (This is to assume +it to have had the effect. As a bare matter of fact it hadn't. +Wagner's soul knew no peace until he died.) It was the great gospel of +Renunciation. After reading this, in his own way, Wagner realized, if +you please, that both <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i> preached the same +doctrine; and one can only retort that, if they preach any doctrine at +all—which they don't, thank heaven!—it is not that. But +Schopenhauerism might easily have ruined <i>Tristan</i>—did not ruin it +only because Wagner himself, when writing it, was consumed with a +fervour of passion that is the negation of Schopenhauerism. It is +responsible, however, for many of the <i>longueurs</i> of the <i>Ring</i>, as, +for instance, in Act II of the <i>Valkyrie</i>, when Wotan stops the action +to give Brünnhilde an elementary lesson in Schopen<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" />hauer-cum-Wagner +metaphysics. The funny thing is that Wagner never renounced anything: +to the end he was greedy, avid of life. He might have benefited by a +careful study of Schopenhauer's pungent phrases; but instead of thus +developing his own natural gift in that direction, his sentences +afterwards grew longer and more complicated than ever. His Beethoven +is a splendid essay; how much finer it might have been had he not +wasted so many pages on what he took to be Schopenhauer's science!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" /><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" />CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>For those who have ears, eyes and understanding <i>Tristan and Isolda</i> +is Wagner's most perfect work, is the finest opera in the world. +Unluckily there are in the world far too many persons who are not +content to have a work of supreme art, but must needs read into it +old, stale platitudes: when they have proved it to be an exposition of +these platitudes they conceive that they have deserved the gratitude +of the people for interpreting the artist and of the artist for having +interpreted him, having made his meaning clear. As I have written +elsewhere of <i>Tristan</i>, "Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft +and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all clear as the +day"; but the commentators have rushed in with their comments between +the stage and the audience only to obscure everything and bamboozle +people who are at least as capable as themselves of understanding the +drama. The platitudes read into <i>Tristan</i> are of two sorts, truisms +and lying commonplaces. To take one of the latter kind, some one many +long years ago got off the pretty phrase, "love and death are one"; +and poetasters and fiftieth-rate dramatists have ever since continued +to assert as a profound and original <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" />truth that love and death are +one. What on earth they understand by it, if they mean anything at +all, is much more than I can guess. But I know that love and death are +not one, that love is life, and death is death. We have had it pointed +out a thousand times that the "moral" of <i>Tristan</i> is that these two +opposites are one; and in the latest books and articles about Wagner +the same game is kept merrily going. I can extract no such moral. +Perhaps some unfortunate essays and letters of Wagner gave the +commentators their cue and lead; for Wagner, when he put away his +music-paper and sat down to his writing-paper, often showed himself a +willing victim of catch-phrases; also many sentences of the drama can +be construed as paraphrases of this particular catch-phrase—for +example, "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod, sehnend verlangter +Liebestod." Such utterances as these, however, have a specific and +different meaning altogether, as will presently be seen. I can by no +means believe even Wagner capable of writing a three-act music-drama +to prove the truth of a catch-phrase or that he would have dreamed of +using such a catch-phrase as the motive of his music-drama. The +commonplaces drawn from <i>Tristan</i> and gravely set forth as the +"meanings" of the operas are as numberless as sands on the sea-shore +and rather less valuable. That young women should not make a practice +of marrying old men, that illicit passions and intrigues may bring on +disaster, that it is madness to make love to another man's wife in a +garden, observable by all, that it is greater madness still to keep on +<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" />when a maidservant is screaming that some one is coming—these rules +of conduct are very well in their way and might commend themselves to +the denizens of Clapham; but, again, I hardly think Wagner would have +constructed a great music-drama to enunciate them. Nor did he +construct his music-drama to expound a philosophy. For a long time the +air was thick with arguments <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i> with regard to the amount +of Schopenhauer he had made use of in his libretto. Now, it is true +that both Tristan and Isolda indulge at times in something +approximating to the Schopenhauer terminology; but of Schopenhauer's +or any other philosophy I cannot find a trace. For that we must turn +to <i>Parsifal</i>. In <i>Tristan</i> there are no "meanings"—none save the +very plain meaning of the drama and the meaning of the music, which is +plainer still.</p> + +<p>It seems to me desirable in this way to clear off misunderstandings +and to indicate with precision my point of view. When Wagner wrote +<i>Tristan</i> he wrote a tragic opera of passion and treachery and death, +and only as a tragic opera can I regard it. Every sentence in it is +accounted for by the course the drama takes; no further explanation is +called for; and I shall certainly not waste my readers' time by +picking out a few words here and there and trying to construe them +into a metaphysical exposition: there is quite enough to digest +without that. Even the longing for death which Tristan expresses as +the only cure for the woes of an impossible life arises from the +drama; Tristan no more preaches Schopenhauer than he preaches Buddhism +when he exclaims "<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" />Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod." Wagner chose the +subject of <i>Tristan</i> not to expound anything, but for the prosaic +reason that he wanted to raise money and the subject seemed the most +promising for the purpose. This is put beyond a doubt by a letter to +Liszt dated July 2, 1858. Everything seemed to work against him; +<i>Rienzi</i> proved a failure when it was put on at Weimar, and nothing +could be hoped for in that quarter; the pecuniary situation was +desperate. He had received a commission from the Emperor Pedro I of +Brazil for an opera, and thought <i>Tristan</i> a likely theme. As early as +December of 1854 he had written to Liszt mentioning it as planned in +his head; and in this letter of '58 he says, "... I saw no other way +open to me but to negotiate with Härtel, and I chose for this subject +<i>Tristan</i>, then scarcely begun, because I had nothing else. They +offered to pay me half the honorarium (two hundred louis d'or)—that +is, one hundred louis d'or—on receipt of the score of the first act, +and I made all the haste I could to complete it. That is why this poor +work was hurried on in such a business-like manner." It seems rather +comical now that the world's most magnificent, and certainly most +profound, musical tragedy should have been commenced to be sung by an +Italian company in such an out-of-the-way spot as Rio de Janeiro and +in the hope of pleasing semi-barbarian ears; and it is rather a pity +it never found its way there. One thing is certain: the press +criticisms could not have been more foolish than those that greeted +the opera when it was produced in Munich.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" />Exactly where Wagner got the idea from I cannot say. Of course, in +one shape or another the legend exists in every European literature; +and probably he had been familiar with it for years. Praeger's story +of Wagner getting hold of Gottfried von Strassburg's interminable +version in the summer of 1855 and conceiving the thing in a flash +might very well be true; only, unluckily for Praeger, the letter to +Liszt in the previous year shows it to be in another sense a story. By +September 1857 the poem was done, and Wagner at once set to work on +the music. He had sketched the first act by the end of the same year, +and in the early part of '59 the whole opera was complete. We have +just seen one reason for pressing forward "this poor work ... in such +a business-like manner"; but even without the pecuniary inducement I +fancy he would have composed quickly. <i>Tristan</i> is one of those works, +like Carlyle's <i>French Revolution</i>, which one feels had either to be +written rapidly or not at all. The music seems to have welled forth in +a red-hot torrent, and his pen could not choose but fly over the +paper. None the less we are compelled to marvel at the industry, the +concentrated and continuous and patient energy of the man; for the +<i>Tristan</i> score is as complicated as any ever written, and the mere +number of notes to be set down might well have appalled him. Handel +could write a <i>Messiah</i> in three weeks and Mozart a <i>Don Giovanni</i> +overture in a few hours; but their scores are mere skeletons compared +with <i>Tristan</i>, a score which neither Handel nor Mozart could copy in +a much <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" />longer time than three weeks. We may hope that Wagner received +his remaining hundred louis d'or, for the Brazilian scheme came to +nothing, and he had to wait seven long years before <i>Tristan</i> got its +first performance. But for the "kingly friend," mad Ludwig II, it +would not have been performed at all; and afterwards other theatres +found it too difficult, or the directors, with true inborn official +insolence, seemed to glory in not so much as looking at the score. We +will now look at it.</p> + +<p>Out of one or another of the various versions of the legend Wagner +extracted the core—the plain, direct story of the passion of a pair +of tragic lovers. Tristan and Isolda love one another with a devouring +love, and circumstances will not allow them to be united; they find a +refuge in death from an existence intolerable without love; and this +is essentially the whole story. In its older form the tale consisted +mainly of what to the modern mind are excrescences—the intrigues, +fights, adventures and what not so dear to the mediæval mind. Wagner +sheared away this mass of overgrowth; or perhaps it would be truer to +say he hewed his way to the statue within, from out of the old stuff +picked out the elements that made just the drama as it had shaped +itself in his brain. Here is the story. Tristan, nephew of King Mark +of Cornwall, had gone a-warring in Ireland and had there slain Morold, +the betrothed of Isolda; and to Isolda he sends as a present Morold's +head. He is himself wounded, and by chance it is Isolda, "a skilful +<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" />leech," who nurses him back to health. She has found in Morold's head +a splinter of a sword-blade, and finds it was broken out of Tristan's +weapon. Full of anger, she raises the sword to slay the sick man: he +opens his eyes, and "the sword dropped from my fingers"—her doom is +upon her: henceforth she loves the slayer of her lover. Though Tristan +loves her he does not ask for her, but with many protestations of +gratitude and friendship sails away to Cornwall. Next occurs one of +those things at which most of us are apt to boggle: Tristan goes home, +it would appear, only to suggest that his aged uncle should marry +Isolda the peerless beauty; Mark consents, and sends Tristan to ask +for her. Tristan afterwards confesses that ambition led him to do +this; but in any case it was very close to a deed of downright +treachery, unless the fact was that Tristan did not suspect Isolda's +love for him, or thought his station too humble. Wagner's language is +ambiguous, and probably he intended his meaning to be the same. Isolda +has no two opinions about his conduct. It had been her duty to kill +him in the first place, and her love, her destiny, Frau Minna—call it +what you will—betrayed her; and now she is betrayed by the man whose +life she saved. Had she spoken one word in her father's castle Tristan +would not have returned to Cornwall: in all likelihood his head would +have been sent as an acknowledgment of Morold's. Her fury knows no +bounds; her grief and sense of ignominious humiliation almost defy +expression; her contempt for Tristan, when she finds <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" />words for it, is +scathing. All this we learn as the opera proceeds; but we should know +the facts of the history before seeing the work the first time, else +the first act is bewildering, for matters have arrived just at this +point when the curtain rises.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The prelude is the only operatic prelude in the world which is an +integral, organic part of the drama; it cannot be omitted without +detriment to the drama. In several of Mozart's operas the overture, by +means of a modulation, is made to lead without a break into the first +scene; Gluck had done precisely the same thing; Wagner, in the +<i>Mastersingers of Nuremberg</i>, did the same thing. But in the cases of +Gluck and Mozart and of Wagner in the <i>Mastersingers</i>, if by chance +the parts of the overture were missing, the opera could start away and +go on merrily, and we should miss nothing but the preliminary pleasure +of hearing the overture. In the case of <i>Tristan</i>, where Wagner's art +of combining the music and drama in an indivisible whole was at its +culminating point—a point from which it gradually receded—this is +not conceivable. If the band parts of the <i>Tristan</i> prelude were +mislaid it would be well to omit the first act altogether. What Wagner +tried to do in the <i>Flying Dutchman</i>—to make the whole opera a solid +thing from which not one bar might be subtracted without ruining the +whole effect—he achieved once, and once only, in <i>Tristan</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" />What may seem an irrelevancy turns on this very point. There is no +necessity for reasoning about a work of art; yet there is both +pleasure and mental profit in doing so in certain instances. If there +is any necessity at all for understanding Wagner's mind and Wagner's +art, we may as well do it as thoroughly as we can. Therefore the +reader will perhaps bear with me patiently if I point out something he +has doubtless discovered for himself, namely, that <i>Tristan</i> is +Wagner's only opera in which music and drama had birth simultaneously +in his brain. He himself, in several significant passages in his prose +writings, indicated this. He said that when, after several years +devoted to expounding his theories in essays,—mainly, he said, to +make these theories clear to himself: mainly, I think, for the +accruing cash—he began <i>Tristan</i>, he immediately found he had left +the theories far behind. That is, he constructed his dramas, without +thinking of theories or traditions, simply as a common-sense +dramatist-musician should, building up the whole edifice with two +hands at once, the dramatist's pen in one hand, the musician's in the +other. He also said that when he set down the words the music was +already (in an amorphous state—we must presume he meant) in his +brain. It was to this effect he wrote in <i>Opera and Drama</i> the most +skilful defence ever put together by a creative artist—or rather not +so much a defence as a plea for his particular form of art, or perhaps +an explanation of the form.</p> + +<p>This is entirely different from his procedure with the <i>Ring</i>, or +indeed any of his works, not even <a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" />excepting the <i>Dutchman</i>. The +<i>Dutchman</i>, he said, grew out of Senta's ballad; but I have already +shown that this statement was a mere piece of self-deception: not the +whole of the <i>Dutchman</i>, not one-tenth of it, grows out of Senta's +ballad; Senta's ballad is not an oak-trunk with all the solos, duets, +choruses and the rest growing out as branches with leaves grow from a +trunk—it is a scaffold-pole upon which these things are tacked in an +almost unparalleled fervour of imagination. That Wagner recognized +this is plainly seen in the prose remarks he penned, in very cold +blood, in his after years, when he looked at his first really fine +work as though it had come from the hand of some other composer. Gluck +had not one-thousandth part of Wagner's sheer genius, or, born into +the nineteenth century, he might have done the thing as Wagner did it +in <i>Tristan</i>; Mozart had not one-hundredth part of Wagner's +intellectual power, or, born into the nineteenth century, he might +have done it. Wagner alone did it. <i>Tristan</i> is a feat accomplished +once and for all; at this moment it is impossible to imagine such a +feat ever being done again. Those of us who live on for another five +hundred years may see something like it; but even then <i>Tristan</i> will +not be old-fashioned—not older-fashioned, at any rate, than +<i>Antigone</i> or <i>Hamlet</i>, and perhaps less old-fashioned than <i>Macbeth</i> +or <i>Lear</i>. The breath, the spirit, which is eternal life, is in it, +and it can only perish when the human race perishes.</p> + +<p>Far too much theorising has been done about <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" />Wagner, and I would not +add my quota did I not hope that this small contribution would save +complicated explanations, now that I come to deal with the concrete, +so to say, with the very stuff of <i>Tristan</i>, the words and the music. +We are to be prepared for a drama of human passion in sharpest +conflict with a dispassionate, indifferent, even antagonistic world. +The passion is the naked elemental thing, the love of a man for a +woman and a woman for a man; and these twain, had they lived on an +island by themselves, might have been happy or unhappy, and felt the +passion fade away and no one a penny the worse. As it is, everything +seems to oppose them; shock after shock comes upon them; until in the +end they are content, feel themselves blest, to be allowed to pass out +of life. We are shown them in four clearly defined phases: first, +loving one another but the love unconfessed; second, the love admitted +and the world opposing it; third, love at its height and the world +breaking in upon it; last, love beaten in the fight and retreating to +the realms of death. Throughout the drama there is no musical theme +representing the idea of the antagonistic world. There are a dozen +love-themes and two death-themes and a great number of what in a +symphony would be called subsidiary themes. By far the most important +theme in the whole opera is that with which the prelude opens, one +made up of a couple of phrases (<i><a href="#Page_274">a</a></i>, p. <a href="#Page_274">274</a>).</p> + +<p>I shall not for the moment discuss the full significance of the themes +as subsequently un<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" />folded: it suffices now to note the use they are +put to in this prelude. A continuation of this love subject presently +is announced (<i><a href="#Page_274">b</a></i>); then the poison motive (<i><a href="#Page_274">c</a></i>); and finally yet +another love theme. A tremendous climax is worked up: the very ecstasy +and madness of love; it dies down, and the prelude ends with a +sinister and tragic phrase (<i><a href="#Page_274">d</a></i>), leading straight to a sea-song sung +from the masthead of a vessel, on which the curtain rises.</p> + +<p>No melody ever sang more clearly of the sea; no melody was ever less +like a sailor's chanty. I have quoted words and tune in full (<i><a href="#Page_274">f</a></i>). +The words set the drama a-going; out of the phrase marked (<i><a href="#Page_275">g</a></i>) the +main body of the music of the first scene is spun. Isolda very +naturally thinks an insult is aimed at herself: it is the spark that +sets a light to the explosive material that has been accumulating in +her heart for heaven knows how long. She curses the ship, Tristan, and +every one concerned in the conspiracy that is to rob her of the man +she loves and hand her over as a slave to the old man she has never +seen. Brangaena, her maid, scared out of her wits, begs to know the +truth; Isolda screams for air, which she assuredly seems to need; the +curtains at the back of her pavilion are opened, and there, on the +stern of the vessel, stands Tristan, the enemy whom she loves. From +the masthead comes again the sailor's song. This time it does not +immediately arouse Isolda to fury; for now her purpose is set—to kill +Tristan: take her revenge and end her own life of misery. "Once +beloved, now removed, brave and bright, coward knight. Death-devoted +head, <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" />death-devoted heart," she sings, gazing at Tristan; and at the +last words we hear the tremendous death-or murder-theme (<i><a href="#Page_275">h</a></i>), a theme +whose sinister meaning is afterwards unfolded. She sends Brangaena to +order Tristan to come into her tent. He bitterly avoids understanding +her meaning; Brangaena becomes more urgent; Kurvenal, Tristan's +servant, a faithful watch-dog, asks to be allowed to reply; Tristan +says he can. Kurvenal bellows out a song praising Tristan as the +heroic slayer of Isolda's betrothed, Morold. Brangaena precipitately +retreats and closes the curtains; Isolda and she face one another in +the tent, the second nearly prostrate with dismay, the first boiling +with wrath and shame at the insult hurled at her. She now tells +Brangaena the whole of the preceding history—her nursing of Tristan +and his monstrous treatment of her—and finishes with another curse. +Brangaena tries to soothe her; Isolda, outwardly quietened, inwardly +is planning how to carry out her purpose; Brangaena unknowingly +suggests the means. "In that casket is a love potion: drink that, you +will love your aged bridegroom and be happy once again." She opens the +casket; "not that phial," says Isolda, "the other." The poison motive +(<i><a href="#Page_274">c</a></i>) sounds under the agitated upper strings: "the deadly draught," +Brangaena shrieks: at this point the shouting of the sailors is heard +as they begin to shorten sail; Kurvenal enters brusquely and bellows +at Isolda the order to prepare to land. She refuses to move until +Tristan has come in to ask her pardon "for trespass black and base." +Here she begins to speak <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" />in terrible double-meanings: it is not +Tristan's discourtesy on the voyage he must apologise for, but the +more tragic occurrences leading up to his bearing her away to +Cornwall. She orders Brangaena to prepare the draught, and awaits her +victim.</p> + +<p>She stands there outwardly composed while one of the finest passages +in the whole of the world's music betrays her inward anxiety and +suspense (<i><a href="#Page_275">i</a></i>). It is useless to describe the scene in any detail: the +words are simple and seemingly direct; the marvellous music alone +reveals their fateful, fearful significance. Isolda asks Tristan to +sink the ancient quarrel between them—caused by the slaying of +Morold—and drink a cup together; he knows perfectly well a large part +of her meaning—that she means to poison him. Whether she herself +intends what presently occurs no one can tell: I doubt whether Wagner +knew much or cared at all. Tristan knows how great is the crime he +must make amends for: not merely Morold's death, but the winning of +Isolda's heart, the desertion, the cruel coming to claim her as his +uncle's bride; he says he will drink—only in oblivion can he find +refuge from the toils in which he has involved himself; he lifts the +cup to his lips, drinks, and as he drinks Isolda, crying "Betrayed, +even here," snatches the cup from him and drains it.</p> + +<p>Brangaena has betrayed her: the cup contains not the poison but the +love-potion. In this stroke there is no fairy-tale or pantomime +foolery. The course the drama now pursues is determined not by a magic +draught, a harmless infusion of herbs, but by the <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" />belief of the +lovers that they have taken poison and are both doomed. Whether +Tristan had previously known Isolda to love him does not matter: he +knows it now. It has been remarked that the language is ambiguous: or +rather, Isolda in her rage may easily be supposed to go beyond the +truth when she speaks of having exchanged love-vows with Tristan. She +knows that he loves her. They have only a few minutes to live and to +love: why not speak? They stand gazing at one another in a state of +tremulous emotion, and at last rush into each other's arms. The hoarse +voices of the sailors are heard outside hailing King Mark; the ship +has reached land; Brangaena enters, and is horrified to find that +<i>both</i> have taken the potion; the pair cling to one another; a stream +of the most passionate music in existence sweeps on: Brangaena tries +to attire Isolda in the royal cloak; Kurvenal shouts to Tristan that +the king is coming; Tristan can understand nothing—"What king?" he +asks; the deck is crowded with knights; and the curtain falls as the +lovers embrace and the trumpets announce the arrival of King Mark.</p> + +<p>Before dealing more fully with the music of this act let me quote a +few words I wrote elsewhere on the dramatic course of the whole opera. +"The end of each act sees the lovers in a situation which is at heart +the same, though in externals different. Rapt in each other, they care +nothing about the sailors, attendants, approaching crowds, and the +rest, at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they +scarcely understand Mark's passionate <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" />affection—they only know it is +an enemy of their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees +them from life, which means an incessant trouble and interruption to +them. The tragedy deepens and grows more intense with each successive +scene; each separates them more widely from life and all that life +means, until in the last act the divorce is complete. This is the +purpose of the drama: this <i>is</i> the drama...." When Wagner conceived +Tristan he was as fine a master of stage-craft as has ever lived; and +certainly by very far the finest who ever wrote "words for music." The +first scene prepares us to understand clearly and to grasp firmly the +forces that are presently to be let loose and run the drama on to its +tragic dénouement; and after that, scene follows scene with absolute +inevitability.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>During Wagner's five years of theorising after quitting Dresden in +1849 he had thought of subjects and written parts of the <i>Ring</i>. +Tristan is the greatest work he completed. A reservoir full of music +must have accumulated in his brain; and he seems now to have opened +the sluices. Never did a more fiery impetuous stream flow from any +composer: never was there, in a word, more inspired music. The +profusion of the material is wonderful, and even more wonderful is the +concentrated quality of that material. In the <i>Ring</i> and +<i>Parsifal</i>—as in <i>Lohengrin</i> and <i>Tannhäuser</i>—there are <i>longueurs</i>; +in <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" /><i>Tristan</i> there are none: not a bar can be cut; there is not a bar +that does not hold us. In a paradoxical mood, or irritated, by being +obstinately, wilfully, stupidly regarded as one of the trade setters +of opera-texts, Wagner declared to Bülow that "one thing is certain, I +am not a musician." This has been interpreted as meaning, "I am no +musician," whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a +musician: which, in a sense, he was. He was not a greater genius than +Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor +than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but +he was something different from both species of men—a dramatist who +could not get the drama out of himself without the aid of music, and a +musician who could not beat out his music without the aid of drama. +Music and drama had simultaneous birth in the case of <i>Tristan</i>, and +it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately. There is no +other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural +foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less +importance.</p> + +<p>Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common +criticism of Wagner's music was that it possessed no melody. Happily +at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when +we hear the first act of <i>Tristan</i> the first thing to strike us must +surely be its richness in melody. It teems with tunes—it is an +unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of +the act. At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might +easily grow wearying to the <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" />nerves, and then comes a long song, such +as Brangaena's remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the +ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst. That is the first +thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound +and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present. The +body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in +the sailor-song (<i><a href="#Page_275">g</a></i>); this goes through a hundred transformations, +and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing +and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and +the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards +Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they +will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when +Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the +meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's +first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and +again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never +losing its original colour. Wagner's mastery of the art of pictorial +suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and +enforcing the actors' emotion, is here at its supremest height. In the +<i>Ring</i> he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with +simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well +could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own +effect. But the burning passion with which <i>Tristan</i> is filled +necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone +amongst musicians had <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" />the art and strength to employ. Other +composers, notably Weber and Mendelssohn, had given the world grand +scenic music; but where they left off Wagner began. Their picture is +an end in itself: Wagner's are settings for the dramatic action.</p> + +<p>There are not many leitmotivs in <i>Tristan</i>, and they are used for +ideas and passions—never for personages. Tristan, Isolda, Mark, +Brangaena and Kurvenal have none of them a representative theme. Each +act has its own themes—a multitude of them—each carried through the +act in which it appears, and nowhere else employed; only (<i><a href="#Page_274">a</a></i>) and +(<i><a href="#Page_275">h</a></i>) appear throughout the opera. Some small use is made of (<i><a href="#Page_274">c</a></i>), +but once the poisoning episode is done with the subject ceases to have +any significance. That marked (<i><a href="#Page_275">h</a></i>) is of great importance. Its effect +is terrible when Isolda is enticing, or compelling, Tristan to drink +the cup. The sailors break in with their "Yo, heave ho!" and Tristan, +bewildered, asks, "Where are we?" Isolda, with sinister purpose, +replies, "Near to the end!" The intense originality, due to their +being closely allied to the dramatic meaning, of all the themes should +be noted: only one, the second part of the love-theme (<i><a href="#Page_274">a</a></i>), suggests +any other music. It is reminiscent of the introduction of Beethoven's +Sonata "Pathétique," and, after all, the phrase was not new when +Beethoven employed it.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" />IV</h3> + +<p>We have seen in this first act, if not the birth of love, at any rate +the avowal. The scene is laid on the sea, fresh, breezy, salt, +bracing, suggestive of infinite energy and possibilities. We are now +to witness it in its ripeness: not by any means a healthy ripeness, +but ecstatic to the point of frenzy, burning to the point of madness, +tumultuous, unbridled passion and lust; and, as these violent delights +have violent ends, ending in tragedy. When the curtain rises the +picture is in exquisite contrast with that presented in the first act. +Well did Wagner know the value of the scenic environment; he always +got it just and true and, from the artistic point of view, in sympathy +with the prevailing emotion. The demands on the scene-painters and +stage-machinists are nothing in <i>Tristan</i> compared with those made in +the <i>Ring</i> and <i>Parsifal</i>; but when the directions are complied with, +as I understand they occasionally are (I have seen them carried out +once), nothing more gorgeously effective can be dreamed of. Instead of +the morning air of Act I we have a warm summer night in a luxuriant +garden; on the left is a castle with steps leading up to the door, and +a burning torch makes the dark night darker; trees at the back and on +the right are massed black against the dark sky; in the centre under a +tree there is a seat for the convenience of the lovers. At the very +first glance we are taken into the atmosphere for a great +love-scene—the most magnificent love-scene ever conceived; and also +we are carried <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" />ages back—back to a time that never existed. This +old, world-old feeling, this sense of the past, is present to some +degree in the first act; but here the music makes it of overwhelming +power, and just as in the first act the sea is always present, so here +the sense of a remote period is never allowed to leave us.</p> + +<p>When the first chord of the brief, passionate introduction was first +heard in a theatre nearly half a century ago, it sent a shudder +through every professional class-room in every conservatoire in +Europe, and the theme is perhaps the most important in the act (<i><a href="#Page_276">j</a></i>); +and the cutting, almost raucous chord lets us know at once that big +doings are at hand. Another theme follows—one of impatience and sick +anxiety: it is that which is played again when Isolda, hardly able to +contain herself while waiting for Tristan, wildly waves her +handkerchief, beckoning to him. Another and most lovely melody is +heard (<i><a href="#Page_276">k</a></i>); and then some of the love-music which is played when he +does come and rushes to her arms. This leads straight to the rising of +the curtain, and Brangaena is seen on the steps by the torch, keeping +watch and listening to the horns of a hunting party; the sounds are +growing fainter in the distance.</p> + +<p>Isolda enters, and Brangaena vainly tries to dissuade her from meeting +Tristan. This night hunt, she swears, is a scheme of Melot's for the +betrayal of Tristan, his foe. Isolda laughs. Melot is Tristan's +friend, and the night hunt was arranged that the lovers might meet. +They dispute to some <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" />of Wagner's loveliest melodies. The theme (<i><a href="#Page_276">k</a></i>) +flows along as an accompaniment, and becomes more prominent when +Isolda says she can no longer hear the horns; she hears the gentle +plash of the brook running from the fountain—as "in still night alone +it laughs on my ear"—the party of hunters must be many miles off. The +signal for Tristan is the extinguishing of the torch, and the music +associated with this deed now is used again in the last act in another +form. Brangaena prays her mistress not to put it out: it means death, +she says, and as a sort of subsidiary death-theme this melody is +afterwards used. Isolda is too completely mastered by desire to +listen. When Brangaena curses herself for having changed the magic +drinks she is laughed at. To music filled with passion and of perfect +beauty she says the whole business was arranged by Venus, goddess of +love, and we hear yet another love-theme (<i><a href="#Page_276">l</a></i>); then to the crash of +what we must call the torch-theme, blent with the death-theme from Act +I, she throws down the torch and frantic with impatience awaits her +lover.</p> + +<p>He enters, and after some delirious pages not to be described in words +the pair fall to talk in Schopenhauerian terminology about the light +and the dark. But the passion never goes out of the music. On the +contrary, it grows in intensity, for the madness of the meeting is +nothing to the white-hot passion we get later; and in spite of the +terminology the meaning of both Tristan and Isolda is perfectly clear. +Light has been, and is, the enemy of their love; in the garish light +of day <a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" />Tristan, filled with daylight dreams of ambition, first made +over to Mark, so to speak, his rights in Isolda; "is there a pain or a +woe that does not awaken with daylight?" he asks; and now, declared +lovers, they may only meet in the dark: during the day they must be +distant strangers. They know whither fate is driving them: Isolda has +said as much to Brangaena: "she may end it ... whatsoe'er she make me, +wheresoe'er take me, hers am I wholly, so let me obey her solely." +They are embodiments of sheer passion; love is the most selfish of +passions, and placed as they are, realising that they live only for +and in that passion, they have no thought for any one else, regarding +the outer world, the world of daylight, as their foe. Isolda does not +hesitate to remind Tristan of his perfidy in the days of light; and +he, far from defending himself, finds it quite sufficient to remark +that he had not then come under the sway of night: that is, they have +no ordinary human affection for each other. If they had, neither would +lead the other into such danger. Shakespeare did not, could not, make +his lovers live so entirely in their passion as this: he had no music +to express himself by, and had to speak through human beings. So when +Romeo says, "let me stay and die," Juliet instantly hurries him away. +Tristan and Isolda know they are wending to death, and are content.</p> + +<p>Their feelings subside into soft languor, and then they sing the +sublime hymn to night. Brangaena's voice is heard from the +watch-tower, warning them of approaching danger; and they heed her +not. <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" />Again she sings to them that the danger is imminent—night is +departing; Tristan, resting his head on the bosom of his mistress, +simply says, "Let me die thus." The catastrophe is at hand. The duet +reaches its glorious climax; Brangaena gives a shriek from her tower; +Kurvenal rushes in yelling "Save yourselves," but it is too +late—Mark, Melot and the other huntsmen come in quickly, and—the +game is up. The red dawn slowly breaks; Tristan hides Isolda with his +cloak; Melot turns to Mark and says, "Did I not tell you so?"—his +ruse has succeeded quite well enough. And now follows a scene which +has proved a stumbling-stock to many.</p> + +<p>The ordinary dramatist or play-monger would drop the curtain on this +dénouement; and undeniably it would be what is called an effective +"curtain." However, effective curtains were not Wagner's business in +planning <i>Tristan</i>; he had long since passed through that stage. He +could not after such a curtain—the sort of curtain that ends many an +opera—have carried out the plan of <i>Tristan</i>—to show us the lovers +realising their impossible situation in life and deliberately seeking +death as the refuge. Tristan and Isolda care nothing for shame and +disgrace: they care only for their love, and their love relentlessly +drives them into their grave. Mark has a great affection for them +both, and precisely on that account he is their enemy. He begins a +long expostulation: "How is it that the two people dearer to him than +all the world have so betrayed his trust?" It is lengthy, and must +<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" />needs be so; each proof he gives them of his love only more clearly +defines his real significance and relation to them. Tristan does not +fear Melot: he dreads Mark's affection. He (Tristan) calls out, +"Daylight phantoms! morning visions, empty and vain—away, begone!" +but Mark continues, putting in a dozen ways the same question, "Why, +why have they done this?" It is not the behaviour of a barbaric king; +but we must remember that Wagner's Mark is not, and is not intended to +be, the legendary Mark any more than Tristan and Isolda are the +legendary Tristan and Isolda: he is the personification of human +affection, a thing to which they, enthralled by elemental love, are +indifferent—detest, indeed, as interfering with their love. When he +ends Tristan knows he has no explanation to offer—none that Mark +could possibly understand: human affection and elemental human passion +are unintelligible to one another. He replies that he cannot answer +Mark's "Why?" and turning to Isolda asks whether she will follow him +whither he is now going—the land of eternal night. He, not Mark, +plans his death. Isolda answers straightway that she will follow. +Tristan and Melot fight, but Tristan allows his treacherous foe to run +the sword through him, and he falls. <i>Then</i> we get the curtain; +Tristan has done with this world and has started out for another, and +the drama has taken a second step towards its goal.</p> + +<p>This, held for long to be bad craftsmanship, is consummate, daring +craftmanship. <i>Tristan</i> is a drama of spiritual conflicts; and those +who do not <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" />like that sort had better try something by the trade +playwrights of to-day.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>The music of the first act is largely fierce, angry, turbulent, often +bitter music, blent and merging into music expressive of fierce +desire, the hunger of the man after the woman, of the woman after the +man. There is one moment of sweet longing—the moment after Isolda and +Tristan have drunk the fatal potion; but instantly the torrent breaks +forth, and though it is in a way sweet, the sweetness is mixed with +fire; the stream is as a stream of molten lava, scalding, consuming. +The note of the music to the second act is utterly different; there is +fire, indeed, a golden fire; there is greedy impatience and +restlessness; but the fire does not scorch nor scald, the impatience +is not despairing, the love is not—as it certainly is in the first +act—that passion which is but one remove from deadly hate. Almost at +the beginning of the first act Isolda, devoured by a longing for +revenge, schemed to murder Tristan, and she does not falter in her +purpose until he has taken the drink; the reaction has all the +violence of a cataclysm; all is delirium; there is not a moment of +happy lingering over the joy of a possible; new life; there is no time +for that, no thought of it. All is burning wrath and hate and equally +burning lust and greed for the possession of the beloved one's body. +In the second act the anger has died out, and in the whirl of the +music, <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" />though at its maddest, there is a fulness, an assured sense of +coming satisfaction; and the excitement settles down into long, +drawn-out, luscious, voluptuous strains as the lovers, held in each +other's arms, exchange the sweet confidences usual (I suppose) on such +occasions.</p> + +<p>Musically the act may be regarded—conveniently, though roughly and +crudely—as a kind of symphony, in four sections which to an extent +overlap. We have section one from the first bar of the prelude to +Tristan's entry; section two, the impassioned duet; three, from the +hymn to night until the lovers are discovered; and four, from that +point to the end. Many of the themes are worked right through, but the +sections vary vastly in colour, atmosphere and feeling. The variety +unified into a completely satisfying whole is astounding. Amongst the +really great musicians only four possessed the organising brain in +this degree—Wagner himself, Beethoven, Handel and Bach. This act is +even more completely an organic whole than the first; every part +performs its functions and retains its individuality, yet all the +parts are co-ordinated. I have seen miraculous pieces of machinery in +which each part seemed to be alive and doing its duty independent of +the others; yet all working together to achieve one purpose. The score +of <i>Tristan</i> is as marvellous—indeed, more so, for the purpose is not +a mechanical one, but the expression, with rigid fidelity to truth, of +the most subtle and exquisite feelings.</p> + +<p>I have said earlier that in evolving his purely <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" />musical structures +Wagner adopted one plan. He not only used the subjects of his operas +for the overtures, or (as in the present case) of the preludes to the +acts, but he makes them tell a story dramatically. Merely to use +themes for an opera as conventional subjects to be treated in symphony +form had been done; but Wagner never dreamed of adopting a form and +imposing it on his material from outside; with him the form is +determined by the material and the significance the material bore in +his mind. This is very different from deliberately writing a symphonic +poem—deliberately sitting down in cold blood and setting to work to +illustrate a story. <i>That</i> method is antithetical to Wagner's; a +symphonic poem writer is simply a setter of opera texts, one who +follows with devout care the book of words put before him—with this +difference, that the opera-writer must, to some extent at least, +consider his words, his singers, his stage, while the composer of +symphonic poems can do just as he pleases and consider no one's +convenience, shortening this section or lengthening that as the +musical exigencies demand, while making use of some tale or a poem as +an excuse for writing in a form which in itself is unintelligible and +illogical. So far as Wagner could he let music and drama grow up +together; then to start with the right atmosphere he took certain +themes and spun a piece of music from them, letting the themes, as I +have said, unfold themselves logically and determine the form. The +result is always a fine piece of music; and thousands of listeners +have derived artistic enjoyment from the <a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" /><i>Mastersingers</i> overture, +the <i>Lohengrin</i> prelude and <i>Tristan</i> prelude without troubling to +trace the story as it is plainly told. In the prelude to Act II here, +for example, no one need seek a story, though it is obvious enough. +First we have the daylight theme, peremptorily, harshly announced; +then the impatience of Isolda, then her longing, then her thoughts of +love and her hopes of fulfilment, and just before the curtain rises +the crash which accompanies the extinction of the torch.</p> + +<p>I have already alluded to the old-world atmosphere got at once by the +horn calls and the lovely passage in which Isolda sings of the brook +"laughing on" in the still night; but in this first scene, which is by +comparison a mere introduction to the duet, we find a thousand +beautiful things. At this period of his life Wagner was by no means so +economical as he afterwards became; he squandered his pearls with +prodigal hands. In a few pages are enough melodies and themes to set +up a Puccini—or for that matter a Strauss or an Elgar—for life. The +blending of the death-theme with one of the love-themes, when Isolda +speaks of love's goddess, "the queen who grants unquailing hearts ... +life and death she holds in her hands," is one of the miracles of +music—stern beauty made up of defiance of fate and careless +voluptuousness. In the very next melody to make its appearance, the +second bar after the change to the key of A, we may note what I think +is the first sign of one of the many mannerisms of Wagner's "third +period," as we call it—the period extending from <i>Tristan</i> to the +finishing of <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" />the <i>Ring</i> (<i>Parsifal</i> being as the tail to the dog, or +perhaps the tin-kettle tied to the tail). It is the phrase quoted +(<i><a href="#Page_276">l</a></i>). Those five notes of the second bar were to be made to serve +many purposes hereafter; and the Wagnerites will insist that this was +done for a high artistic reason. Perhaps it was; but to me it seems +that it is found so frequently sometimes because Wagner wanted to +utter precisely the same emotion as he had employed it for earlier, +and sometimes because, like all other composers, at times he found his +invention flagging. In the second scene of this act of <i>Tristan</i> it +plays a conspicuous part, and is indeed one of the most pregnant love +motives of the drama—perhaps the most prolific of subsidiary themes +and passages.</p> + +<p>The big duet beats description, and its structure must only be +discussed briefly. A figure which forms part of the music played while +Isolda impatiently awaits Tristan is turned into the whirling +accompaniment to impassioned and incoherent exclamations as they first +embrace; then to the seething mass of tone is added (<i><a href="#Page_276">l</a></i>), and +gradually out of chaos and confusion emerges one clean-cut melody +after another. The daylight-theme which begins the introduction is +Protean in the shapes it assumes, and the emotions, now hot passion, +now the gentlest tenderness, it is made to express. The ferment +settles down, and we get the hymn to night and a series of melodies +which are love's own voice speaking. The dreamy voluptuousness that +pervades these duets comes from songs written by Wagner as studies. +They were not over highly <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" />esteemed by his friends, but he had his +revenge. This night in the garden—with the black night above and the +black trees around, the flowers, the musical brooklet, and the voice +of the caller heard at times from the roof—is the greatest thing of +the kind in all music: in all the arts, I know only the balcony scene +in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> which may be said to approach it. Melody upon +melody, delicate and sweet to the ear as the perfume of night flowers +and grasses to the nostrils, floats past; until at last the sheer +delight of the thing seems to work up the lovers to a state of +heavenly rapture, and in the final verse of the hymn to night they +pray only to be removed from the dangers of returning day; and here +the strains swell to an intensity of yearning for peace quite +unprecedented in music. And, as we know, their prayer is immediately +answered in a fashion they were hardly prepared for.</p> + +<p>Mark's address is deeply touching; and it is odd that when attacked by +Melot Tristan's accents are almost his. The sublime is again touched +when Tristan asks Isolda to follow him and in her answer. Melot then +stabs him, and the curtain drops to one of Mark's reproachful phrases +thundering from the orchestra. This, then, is Tristan's answer to +Mark's questioning—told in the music, not in the words.</p> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>Who first uttered that immortal piece of nonsense, Love and death are +one, I cannot say. The Greek conception of Death as Eros with an +inverted torch <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" />is quite different: it is a kind of <i>Tod als Freund</i> +idea; we are called out of life by an irresistible force or god, which +god must be love, else he would not want us. The inverted torch is the +sign that shows whither he calls us. It had a mighty fascination for +many fine minds of the second-rate sort last century; and judging from +the phraseology of <i>Tristan</i> it seems to have captured Wagner. He was +everlastingly bewildering himself with cheap catch-phrases which +happened, through suggestion or otherwise, to stir his emotions. He +took up one philosophical and political system after another, only to +abandon them in turn; but they left a kind of sediment in his mind, +and one never feels sure that the pellucid stream of his music-drama +will not the next moment be gritty to the palate with some of this +outworn stuff. The bits of Schopenhauer's broken brickbats embedded in +the libretto of <i>Tristan</i> serve their turn, though a finer and more +poetical way of saying the same things might have been found. But +Wagner did not find that more poetical way, so let us rejoice that +through this uncouth lingo Wagner managed to get into a sort of verse +the idea that night was the friend of Tristan's love and day its +enemy, and that in the end everlasting night is best of all. In his +letters, however, we find him playing with the love and death notion, +though he must have known that love is not death, but life; that if +love and death are one, then death and love are also one, and to be in +love is to be in death, to be dead—which is preposterous: corpses +don't love. Presently we shall see that <a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" />Isolda died in a state of +exaltation akin to the state of being in love; but that does not +establish the thesis. Blake, for hours before he died, shouted till +the ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God: +does that prove that mysticism and death are one? Mr. Chamberlain, in +his exegesis of <i>Tristan</i>, will have it that Wagner composed the opera +to demonstrate the truth of a very trite and ridiculous lie. The fact +is, Wagner's was far more a feeling, emotional, imaginative brain than +a thinking one, and in the hazy, steamy, overheated thinking part he +often let idle phrases play about without himself firmly grasping +their meaning or want of it. Anyhow, if he had done what Mr. +Chamberlain and many others say he did, we should have found it in the +last act. Instead, there is not a word on the subject. Wagner's +thinking might be misty: his dramatic instinct was supremely right and +sure.</p> + +<p>In the first act Isolda and Tristan enjoy their love only for a few +minutes; the world, daylight, breaks in and separates them. In the +second they revel in it for hours; the world, daylight, again +separates them. In the last the world again breaks in; but Tristan has +already found his refuge in death, and Isolda, obedient to her +promise, follows him, and they are joined, safe from the annoyances of +the "phantoms of the day," in "the impregnable fortress," the grave. +The action, as in the preceding portions of the drama, is of the +simplest. On his bed of pain and sorrow Tristan lies wounded and +unconscious. Kurvenal has got him away <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" />from Mark's court in Cornwall +to his own castle in Brittany; and now he has been brought out into +the castle yard for coolness and air. It is hot, sultry, close; the +sea in the distance seems to burn; the castle is dilapidated and +overgrown with weeds. Kurvenal watches by his master; from outside the +saddest melody ever conceived is heard on a shepherd's pipe. Presently +the shepherd looks over the wall and asks how the master fares, does +he still sleep? If he awakes it will only be to die, replies Kurvenal; +unless the lady leech (Isolda) comes there is no hope. A moment after +Tristan comes out of his coma, wanders in his mind a little, but at +last understands where he is and that Isolda will come. At that news +he works himself into a condition of unbounded excitement, fancies he +sees the ship bringing Isolda, but at the sound of that sad, droning +pipe melody, and when Kurvenal tells him it is a signal that no ship +is yet in sight, he lapses into unconsciousness again. Then he wakes +up, goes over the whole history of his love for Isolda, and faints +once more; once more he half awakes and as in a dream sees the ship +decked with flowers speeding over the summer sea. Suddenly the +shepherd strikes in with a lively tune: "Isolda is at hand," cries +Kurvenal. "Hasten to bring her," shouts Tristan, and Kurvenal does so. +Tristan, left to himself, goes mad for sheer joy, staggers off his +couch, tears his bandages off so that his wound bleeds afresh, and +Isolda rushes in just in time to catch him in her arms, where he dies +murmuring "Isolda." She laments over his body and sinks <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" />down beside +it. Another alarm is given; Kurvenal barricades the gate; Mark, Melot +and the rest break it down, and there is a terrible hand-to-hand +fight; Kurvenal is run through with a spear, and creeps to his +master's side, to die, groping for his hand. Brangaena enters, and she +and Mark try to explain how she has told the whole story of the potion +to Mark; how Mark has come, too late, to unite the lovers. Isolda does +not listen; presently she rises to sing the matchless death-song; she +sees Tristan before her, smiling, transfigured, his love envelopes her +as in billows; she is his now, at last, for aye; and, exhausted, she +again sinks down beside Tristan, and dies.</p> + +<p>There is thus in <i>Tristan</i> next to no action—no more than serves to +turn spiritual forces loose and helps to interpret various spiritual +states. The spectator is interested, indeed, in the <i>doings</i> of the +people on the stage only in the first act. Isolda's command to Tristan +to come before her, Tristan's evasions, Kurvenal's rude answer, the +rough gibing bit of sailor chorus, the episode of the two chalices +—the love potion and the poison—the scene between Isolda and Tristan +in which he offers her his sword and tells her to take her revenge by +killing him forthwith, the drinking, the wild embraces and the arrival +of the ship in port amidst the clatter of triumphant trumpets—such +things might have been, and were, done by Wagner in his <i>Tannhäuser</i> +days. But consider how little is done in the second act and in the +third. These two portions of the music-drama are more symphonic than +operatic, and it is <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" />small wonder that in the days when good folk +expected to see opera when they went into an opera-house, they thought +they had been diddled when they were given <i>Tristan</i> for their money. +If anything so new and unexpected were sprung upon us to-day we should +raise the same cry as was raised when <i>Tristan</i> was given nearly half +a century ago. The introduction opens with a phrase (<i><a href="#Page_276">m</a></i>) of threefold +meaning. It is clearly derived from the second phrase of the first +love-theme (<i><a href="#Page_274">a</a></i>, page <a href="#Page_274">274</a>); it is a realistic representation in music +of Tristan's stertorous breathing; it expresses his delirious state of +mind—chiefly, however, in the upward-drifting thirds and fourths with +which it ends at each occurrence. Then comes the music associated with +his suffering and the "lady leech." The whole passage is then +repeated, and afterwards we get the shepherd's pipe (<i><a href="#Page_276">n</a></i>). This forms +the prelude, and the music of the short scene with the shepherd is +practically the same. Some new matter is brought in, for dramatic +rather than sheer musical purposes, as Tristan awakens; but the next +subject that I need call attention to is the noble one which comes in +when Kurvenal assures him he is safe in his own castle (<i><a href="#Page_276">o</a></i>). The +whole of Tristan's subsequent ravings are made up of reminiscences, +more or less distorted, of various passages out of the first and +second acts, as he goes over, as in a dream, his recent life—the +sight of Isolda, the scene on the ship and that in the garden. Another +new theme to be noted is blazed out by the orchestra when Kurvenal +tells him Isolda has been sent for. <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" />When he sinks back exhausted and +no ship is in sight the shepherd's pipe keeps wandering through his +brain with strange, weird, terrible effect, mixing with fragments of +other themes; he gathers strength, and his despair rises to frenzy as +he curses himself—"'Twas I by whom [the draught] was brewed"—to a +phrase overwhelming in its intensity of expression (<i><a href="#Page_276">p</a></i>), and again +collapses.</p> + +<p>Presently follow a few pages of perhaps the divinest music to be found +in Wagner's scores, Tristan's dream of Isolda crossing the summer sea. +To an evenly pulsing gentle accompaniment we hear first the second +part of a love-theme (<i><a href="#Page_276">q</a></i>), then fragments of others, till the point +of supernal, Mozartean beauty is touched at "full of grace and loving +mildness." The pathos of it is almost intolerable: no one could stand +the strain another second, when after the cry, "Ah, Isolda, how fair +art thou," he rouses himself to anger because Kurvenal cannot see on +the rolling waters what he with his inner vision sees so bright and +clear. How any one could, even at a first hearing, fail to realize +that the composer of this sublime passage was by far, infinitely far, +the mightiest and tenderest composer of opera music who has +lived—this is a phenomenon that passes our comprehension nowadays. +The scene where the shepherd sounds his pipe to signal the coming of +the boat, and Tristan, his delight wrought up until it grows into +anguish, goes mad and tears off his bandages, baffles description. It +is made up of the love music of the first and second acts, the +melodies being <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" />metamorphosed in marvellous fashion. At the last he +sees Isolda throwing down the torch as she did in Act II, and as +darkness comes over his eyes we hear the same music combined with the +love-themes. There is only one thing of the kind to match Isolda's +lament—Donna Anna's grief over her father's body in <i>Don Giovanni</i>. +The rest of the act is largely made up of music which has been heard +before. The death-song is an extended and glorified version of the +hymn to night; and the close is of sad, tragic sweetness. The lovers +are joined together and at peace—but in the everlasting darkness of +the grave.</p> + +<p>Any one who has heard <i>Tristan</i> a few times will begin to notice that, +despite the endless variety of the music, it possesses an odd +homogeneity. After hearing it fifty or a hundred times one begins to +feel it to be comparable—if such a comparison could be made—to an +elaborate oration delivered in one breath. The whole thing, complete +in every detail, must (one thinks) have come bodily into the +composer's mind in one inconceivable moment of inspiration and +insight. Of course we know it was not so. A god may think a world into +being in that way: a mortal requires time and unflagging energy to +produce a masterpiece. We know that Wagner incorporated his own +studies in his masterpiece; we can see how theme is evolved from +theme. But the unity is so complete that if some sketches were to come +to light showing that the last form of some of the music was in +existence before the portions from which it seems to be evolved, I +should <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" />not be in the least surprised, so perfect is the unity, so +inevitably does every note fall into its proper place to express the +feeling of the occasion. I take it that when he drafted the words he +had before him a prophetic shadow of what the music was to be; and +when he came to compose, the uninterrupted white heat of inspiration +and enormous cerebral energy and intellectual grip of his matter, and +the boundless invention which provided that matter for him, so to +speak, so that he had only to pick it up ready made, enabled him to +make that more or less dim, prophetic shadow a living, concrete +reality. Never, from the first bar to the last, does the inspiration +fail him; there is not a phrase that says less, or says it less +adequately than the situation demands, than he has led us to expect. +Old Spohr, when he heard <i>Tannhäuser</i>, though his ears rebelled +against the unaccustomed discords, spoke about the Olympian +inspiration and energy he felt in the work; and this criticism—and +very just and fine criticism it was: as just and fine as it was +unexpected from an old-world musician such as Spohr—is equally +applicable to <i>Tristan</i>. In its power and perfection it seems the +handiwork of one of the gods. The very truth of every phrase, and the +fulness of utterance with which every phrase expresses the emotion of +the moment, has given rise to a common delusion or absurdity: that in +the Wagnerian opera every phrase is evolved or developed out of the +previous one. If Wagner ever thought of adopting such an insane +procedure he would have been puzzled to know how and where to start. +He might, <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" />perhaps, have evolved the first from the last, and thus got +a perfect rounded whole—a serpent with its tail in its mouth. As a +matter of prosaic, or poetical, fact, Wagner, in all his work, +incessantly introduces fresh matter, and dozens of themes appear, are +worked out, and disappear entirely.</p> + +<p>Now, when all this overgrowth of rubbishy comment is being swept away, +and those who contemned Wagner are disappearing with those who +battened on him and his memory, <i>Tristan and Isolda</i> remains, a +world-masterpiece, the most powerful, beautiful, sweet and tender +embodiment to be found in any art of elemental human love in all its +splendour, loveliness, fearfulness, terror and utter selfishness. +Thousands of years hence, when Europe has sunk under the waves and +fresh continents have arisen, perhaps a stray copy by hazard preserved +in the Fiji Islands will come to light, will be deciphered by pundits, +and a new race will see in it a primitive but consummate work of art, +and the pundits will argue themselves black in the face about the name +of the composer, whether he was Wagner or another man of the same +name. In the meantime millions of our epoch will have understood it, +loved it, and seen in it a thousand times more than we see in it +to-day, and many thousand times more than I could say in the preceding +pages.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" /> +<img src="images/p274.png" width="400" height="611" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" /> +<img src="images/p275.png" width="400" height="617" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" /> +<img src="images/p276.png" width="400" height="625" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" />By way of a footnote to this chapter I may be allowed to add a few +words about the smaller characters. All that Wagner took from the old +legends was the suggestion for the two lovers who sinned and perished +for their sin. Crudely or coarsely, gentlemanly (as in Tennyson), +refined and spiritualized, that idea is the central idea of every form +of the tale. To these two people Wagner added Brangaena and Kurvenal, +and, taking only the name of King Mark, he created a new personage, +unlike any of the older versions of the man, necessary for the +exposition of his idea. Brangaena is the most difficult part to sing +and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress. She has not +a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last +recitative. Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely +appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable +pathos. His phrase to Tristan, "The wounds from which you languish +here all shall end their anguish," is as touching in its rough, +uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master. That is +all Kurvenal is—a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it +requires a very great artist to interpret it. David Bispham's +impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen. Mark's +reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are +also very hard to render. In fact, only fine opera singers can take +any of these parts without coming to grief. The invisible sailor must +be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with +no little skill.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" /><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" />CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing +<i>Tristan</i>, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The +struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard +and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few +victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next +chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the +reader, to consider the <i>Mastersingers of Nuremberg</i> immediately after +<i>Tristan</i>. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the +second opera in its true chronological order. The <i>Nibelung's Ring</i> +was still in abeyance; <i>Tristan</i> finished, Wagner, in search of means +of subsistence—the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast +giving out—undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, +Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861 +his last hopes of a Paris success with <i>Tannhäuser</i> were extinguished; +his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of +debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as +bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a +simple case of "tasks in hours of insight <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" />willed can be through hours +of gloom fulfilled." The <i>Mastersingers</i> had been sketched, as we +know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the +character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an entirely +different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he +worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he +was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the +outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer +world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but +given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once +became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of +the <i>Mastersingers</i> his contentment should endure any length of time. +No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels +again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862 +that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in +the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say, +will occupy us presently.</p> + +<p>In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many +another city, a guild of minstrels—at once poets and musicians. The +name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as +for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic +pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the <i>Mastersingers</i> +that hangs from <i>Tannhäuser</i> I beg the reader not to ask me. There is +this similarity: the central <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" />scene of each is a minstrel-contest; +there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the +other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of +resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not +developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the +want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a +benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he +went ahead and wrote the poem.</p> + +<p>All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a +skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the +prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his +daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on +record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number +of entries—as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not +compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was +that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter. +There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and +Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the +<i>Mastersingers</i>, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and +goodly sport is expected. Hans Sachs himself, though past middle-age, +loves her, and might well hope to win; Beckmesser, another master of +the guild, means to do his best; and a young knight, Walther von +Stolzing, has just become infatuated with her and she with him. He +cannot strive in the contest, however, not being a master; and when he +submits to a trial the <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" />guild rejects him with scorn. Things have +arrived at this point at the end of the first Act. In the next, +Walther and Eva, desperate, resolve to fly under cover of darkness; +Sachs overhears them planning and sings a curious sort of +warning-song, letting them know that he is on the look-out and will +prevent the elopement; Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva, and David, an +apprentice, thinks he has come after <i>his</i> (David's) sweetheart and +falls to fisticuffs with him; there is a street row, amidst which Eva +escapes into her father's house, while Sachs pulls Walther into his. +In the third Act Eva, who has already told Sachs quite plainly enough +that if only a master may win her, and Walther cannot become a master, +she prefers him to any other, practically repeats her hint. But +Walther has composed another song and Sachs has devised a scheme: if +Walther sings his song he is certain to be the victor, and Sachs has +determined that by hook or by crook he must sing it. Beckmesser grabs +the song, under the impression it is by Sachs; Sachs, without +committing himself, tells him to make use of it at the contest if he +can. The people gather to watch and hear and judge; Beckmesser makes a +muddle of the song and is laughed off the scene; then Sachs pleads +Walther's case, and he is allowed, though not a master, to sing. He +triumphs, and by one stroke is admitted to the guild and wins the +prize. Virtually the play ends here. Sachs' winding-up address can +only be dealt with in connection with the music.</p> + + +<h3><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" />II</h3> + +<p>The personality, the soul, of Sachs, its conflict with itself, its +victory over itself and renunciation—undoubtedly Wagner felt this to +be the centre of the action of the play, and undoubtedly without it he +could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It +gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour +is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would +be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and +then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into +one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of +old Nuremberg—a vision as indissolubly blent with music as was the +vision of the river and the swan with the music of <i>Lohengrin</i>. One +may say truly that once the germ of the dramatic action was in +Wagner's brain he needed the musico-pictorial inspiration of the +scenic environment and atmosphere before the thing took final shape +and he could compose the music. He says explicitly this was so in the +case of the <i>Dutchman</i>; in <i>Tannhäuser</i> it is perhaps a little less +obviously the case. But even in that second of the great operas we +need only read his directions for the right performing of it to see of +what importance to him were the different scenes—the hot, steaming +cave of Venus, the fresh spring morning by the roadside, the great +hall of song—about which he <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" />was very particular—the autumn woods in +the last act. In his letters to Uhlig this comes out very plainly: for +instance, he gives as his reason for cutting down the finale of the +last act that it was impossible at Dresden to get a glorious sunrise, +with which the work should end. I have already laid sufficient stress +on the true source of <i>Lohengrin</i>; in <i>Tristan</i> adequate and +appropriate scenery is absolutely demanded to sustain the atmosphere; +and here, in the <i>Mastersingers</i>, music and a series of pictures go +together, and the pictures seem to inspire the music—or rather, music +and pictures are parts of the first inner vision.</p> + +<p>Mediæval Nuremberg, with its thousand gable-ends, its fragrant +lime-trees and gardens, its ancient customs, its processions of the +guilds and crafts, its watchman with his horn and lantern, calling the +hour, its freshness and quaint loveliness by day and its sweetness on +soft summer nights—it is these Wagner employed all his superb +musico-pictorial art to depict; they are the background to the purely +human element of the play, and at the same time they help to express +that element. If the <i>Mastersingers</i> was a little less successful as a +work of art we should still have to regard it as an amazing <i>tour de +force</i>. The opera is far too great for that term—one at once of +praise and of reproach. The music is full of the spirit of a past +world; but the feeling of that world is not got by the use of +artificially archaic phrases or harmonies. Kothner's reading of the +rules of correct minstrelsy is one of the exceptions, and the +night-watchman's crying of the hour is <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" />another; but these, as Lamb +said of Coleridge's philosophic preaching, are "only his fun." The +melodies are often quite Weberesque in contour; the harmonies are +either plain work-a-day ones or modern—so modern that no one had used +them before. Nor it is by the sadness of the music alone that he gains +his end: some of the merriest scenes belong, by reason of the music, +to mediæval times. By his art, the intensity of his feeling for those +times, and the fidelity with which he could express every shade of +feeling, he conjures up this vision out of the dead and dusty past, +makes the dead and dusty past live again, takes us clean into it and +keeps us there a whole evening without for a moment letting the spell +be broken. It is significant that the very title he gave his work is a +peremptory warning to us of what to expect: it is not <i>Hans Sachs</i>, +nor <i>Walther von Stolzing</i>, nor even the <i>Mastersinger</i>, etc., but in +the plural form, the <i>Mastersingers of Nuremberg</i>. This is not to cast +doubt on Wagner's sincerity when he declared that he only got the +creative impulse to go on with his work when he had conceived Sachs as +Sachs now stands: it is only to say that his extraordinary sense of +colour, atmosphere, and his historical sense, led him to do much more +than he thought he was doing and perhaps realized he had done.</p> + +<p>The overture as plainly as the title of the opera proclaims the +composer's purpose: it sums up the solid and pompous old burghers, the +impudent apprentices, the love of Walther and Eva, and says nothing +about Sachs. As an afterthought, in fact, <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" />Sachs is left for the +prelude to the third act. As a piece of music, detachable from the +opera, and by no means an integral part of it as is the case with the +<i>Tristan</i> prelude, the overture transcends every other work of +Wagner's. As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ +fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of +musical art—not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the +musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to +produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty. The energy of +the thing is almost superabundant; the gorgeous colouring is dazzling; +and every minutest fibre of it lives. The first theme is another +landmark in musical history. The harmonisation is extraordinary, not +only for its gigantic strength, but for the free employment of +chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so +employed throughout the <i>Mastersingers</i> that it sounds diatonic. +Throughout <i>Tristan</i> and in the Venusberg music of <i>Tannhäuser</i> +chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; but here we have +music that is as solid, equable, serene as a Handel eight-part chorus. +With consummate skill the stream of music is, so to say, led on to the +theme that always accompanies the mastersingers, as distinguished from +the citizens, of Nuremberg; next Walther's song is extemporised upon +(no other phrase serves) for a couple of minutes—the most passionate +page in the opera—and after that come the apprentices. We shall +presently observe that Wagner in this opera made light-hearted fun of +the pundits, <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" />and as if to show them that he had a right to do so he +played with the devices that to them were a very serious business +indeed. What to them was an end—I mean all the tricks of +counterpoint—was to him a means to expression: more expressive music +was never dreamed of in a musician's imagination, and at the same time +he accomplished with ease part-writing that the most skilful +contrapuntists could only perform by labouring long at expressionless, +stale old themes first contrived before the Flood to "work well," as +the phrase goes. The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner +takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the +length, so that it sounds four times as fast. The effect is +unexpectedly droll, the music skips about in the most irresponsible +way, and (when one knows what it is meant for) depicts the gambols of +the herd of young rascals who come on the scene in the first act. This +contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when +the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an +accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers' +music. There is a good deal of <i>tour de force</i> about this, but the +result justifies the means: the superb melody swings over the +ponderous bass, both melody and bass singing out clear and strong +amidst an animated, bustling and whirling sea of merry tunes.</p> + +<p>Composers generally left the composition of the overture till last—as +it were doing the thing only because an overture had to be +written—but Wagner knew the importance of his work and must have +<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" />composed this one very early; for in 1862, five years earlier than +the completion of the opera and six before the first representation, +he directed a performance of it in the Gewandhaus at Leipzig. He never +was a favourite in that stodgy city, the headquarters of musical +Judea, and the audience is said to have been scanty. In fact, he +himself said that, although he gave concerts only to gain money, he +never made any profits until he went to Russia. The audience, if +small, was enthusiastic. But, without entertaining any delusions about +persecution and the deliberate ignoring of his work, it is easy to see +that such music as this could not possibly be understood at once. +Though this overture is clarity itself to our ears, it is terribly +complicated, and the style was absolutely new. I doubt whether the +players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for +here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures +which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time. There +was no "form"—no statement of first and second subject, no +working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no +recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains +were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the +part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring—these were a +mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting. +Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst +them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his +nights to raising a stone wall of misunderstand<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" />ing between the +composer's music and the ears of the audience; and at this game Wagner +was an adept. The generation rising up to-day finds it hard to see +what an earlier generation found to carp at in Wagner's music; in +fifty years' time the war between Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites will +be inexplicable, and the story of it may not improbably be regarded as +grossly exaggerated, if not a pure myth. Men of my generation know +very well it was an ugly and stupid reality; we know also it was +brought about by the Wagnerites. Not Wagner's "discords," his "lack of +melody," his "formlessness" and so on hindered an almost instantaneous +appreciation of his music, but the "explanations" of the music. Things +easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were +"explained" as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the +"revolution" Wagner had brought about in music. No wonder many good +folks were distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it, +believing the Wagnerites' claim that their master had rejected all the +rules observed by previous composers. Wagner's own account of this +overture is enough to turn a man's hair grey and to break a woman's +heart. Had he only written a good deal less prose—or none at all!</p> + +<p>The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest +song in existence. Nearly all the characters are supposed to be +singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the +second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of +themselves and a bad song pro<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" />vokes a street riot; the opera winds up +with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song. If there +must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero. We hear snatches of +it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory +with a choral accompaniment. There are interludes, of course—Wagner +knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained; +but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the +clear-cut songs interspersed are parts. Even in the 'sixties, when +nothing later than <i>Lohengrin</i> was known, the charge was brought +against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung +—the <i>Mastersingers</i> was his answer. The overture leads into the +first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the +musical texture as the opera proceeds. We see part of the inside of a +church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending +to her devotions. Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the +custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of +hymn-tunes—a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid +use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and +makes them serve as a voice for Walther's feelings on seeing Eva for a +second time: on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in +love with each other. The next real song-music begins to flow with the +entry of the singers' guild; but meantime there has been some music of +the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of <i>Tristan</i>. +Recitative—often broken sentences and mere ejaculations—<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" />merges +imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way +to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly +continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment. The apparatus, in a +word, is precisely the same as in <i>Tristan</i>. In this first scene +Walther pleads his suit with Eva and her maidservant Magdalena; then +we have the apprentices, amongst them Magdalena's sweetheart David, to +some rollicking choruses and to their own music—the burghers' music +played four times as fast; and next David instructs Walther in the +rules to be observed if he wishes to compose a master-song and to be +admitted to the guild. Here Wagner indulges in positively uproarious +satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint +and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less +ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music +Wagner wrote in his <i>Rienzi</i> days, with sneers at the Jewish composers +of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he +wants to learn how to sing, not to cobble boots.</p> + +<p>The entry of the masters is a scene that only Wagner could have +executed. A stream of Mozartian melody ripples on as the men shake +hands and go through the conventional business of the gathering of +people on the stage: what in the operas of the day—a dozen instances +might be mentioned—is wearisome stodge is here turned into a thing of +surpassing beauty. These shifting shadows of the old world become for +the moment alive; yet we see them as though across the centuries +through the <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" />magical web of music. The steady swaying motion of the +accompaniment—and, of course, the whole charm lies in the +accompaniment—has a curious resemblance to the duet of the Don and +Zerlina in the first act of <i>Don Giovanni</i>, though Mozart's score is +simplicity itself compared with this. This use of a kind of rocking +figure led many younger musicians astray; and I make a comparison +between their use of it and Wagner's with no intention of being odious +to any one, but to show exactly where Wagner's superiority lay. Take a +composer of very fine genius, Anton Dvoràk, and look at a beautiful +number (beautiful in a primitive, almost savage way) in his <i>Stabat +Mater</i>, the <i>Eia, mater</i>. The theme of this (<i><a href="#Page_318">a</a></i>, page <a href="#Page_318">318</a>) is a +descendant, with several of Wagner's subjects, and three or four at +least of Sir Edward Elgar's, of the opening of Handel's "Ev'ry +valley." Dvoràk's form of it is quite original, but he never gets any +further: he cannot develop his subject. He adds an echoing, antiphonal +phrase; but even with this help he gets no further. At a first hearing +of this really very sincere and for moments entrancing work one hopes +for the best at the end of the first dozen bars; but better is not to +be. The theme becomes an accompanying figure to some not very engaging +choral passages: in the invention of the theme the whole force seems +to have gone out of the man: he has no power of achieving a climax +save by the addition of instruments: a growing climax to him means +nothing more than growing noise, and the grand climax is only the +noisiest passage of all. The one figure is repeated over and <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" />over +again, always with more instruments, until at last the complete +battery of the modern orchestra is hard at it, and Dvoràk's resources +are at an end. Now look at our mighty Wagner. He takes the simplest of +figures (<i><a href="#Page_318">b</a></i>), plays with it, with seeming carelessness, for a while, +then adds what is, technically, a counterpoint to it; he develops that +counterpoint, adds melody on melody—always keeping his figure going, +that the thing may be held together—until, after a rich and ever +broadening and deepening tide of music, he gets his climax at the +predetermined dramatic moment; and the climax does not consist of +noise, but is in the stuff of the music. Development, real +development, is not mere juggling with musical subjects, but +continuous invention of melodies, and the driving-force behind it is +the ceaseless craving of the spirit to express itself fully.</p> + +<p>Even more striking than this instance is the treatment of a figure +heard first when Pogner announces to the assembled mastersingers his +intention of giving his daughter Eva as the prize in next day's +contest. "To-morrow is Midsummer Day," he sings, and this figure (<i><a href="#Page_318">c</a></i>) +sounds from the orchestra. It is made up of two distinct sections. +That formed by the first two bars is used largely as an accompaniment, +but it continually comes round to the third and fourth bars, and +counterpoints are added until at last we are far away from the +beginning, though, as in the example discussed above, the figure welds +all together into a coherent whole for the intellect to grasp apart +from the appeal the music <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" />makes to "the feeling." This "feeling" of +Wagner's was absolutely right, it was infallible; and in consequence +we find a curious state of affairs is promptly established. The rich, +joyous strain of music, lull of the feeling of summer, immediately +becomes what was, so to say, at the back of Wagner's mind—the sense +of a spring not known to ordinary mortals, the everlasting spring of +Montsalvat, a spring full of promise and just as full of regrets, the +spring Tennyson sings of—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>Is it regret for buried time<br /></span> +<span>That keenlier in sweet April wakes?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The enchanting flood of music wells up from the orchestra, and the +vocal writing for Pogner is in Wagner's most lordly manner: there is +not a hint of the mechanical "faking" which characterises similar +passages in the <i>Ring</i>. If it was necessary to think that one part was +written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done +first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its +intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems +impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived +simultaneously. The interweaving becomes ever more marvellous as the +speech proceeds, the burgher theme in a varied form being added, until +at last, with the acclamations of the masters, it culminates in a +passage at once dramatically true, supremely beautiful and as +elaborate in its texture as any Bach fugue. We used to hear much of +the necessity for ambitious young composers to devote years to the +study of <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" />text-book counterpoint—indeed, the failure of many youthful +gentlemen to achieve anything on the grand scale has often been +attributed to their lack of diligence, their want of patience with +professorial instruction: yet here we have music which, from the +scientific point of view, is as perfect as any in the world, composed +by a daring soul who had no more than six months' teaching. It may be +remarked in passing that Spohr, in his naïve way a good enough +fugue-writer, never received any instruction at all: in point of +effectiveness his fugues beat anything coming from the Jadassohn and +Hauptmann pupils.</p> + +<p>With the re-entry of Walther and his proposal as a member of the guild +by Pogner, we get another of these great phrases, half-theme, +half-accompanying figure, and then Walther's spring song. He describes +how, sitting by the hearth in winter, he first learnt the art of +minstrelsy from reading "das alte Buch" of the greatest of minstrels, +Walther von der Vogelweide; then when the winter had passed he heard +the birds in the green trees singing the selfsame song. Thematically +this is much richer than the spring-song in, for instance, the +<i>Valkyrie</i>, and for the best of reasons—that in the <i>Valkyrie</i> is +incidental, part of a long duet woven from quite other material, while +that in the <i>Mastersingers</i> is itself the material of a large portion +of the opera. The tune of the first stanza in the <i>Valkyrie</i> is only +referred to once again throughout the work; and by far the most +expressive part is made out of a love-theme previously heard. In the +<i>Mastersingers</i> <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" />song there is subject-matter enough to make a whole +opera. From this point it is impossible to quote themes—they are far +too long. In this respect a writer on music is at a disadvantage with +a writer on literature; the latter can cite long passages to establish +a case or illustrate his meaning; the unfortunate musical writer must +refer his readers to scores, and it is inconvenient to sit amidst a +pile of these—and Wagner's are the longest and weightiest in +existence—and dive now here, now there, to follow the author without +danger of mistaking him. The most important passage in Walther's song +begins at bar 13 (counting from the beginning of the nine-eight +measure); and it is developed in as masterly a fashion as any of the +earlier subjects, only now the style is symphonic, in the Viennese +way, as the others were contrapuntal. The whole thing is full of the +yearning spirit of spring; and, not at all strangely, bears a marked +family likeness to Siegfried's song about his mother in the <i>Ring</i>. +Throughout the deliberations of the masters the music remains at a +high level: there are no <i>longueurs</i>; dry recitative and barren +attempts to treat prose poetically alike are absent. Kothner's +delivery of the rules of the art are good-natured fun; Wagner, with +his parody of eighteenth-century mannerisms, laughing at the wiseacres +who wished to tie down modern musicians to the procedure of their +forbears. Walther's trial song, with its gorgeous instrumentation, and +the rush of the winds of March through budding woods, is even finer +than the first; and it contains passages which are em<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" />ployed with +exquisite effect in the next Act. There occurs a deal of what can only +be called musical horseplay as Beckmesser, the pedant type, hidden +behind a curtain, marks Walther's "mistakes"; then comes the only +phrase (<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>) in the opera which can be said to be definitely associated +with Hans Sachs. It stands first for Sachs' honest longing for the +<i>new</i>; and afterwards it is made to express the longing in his soul +for other things. With the consummate craftsmanship Wagner possessed +at this period he adds to the score the utterance of the masters' +disapproval, of Sachs' approval, of Beckmesser's pedantic +maliciousness, of the riotous fooling of the apprentices, until we +have them all hard at work united in accompanying Walther's song in +what is nothing more nor less than a grand operatic finale. The thing +is justified theatrically, so to speak, rather than truly +dramatically; for though the masters manifest dissatisfaction by their +ejaculations, and the 'prentices, seeing the way the wind blows, get +out of hand, and chant their scoffing song in the most uproarious +fashion, Walther, inspired by a sense that he is right and a +determination not to be put down, continues his song to the end. Then +he proudly quits the room and the rest follow in confusion, leaving +Sachs for a moment to show his vexation; then the curtain drops.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The music of this Act is of the highest order of beauty and never +falls to the level of mere pretti<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" />ness; from the first note to the +last it is vigorous, sturdy. The combination of strength with delicacy +and gentleness is extraordinary: one feels that the reserve of this +strength behind it all must be unlimited. The orchestration is like +the music: it is always exactly appropriate to the music. One +characteristic of the themes should be noted: with the solitary +exception of that expressive of the deep longing in the heart of Sachs +(<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>) all are singable. Even the burgher motive can be sung and is +sung. When we consider the other operas we perceive that this is by no +means always the case. The <i>Dutchman's</i> motive is not so much sung as +jodelled by Senta; the Montsalvat music is rather orchestral than +vocal; all the motives in <i>Tristan</i> are either orchestral or +declamatory. In saying this I do not at all underrate the other +operas: simply I wish to point out the very marked difference in the +quality of the music. The <i>Mastersingers</i> is a long song, and the +first act the first verse of it. Such a profusion of melodies has +never been scattered over one act of an opera—not songs simply +pleasing to the ear, but constituting subjects surcharged with feeling +and capable of unfolding, as the opera goes on, into fresh forms of +the rarest beauty and splendour. We cannot lay our finger on a +superfluous bar, not one that can be cut without badly injuring the +whole work. This criticism applies to the other two acts. As new +material is introduced it is all singable; though harmonious effects +are freely used they are all there to enforce the melody. The swan, or +river, phrase in <i>Lohengrin</i> is, of course, purely <a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" />an effect of +harmony; but in this glorification of song Wagner seemed determined to +trust entirely to song and use his harmonic resources and +devices—which were inexhaustible—another day. Only once does he +resort to them: in the third act when Walther tells Sachs he has had a +lovely dream, by a single unexpected chord he gets the dream +atmosphere he wanted. At the same time the harmonies throughout are +freer, more daring, than they are even in <i>Tristan</i>. They are managed +with consummate mastery, the sharp collisions of the many winding +voices of the orchestra occurring infallibly in precisely the right +place. As I have said, not Bach himself managed a score of many parts +with finer mastery, nor gives one a more satisfying sense of complete +security; not Bach, nor Handel, nor Mozart was a greater +contrapuntist; instructively, instinctively, he knew the way his +stream of music was going, and so mighty a craftsman had he grown that +to achieve new harmonies and harmonic progressions by the interweaving +of many melodies, each individual and expressive, seems almost like +child's-play to him. But the old saying, easy reading means hard +writing, is true in the case of the <i>Mastersingers</i>. We have only to +glance at Wagner's letters to see the labour all his later works cost +him, and his incessant complaints about the state of his nerves are +significant. The writing of the <i>Mastersingers</i> was spread over six +years. It does not matter whether it was written easily or with +difficulty—the marvel is that it was written at all.</p> + + +<h3><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" />IV</h3> + +<p>The first act is the song of spring, the second one of a beauteous +summer night. The night slowly falls, and lights are seen at the +windows of the gabled houses. The apprentices put up the shutters of +the shops and bar the doors. We have old Nuremberg before our eyes; by +Sachs' door is the inevitable elder-tree, by Pogner's the just as +inevitable lime; and as surely as Schumann caught the scent of flowers +from a piece of Chopin's, do we catch the fragrance of those trees in +Wagner's music. The 'prentices, hard at work, merrily chant +"Midsummer's Eve" ("Johannestag"—not a precise translation), and +banter David concerning that very serious matter, his courtship of +Magdalena, the accompaniment being spun largely from the midsummer +theme of the first act. The atmosphere, sweet, clear, redolent of the +old world, and seeming to sparkle with excitement about the coming +joys of the morrow, is first created by a prelude scarce thirty bars +long. Through more than half of this section we get shakes and +arpeggios on one (technical) discord (<i><a href="#Page_318">e</a></i>), with snatches of the +midsummer theme, and the exhilaration of the eve of a holiday given to +us in this very simplest of ways shows the miracle worker in his +happiest mood. Like the opening of the <i>Rhinegold</i>, this brief prelude +is an exemplification of Wagner's advice to young composers—never +travel out of the key you are in if you can say in it what you have to +say. The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal—in fact, the +<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" />whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the +note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But +presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is +Beckmesser or no one. Dramatically the scene is of the lightest, but +Wagner seizes the opportunity to paint a musical picture of Nuremberg +as Pogner holds forth on the festivities arranged for the morrow; +never did he give us anything more delightful than this picture of a +mediæval city, anything more beautifully or more fully charged with +the sense of the past. They go in, and shortly Sachs comes out; he +tells David to arrange his tools and get away to bed, and sits down, +intending to work outside. The hammering motive (<i><a href="#Page_318">f</a></i>) sounds out +vigorously for a couple of minutes; but Sachs is already dreaming of +Walther's song, and presently we get a phrase of it in a shape of +superb beauty—the fifty times distilled essence of spring is in +it—then another bit of it is taken and used as an accompaniment with +most enchanting effect: one feels the cool night breeze touching +Sachs' cheek, and, as in the introduction, one scents the aroma of +lime and elder—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"The elder scent floats round me; so mild, so rich it falls,<br /></span> +<span>Its sweetness weighs upon me; words from my heart it calls...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With its gently rocking motion and the tremolando in the bass it is as +beautiful in its way as the opening scene, already discussed, of the +second Act of <i>Tristan</i>—the picture of the brook running through <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" />the +darkness from the fountain in King Mark's castle garden. Sachs +abruptly ceases, and sets to work; and the hammering phrase is heard +again, now combined with the beginning of another subject, liker than +ever to Siegfried's great song—the very harmonies as well as the +general rhythm are the same—and this subject is developed before long +into the Cobbler's song. But "and still that strain I hear"; and he +stops and dreams again over Walther's song. "Springtime's behest, +within his breast, on heart and voice there was laid," he sings; and +to music compact of sheer loveliness he praises the song, terminating +with a passage which I take to be nine bars of vocal writing as fine +as can be found in the whole of music—"The bird who sang this morn."</p> + +<p>Eva steals out from her father's door, and at once the dramatic motive +of the action deepens. We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the +night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's +heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element +comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether +there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and +she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love. +Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the +other shaped from a fragment of Walther's first song; these two are +gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in +expressiveness, until Eva's secret is no secret from the audience, +though Sachs himself is supposed not to <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" />be at first quite sure about +it. When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase +(<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>), and its full significance is brought out. The real Hans Sachs, +we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young +girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily. That, obviously, was +too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera—every one would +have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been +pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the +libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this: that Wagner +created a soul for <i>his</i> Sachs. Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending +of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the +haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for +his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a +pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and +disastrous cad. In the trial scene he has already half divined +Walther's object, and the theme (<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>) in its application hints not +only at his longing to grasp "the new" in Walther's song, but also his +longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to +renounce her in favour of the younger suitor. Towards the end of the +opera, when Sachs brings the young pair together he says (to music +quoted from <i>Tristan</i>) he would not play the part of King Mark and +thus invite his Isolda to find a Tristan. I ask the reader to compare +this phrase with one form of the first love-theme in <i>Tristan</i> (<i><a href="#Page_318">g</a></i>). +The essential notes are the same; but as a melody is made to sound +another and different thing by varying the harmonies, there <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" />is in the +Sachs phrase a touch of sadness, nearly hopelessness, but no hint of +it in the <i>Tristan</i> form. The true meaning is not obvious when it +first occurs: Sachs seems simply to be the appreciator of true art and +to be standing up for the true artist Walther against the barren +pedant Beckmesser.</p> + +<p>And I beg leave here to make a digression. I have spoken of Wagner's +obsession by the notion that he could by his union of drama, music, +pictorial art, etc., make his work clear enough to be understood at a +first performance: in his letters he referred to a plan for giving the +<i>Ring</i> only once and then burning the theatre and the score—he did +not add the composer and the artists. Unfortunately this view has been +taken as a tenable one by good critics, and it has been argued +seriously that such a phrase as (<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>) is meaningless, because its +significance becomes apparent only in the second act. No great work of +art can be seen at one glance—least of all Wagner's. If a painter +puts before us a picture, say, of Perseus and Andromeda, we know at +any rate what it is about; and there is no difficulty in understanding +a Madonna. But, with the exception of the <i>Dutchman</i>, Wagner reshaped +all his subjects so that, for instance, an acquaintance with the +Nibelung legends is rather a hindrance than a help to a swift +understanding of the <i>Ring</i>. At first his King Mark is a puzzle to +those who know the Arthurian legends; and in the same way, if the +Sachs of history is confounded with Wagner's Sachs, we are at once +utterly at sea. But a knowledge of Wagner's Sachs can scarcely be +acquired from the words alone: more is <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" />told us in the music than in +the words; and before we can grasp the drama as well as Wagner's use +of phrases we must hear the opera many, many times. I deny that this +is an illegitimate mode of appeal to an audience; I deny that the +indispensability of knowing an opera thoroughly before you judge it is +to imply that it is less than a very great work of art; I affirm that +the nobler, profounder, more beautiful a work of art, the more +necessary it is to be able to look at every passage with a full +consciousness of all that is to come after, as well as of what has +gone before. Wagner himself was compact of contradictions, and so, +while trying to create his operas in such fashion that a single +performance would suffice to reveal their splendour, he took the +precaution to write detailed explanations which might serve the same +purpose as many previous performances; and he also wrote explanations +of Beethoven's symphonies.</p> + +<p>Throughout this long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never +lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding +us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance +is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly +spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser. +A scene of such length, constructed on such a plan, could have been +carried through by no other composer than Wagner—the sweetness, +variety and dramatic strength and truth are Wagner at his ripest and +best. After Eva's heart has been opened to us he takes up (<i><a href="#Page_318">d</a></i>), and +though Sachs is a little grumpy—the effort to resign Eva inevitably +though <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" />insensibly showing itself—we learn all about him and share +his secret, too, in a very short while. Then Magdalena calls Eva and +tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her +place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera. +Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin +to one of the greatest in <i>Euryanthe</i>. As we get on we find it harder +to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing. The gentle +evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning +the masters who compose and sing only by rule—and, by the way, what +would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and +sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?—works +himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise +is heard in the distance, the watchman's cow-horn. A minute's silence, +and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music—expressive of the +love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote +past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk +to look after their lights and fires: it is ten o'clock (late hours) +in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs. Sachs has +heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off +disaster in one shape at any rate: he places a light so that they +cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but +that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to +perform his serenade. From this point Wagner, without ever ceasing to +be the consummate artist or <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" />allowing the old-world atmosphere to +weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out +for a holiday. He begins his splendid song, a parable: Eve was well +enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the +Lord sent a shoemaker to save her. The words are in the very spirit of +the Middle Ages: a materialistic, naïve, literal handling of spiritual +things; but the most devout of believers can find no cause of offence. +The song opens, as I have mentioned, in the rhythm (4-4 instead of +3-4) of the Sword scene, the harmonies being practically the same. The +tune is one of Wagner's finest: indeed, if we did not know what he +could do, if we could not hear the opera once in a while, we should +refuse to believe that such dignity and beauty of utterance could be +kept up alongside of the grave old cobbler's humorous bedevilment. +Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva—mistaking Magdalena at the window in +Eva's dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser's new +shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the +insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for +every mistake. Before this is arranged there is a long altercation, +and as the heat of the men's temper dies down that sweet love melody +of the old world creeps in again; but then the farce commences. +Beckmesser's song is almost outrageous caricature; the parody of the +academics of Wagner's day who made no mistakes from the academic point +of view, and yet could write nothing that sounded right, is +excruciatingly funny; then David, under the impres<a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" />sion that the chief +of the academics is serenading Magdalena, comes out, goes in to fetch +a stick, comes out again armed, and sets to work with it upon +Beckmesser; the good burghers have been annoyed by Beckmesser's +caterwauling and Sachs' hammering; out they come to keep their streets +in order; and the tumult begins in serious earnest. Every one hits at +every one else, as Irishmen hit, it is said, at Donnybrook Fair; +Beckmesser is sadly injured; Sachs kicks David indoors, Eva and +Magdalena are got in to Pogner's; Sachs gets Walther in with him also; +the row dies down. No one save Sachs and David knows how it started; +no one knows why it ends. It is—allowing for the lapse of four +centuries—rather like a cab accident in London or any other great +city: ladies in night attire look out of windows, and, seeing their +husbands engaged in deadly warfare, in the very spirit of Miss Miggs +begin to empty pails of cold water over the combatants +indiscriminately. Apparently this cools the ardour of everybody. One +by one the crowd makes for shelter; the watchman's horn is heard a few +streets away; and when he arrives with his lantern and stick a few +minutes later the alley and platz are deserted. The moon shines out on +the lovely scene; the old man chants his call—it is eleven of the +night; all the world should be in bed; all the lights and fires should +be out; he goes off, leaving us the wondrous picture of old Nuremberg +sleeping in the heart of old Germany; and the curtain slowly falls. A +very ineffective "curtain" it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in +the 'sixties, <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" />and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; +but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of +the dramatic works of the world.</p> + +<p>It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a +scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now. I have +referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested +throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this +mastery. Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and +also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with +nobility. Sachs' song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its +joviality we feel the greatness of the man—a man so great in +character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving +banners are needed to make him impressive: he remains, even while he +works at his last and sings a sort of club-dinner song, the simple +cobbler-poet, great by reason of his sincerity and his artist-soul. +The street scrimmage is the most realistic thing of the sort ever +attempted, not to say achieved. It is customary to describe the music +as a fugue, and, if that is so, no more unfugue-like fugue was ever +penned. It begins with a parody of a fugue, the answer being announced +before the subject—that is, what purports to be the answer occurs a +fifth instead of a fourth below; then what purports to be the subject +is re-announced one tone above its first statement, and answered, as +before, a fifth below. Then the melody of Beckmesser's grotesque is +brought in and treated contrapuntally, <a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" />with what theorists call free +imitation in the accompaniment. Fugue, real or tonal, there is none.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>This midsummer night's orgy over, we next have midsummer day. The +curtain rises; the early morning sun shines through the windows of +Sachs' house; Sachs sits there, a book on his knees, but dreaming, not +reading. But before the rising of the curtain there is a prelude to +tell us of his musings. When we know the opera this piece is easy +enough to follow. He thinks over the events of the past night, and +passes through thought into dream, getting clean away from earth into +a serener air—and coming slowly back to earth again. Structurally +this piece is on the same plan as others of the preludes—that of the +third act of <i>Tannhäuser</i>, for example. It is nonsense to say the +piece is meaningless because it cannot be fully grasped at a first +hearing: I have already spoken of the fallacy involved in that +contention—the fallacy that a work of art should be completely +comprehensible at a first hearing. It is equally nonsensical to decry +the "literary" method of composition: that method was the method of at +least two others of the great composers, Haydn and Beethoven, who +"worked to a story." In fact, all these unreasonable reasoners who +tell us these fine incontrovertible pieces of absurdity place +themselves on the same level as the pundits who pointed out that +because <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" />Wagner used the piano when composing, therefore he could not +compose—forgetting Haydn's explicit statement that he always composed +at the piano; forgetting how Mozart spent hours and days at the piano +in doing the creative work of a new opera; forgetting that Beethoven +used the piano even when he could no longer hear it (see Schindler's +or Ries' account of the composition of the "Appassionata" sonata). As +a mere piece of music, a succession of tones and combinations of +tones, the rare quality of this prelude cannot but be felt; and though +we may not at once grasp its full significance, no one can miss the +sequence of the emotions expressed—the grave reflection of the +opening, the hymn-like succeeding passage, the gradual mounting of the +music into a beauteous, calm morning air, some realm of ecstatic peace +far above the clouds, the gradual return to the mood of the opening. +When we do know what it is all about the expression of the different +stages of feeling is felt to be more precise—that is all.</p> + +<p>The prelude prepares for Sachs' monologue, a profound thing, and one +moreover entirely new—had Shakespeare been a musician he might have +done something like it. Then David the Irresponsible enters, and we +get some more of Wagner's exquisite fooling; next we have Walther with +his "dream," out of which the Prize-song is made. This is a long +scene—perhaps a little too long—for Wagner seems to have been +determined that if the audience did not feel the beauty of his melody +it should not be for want of hearing it often enough. As Walther +<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" />sings Sachs takes it down in tablature, calling out to him what +sections are next required. Sachs then declares that this is indeed a +master-song, and will win Walther the prize he so much desires; he and +Walther go off to attire themselves for the contest, and Beckmesser +limps in. In dumb show he describes his aches and pains and shows how +he is thinking of his thrashing of the night before; and what he does +not say the orchestra says very plainly for him. There is far too much +of it—for English tastes, at any rate—before he is alarmed by +discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs' handwriting. He +snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great +ceremony, and there is a row—Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and +suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other. Let +me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner's stage +craftsmanship at its best. There is nothing conventional in the way +Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser his chance: what more +natural than that they should go to prepare themselves? Nor is the +finding of the manuscript one of those things that give people who +don't like opera cause to blaspheme: Sachs simply left it on the table +to dry until he returned for it. Compare this scene with that in +Verdi's <i>Falstaff</i>, where that fat hero, hiding behind a screen, must +be supposed not to hear an elaborate ensemble number sung by the other +characters—an instance which one might presume to be intended to make +the "aside" so ridiculous that no one would ever dare to use it again. +Wagner, for the time, at <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" />any rate, had ceased to make demands on the +credulity of his audiences or their meek acceptance of a preposterous +convention. The business is kept up too long, as I have just +confessed; and this is perhaps explained by Wagner's evident desire to +make fun of the men who for years had called him a charlatan, a bad +musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his +living. Still, it is a small blot on a big opera. The music for such +incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the +cases of a <i>tour de force</i>. But even its inferiority is made to serve +a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of +Eva and her conversation with Sachs. Beckmesser has gone away joyfully +with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song +by Sachs—who has told him he can do what he likes with it—and +revealing the fact that, despite all his boasting, in his heart he +knows the cobbler to be immeasurably his superior. In music hardly to +be matched for sensuous beauty Eva's trembling perturbation and hopes +and fears are exquisitely suggested; then with the arrival of Walther, +and also of Magdalena and David, we get a little more fooling, +followed by one of Wagner's loveliest and most amazing feats, the +quintet. If only for one reason it is amazing. Only a few years before +the notes were set down, and certainly only a year or two before the +thing was planned in the libretto, he had vehemently declared, in +essays and letters, that never again would he compose anything in the +operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; <a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" />henceforth +music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first +opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to +his first act—which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to +his second act—which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in +the middle of his third act—which according to his own theories at +any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came +to compose <i>Tristan</i> he discovered he had gone far beyond his +theories. The justification for the quintet is its beauty and the fact +that it finds expression for the feeling of the moment. All the same, +I have heard it encored more than once; and an encore in the middle of +the act of a Wagner music-drama, or even music-comedy, is almost +inconceivable.</p> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>The two pairs, Walther and Eva, and David and Magdalena, having been +joined together, and David having been freed from his 'prentice +servitude by a hearty box on the ear, the quintet having been sung and +(as just remarked) sometimes encored, Wagner gathers himself together +for a gigantic scene as characteristic of his genius as anything he +conceived: no one, indeed, but Wagner could have done or would have +thought of attempting such a scene. He has shown us the masters of +Nuremberg in conclave, the apprentices romping and joking, the crowd +in the street losing its head; and how he <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" />gives us a picture of the +town on a fête-day, with the trade-guilds marching to the +singing-contest. The tailors, the shoemakers, the bakers and the +butchers all file past, chanting the merits of their various callings, +finally gathering on the meadow outside the town to await the arrival +of the chief burghers. It is a picture, not a dramatic scene, and to +judge only from the text might suggest the <i>Rienzi</i> way of planning +things. It is not, however, a spectacle in the sense in which we apply +that word to some of the <i>Rienzi</i> scenes; there is nothing pompous +about it, no recourse is made to gorgeous costumes. The artisans march +past in their holiday clothes, each guild bearing its banner; the +banners wave in the bright sunlight, and there is plenty of colour as +well as of bustle and gaiety; but all is homely in style—there is not +a noble person in the crowd—and the thing is carried through by the +vividly imagined music, the energy and sparkle of it, the positive +splendour of the orchestration. The various guild-choruses are full of +humour, the many ridiculous things being saved from lapsing into mere +horseplay and nonsense by the endless series of beautiful tunes. This +part of the business ends with a waltz which shows that Wagner might, +had he chosen, have been the finest writer of dance-music in Europe, +and driven the Strausses and the rest from the field.</p> + +<p>The signal is given of the masters' approach, and as Sachs comes on +the whole crowd presses to greet him with a setting of his own song to +Martin Luther. The transition from the jollity of the dancing to the +<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" />solemnity, nay, sublimity, of this chorus is managed with perfect +deftness: there is no incongruity. It is this song that passed through +Sachs' brain when we found him absorbed in meditation at the beginning +of the act. The poem—written by the historical Sachs—is itself +beautiful, and Wagner has made it immortal; only he at his ripest and +best could combine in an opera-chorus such strength with such +sweetness, combine the directness of a part-song with the free play of +parts, with never a touch of formalism. It must be held to be one of +the most superb things in an opera which is as nearly perfect as ever +opera is likely to be.</p> + +<p>This over, we are gradually prepared for the ridiculous and +preposterous again. Beckmesser is to make his bid for Eva's hand with +what he supposes to be a song by Sachs; and to an accompaniment of +music which, lively and graceful enough, is purposely of no very +distinctive character. The preparations are made. By the time he +mounts the heap of turf to address his audience we are ready for him. +Of course he makes a fine ass of himself. He has not had time to +memorise the poem of the song, and with extravagant fun Wagner makes +him change the poetical and serious words into words of most ludicrous +significance. Walther's melody he has not got hold of at all, and in a +state of intense nervousness tries to fit the words to the burlesque +tune of his previous night's serenade. The accents all fall in the +wrong place; and as he stumbles miserably along the crowd begins to +titter. Wagner of course was parodying and satirising the pedants <a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" />of +his own day, especially the composers of psalms who could not set a +straightforward Bible sentence without making nonsense of it. Readers +acquainted with the ordinary musical setting of a portion of the +Church of England service, or the average organist's anthem, will know +what I mean: the average organist seems to consider it a point of +artistry, if not indeed of honour, to accentuate the words so as to +leave the meaning as little intelligible as possible; and in many +cases—I have some before me now—he contrives to make them +nonsensical. It was this sort of thing, perpetrated by the very men +who denied him any musical gift, that Wagner held up to derision in +Beckmesser's song. The tittering swells into a roar, and at last +Beckmesser, cursing Sachs for a deceiver and false friend, flies. With +that, fooling ends. To music of a rare sweet gravity Sachs invites the +"volk" to hearken to the song when given by the man who composed it. +Walther steps up and sings; as he goes on the people again make +themselves heard, but to praise, not to deride; towards the finish +their voices form a choral accompaniment, and we have the counterpart +to the finale of the first act. Walther wins the day and Eva; and, +slightly against his will, he is made a Master. There is an address +from Sachs, in which he exhorts Walther and all present not to despise +art, but to honour it as being (for this is what his speech amounts +to) the heart's blood of national life. Preachments are not usually +stimulating, but this one is mercifully brief, and is accompanied by +fine, melodious strains. With its contrapuntal weaving it <a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" />leads to +the final chorus, and also it puts Sachs back again into the position +from which the importance of Walther's song has thrust him: it is a +last reminder that the opera is a glorification of song, and that the +masters have a sacred trust—to guard song pedantry and commercialism. +The work closes with a grand chorus made up of familiar music, a +glorious blaze and riot of orchestral and choral colour.</p> + + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>The second section of this chapter contains what I have to say by way +of summing up. Let me repeat that the <i>Mastersingers</i> is notable for +the endless flow of beautiful melodies, neither broken and scrappy +nor, on the other hand, approaching monotony: there is infinite +variety combined with magnificent breadth; for the nobility hidden +under homeliness—a characteristic most marked in Sachs' music; for +miraculous colouring now pitched in a low and tender key, now blazing +as in the last finale; for the picture of Nuremberg in the old time, +and for the vigour and fun with which the old life is depicted. It is +Wagner's one cheerful opera, and from some points of view, perhaps, +his most perfect; nowhere else did he try to keep on a high and even +level of pure song for so long; it does not strain our nerves, and +will bear hearing perhaps more frequently than anything else he wrote.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" /> +<img src="images/p318.png" width="400" height="611" alt="Music" title="Music" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" /><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" />CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>KING LUDWIG</h3> + + +<p>In resuming Wagner's biography we may conveniently take it up after +the completion of <i>Tristan</i> in August, 1859. I summarised the events +leading up to his beginning on the <i>Mastersingers</i>; but it is +necessary to go over some of the ground in a little more detail to +show in what a terrible plight Wagner had been landed when King Ludwig +II of Bavaria sent for him. He was bankrupt financially, in health and +in hope. Like the nose of his boyish hero, everything turned to dust +the moment he touched it. Concerts in Paris nearly brought utter +ruin—would have brought utter ruin had not a woman friend and admirer +come to the rescue. He gained no money by his concert tour until, as +he said, he got to St. Petersburg, and there the amount cannot have +been stupendous. He laboured with brain, heart and hand to give the +world masterpieces; the world responded by not responding at all—by +taking absolutely no notice. In Paris he made many valuable friends, +but they were useless to him for the realisation of his projects. They +might help him from moment to moment, and did help him to remain alive +and to avert calamities: a secure and peaceful living they could not +guarantee him: they could not assist him in getting his works +<a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" />properly performed, or performed at all. I have already discussed the +mistaken policy, on his part, of writing so much about himself, and +the futility of his German friends taking up the pen on his behalf. +The friends meant well, and there was nothing else they could do; but +at the time their efforts resulted in nothing. He published the words +of the <i>Mastersingers</i> and of the <i>Ring</i>, and the consequence was only +that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity +as the second to music. It is hard to say who did him the greatest +amount of harm—his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies +on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days. +Whatever was done for him, whatever he did for himself, whatever was +done against him, it seemed all one: he walked steadily on into the +thickest of grimy fogs. By romping over Europe like any itinerant +conductor of this day, he might earn an uncertain livelihood: as for +any prospect of getting on with his <i>Mastersingers</i>, his <i>Ring</i> and a +score of other plans bubbling in his head, that was a receding +prospect indeed: every year, every month, made the prospect still more +remote. His music was either misunderstood or disliked: certainly the +man's writings and the writings of his friends resulted in <i>him</i> being +disliked. When he settled in Vienna after the triumphs of his earlier +operas he speedily discovered this sad truth, but did not discover the +reason why. His life had been a long tragedy, and with this collapse +of his Vienna hopes he seemed to touch the lowest depths.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" />So he got away from Vienna, and one day had a visitor. This gentleman +said, in effect, that King Ludwig II had just ascended the throne, and +would be glad of a call. Instantly the grimy fog cleared away; all was +splendid sunshine: in that sunshine Richard was henceforth to bask and +the fruits of his genius were to ripen. He went to Munich, and there +were prompt results. In 1865 <i>Tristan</i> was (at last) produced; he was +enabled to make a new start on the <i>Mastersingers</i>, which was +eventually produced in Munich in 1868. But in Munich, as elsewhere, +the inevitable occurred. Wagner suddenly became the "favourite," quite +as in mediæval times, of a not very popular king, one of a line noted +for mental and moral deficiency; and, without consulting any of the +powers that had ruled for a long time in Bavaria, in his mad +enthusiasm he set about "reforming" everything. Apparently he wanted +within twenty-four hours to set up a Saxon Utopia in the midst of a +people who hated the Saxons. He wanted to establish a new opera-house, +where perfect artists were to give perfect performances for audiences +that did not pretend to be perfect. As such performances could not +possibly pay, the audiences, besides putting down the price of +admittance, had, as taxpayers, to make good the deficits. King Ludwig +was supposed to do it; but where on earth was Ludwig's money to come +from if not out of the taxpayers' pockets? Then there was to be +founded a genuine school of music—an excellent scheme, but one, +again, which could not possibly be profitable, or for some time earn +enough to cover its <a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" />expenses. Who was to pay?—of course King Ludwig: +that is, the taxpayers. And Wagner was not only known (with absolute +certainty) to wish to divert from the pockets of "placemen" funds they +had learnt to consider their perquisites, with a view of turning +Munich into a musical paradise on earth: it seemed to many that he was +gaining such an ascendancy over the feeble mind and will of the king +that shortly he would be dictator of the country. That view was not +well-founded: Wagner, dreamer though he was, had a strong practical +vein in his character: if he saw that one of his dreams could be +realised he realised it at the first opportunity; if he saw it could +not be realised he explained it in an article and left others to make +the first effort at realisation. The man who created Bayreuth was not +the man to imagine altogether vainly that he could, per favour of a +king, whom he must have known to be utterly weak, turn some millions +of citizens and villagers into an Utopian nation of art-lovers and so +on. But hatred surrounded him everywhere; the machinery of the state +came early to a standstill, and, finally, the king had to ask him to +withdraw for a longer or shorter while.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 343px;"><a name="fp322" id="fp322" /> +<img src="images/fp322.jpg" width="343" height="490" alt="King Ludwig of Bavaria" title="King Ludwig of Bavaria" /> +<span class="caption">King Ludwig of Bavaria</span> +</div> + +<p>This is the plain truth of an affair concerning which there has been +an immense amount of lying on both sides. The scandals about the +personal relations of the king and Wagner I leave to the vampires; as +for the gentry who will have it that Wagner was "persecuted" out of +Munich by Jews, Christians, journalists and bank-managers, I leave +them <a name="Page_323" id="Page_323" />to anybody who likes to take them up. That Wagner had to quit +Munich was a sad thing in his life—a very sorrow's crown of sorrow; +and it was a bad thing for German music. It put back the clock many +years. But, sad though it was for Wagner, in the long run it proved +good for him. He would have composed little more in such a city—a +city so misgoverned and misguided as Munich: his days would have been +filled with bitterness, his nerves would have been quickly shattered +by intrigues. He was now amply provided for; a villa—the celebrated +"Triebschen"—was taken for him on the shores of Lucerne, and here he +settled and remained for some years. Here he finished the <i>Ring</i> and +planned Bayreuth.</p> + +<p>Another thing which contributed to his unpopularity was his relations +with his own and another man's wife. Hans von Bülow, his pupil, had +married Liszt's daughter Cosima: that lady became infatuated with +Wagner, and Wagner with her, and they virtually eloped together. +Minna's cause was eagerly taken up by musicians, operatic people +generally, and journalists, though none of them cared a rap about +Minna. The most scandalous stories were circulated, and Wagner came to +be thought not only a charlatan cadger living on the State funds, but +one who used those funds to satisfy his carnal and other appetites. +His silk dressing-gowns, his gorgeous apartments, his sybarite +feastings, were the common talk of the newspapers: while he was +slaving, as the saying goes, twenty-six hours out of twenty-four, the +common fancy was <a name="Page_324" id="Page_324" />taught to picture him as taking his ease in +unheard-of luxury.</p> + +<p>These matters have nearly all been indirectly dealt with already, and +as we come to review the situation, this is what we find. Minna was an +impossible wife for such a man: she never could understand why he +could not have remained quietly at his post in Dresden, indifferent to +good or bad opera representations, and unambitious concerning the +proper artistic production of his own works. When calamity followed +calamity, to her all the trouble seemed due to Richard's +pig-headedness; and she would at once have grown cheerful and +good-natured had he burned his finished and unfinished scores and +written "something popular." She was, I say, impossible. Cosima, for +her part, found Bülow impossible. A splendid character in many ways, +he was as wayward and quarrelsome a man as has lived. So Richard and +Minna drifted apart, and Bülow and Cosima drifted apart, and in the +end Richard and Cosima drifted together. The censures that still are +passed at times on their conduct are hypocritical and grotesque. The +people who pass them are usually people who think that the Ten +Commandments were made only to be observed by the poorer classes, or +by other people, not themselves, and are willing enough to excuse +offences against the marriage laws when they are committed by folks of +exalted social position. The whole truth about the Richard-Cosima +affair will evidently never be known; no one has told; three of the +four concerned have passed away; and those <a name="Page_325" id="Page_325" />writers to-day who pretend +to know most are precisely those whom I suspect of knowing least.</p> + +<p>The charge of living in luxurious surroundings is well enough +founded—Wagner undoubtedly did love them: he said so himself. What +did the luxury amount to? A few carpets, chairs, a silk dressing-gown, +and sufficient to eat and drink! He certainly worked hard enough for +them and had a right to them. It is odd to think that most of those +who brought these charges against him themselves grasped at as much +luxury as they could get: had King Ludwig spent his money on <i>them</i> +there would have been no objections raised, and doubtless they would +have given us <i>Rings</i> and <i>Mastersingers</i>. This must be the judgment +of every sane person.</p> + +<p>However, Wagner settled peacefully at Triebschen, and remained there +until the Bayreuth idea took solid and visible shape. He completed the +<i>Mastersingers</i> and <i>Siegfried</i>, and made progress with the <i>Dusk of +the Gods</i>. When Minna died in 1868 he immediately married Cosima. The +idea of what ultimately became Bayreuth took shape. Bayreuth was first +thought of for a very prosaic reason. The town theatre at that time +possessed the largest stage in Germany, and in many respects was far +ahead of every other German theatre, and this drew the attention of +Wagner and his friends to the spot. Various causes combined to make +the idea of giving the first performances of the <i>Ring</i> in this +theatre an utter impracticability, and Wagner reverted to his old pet +idea of building a theatre for himself. An eminent architect, +Gottfried Semper, <a name="Page_326" id="Page_326" />cheerfully helped at planning a building which +should unite the utmost artistic usefulness with the smallest possible +expense. The house is long out-of-date, but in the 'seventies it +seemed a marvel. The seats were so arranged that every one commanded, +theoretically, the same view of the stage; the stage was fitted with +the most modern machinery, lights and so on. The orchestra was sunk, +so that the movements of the conductor and his fiddlers should not +distract the attention of the audience; the auditorium was darkened, +so that everything happening on the stage could be seen with the +greatest possible clearness. When the good burghers of a decaying +mediæval town found what was going to happen to them they rejoiced, +for they foresaw invasions of millions of aliens who would not hurt +them but would pay out handsomely, and renew the days of the town's +prosperity. Sites were granted free of cost, both for Wagner's own +house—Villa Wahnfried—and the Festival Theatre. When the foundation +of the latter was laid, brass bands and processions took an important +part in the proceedings.</p> + +<p>From the very start the enterprise was looked on as a commercial one. +Wagner's house was built, but work at the theatre had soon to be +stopped for want of money. Numerous Wagner societies were started to +raise it; concerts innumerable were given with the same object; the +composer himself laboured incessantly; and eventually it was possible +to resume building. But the very means, or some of the means, adopted +to raise money <a name="Page_327" id="Page_327" />aroused fierce antagonism amongst the musicians who +did not believe in Wagner, or had been attacked by him and his +disciples, and put into their hands a weapon of counter-attack. +"Begging" was a term freely employed; and a thousand newspapers were +found willing—nay, anxious—to insinuate or to state boldly that the +money was badly needed to enable the composer to live on a sumptuous +scale. When, in the summer of 1876, the first cycle of the <i>Ring</i> was +given, no artistic undertaking could have made a worse start. People +did not know what they were asked to see and to hear; they did know +that all these scandalous rumours had been flying about for years, +that the "entertainment" was not ordinary opera, that the opening of +Bayreuth was to mark the beginning of a millennium—a new moral, +religious, political and goodness knows what sort of era. Bayreuth +from the first had attracted a very disagreeable set of persons, men +whom fathers would not allow to speak to their daughters—or to their +sons. Wagner himself had invited ridicule by claiming that his theatre +was not to be a mere opera-house, but, as he told Sir Charles Hallé, +the centre of the intellectual and artistic world. "A noble ambition!" +scornfully replied the pianist. In a word, nothing was done to +conciliate; everything was done to create resentment and opposition. +King Ludwig's unpopularity must not be forgotten. Not Bavarians only, +but all the German-speaking peoples, knew Bavarian national finances +to be in a deplorable, desperate condition, and it seemed to them +scandalous that State funds should be used—as, <a name="Page_328" id="Page_328" />rightly or wrongly, +was thought—for Ludwig's own gross, unspeakable pleasures. While the +Germans were thus alienated, Wagner immediately after 1871 had stirred +up the wrath of the French by speaking of the German army as the +"world-conquerors"; he had angered the English musicians by the many +remarks concerning them uttered by or attributed to him after his +exploits with the Philharmonic society. He had written against the +Jews, and though their finest musicians were with him, the bulk were +against him.</p> + +<p>That the performances were in many respects admirable, indeed without +any precedent, we are bound to believe. The artists, great and little, +had toiled for months to attain perfection. Most of the orchestra, +headed by Wilhelmj, had slaved without payment that there might be no +deficiencies in their department. The stage machinery, crude though it +seems to us nowadays when we read of it, was on all sides reckoned +marvellous. Interminable rehearsals had been held, Wagner supervising +them all. In the end, even the anti-Wagnerites who went to curse, +admitted that unheard-of results had been achieved: they would not +give in about the music, which remained, in their crass ears, "without +form or melody"; and we may therefore the more readily accept their +testimony as to Wagner's supremacy as a musical director. The late Mr. +Joseph Bennett's reports—and he was till his last breath a violent +anti-Wagnerite—are typical: they may be read in the files of the +<i>Daily Telegraph</i>, and are well worth reading. But, alas! when those +heartless people <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329" />called accountants came to add up their mysterious +sums and to put figures on the credit side and on the debit side, they +proved incontestably that an appalling deficit was the most obvious +result of the whole proceedings; and if Wagner had any doubts, the +steady inflowing tide of bills to be met must have finally convinced +him. To pay the deficit, dresses and scenery had to be sold; and for a +time, at any rate, it was clear the theatre could not open again. +Wagner, in his old age, had to commence once again giving concerts, in +London amongst other places, to raise funds. Ludwig had done much, and +dared go no further. A huge subscription was arranged, and a large +amount of money had been collected, when help came from somewhere, +whereupon the subscriptions were returned. The detractors and +slanderers who had shouted that all the money asked for in the name of +Bayreuth was really destined to pay for Wagner's and King Ludwig's own +private amusements received, if a vulgar phrase is allowable, a +violent blow in their noisy mouths. Wagner paid no further heed to +them, but went on working out his plans. The old dream referred to in +his letters to Uhlig had been realised; he had his ideal theatre, he +had given ideal performances, and he reckoned he had given the Germans +an art. And now let us see what that art was.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" /><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330" />CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND 'THE RHINEGOLD'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>In the case of few artists is there an account of the creation of +their works worth serious consideration. In the colloquial as well as +the true sense of the word they are apt to be imaginative, and such a +story as Edgar Allen Poe's of the composition of the <i>Raven</i> is not so +much imaginative as imaginary. The creative artist is usually the last +man in the world to give a veracious history of the genesis of his +creations, for the simple reason that he does not know, and, during +the later process of trying to find out, for his own private +satisfaction, he is given to invent theories—or, let us say, +hypotheses—which eventually he may come to believe pure fact. In +music the act of creation is often done in a hypnotic state. Goethe +mentions that his earlier songs were written in a state of +clairvoyance. Many much more recent poets seem to have achieved their +hugest popular successes whilst in a comatose state. Some, who also +managed to secure a success with the public, apparently conceived and +executed their mighty works in a state of hallucination—having +somehow got the idea into their heads that they were poets. Handel, +Mozart and Beethoven are three <a name="Page_331" id="Page_331" />musicians who are known—if history may +be at all believed—to have composed in a hypnotic state: Handel would +sit for hours, unconscious of what went on around him; Mozart could +not be trusted with a knife at dinner—when he had a dinner; Beethoven +would pour cold water over his hands until the tenants beneath raised +violent objections. No such tales are related of Bach, of Haydn, of +Gluck, of Weber, nor of Wagner. If ever a man knew precisely what he +had been doing, even if he was not self-conscious at the moment of +doing it, that man was Wagner. He stands apart, therefore; apart from +some of the greatest composers. His case, I take it, is analogous to +that of a man who cannot remember a friend's address and thinks of it +that night in a dream: how he chances to dream he cannot tell, but he +knows what he has dreamt, and when.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 371px;"><a name="fp332" id="fp332" /> +<img src="images/fp332.jpg" width="371" height="469" alt="Wagner in 1877" title="Wagner in 1877" /> +<span class="caption">Wagner in 1877</span> +</div> + +<p>It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently +characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace +with some certainty the growth of the <i>Nibelung's Ring</i>, both drama +and music, from its birth to its final execution. The history of the +building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily +complicated and entangled matter. Some of it had to be related earlier +in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled +up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us +begin with a few dates—</p> + +<p> +1848. Had studied the Nibelungen saga and<br /> +sketched the plan of the whole gigantic<br /><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332" /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">work much as it now stands.</span><br /> +<br /> +1850-51. Discusses <i>Siegfried's Death</i> in letters<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">to Uhlig and Liszt. Begins the poem in</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">another form, which he abandons.</span><br /> +<br /> +1852. Writes the poem for the work practically in<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">its final form; privately printed the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">following year.</span><br /> +<br /> +1853. Begins <i>Rhinegold</i>.<br /> +<br /> +1854. Completes <i>Rhinegold</i>.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Begins the <i>Valkyrie</i>, and sketches <i>Siegfried</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">at the same time.</span><br /> +<br /> +1856. Completes <i>Valkyrie</i>.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Begins composition of <i>Siegfried</i>.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Completes first and begins second act of</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Siegfried</i>, and interrupts it to start work</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">on <i>Tristan</i>.</span><br /> +<br /> +1859. <i>Tristan</i> completed.<br /> +<br /> +1867. <i>Mastersingers</i> completed.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Composition of <i>Siegfried</i> resumed.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Siegfried</i> completed.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Dusk of the Gods</i> begun.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Dusk of the Gods</i> completed.</span><br /> +<br /> +1876. The <i>Ring</i> given at Bayreuth.<br /> +</p> + +<p>Wagner was thus occupied with the <i>Ring</i> for fully twenty-five years. +The <i>Rhinegold</i> followed <i>Lohengrin</i>, but there was a gap of five +years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and +during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change. +In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the +<i>Rhine</i><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333" /><i>gold</i> and the <i>Valkyrie</i>; in the first there is little of the +passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others. While composing the +<i>Rhinegold</i> his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had +the <i>Rhinegold</i> been a better subject for the purpose they might have +reached maturity while writing it. But there is no human element in +it, and without that Wagner could not get on. We have already seen +that he abandoned the idea of the <i>Mastersingers</i> for years—until, in +fact, he had created a soul for Sachs: then he went ahead and gave us +a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg. In the same way, +though he wrote some fine music in the <i>Rhinegold</i>, in richness, +splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the <i>Valkyrie</i>, where +he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be +called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human. He could not +compose unless he had the double inspiration, the human soul and the +pictorial environment. If I had to select three of Wagner's works to +live with I should take the <i>Valkyrie</i>, <i>Tristan</i> and the +<i>Mastersingers</i>. In them we find inspiration and craftmanship in +absolute proportion; in the later dramas of the <i>Ring</i> we shall see +how craftsmanship outran inspiration—sometimes with results that can +only be called deplorable. This matter must be reserved for discussion +until we deal with the operas separately.</p> + +<p>The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it +took to write—for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a +single breath<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334" />—but to the nature of the subject and the very German way +in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that +subject. In Chapter X, p. <a href="#Page_193">193</a> and onward, the reader will recollect +certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to +these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this +gigantic opera. The letter on p. <a href="#Page_227">227</a> is most characteristic of a +German. <i>Siegfried's Death</i> did not explain enough, so an explanation +had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second +explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state +as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the <i>Rhinegold</i>, +was written—and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set +himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on +his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just +as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas +could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in +the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate +repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The +poem—or, more properly, the four opera-books—must now be summarised, +and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over +the same ground twice, or more than twice.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The central figure of the <i>Ring</i>, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He +is absolute lord of earth and <a name="Page_335" id="Page_335" />heaven as long as his luck lasts. The +luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some +mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the +hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be +rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the +minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now, +this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the +guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of +the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama +inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of +how the <i>dénouement</i> came about, of the causes which brought it about, +which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive +attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at +all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been +arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this +sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to +hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a +violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily +abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles +to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form +the subject of three of the four dramas.</p> + +<p>The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into +a Ring—the <i>Nibelung's Ring</i>—gives absolute power to its possessor. +It is accursed; the curse being what I have just men<a name="Page_336" id="Page_336" />tioned—that the +power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his +nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely +free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions, +could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even +Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He +makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero: +the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed +it.</p> + +<p>After this description of the main dramatic motive of the <i>Ring</i>, +those—if there are any now alive—who are unfamiliar with the work +may have no desire to see it, whilst those who know it may imagine +that I am purposely misrepresenting it. I beg both classes of readers +to be patient. If this were the whole <i>Ring</i> it would indeed be a +barren, bleak and desolate affair. This is nothing more than the frame +which contains the dramas which make the <i>Ring</i> the great work it +is—the dramas with their wealth of passion and colour, their hundred +varied emotions and scenes of love and tragedy. Before proceeding to +deal with them separately, let me again mention one point. There is +the flat contradiction between the Wotan who knows that when the +moment arrives his reign must automatically end, and the Wotan who +hopes to go on reigning by getting possession of the Ring through the +agency of a fearless hero who has struck no bargain with the powers +who are stronger than the gods. That contradiction is inherent in the +saga, and had Wagner been able to <a name="Page_337" id="Page_337" />eliminate it—as he tried by diving +through the saga and to the myth behind—the very essence and +atmosphere of the drama would have been eliminated also. The idea of +predetermined destiny colours that drama throughout; the whole thing +might be the old Scandinavian way of stating a problem older than +Scandinavia, that of free-will and predestination.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The curtain rises, and we are in the depths of the Rhine; water-nymphs +sport about; Alberich, an evil being of the river, tries in vain to +catch them. The water grows brighter with the rising of the sun, and +the Rhinegold is seen to glow on the summit of a high rock. Defeated +in his attempts to capture a nymph, Alberich scales the rock, seizes +the gold and makes off with it. The silly creatures have told him that +their innocent toy, shaped into a ring, would confer upon its +possessor power to rule the whole world, on condition that he +surrendered love; and love being something Alberich is incapable of +understanding, though he is amorous enough, he willingly pays the +price for the sake of the power—that is, the power costs him nothing. +The light-giving gold being raped, darkness falls on the river.</p> + +<p>The next scene is on a plateau; beyond it lies the valley of the +Rhine; further off is a mountain; light mists hover over the summit; +and, as they clear away in the early morning sunshine, a gorgeous +castle, Valhalla, gradually becomes visible. Wotan <a name="Page_338" id="Page_338" />and Fricka his +wife lie in slumber. Fricka wakes first, and is startled, not to say +horrified, by the apparition. The Giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have +built the castle, and the promised payment is Freia, Fricka's sister, +whose apples all gods and goddesses must eat every day, else they will +fade and perish. Fricka tries to awaken Wotan: in his dreams he talks +of endless, omnipotent power, and of his castle, to be peopled by +heroes to fight for him against the brute forces of the earth. When he +is aroused he gazes at the building in deepest joy: <i>now</i> his ambition +will be gratified. In vain Fricka expostulates, repeating (in homely +phrase), "What about Freia?" Wotan smiles a superior smile: he has +arranged that matter, and all will be well.</p> + +<p>This is the beginning of Wotan's tragedy, the huge drama of which the +others constitute the working out. From this scene to the end we are +to see Wotan gradually forced into a corner. He has to learn by slow +degrees that you cannot have anything without paying the price. It is +in vain he argues with Fricka. She stands for law—inexorable law. She +seems a disagreeable woman, and it would be much more pleasant for +everybody concerned if she could be induced to hold her tongue and let +things take their course. So is what we call the law of gravitation a +disagreeable thing; all the same, we know that if we fall off a +house-roof we shall break our necks. In the Scandinavian cosmogony +Wotan holds sway only by treaties, bargains struck with the powers +that only sustain him so long as he sticks to his word, and are +capable of thrusting him down <a name="Page_339" id="Page_339" />if he breaks his word. Even omnipotence +may be bought too dearly, and Wotan is not destined to taste the +sweets of even a quarter of an hour's omnipotence. In vain he tries to +evade responsibility, to get something for nothing; and his tragedy is +consummated when in <i>Siegfried</i> he realises that omnipotence can never +be his. Then he renounces it.</p> + +<p>This is by way of being a digression; but, for a clear understanding +of this main drama of the <i>Ring</i>, it is absolutely necessary that we +should see the source of Wotan's troubles, and here it is: that Fricka +will not allow him, figuratively, to jump off a house-top without +breaking his neck. What she tells him swiftly proves true. Freia flies +in, pursued by the Giants, who demand to be paid. "You rule by +treaties alone," they say. Wotan looks anxiously round for Loge, the +treacherous god of fire and lies. He has promised to find something +that the Giants will accept instead of Freia; and when he enters he +confesses to failure—there is nothing, in the estimation of an +earth-born creature, that is equal to a woman. But he tells of the +theft of the gold; the Giants listen greedily, and they agree to take +it, if Wotan can get it, instead of Freia. Wotan has a double motive: +he does not want all the gold, or, indeed, any of it, save the Ring +shaped by the Nibelung; that he determines to grasp, else the Nibelung +will become <i>his</i> master. He has trusted to lies and trickery, and has +been swindled; but so overpowering is his thirst for universal rule +that he again trusts himself to Loge. The Giants hold Freia as a +hostage; presently all the gods begin to lapse into <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340" />a comatose +state—they have not eaten of her apples that day—and in desperation +Loge and Wotan set out for the Nibelung's abode. The Nibelungs are the +slaves and sons of toil; they labour incessantly for Alberich; him +only does Wotan fear: he must get the Ring from them at all costs. The +pair descend into the Nibelung's cave. The Ring is already forged, and +the Tarnhelm—the cap of invisibility—is made which enables him to +render himself invisible or to change himself into any animal he +wishes. By a trick Wotan gets Alberich into his power, carries him to +the upper earth, and only lets him go free after he has surrendered +Tarnhelm, Ring and all the hoard of gold. Then the turn of the Giants +comes. The pile of gold they demand must hide Freia from sight; and in +the end she can still be seen, and Wotan must sacrifice the one thing +precious to him, the Ring. That is accursed, and no sooner have Fafner +and Fasolt got it than they quarrel; Fafner kills Fasolt, and goes off +with all to change himself into a dragon and to hide himself in a +cavern with his treasure. Wotan, in his extremity, has summoned Erda, +the wisdom of the earth, and she has counselled him to give up the +Ring, and it is with horror that he sees how wise she was. But his +ambition is boundless; he cannot give up the idea of reigning supreme; +and when things seem at their worst he has a sudden inspiration—that, +already mentioned, of raising up a hero who will freely take the Ring +from Fafner, and, by letting Wotan have it, free of treaties, enable +him to reign supreme. The thought is told us only <a name="Page_341" id="Page_341" />in the music, and +in the music only in the light of the later operas of the series. Then +the gods cross a rainbow bridge, somewhat hastily thrown up by Donner, +the god of storms, and enter Valhalla; and underneath the dreary wail +of the Rhinemaidens is heard as they lament their loss. With this the +<i>Rhinegold</i> closes.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Now let us consider the music of the <i>Rhinegold.</i></p> + +<p>Already the discrepancy of styles has been referred to. The +<i>Rhinegold</i>, coming between <i>Lohengrin</i> and <i>Tristan</i>, suffers from an +odd sort of pettiness of phrase—a pettiness which in all probability +we should not feel if we did not judge it by <i>Tristan</i>. The wide sweep +of the tide of music that we find in the <i>Valkyrie</i> is absent; there +is a tendency to shorten the measures, a hesitation between boldly +going on, as in his later manner, and the symmetrical four-bar +measures of <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Lohengrin</i>. The opening of the second +scene is in structure that of a Handel opera air: we have the +ritornello, and presently the same music is repeated as the +accompaniment of Wotan's salute to his castle. This smallness of +design, it must be remembered, is only comparative: compared with +anything of the sort done before, the design is big and broad. The +Wagner of the <i>Valkyrie</i>, of <i>Tristan</i> and of the <i>Mastersingers</i>, has +not acquired full mastery of his new art; there are still plenty of +full closes, and, <a name="Page_342" id="Page_342" />though words are not repeated, the effect at times +would hardly be more conventional if they were.</p> + +<p>But in all the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner's walks +amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the <i>Ring</i> to +Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly +concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The <i>Rhinegold</i> +ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in +each Act of the <i>Valkyrie</i> there is a storm; the Third Act of +<i>Siegfried</i> opens with a storm; there is one storm in the <i>Dusk of the +Gods</i>. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the +driving of thunder-clouds—these are the pictorial inspiration of the +<i>Ring</i> as surely as old Nuremberg is the pictorial inspiration of the +<i>Mastersingers</i>. These Scandinavian gods are the divinities of river +and wood and mountain, and Wagner made full use of them. The <i>Ring</i> is +far too lengthy, and the main drama is apt to get forgotten; the +repetitions, due to Wagner's desire not to let it be forgotten, are +wearisome. But one thing can never be forgotten—the sense of the open +air, the freshness of nature, the loveliness and health of the green +earth: that sense keeps the gigantic, overgrown thing sweet and an +endless delight.</p> + +<p>The opening is as sublime in its simplicity as the first bars of the +<i>Lohengrin</i> prelude. As the curtain rises on the depths of the Rhine, +"greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below," the lowest E flat +booms softly out (it has to be done by an organ pedal-pipe), the deep +voice of the river as it rolls massively on <a name="Page_343" id="Page_343" />its course towards the +sea; and the effect is overwhelming. A theme then makes its appearance +in its first vague form, a theme which in one shape or another Wagner +uses throughout the four operas for the elemental beings—here, the +water nymphs, afterwards Erda. The mass of tone swells out; the music +becomes more active; and at last the voices of the Rhinemaidens are +heard. The whole of this is one of Wagner's most delightful things. It +is another illustration of his rule that a composer should never leave +a key as long as he can say what he wants while staying in it; for +some hundreds of bars there is no change, and then only a slight one. +With the entry of Alberich modulations begin. Here we have the +wonderful inventive Wagner: that figure, in the inner part of the +musical tissue, would alone stamp him as a great composer: the +composer who could invent such a theme could not possibly be a small +composer. The mock-coaxing of the nymphs might be a parody of the +Venusberg scene in <i>Tannhäuser</i>; and later on there occurs a passage +that might be a parody on parts of <i>Tristan</i>. When Alberich steals the +gold we get that degenerate form of the Valhalla theme repeated again +and again, and the full effect of the device is only felt when, with +the change of scene, we hear the passage in all its nobility and +splendour. Wotan's greeting to his new castle is rather grandiose than +really fine: one feels the theatrical baritone; one feels also that +the quality of homeliness which makes Sachs a great character is sadly +lacking. In the <i>Valkyrie</i> this unpretentiousness, so to speak, is +always present, <a name="Page_344" id="Page_344" />and the music gains proportionately in +impressiveness. Wotan's opening phrase, grand and sweeping though it +is, somehow evokes a vision of an Italian opera baritone expanding his +chest, with arms extended in the direction of the more expensive +seats: this is neither the mighty Wotan of the <i>Valkyrie</i>, nor even of +the underground scene in this opera.</p> + +<p>Nor is the vocal writing, in another respect, that of the greatest +Wagner. I have already spoken of the perfect fusion of vocal and +orchestral parts which we find in <i>Tristan</i> and the <i>Mastersingers</i>. +To that perfection Wagner had not attained when he began the <i>Ring</i>; +and much of this first speech of Wotan consists of notes written +simply to fit in with the Valhalla theme. That theme shows traces of +its descent from the Alberich motive—the greed for power—in that it +does not bear real development, but only variation; it is, in fact, +not a musical subject in the sense in which, say, the <i>Tristan</i> +subjects are musical subjects, but is, properly speaking, a figure. +But shaped to a stately rhythm and richly harmonised, and moreover +gorgeously orchestrated, it glitters with sufficient magnificence. +Fricka's remonstrances are at first querulous, but with the passage +beginning "Um des Gatten Treue besorgt" we get one of Wagner's +matchless bits of lovely melody. The entry of Freia, flying from the +Giants, is theatrically effective, and here we find for the first time +the phrase, already alluded to in the chapter on <i>Tristan</i>, which +throughout the <i>Ring</i> is made to serve so many purposes. In this scene +I still feel the halting between the <i>Lohengrin</i> style and <a name="Page_345" id="Page_345" />later, the +indecision—nay, the uncertainty—in the handling of the musical +material. There are no regular four-bar measures and full closes as in +the earlier work; but a great deal is nothing more than dry recitative +disguised. The first scene of the <i>Rhinegold</i> is purely symphonic: +even if Alberich's spasmodic, jerky exclamations seem to be written in +to fit the nature of this being, his whole mode of speech—harsh, +unmusical—renders the fact less glaring; and the tide of music flows +steadily on, reaching climax upon climax, until the final crash when +he disappears with the gold. Wagner did not find it possible to get +this continuity when he came to set to music the arguments amongst +Wotan, Fricka and Freia: there are short cantilenas, but they are +constantly broken by recitative.</p> + +<p>With the entry of the Giants the music makes, so to say, a fresh +start. The old themes are welded to or interwoven with new material, +and a perfect symphonic whole results, one that can be listened to +with delight without stage accessories. I do not mean that music +intended for the theatre should stand the test of playing away from +the theatre, but that here Wagner, while writing strictly and +immensely effective theatre music, has got such a grip of his art that +he can combine the two things, dramatic truth, and symphonic beauty +and cohesion. The flood sweeps on, undisturbed in its flow by the +entry of the other deities, or by the introduction of themes full of +significance in the light of their after development. But another fact +must not go unnoticed. There is in the <i>Rhinegold</i> little of the +<a name="Page_346" id="Page_346" />spring freshness of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. The melody associated with +Freia's apples is supremely beautiful; but it is a mere short phrase, +several times repeated, and the mass of music in which it is embedded +smells more of the study and the lamp than of the mountains and the +woods. The Froh theme, too, is a trifle flat: it does not effervesce +or sparkle: the "dewy splendour" of the <i>Valkyrie</i> music is not on it. +This is not to be hypercritical: it is to compare, as one must, a +great achievement with an achievement in all respects very much, +immeasurably, greater. Had we only the <i>Rhinegold</i>, with all its +plentiful lack of inspiration and its theatricality, it would rank +very high; but Wagner himself in the <i>Valkyrie</i> set the standard by +which inevitably it must be judged.</p> + +<p>When Wotan and Loge descend to the Nibelung's cave to steal the +treasure Wagner frankly lets himself loose. Here we have the +hobgoblins of the Teutonic imagination and the rude, boisterous, +humorous Wotan of the Scandinavian imagination—the Odin who tried to +drink the sea dry and laughed to find he could not. As the +once-celebrated Sir Augustus Harris declared, "This is pantomime." +Perhaps the scene is unduly protracted, but the music goes on merrily +enough. The renewed altercation with the Giants calls for little +remark. When, however, the Giants demand the Ring and Wotan calls up +Erda, the wisdom of the earth, a passage occurs which, though more or +less of an irrelevant interpolation, gives Wagner a chance of putting +forth his strength. Erda rises <a name="Page_347" id="Page_347" />to most mysterious music, counsels +Wotan to surrender the Ring, and sinks down again to her sleep; and +one forgets the irrelevancy in the thrill of this vision of the Mother +Earth, the spirit that sleeps amongst the everlasting hills. Finally +the composer gets his great chance, and shows that, like Handel and +his own Donner, he "could strike like a thunderbolt." The gods are all +disheartened; mists have gathered; Donner—our old friend Thor—raises +his hammer and smashes something; there is a flash of lightning and a +peal of thunder; the mists and clouds clear away; and we see there the +rainbow bridge over which the gods wend on their way to Valhalla. We +have Wagner the sublime pictorial musician. The Rainbow motive is +perhaps not very graphic in itself, but it serves as a basis for a +delicious passage—evening calm and sunset after storm—comparable +only with a parallel passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The +storm itself is Wagner in the plenitude of his power. It is short: it +is not "worked up": in a few strokes, brief and telling as Donner's +own hammer-strokes, the whole thing is done. Then the Valhalla music, +glorified by a gorgeous accompaniment, is heard again, only +interrupted by the wail of the Rhinemaidens below, sorrowing for the +loss of their pretty, harmless toy. Wotan hears the cry, and passes on +to feast in his castle. Grim care goes with him; but he has the +consoling idea of the free hero and the irresistible sword. So ends +the <i>Rhinegold</i>—Fricka content to have both Wotan and Freia; the +other gods not much concerned about anything; Wotan <a name="Page_348" id="Page_348" />full of +apprehensions and also of determination—determination to rule without +paying the price of rulership.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>I have attempted nothing more than a broad and rough description of +the <i>Rhinegold</i>. The opera was planned as a prelude, and suffers from +the defects of the plan, as well as from the fact that it was written +before Wagner's new method was ripe. He wrote to Liszt that the music +came up "like wild," or, as an irreverent critic once observed, like +mould on a pot of jam; and the second description is truer than the +speaker thought. The <i>Rhinegold</i> has aged faster than any other of the +great works. Alongside of the sublime we find the petty; after phrases +as sweet and fresh as raindrops on young spring leaves we find stodgy, +"made," music; the atmosphere is not preserved. But gigantic +possibilities are opened out. The Rhine music is afterwards used to +splendid ends; the Spear motive, which makes its first appearance in +rather a trivial form—it might be a quotation from Weber or +Spohr—becomes later one of the crowning glories of the <i>Ring</i>; the +Fire music—the Loge theme—comes out at once in its full +magnificence. It is fair criticism to say that had Wagner written the +opera again after finishing the <i>Valkyrie</i> he might have wrought up +his material into a perfect work of art. A mere mortal, even the +greatest mortal, could hardly be expected to attempt the task, and the +<i>Rhinegold</i> <a name="Page_349" id="Page_349" />is a little less than perfect. Moreover, it is +superfluous. We can follow the <i>Valkyrie</i>, <i>Siegfried</i> and the <i>Dusk +of the Gods</i> quite well without it. Still, it is a part of Wagner's +scheme, and for many a long year will be enjoyed for its power and +beauty, a power and beauty that seem small only in comparison with the +greater operas.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" /><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350" />CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>'THE VALKYRIE'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The <i>Rhinegold</i> suffers from a plethora of undeveloped themes, some of +which are treated at length as the <i>Ring</i> proceeds. Of all announced +only two remain unchanged, the Valhalla and the Fire themes. The +first, I have just remarked, is not susceptible of development, and is +only slightly varied throughout the <i>Ring</i>; the second does not demand +development, but is varied much as Beethoven varied his melodies in +his last pianoforte sonatas. The most important of those that are +metamorphosed is the Spear motive. The Spear is the symbol at once of +Wotan's sovereignty and of his bondage. On its shaft, the world +ash-tree stem, are graven the mystic laws by virtue of which he rules; +did he break these laws his power would be gone from him. The essence +of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and so we first hear its +representative theme when the Giants come to claim Freia as payment +for the building of the Burg: it makes its appearance quietly, +unobtrusively, almost apologetically, and might be, as I have said, a +fragment from Spohr or Weber. Its treatment in a simple snatch of +two-part canon, one part following the other at half-a-bar's distance, +seems like a mild gibe at those who only live for and by conventions. +<a name="Page_351" id="Page_351" />When it reappears in the Second Act of the <i>Valkyrie</i> it is +altogether a different thing: here we have Wotan the ruler determined +at all costs to rule and using to the full the power the Spear confers +on him. Like many of the greatest musical subjects, it is simple +beyond the daring of the minor composers, merely an unbroken scale +descending in heavy, emphatic steps to the lower octaves: it is +authority personified, will that brooks no opposition. This motive, +the Valhalla motive and the fire motive are the principal ones carried +into the <i>Valkyrie</i> from the <i>Rhinegold</i>; and an immense amount of new +musical matter is introduced. We see no more of the inferior deities: +we hear the stroke of Donner's hammer in a storm <i>Lied</i>, and Loge +appears as consuming flame in the last act; but, excepting Wotan, only +Fricka is seen again in human shape. The stage is now occupied by +human beings, raised up, it is true, by Wotan himself, and by some +other mysterious beings, also raised up by Wotan, one of whom, <i>the</i> +Valkyrie, Brünnhilda, is condemned in the final scene to become human.</p> + +<p>Two dramas, the huge encircling tragedy of Wotan in conflict with his +wife Fricka, the goddess of laws and covenants, especially the +covenant of marriage, and the subsidiary tragedy of Siegmund and +Sieglinda, are combined in perfect proportions in the <i>Valkyrie</i>. The +story at first sounds a little complicated; but the reader, bearing in +mind what has already been said of Wotan's Master-idea, can have no +difficulty whatever in following it. The Master-idea, we know, is to +raise up a hero who, <a name="Page_352" id="Page_352" />acting freely, independent of and ever defying +the gods, will wrest the Ring from Fafner. Wotan, then, has descended +from his Valhalla, and, taking an earthly wife, begotten two children, +Siegmund and Sieglinda, who know themselves to be of the tribe of the +Volsungs. These he deserts. Sieglinda is taken captive and made the +loveless wife of Hunding; Siegmund, alone in the world, wanders hither +and thither, meeting ill-luck everywhere—ill-luck prepared by his +father. At last, in attempting to rescue a maiden from some raiders, +he is forced to fly. As he runs through the depths of an unknown +forest a storm breaks upon him, and he takes shelter, utterly +exhausted, in the house of Hunding. At this point the curtain rises.</p> + +<p>The scene is the inside of Hunding's dwelling, built round a great +ash-tree; on the right the fire burns on the hearth. The steady roar +of the storm outside is heard, broken by shocks as the wind buffets +the trees and the house and by the plashing of the rain. The room is +empty; presently the door is roughly dashed open from outside and +Siegmund staggers in. "Whatever this house may be, I must rest here," +he says, and throws himself on the hearth. (We must bear in mind that +the hearth was sacred: if my enemy took refuge on mine I might starve +him out, but so long as he stayed there I might not hurt him.) +Sieglinda enters; the two do not recognise one another; he calls for +water; she brings him mead. Presently they fall to talking; and it is +seen that the inevitable must happen. Hunding enters abruptly; they +sit down to supper; <a name="Page_353" id="Page_353" />Siegmund discloses his identity, so far as he +knows it—all but his name; Hunding recognises the very man he has +been chasing, and gives him shelter for the night, but warns him that +in the morning he, without a weapon, must fight. He calls for his +night-draught, sends Sieglinda into the sleeping-room, and follows +her. She glances repeatedly from Siegmund to a spot on the ash-trunk; +but he does not take her meaning.</p> + +<p>There follows a strange and beautiful scene. Siegmund lies down to +rest; the fire glimmers fitfully, then blazes up, revealing at the +point on the trunk at which Sieglinda had gazed a shining sword-hilt, +the blade embedded in the trunk. Still Siegmund does not understand, +and the fire dies down; he is beginning to slumber when Sieglinda +enters and calls him. He starts up; she has put a sleeping-powder in +Hunding's cup, and they are safe; and thus begins the greatest +love-duet, next to the <i>Tristan</i>, in the world. Sieglinda tells how +when she, full of grief, was wedded to Hunding, a grey old man, with +one eye, clad in a blue cloak, came in uninvited, drove the sword +Nothung into the ash-tree, and said that it should belong to the hero +strong enough to draw it out. From all parts warriors came, but none +could move it. Sieglinda feels that the appointed man has come; +Siegmund grasps the weapon and triumphantly pulls it out. Then they +reveal their names, and recognise one another as brother and sister, +and the Act ends.</p> + +<p>This is the first step towards Wotan's discomfiture. The significance +of the Sword theme in the <a name="Page_354" id="Page_354" /><i>Rhinegold</i> at the moment when he has the +Master-idea will now be apparent. The sword was so endowed by Wotan +that only a fearless hero could use it; therefore, when Siegmund draws +it from the wood, Wotan, watching from Valhalla, knows he has +succeeded in raising up the hero he needed. Siegmund had been tested +by all manner of misfortune; no harder life could have been his; Wotan +had never aided him, but thrown disasters in his path; and had he +failed or succumbed Wotan's device would have failed. But freely, +independently, with no help from the god, he had come through all, and +now his own strength enabled him to take the sword to—to what?—to +work Wotan's will! That is, in creating Siegmund, even in testing him, +in preparing for him a weapon that none could stand against, Wotan, +far from successfully accomplishing his purpose, was accomplishing his +ruin. Disillusionment comes swiftly. The first deed of his hero is to +break two of the most sacred laws of heaven—laws binding on Wotan +until he gets the Ring—for he carries off another man's wife, who is, +moreover, his own sister. The punishment for that is matter for the +next Act. At the end of the first we have seen that Wotan's +Master-idea is a delusion. He might as well go and kill Fafner himself +and take the Ring as breed a hero to do it for him with the aid of a +magic sword. If he did so it would be by virtue of the power conferred +on him by the runes on the Spear; and by those runes—those +laws—Siegmund must be, and is, promptly judged and punished.</p> + + +<h3><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355" />II</h3> + +<p>Before the rising of the curtain we have the first and one of the +greatest of the ear-pictures of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. There is no preamble; +at once the strings begin in repeated quavers to sustain (virtually) a +long D, while the basses start off with a figure many times +repeated—a figure which is simply a bold variant of the bass figure +in Schubert's <i>Erl-king</i>. So, for that matter, is the long D. Schubert +drew a fine picture of storm in black wood; but he was limited by the +form he wrote in and the instruments he wrote for. The energy, +superhuman energy, of the thing is amazing: the storm throbs in the +forest: one feels the pulse of the storm-god; the <i>sforzando</i> shocks +and shrieks add to the terrific wildness of the scene. Pitilessly, +ever higher and higher, the wind shrieks, always to that beating bass, +until, amid the clatter and screaming, we hear Donner, exulting in his +mad strength and swinging his mighty hammer as he rides. The lightning +crackles vividly in the orchestra, the thunder rolls, crashes and +growls, and the thunder-god can almost be heard betaking himself off +to continue his riot afar. Then a labouring, panting and struggling +phrase—scarcely a theme—is heard as the storm slightly lulls; the +curtain rises and we see Hunding's dwelling, and Siegmund bursts in.</p> + +<p>The music of the earlier portion of the first scene is not of the same +intrinsic quality, nor need it be. We have the setting before our +eyes, and the stupen<a name="Page_356" id="Page_356" />dous power of what has just been heard leaves in +our minds a vivid impression of what is going on out of doors. +Sieglinda comes in, surprised to find a stranger there at all, +especially on so wild a night; Siegmund asks for water; she brings it; +finding he is likely to fetch trouble on her head, he is for going. +But there is sympathy between them, and various Volsung motives and +phrases of the rarest beauty and expressiveness tell us why; and she +tells him to wait. "Hunding I will await here," says Siegmund. It is +in this scene that a passage occurs like one which I have referred to +in the chapter on the <i>Dutchman</i>—the phrase is marked (<i><a href="#Page_118">f</a></i>) on p. +<a href="#Page_118">118</a>. The <i>Dutchman</i> phrase is longer and at the same time less +poignant; here it is brief and extraordinarily expressive; there it is +not developed, nor, after some repetitions, heard again; here it is +made the most of musically and appears so late as in the <i>Dusk of the +Gods</i>. But the situations are analogous. Senta gazes, rapt, on +Vanderdecken; Sieglinda and Siegmund look on one another and passion +begins to dawn. This is worth noting as showing that Wagner used the +leitmotiv spontaneously, so to speak, and not always as the result of +deliberate calculation. Like all the other composers, he had his +mannerisms: having invented a melody to find utterance for a feeling +or set of feelings, when similar feelings had to be expressed again it +was natural to him to use again the first melody, or something very +like it. No composer, not even Beethoven, was more resolutely bent on +writing <i>truthful</i> music; and having once found the <a name="Page_357" id="Page_357" />music to express +certain shades of feeling, he was like a writer who, having said +something as well as he can say it, prefers repeating himself to +trying to achieve a superficial appearance of variety. Wagner, I +think, repeated himself quite unconsciously very often: when the +repetition is conscious of course we have at once the genuine +leitmotiv; but it is the maddest of errors to see in every resemblance +between phrases the deliberate employment of the leitmotiv.</p> + +<p>The pair have drunk mead together and stand looking at one another; +the storm has died away; and from the orchestra come passages of +wondrous delicacy, tenderness and freshness, scored by a perfect +master. Suddenly the clanking of a horse's hoofs is heard; "Hunding!" +exclaims Sieglinda; the door is again thrown open and the black, +ferocious barbarian stalks in. His theme is, figuratively, as black, +gloomy, sinister and forbidding as himself; and the heavy, sullen +tones of the battery of tubas which announces it intensify its +effectiveness a hundredfold. Hunding is no villain of the piece, but a +simple, surly chief of a tribe of savage fighters, and Wagner's music +exactly describes him. Save for Siegmund's recital of his woes, the +remainder of the scene remains sullen and gloomy; Siegmund, however, +has some touching passages, and notably a phrase of unearthly +strangeness when he tells how he came back to his hut and found his +father gone, only a wolf-skin lying there; and a bit of the Valhalla +motive in the orchestra thrills one with its suggestiveness. One is +carried into the dimmest <a name="Page_358" id="Page_358" />recess of a forest where man has never been, +far back in a period so old that it is ridiculous to call it ancient. +Throughout the music is in Wagner's grandest manner; the vocal writing +is perfect; and though there are plenty of theatrical strokes, they +are done in a nobler way than the mere opera way of <i>Tannhäuser</i> and +<i>Lohengrin</i>. In a word, the music is big: the breadth and sweep are +enormous: the greatest Wagner has arrived, the Wagner who has gone far +beyond the hesitations and littlenesses even of the <i>Rhinegold</i>. +Hunding is characterised more clearly and with more decisive strokes +than Hagen in the last opera of the <i>Ring</i>, partly because there is +more genuine inspiration in the <i>Valkyrie</i>, partly, perhaps, because +Hunding is a much simpler personage.</p> + +<p>That strange scene where Siegmund lies on the hearth again, and, +realising his desperate situation, calls on his father the Volsung for +aid, is musically and dramatically splendid in its colour and force. +As he thinks of Sieglinda a feeling of spring again comes into the +music; thus is strengthened the beautiful music she is given; then +comes the avowal of love, and the flying open of the door. Outside, +the trees are seen in the moonlight, the dripping green leaves +glistening; and Siegmund sings a spring-song never to be beaten for +freshness (though, as I have pointed out, not equal in musical +significance to Walther's song in the <i>Mastersingers</i>); there comes +the magnificent scene of the plucking out of the Sword; the +recognition of the two as brother and sister; and the final +impassioned <a name="Page_359" id="Page_359" />outburst which ends the scene as with a blaze of fire.</p> + +<p>This Act will ever be accounted one of Wagner's most magnificent and +fully inspired. The superb vocal writing, the beauty and sheer +strength of the orchestral parts, the gorgeous colouring, and the +human passion blent with the sense of the green yet fiery spring, all +go to make up a thing unique in opera. A tide of life rushes through +it all; and the man's technical accomplishment was so fine and +complete that he found immediate incisive expression for every shade +of emotion, or complex blend of emotions, and every sensation. The +jealous, savage ferocity of Hunding is there; Siegmund's and +Sieglinda's despair, hope and final burst of ecstatic joy; and at the +same time we seem to smell the fresh, wet earth and leaves and to see +the sparkling moonlight.</p> + + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The Second Act opens in a wild and rocky place amongst the mountains. +Siegmund and Sieglinda have fled; Hunding is in hot pursuit; and now +Wotan stands, the mighty war-god, brandishing his spear, and calling +his daughter Brünnhilda, the Valkyrie, to favour and aid Siegmund. She +joyfully assents and goes off, and Wotan exults. He persists in +deceiving himself: Brünnhilda, his own daughter, was created to +execute his purposes: the Runes make him accountable for her actions, +just <a name="Page_360" id="Page_360" />as he is now for Siegmund's and in the later operas for +Siegfried's. As in the <i>Rhinegold</i>, Fricka instantly bids him remember +what and <i>how</i> he is. As the goddess of covenants, laws, she wants +vengeance wreaked on Siegmund and Sieglinda: they have broken the most +sacred of all covenants in the eyes of a woman, the marriage covenant. +Vainly Wotan pleads that the Valkyrie works unaided: she presses him, +until at last he swears a sacred oath on his spear that Siegmund shall +die. Brünnhilda comes in, whooping her war-call, but her voice drops +at the sight of Fricka. Fricka, who thoroughly despises all the +Valkyrie maidens as being born out of true wedlock, tells her to take +her orders from Wotan, and goes off triumphant. Wotan, deeply +despondent, terrifies Brünnhilda with his grief; she casts down her +spear and shield and kneels before him, imploring him to tell the +cause.</p> + +<p>Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: +Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian +terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been +explained amply in the <i>Rhinegold</i> and in the scene we have just +witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again—with dreary +and soporific effect. Brünnhilda, as love incarnate, pleads for the +man and woman whose only crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws +are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; +he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. +Sadly Brünnhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is +subject <a name="Page_361" id="Page_361" />to—for how should love know aught of greed for power?—picks +up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to +warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save +in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen +one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard +she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the +woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he +cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps—the Valkyrie having +thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Brünnhilda +advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come to call thee hence"; he raises +his head, sees her, and knows his fate. This is the final crushing +blow; the Volsung had always deserted him; but he had found the magic +sword and thought the promised help would not fail him in his worst +need. (Truly the gods treat us as toys to be broken at pleasure!) He +refuses to go, and speaks blasphemy of the high gods; Brünnhilda is +horrified: here she is going to take him to Valhalla to feast on +delights for ever—and he scorns her. He ridicules Valhalla and Wotan +and the serving-maidens: he wonders who the Valkyrie is, so beautiful +and cold and stern. The scene is one of the fullest dramatic +intensity: at last Siegmund asks whether, if he goes to Valhalla, he +will find his wife there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," is +the answer: Siegmund for the moment is crushed, but again rebels, and +takes his sword to kill first Sieglinda and then himself. Brünnhilda +is overcome with admiration: <a name="Page_362" id="Page_362" /><i>this</i>, at any rate, this love she can +understand; she tells him to prepare to fight Hunding and she will +help him.</p> + +<p>The next scene is unmatched, even in Wagner, for its terror and the +swiftness with which the climax comes on. Clouds gather; Hunding's +horn is heard and his voice; Siegmund leaves Sieglinda and goes off +cheerfully and confidently to meet his foe. Thicker gather the clouds; +thunder peals and lightnings flash; the antagonists are heard calling +as they seek each other in the darkness; Sieglinda speaks in her +dreams; as she awakes, Hunding and Siegmund are seen in the dim light +high up amongst the rocks; Brünnhilda encourages Siegmund, guarding +him with her spear; he is about to strike Hunding down; there is an +angry red glare, and Wotan shatters the sword with his spear; Hunding +runs his spear through Siegmund; Sieglinda shrieks and falls +insensible to the ground. Slowly the red light fades; "Go, tell Fricka +I have sent you," Wotan says bitterly, and at his nod Hunding falls +dead; Brünnhilda has run round, picked up the shards of the Sword, +and, gathering Sieglinda in her arms, rushed away. There is a moment +of suspense; the tragedy is accomplished; and now Wotan must punish +Brünnhilda for disobeying his commands; and amidst thunders and +lightnings, in flaming wrath, he rides off, and the curtain falls.</p> + +<p>The drama of Siegmund and Sieglinda is ended; the second inner drama, +that of Wotan and Brünnhilda, is begun. Love, the best part of Wotan's +nature, has risen against him in his endeavour to <a name="Page_363" id="Page_363" />rule; she cannot +prevent him destroying the creatures he has made, but she can defy +him. That sort of rule would be intolerable, so love shall be put away +from him and he will still rule. And, love being discarded, there is +no reason why he should not still get the Ring, by fair or foul means, +and reign—loveless indeed, but in no fear of Fafner or the Nibelung, +black Alberich.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>As a musical structure the Second Act divides more easily and clearly +than the first into sections: the sections, indeed, are boldly +defined. First there is a prelude formed of the scene in which Wotan, +rejoicing in the coming combat, directs Brünnhilda to see to it that +Hunding is slain; and this is followed by what may be regarded as the +main first movement—the dispute between Wotan and Fricka, terminating +in his taking the oath; then comes his monologue, addressed, of +course, to Brünnhilda ("In talking to thee it is with myself I seem to +speak," to transcribe approximately what he says); Brünnhilda's +warning to Siegmund follows, and then the finale, the catastrophic +climax with Siegmund's death.</p> + +<p>The prelude opens with the same fiery impetuosity as that to the First +Act. It is largely made up of what in the guide-books used to be +called the "Flight motive"—as though a serious composer would or +could invent a motive of Running away!—and as the opening bar may be +taken as a varia<a name="Page_364" id="Page_364" />tion of the Sword theme, and the thing ends with what +we learn to be a tune associated with the Valkyries, a really fertile +and picturesque mind may see in it a musical account of Siegmund +flying with the Sword and pursued, for good or evil, by the Valkyrie. +What we really feel in it is the harshness of the opening discords, +the agitation, the power, all forming a fitting prelude to what we see +when the curtain rises, the barren rocks, and Wotan, exultant, calling +Brünnhilda. His phrases have, indeed, a glorious vigour, as have +Brünnhilda's in her answer. Her war-whoop plays an important part in +the Third Act. Fricka's music is royally imperious at first: such +declamation had never been thought of in the world before; but there +is rare beauty of an austere kind—the beauty of holiness—afterwards, +as she momentarily drops her dignity and pleads her cause. She gains +the day and departs, and after Wotan's tedious meditation comes the +most magnificent music of all. We hear the Fate theme—a strange +phrase that seems to question destiny without ever getting an +answer—and a subject taken bodily from Mendelssohn and made into a +new thing filled with a curious blending of wistful and tender pity, +mystery and power. It gives us a glimpse into the very heart of +Brünnhilda, obeying her father because she must, and revolting against +the task. Siegmund's declamation is a fine example of Wagner's finest +vocal writing at this period—the style which I have referred to as +something between recitative and true song. That is, it remains +metrical without the slightest tendency to <a name="Page_365" id="Page_365" />fall into regular four-bar +measure, or any other regular measure; yet it decidedly is not +recitative. But as the prevailing mood becomes more exalted, so does +the music become more lyrical, and the ending of the dialogue, when +Brünnhilda's emotion swamps every other consideration than rescuing +the lovers, is sheer song. The orchestral part is symphonic +throughout, with a few dramatic pauses. One of the most wonderful of +these is at Brünnhilda's reply: "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more." +There is no wailing, no sadness, in the accompaniment—only simple +chords; and the simple voice-phrase, evidently intended to be +half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different +order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the +melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be +remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is +none of the contrapuntal intricacy of <i>Tristan</i>: the pictorial +requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, +both—if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned—for the abstract colour +of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use of +chords permitted. Wagner never ceases to make us feel that the drama +passes amidst the wild mountains and woods: the drama is poignant +enough in all conscience, and the scenery is an aid to it. We have the +purely pictorial Wagner with the gathering storm—the voices calling +amongst the clouds. The sinister growling of the approaching thunder +is heard, and, still more sinister, the harsh notes of <a name="Page_366" id="Page_366" />Hunding's +horn; the orchestra rages louder and louder, Sieglinda mutters in her +dream, the Valkyrie's call is heard encouraging Siegmund, the crash as +the Sword is splintered, and then an awful silence. The action has +been long delayed, but the catastrophe arrives with appalling +swiftness at the end, and the music is equal to the opportunity. It is +not wholly theatre music: that passage in the bass, galloping up and +down the scale against a <i>tremolando</i> accompaniment, is in itself fine +music; even Hunding's rough cow-horn makes a musical effect. When +Wotan's fury breaks forth and he rides off in godlike wrath—even here +the music is glorious, taken simply as music. Had all the <i>Ring</i> been +done with the superb mastery of this and the preceding Act, we should +have an art creation to be set above every other art achievement in +the world—above anything done by Æschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>Like the First Act, the Third begins with a storm of rain, wind, +thunder and lightning; like First and Second, it opens with a display +of energy before which all listeners are as leaves in the wind. As +panoramic displays translated into music all the three introductions +are likely enough to be misunderstood; so at the outset let us +carefully bear in mind Wagner's intention at the beginning of the last +Act of the <i>Valkyrie</i>—to show, with unequalled force and splendour, +the strength of the god, soon <a name="Page_367" id="Page_367" />to be shown as nothing before the +strength of Brünnhilda. Brünnhilda, let us always remember, stands for +human love, affection—not love in the <i>Tristan</i> sense—but that love +of which Goldsmith sang that He "loved us into being"; the love of +human being for human being so strong that not for so many thousands a +year as a judge, so many pitiable hundreds a year as a magistrate, +immortality as an omnipotent ruler or a Wotan, will it perpetuate or +permit a wrong on a human being. To win omnipotence Wotan has +inflicted wrong upon wrong—wrong upon wrong on those he had created +for his purpose, on those the fine part of his nature loved. The fine +part of his nature revolts and conquers him. He struggles on, shorn of +nine-tenths of his strength, and it is not until the Third Act of +<i>Siegfried</i> that he sees himself beaten and acknowledges it; but the +ending of the gods, which really began with Wotan's first grasp at +universal power, is first in this last Act of the <i>Valkyrie</i> clearly +foretold. Wotan comes on clothed in thunders and lightnings to punish +Brünnhilda because she fought on the side of the higher instead of the +lower part of his nature—his higher self is cast from him, only (he +thinks) to unite later with a force (a hero) independent of him to +gain him his sovereignty.</p> + +<p>The tempest rages and roars; the Valkyries arrive "by ones, by twos, +by threes," at the Valkyries' Rock; and presently, in hotter haste +than the rest, Brünnhilda comes in, bringing Sieglinda. She tells her +(Brünnhilda's) sisters how she has defied Wotan, the All-father; they +are scandalised, and desert her; <a name="Page_368" id="Page_368" />Sieglinda feebly begs her to take no +more trouble—there is nothing left to live for; Brünnhilda tells her +she carries within her the seed of the highest hero of all the world; +Sieglinda is filled with joy, revives, and flies to the cave in the +wood where Siegfried is destined to be born. Wotan comes on with his +thunders and lightnings and calls for Brünnhilda; at last she answers, +and he announces her punishment: she shall be deprived of her godhood +and left on the mountains to become the wife and slave of the first +man that passes. The other maidens wail in protest; in anger he bids +them begone; Brünnhilda, overcome with shame, sinks at his feet. The +storm slowly dies away; Brünnhilda rises and pleads her cause—"Is +this crime of mine so shameful?—in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I +simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost +heart." At first Wotan will scarcely hear her; gradually he relents. +But he cannot go back on his oath, on the sentence he has pronounced; +and in the end he yields her this much—that she shall lie guarded by +a wall of fire, only to be claimed by a hero who, not fearing his +spear, will pass through the fire. Then he bids her an everlasting +farewell; lays her to sleep in her armour, covered by her shield, her +weapon by her side; calls up the fire, and casting a last sad look on +her, his favourite child, goes slowly off as the curtain falls.</p> + +<p>The drama here is of the most poignant kind; the scenic surroundings +are of the sort Wagner so greatly loved—tempest amidst black +pine-woods, with wild, flying clouds, the dying down of the <a name="Page_369" id="Page_369" />storm, +the saffron evening light melting into shadowy night, the calm +deep-blue sky with the stars peeping out, then the bright flames +shooting up; and the two elements, the dramatic and the pictorial, +drew out of him some pages as splendid as any even he ever wrote. The +opening, "the Ride of the Valkyries," is a piece of storm-music +without a parallel. There is no need here for Donner with his hammer: +the All-father himself is abroad in wrath and majesty, and his +daughters laugh and rejoice in the riot. There is nothing uncanny in +the music: we have that delight in the sheer force of the elements +which we inherit from our earliest ancestors: the joy of nature +fiercely at work which is echoed in our hearts from time immemorial. +The shrilling of the wind, the hubbub, the calls of the Valkyries to +one another, the galloping of the horses, form a picture which for +splendour, wild energy and wilder beauty can never be matched.</p> + +<p>Technically, this Ride is a miracle built up of many of the +conventional figurations of the older music. There is the continuous +shake, handed on from instrument to instrument, the slashing figure of +the upper strings, the kind of basso ostinato, conventionally +indicating the galloping of horses, and the chief melody, a mere +bugle-call, altered by a change of rhythm into a thing of superb +strength. The only part of the music that ever so remotely suggests +extravagance is the Valkyrie's call; and it, after all, is only a +jodel put to sublime uses. Out of these commonplace elements, elements +that one might almost call <a name="Page_370" id="Page_370" />prosaic, Wagner wrought his picture of +storm, with its terror, power, joyous laughter of the storm's +daughters—storm as it must have seemed to the first poets of our +race. The counterpoint is not so obviously wonderful as in <i>Tristan</i> +and the <i>Mastersingers</i>, but only a contrapuntist equal to Bach and +Handel could have written such counterpoint. We may gain a clearer +idea of what this means if we compare, not to the disadvantage of one +or the other, this Ride with Berlioz's "Ride to the Abyss." At first +sight, Berlioz seems the more daring. He trusts to a persistent rhythm +and to orchestral effects. There is no inner structure—the separate +parts, or batteries of parts, have no individuality: nothing of the +sort is attempted or indeed wanted. The horses gallop on like mad +things: their pace cannot be checked; themes, properly speaking, there +are none—we hear the screeches of fearsome wild-fowl, the excitement +and the noise increase, until at last the catastrophe is reached, and +the final climax is the terrible gibberish-chant of all the devils in +hell. Regarded as sheer music, the thing gets as far by the twentieth +bar as ever it gets. The piece is as near to pure colour in music as +can be attained. Why, Wagner with his counterpoint seems old-fashioned +and formal by comparison! The four constituents, the wild laughter of +the shakes of the wood-wind, the slashing figure of the strings, the +galloping figure of the bass, the Ride theme—had these been used by +any one save Wagner the result would have been unendurably wooden. But +Wagner had unlimited harmonic resources at his disposal; and he had +the <a name="Page_371" id="Page_371" />determination and the gift to achieve perfect truth in his +delineation of a storm. Delineation, I say, for here we have drawing +as well as colour. Of colour there is plenty: notice, for example, the +use of the brass against the descending chromatics; but the colour is +mainly harmonic. In a sense Wagner was not an innovator: so long as +the methods of his mighty predecessors served him he sought no +others—effects, whether of orchestration or of melody, were to him +simply means: never for a second was he beguiled into regarding them +as ends; and every musician knows that plenty of them came at his +call, more readily and spontaneously than in the case of any of the +later musicians.</p> + +<p>It is worth looking at the plan of this Ride—which is, be it +remembered, only the prelude to the gigantic drama which is to follow. +After the ritornello the main theme is announced, with a long break +between the first and second strains; and again a break before it is +continued. Then it sounds out in all its glory, terse, closely gripped +section to section, until the Valkyries' call is heard; purely +pictorial passages follow; the theme is played with, even as Mozart +and Beethoven played with their themes, and at the last the whole +force of the orchestra is employed, and his object is attained—he has +given us a picture of storm such as was never done before, and he has +done what was necessary for the subsequent drama—made us feel the +tremendous might of the god of storms. A few of my readers may know +Handel's "Horse and his Rider" chorus—how he piles mass <a name="Page_372" id="Page_372" />on mass of +tone until in the end we seem to see a whole irresistible sea rushing +over Pharaoh and his host. Wagner does a thing perfectly analogous; +but as I have remarked with regard to Weber and Mendelssohn and their +picturesque music, where Handel, having painted his tremendous +picture, had achieved his end and was satisfied and left off, is just +the point where Wagner begins what to him is much the more important +thing, the drama. The omnipotent master of Valhalla comes on apace: +the storm is a mere indication of what is coming.</p> + +<p>A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this. +Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and +it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has +done. Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and +station at great length. This may be a vestige of the older +stage-craft: certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas +that followed the <i>Valkyrie</i>. It is not for even the minor personages +of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience +into their confidence. But, as I say, words were indispensable, and +Wagner found the best he could—I suppose. The defect is a tiny one; +none the less it is a defect.</p> + +<p>With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced. The +godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme +sounds out—if, indeed, we may call it a theme—and then we get a lull +after all the hurly-burly. Brünnhilda and Sieglinda come in; +Brünnhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl +disturbed <a name="Page_373" id="Page_373" />the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and +horror. The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the +opera—Brünnhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one +after another refusing in very conventional phrases. The scene is +indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate: music +has no tones to express primness. With the voice of Sieglinda the +music at once begins to live in Wagner's own curious fashion. She has +nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to +be left alone to die. Wagner well knew when the drama could make its +effect almost unaided—when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic +music in the older style would be to overdo things. Sieglinda's +phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to +be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung. Bathos is avoided: +the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched. In fact the +technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous +act. But with Brünnhilda's announcement to Sieglinda we get the great +lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the +last act of the <i>Dusk of the Gods</i>, and we get the mightiest of the +Siegfried themes. With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes +the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame; +then comes his denunciation of Brünnhilda, another specimen of the +lyrical Wagner. Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down +of the storm. We can <i>see</i> the setting sun and the departing +storm-clouds in the <a name="Page_374" id="Page_374" />music, and with these we are made to feel the +abating wrath of the god. And then comes the noblest piece of +recitative in all music. The words in which Brünnhilda appeals to her +father have already been (roughly) quoted: to give an idea of the +musical phrases would require too many pages of this book. The Sleep +theme enters as Wotan sees a way to the great compromise—the +compromise foredoomed to bring him to ruin. He will put Brünnhilda to +sleep to await the hero; but he will hedge her in with fire so that +the hero shall be a true one. With the indescribable finesse, +subtlety, of his own particular art, Wagner lets us feel how +Brünnhilda, in begging to be protected in this (rather unusual) way, +is reading only her own father's thought: he seems for a long time to +contend, but at last yields. The music steadily increases in force and +passion, and at each stage where one would think the composer could +strike no harder he immediately does it. More and more of the divine +fury pours into the music, until the climax is reached in the bars +preceding the Farewell.</p> + +<p>In the meantime we have had the wonderful Eternal Love theme—not +sexual love, but the mystic force that created the worlds and holds +them in their courses: in all Wagner there is no nobler and sweeter +passage than that in which Brünnhilda first sings it. The vivid +musical description of the crackling flames which are to surround her +is another of an unequalled series of marvels. The Farewell I have +already compared with that at the end of <a name="Page_375" id="Page_375" /><i>Lohengrin</i>: the voice part +is at times in Wagner's own style of song-recitative, but a great deal +of it is sheer simple melody. No master has excelled, or perhaps +matched, Wagner in the art of expressing the most profound and +poignant pathos without ever a suspicion of letting it lapse into +bathos; and this he does by—what at first it may seem ridiculous to +say of so opulent and luxurious a genius as Wagner's—by his +instinctive artistic austerity. The word is not too strong to be +applied to the resolute simplicity which enabled him to write such +melodies as those of which I am now speaking and the Farewell in +<i>Lohengrin</i>: the temptation to let himself go, to wallow in sadness +and to wring our bowels must have been almost too tremendous to be +resisted by the man who within a year or so planned <i>Tristan</i>. In art, +harrowing our feelings never pays, and his self-repression has its +exceeding great reward: we could not feel more with Wotan's desolating +grief—one stroke more and we should rebel: we should know that our +most sacred feelings were being exploited—that an endeavour was being +made to gain our applause for a work of art by an illegitimate appeal +at one particular moment to those feelings. I have dwelt a little on +this because we all know <i>Tristan</i> and its author, and though there is +little self-repression in that work—where it is not required—and +physically there was little but self-indulgence in its author's +nature, it is well to realise that the artist rose immeasurably +superior to the man. It must have come to us all at one time or +another with something of a shock to find that the <a name="Page_376" id="Page_376" />voluptuous Wagner +of <i>Tannhäuser</i> could be as austere as Milton. Austerity is not +barrenness—not the barrenness that would result from imitating the +austerity of the old church composers with their hundred rules and +regulations: the harmony is as free as could be wished; at the needful +moment the melodies pass without hesitation from key to key; but when +we have long known them and learnt to understand them we find them at +heart to be idealised folk-tunes—simple and indescribably pathetic, +as the situation demands.</p> + +<p>An instance of Wagner's subtle feeling is the passage where Wotan +"kisses away" Brünnhilda's godhood and lays her to sleep, as one with +the rocks and stones of mother earth, Erda, whose music accompanies +the act. Wotan, like Alberich, has renounced love; so just previously +we have heard the corresponding passage from the <i>Rhinegold</i>. We have +the lulling Sleep theme, and then comes the Fire-music, a thing +unmatched—and, so far as I know, never attempted—in all music. The +mighty Spear strikes the ground to the mighty Spear theme; the earth +seems to shiver as the fire comes up; then the flames mount, yellow +against the deep blue sky; the Loge music sparkles in the orchestra, +the strings sustain a continuous whizz and roar, and over it all, and +at times in it or under it, swings that lulling Sleep theme. If it is +not too futile a word to use, the Siegfried "heroic" theme, as Wotan +uses it in commanding the fire (Loge) that only the noblest hero ever +born shall pass to Brünnhilda, is the most pompous form in which it +appears through<a name="Page_377" id="Page_377" />out the <i>Ring</i>; but the situation warrants it, demands +it. Amidst the roar of the fire and with the divine lulling phrase, +fragments of the Farewell are heard; and twice, as Wotan looks back on +his daughter, we hear the Fate theme—the Scandinavian sense that this +tragedy <i>mysteriously had to be</i>: the mighty god and lord of the +universe himself knows and feels that the things preordained must +happen. He goes slowly off; the central tragedy is virtually +accomplished; to the end the fire blazes and sparkles, and the curtain +descends on a soft chord. The revolving seasons will pass; strange +events will happen in the outer world of men; Brünnhilda will sleep +there, the guarding fire seen from afar by awe-stricken warrior +tribes.</p> + +<p>The spring freshness of the music, its vivid pictorial quality, the +intense human feeling expressed, its profound sense of the past and +the mystery of things, the godlike power, place it hardly second, if +indeed second, to <i>Tristan</i>. There are love-duets in music which may +be compared with those in <i>Tristan</i>: there is nothing with which the +music of the <i>Valkyrie</i> may be compared. The grandeur of Handel's +picture-painting in <i>Israel in Egypt</i> is a different quality +altogether. Handel is unapproachable; but he worked with a different +aim, in a different way, and in a different material. Wagner's music +is beautiful and sublime, and he blent the human element with the +others in a fashion no other musician has attempted.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" /><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378" />CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>'SIEGFRIED'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>In a letter to Liszt Wagner says he would not have undertaken the toil +of completing so gigantic a work as the <i>Ring</i> but for his love of +Siegfried, his ideal of manhood. It is as well, from one point of +view, that his love of his ideal was so intense, for in consequence we +have the <i>Ring</i>; but from another point of view it is not so well, for +the youth Siegfried is the least lovable, perhaps the most inane and +detestable character to be found in any form of drama. He is a +combination of impudence, stupidity and sheer animal strength—mere +bone and sinew; his courage comes from his stupidity. The courage and +strength and impudence carry him through to his one victory; then his +stupidity leads him straight to destruction. He possesses not one fine +trait: he is as weak in will and intellect as he is strong in muscle. +In the 'fifties and 'sixties not only Germans but men of all other +nationalities seem to have vainly imagined they had solved all the +problems of this very difficult world by assuming and proclaiming that +might is right. Bismarck acted on this belief; our own Carlyle, +Tennyson and Ruskin preached it; and Wagner, being a feeble creature +physically, fell naturally, inevitably, a <a name="Page_379" id="Page_379" />victim to the old delusion, +and set to work to glorify the strong man. There is a further +explanation. I need not do more than refer to an idea which took +definite form during the eighteenth century, that as many of the +defects and problems of modern life spring from the very conditions +under which our civilisation alone is possible, a return to a state of +nature, without government, clothes, or even houses to live in, would +be a return to the garden of Eden before the Fall. We see this notion +working in Wagner's mind continually in the prose writings, and in his +last opera we see Parsifal, the "pure fool," "redeeming" an +over-civilised world. To glorify the idiot absolute in this fashion +was to out-Rousseau Rousseau—though Wagner would have scorned the +suggestion. In <i>Siegfried</i> he goes by no means so far; but he goes +quite far enough. Siegfried is no idiot; but he certainly is an +unamiable, truculent savage. He has been reared by a dwarf and +cripple, Mime, and the first we see of him is on his entry with a wild +bear in leash, which beast he drives at his terrified foster-father. +The justification is that he feels instinctively that Mime is bad, low +and cunning—and it does not justify him: Mime, with an ulterior +purpose, it is true, has saved him from death by starvation in his +infancy, and nurtured him, and the least Siegfried could do was to +leave the abject creature in peace. It is true also that he is mending +Siegfried's sword—but this is to anticipate. I cannot accept +Siegfried as a specimen of the highest heroic humanity. The boldness +of a man who because of his dull wits cannot realise <a name="Page_380" id="Page_380" />danger is of no +use in this world under any imaginable conditions. Siegfried knows no +fear. There is a story of two officers conversing during a battle. One +asked, "Are you afraid?" Reply: "If you were as afraid as I am you +would run away." One, the tale assumes, had a finely organised brain, +the other brute force and insensibility. Which is the nearer approach +to an ideal of noble manhood? Wagner's <i>Siegfried</i> answers, brute +ferocity. Judged by his own standard how would Wagner himself +stand?—as splendidly organised a brain as that possessed by any man +born into the nineteenth or any other century?</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The continuous clink-clink-clink of a metalworker's hammer is heard; +the curtain rises, and we first see through an opening at the back of +the stage the bright green shining forest; as our eyes grow accustomed +to the darkness in the front we gradually perceive a rude smithy in a +cave, with an anvil, a forge with a smouldering fire, and a deformed +dwarf, Mime, at work trying to piece together the shards of the broken +sword. That sword was Siegmund's, shattered by a blow of Wotan's +spear; and long ago it was to this cave Sieglinda fled, bearing with +her the fragments. Siegmund and Sieglinda are long dead, Sieglinda +after giving birth to Siegfried; not far off is Hate-cave, where the +dragon Fafner lies guarding his precious gold <a name="Page_381" id="Page_381" />amongst it the Ring; +far away Brünnhilda sleeps on the mountain, surrounded by her wall of +fire. There she lay on the evening of Siegmund's death; there she has +lain since. The world has gone on its way; Siegmund and Sieglinda have +departed; Siegfried has grown to manhood; year by year the young +shoots in the forest have sprouted and the leaves spread to the +sunlight: as we see the forest now, so was it on that fateful day, and +so it has been as the successive summers came. Siegmund lived, died, +and his memory has almost perished; save to the dwarf, the very name +of Sieglinda is unknown; other men have lived and died: nature only +goes on her course, the trees each year bringing forth fresh leaves to +repair last year's losses, as though the lives and deaths of brave men +and women were nothing to her. The earth is sweet and pleasant, but +nature must attend to her own affairs, and her indifference to the +affairs of men, her unchangeableness amidst all the vicissitudes of +men's lives, compel us to realise in such a scene as this at once her +own eternal youthfulness and man's brief, ephemeral existence. At one +stroke Wagner creates the atmosphere for his drama, and gives us as no +other artist has ever given it a sense of the unfathomable mystery of +the world and of life.</p> + +<p>The dwarf taps away with his hammer; he longs to patch up the sword +that Siegfried may kill the dragon and he, Mime, get the hoard; he +bewails his weakness, but he does his best. All his labour proves +useless—the sword refuses to be mended; and in comes Siegfried with +his bear. The bear <a name="Page_382" id="Page_382" />is driven off into the woods; there is a long +altercation and an explanation; Siegfried cannot believe that, as he +has been told, Mime is his father, and he learns the truth. He softens +into something approaching manhood as he hears of his mother's death; +and finally rushes off into the forest, leaving Mime again to his +task. Then follows a scene to be accounted for in only one way. First, +the scene: Mime sits in despair, and there enters an old man with his +slouch-hat drawn down over one eye, wearing a dark blue cloak (it +ought to be dotted with stars), and carrying a spear or staff in his +hands. He gains the sacred hearth, converses with Mime, and finally +bets him his head that he cannot answer three questions. Much to my +surprise when I first saw the score of <i>Siegfried</i>, these form merely +an excuse for going again over the ground covered in the <i>Rhinegold</i> +and the <i>Valkyrie</i>. The Scandinavian hegemony is expounded, and other +matters are gracefully touched on; the only point is made when the +last question is propounded and Mime cannot answer: Who is it shall +forge the sword, slay Fafner, take the hoard, pass through the fire +and take Brünnhilda for his wife? The old man laughs, leaves Mime his +head, but tells him it will fall to the hero who can do all these +things, the hero who knows not fear. He goes off; thunder is heard; +strange lights flicker amongst the trees; and Mime falls into an +ecstasy of terror, suffering all the agonies of a waking nightmare, +until the spell is abruptly broken by the entry of Siegfried. Why we +should have the two previous dramas of the <i>Ring</i> <a name="Page_383" id="Page_383" />told again in this +way is the puzzle. In the letter to Uhlig (p. <a href="#Page_227">227</a>) Wagner had plainly +given his reasons for writing the <i>Rhinegold</i> and the <i>Valkyrie</i>—to +set before the audience clearly and vividly the events leading up to +<i>Siegfried's Death</i>, in action, not in narrative. We have seen them in +action, and lo! we get them in narrative! Wagner's idea must have been +to show us Wotan, realising how matters had passed beyond his control, +going about the world as the Wanderer, watching the development of +things and awaiting the inevitable day. He gives us the very awe and +thrill of our Scandinavian forbears with the apparition of the +grey-bearded man in his cloak coloured like deep night—the terrible +god that they believed walked the earth and might enter their +homesteads at any moment. Of course, as we shall see presently, the +answer to the third question prepares the next stage of the drama. But +as to why the whole story of the <i>Ring</i> should be repeated—well, even +gods must have something to talk about if they wish to talk at all; +and the scene serves to sustain and to intensify the atmosphere in +which the whole drama is enacted, the atmosphere of the old sagas. But +I cheerfully concede that it is far too long, and in many respects an +artistic error.</p> + +<p>The real drama of <i>Siegfried</i>, considering it as a separate, +self-contained opera, is now prepared for, and forthwith begins. We +know Siegfried and the task before him; we know Mime and <i>his</i> +task—to find out if Siegfried can be made to fear, and if he cannot, +to encourage him to kill the dragon, win <a name="Page_384" id="Page_384" />the gold, and then to poison +him. He tries Siegfried with stories of terror, asks him if he has +never felt afraid of this, that and the other; and finding that this +is the veritable Hero, makes his preparation. Siegfried takes the +splinters of the sword—the splinters no smith can weld +together—files them to dust, melts the dust, re-casts the sword and +finishes it. Meantime Mime, working on, brews his poisonous broth, +muttering to himself about his purpose. At the end Siegfried tests the +sword and proves it true by splitting the anvil. All sorts of +allegorical meanings may be found in this gigantic scene; but the +plain meaning is that to a hero, unique, unparalleled in the history +of the world, a patched-up weapon, used previously by lesser men, is +useless: his sword must be new, and only he himself can forge it.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Before dealing further with the drama of <i>Siegfried</i> I wish, for a +reason, to say a few words about the music of this First Act. From +<i>Tannhäuser</i> onward Wagner showed in the music of his operas a +complete mastery of what can only be called the business-artistic side +of his art, or perhaps a complete knowledge of effectiveness. In so +long an affair as an opera, and especially a Wagner opera, +effectiveness depends largely on contrast, not simply between scene +and scene of an act, but also in a more marked degree between act and +act of an <a name="Page_385" id="Page_385" />opera. In the <i>Dutchman</i> there is none of this larger +contrast, and could hardly be, for the <i>Dutchman</i> was originally +planned as an opera in one act. There is contrast enough, but he +contrasts set-piece with set-piece, scene with scene, not act with +act. In <i>Tannhäuser</i> he works on the bigger scale and contrasts act +with act: the opening of the Second reveals a totally different mood +from that of the First, and the Third is entirely different from +either. This is true of the <i>Valkyrie</i>; but the <i>Rhinegold</i>, like the +<i>Dutchman</i>, is all of a piece, and is, moreover, the prelude to a huge +drama. When we come to <i>Siegfried</i> we see at once how he was planning +his music on a still vaster scale: the atmosphere of <i>Siegfried</i> is in +contrast, almost violent contrast, with that of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. The +music of the last act of the <i>Valkyrie</i> is of a different character +altogether from that of the beginning of <i>Siegfried</i>. This is not +merely due to the development of Wagner's genius and his technical +power, but can be shown to be deliberately planned. Indeed, it ought +not to need any demonstration, knowing as we do know his knowledge and +grip of what is effective in the theatre. It would be absurd to +suppose that he was not perfectly well aware that every one would yawn +if after hearing the <i>Valkyrie</i> his audience found <i>Siegfried</i> to be +simply a continuation of the <i>Valkyrie</i>, found the two operas to be +virtually the same work with the scissors put through the score at an +arbitrarily chosen point. Consider the scenery of the two operas: +First Act of the <i>Valkyrie</i>, Hunding's hut with the smouldering <a name="Page_386" id="Page_386" />fire; +Second, a rocky defile in the mountains and no particular weather; +Third, storm round the Valkyries' rock, black flying clouds, the pines +tossing their branches to the tempest, and, at the end, a peaceful +evening sky and then the yellow flames shooting up against it. We must +note the change to the beginning of <i>Siegfried</i>: a dark cave, and +outside it the forest, green, fresh and bright; Second Act, the +entrance to Hate-cave, time, night, long before dawn, and at the end a +summer morning, with the sun shimmering on the grass and the trees +gently murmuring in the wind; Third, a rocky ravine in the early +morning, grey storm-clouds scudding past, the wind whistling; at the +end, a mountain top, Brünnhilda sleeping, the peaceful trees, a horse +quietly grazing, morning sunlight. This sequence shows how carefully +the matter was schemed; and we may now turn to the music.</p> + +<p>When the same leitmotivs are largely employed throughout a long +operatic work there must be a superficial, or, if I may say so, +external, monotony in the character of the music. A first glance at +the scores reveals to the eye the same series of notes and chords +repeated again and again; to any but the most attentive listener a +first hearing leaves the impression of the same themes and passages +endlessly repeated. But any one who leaves the theatre on an evening +after the <i>Valkyrie</i> bearing with him a vivid memory of the brilliance +and sweetness of the close must at the very least be struck by the +sombre colouring of the opening of <i>Siegfried</i> the following evening. +I do not mean the orchestral <a name="Page_387" id="Page_387" />colouring, but the intrinsic thing, the +music itself. The tapping of the hammer on steel goes on, and in mock +seriousness the orchestra gives out a series of prolonged sighs or +groans of the most lugubrious character, reaching a climax as poor +miserable Mime at last gives up his job in despair. Mime, we must +remember, is a half-comic personage; and were his music allotted to +some heroic man facing an impossible task it would be much the same, +save that Wagner would not have so exaggerated the hysterical emotion. +To depict a being facing an impossible task with no noble, but with +only an ignoble, motive requires such an exaggerated mode of +expression. Mime's grief is real enough, but the cause of it +contemptible. After a considerable deal in this mournful key comes the +sudden entry of the bright young savage Siegfried, driving the bear. +His first theme is simply a bugle hunting call: Siegfried was then +nothing but a hunter, a wild child of the forest. But as he gets on +with what he has to say Wagner warms up to his work, and we get many +inspired pages, some of them showing the tendency to indulge in +counterpoint of the finest sort which manifested itself more fully in +the <i>Mastersingers</i>, though here the movement is fuller of rude +impetuosity. The movement—for it is a distinct movement—in which +Siegfried describes how he had often looked into the smooth-running +brook, and seeing his reflection there knew he did not resemble Mime, +who therefore could not be his father—for the cub is like the +bear—is one of Wagner's loveliest, and full of a delicate pastoral +feeling (again, <a name="Page_388" id="Page_388" />in contrast with everything in the <i>Valkyrie</i>). The +Wanderer music is sublime. The theme was borrowed from Liszt, and +Liszt ought to have been grateful, for the possibilities of his own +musical subject were surely unfolded to him for the first time. In the +music here, even more than in the vision of the stage, we have the +grey Wanderer of the Scandinavian imagination—the mystery of wood, +mountain, river and ravine, with human sadness superadded, is clearly +communicated to us. Passing over the repetitions from the preceding +operas, concerning which I have already said sufficient, we come to +the nightmare music, where Wagner once more manifests that miraculous +gift of depicting, in terms of music, light and colour, a personal +emotion. We can see the flickering lights glaring amongst the trees +and feel Mime's terror.</p> + +<p>The forge scene is one of Wagner's most stupendous efforts—for really +inspired, not mechanical, energy it is by far the greatest thing in +the opera. As Siegfried sets to work pulling the bellows, his first +call "Nothung!" (the name of the Sword) is practically the same as the +cobbler's song in the <i>Mastersingers</i>; but immediately after it goes +off into a sheer song of spring and the joy of spring; while the +bellows groan and the fire roars the feeling of growing green forest +life overflows into the music, and the intoxicating exhilaration is +expressed as only Wagner himself had expressed it before. When the +hammering business begins we again find a likeness to the Sachs music, +but what a <a name="Page_389" id="Page_389" />dissimilarity from the petty tapping of Mime! Mime's +theme, and that of all the Nibelung smiths, is characteristic enough; +they are not contemptible in themselves, though through them we find +the whole tribe of these smiths to be contemptible; and the tremendous +swing of this second section of Siegfried's song makes every other +smith's song seem by comparison contemptible. Finally, when Nothung is +ready for action there is a coruscation of light from the orchestra as +the Sword theme, which, of course, we have heard long before, and the +Siegfried-the-hunter theme are blared out and the anvil is split.</p> + +<p>Many other points must be left until later. I wish for the present to +give a notion of Wagner's powers at the time he wrote the earlier +portions of <i>Siegfried</i>. Had the whole opera been equal to these +portions it might have ranked with the <i>Valkyrie</i>. But though his +powers were not yet on the wane, as we get on we shall see that the +subject was getting a little stale. He had not the smallest hope of +seeing his work performed. If ever a man wrote purely for posterity it +was Wagner at this period; and though the general inspiration remained +as deep and powerful as ever, we cannot be surprised if the continuous +white heat of the <i>Valkyrie</i> was checked and broken very often. The +surprising thing is that so circumstanced he achieved so much.</p> + + +<h3><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390" />IV</h3> + +<p>The story of the next Act is so simple that I shall deal with it and +the music at the same time. Near Hate-cave black Alberich, who first +steals the gold, ceaselessly watches: he cannot gain the gold, but its +attraction is irresistible. So he watches while we hear the snarling +music associated with him; and we can feel all the old-time horror of +the malignant semi-deities of the black forests and streams and caves. +Mime and he dispute angrily: Siegfried is about to slay the dragon, +the "Wurm," and the question is who is to have the gold. The music is +all of the sort that Wagner alone after Weber could write—wild, full +at times of frenzied energy, full also, if so forced a phrase may be +permitted, of black colour—black-green made audible as was the thick +darkness that might be felt made to be felt by Handel. Anger cannot be +directly expressed in music; but these dreary snarling noises from the +orchestra and the peculiar use made of the human voice—a use to be +referred to later—enable Wagner to indicate it indirectly in a way +effective on the stage. (We may note once again the contrast between +two successive scenes—the brilliance, the straightforward vigour of +the close of Act I, and these tortuous phrases at the beginning of Act +II.) Day begins to lighten, and Siegfried enters; he reclines on a +green bank and hearkens to a bird carolling amidst the rustling +branches. He tries to imitate its notes on a reed <a name="Page_391" id="Page_391" />cut with his sword, +that emits strange noises; and at last, annoyed by his lack of +success, he petulantly blows a blast on his horn. This arouses Fafner, +who grumbles and discloses his hiding-place; and presently an +extraordinary reptile, one the like of which never was on sea or land, +comes forth to destroy the intruder. Siegfried (like the ordinary +audience) seems disposed to laugh, but when the monster opens its +giant jaws and sends out flames and steam, and red lights begin to +glare in its eyes, he sees serious matters are at hand. He prepares +for combat, and the battle is terrific, if not very convincing. At +last, however, he penetrates the odd brute in a vital part; it rolls +over and makes dying prophecies; at the last it asks its conqueror's +name and, having learnt it, groans that name once and dies. Siegfried +thereupon penetrates into the cave and returns with the hoard; then he +throws himself once more upon the green bank.</p> + +<p>If the reader thinks I treat this episode rather flippantly, let me +promptly admit that this is so. It is pantomime of the most grotesque +sort, not serious opera. The dragon would not frighten a child. The +whole thing is an artistic mistake: the fight should take place with +the beast wholly or nearly out of sight: an occasional lash of the +tail, with plenty of smoke and red fire, would be much more effective +than this construction of lath and pasteboard. The music hardly ever +reaches a high level. There is not in existence any fine music +descriptive of any form of fighting; and here slashing passages on the +strings, blares of the brass, shrieks <a name="Page_392" id="Page_392" />of the wood-wind, do not cover +the inevitable failure of invention. Fafner's dying speech is better, +for Wagner had something urgent to say on his own account: he wishes +to urge on us the significance of Siegfried's coming career; and he +does it with immense impressiveness. The day of the Ending of the gods +comes a little nearer when Siegfried takes possession of the Ring and +places it on his finger. As was arranged from the beginning of time, +things are taking their course; Fate, answering none who questions, +works out her plans silently, mysteriously, inexorably. A sense of our +darkness regarding our destiny fills the music with a profound +emotion.</p> + +<p>If there has been too much of the pantomimic grotesque so far, Wagner +soon offers us compensations. The music now is amongst his freshest +and most fragrant. A reservation must be made touching the absolute +perfection of its beauty, but only a minute one. When first the bird +sang sweetly in the branches outspread above Siegfried's head we heard +the beginning of the piece known in the concert room as "Forest +Voices," the most exquisite sylvan picture ever done in music. A low +rippling figure, or rather part-figure and part-melodic theme, is +heard: it mounts higher, descends again, sways about, swells and dies +away; other melodies are interwoven with it; it becomes more rapid in +its motion, and grows louder until we feel the wind getting up and the +leaves dancing, and then comes the voice of the bird. This may sound a +little high-falutin', but is the only way in which I can <a name="Page_393" id="Page_393" />render my +impression. The picture is so absolutely convincing that many readers +who, like myself, first heard the thing in a concert room will +remember that with the one hint conveyed by the title no scenery was +needed to make its meaning and feeling quite clear. The bird-voice is +managed with consummate art: a penny toy would have enabled the +composer to give a faithful imitation of bird-song—and would have +spoilt the faithfulness of the whole picture. So Wagner has translated +the real bird-song into terms of art, and thereby given us its spirit +while sufficiently suggestive of the original. It is not sustained for +long. Siegfried, as I have described, tries to cut a reed so as to +imitate it, and there is some innocent fooling as he only gets odd +squeaks out of his instrument; then comes the combat with the Dragon, +and he returns to his place. The one tender spot in his nature, +awakened by the thought of his mother, who died for him, is touched by +the bird-song and the sweet morning; he is filled with vague, +sorrowful yearnings—and presently the bird sings again. But after +killing the monster he had touched its blood—it burnt his finger, +which he instinctively put in his mouth; and the taste of the blood +endows him with the faculty of understanding the speech of beasts and +birds. So now when the bird sings it is a human voice uttering words. +It is with regard to this I make a reservation. The abrupt entrance of +the human voice startles one: the picture is for a moment distorted, +made artificial. After a few hearings one grows accustomed to the +incongruity; but I still think Wagner would perhaps <a name="Page_394" id="Page_394" />have done better +to let Siegfried tell us what he hears. This is, however, a mere +guess; and it savours of impudence to suggest what so great a composer +as Wagner should have done. The bird first warns Siegfried against +Mime. Mime crawls in with his basin of poisoned soup, meaning to offer +his "son" some refreshment after the labours of the morning. In +whining accents, verging on the ludicrous—for I have said that Mime +is semi-comic—he professes his love; but the dragon's blood also +enables Siegfried to understand what he means, and, just as Beckmesser +in singing the stolen song utters words very different from those he +means, so Mime in what he intends to be affectionate strains tells us +his real purpose. Siegfried plays with him as a cat plays with a +mouse, and at last plunges the sword into him—and from a thicket +comes the malignant laugh of Alberich, barked to Mime's own hammering +phrase. Disgusted, Siegfried returns to his resting place, but the +bird again engages his attention: it sings of the maiden afar off on +the mountain sleeping hedged in by the fire through which he alone can +break. Siegfried's longings take definite form: he will win the +maiden; the bird promises to lead him; it flutters off; he follows; +the curtain drops.</p> + +<p>Thus ends one of Wagner's most splendid scenes—certainly the finest +in this opera. The passion of the music, its vivid picturesque +quality, its freshness, go to make it one of the many things of +Wagner's for which no parallel can be found. Wagner's technique had +now reached that supreme <a name="Page_395" id="Page_395" />height which made <i>Tristan</i> and the +<i>Mastersingers</i> possible; and the spontaneous energy of his +inspiration was unabated. The Act, we may remember, was actually +completed after those two operas, but it was planned and partially +executed before.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>During the long interval that elapsed between the execution of the +earlier portion of the Second Act of <i>Siegfried</i> and the resumption of +his work many things happened to Wagner. He composed <i>Tristan</i> and the +<i>Mastersingers</i>; he went through his worst years of utter despair; he +was taken up by King Ludwig. As I have mentioned, he went to +Triebschen to complete the <i>Ring</i> for the sake of his conception of +the hero Siegfried—and he went there a jaded man. And there is an +unmistakable quality in the music of his Third Act. In <i>Tristan</i> and +the <i>Mastersingers</i> we have the perfectly mature Wagner; inspiration, +invention and technical accomplishment are perfectly balanced. What we +feel immediately in the third act of <i>Siegfried</i> is a certain +over-ripeness—as if the writing of music had become too easy. As we +proceed I shall give some instances of this, though not so many as +might be given.</p> + +<p>Siegfried is now on the point of reaching the height of his fortunes. +He has the Sword, has killed the Dragon, secured the Ring and the +magic cap which will enable him to change himself into any shape he +pleases. Following the fluttering bird <a name="Page_396" id="Page_396" />he comes to a pass on the +mountain-side and encounters Wotan who, we know, had sworn that none +who feared his Spear should pass through the fire. He endeavours to +stop the Hero, who shatters the Spear. Siegfried passes on; the flames +leap up at his approach and subside as he boldly goes on. He finds +Brünnhilda sleeping, awakes her with a kiss, overcomes her resistance, +and the opera concludes with a triumphant love-duet. This is the +skeleton of what is, dramatically if not musically, the most important +of the three acts.</p> + +<p>The curtain rises on this mountain pass in a dark dawn: an angry cold +wind whistles and screams, and wild wet clouds are flying. Wotan +stands there; presently he summons Erda, who rises, as in the +<i>Rhinegold</i>, with a "frosty light" about her; he asks her what will be +the upshot of the day's doings. Her answer is no answer, and Wotan +replies for her: Siegfried will pass and take Brünnhilda—and then the +End of the gods. The dramatic object of this scene I have never been +able to grasp. Both Wotan and Erda know what the end will be; and I +can only take it that Wagner, fully aware that each of the constituent +operas of the <i>Ring</i> would certainly be performed separately, wanted +to make his intention and the whole plot clear to those who had not +seen the earlier parts of the work. Musically it shows signs of that +over-ripeness I have just spoken of. The introduction is magnificent: +the leaping figure on the strings, the subject that serves for Erda +here (and elsewhere in different shapes for all the elemental beings), +mounting up against it, the <a name="Page_397" id="Page_397" />phrase expressive of Wotan's anguish +(from Act II of the <i>Valkyrie</i>), the Spear theme rising by degrees and +ever increasing force, the whole leading up to the Wanderer +music—these at once tell a story and paint a picture of tempest +amongst the wild mountainous rocks. Had Schopenhauer heard this music +it would have justified his remark about the use of clouds. From the +moment that Wotan begins his invocation the quality falls: the motive +is, for Wagner, a poor, mechanical thing; and an appearance of life is +only kept up by marked rhythms, forced changes of key, and noisy +orchestration. Erda's music is not on the highest level. The colour is +there, and an atmosphere is gained largely through the employment of +music previously heard; but the vocal phrases are not true song, nor +that blending of true song with recitative of which we have already +noticed so many examples.</p> + +<p>With the approach of Siegfried, however, at once the superb artist +shows himself: a complete piece made from the fire-music, the +bird-music, and Siegfried the hunter's theme is begun, to be +interrupted for a while, then resumed and worked up into a glorious +thing. The interruption is the scene between Siegfried and his +grandfather the Wanderer. It brings the tragedy of Wotan more vividly +than ever before us, and is from every point of view not only +justified but necessary. Siegfried scoffs at the old dotard, who loves +the boy as his own flesh and blood (if one may say this of a pagan +god) doomed to death by his forbear's ambition and errors. At last +Siegfried, impatient to go on, <a name="Page_398" id="Page_398" />smashes the Spear and ascends the path +to where we see the distant glow of the flames. The music is supremely +noble and touching, with just a hint here and there of over-facility: +I mean chiefly that the vocal phrases are not tense and full of +character as are those in the <i>Valkyrie</i>: they seem to have been <i>put +in</i> to fit the orchestral web. In an earlier chapter I spoke of this +weakness in the <i>Ring</i>; and from this point onward till the end of +Wagner's writing days, unless he was writing undisguised song, the +liability to this weakness increased. The over-ripeness shows itself +also in the structure of the music: the parts lack definition (as +microscopists would say). Formalism is not at all a desirable thing; +but if we examine the great works, differing widely in character, +<i>Tristan</i>, the <i>Mastersingers</i> and the <i>Valkyrie</i>, we find the utmost +distinctness combined with perfect freedom and expressiveness. Even as +early as the Second Act of <i>Siegfried</i> the freedom threatens to +degenerate into sloppiness—or, to put it rather more mildly, at least +into vagueness. Perhaps he felt this himself; for certainly at the end +of the act we are discussing, and often in the <i>Dusk of the Gods</i>, he +gives us straightforward song. At best his song-recitative is sublime; +at worst it is insufferably tedious.</p> + +<p>The gorgeous journey to the mountain-top is resumed as Siegfried +disappears amongst the rocks and Wotan goes off. We are now done with +him: his last ineffectual stand for supremacy having collapsed, as he +fore-knew it would, he returns to Valhalla to await the end. There is +darkness for <a name="Page_399" id="Page_399" />a while; then light returns, and we find the scene that +of the termination of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. The mountain-top is sunlit; +Brünnhilda's horse Grani is contentedly at graze; Brünnhilda, covered +with her shield, her spear by her side, sleeps, motionless. Siegfried +comes over some rocks at the back of the stage, gazes around him in +wonder, finally discovers Brünnhilda, and with a kiss awakens her. At +first the godhood has not quite gone out of her, and "Woe! woe!" she +cries, as she realises her fate. But womanhood is strong within her; +she yields; hails Siegfried as the highest hero of all the world, and +the opera ends.</p> + +<p>The music is nearly throughout the superb Wagner. The long ascending +violin passage which accompanies Siegfried's amazed gazing at the +wonders around him, chief amongst them Brünnhilda, is imagined with +absolute truth; Brünnhilda's Greeting to the sun is Wagner in the +plenitude of his powers, blending music which depicts her outspread +arms with human rapture in an incomparable way; Siegfried's masterful +and passionate entreaties are quite in the strain of Tristan, though +the Scandinavian atmosphere prevails; Brünnhilda's awe-stricken song, +"O Siegfried, highest hero," interprets the birth of love in a woman's +breast with, again, absolute truth; and that the man who had lately +written <i>Tristan</i> could write such a finale is not the least +astounding of Wagner's feats.</p> + +<p>The Siegfried Idyll, made of the Siegfried Themes, is, in a word, the +most beautiful thing he ever wrote.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII" /><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400" />CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>'THE DUSK OF THE GODS'</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>This, the last of Wagner's really great works, was composed in hot +haste for the first Bayreuth festival. True, the festival did not take +place until some time after its completion; but at the moment Wagner +anticipated an immediate performance. There is nothing more pathetic, +nothing sadder, than the picture of the mighty world-composer +struggling against petty odds to complete what might have been a +world-masterpiece, and failing because of his hurry. He was sixty +years of age; worn by constant combat; worried even then by stupid +persecutions and the uncertainties of life; and he went on, if not +joyfully, at least indomitably, unconquerably. The result is a work +gigantic in idea, but far too rapid and facile in the execution. His +pen seems to have run of its own accord; the scenes are spread out to +a length positively appalling; pages on pages show no trace of +inspiration. Yet the <i>Dusk of the Gods</i> is an opera no other composer +could have achieved; and with all its defects it will be a high and +holy joy to generations not yet born.</p> + +<p>The last hour of the old gods has come; the Norns spin their web on +the Valkyries' rock; it breaks, and they sink into the earth, knowing +that all is <a name="Page_401" id="Page_401" />finished. Dawn breaks, and Siegfried and Brünnhilda come +out of their cavern; Siegfried must now go forth to deeds of +derring-do, for, like Lovelace, "how could he love her, dear, so much, +loved he not honour more?" She bids him go, and he goes; the flames +immediately spring up again round her dwelling—for what reason Wagner +does not explain. Neither does he explain why Brünnhilda does not +travel with her husband—the explanation is made only too obvious +afterwards. He travels to the Rhine, and there meets Hagen, Günther +and Günther's sister Gutruna. Hagen, the son of Alberich, is more or +less like Mime, a half-super-natural being, malignant, diabolical, +with only one idea, that of getting possession of the gold, and, above +all, of the Ring. He knows of Siegfried's "deed," and knows that +Siegfried is coming that way; but he keeps the story to himself, and +tells Günther and Gutruna of the fearless hero and of Brünnhilda +sleeping on the mountain-top encircled by fire. Günther desires the +woman, Gutruna the man. But only Siegfried can pass through the fire. +Pat to the moment he arrives, and enters leading Grani. Hagen offers +him drink which contains a powder which destroys his memory; he +forgets all about Brünnhilda, but not, apparently, about the magic +cap; he gazes in rapture at Gutruna, and in a few minutes the pact is +made—Siegfried shall take Günther's form and win Brünnhilda for him; +in return he will have Gutruna, who is more than willing. The two men +go off together, and the scene changes again to the Valkyries' rock. +Brünnhilda <a name="Page_402" id="Page_402" />sits alone looking at the Ring; Waltraute, one of the +Valkyries, rushes in and demands that Ring. She relates how for want +of it Wotan, dreading that it may fall into the hands of Alberich, +sits gloomy and silent in Valhalla. But Brünnhilda is now wholly woman +and has no sympathy with the gods; she refuses the Ring, and Waltraute +goes off in despair. The flames begin to flicker and dance; +Siegfried's horn is heard; and presently he enters in Günther's form, +or at least as nearly in it as can be managed on the stage. He claims +and seizes Brünnhilda, sends her into the sleeping-chamber, and, +swearing truth to his new friend Günther, follows with his drawn sword +ready to place between him and his bride.</p> + +<p>So the act closes. Brünnhilda's horror and shame are unspeakable; she +cannot understand; Wotan had promised her the great hero, and this +promise is broken and a last humiliation inflicted on her. The act is +intolerably long; even were every moment crowded with Wagner's most +glorious music the strain on our attention would be terrific. But the +music is by no means uniformly of Wagner's best; for pages on pages +his sheer craftsmanship fairly gallops away with him. The Norn scene +is as purely theatrical as anything he wrote; the atmosphere is, so to +speak, artificially weird. The scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilda +is more inspired; and the journey to the Rhine is one of Wagner's +finest bits of picture-painting. The change of feeling towards the end +is superb: a sense of foreboding and dread comes into the music and +prepares us for the coming <a name="Page_403" id="Page_403" />disaster. But when the curtain rises on +the hall of the Gibichungs we at once get more artificiality and +theatricality. In using the word theatrical I do not mean there is any +return to, for instance, the <i>Rienzi</i> style: the music is theatrical +in Wagner's own later way: it seems to fit the situation, but the +appearance is an appearance only: the stuff is superficial: the +feeling of the moment is not expressed—the music, in a word, is +essentially the same as that of many inferior but clever opera +composers, only, of course, the Wagner idiom is always there. The +Waltraute scene is fine, being largely made up of old material; but I +cannot say much for the scene between Brünnhilda and Siegfried. In +this first act two important themes are introduced, the Tarnhelm theme +and that of the draught of forgetfulness. The first is of the +theatrical type: it is a leitmotiv of the same sort as Lohengrin's +warning to Elsa; the other is a miracle, one of the wonders of music. +It gives one in a brief phrase Siegfried's dazed sense that something +has gone from him, a strange sense of loss; and it has the pathos the +moment demands. As for the draught of forgetfulness itself, it cannot +be explained as symbolical of anything; it must be accepted as we +accept the Tarnhelm and the Rhinemaidens and black Alberich.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>In the Second Act the scene is again the Gibichungs' hall. Siegfried +and Günther are away, and Hagen watches by night; his father, +Alberich, crawls <a name="Page_404" id="Page_404" />up from the river and counsels him as to how to get +possession of the Ring; then he disappears as dawn begins to show. The +music is weird and sinister in Wagner's finest manner. Siegfried comes +in and says Günther and his bride will soon arrive, and goes off with +Gutruna, happy as a child; in a magnificent piece of music, largely +constructed of a harsh phrase associated with Hagen, he (Hagen) calls +up the clansmen and women; a pompous bit of chorus greets Günther and +Brünnhilda, and then once more we are plunged into a sea of +theatricality. To her amazement, Brünnhilda finds Siegfried there with +his new bride, unmindful of her. In rage she denounces him and +declares he has shared the joys of love with her; he denies it; but +Günther is shamed, and has no doubt that Siegfried has played him +false. Siegfried goes merrily off, and Günther, Hagen and Brünnhilda +swear that he must die. In the music we get any amount of physical +energy and dramatic emphasis; but we know this is no longer the Wagner +of the <i>Valkyrie</i>. I pass over the Act briefly now, because I can only +repeat what I have said before. Of course all the consummate skill of +the master is there.</p> + +<p>The Third Act opens by the river-side. Siegfried has wandered away +from a hunting party, and is attracted by the song of the +Rhinemaidens—a regular set piece in the oldest-fashioned of forms, +but marvellously beautiful. The nymphs try to coax him to throw them +the Ring, which he had wrested from Brünnhilda; he refuses, and they +tell him that this day he must die. The other hunters <a name="Page_405" id="Page_405" />come in, and +Siegfried is asked to tell of his adventures, and as he does so Hagen +offers him a cup of wine into which he dropped another powder; +Siegfried's memory gradually returns, and to Günther's horror he +relates how he first scaled the mountain, passed the fire and won +Brünnhilda. He means on the first occasion, but it shames Günther once +again. Hagen points in the air and asks Siegfried what he sees above +him; two black ravens fly over. Siegfried turns to look at them, and +Hagen instantly thrusts a spear into his back; the ravens wing their +way to Valhalla to tell Wotan that the fatal hour has come. In a +sublime passage Siegfried the dying hero sings of Brünnhilda, and +dies. Every one save Hagen is horror-stricken; the body is picked up +and carried downward through the moonlit mists over the mountain, and +the gorgeous funeral march is played. This is built up on Wagner's +customary plan: it tells the story of the Volsung race, now ended by +the death of Siegfried.</p> + +<p>In the second scene of the Act there is one fine passage—Brünnhilda's +long address—and the rest is manufactured with dexterity and quite +uninspired. The body is brought in; Hagen wishes to take the Ring, and +a thrill is sent through us as the dead man's arm rises threateningly. +Günther interferes, and Hagen kills him; Brünnhilda comes on and sees +clearly everything; Gutruna claims Siegfried as hers—"he never was +yours; he is mine," Brünnhilda replies, and (by trick of true +stage-craft) Gutruna is seen to kneel down by the side of her dead +brother. She is absolutely alone—even Siegfried, dead, is <a name="Page_406" id="Page_406" />taken from +her, and she instinctively creeps to the only thing that is in any +sense hers. Brünnhilda orders the funeral fire to be built; the body +is put on it and consumed: Brünnhilda mounts Grani and scatters the +ashes, and with them the Ring, into the river; the waters rise, and +Hagen rushes after the Ring, to be drawn down; Wotan's power went when +the spear was shattered, and now that the Ring is returned to the +Rhine no other power controls Loge. He flares up, and we see Valhalla +on high in flames.</p> + +<p>So ends the <i>Dusk of the Gods</i> and the whole gigantic cycle. A noble +race has come and gone, and the world is prepared to make a fresh +start. I have discussed the music as we went along, and there is +nothing more to add.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII" /><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407" />CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN</h3> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>After Wagner had completed the <i>Ring</i>, a work which, in regard to its +gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he +was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous +musician—more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or +Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph +than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had +dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have +dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as +his lackey—and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth +festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person +could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors +to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much +of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all; +Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of <i>his</i> +Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take +these three because they are three of the most successful financial +composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be +added. That is what <a name="Page_408" id="Page_408" />they would have done: made a little money they +did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more +successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or +ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in +proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they +were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub, +it may be remarked, was a preciously comfortable one, and he made no +pretence about it being anything else. He was a successful man of +business; in spirit he was broken, exhausted, defeated.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 502px;"><a name="fp408" id="fp408" /> +<img src="images/fp408.jpg" width="502" height="375" alt="Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Venice" title="Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Venice" /> +<span class="caption">Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Venice</span> +</div> + +<p>That is the first point to be considered; the next is a corollary. +This man of dashed, broken hopes still needed the driving force of +either human passions, griefs or sorrows, or of great human ideals, +before he could compose ten notes. It is no desire of mine to scoff at +the Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian notions working in Wagner's brain +when he planned the <i>Ring</i>, and wrote its finest music; in art—as in +business, if it comes to that—one judges by results and results only. +But we can see that it was these ridiculous ideas, as perhaps I have +already pointed out, that were the postilion's whip to Wagner's +Pegasus. Of some men it can be said that no one knows anything of the +postilion's whip: of every artist concerning whom a fair tail of facts +is available and consultable we find a very distinct whip. We may +laugh at the idea of the "stories" to which Beethoven worked: who +would laugh at the Fifth Symphony would not even be laughed at. And I +have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that when <a name="Page_409" id="Page_409" />Wagner set +to work on <i>Parsifal</i> his most eager and greedy desire was to show the +world that he desired nothing. Knowing Bayreuth a failure, fancying +his whole life a failure, from a particular point of view, one idea +seized hold on him—- the idea that those who did not like his music +were in a pitiable condition, and compassion exhorted him to rescue +them, to redeem them. He meant to heap coals of fire upon a generation +that refused to recognise him as a prophet. He did it—with a double +vengeance: he made the detractors come to his knees and he made a +fortune out of them—them alone. For Bayreuth never became a +profitable investment for Jewish money until the one great Christian +drama of modern times was produced there.</p> + +<p><i>Parsifal</i>, in one form or another, had long fermented in Wagner's +brain. At first it was—incongruous though the thing may seem—either +<i>Jesus of Nazareth</i> or <i>Wieland the Smith</i>; then <i>Parzival</i> grew out +of the Siegfried idea; and at length, stimulated by the attentions and +help of poor Ludwig, he settled on <i>Parsifal</i>. These are matters not +of opinion, but of historical fact. Ludwig, when not masquerading in +woman's clothing, or ordering it from Paris, or appearing at private +performances in one opera or another, suffered from great attacks of +religion; and, unhappily for the art of music, what appealed to his +diseased brain from one side appealed to Wagner's tired brain from the +other side. Ludwig asked him to complete <i>Parsifal</i> and he did so. I +doubt whether without the royal request he ever would have done so. +But in doing so he, as <a name="Page_410" id="Page_410" />Americans say, "struck lucky." Throughout +Western Europe you have only to bawl the word "religion" and your +fortune is made; in America it is the same; on the two continents +innumerable fortunes have been made by bawling the word "religion." So +Wagner's conviction, Ludwig's desire, and advertisement possibilities, +all coincided; and thenceforth Bayreuth flourished—financially, if +not artistically or morally.</p> + +<p>I shall devote little attention to <i>Parsifal</i>. The plot would disgrace +Wagner's memory if we did not know it to be the work of his tired-out +old age. The central idea is that of Renunciation; and I will give the +reader a skeleton, but a fair skeleton, of the plot, and ask him, Who +renounces anything? who gains anything by renouncing? or loses +anything by not renouncing? and, above all, what is any one called on +to renounce?</p> + +<p>At the Montsalvat of <i>Lohengrin</i>—ah! what a different +Montsalvat—Amfortas, lord of the tribe of monks, has flirted with a +lady, and a magician, Klingsor, has seized the sacred spear with which +Christ's side was pierced and inflicted on Amfortas an incurable +wound. That is the state of affairs when the curtain rises. Gurnemanz, +a faithful warder, talks with sundry squires, not yet fully degraded +to the order of knighthood, and tells them how through a certain +wondrous woman Amfortas fell from his high estate. The wondrous woman, +Kundry, disguised as a sort of Indian squaw, enters, coming, she says, +from far lands; exhausted, she flings herself in a thicket to +sleep—sleep—she says. <a name="Page_411" id="Page_411" />Gurnemanz does not know who she is—nor, for +that small matter, do I—but she comes and serves these knight-monks +faithfully for whiles and then disappears; and generally, it seems, +during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured +pearl of a saint of a knight. Enter Parsifal, "the pure +fool"—Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He +carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides +of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any +wrong—wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains +in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts +into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the +reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my +explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that +only the "pure fool" taught by suffering could redeem suffering +Amfortas: mankind, that is, could only be made perfect by a perfect +idiot. Gurnemanz thinks he has found the required man—and he has, if +only he knew it—and he takes him on the most curious promenade in the +history of mankind—to the Hall of the Grail. The two men do not walk: +it is the scenery that walks. "Here," says Gurnemanz, "time and space +are one."</p> + +<p>Arrived there, we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than +anything we know of mediæval Christianity: a sort of mosque with a +huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart's Cocoa-rooms tables and +benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque. The <a name="Page_412" id="Page_412" />pure fool is pushed +aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then +the service begins. It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord's Supper. When +the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away, +Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it all. "Nothing," +Parsifal replies, and is immediately turned out of doors.</p> + +<p>The origin of the guileless fool has already been indicated: this—as +it seems to us to-day—idiotic notion of the eighteenth century +started Wagner on the notion that if a modern child, with all the +developed brain of a modern child, could suddenly be transplanted into +a state of nature, all would be well with the world. What could +possibly happen? But it is silly to ask the question: the whole +juvenile population of the earth would have to be so transplanted, and +they would have to find a new earth to live on—at least an earth not +frequented by modern men and women.</p> + +<p>In the next Act we are taken to Klingsor's magic castle. Klingsor +calls up Kundry and changes his castle into an enchanted garden full +of flower-maidens; Parsifal comes in, and, though curious about the +maidens, does not know what they would be at; he angrily drives them +off; Kundry calls him. She tells him of the death of his mother who +had loved him so dearly; he again weeps and learns the meaning of +compassion; Kundry kisses him, and he learns the meaning of sex and +temptation. In horror he casts her from him; Klingsor throws the spear +at him—the sacred Spear with which Christ's <a name="Page_413" id="Page_413" />side was wounded, stolen +by Klingsor from Montsalvat—it remains suspended above his head; he +seizes and waves it, and at once garden, flower-maidens and all are +reduced to withered stalks and leaves. Parsifal returns, an +"enlightened" fool, and by touching the wound of Amfortas, cures him, +becoming himself head of the order.</p> + +<p>The whole affair is a spectacle which I must say is disgusting to +healthy minds. The insinuations are frightful. Consider, reader, +seriously for a moment: Parsifal—Siegfried grown to manhood—knows +and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is +he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with +suffering—acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never +suffered—that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity. +Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that +the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to +please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion.</p> + +<p>Of the music it is not necessary to say more than that some of it is +fine. For the most part it lacks virility, though there are passages +of marvellous loveliness. The flower-maidens' waltz shows what Wagner +could do in that way; the Good Friday music, dating back to the +<i>Lohengrin</i> days, is sweet and fresh. But the quasi-religious music +has no charms for me.</p> + +<p>Of course the prelude is in its way, but only in its way, a beautiful +thing. One almost hears the beating of angels' wings; the remnant of +old church <a name="Page_414" id="Page_414" />melody, fitted into the most modern of modern rhythms, +sings out; the old <i>Tannhäuser</i> and <i>Rienzi</i> Dresden Amen comes out +pompously if not very effectively. On the whole a splendid <i>tour de +force</i> is accomplished. But as soon as the singers are introduced we +feel the lack of the inspiration of former days; the writing is not +vocal writing at all; it is simply notes chosen at will or at random +to fit in with the chord sequences that were constantly shaping +themselves in Wagner's brain—not sequences that sprang, as he himself +would have expressed it, from "the feeling." The woes of Amfortas are +described by the orchestra with a coldness that would have surprised +or stunned Wagner in his <i>Tristan</i> days: had Meyerbeer done it no +paper would have carried his hot words. When Parsifal shoots the Swan, +Gurnemanz has two or three moments of true emotion: the rest ought to +be silence and is rubbish. The parody of the Lord's Supper is +deplorable: we have already heard enough of the music in the prelude +without having to go through it again. Klingsor's magic music is mere +theatricalism; about Kundry's account of Parsifal's mother I remain in +some doubt: it is certainly beautiful, but to those of us who know the +corresponding scene in <i>Siegfried</i> it is rather beggarly. Parsifal's +denunciation of Kundry after she has kissed him has not a word of the +old truthful Wagner in it: Wagner had written so magnificently about +the ecstatic state of Palestrina and such of the other church +composers as he knew, that he must, absolutely must, have realised +that his <i>Parsifal</i> stuff was essentially untrue. <a name="Page_415" id="Page_415" />Theatrically, the +end of the Second Act sounds true; but it will not bear rehearing. The +opening of the Third Act, again, is false; and the ending of the whole +business is tawdry stuff such as Meyerbeer might have been proud to +sign. Technically, the old man retained his hand; but to compare this +decrepit stuff with the music of the <i>Valkyrie</i> would be preposterous, +and I have no wish to write more about it.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p><i>Parsifal</i> having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to +arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans +bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he +imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a +financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful +unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony +in C, worked away at his <i>Parsifal</i> arrangements; his heart ruptured +and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded +life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can +do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death +sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man +could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a +prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest +detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid +her hair by <a name="Page_416" id="Page_416" />his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests +there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending? +We must regard <i>Parsifal</i> as the last sad quaverings of a beloved +friend: after that came peace, immortal peace.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Amongst musicians of the first rank stand four commanding, tremendous +figures. First comes Handel, by far the greatest personality of them +all: him I beg permission to think the greatest man who has yet +lived—greater than Cæsar or Napoleon. After him came Gluck, a +triumphant bourgeois; then Beethoven, whose domination was the result +of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose +supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or +a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time; +he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pugnacity +landed him in bankruptcy, and enabled him finally to win a fortune by +oratorio when no one would listen any longer to his operas. Gluck was +from the first a popular composer: there were rows, it is true, but +they did not concern him; he had always an assured public. Beethoven +had throughout his working life an ample pension and the friendship of +princes. Wagner had no such friends until he was sixty years old; he +had no pension; he offended every opera director in Germany by telling +those gentry that they knew nothing of their business; he got mixed up +with revolutionists, <a name="Page_417" id="Page_417" />and, mainly because he was a man of unusual +ability, was regarded as dangerous by every bureaucrat. He was fast +becoming a popular composer; and he left his successes behind him and +went on to change opera in a fashion never attempted by Gluck or any +other composer. He was the most consummate contrapuntist of his age: +therefore the critics and professors declared he knew nothing about +counterpoint. He wrote the loveliest melodies of the nineteenth +century: therefore it was generally agreed that the gift of melodic +invention had been denied him by a merciful Providence, who reserved +that gift for the Jews and their friends. He could hold neither his +tongue nor his pen; if a bull may be excused, he replied before he was +attacked, he hit back before he was struck. Proud as Satan, and +through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and +yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his +friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with +his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising +about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring +he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even +one single opera of the <i>Ring</i> to be given, and then allowing single +operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself—there never was in +the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of +universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 303px;"><a name="fp418" id="fp418" /> +<img src="images/fp418.jpg" width="303" height="462" alt="Carl Tausig" title="Carl Tausig" /> +<span class="caption">Carl Tausig</span> +</div> + +<p>All this we may joyfully concede, knowing how much may be said on the +other side. Wagner not only <a name="Page_418" id="Page_418" />was the most stupendous personage born +into the nineteenth century: he was also one of the noblest, most +generous men that have lived. There is not a mean trait in his +character. He endured privation, actual starvation; he was shamefully +treated; his wife did not believe in his genius; his simplest actions +were misinterpreted; frantic endeavours were made to hound him out of +the public life of opera; his publishers took advantage of his poverty +to try to rob him; the scores of his masterpieces were returned +unopened from theatres—in some cases they were not returned, and he +had infinite difficulty to secure them; moreover, he was ill all his +life: yet he never lost faith in mankind, and when he became, +comparatively, a well-to-do man he went on doing generous deeds as +though nothing had happened. With humbugs and pretenders he would have +no dealings; but no genuine young artist ever asked his help in vain. +He spared even that rancorous decadent Nietzsche; he owned his +obligations to that soul of chivalry, Liszt. He spared that mediocre +person Meyerbeer; he treated Mendelssohn with almost exaggerated +courtesy. He fought a terrific fight with all the forces of reaction +and stupidity, and he came through untainted, unstained; if he sorely +belaboured the charlatans, he had all the finest musicians, and all +other fine artists, on his side. The composer who won and held the +friendship and esteem of such men as Liszt, Cornelius, Jensen, Tausig +and Bülow, not to mention the admiration of our own Swinburne, is not +a man to be dismissed by enumerating his defects. Some <a name="Page_419" id="Page_419" />of us, I +suppose, will admit that we may possibly have our defects: none of us, +so far as I know, can possibly claim his great qualities.</p> + +<p>He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he +let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily +life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible +personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an +angel and the understanding of an archangel to put up with him. We see +that every one did put up with him; every one who knew him had the +same faith in his genius as he himself had; every one who knew +him—really knew him—loved him. Those who did not know him belaboured +him in the press or by word of mouth, and much honour and profit did +they get by it. He stands unsmirched by the mud thrown by his +detractors; he stands undamaged even by the adulation of his admirers.</p> + +<p>Let us consider for a moment what the man's personal character and +momentum enabled him to achieve. Finely endowed personalities like +Mozart and Chopin did much: did they write a <i>Ring</i> or a <i>Tristan</i>? +The question needs no answer. Did they or the still mightier Beethoven +dream of creating a Bayreuth? In the midst of years of privation +Richard Wagner planned and partly executed the <i>Ring</i>; he completed +<i>Tristan</i> and the <i>Mastersingers</i>; as quite a young man he had dreamed +of a Bayreuth; as an old man he turned his dream into a reality. He +had his lieutenants—big men always have their lieutenants—but the +idea, <a name="Page_420" id="Page_420" />the purpose, and the force behind were his and nobody else's +than his. Bayreuth does not stand for very much to-day; in the +'seventies it stood for a fierce attack on the general sloppiness of +opera performances all the world over, for the setting up of an ideal +to which there is no parallel in the history of the art of music. +Nothing but the personal force of this one man accomplished this +thing—personal force accompanied by a wholehearted devotion to his +art. I suppose the inventors of steam-engines and the builders of +giant dams have an ideal, too, in their crazy craniums, but they +invent and work with a very definite idea of personal gain. Wagner +hoped for no gain, and he gained little, though, as I have said, as +much as he wanted. He was helped by the only noble-hearted king born +into the nineteenth century; but he found that king and inspired him. +He risked everything for his idea; if his works have grown to be +valuable assets since his death, they were not during his lifetime. By +unheard-of energy while suffering privation—even of the ordinary +necessities of life—he went on and created masterpieces, and then by +creating Bayreuth set up a standard of musical execution that no one +before him had thought possible. All the great conductors of the last +fifty years are, musically, his offspring. Without him we should have +been without a Richter, or Richter's introducer to the English, an +Alfred Schulz-Curtius; without these two men we should have no Robert +Newman or Henry J. Wood. Wagner's influence has been further-reaching +than <a name="Page_421" id="Page_421" />many of us think; and that influence was due not more to the +consummate skill of the musician than to the character of the man.</p> + +<p>Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human—in +painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose. He made what we consider +mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of +passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?—but how few they +are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the +centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were +the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not +know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in +Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book +by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the +ages have produced—the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart, +Beethoven and Michael Angelo: a man it is an honour to have known as +it is a disgrace to have scorned—the one man born into the last +century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" /><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422" /><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423" />INDEX</h2> + +<p> +<i>Abendzeitung</i> (Dresden), <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +<br /> +Apel, August, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br /> +<br /> +Auber, D.F.E.,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Masaniello</i>, 47, 89;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">compared with Meyerbeer, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Avenarius, Eduard,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">marries Cäcilie Geyer, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bakunin, Michael, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br /> +<br /> +Baumgärtner, Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> +<br /> +Bayreuth, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325-329</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a><br /> +<br /> +Beethoven, Ludwig van, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his influence on Wagner, <a href="#Page_33">33-35</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">arrangements of, by Wagner, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Fidelio</i>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bellini, Vincenzo, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br /> +<br /> +Bennett, Joseph, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br /> +<br /> +Berlioz, Hector,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Wagner's criticism on, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">tragedy of his life, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">praises the <i>Flying Dutchman</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">in London, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his relations with Wagner, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his "Ride to the Abyss," <a href="#Page_370">370</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bethmann, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br /> +<br /> +Bispham, David, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br /> +<br /> +Brahms, Johannes, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br /> +<br /> +Brangaena, <a href="#Page_245">245-248</a><br /> +<br /> +Brazil,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Wagner receives a commission from, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Brendel, Karl Franz, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br /> +<br /> +Brockhaus, Friedrich,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">marries Louise Wagner, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bülow, Cosima von,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">and Wagner, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-325</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bülow, Hans von, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">married to Cosima Liszt, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Communication to my Friends</i>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br /> +<br /> +Cornelius, Peter, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br /> +<br /> +Cusins, W.G., <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Dannreuther, Edward, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> +<br /> +Davison, J.W., <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<br /> +Dietsch, Pierre, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br /> +<br /> +Dorn, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Dusk of the Gods, The</i>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_400">400-406</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Dvoràk, Anton,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">compared with Wagner, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Elgar, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_291">291</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>End in Paris, An</i>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Europa</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Feen, Die</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60-63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> +<br /> +Feuerbach, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a><br /> +<br /> +Fischer, Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Flying Dutchman, The</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_94">94-120</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produced at Zurich, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gazette Musicale, La</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +<br /> +Gewandhaus Concerts, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<br /> +Geyer, Cäcilie, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> +<br /> +Geyer, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6-14</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">marries Frau Wagner, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>; his death, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Geyer, goldsmith at Eisleben, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br /> +<br /> +Glasenapps <i>Life of Wagner</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br /> +<br /> +Gluck, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>;<br /><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424" /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his <i>Iphigenia in Aulis</i> overture revised by Wagner, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Goethe, J.W. von, <i>Die Laune des Verliebten</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> +<br /> +Götterdämmerung. <i>See</i> Dusk of the Gods<br /> +<br /> +Gottfried von Strassburg, <i>Tristan</i>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br /> +<br /> +Gozzi, <i>La Donna Serpente</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Habeneck, F.A., <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Hallé, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br /> +<br /> +Handel, G.F., <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the "Horse and his Rider" chorus, 371, 372;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Israel in Egypt</i>, 377</span><br /> +<br /> +Hanslick, Eduard, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Happy Evening, A</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> +<br /> +Harris, Sir Augustus, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br /> +<br /> +Hauser, Franz, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br /> +<br /> +Heine, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76-78</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> +<br /> +Heubner, Otto, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Hochzeit Die</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br /> +<br /> +Hoffmann, E.T.A., <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Huldigungsmarsch</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Jensen, Adolf, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Jesus of Nazareth</i>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br /> +<br /> +Jews, Wagner and the, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217-219</a><br /> +<br /> +Joly, Anténor, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Judaism in Music</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217-219</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Kaisermarsch</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br /> +<br /> +Kittl, Friedrich, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Laube, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Lehrs, F. Siegfried, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br /> +<br /> +Leitmotiv, discussion of the, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a><br /> +<br /> +Lewald, August, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Liebesverbot, Das</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br /> +<br /> +Liszt, Cosima. <i>See</i> Wagner, Cosima<br /> +<br /> +Liszt, Franz, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his first acquaintance with Wagner, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">helps him to escape to Zurich, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produces <i>Tannhaüser</i> at Weimar, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">sends him to Paris, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his generosity and friendship, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produces <i>Lohengrin</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Lohengrin</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_165">165-192</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the leitmotiv first introduced, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produced by Liszt at Weimar, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Love-feast of the Apostles, The</i>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br /> +<br /> +Ludwig II, King, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-329</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a><br /> +<br /> +Lüttichau, von, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br /> +<br /> +Lytton, Bulwer, <i>Rienzi</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Marschner, Heinrich August, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his <i>Adolph von Nassau</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Mastersingers, The</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319-321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the story, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the influence of Nuremberg, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the overture, <a href="#Page_284">284-288</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_288">288-318</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produced at Munich, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Mendelssohn, Felix, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i> overture, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Hebrides</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his comment on <i>Tannhäuser</i>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Meyerbeer, Giacomo, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Robert the Devil</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his treatment of Wagner, <a href="#Page_67">67-71</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his influence on <i>Rienzi</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84-86</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Müller, Alexander, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br /> +<br /> +Müller, Gottlieb, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425" /> +<br /> +<i>My Life</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Napoleon I, his flight from Leipzig <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br /> +<br /> +Newman, Mr. Ernest, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Nibelung's Ring, The</i>. See <i>Ring</i><br /> +<br /> +Nicolai School, Leipzig, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br /> +<br /> +Nietzsche, Friedrich, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Overtures: "Polonia," <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">D minor, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">C major, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>King Enzio</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Faust</i>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Columbus</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Parsifal</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-140</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_409">409-416</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Pätz, Johanna Rosina, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br /> +<br /> +Pecht, Friedrich, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, commissions an opera from Wagner, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br /> +<br /> +Philharmonic Society, the, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">concerts conducted by Wagner, <a href="#Page_220">220-226</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Pilgrimage to Beethoven, A</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br /> +<br /> +Pillet, Léon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br /> +<br /> +Planer, Minna, marries Wagner, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,<br /> +<i>See</i> Wagner, Minna.<br /> +<br /> +Poe, Edgar Allen, <a href="#Page_330">330</a><br /> +<br /> +Poland, Wagner's sympathy with, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br /> +<br /> +Praeger, Ferdinand, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Raymund, his "magic dramas," <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<br /> +Reinecke, Carl, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<br /> +Reissiger, Gottlieb, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123-125</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rhinegold, The</i>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">composition of, <a href="#Page_332">332-334</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_337">337-349</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Rienzi</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">completed and sent to Dresden, <a href="#Page_75">75-80</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">accepted, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Meyerbeer's influence on, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_86">86-93</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">its success, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">a failure at Weimar, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Rietz, Julius, portrait of Wagner by, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Ring of the Nibelung, The</i>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>,<a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-209</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-230</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">first cycle given at Bayreuth, <a href="#Page_327">327-329</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">summary of its growth, <a href="#Page_330">330-334</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis of its main dramatic motive, <a href="#Page_334">334-337</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Schopenhauer's criticism, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>see</i> also the separate operas</span><br /> +<br /> +Ritter, Alexander, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br /> +<br /> +Ritter, Frau, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br /> +<br /> +Roeckel, August, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br /> +<br /> +Rossini, G.A., <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>William Tell</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Stabat Mater</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Sainton, Prof., <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Saracen Young Woman</i>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br /> +<br /> +Schlesinger, Maurice, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a><br /> +<br /> +Schopenhauer,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his influence on Wagner, <a href="#Page_231">231-233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his criticism on the <i>Ring</i>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Schröder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76-79</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br /> +<br /> +Schubert's <i>Erl-king</i>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br /> +<br /> +Schumann, Clara, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<br /> +Schumann, Robert, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">on <i>Tannhäuser</i>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">on <i>Lohengrin</i>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Scribe, Eugène, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br /> +<br /> +Semper, Gottfried, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br /> +<br /> +Shaw, Mr. Bernard, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> +<br /> +Shedlock, Mr. J.S., <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Siegfried</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200-202</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227-230</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_378">378-399</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Siegfried's Death</i>, <a href="#Page_227">227-230</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Siegfried Idyll</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426" /> +<br /> +Spohr, Ludwig, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produces the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> at Cassel, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">on <i>Tannhäuser</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Spontini, Gasparo, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Wagner's essay on, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Strauss, Johann, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<br /> +Sulzer, Jakob, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br /> +<br /> +Symphony in C major, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56-59</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a><br /> +<br /> +Swinburne, A.C., <a href="#Page_415">415</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Tannhäuser</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137-140</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_140">140-164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">production and reception, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">opinions on, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produced by Liszt at Weimar, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Tausig, Karl, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a><br /> +<br /> +Thomä, Jeannette, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Tichatschek, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br /> +<br /> +Tieck, Ludwig, <i>Tannhäuser</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br /> +<br /> +Tomaschek, Wenzel, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<br /> +"Triebschen," <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Tristan</i>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">rehearsed at Vienna and abandoned, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">folly of commentators on, <a href="#Page_234">234-236</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">intended for Rio, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">completed, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">produced at Munich (1865), <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">origin of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">preliminaries of the story, <a href="#Page_239">239-241</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_241">241-277</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Uhlig, Theodor, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Vaez, Gustave, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Valkyrie, The</i>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">analysis and criticism, <a href="#Page_350">350-377</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Verdi's <i>Falstaff</i>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br /> +<br /> +Victoria, Queen, and Wagner, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br /> +<br /> +Villa Wahnfried, <a href="#Page_326">326</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Adolph, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Albert, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Carl Friedrich, father of Richard, <a href="#Page_2">2-5</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his death, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Clara, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Cosima, second wife of Richard, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-325</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Friederike, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Gottlob Friedrich, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Johanna, daughter of Albert, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Johanna Rosina, mother of Richard, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>,<a href="#Page_1">1</a>5, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Julius, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Louise, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Minna, first wife of Richard, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-325</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Ottilie, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Richard (for Works see under separate headings),<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">birth and ancestry, <a href="#Page_1">1-3</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">absence of precocity, <a href="#Page_11">11</a> <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">schooldays at Dresden, <a href="#Page_17">17-24</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">early training in theatrical matters, <a href="#Page_18">18-19</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his love of the theatre, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Weber's influence, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">at school at Leipzig, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his debt to his uncle, <a href="#Page_28">28-30</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">unable to play the piano, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"converted" by Beethoven, <a href="#Page_33">33-35</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">early compositions, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">studies under Weinlig, <a href="#Page_36">36-38</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span><br /><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427" /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">helped by his family <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his egotism, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">matriculates, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his revolutionary fervour, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">visits Vienna, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">at Prague, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">works performed at the Gewandhaus concerts, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">chorus-master at Würzburg, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">returns to Leipzig, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his industry, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his marriage, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">obtains conductorships at Magdeburg, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, Königsberg, and Riga, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">sails to London, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64-67</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">meets Meyerbeer at Boulogne, <a href="#Page_67">67-69</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">disappointments in Paris, <a href="#Page_69">69-75</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">goes to Dresden, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">first acquaintance with Liszt, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Kapellmeister at Dresden, <a href="#Page_122">122-126</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-135</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his relations with Minna, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168-169</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his political views, <a href="#Page_128">128-131</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his share in the May insurrection of 1849, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his Germanism, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">flees to Zurich, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">goes to Paris, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">returns to Zurich, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">friendship of Liszt, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his demands on his friends, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his ill-health, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his scheme for producing <i>Siegfried</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200-202</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227-229</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">third visit to Paris, <a href="#Page_203">203-207</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">life in Zurich, <a href="#Page_207">207-210</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his prose-writings, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">speech at the re-interment of Weber, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his theory on the fusion of the arts, <a href="#Page_214">214-216</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">unable to comprehend opposition, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">directions for performing his operas, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">visit to London, <a href="#Page_220">220-226</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">settles in Vienna, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his extravagance, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">influence of Schopenhauer, <a href="#Page_231">231-233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">disappointments and failures, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">the chief Wagnerite, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">invited to Munich by King Ludwig, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">ambitious schemes, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">obliged to leave Munich, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">retires to "Triebschen," <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">elopes with Cosima von Bülow, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">marries Cosima, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Bayreuth, <a href="#Page_325">325-329</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his worship of brute force, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">completion of the <i>Ring</i>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">outward success, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his death, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his character and achievement, <a href="#Page_416">416-421</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Rosalie, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Siegfried, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagner, Sophie (Wendt), <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Wagnerites, the, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br /> +<br /> +Walther von der Vogelweide, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br /> +<br /> +Weber, Carl Maria von, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his influence on Wagner, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">his re-interment at Dresden, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a> <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Euryanthe</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Der Freischütz</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Weber, Dionys, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<br /> +Weinlig, Theodor, <a href="#Page_36">36-38</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br /> +<br /> +Wendt, Sophie, marries Adolph Wagner, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Wesendoncks, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br /> +<br /> +Wieck, Clara, <i>see</i> Schumann, Clara<br /> +<br /> +Wigand, Otto, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Wiland der Schmied</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br /> +<br /> +Wilhelmj, August, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br /> +<br /> +Wille, Dr. and Frau, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br /> +<br /> +Wüst, Henriette, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br /> +<br /> +Wylde, Dr. Henry, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Young Siegfried</i>, <a href="#Page_227">227-229</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Zigesar, von, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Richard Wagner, by John F. 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Runciman + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Richard Wagner + Composer of Operas + +Author: John F. Runciman + +Release Date: August 4, 2005 [EBook #16431] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD WAGNER *** + + + + +Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +RICHARD WAGNER + +COMPOSER OF OPERAS + +BY + +JOHN F. RUNCIMAN + +LONDON +G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. +1913 + + + + +TO +HAROLD HODGE + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +It is now one hundred years since Richard Wagner was born, thirty +since he died. In every land he has his monument in one shape or +another; his music-dramas can be heard all the world over; all the +ancient controversies as to their merits or demerits have died down. +The Bayreuth theatre, the outward and visible sign of his inner +greatness, has risen to the point of its most splendid glory and +lapsed into the limbo of tenth-rate things. Every one who really cares +for the art of music, and especially the art of opera (of which art +music is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and +opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to +simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I +trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous +eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain +and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to +describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time to +consider and to sort out (so to say) the reams that have been written +and printed about Wagner: the bulk of it has had to be thrown on the +scrap-heap: what there was of value has, I hope, been utilised. + +An author who plans a book on an artist or an artistic question must +be wary, especially at the beginning of his adventure. To start away +with a theory, whether new or old, and to yield to the seductive +temptation to convince humanity of its truth--this is to lay a trap +and to take the path that leads straight into it. Theories should be +kept for scientific matters. A work proving that parallel straight +lines never meet need not land the writer in self-contradictions; and +another writer may prove that they must and do meet, and still avoid +getting tangled amongst his own arguments. I even read a book once in +which it was clearly shown that the earth was flat; and, granted a +ludicrous premise, one could but admire the irrefragable logic with +which the conclusion was reached. With regard to art, be your premises +sound or grotesque, the result is the same--muddle. Logic, science, +philosophy, applied to art, spell certain disaster. With mingled pain +and amusement I have noted how more than one writer on music, setting +out in triumphant high spirits to demonstrate this or that, has before +his third chapter demonstrated just the contrary: I have never seen +anything else occur. + +Wagner wrote so much about himself and his art, and appeared so fully +satisfied with his explanations of why he became just what he became +and of why his art was just what it was, that naturally for nearly a +generation his critics fell into one or other of two errors. Either +they accepted his theorisings unreservedly or as unreservedly they +rejected them. In the second case they had to face the difficulty of +coining, shaping, a theory of their own; in either case shipwreck +nearly always promptly ensued; and on the whole, if Wagner had to be +theorised about, one would prefer to have it done by Wagner. He +himself knew the tiny value of his theorisings about his art, for he +declared that when he wrote _Tristan and Isolda_ he found he had +already left his theories far behind. This discovery might well have +served as a warning both to Wagner and to the hosts of his +commentators. Unluckily Wagner was far too fond of theorising, +moralising and generally talking of himself and his works, and he +reckoned he had a big propagandist work to do; so he went on +scribbling to the end. As for the commentators, they neglected the +warning and took Wagner's later doings as an example, with the result +that the library shelves of Europe are stopped and blocked with as big +a heap of rubbish as ever was provoked by great works of art since the +world began to turn round. For Wagner there is an ample excuse: he +honestly thought it necessary to spread his ideas abroad; his aims and +intentions had been so misunderstood, and so stupidly, wickedly, +recklessly misrepresented, that he did not believe his music-dramas +would ever find acceptance until he had cleared the way by explaining +himself. Little good came of it--in fact, the only good result was +that some of his writings fell into the hands of Ludwig II of Bavaria, +and thus led to the ending of his days of misery, and indirectly to +Bayreuth. For the commentators no word of extenuation can be said. +Those, perhaps, of the period 1867-77 were justified in pressing their +master's claims on the public at large, for the support of the public +at large had to be won, and the best way of winning it seemed to lie +in advocating those claims, in season and out of season, through the +agency of the newspaper-press; but the rest of the herd have proved +themselves an unqualified nuisance and a hindrance to a right +understanding of Wagner. + +This herd I would not willingly join. In the following pages no +general theory concerning Wagner will be found. I shall indulge in no +theorisings whatever, but stick to the facts, facts which can now be +ascertained with certainty. My endeavour will be to tell a plain, +unvarnished tale of what Wagner did and of what he suffered, of the +environment amidst which he grew up and laboured and struggled: with +all that he said and wrote I shall deal as briefly as may be, +regarding his endless loquacity of mouth and pen as of interest only +when it throws real light on the artist. Least of all shall I waste +the reader's patience on the morals that may be drawn from his musical +works. The moral to be drawn from his prose works is simply that a +man, even a stupendously great man, may write far too much; the moral +to be drawn from his musical works every man may find out for himself: +for myself, I have found none, any more than I could ever find a moral +in a play of AEschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare. + +There are plenty of authorities for the statements now to be made. We +have the exhaustive _Life_ by Glasenapp and W. Ashton Ellis; then +there is Wagner's own work, _My Life_, lately translated into +English; finally there are the _Letters_. Many of these are of no +interest or value whatever, dealing only with details concerning +scores and proof-sheets and petty money matters. Many, on the other +hand, notably those to Uhlig, are invaluable to every one who wishes +to understand Wagner. Extensive use is made of them in this book, +though, as they are easily accessible, I have forborne to quote more +than is absolutely necessary. _My Life_ I think but little of, and +have not relied greatly on it. + +Wagner the reformer will receive no lengthy consideration. He did not +"reform" the opera form--the opera form of Mozart and Weber needed no +reforming--he simply developed it. He did reform operatic performances +by insisting on precision and intelligence in place of slovenliness +and stupidity, on enthusiasm for art in place of stolid indifference; +and he did as much in the concert-room. I shall not theorize about +these matters, but point out what he achieved by making a continuous +appeal to indubitable, indisputable facts. + +I am indebted to Messrs. H. Grevel & Co. for kind permission to print +extracts from Mr. Shedlock's translation of Wagner's _Letters_, and to +Messrs. Novello for similar permission regarding quotations from the +libretti of the operas. Two words may be said about the quotations, +both words and music, of the operas: in some cases, when I could +neither find nor make an adequate translation of verses, I have stuck +to the original German; with regard to the music, I have given as +little as possible. Both musical and verbal citations are meant for +reference--there is only one exception, the Sailors' Song from the +opening of _Tristan_. Catalogues of Wagner's themes have for long been +issued by several publishers; but they are of small assistance in +helping one to understand Wagner. + +J.F.R. + + + + +CONTENTS + +I EARLY LIFE + +II EARLY BOYHOOD + +III EARLY LIFE (_continued_) + +IV JUVENILE WORKS + +V PARIS + +VI 'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN' + +VII DRESDEN + +VIII 'TANNHAeUSER' + +IX 'LOHENGRIN' + +X EXILE + +XI 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA' + +XII 'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG' + +XIII KING LUDWIG + +XIV 'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND THE RHINEGOLD' + +XV 'THE VALKYRIE' + +XVI 'SIEGFRIED' + +XVII 'THE DUSK OF THE GODS' + +XVIII 'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN + +INDEX + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +PORTRAIT OF WAGNER (_Photogravure_) + +WAGNER'S BIRTHPLACE: THE SIGN OF THE RED +AND WHITE LION, ON THE BRUeHL, LEIPZIG + +THE WAGNER THEATRE AT BAYREUTH + +LISZT +(_From life and on stone by N. Hanhart_) + +WAGNER +(_From the portrait by A.F. Pecht_) + +KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA + +WAGNER IN 1877 + +PALAZZO VENDRAMIN CALERGI, VENICE, WHERE +WAGNER DIED, FEB. 13, 1883 + +CARL TAUSIG + + + + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY LIFE + + +I + +As the springtide of 1813 was melting into early summer the poet and +musician of spring days and summer nights was born at the house of the +Red and White Lion on the Bruehl in old Leipzig. The precise date was +May 22; and owing to many causes the 16th of August came round before, +at the church of St. Thomas, the child was christened Wilhelm Richard +Wagner. The events and circumstances of the period have furnished the +imaginative with many striking portents with regard to the future +mighty composer; and, to do the prophets full justice, after the +event--long after the event--they have widely opened their mouths and +uttered prophecies. Thus the name of the house, describing a beast +such as never was on sea or land, distinctly warned a drowsy people +that the monstrous dragon of _Siegfried_ was about to take the road +leading from Nowhere to Bayreuth. The spring foretold the songs in +_Tannhaeuser_ and the _Valkyrie_; the summer, the nights in King +Mark's Cornish castle-garden and amongst the fragrant lime-trees in +the streets of ancient Nuremberg; the horrors of the war raging at the +very gates of Leipzig and Napoleon's flight, the advent of the +preacher who was to earn a long exile by advising the Saxon soldiers +not to shoot their brethren. Events provided material for these and +many another score of prognostications: only, fortunately, no one read +events rightly at the time, and something fresh was left for the +biographers to expend their ingenuity upon. + +Richard Wagner came of a German lower middle-class stock. There is not +amongst his ancestry a single man distinguished in letters or any art. +His uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not +be remembered had he not been Wagner's uncle. Only by patient research +has it been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much +as play the organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast, +and he too would have been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner's +father. His stepfather--though this seems hardly to the point--was an +actor and portrait-painter; and his one claim to remembrance is that +he was Wagner's stepfather. So, however scientifically minded we may +be, however strongly disposed to account for the sudden appearance of +a stupendous genius by the cheap and easy method of pointing to some +distinguished ancestor and talking pompously of the laws of heredity, +in Wagner's case we are baffled and beaten. He came like a +thunderbolt out of a blue sky. We must be content with the fact that +he came. His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials +both; and bearing in mind Wagner's frank detestation of officialdom, +the scientist can scarcely draw much comfort from that. + +The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a +few years later than Haydn. In 1769 he married the daughter of a +charity-school master or caretaker; and in 1770, the year of +Beethoven's birth, his first child, christened Carl Friedrich Wilhelm, +was born. Four years later Adolph arrived. Gottlob was a douanier, an +exciseman, at the Rannstadt gate of Leipzig, and passed his days, I +dare say, as honestly as an exciseman can, in examining incoming +travellers to see that they did not bring with them so much as an egg +that had not paid duty. He died in 1795. Meantime, Carl Friedrich had +received a thoroughly sound education, and he became deputy-registrar +to the Leipzig town court. In 1789 he married Johanna Rosina Paetz +(whose name, it seems, is susceptible of many spellings). + +The scientific mind may after all find consolation in the +all-illuminating truth that Friedrich and all his children were more +or less passionately addicted to the theatre and attracted by it. It +was Friedrich's one hobby; and though Friedrich's brother Adolph had a +horror of it, the feeling was not aroused by it as an artistic +institution, but as an agency for the intellectual, moral and worldly +ruin of young men and women. In his leisure Friedrich arranged +dramatic performances and took part in them, and, as amateurs go, he +appears to have been highly successful. Histrionic persons were +constant guests at his house on the Bruehl--amongst them notably one, +Ludwig Geyer, who became a fast friend of the family and played an +important role, off the stage, with regard to that family soon after +Richard's birth. Friedrich, during his later years, cannot have had +much spare time for amateur theatricals or any other amusement. +Napoleon was fighting his last desperate fights against the combined +forces of reactionary Europe; all the powers of feudalism had combined +to crush an emperor who had no royal blood in his veins; he raged over +Germany like an infuriated beast with a genius for military tactics, +scattering armies which dispersed only to join together and face him +again. While Richard was in his cradle the whole of Saxony was filled +with the squalor and misery and loathsome terrors of war. Leipzig was +occupied by the French; Marshal Davoust was left there as commandant, +with power of life and death, and all the other privileges of a +military governor; and in the deputy-registrar of the law-court he +found the man for the post of provisional chief of the police "of +public safety." Who kept the public safe from the police I am unable +to say. Fighting was going on perpetually in the neighbourhood; the +dead and dying lay scattered in all directions; the stench bred +epidemics more murderous than all Napoleon's cannon. Friedrich must +have found his hands full day and night. Richard was baptized on +August 16; the following day Napoleon won a victory which cost him +dear; the 18th, being Sunday, was observed as such by a soldiery in +need of a rest; on the 19th Napoleon was a beaten man, and ran to save +his skin past the windows of the house of the Red and White Lion on +the Bruehl. Richard's mother had been trembling for her own safety and +that of her children and husband; but when, as she herself afterwards +told, she saw the dreaded conqueror bolt in haste without his hat, she +breathed again. Whether she and the family were any better off under +the deliverers is a question that does not concern us here: the point +is that she thought she was. It was all one to Richard, who, aged +three months, slept peacefully on. + +After the deliverance Friedrich's work became even heavier than +before. The town through its length and breadth was shattered and +dilapidated; whole families were homeless and packed like rabbits in +hutches; the slaughtered dead, men and beasts, could not be buried +quick enough; black death stalked abroad in the guise of what was +called hospital typhus--an epidemic fever of some kind. After the +French flight, I take it, provisional chief-policeman Wagner had +returned to his deputy-registrarship; but his toils were none the +lighter for that. He exhausted himself; the appalling fever attacked +him and he had no strength to resist it; and he died on November 22, +exactly six months after the birth of Richard. Wagner's ill-luck, his +wicked fairy, struck her first blow while his age had to be reckoned +in months; she went on striking, and never ceased to strike, until he +was beginning to grow a little weary and his age was reckoned in +decades of years, and in terms of masterpieces accomplished and +insults and ill-usage by no means patiently borne. It must have seemed +hard to his widowed mother, after the uncertainties and horrors of the +last years, that when at last a period of happy peace seemed about to +dawn, uncertainties and griefs and worries of a fresh sort should come +upon her. + +Whether Frau Wagner ever actually drew any pension from the good +burghers of Leipzig or the greedy state officials of Saxony seems, +when all is said, very uncertain. In such times of stress and struggle +great crown officers, laudably anxious about their own interests and +the interests of their families, are apt to be rather careless, not to +say callous, about the smaller fry. However, pension or no pension, +with the aid of relatives and friends the Wagners pulled through. +Chief and best amongst the friends was Ludwig Geyer. + +A few words must be said about him. Born in 1780, he was ten years +Carl Friedrich's junior. An actor who had taken up painting, or a +painter who had taken up acting, in both arts he had won at any rate a +local reputation. We know what was thought of his histrionic gifts +from more or less competent contemporaries; but what to think of his +paintings I do not know, for two reasons: I do not trust my own +judgment in such a matter, and if I did, I have never seen any of +Geyer's work. Of this, however, I am very sure: he cannot have been a +good painter unless nature had worked a miracle in sending a good +painter to Germany in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. German +artists of the period must be classified not as sheep and goats, but +as bad goats and worse goats. But if he was not a fine painter he was +what is better, or, at any rate, more useful to the rest of human +kind, a fine character: a noble, generous, self-sacrificing man. In +haste on hearing of Carl Friedrich's death he came from Dresden to +attend to the burying of the dead and the nourishing of the living. +The details of this first period of Richard's ill-fortune do not +amount to a great deal and are unimportant, since our subject is +Richard, and his mother, brother and sisters only so far as their +lives and characters influenced Richard. Albert, the eldest of the +children, was now fourteen years old; he was at the Royal school in +Meissen, and there he remained. Rosalie went to dwell with a friend of +Geyer's, a lady who lived at Dresden. Louise was adopted by a Frau +Hartwig, also at Dresden. Richard in his cradle remained with his +mother and the younger members of the tribe in Leipzig. + +And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man +slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell +dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his +health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements +of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his +income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved +really a stroke of good fortune. Glasenapp, basing his calculations +on I know not what authorities or documents, computes that his +earnings as an actor at this time came to L156 a year, and there seems +every reason to think he was at least fairly well paid for his +portraits. It was not enough to be shared between two families, or, we +had better say, to be devoted to the up-keep of two homes. He +determined rapidly on a bold stroke. That he was in love with Frau +Wagner is more than any one can declare with confidence; but she was +an amiable, bright woman, a good mother and thrifty housekeeper; and +it is likely enough that she had inspired a deep affection in a +singularly loving man. After the recovery of Albert the widow had gone +for a change to Dresden; and there Geyer resolved to marry her--and +resolved quickly; for Carl Friedrich died in November 1813, and early +in 1814 the marriage took place. Soon after, the new Frau Geyer +returned to Leipzig; then the whole family migrated to Dresden, where +Richard was to pass from babyhood into boyhood and spend the first +fourteen years of his life. + + +II + +The Geyer-Wagner family set up their tent in the Moritz-strasse in +Dresden, which belonged to the seventeenth or eighteenth century--was +in fact almost mediaeval. Life must have been atrociously narrow and +trammelled to any free spirit. But Germany did not produce many of +that sort at the time, and those she did produce were quickly +silenced in gaol. Whether Geyer had yearnings for outward liberty +cannot be said; but if he had he gave no expression to them, being +himself a court player and a semi-court painter. Undoubtedly the main +thing to him was that in the drowsy court air he could at least earn +the means of bringing up adequately the large family he had taken on +his shoulders. He played constantly in all sorts of parts, and in his +off hours painted; he also wrote a number of theatre pieces of varying +type and importance--none of which concern us here. His wife enjoyed a +period of peace in which to attend to her husband, children and house, +as a faithful hausfrau should. If Geyer was industrious and much +occupied, he nevertheless found time to cultivate friendships, and +some of them in later days were continued by Richard. + +The whole life of the circle went on around the theatre or in it; it +must have been their whole world, for of culture other than of the +theatre there is no indication--save one or two half-hearted remarks +of Geyer's at a slightly later period. They admired Goethe and +Schiller, of course, and knew their theatre works; they knew of the +Romantics in so far as they affected the theatre; it seems to have +been only through the theatre they saw anything or could see anything. +Breathing the theatrical atmosphere constantly, one after another of +Geyer's step-children caught the theatre malady (for it will be +admitted that men or women must have something the matter with them if +they deliberately choose a theatrical life); and within a few years +three of them were appearing on the stage. Albert left school and went +to the university to study medicine; after a very brief struggle he +gave this up, studied singing, and in 1819 or 1820 made his debut as a +light-opera tenor. Before this Geyer had warned him against taking +such a course; but apparently he was obdurate. On May 2 of the former +year Rosalie had first appeared as an actress in a piece by Geyer; +still earlier Louise had also begun acting child-parts. There must +have been a good deal of family discussion and commotion about these +things. It had been the wish of Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should, +or perhaps might, take to the stage as a profession, but in no case +until she had attained the age of sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph, +as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the +sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct +of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps +the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after +another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. Geyer +kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie, though she had +been long preparing, made no public appearance until she reached +sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family occupation. How +all this affected the family generally, and especially Richard, we +shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned that +Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed +at Eisleben to Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not +pulled stagewards. + + +III + +Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous +hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard +did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise +us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music +was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while +they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded +music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the +precocity is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy +practising on a dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had +become the most celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a +few not wholly irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous +babyhood were repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did +not know what a dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries +regarding the source of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are +swallowed cheerfully to this day because so many authors accept them; +and I would point out that the first author, No. I, was simply copied +recklessly by author No. II, that author No. III, maybe a little less +recklessly, copied No. II because he was supported by No. I; and thus +the game went on until the simple minds of a generation think that +what fifty writers have said must be true. Ten thousand times more has +been written about Wagner than all that Handel provoked, and even less +honest investigation has been made--result, a gigantic series of +tales, genuine or mythical, based on what amounts to no authority +whatever. Unless these are verifiable I leave them to the care of +others, and pass on. So with regard to Wagner's childhood we know he +showed himself no wonderful genius. We do know that he lived amidst +folk whose whole conversation must have been of the theatre and drama, +actors and actresses; that he was petted and taken about by his +stepfather, and as soon as he was old enough, or sooner, went to the +theatre while rehearsals were going on. "The Cossack," as Geyer called +him, grew up a lively, quick-witted child, active and full of +mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the hedge" and sliding +down banisters--much indeed like many other children who afterwards +for want of leisure neglected to compose a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_. The +theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly from the same +life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty existence, one in +which one's days, weeks, months and years are frittered away; they +pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them. When performances +are not over until late, no one rises early; then come the rehearsals; +then the evening performance again--and so home and to bed. Long +intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous work can hardly be +used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or idling in cafes. +Save for those who have risen high in popular favour--or, during +Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses--it is an +uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often +terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of +grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in +the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean +squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced +idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite +right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to +the _cabotin_. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed +from the _cabotin_. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must +have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his +work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen +going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own +home. + +When in 1817 Weber arrived at Dresden to set up a real German opera, +it seemed he must have landed in exactly the wrong place to carry out +his plans. Only by a series of miracles did they get partially carried +out; and here, as we know, he composed two works, _Der Freischuetz_ and +_Euryanthe_, destined in after years to exert greater power over +Richard's genius than any other music save Beethoven's--a power not +inferior to that of Beethoven's music in some respects. Weber +inevitably became a friend of the Geyers, and before Richard was much +older he knew the great person to speak to and set him up in his heart +as a demi-god. But as yet Richard was only picking up a little +knowledge and trying, very faintly trying, to play the piano. + +Meanwhile, Geyer's health was failing, though no one then foresaw what +was to come. He acted, he painted, he wrote plays, he saw to the +debuts of Albert and Rosalie; he tried a cure here and a cure there. +In 1821 he moved to a larger house at the corner of the Juedenhof and +the Frauengasse, and rejoiced to have a larger studio for his +picture-work. In July he went to Breslau and returned ill, tried +Pillnitz and came back appearing a little better, and promptly got +worse. On the evening of September 29 he heard Richard strumming the +"Jungfernkranz," and asked his wife whether it was possible the boy +had any gift for music; the following evening he died. The next +morning Richard was told by his mother that his father would fain have +made something of him; and, like young Teufelsdroeckh, Wagner for long +fancied something would be made of him. + + +IV + +So, less than eight years after, Ludwig Geyer followed his friend Carl +Friedrich Wagner to the grave, like him to a premature grave. He left +only one child of his own, Augusta Caecilie (born February 26, 1815); +but he made Friedrich's widow his wife and her children were as his +children; and he toiled hard for their comfort and planned unceasingly +for their welfare; and when on an October morning he was left in his +last peaceful home to rest, it must have seemed to his widow as though +happiness was to be denied her until she joined him. The winter of +1813 had been black enough, but at once she had Geyer; in 1821 there +was no second Geyer. Adolph Wagner may have seen in the tragedy a +marked instance of the folly of having anything to do with the stage +or actors. Possibly he did not realize that precisely through Geyer's +connection with the theatre, and only to a comparatively small extent +by means of his reputation as an artist, his sister-in-law and nephews +and nieces suffered less than might have been anticipated. For on the +morning following Geyer's death Rosalie swore to take his place as +provider for the family, and that promise she kept. + +When Richard was six months old, fate, as we have seen, struck her +first blow, placed the first obstacle in the path of a successful +infantile career, and swiftly sent Geyer to his aid. Now, when he was +just turned eight, she snatched away Geyer, and had already Rosalie in +readiness to help him. And, in fact, throughout Wagner's life fate +seemed never to tire of delivering staggering blows with one hand, and +with the other hand, at the same moment or a moment later, giving him +compensation, often ample, sometimes on a scale of lordly generosity. +From the beginning to the end of his seventy years no man ever had +worse or better luck than Wagner. It is perfectly clear that fate +meant him to write the _Mastersingers_ and _Tristan_, and at times she +was cruel to him only to be kind to humanity. It is true she seems to +have made a mistake when she allowed him to complete _Parsifal_--but +that matter lies as yet many chapters ahead. + +It would appear that Frau Geyer had a pension of some sort; since May +1 Rosalie had been engaged with the Royal Court players of Dresden; +Albert and Louise both had engagements at Breslau--one of Geyer's last +acts had been to see Albert safely fixed there; it is probable, if not +certain, that Adolph Wagner--who, after all, was fairly well off--lent +a helpful hand: and the family, if not in the modest affluent +circumstances they enjoyed while Geyer lived, at any rate tasted none +of the bitterness of poverty. Glasenapp states that Geyer's "stock of +pictures" had gone up in value after his death; but as he just +previously tells us of Geyer's lack of time and of "would-be sitters" +waiting their turn, we cannot see how the stock can have been very +large. Let us hope, however, that it was, and that Geyer in his grave +went on helping those he loved. Julius was safely bestowed at +Eisleben; and the widow had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Caecilie to +look after--quite enough, it is true, and calling for all the +resources of her housewifery to make ends meet; but, still, nothing +like the burden Geyer had taken up so courageously a few years before. +How much Rosalie and Albert could spare out of the small salaries paid +in those--and still paid in these--days by German theatres is a matter +entirely for conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the +main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at +the first glance one is puzzled to know however the family managed to +pull through at all and avoid the workhouse. + +At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, +he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to +persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one +Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he +had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he +was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in +discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a +time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response +to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would +do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to +Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as +Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and is common +enough when a widowed mother has married a second time. Several such +cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls at Wagner's +double name, as though at some period he had gone under an alias, are +purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a desperate case. + +With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of +boyhood--his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other +members of his family--though they will by no means drop out of the +story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to +his marrying days. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +EARLY BOYHOOD + + +I + +So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to +this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of +Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism, +court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely +conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the +theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all +details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early +experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman +learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of +course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the +spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a +flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he +can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work +comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations +at the instance of those who have been through the proper early +training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he +knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the +result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was +effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and +what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of +the _Ring_ proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly +without trouble in every opera-house of Europe. + +This training--for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the +career before him--now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in +Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so +now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had +rather to consider his family than him; but now the little +individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, +from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an +overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also +leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or +lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the +mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most +stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether +unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate +sketch of the activities and escapades of these days: this would +involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits of the labours +of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, +would yield us nothing essential and might drive the reader to an +untimely end. Out of the strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious +fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour +only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful. + +Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the +classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical. +True, he learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty +and how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the +pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a +special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that +at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a +holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary +school curriculum. It is just possible--just, I say--that had the +family remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the +Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the +composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the +might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very far +from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather was +dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a +fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be +employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great +awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest +drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright, +self-confident boy. + +I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great +engineer having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a +great painter having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines. +Always, from the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without +reflection, instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he +is destined to follow as a man; and though some potential great poets +may be thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by +far the more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or +brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves +and every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature +shaped them to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a +startling exception to the nearly universal rule; but he is no +exception. The theatre was his first love, and to the theatre he ever +remained faithful: only through the theatre did his genius manifest +itself; apart from the theatre it may be doubted whether he could have +developed into the consummate technical musician of _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_. Music was his second love, music associated with +drama; and throughout his long career we find him engaged, first, in +getting his drama true, poignant and effective, and then in allying it +with music. Third in his affections came philosophy; and at this time +of day it need scarcely be remarked that he always considered himself +a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to the last with philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper and gallons of good ink have +been used in writing about the musician, the composer of the most +magnificent operas in the world; weeks, months, years have gone to the +writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all the labour, all the +mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle when we look +through the bibliographies and realize how much paper, ink, +effort--not always to be called mental--sympathy and love have been +used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of Whitman and +Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I believe there are +still some human beings who turn for guidance to Wagner the +philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something about the +subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly matter--in +fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a little +consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and +pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove the +word-tissue of his dramas. + + +II + +There is not much, then, to detain us during this period. Rosalie and +Albert had their engagements, Rosalie being the mainstay of the +family. On May 1, 1824 Clara made her debut. Uncle Adolph, ceaseless +in objurgations touching every one who had any connection with the +court or trade theatres of the day, had to accept the situation; and, +apparently in desperation, or because he found life intolerable with +two nagging females in the house where he dwelt, quietly went in 1824 +and married Sophie, a sister of his friend Amadeus Wendt. +Thenceforward he lived in peace at a house called "The Hut," visiting +his two nagging ladies every day, however. One was his sister, +Friederike, the other Jeannette Thomae. He was a studious, retiring +man, and in the course of time produced some books that are worthless, +or all but worthless, now. Of course the Bayreuth worshippers and +idolizers of the Wagner family will have it that he, being one of the +family, was inevitably a man of superlative gifts; but as I have +already indicated, there is nothing to justify such an assumption. A +cultivated man of sound sense he must have been; and it is true he was +in some slight touch with a few of the stronger artistic and literary +spirits in that very dull and disheartening period; it is true that he +influenced, wholly for good, Richard a few years afterwards. When that +is said all is said. + +Richard is said to have studied English, but how much he actually +learnt I never could ascertain. I have been told with solemn +mysteriousness at Bayreuth that, like the parrot, he could have +rattled off our tongue with tremendous volubility had he chosen; but +the fact that he never chose lends colour to the supposition that in +reality he had no choice. However, in the original or in translations +he read Shakespeare; and it may be presumed that he knew Goethe and +Schiller almost by heart. Naturally he determined to rival them. In +that heyday of the big Romantic movement he just as naturally +determined to rival or to beat them by piling terror on terror, horror +on horror. At that period the latest word in the theatre was melodrama +of the wildest sort, and a play which did not contain a few murders, +ghosts, enchanted woods and haunted castles had not the faintest +chance of success. According to Wagner's own account he made a +handsome bid for success; for nearly all the _dramatis-personae_ came +to an untimely end, and a spectre told one, not yet finished off, that +if he moved another step his nose would then and there crumble to +powder. + +While this masterwork was in process of construction, circumstances so +altered that Frau Geyer thought it wisdom to quit Dresden and return +to Leipzig. Albert, Rosalie, Louise and Clara were in various towns +fulfilling engagements; she was left alone with the younger children. +In 1826 Rosalie had gone to Prague; Albert and Clara were in Augsburg; +Louise had been in Breslau, had tried Berlin, then finally took a +permanent post at the theatre in Leipzig. So a move was determined on, +and the family made another migration in 1827. Richard stayed on for +some time, in connection with his schooling, I presume; then he +followed, incidentally taking the most momentous step in his young +life. + +These five years had been for him profitable. He got the best part of +his education at Dresden, where he had skilful and sympathetic +masters; and almost, one may say, without knowing it he had received +an informal musical education which was profoundly to affect him as +soon as he started writing operas. I mean that he constantly attended +the opera while Weber was conductor, and Weber, who had been a friend +of Geyer's, used to call at the house to pass the time of day with the +widow. Richard looked up to him with awe and worshipped every bar of +his music; and this, together with a knowledge of the road Richard was +soon to take and of what he was to become, makes one wonder that he +had not already decided to compose another _Freischuetz_. But, as I +have said, the theatre--that is, the theatre with the spoken +drama--was his first love; and evidently it had a wondrous hold on +him, for after spending a rapturous evening with _Freischuetz_--first +given in Leipzig in 1822--he would return contentedly to his tragedy. +It took a stronger spirit even than Weber's to awaken the musical side +of his nature. But unconsciously the foundation had been laid, as we +shall have ample reason to understand before long. These years at +Dresden, too, are noteworthy, inasmuch as they saw the beginning of +some friendships, at least one of which was to prove lifelong and +invaluable to Richard. + + +III + +When the family settled again in Leipzig one Ludwig van Beethoven died +(March 1827), and Wagner heard of this composer, it is said, for the +first time. It is all but unimaginable, yet there seems no reason to +doubt it. After all, that was not an age of halfpenny morning and +evening papers, and if composers were boomed the deed was accomplished +tranquilly in the houses of great society leaders, dukes and +archbishops, and the general public knew little of what was going on. +I dare say even in our newspaper age many a clever boy of fourteen has +never heard of Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom +nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: +the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber +would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded +mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed +personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped +Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the +existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The +great hour was at hand. + +First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and +disappointment. At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters, +and had worked hard. His own account of the methods, temper, and +intellectual qualifications of his masters seems to me eminently +reasonable. Their aim was to bring out whatever was best in their +pupils. His account of his first masters at Leipzig similarly bears +the stamp of truthfulness. They were a set of conceited academics +with only two ideas in the world: first, that they were the very +finest flower of Teutonic culture; second, that they must so impose +their personalities on the boys, so impress them with their ideal, +that every pupil would carry to his dying hour the stamp of the +culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond +the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were +frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived--as they +always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect +cleverness--the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or +outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in +achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told me he had +calculated that the Nicolai school turned out in ten years more +complete, complacent blockheads than any other school in Germany had +turned out in half-a-century; and my friend gave me many notable +instances of men who had soon won the proud distinction of being +unmistakable pupils of the Nicolai school. There were rebels, and +Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had +been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to +imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, _i.e._ a +pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the +period, they degraded him to the third. No doubt there were protests: +one cannot believe that Wagner the boy any more than Wagner the man +could refrain from declamation under a grievance; but with such +impervious skulls and thick hides protests would be unavailing. The +mischief was done: he was numbered amongst the rebels, the lost souls, +the unhappy beings who dared to have notions of their own. He +neglected his studies and sought refuge in his drama. I wonder if he +found, or made, an opportunity of satirizing his precious professors +in it. + +At home his life cannot have been much better. Good Hausfrau Geyer +cannot have understood where the shoe pinched: she can only have seen +how he was wasting his time. The tragedy was discovered and there seem +to have been solemn family deliberations regarding the probable fate +of the reprobate. His Uncle Adolph seems to have acted as the great +consoler. He, at any rate, knew better than to think a boy was on the +way to the bottomless pit simply because he could not get on with a +gang of dull pedagogues. Now and later he lectured Richard in a kindly +if sententious way; and he must have fostered the boy's natural strong +spirit of revolt. Adolph loathed authority, especially the authority +of irresponsible court officials; and in some of his preserved letters +he lashes these gentry, the scum of humanity and the parasites of +courts, with scathing sarcasm. His sarcasm had no practical result, +because the officials never saw it--if they had they would have +shrugged their fat shoulders and gone to draw their comfortable +salaries. But he taught Wagner that officialdom is the curse of the +human race; and in after years that certainly had some practical +results--at the moment calamitous to Wagner; in the long run +beneficial to him and the human race. Perhaps of all forms of +authority that which Adolph found least tolerable, that which he +taught Richard to loathe and hate and spit upon, was official +authority in art matters. Nowadays, when public opinion counts for +something, when those who pay the taxes insist on having some small +say as to the way in which they are spent, the intendant of a German +theatre is by no means the lordly court-parasite he was once. Yet even +now he often flouts his paymasters, feeling fairly secure under court +protection. We can easily imagine the high-and-mighty jack-in-office +he must have been in Adolph's time. + +Wherever he made his power felt it blasted honest art and checked +honest art endeavour. It was fitting that Richard should have dinned +into him--as I have no doubt he did--his uncle's views on these +heroes; for later Richard had a fair amount of fighting to do with +them, and in the end it was he more than any other one man who broke +their power for ever by appealing to the great public. This attitude +is due to Richard's preaching and example; and he learnt it from Uncle +Adolph. In one other respect Adolph's influence was good: he opened +out to Richard's vision immense fields of literature that the +youngster had never heard of. I have previously mentioned that all the +culture of the Geyer family came through the theatre. To this Richard +added a small school-acquaintance with the classics; and now came +Adolph to show him a huge, truly vital literature--poetry and prose +dealing with the life of our own epoch. Adolph wrote reminding him of +how finely Weber Had cultivated himself, of his breadth, of his +outlook on history and mankind. It is evident that Adolph, seeing the +irresistible bent of the Wagners towards the theatre, and fearing that +Richard might in time learn to be content with a life of ignorant +theatre tittle-tattle, did his best to save him, not so much by +warning him against the theatre--which he certainly knew to be +useless--as by showing how many great and interesting things the world +holds. The preaching did not fall on deaf ears; and Richard always +declared that in this regard he was incalculably indebted to his +uncle. One of Richard's most strongly marked characteristics was the +tenacity with which he held any idea that once entered his mind; and +it is worthy of note that about this period he read E.T.A. Hoffmann's +collected fantasies and Tieck's _Tannhaeuser_. From the first he +unmistakably got the minstrels' contest in his own _Tannhaeuser_; from +the second, Tannhaeuser's coming home after being cursed by the Pope. + +So things went on. Richard's mother, Richard, Louise, Ottilie and +Caecilie formed the household; Uncle Adolph and Aunt Sophie lived not +far off; and they had plenty of friends. They lived at first in the +Pichhof outside the Halle gate and later removed into the town. +Richard wandered about the city, seeking the scenes of his babyhood; +and his mother pointed out to him the spot where she saw Napoleon +rush off, without his hat, to make his: escape after the battle of +liberation, while Richard was in his cradle. The Rannstadt gate, where +his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing, +though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion +on the Bruehl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the +Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange +animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, +incidentally responsible for the notorious _Judaism in Music_ of 1850, +and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable essay. Richard got +his own way in most things, and the seeds were sown of the +self-confidence, egotism, selfishness--call it what you will--that was +to carry him through unheard-of difficulties and troubles in later +life, and was often, unfortunately, to show as an objectionable, even +odious, feature in his character. He still laboured at his tragedy, +killing off his personages and turning their noses into dust with the +careless facility and cheerfulness of buoyant boyhood. He had always +been fond of roaming the country, and he continued to nourish that +love of the pleasant earth which forced him to keep up the habit all +his life and resulted in the glorious pictorial music of the _Ring_. +He struggled in vain to conquer the piano-keys, and, indifferent to +the fable of the fox and the grapes, came to the satisfying conclusion +that the instrument was not worth mastering. We must remember that +through Louise he was in constant touch with the theatre, and it is +evident that he kept up the connection after her marriage to +Brockhaus the bookseller in 1828, for when the theatre was entirely +reformed next year Rosalie came as a principal lady and Heinrich Dorn, +who speedily became his friend, as conductor. Drama, literature, +school-tasks, open-air rambles, talks with Uncle Adolph--these +constituted his life. Now another element was to enter and overwhelm +all the rest. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +EARLY LIFE (CONTINUED) + + +I + +In the second half of the eighteenth century some enthusiasts at +Leipzig had founded a series of concerts, with a very small orchestra, +which were given in "Apel's house"; in 1781 they migrated to the +Gewandhaus, and by this name the concerts were afterwards known. In +still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and +neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke +came and they became the most slovenly in the world--in this fine +quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could +hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no +modern music could get a hearing there. However, that did not greatly +matter; and the world owes the Gewandhaus concerts an everlasting debt +of gratitude. + +Richard, we know, had never heard of Beethoven, had never heard a bar +of his music. At the Gewandhaus the symphonies were regularly played, +and to one of the performances he went, contented, with his head full +of his play, not dreaming of what was to happen to him ere the morrow. +Here are his own words: "I only remember that one evening I heard a +symphony of Beethoven's, for the first time, that it set me in a +fever, and on my recovery I had become a musician." This is from one +of his stories, but it describes with sufficient closeness what +actually happened. We know that saturated solutions of some salts at a +touch solidify into a mass of crystals, and as far as intentions were +concerned this, figuratively, happened to Richard: his purpose was +instantly set--he would be a musician--nay, he felt he _was_ a +musician. As to his proceedings, however, a better simile would be +that of a liquid into which you drop a little of another liquid and +immediately a violent commotion with much heat is set up. Beethoven's +music touched his young being, and a fermentation began which drove +him forthwith to make himself a perfectly equipped technical musician. +Almost like Teufelsdroeckh and St. Paul, he was "converted" in the +twinkling of an eye. + +The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius. The +bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the +dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while +the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of +Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded. +Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and +Beethoven took his place. When he started to compose seriously it was +Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained: +Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst +Beethoven wrote only utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and +it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre +music. But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse +to, compose came. He had heard, probably, all Weber's operas without +any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven's +symphonies, and the incidental music to _Egmont_, he at once realized +that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to +write it. Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a +thing as the technique of the novelist's trade, and believing in the +omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and +we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when +the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written. + +When the incidental music to--whatever the name of his play +was--obstinately refused to be written, young Wagner may have said +something, though it is not on record; but having a finer instinct +than Carlyle he perceived the necessity of acquiring the technique of +his new trade. So he got possession of Logier's _Method_; in a few +days made a complete study of it; then he set to work in earnest +--with, alas! no more satisfactory fruits. Something that might serve, +however, was achieved, and the ambitious composer went on to a fresh +struggle. He had heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, so, taking +Goethe's _Laune des Verliebten_, he started a kind of fantasia, +concocting words and music together. An account of Wagner's youth +would be incomplete without some mention of these brave doings; they +show clearly how strong the instinct which led him on to the _Ring_ +was in him at this early time--to what an unusual degree the child was +father of the man. But to take seriously his tragedy and these first +musical attempts, made at the unusually advanced age of sixteen, even +if I had seen them--which I have not: I do not know whether they are +in existence--would be preposterous. + +Richard began to see that he could make no headway, and he persuaded +his family to let him take lessons from Gottlieb Mueller, who must have +been a bad teacher for such a boy. Nothing was learnt. Richard was +told he must not do this and must not do that, and he was not told +what he might or should do; in the end both he and Mueller grew +disgusted and the lessons were abandoned. I dare say Mueller was in a +humdrum way a good coach; he could have prepared candidates for our +absurd academic examinations; but for an artistic genius, bursting +with inarticulate ideas and inchoate purposes he was worse than +useless. So Richard had to muddle along as he best might, while his +good relatives doubted whether he would ever be able to do anything at +all, until by good fortune he tried Theo. Weinlig. Weinlig saw what +was wrong and what was wanted; instead of Mueller's "you must not do +this or that: it is against 'rule,'" he explained matters and showed +Richard that if he once learnt the tricks of the trade he would be +able to compose just as he liked; in six months Richard had become an +expert contrapuntist and could fugue it with students who had toiled +for years. "Now," said Weinlig at the last, "you will probably never +want to write a fugue, but the knowledge that you can will give you +confidence." According to the late Mr. Dannreuther his words were, +"You have learnt to stand on your own legs." So it came to pass that +Richard's ambition was fulfilled: he was a musician. + +In the life of a being so extraordinary as Wagner it is not surprising +that he took many steps, each of which seemed the most momentous in +his career; but I think on the whole we must reckon this one, from the +amateur enthusiast to the fully equipped professional musician, the +most important. How long he would have been about it but for Weinlig's +timely aid cannot be said. He was steeping himself in Beethoven. He +could not play the piano, but he could read scores: Heinrich Dorn +declared that he copied those of the overtures with his own hands. He +arranged the Ninth Symphony and offered it to Schott, who declined it, +of course. Another arrangement, for four hands, was afterwards +accepted by Breitkopf, in exchange, it would seem, for a copy of the +full score of the same work. Possibly he had borrowed the copy he +worked from--or thumbed it until it fell to pieces. Dorn said he never +came across such a Beethoven enthusiast, and he felt sure something +would come of it. We know something did come of it. Weinlig had taught +him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and +counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each +masterpiece an easier task; and to Weinlig the world owes a huge debt +of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death +in 1842 he dedicated _The Love-feast of the Apostles_ to his widow. + + +II + +Richard, when he was some years older, said bluntly he cared little +for his family; and some of the Wagner-mad Bayreuth host point out +that the family did little for him and did not understand him. One +might ask why they should be expected to do much: they had plenty to +do in looking after themselves. But no questions and no appeals to +sweet reasonableness are needed, for the very patent fact is that his +family helped him to the uttermost limit of their means. Geyer first, +his widowed mother afterwards, then Rosalie and his brother Albert, +without a doubt Louise--all did their best to make his young existence +comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that +epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of +such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them, +and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was +fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own +with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a +little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first +appointment. Long after then he drained their resources and the +resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner, +as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish; +and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of +Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical +process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his +selfishness--namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for +to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very +charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without +Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the +difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his +quality; but it is pitiable to find writers--Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis, +Chamberlain and Wolzogen--sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to +glorify the defect as the quality. + +In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as +a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn +was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years +make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the +influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the +younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre--to his own +confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture +in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a _Paukenschlag_, +every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful. +That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess. +Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us +hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two +to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but +first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life. + +The Paris revolution of 1830 set all youthful Europe in a ferment. The +students of Leipzig university were not behind, and though Wagner did +not yet belong to the sacred circles he mixed much with them, hearing +them talk and doubtless doing not a little talking himself. At one +stroke, he says, he became a revolutionist; and, within his own +meaning of the word, a revolutionist he remained all his life. When we +deal with the period during which his revolutionary ideas got him into +serious trouble it will be time to discuss his views: for the present +we need only note that the conduct of the Leipzig students in various +riotous scenes that took place filled him more than ever with +admiration for them, and with a determination to enrol himself amongst +them as early as possible. He had quitted the Nicolai and gone to the +more congenial Thomas school; but he would not wait to finish his +course there. On February 28, 1831 he had his wish and matriculated. +He was, I say, spoilt in everything. Most German musicians who +received any education worth speaking of at that time got it because +of the ambition of infatuated parents to see their children turn out +successful lawyers or win high official positions, for Germans have a +touching trust in their government and its power of providing for +their children. Richard, however, had no taste either for law or +officialism--he knew indeed that lawyers and officials are the +parasites and curse of our civilization. He had evidently taken to +heart his Uncle Adolph's admonitions--"Remember how wide was the +culture of C.M. von Weber," etc.; and he entered the university with +the intention, as he imagined, of acquiring some of that culture. But +I fancy he deceived himself. As a schoolboy, as we have just noted, he +aspired to the glory of studentship; having won to that he seems to +have rested content. Certainly he did no work, attended no lectures. +His days and nights were devoted to two things, composition and +politics. With Apel and others whom he used to meet at a cafe he +denounced governments, police officials and the rest of it; at home he +composed overtures and finally a great symphony in C major. It is hard +to say which of his two occupations he took the more seriously. + +The artist was growing up strong within him; but the injustice and +robbery he saw perpetrated on every side of him, the wholesale theft +of Poland by Russian officials--by which I mean the Tsar, his +ministers, his generals, soldiers, subservient judges and police--set +his blood aboil; and I suppose that, like other boys of his years, as +well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put +the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this +time that I have come across is there any hint of the poetic +atmosphere in which he should have lived. Surely in those days before +his health broke down, with his fervid imagination, his intimacy with +the masterworks of music and poetry, he must have drawn in a richer +air than the reek of a Leipzig cafe, his inner vision must have seen a +diviner light than the common light of the stodgy Leipzig streets, +with his inner ear he must have heard a music sweeter than the hoarse +arguments of students half-filled with lager-beer. In the accounts of +this time there is not--to use the phrase colloquially--a touch of +romance. Even his letters are stodgy. My surmise is that just as in +his boyhood the musical part of his nature lay latent and unsuspected +until Beethoven's music awoke it, so now the poetic part lay fallow +awhile, and he worked away at the technical side of his music, +mastering form and conventional development of themes, and in his +leisure spent his excess of energy in talking politics and +metaphysics. The C Symphony of the period can now be seen by all and +has often been played; and it supports my view very forcibly. When I +say there is no hint of Wagner in it I do not mean that the +phraseology does not resemble that of the later Wagner--one could +hardly expect that; I do mean that from _Die Feen_ onward there is +always atmosphere, always emotion and colour, in his music; while the +symphony is as bald, as unpoetical, as any mean street in Kennington. +I do not doubt that he had his poetic dreams, because with such a +nature he could not help it; but he must have been temporarily +indifferent to them, absorbed in mastering the purely technical part +of his business. If we compare the letters of the time with, say, +Keats's and Shelley's, it is startling to find him enthusing over the +affairs of the parish and seemingly turning his back on the great +thoughts of life, on life's colour, romance, poetry--call it what we +like. About the Poles he is enthusiastic and fiery enough. Hundreds of +these heroes passed through Leipzig, living on charity as they went to +their new homes in all quarters of the globe--where many of their +descendants live on charity to this day. Richard wept over their +griefs, and got the idea for a "Polonia" overture; and his ardour was +sufficiently hot to last out until 1836, when he wrote the work at +Koenigsberg. Or it may be that he had forgotten all about the Poles +till he got into the vicinity of their dismembered country. Richard +himself confesses to leading a dissipated life during this period; but +probably he exaggerated when in after years he began to realize the +brevity of life and to regret wasted hours. His guide, counsellor, +friend, and, I doubt not, inspirer of most of his great achievements, +Praeger, tells a fine story of this part of his life; and one can have +no hesitation in calling it a pack of lies. On the other hand, forger +though he was, Praeger is quite as worthy of credence as those writers +who want us to believe that Wagner as a boy of fourteen had a fully +developed character and clearly foresaw the _Ring_ and _Tristan_ as +things before him, only waiting to be accomplished. Richard was still +a boy, impulsive to the point of madness, a hotheaded fanatic, with +his character still in the making, his artistic purposes neither +defined nor capable of being defined. He was not yet a great man. But +he had the makings of a great man in him; and in the meantime it is +much that he gained the affection of most of the people he came +across. In fact it was as true now as ever it was in later life that +of those with whom he came in contact most became his friends and the +rest his enemies: few could disregard him or remain indifferent. + +His apprenticeship was by no means run out in 1832. He had written and +heard performed some overtures, and he set to work and completed the +big Symphony in C major, "in the style of Beethoven"; and this done he +went for a holiday and to gain some little experience in Vienna. That +he could afford such a trip, when at the age of nineteen he could not +contribute a penny to the household expenses, bears out what I have +said about the assistance he received from his family. He contributed +nothing, and, considering his headstrong temper, only a courageous or +reckless man would have prophesied that he would ever be able to +contribute anything. However, to Vienna he went, and heard +_Zampa_--many more times than he wished. He heard Strauss' waltzes and +liked them; he saw Raymund's forgotten achievements and waxed eloquent +about them too. He seems to have learnt nothing but a lively contempt +for a frivolous people who had forgotten how lately Beethoven had died +amongst them--only five years before; a people who danced and made +merry and went philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off +its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was +light-hearted and gay then; and having seen what there was to be seen +he went back to Leipzig _via_ Prague. Here he sketched _Die Hochzeit_; +met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all +events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a +fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown +professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as +principal of the Prague conservatoire. + +He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was +performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and +Aria were sung by one Henriette Wuest at a "declamatorium" in the +Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given +at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following +year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by +a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play, +_King Enzio_, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly +while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a +"declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of +spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear +on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck--afterwards +Schumann--played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious +idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his +directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as +thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when +one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to +rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic +and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians +like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London, +owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had +thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics +what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins +(and with him J.W. Davison of the _Times_) knew Wagner to be a great +musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was +not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was +not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered +when solid incomes are at stake. + +At the Gewandhaus--and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through +a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn _allegro_--Richard got his +first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may +be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be +done. He knew the ninth symphony by heart, and was also entranced by +the blended loveliness and strength of Mozart's symphonies: played +here, all the effects and points he could plainly see in the score +disappeared. He knew better, even thus early, than to think the two +great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which +looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you +like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped +through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of +colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and +soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit. + +At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for +writing operas of his own. _Masaniello_ in its way opened his eyes as +much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the +clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with +brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in +amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and +picturesqueness of his music: in _Masaniello_ the music made its +effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The +same thing he felt in _William Tell_. These two men, Auber and +Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the +theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor +lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even +Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried +them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their +skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at +once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of _Die +Hochzeit_. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but +immediately he proceeded to another opera, _Die Feen_, which he +completed at Wuerzburg. The book of _Die Hochzeit_ is dated December 5, +1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was +given; on the 12th he replied to his brother Albert--now singer, +actor and stage-manager at the Wuerzburg theatre--accepting an +invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his +destination towards the end of the month. + + +III + +Wagner had scarcely time to look around him before his brother Albert +offered him the post of chorus-master. The salary was magnificent--L1 +(of our money) per month for about six months in the year; the work +was hard. We need only note with regard to it that he here heard, and +in the process of drilling his choristers undoubtedly got to know very +well, all the popular successes of the day. His own account is that he +liked them; and it is significant that during this period he heard +Meyerbeer's _Robert the Devil_. At the moment it does not seem to have +affected his compositions; but in a very few years Meyerbeer's +example, if not his music, had a most marked influence in shaping his +career. For the present he worked at _Die Feen_, and as soon as the +theatre closed and Albert and his wife went elsewhere to perform in +the off-season--just as German, French, Italian and American singers +come to Covent Garden now during the summer--he had plenty of time. By +New Year's day of '34 the work was complete. Parts of it were rendered +by some Music Union; but soon Richard left Wuerzburg, having gained +much experience if not any money. He was offered a post at Zurich; +but though that town was destined to be his home for years long +afterwards, it evidently did not tempt him then, for he returned to +Leipzig. + +Here at once began one of those squalid intrigues which drive serious +opera-composers crazy. Several of Richard's pieces had been played; he +had occupied one responsible position and been asked to take another; +he had the finished score of his opera; and he was young and by nature +sanguine to the verge of lunacy. He thought he had only to call on the +Intendant of the opera with his masterpiece and its production would +be assured. He did call, and soon he received a promise that his work +would be done. But Leipzig was now Mendelssohn's stronghold and no +rival could be tolerated. One of the great man's friends and admirers, +Hauser, determined that the work should not be done. He opined that +Wagner did not know how to compose nor how to orchestrate; he found +the music lacking in warmth. This from a worshipper of Mendelssohn +seems a little amusing to-day; but it had a result bad for Wagner in +1834. Underground work went on; and while Wagner waited with what +patience he could muster--and I expect that was not much--hoping every +day to hear that rehearsals had commenced, his score was quietly put +on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of +operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than +barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the +beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much +a few years ago. It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did +not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely +they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession +in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should +be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the +Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two +great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could +tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When +Brendel published the notorious _Judaism in Music_ it is true many +Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some +Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel +should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals, +and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans +for it to be desirable for _them_ to raise the cry of persecution. +Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I +come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the +reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all +protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I +dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish. + +Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the +negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be +wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his _Die +Feen_ overture made a hit. He heard Schroeder-Devrient in Bellini's +_Montechi e Capuleti_, and found to his astonishment that a great +singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high +value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich +Laube--the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so +scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for +themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he +was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the _Zeitung fuer +die Elegante Welt_--- a curious title for a journal which frequently +praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for +another holiday, this time to Teplitz, where he sketched _Das +Liebesverbot_, his second opera to get finished and the first to be +performed--performed, by the way, in a very unusual fashion. Obviously +his spirits were not damped: obviously, also, the family which is +supposed not to have assisted him assisted him to the extent, at any +rate, of enabling him to take a holiday he could not pay for. He had +as yet not earned sufficient for his travelling expenses from Leipzig +to Wuerzburg and back, to say nothing of holiday trips. As on this trip +he planned _Das Liebesverbot_ his thanks were due to his family for +being able to begin that work. It is true he had Apel as a friend, but +he had not yet formed the habit of borrowing right and left, nor is +there any hint in his correspondence of Apel having paid his expenses. + +I wish now to pass rapidly over two fresh adventures--the +conductorship at Magdeburg and that at Koenigsberg; but first let me +point out how the boy's was changing to a man's character. It is +plain that he worked very hard at Wuerzburg, for the score of _Die +Feen_ is a big one, and teaching his chorus must have occupied many +hours a day. It is equally plain that he set to work with the greatest +vigour on the new opera. Now, Nietzsche declared that Wagner by sheer +will and energy "made himself a musician." That is pure nonsense; but +it points to an important characteristic--namely, Wagner did not, even +at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and +impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work. +For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were +almost incredible. + + +IV + +At this point the reader must be asked to bear in mind that the +operatic companies with which Wagner was connected in these early +days--until he left Riga in 1839 and set sail for Paris _via_ +London--were unlike anything in existence to-day. Dickens in _Nicholas +Nickleby_ and Thackeray in _Pendennis_ gave us pictures of the old +stock theatrical companies, with all their good-fellowship, jealous +rivalries, lack of romance and understanding of the dramatic art, and +abundance of dirt. One has only to read Wagner's accounts of the +enterprises at Wuerzburg, Magdeburg, Koenigsberg, and even at Riga, or +to glance at his letters of the period, to see that these concerns +differed in no essential from the companies ruled over by Mr. +Crummles and Miss Costigan's manager. Life went on in an utterly +careless way: the rehearsal for the day over, the company met in cafes +or beer-gardens and stayed there until it was time to move, in view of +the evening performance; any one who had a shilling spent it, while +those who had no shillings accepted their friends' hospitality and +hoped for the good time coming. Ladies quarrelled and then kissed; +gentlemen threatened to kill each other in honourable duel and sank +their differences deep in lager; one member left, another joined, some +members seemed to go on for ever; the great times were always coming +and never came. There was a company of this sort, the head being one +Bethmann, that wintered at Magdeburg and in the spring and summer +months played at Lauchstaedt and Ruedelstadt; and Wagner got the +position of conductor--the first real position he had yet held, for +the Wuerzburg office, after all, was a very small affair. He now went +out to conquer the world for himself; he became nominally +self-dependent, though neither now nor in the future was he really so. +He did the usual round with his troop, arriving at Magdeburg in +October; and arriving there, he tells us, he at once plunged into a +life of frivolity. This may be true, but we must again note the +stupendous industry which enabled him to finish _Das Liebesverbot_ in +so short a time. The most important event in Richard's life about this +time was his engagement to Minna Planer. She is said to have been a +handsome young woman; and, as impecuniosity is everlastingly an +incentive to marriage, of course he married her. In the meantime he +thoroughly enjoyed directing all the rubbish of the day, the season +ended and he returned to Leipzig. + +The next season barely began before Bethmann, according to custom, +went bankrupt; the company disbanded, and Richard was left with a +young wife and nothing to live on. An engagement at Koenigsberg proved +no better; but at last the conductorship of the opera at Riga was +offered to him, so off he went eagerly, never dreaming, we may +suppose, of the extraordinary adventures that lay before him. Here in +outward peace he was to remain until 1839, rehearsing and directing +operas; but here also he was inspired with the first idea that showed +he had grown into the Richard Wagner we all know. He toiled away at +the theatre, nearly driving the singers crazy with the ceaseless work +he demanded from them; and to his family, when they had news from him +or of him, it must have seemed as though he had already one foot on +the ladder and it was only a matter of time for him to climb to the +dizzy height of Hofkapellmeister of one of the larger opera-houses. No +one, however, who had only known Richard prior to this period could +realize how rapidly the new environment was to form and ripen his +character. + +He was now about twenty-three years of age and a master of his trade. +He had written two operas and saw little likelihood of either being +played--for his advantage, at least. He had composed some instrumental +things, but he knew that the theatre and not the concert-room was his +vocation. He must have reflected that even writers of successful +operas had died in poverty, either utterly abject, as Mozart died, or +comparative, as Weber died. On the other hand Rossini had made a +fortune and Meyerbeer was making one. What then? Well, Wagner wanted +neither to die poor nor to die at all: all his life he claimed from +the world luxuries as a right. He felt his powers at least equal to +Rossini's and far superior to Meyerbeer's (though at this time he +ranked Meyerbeer high). His artistic conscience was not so sensitive +as it afterwards became: he actually liked the sparkling French and +Italian stuff which was so popular. So, then, he would challenge +Meyerbeer on his own ground! And as all the musical fashions had to +come from Paris he would go to Paris and make a bid for fortune. Such +must have been the process of reasoning which led Wagner to take his +first great step in life. + +For the present it is sufficient to say that out of Bulwer Lytton's +novel _Rienzi_ he took material to weave a libretto that would afford +opportunities for a great spectacular opera; and set to work and wrote +two acts of the music. Finally he took ship from Pillau to London, +bringing with him his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching +Paris ultimately. And on that journey I must leave him for the +present, pausing a little to consider the music he had composed up to +this time (not including the incomplete _Rienzi_). + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE WORKS + + +With the exception of _Die Feen_, nothing composed by Wagner prior to +_Rienzi_ calls for serious attention, nor would receive any attention +whatever were not the author's name Wagner. He himself did not +distress his soul about the fate of his early works: he knew too well +their value; but when a Wagner cult came into existence these things +of small importance were acclaimed, one by one as they came to light, +as things of, at any rate, the highest promise. Not even that can +justly be claimed for them. _Die Feen_ has a certain atmosphere and a +set artistic purpose which may, in the light of his subsequent +achievements, be taken as an indication, a small hint, that the +subsequent achievements were possible. So much, but not more, may be +conceded. _Das Liebesverbot_ is known to me only from descriptions and +brief quotations, but these suffice to show that here is not the true +Wagner. Of the orchestral music--the overtures and the symphonies--I +have heard oftenest and studied most closely the C major Symphony. Let +us take it first. + +Already I have referred to the absence of what, in the popular +acceptation of the word, might be called the "romantic" element in +Wagner's daily life during this period, and the symphony supports my +suggested explanation. In the letters, in accounts written by Dorn and +others, we find fire, enthusiasm, even a good deal of blatherskite and +wild vapouring, but scarcely a hint of "poetry," of the special +poetical sense, of the poet's outlook on life: and in his music he was +chiefly occupied in mastering the technical side of the craft, +assimilating, and at the same time emancipating himself from, the +lessons with Weinlig, and, absorbed in the task, simply letting +romance, poetry, imagination, fancy and the rest go hang; his +practical outward life was devoted to talking what he thought was +politics and drinking lager. + +Though the symphony is worth looking at because it shows how far +Wagner had then got, the general interest in it has for thirty years +been its history. It has led to a deal of unnecessarily acrimonious +and barren dispute. Wagner's disagreeable diatribes aimed subsequently +at the Jews were, and are, in part attributed to Mendelssohn's +behaviour regarding it. It was sent to Mendelssohn; and that +industrious gentleman never referred to the subject. Wherefore we are +asked two things--to contemn the Jew and accept the symphony as a +manifestation of tremendous genius. Possibly Mendelssohn never clapped +eyes on the symphony. Had he done so, one would have expected him to +pay Wagner a superficial, insincere compliment about the score, and +imply that something might be done, etc. We have Richard's written +word for it that Mendelssohn never referred to Wagner's work. All the +same, what I believe may have been the case, and what Wagner most +certainly would not have believed to be the case, is that Mendelssohn +saw it, and saw nothing in it, and put it on one side, and totally +forgot it. The symphony was lost for long years; but some one +discovered the parts somewhere, and a score was made, and at the very +end of his life Wagner directed a private performance of it. He +dismissed it with a humorously disparaging remark, and we need have +heard no more about it, had not sundry gentlemen who refuse to accept +any Wagner save the inspired prophet of their own imaginings insisted +on having it performed in public. + +I have, I say, heard it fairly often and beg to testify that it is a +miracle of dullness. The themes are not good of their sort, the sort +being, as he said, the sort that are useful for contrapuntal working. +That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by +lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils +could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither +grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got +along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the +finale. Here we find at least sturdiness if not much character. + +This criticism of his boyish work is not a disparagement of Wagner: +one might as well, indeed, disparage Shakespeare, or Beethoven, or the +sun and all the stars in heaven. The symphony tells us, as plainly as +words could tell, two things. First, that as far as craftsmanship is +concerned he fell between two stools: had his aim been lower, it would +have been also less confused, and the result would have turned out +better. That is, had he thought only of composing a well-constructed +symphony, with skilful, easy-running counterpoint, he might have +produced a more obviously clever if more superficial work. That aim +was missed by the fact that the Wagner who knew Beethoven by heart was +not at all content to achieve mere cleverness: he, too, wanted to +write a great symphony. But that ambition also was vague and robbed of +its force by his instinctive struggle to acquire a thorough technique. +So he showed himself neither a great poet-composer nor a contrapuntal +adept. The second fact so plainly stated in the symphony is that he +had not discovered what was to be the real driving force of his +invention throughout his creative career--the inspiration of a +dramatic or pictorial (not poetic) idea. The poetic idea is the +inspiration of the composer of pure, "absolute," music--the poetic +idea which is interpenetrated by the musical idea, the musical idea +that is interpenetrated by the poetic idea, the two being one and +indivisible. As this book proceeds the reader will see how, before +Wagner could shape fine music at all, he needed the +pictorial-dramatic-musical idea (if so cumbrous a phrase may be +allowed). From the very first he never succeeded in the attempt to +compose pure music of notable quality. As years went on he tried again +and again, but only such things as the _Kaisermarsch_, the +_Huldigungsmarsch_ and the _Siegfried Idyll_ are of any value, and +these, we may note, were meant to be played in a quasi-theatrical +environment. Immense crowds, flags, waving banners, uniforms, +flashing swords, snorting chargers and so on set Wagner to work on the +first as surely as the picture of the Hall of Song suggested the march +in _Tannhaeuser_; the same is the case with the second; the _Siegfried +Idyll_, of course, was written for performance at the bedroom door or +window of Madame Cosima on that lady's birthday. A distinct picture +was in the composer's mind's-eye; and besides, the themes came out of +an opera already composed. + +_Die Feen_--_The Fairies_--is based on a version of the child's tale +of _Beauty and the Beast_, Gozzi's _La Donna Serpente_. In Gozzi's +form a lady is changed to a serpent: the handsome and valiant prince +comes along and all ends well. Wagner had not then dreamed of the +_Nibelung's Ring_ with its menagerie of nymphs who could sing under +water, giants, dwarfs, bears, frogs, crocodiles, "wurms," dragons and +birds with the gift of articulate speech; and he would have nothing to +do with the serpent. The lady must be changed into a stone. Further, +Wagner had now got hold of the notion that haunted him for the rest of +his life--a notion he exploited for all it was worth, and a good deal +more--the notion that woman's function on the globe is to "redeem" +man. So the prince changes the lady back from a stone to a woman, and +then, like Goldsmith's dog, to gain some private ends, goes mad. The +lady is equal to the occasion: she promptly redeems him--that is, +cures him--and all ends well. + +Here, at worst, we have the picture, or series of pictures, demanded +by Wagner's genius; here also is a dramatic idea of sorts. His +imagination immediately flamed. The music is not like that of the +symphony, dry and barren wood: on the contrary, it contains many +passages of rare beauty and feeling. There is little of the fairy-like +in it. To Wagner's criticism of Mendelssohn's _Midsummer Night's +Dream_ overture, that here we had not fairies but gnats, one might +retort that in his own opera we have not fairies but baby elephants at +play. But throughout there is a quality almost or quite new in music, +a feeling for light, a strange, uncanny light. It is worth noticing +this, because it is just this sense of all-pervading light which marks +off _Lohengrin_ from all preceding operas. The hint came, it goes +without saying, from Weber; but there is a vast difference between the +unearthly light of Weber and the fresh sweetness of _Lohengrin_, and +here, in his first boyish exploit, we find Wagner trying to utilise in +his own way Weber's hint. + +For a boy of twenty the opera is wonderfully well planned. Whether, +had it been written by Marschner, we should take the trouble to look +at it twice is a question I contentedly leave others to solve. But, as +it is by Wagner, we do take the trouble to look at it many times, and +the main thing we learn is that from the beginning the composer could +write his best music for the theatre, while for the concert-room he +could only grind out sluggish counterpoint. In addition we may see +that it is a work of much nobler artistic aim than _Rienzi_. +Preposterous as is the idea of a woman sacrificing herself to "save" +a man, it is an idea, and it stirred the depths of young Wagner's +emotional nature. In _Rienzi_, as we shall see in a later chapter, +there is no idea of any sort; that opera did not spring from his +heart, nor, properly speaking, from his head, but simply and wholly +from a hungry desire for fame and fortune. + +The clumsiness of the music is due to several causes. He modelled it, +he says, upon three composers, Beethoven, Spontini and Marschner--the +second and third being by far the more potent influences. Now, +gracefulness is not a characteristic of either of them. Then we must +consider that Wagner was not yet one-tenth fully grown, and it is the +hobbledehoy who is so heavy on his feet, not the athlete with all his +muscles completely trained: Wagner needed years of training before he +gained the sure, light touch of _Lohengrin_ and the _Mastersingers_. +His very deadly earnestness over the "lesson" of his opera and his +desire to express his feeling accurately and logically led to his +overweighting small melodies with ponderous harmonies. The +orchestration of the day was heavy. The art of Mozart had been +forgotten; Weber scored cumbrously--as was inevitable; Spontini and +Marschner scored cumbrously also, partly because they could not help +it, partly because they wanted to fill the theatre with sound. Wagner +naturally followed them. But it may be noted that the orchestration of +_The Fairies_ is not so widely different from that of the _Faust_ +overture composed a short while afterwards. A sense of the contrasts +to be obtained by alternating word-wind and strings is peculiarly +his. Mozart and Beethoven had alternated them, but on the simple plan +adopted in their violin sonatas: in those sonatas the violin is given +a passage and the piano accompanies, then the same passage is given to +the piano and the violin accompanies; in all the symphonies of Mozart, +and the earlier ones of Beethoven, virtually the same plan is +followed, strings and wind standing for violin and piano. Wagner from +the first discarded this mechanical notion; wind and strings are +played off against one another, but there are none of these mechanical +alternations, one holding the bat while the other has the ball. On the +whole _The Fairies_ is very beautifully scored. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +PARIS + + +I + +The late Sir Charles Halle, probably retailing a story he had heard, +relates in his reminiscences that when Heine heard of a young German +musician coming from Russia to Paris to try his luck with an empty +pocket, a half-finished opera and a few introductions from +Meyerbeer--amongst them one to a bankrupt theatre--he clasped his +hands and raised his eyes to heaven, in silent adoration before such +unbounded and naive self-confidence; and probably he had not then +learnt the whole truth of the matter. The journey from Riga, _via_ the +Russian frontier into Germany, and thence by Pillau, the Baltic, the +North Sea, London, the Channel and Boulogne, is surely the maddest, +most fantastic dream ever turned into a reality. That he turned the +dream into a reality shows how completely Wagner's character was now +formed: in no essential does the Wagner who built Bayreuth in the +'seventies differ from the Wagner of '39. He had unshakable tenacity +of purpose and perfect faith in his own genius; he was absolutely sure +he could accomplish the impossible; he took the wildest risks. As a +creative artist his development had just begun; but the qualities +which were in after years to enable him to force his creations on an +indifferent world were all there, ripe and strong. + +The problem of getting away from Russia was by no means simple, but +may be passed over in a few words. Wagner's income in Riga had not +been large--300 roubles--and it had been mostly swallowed up by his +German creditors; and even in the town he managed to owe money. ("Was +ever poet so trusted?" asked Dr. Johnson, referring to Goldsmith). Had +he given notice of his intended departure his Riga creditors could +have stopped him; so when the company returned to Riga after their +annual summer series of representations in Mittau Wagner did not +return. He made what is, I believe, called a "bee-line" for the +frontier, met there a friend, one Moeller, who helped him to dodge the +sentries and patrols, and in a few days reached Arnau. Very little +later, in July 1839, he, Minna and Robber the dog took ship at Pillau +and set sail for England. The date is one of the most memorable in the +lives of the musicians--quite as worthy of remembrance as the day on +which Haydn boarded the packet at Calais. Haydn's powers had been +ripened in the sunshine of Mozart's genius, but it is doubtful +whether, save for England, the twelve great symphonies would have been +written; Wagner's powers were beginning to ripen, but it is hardly +doubtful that the _Dutchman_ would never have been written but for the +voyage to England. + +If he could have afforded it he probably would have travelled to Paris +by land. But travelling by land was quite out of the question; money +was then, as ever, scarce with Richard, and he realized that the +longest way round was the shortest--nay, the only--way there. He had +over three weeks of life on the ocean wave, and did not like it and +had no reason to like it. Uproarious storms raged unceasingly; the +ship was driven amongst the Norwegian crags for shelter; and the gloom +of these black, forbidding sea-precipices and fiords took possession +of his soul, mixing and giving pictorial shape to the weird old legend +of the phantom sailor doomed for ever to wander on the grey seas. +Glasenapp points out in an admirable passage that Sandwike, where +Daland goes ashore, is the name of the place where Wagner's ship put +in and he and the crew were regaled by a lonely miller with rum. There +is no rum in the _Dutchman_, but the atmosphere, terror and mystery of +the seas and rocky fiords of Norway are all there; and it was these +that inspired the _Dutchman_. He knew the tale in Heine's form of it, +and had thought of adapting it; but it was the sea gave the idea birth +in his imagination: without the sea the _Dutchman_ is inconceivable. +The _Dutchman_, the whole of the _Ring_ and the _Mastersingers of +Nuremberg_ are all operas in which the scenic environment is the +inspiration. Depend upon it, ere the ship had freed the Sound, and got +into the comparative safety of the open North Sea, the _Dutchman_ +legend had formed itself in his mind ready for dramatic treatment. + +Ultimately--to be precise, three and a half weeks after getting on +board--the family reached London, all three spent with sea-sickness +and want of food. They needed and took a rest, first staying near the +Tower and then in Soho. There is nothing to relate of Wagner's +experiences during his first London visit, save the episode of his +lost dog. The late Mr. Dannreuther got the story wrong and has since +been faithfully followed by biographers in saying the dog was away +several days, and on his return was hugged nearly to death by his +master; but in _My Life_ Wagner says the animal was lost for only a +few hours. But as he was intensely fond of animals all his life--he +always had two or three about him--the incident must have impressed +him. Anyhow, when he next came to London, fifteen years after, he +mentioned it to Mr. Dannreuther, and also pointed out to him where he +had lived and the points of interest he had seen. But nothing of the +slightest significance occurred, and soon he started for Paris by way +of Boulogne. When he reached Boulogne he stayed there a month for the +sake of the sweet company of Meyerbeer--which seems not a little funny +to-day. + +Wagner was only twenty-six years of age; like a rustic who has +suddenly been carried out of the dullness and darkness of his village +into some tawdry cafe of the town, and is dazzled and mistakes the +gilt wood for solid gold, so had Wagner been filled with admiration by +Meyerbeer's brilliant shoddy. It must be admitted that for sheer +theatricalism that gentleman beat any composer who preceded him. +Bellini's, Auber's and Spontini's scores are thin compared with his; +even Auber's grandest ensembles lack his sham magnificence. Wagner's +artistic conscience had not ripened to the point at which conscience +is an absolute, unfailing, unerring touchstone. He had been impressed +with Meyerbeer's showiness and superficial sparkle: it had not yet +occurred to him to test the music with the touchstone of truth. It is +not at all hard for me to believe that he had at this time a sincere +admiration for the Jewish autocrat of the opera world. He was passing +through that stage: he had not yet passed through it; in scheming +_Rienzi_ he had started, so to speak, with an immense rush to follow +Meyerbeer, and for some time the momentum acquired in that first rush +kept him going. When disillusionment came--well, we shall see. + +He was an obscure German kapellmeister, and had never been conductor +in a theatre which did not suffer bankruptcy or where something worse +did not occur. Meyerbeer had certainly never heard his name, and +Wagner was aware of his: he had heard of Meyerbeer's name, and even if +he had not admired the musician he cannot at that period have been +insensible to the man's supremacy in the opera trade. And when we add +to this latter fact, the other fact, that he _did_ admire the +musician, it is easy to understand the feelings with which he +approached this emperor of the barren Sahara of opera. To the emperor +he got an introduction--whether or not in the way Praeger relates is +not worth inquiring into--and the emperor received him not merely with +courtesy, but with what appears to have been something a great deal +warmer than courtesy. He hearkened to the two finished acts of +_Rienzi_, and beginning with an expression of admiration for the +beautiful clear handwriting, presently grew interested in the music +and ended by commending it heartily. Wagner departed for Paris with +the autocrat's letters in his pocket and, as I have said, little +money, but a breast packed with glorious hopes. The most successful +opera-composer of the day had declared that he would succeed, and +guaranteed his belief by giving him those precious introductions. One +was to the direction of the Grand opera, one to Joly, director of the +Renaissance Theatre, another to Schlesinger, the publisher, another +again to Habeneck, the director of the Conservatoire. Of these the +letter to Habeneck proved useful to Wagner from the artistic point of +view; that to Schlesinger useful pecuniarily. The others were useless, +and were never meant to be of any service. Had Meyerbeer told Wagner +to go back to Germany it is just possible Wagner might have gone. +Instead, Meyerbeer sent him into a _cul de sac_--to starve, or get out +as he best could. In the whole history of the art of the world no more +cruel swindle was ever played on an obscure artist by a man occupying +a brilliant position. + +For, figuratively, Wagner had not been in Paris twenty minutes before +he discovered that to be presented by the omnipotent Meyerbeer meant +nothing--absolutely nothing. Every one received him with the greatest +politeness; every one appeared to promise great things; no one did +anything. At the opera he had not the remotest chance, of course, +being young, unknown, a German, and without social influence. The +Renaissance speedily shut its doors, being bankrupt. Through Habeneck +he learnt to understand the Ninth Symphony even better than he had +understood it before; for the Conservatoire orchestra had rehearsed it +until, almost unconsciously, they discovered the real melody, or what +Wagner calls the melos. This is a question I shall go into later when +dealing with Wagner's own conducting; for the present it suffices to +mention the bare fact, as we can trace directly to these +performances--or, rather, rehearsals--the _Faust_ overture which +Wagner soon afterwards composed. Habeneck gave a performance of his +_Columbus_ overture; and in no other way was the acquaintance of any +value. So, as his little money was speedily gone, he had to live for a +while on what his relatives and friends could give him, and afterwards +by what he could earn by writing for Schlesinger's _Gazette Musicale_. +This is what Meyerbeer's introductions were worth. + + +II + +However, he found and made friends, some, though not all, as poor as +himself. Laube, his crony of earlier years, was there and introduced +him to Friedrich Pecht, a student of painting, and to Heine. This last +was very suspicious of Wagner at first, because he did not believe +Meyerbeer would exert himself on behalf of any one possessing the +slightest ability. It is obvious that he soon discovered that he was +both right and wrong. Wagner had ability, and Meyerbeer, far from +helping him, had ingeniously dug a trap to keep a possible rival +quiet. Wagner made the acquaintance of Berlioz, and promptly uttered +the criticism he adhered to always--one that I humbly subscribe +to--that Berlioz, with all his imagination, energy and wealth of +orchestral resource, had no sense of beauty. Berlioz, he remarked, +lived in Paris "with nothing but a troop of devotees around him, +shallow persons without a spark of judgment, who greet him as the +founder of a brand-new musical system, and completely turn his head." +To a certain degree this judgment came home to roost in Wagner's later +years in Bayreuth; but he was saved by the fact that, being a great +musician, he also drew genuine musicians to him. If Bayreuth was +crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before +Richard and found the weirdest meanings in his simplest melodies, and +who now write lengthy books about Richard's son Siegfried, yet we must +remember that the men who carried the news of Richard's true greatness +through Europe were Liszt, Buelow, Tausig, Jensen, Cornelius and many +smaller men--smaller men, but real musicians. Now, it was long since +pointed out that amongst his entourage Berlioz had no one possessing +an understanding of the art of music. Literary men and painters were +there in abundance: that is, they called on him; and because his +musical ideas or ideas for music seemed so vast they assumed that his +musicianship must be vast also; but those whose judgment would have +been trustworthy, and whose help worth having, stayed away altogether; +and when the celebrated personages had paid their call and gone their +several ways he was left to the flattery of a pack of incompetent +fools. This is not to exaggerate--it is simply to explain the +loneliness and sad tragedy of the end of Berlioz's life. He must in +his heart have known the bitter truth. One friend of Wagner's must not +be omitted--Lehrs. From him Wagner obtained what is called the middle +high-German _Saengerkrieg_, from which he extracted ere returning to +Germany the whole world of _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_; and this we +must consider later. We may note that his youngest sister Caecilie, +Geyer's only child, had married Avenarius, who resided in Paris for a +time as agent for Brockhaus, the Leipzig publisher. + + +III + +The whole story of this first visit to Paris is sordid, squalid, +miserable to a degree; and I don't know that we can be surprised. When +Wagner sailed from Pillau he had not had a single work of any +importance performed. Nay, more, he had not written a work of any +importance. _Die Feen_ had never been given; _Das Liebesverbot_ had +been given--under ridiculous circumstances and with the most +disastrous results; his symphony had been played, but by this time +score and parts had probably disappeared. Mendelssohn had received +them in Leipzig and never once referred to them. Anyhow, none of these +things were striking enough to have attracted much attention even in +Germany; and they certainly would have excited no interest in busy, +bustling Paris--the home of the Rossini and Meyerbeer opera, of +quadrilles, vaudevilles and the rest. But for the happy, or rather +unhappy, chance of meeting Meyerbeer in Boulogne, he would have +entered the city without a line to any one of position. His money, as +I have just said, gave out almost at once, and thenceforth he had to +keep the wolf from the door by slaving at any odd jobs which would +bring in a few pence. On more than one occasion he was reduced, +literally, to his last penny. With marvellous resiliency of spirits he +managed not only to pull through, but to complete _Rienzi_, then to +write one great opera and begin planning two very great ones. We have +accounts--mostly written long after the event--of merry meetings and +suppers; but against them we must set the dozens of despairing letters +and scribbled notes in which he complains of his luck and his lot. +Yet, I say, how can we feel surprise? Why, he could not even play the +piano well enough to give an opera-director any fair notion of his +music; and perhaps that is just as well, so far as Paris was +concerned, for the taste of the day was such that the better his +compositions were understood the less they were liked. Halle remarks +that when he talked of his operatic dreams at this time he was +commonly regarded as being a little, or more than a little, "off his +head." + +It became evident at the outset that all hopes anent the opera must +fall to the ground. He met Scribe, the omnipotent libretto-monger of +the day, and of course nothing came of it. The spectacle of _Rienzi_ +was on far too large a scale for the work to be possible at the +Renaissance, so, much against the grain, he offered Antenor Joly _Das +Liebesverbot_. He waited two months for a decided refusal or a +qualified acceptance, but heard nothing. At last a word from Meyerbeer +seemed to have settled the matter. One Dumersau, who translated the +words into French, was very enthusiastic about the music and made Joly +enthusiastic too; everything looked bright for the moment, and Wagner +moved from the slum where he had been living to an abode a little less +slum-like, in the Rue du Helder. On the day he moved the Renaissance +went bankrupt again. I say again, because Joly became bankrupt +punctually every three months--a fact which explains Meyerbeer's +readiness to help him in that quarter. In desperation he seized the +chance of earning a little money by writing the music for a vaudeville +production, _La Descente de la Courtille;_ but here again his luck was +out: a more practised hand took the job from him. He composed what he +considered simple songs adapted to the Parisian taste, and they were +found too complicated and difficult to sing. To earn mere bread he +arranged the more popular numbers of popular operas for all sorts of +instruments and combinations of instruments, and in one of his notes +we find him bewailing the sad truth that even this work was coming to +an end for a time. However, he wrote on for Schlesinger's _Gazette +Musicale_; for Lewald's _Europa_ (German) and the Dresden +_Abendzeitung_--though the work for the second two did not commence +till later on. This toil perhaps brought him bread: it did nothing +more; Minna had to pawn her trifles of jewellery; there seemed not a +ray of hope gleaming on the horizon. The performance of his old +_Columbus_ overture did him a precious deal of good--especially as at +the second performance--at a German concert arranged by +Schlesinger--the brass were so frightfully out of tune that people +could not make out what it was the composer would be at. It is +needless to tell the ten times told miserable tale in further detail +at this time of day; and I will now confine myself to the few facts +that bear upon the fuller life that soon was to open before him. + + +IV + +A new opera-house had been a-building in Dresden, a royal court +theatre; and a chance in Paris being denied to _Rienzi_, Wagner, +staggering along under the burden of his crushing woes, thought +perhaps his grand spectacular work would be the very thing to suit the +Dresdeners about the time of the opening. True, there remained three +acts to compose and orchestrate--but what was that to a Richard +Wagner! Only one other composer has achieved such astounding feats. +Mozart, amidst multitudinous worries, sat down and wrote his three +glorious symphonies "as easily as most men write a letter." Wagner was +born to achieve the impossible: he had already done it in getting to +Paris at all; and now, as a sheer speculation, on the very off-chance +of a Saxon court theatre accepting a work by a Saxon composer, +harassed by creditors, despondent under repeated disappointments, +drudging hours a day at hack-labour, he went to work and composed and +instrumentated the last three acts of the most brilliant opera that +had been written up to that date--1841. On February 15 of that year he +began; on November 19 he ruled the last double-bar and wrote finis. +That done, he dispatched the complete score and a copy of the words to +Dresden, with a letter to von Luettichau, the intendant. Again the +delays seemed interminable; his letters, especially those to Fischer +and Heine, are packed with inquiries about the fate of his opera--he +could get no answer at all for a long while, and after it was +definitely accepted the usual troubles occurred through the whims and +caprices of singers. Even his idol and divinity, Schroeder-Devrient, +great artist though she was on the stage, played the very prima +donna--which is about as bad a thing as can be said of any woman--off +the stage so far as _Rienzi_ was concerned. Being a prima donna first +and an artist afterwards, she thought nothing of dashing Wagner's +hopes by expressing a desire to appear in some other opera before +_Rienzi_; and as the delay meant a prolongation of the actual misery +and possible starvation at Paris we can picture Wagner's impotent +rage and despair. + +On October 14, 1841, we find him writing to Heine: + + "... Herr von Luettichau has definitely consented to my opera + being put on the stage after Reissiger's. That is all very good; + but how many questions does not this answer suggest! For + instance: does the general management propose to place my work + upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant + effect? On this point W----writes me: 'The general management + will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable + manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to + me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from + Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me--that is the + best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on + my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be + fairly engrossing his attention, should be much occupied about + me. But what alarms me is the absolute silence of our Devrient! + I think I have already written a dozen letters to her: I am not + exactly surprised at her sending me no single line in answer, + because one knows how terrible a thing letter-writing is to many + people. But that she has never even indirectly sent me a word, + nor let me have a hint, makes me downright uneasy. Good heavens! + So much depends upon her--it would really be a mere humanity on + her part if she, perhaps through her lady's-maid, had sent me a + message to this effect: 'Make your mind easy! I am taking an + interest in your affair!'--certainly everything which I have + learnt here and there about her behaviour with regard to me + gives me every reason to feel comfortable; for instance, she is + said to have declared some while ago in Leipzig that she hoped + my opera would be brought out in Dresden. This token would have + fully quieted me, if it had only come directly to my ears or + eyes: hearsay, however, is far too uncertain a thing. + + "A month ago I likewise wrote to her, and earnestly begged her + to let me have only a line with the name of the lady-singer whom + she would like to be cast for the part of Irene, so that I might + make a formal list to propose to the management. No answer! Oh, + my best Herr Heine, if your kindness would only allow you a few + words in which to make me acquainted with the intentions of the + adored Devrient! Does she really wish to sing in my opera?--that + is the question. + + "Good heavens! only to know how all this stands! I have written + to Herr Tichatschek, and commended myself to his amiability: + shall I be able to count on this gentleman?" + +Again, on January 4 of the following year: + + "Should it really come to this, that my opera must be laid aside + for the whole winter, I should indeed be inconsolable; and he or + she who might be to blame for this delay would have incurred a + grave responsibility--perhaps for causing me untold sufferings. + I cannot write to Madame Devrient; for that I am much too + excited, and I know too well that my letters make no impression + upon her. But if I have not yet worn out your friendly feeling + toward me, and if I can be assured that you rely upon my fullest + gratitude, I earnestly beg of you to go to Madame Devrient. Tell + her of my astonishment at the news that it is she who hinders my + opera from at length appearing; and that I am in the highest + degree disturbed to learn that she by no means feels that + pleasure in and sympathy for my work which so many flattering + assurances had led me to believe. Give her an inkling of the + misery she would prepare for me, if (as I have now good reason + to fear) a performance of _Rienzi_ could not after all take + place this year! But what am I saying? Though you may be the + most approved friend of Madame Devrient, even you will not have + much influence over her. Therefore, I do not know at all what I + should say, what I must do, or what advise! My one great hope I + place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von + Luettichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger. If Devrient cannot + give up her Armida, if she cannot afford me the sacrifice of a + whim, then all my welfare rests only on the promptness with + which this opera is brought out, and my own is taken up. I + therefore fervently pray Reissiger to hurry: and you--I beseech + you--do the same with Devrient. By punctuality and diligence + everything can still be set right for me; for the chief thing + is--only that my opera should come out before Easter (that is to + say, in the first half of March). I am truly quite exhausted! + Alas! I meet with so little that is encouraging, that it would + really be of untold import to me if, at least in Dresden, things + should go according to my wish!" + +These excerpts afford some notion of the struggles and disappointments +of this time--struggles that were to be repeated when, more than +twenty years later, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ were produced in +Munich. More need not be quoted, for the story is always the +same--delays caused by intrigues and the whims and caprice of singers, +and the indifference of inartistic directors. + +It should be said that Meyerbeer seems, for the only time, really to +have helped Wagner in getting _Rienzi_ accepted, for a letter of his +to von Luettichau recommending the opera, has been preserved; wherefore +let us gladly acknowledge this deed, which was a good, if a very +small, one. He again paid a visit to Paris, and this time gave Wagner +a word of introduction to Pillet, who had assumed the post of director +of the Opera. Owing to this introduction the _Flying Dutchman_ was +written. Wagner sketched a scenario and let Pillet have it. The +customary procrastination set in, and at last Pillet flatly told +Wagner he could not produce an opera by him: he was young, a German, +and so on and so on; and in a word he liked the scenario and had +determined to have it set by one Dietsch--which is not a very +French-sounding name. He offered Wagner twenty pounds for it, and if +the offer was not accepted--well, Wagner might do what he chose. +Wagner took it. + +He completed his libretto, took lodgings at Meudon, then a lovely +suburb of Paris, hired a piano and sat down to compose his _Dutchman_. +He gives a graphic account of his tremors whilst awaiting the piano: +he feared that during the degrading struggle for bread the power of +composing might have deserted him. The instrument arrived, he sat +down, and shouting for joy, struck out the sailors' chorus. In seven +weeks the draft was complete--it is dated September 13, 1841. Want of +funds compelled him to leave Meudon and resume his treadmill +toil--this time in the Rue Jacob in Paris; but he began to score his +opera in the autumn and by the end of the year it was entirely +finished. He sent it to the Berlin Opera, and at once began to cast +round for another subject. He had demonstrated to his own complete +satisfaction that grand historical themes were the only useful +material for a thoroughly "up-to-date" (date 1842--seventy years ago) +composer; and while doing what may be called foraging work he had hit +upon the story of _The Saracen Young Woman_. We may presume that this +appealed to him in a mood of reaction after the intensely personal +quality of the _Dutchman_. That mood sent him back in the direction of +_Rienzi_. About the _Dutchman_ he never had the slightest illusion. He +knew it to be so far ahead of the time that nothing in the way of a +popular success was to be hoped for it. On the other hand, he had +perfect faith--a faith justified by the subsequent event--in _Rienzi_; +and since the Wagner of 1842 was by no means the Wagner of 1862, or +even of 1852, since also he had been half-starved for a couple of +years and money seemed to him a highly desirable thing, he naturally, +inevitably, was drawn towards a subject which promised as well, from +the box-office point of view, as _Rienzi_. + +However, there is--or was in Wagner's case--a divinity that shapes our +ends. Much as he hungered after comforts, luxuries and the flesh-pots +of Egypt, the daemon within his breast was too strong for him. He had +planned a new work, more or less on the lines of _Rienzi_, and perhaps +some lucky or unlucky accident might have sent him the inspiration to +start with the music. But just at this juncture Lehrs' copy of the +_Saengerkrieg_ attracted his attention: the complete drama of +_Tannhaeuser_, and the first vague notion of _Lohengrin_, flashed upon +him. As he said, and as I have repeated, a new world was opened before +his amazed eyes. The _Saracen Young Woman_ and the rest all went to +the wall; and when on April 7, 1842, he set out for Dresden he had +different plans altogether in his head. Before he could start +Schlesinger advanced the money for more cornet-a-piston arrangements +of opera-airs, and he had to take the scores of those operas amongst +his luggage. + +As yet I have said nothing about his acquaintance with Liszt. It began +at this time, and of course was destined to have wonderful results, +but for the moment it was of no importance. Wagner was an unknown +composer; Liszt was a world-famous pianist. Wagner, moreover, had +written only _Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_, and was unable even to play +them on the piano. He probably made only the slightest impression on +Liszt. The incident is worth noticing in this chapter, because, though +this Paris episode seems to be nothing but a series of disasters, it +is an instance of the good that came of it. Wagner undoubtedly learnt +a lot about the stage; he got to know Liszt; he had the world of +_Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_ opened out to him. When he went off to +Dresden and touched German soil once more he swore he would never +again leave his fatherland. But he had learnt what his fatherland was +quite unable to teach him. His friends said his character changed +entirely during this period. Undoubtedly it did change: the Wagner who +had aimed only at worldly, commercial success, changed into Wagner the +artist whose sincerity carried him through all troubles to the +crowning triumph--and discomfiture--of Bayreuth. I have referred +before to the fact of the old momentum keeping him going in a certain +direction even after he knew that direction to be a wrong one; and the +same thing was to occur again, as we shall see in a moment. After +writing the _Dutchman_ he actually deliberated as to the wisdom of +doing another _Rienzi_. The claims of his stomach were, naturally +after a two years of semi-starvation, very strong, and another +_Rienzi_ might have meant easily earned bread-and-butter. But the +Paris change was fundamental; and even if he had tried to do another +_Rienzi_ he could not possibly have done it. Without his knowing it, +the artist in him had triumphed over the merely commercial composer. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN' + + +I + +Were _Rienzi_ an opera of the highest artistic importance, I suppose I +should have read ere now Bulwer Lytton's novel of that name. As it is, +I must confess my utter inability to wade through that pretentious and +dreary achievement. And it does not matter. Skimming over the novel, I +have gathered enough of the plot to see that Wagner took only the plot +and nothing else from Lytton. What else he could have taken I cannot +guess, unless it was a copious stream of high-falutin', and at this +period Wagner's own resources of the sort were ample. What he wanted +was a plot that would afford him an opportunity of planning a +spectacular opera on the largest possible scale, and this he found in +Lytton. + +Two claims, or rather, a claim and a counter-claim, have been, and +constantly are, made with regard to _Rienzi_. The first is that it was +inspired by Meyerbeer and a copy of one of his works--which one I do +not know; the counter-claim is that Meyerbeer had no part in the +business, and that on the contrary he learnt more from Wagner than +Wagner could possibly have learnt from him. Now the notion, I take it, +of composing a grand work for the Paris stage was suggested by +Meyerbeer's stupendous success--of that, indeed, I cannot admit there +is the faintest shadow of a doubt. Starting from Paris, where they +were concocted together with Scribe, Meyerbeer's operas went the round +of the opera-houses of Europe, and save in one or two quarters +Meyerbeer lorded it over the opera-houses of Europe. It may be true +enough that some of his mighty works had not been played at Riga--it +may even be true that Wagner had not seen the scores. But that I feel +less sure about; and, anyhow, if he had not seen them he was bound to +have heard of them. The talk of musical Europe was not likely to be +unknown to a man who both read and wrote in the musical papers. As +soon as Wagner conceived the idea he wrote to Scribe concerning it; +and, as we know, Scribe quite naturally left his communication +unanswered. We find, then, that this, not more than this, though +certainly not less, is the extent of Wagner's indebtedness to +Meyerbeer: that Meyerbeer, by writing clap-trap for a large stage, +with showy, tawdry effects, had gained enormous popularity and +corresponding wealth, and thus unconsciously had thrown out a hint +that budded and blossomed into _Rienzi_. How little beyond this bare +hint Wagner got from Meyerbeer we shall see when we examine the music. +A word must be said about the counter-claim. In his age Wagner at +Bayreuth, although he had fine musicians as his friends, had round him +many gentry who told him--greatly daring, to his face--not only that +he owed no artistic debt to any one, but that, on the whole, most +other composers owed him a good deal. One can excuse the weary old +man, sorely battered in life's battles, lapping up a little of this +sweet flattery; but it is hard to forgive the stupidity that still +makes the great composer appear ridiculous thirty years after his +death. This legend of Meyerbeer borrowing or thieving from Wagner is +sheer rubbish; in all Wagner's music there is not a bar which could +have been of use to Meyerbeer. The most rowdy tunes in _Rienzi_ he +could easily equal: anything ever so remotely approaching the +beautiful he did not want. What! was he to run the chance of failure +by writing, or copying, one really expressive measure? + +It needed the cruel disillusionment of the Paris days, it needed also +the time needful for Wagner's normal growth, before he was driven to +see that the music-drama, or something that ultimately evolved itself +into the music-drama, was the form that he needed for his deepest +utterances. _Rienzi_ is old-fashioned opera, barefaced, blatant and +unashamed. Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and +marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more +deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide +opportunities for these. Both in _Die Feen_ and in _Das Liebesverbot_ +his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic. +Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market. The subject +was eminently suitable. The personage Rienzi was intended for a great, +heroic figure and the music written for a brilliant tenor. The +indispensable love-element was provided by Irene, a soprano (though +it can well be sung by a mezzo), and Adriano, son of a patrician, a +mezzo-soprano (almost a contralto part)--which would be amazing did we +not know Wagner's aim. A woman-man carries us back to the days of +Handel and Gluck, and shows how little sincere Wagner was at the time, +how absorbingly bent he was on tickling the ears of the Parisians. The +villains of the piece, Colonna and Orsini, with their patrician +followers, are true stage-villains of melodrama in some +situations--proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they +whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was +determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their +voices and their skill in every kind of music--heroic or noisy, +pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few +minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and +the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera +is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's +time on an exhaustive analysis. We shall have enough to do of that +kind of thing when we come to the beginning of Wagner's riper work, +the _Dutchman_: time and space would only be wasted if we examined +_Rienzi_ very closely. + +The curtain rises on a street in Rome; it is night, and in the +foreground Rienzi's house can be discerned. Orsini and his companions +run up a ladder to a window, enter, and come out carrying Irene, +Rienzi's sister. She screams for help quite in the Donna Anna manner; +Colonna and his companions come in and fall to blows--why, is not too +clear--with Orsini and his men. Adriano, Colonna's son, rescues Irene. +Crowds of the common people rush in, wildly asking one another what +the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the +name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, +sees what has occurred, and in a speech--uttered mainly in the driest +of dry recitative--taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and +their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The +nobles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their +quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to +wait their time, and he will lead them to destroy their oppressors. +They quietly disperse; Rienzi, Adriano and Irene have a scene; Rienzi +recognises in his sister's rescuer the son of his brother's murderer, +Adriano, and the latter, who has fallen in love with Irene, promises +to take Rienzi's part, and the three sing a trio as cold, undramatic +and commonplace as anything in Donizetti. There are two passages in it +which possess life: a variant of a theme from _Euryanthe_, and a theme +distinctly suggestive of the Wagner of _Tristan_. Then Rienzi goes +off, ostensibly to prepare for battle, but in reality to leave the +scene clear for Adriano and Irene to sing a rather maudlin love-duet. +A trumpet-call is heard; people rush in from all sides; Rienzi +addresses them; and after choruses, partly double-choruses, all go off +to fight the patricians. There is plenty of bustle; there is +tremendous vigour; and the scene affords chances for the stage manager +to manipulate big crowds effectively. But we must remember that the +thing had been quite as well done by Auber in _Masaniello_: even the +energy is not the true Wagnerian energy divine: it does not show +itself through the stuff of the music, but in the common rumty-tumpty +rhythms of the day, often offensively vulgar, and in the noisy +instrumentation. Any one can write for a big chorus and orchestra, +with plenty of trumpets and drums: to fill the music itself with +energy is a task that Wagner could not cope with as yet. + +So far the characters have been consistent. In the second act they all +show signs of weakness. Messengers of peace enter: Rienzi has +conquered and freed the people from an unbearable yoke; he is +congratulated by the messengers who have wandered through the +country--a pilgrimage that in the fourteenth century might well have +occupied them for years--and everywhere peace prevails. The music here +has a certain charm and freshness, but no more can be said for it. +Wagner wanted a contrast to the imposing displays of the first act, so +he simply put in this unnecessary scene. The patricians enter and +whine, begging for mercy; Rienzi, now Tribune, joins the senators; and +Colonna, Orsini and the rest begin to plot his death. Adriano, amongst +them unnoticed at first, expostulates--begs them not to stain their +hands and souls with the blood of the vanquisher who has treated them +so magnanimously. They scorn him as a deserter of his own class; they +leave, and he swears to save "Irenens Bruder." He has become +sentimentalist; but some of the music of the scene has strength. Then +the people conveniently flock in; ambassadors come from all corners of +the earth to acknowledge Rienzi; Adriano warns him that mischief is +breeding, and Rienzi calmly smiles; there is a most elaborate ballet, +occupying many pages of the score and full of trumpery tunes; Orsini +stabs Rienzi, and all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi +shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the +conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and +Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, +turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the +people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he +prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much +very Italian stuff in the music; but on the whole this scene is the +strongest in the opera. Of the real Wagner there is still small sign. + +He had completed these two acts when he set out for Paris. Once he +realized how poor were the prospects of getting his work played there, +his ardour for bigness and noise seems to have cooled. There are no +more double choruses; everything is planned on a smaller scale. The +three remaining acts in their present form (for he afterwards +shortened the opera) can be, and often are, compressed into two, or +even one. They can be described in a few words. The people begin to +distrust Rienzi; the patricians recommence plotting; Rienzi leads the +people to victory against them, and Colonna, with the others, is +killed. Adriano again wobbles and swears vengeance; the capitol is set +on fire with Rienzi and Irene inside; at the last moment Adriano +repents and rushes in to die with them; the building falls with a +crash, destroying the three; and as the curtain falls the +patricians--such as are left--seeing the people leaderless, fall upon +and scatter them. There are pages on pages that one can scarcely +believe came from Wagner's pen; in terrific theatrical situations the +most trivial Italian tunes are poured out in copious profusion. The +war hymn is sheer rowdyism; the great broad melody which forms part of +the prayer, and on which the introduction of the overture is based, +stands out from a weltering sea of orchestral bangs, noises and +screams and skirls of the strings. But there are numberless chances +for fine voices to be heard; and at that time of day these were even +more prized than they are to-day. The sparkle, the fireworks, the +sheer noise of the choruses, carried every one away. In Dresden Wagner +became the man of the hour. He had aimed at a success of this sort, +and he attained it, though by no means so quickly as he had expected, +nor in the quarter where a success would have been profitable. + +It is not needful to say much more about the music. It shows a variety +of influences; it shows also that Wagner, before he was thirty, was, +as I have already said, a perfect master of the tricks of the trade. +In huge imposing effects he out-Meyerbeered Meyerbeer, out-Spontinied +Spontini. If his tunes have not the superficial gracefulness of +Bellini it is because Wagner, in spite of himself, was driven by his +daemon to aim at expressiveness, and, as in the _Dutchman_ a very short +time afterwards, fell between two stools. His tunes lack the fluency +of the Italians because he did, in a half-hearted way, want to utter +genuine feeling; they are not finely, accurately and logically +expressive as they are in _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_, because the +Italian influence, and the necessity of writing to please the gallery, +perpetually held him back. The contours of the melodies are dictated +from outside, consciously copied from alien models: in the later works +they are shaped by the inner force of his own mind, and though the +Weber idiom is prevalent, he used it unconsciously, as children in +learning to speak acquire the accent of the elders about them or the +dialect of the neighbourhood in which they are reared. I say the tunes +lack external grace, and I might go further: all the themes, all the +passages that follow (rather than grow out of) the themes, are +characterized by a certain clumsiness. This followed, as night the +day, from the attempt to copy and to be original at the same time. He +could not obey his instinct and write directly and simply: he must +needs warp and twist the obvious, and disguise, even from himself, its +essential commonplaceness. A remarkable instance is his use of the +Dresden Amen in _Rienzi_ as compared with his use of it in +_Tannhaeuser_. In the latter it is plain, diatonic and immensely--in +the best sense--effective; in _Rienzi_, in spite of the vigour of its +presentation, the effect is weakened by the way in which it is bent +away to a chromatic something which is neither frankly Italian nor +honestly German. Again, he composed with an audience in his mind's eye +that could only take in one melody or theme at a time. The melody +might be in an upper part, a middle, or in the bass. In one or another +it always is, and the rest of the musical tissue is only +accompaniment. Hence a heaviness, a lumbering motion of the harmonies, +which is irritating to our ears now that we are accustomed to webs he +spun in later days when music no longer consisted to him of top parts +and bottom parts, but of a broad stream of parts, all of equal +importance, and all flowing along together, preserving each its +individuality, and each individual blending with the others to produce +the total effect. In _Rienzi_ the bass often remains the same for bars +together, while in an upper part a florid tune flourishes its tail, so +to speak, for the public amusement. An ugly trick he indulged in at +this time was giving to the voice the notes of the instrumental +bass--a remnant of the eighteenth-century way of writing for the bass +voice. + +Artistically _Rienzi_ was a sin. Remembering that _Die Feen_ had been +written years before, it is useless to contend that Wagner did not +know he was aiming at something lower than the best he could produce. +He never again fell away from his highest and truest self, though he +was sorely tempted. + + +II + +The simple, terrible old legend of the Flying Dutchman had in it no +elements of drama. The irascible mariner of ancient times, vainly +struggling to round Cape Horn (or some other cape) against a head +wind, swore in his wrath that he would succeed if he tried until the +Day of Judgment; a lightning flash in the sky proclaimed that he was +taken at his word; thenceforward his ship sailed the seas without +stopping; it never could reach any port, and release would only come +at the last day. The crew died and their ghosts worked the vessel; the +vessel rotted and the ghostly crew continued to work a phantom ship; +only Vanderdecken, the skipper, seems to have lived on in the flesh. +Other ships passed through the phantom as though it was a cloud; and +the living crews shuddered, and cursed the dead. Before this thing of +terror and mystery could form a part of any drama, adventures had to +be invented and grafted on to it. As with the legend of the Wandering +Jew, this was done in a hundred, perhaps a thousand, instances; and +never had a good piece of work been the result. Whether Heine did or +did not himself devise the form in which the legend is used in his +reminiscences of Herr von Schnabalewopski it is not worth troubling to +find out. It is enough that in Heine, Wagner found the story more or +less as he employed it. It is an odd compound--odd at this time of day +at least--of the hard old superstition with soft German sentimentality +of the Romantic period. A good Angel, thinking the Dutchman's fate +too hard, interceded for him; and though his sentence could not be +wholly remitted, a bargain was struck. Once in seven years +Vanderdecken could land and spend a certain time ashore. If during +this interval of peace he could find a maiden who would love him +faithfully to death, he would be released: his wanderings would be +o'er, and death would swallow him up. How the maiden's fidelity could +be tested does not appear. + +Wagner would have it that with the _Dutchman_ he ceased to be a mere +stringer of opera verses and became the full poet. The work does not +support that view; nor is the construction of the plot one whit better +than a hundred others put together by hacks before he was born. Each +act is crammed with conventional tricks out of the hack's common +stock; in each scene, from the very first, characters come on or go +off, not because it is inherent in the action that they should do so, +but because without such helps the librettist, or "poet," could not +have got along. The curtain rises on a rocky Norwegian fiord where a +sailing-vessel has found shelter from a storm that is raging on the +open sea. Daland, the skipper, has gone ashore to survey the land and +to find out, if he can, whither his ship has been driven. He +recognizes the spot: it is Sandwike, and the tempest has blown him +"sieben Meilen" out of his course. However, he is glad enough to be +safe; and seeing signs of better weather goes into his cabin to wait, +leaving a watchman on guard. This is the first specimen of the old +stage-craft; Daland had to be got rid of, so, instead of attending to +any damage the waves may have caused the ship, he goes quietly +downstairs to take a snooze. The watchman tries to keep himself awake +by singing. But it is no use. The librettist is inexorable: the stage +is wanted for some one else; and the watchman's song merely acts as a +soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores. In the distance appears +the ship of the Flying Dutchman--"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der +Mast"--she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by +Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore. It is the seventh year, +and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will +redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland +awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, +hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon +grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger +home with him, and if his daughter Senta proves satisfactory, +Vanderdecken is to have her as his bride in return for infinite +treasure out of the hold of the strange vessel. Daland has been shown +a sample, and is overjoyed with his bargain: a distinguished-looking +husband for his daughter and the husband's wealth for himself. The +wind changes to a favourable one; Daland sets out first, leaving the +Dutchman to follow in a boat which we may well believe goes faster, +for it is driven by the devil and carries a private hurricane wherever +it goes. The convenient veering of the wind need not be taken as +forced on the stage manager by the librettist, for Daland foretells +it at the very beginning of the act. + +I do not wish to treat so noble a work as the _Flying Dutchman_ with +any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and +the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and +ultra-conventionality of _Rienzi_ to the richness and simplicity and +directness of _Tristan_, we must realize clearly that in its present +stage the craftsmanship was little in advance of Scribe's. In some +respects he was very far in advance of Scribe. The whole thing springs +from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast +doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of hell +as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his +torments, and at last finding her. But Wagner had not yet evolved or +invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in +the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities which +seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now +they compel us to smile. He could no more have constructed the +framework of the _Dutchman_ without shoving on and pulling off his +puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music +without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera +which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond. The +conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way. Throughout +the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman +story: mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are +scared when they are told of him. Yet when the very ship described in +the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with +its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest +astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the +ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who +he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no +attention to so weird a craft. + +In the next act we have a room in Daland's house. A number of girls +are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs +on the wall--that of Vanderdecken. From earliest girlhood she has +heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her +hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind +and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity +occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which +men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned +and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more +or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in +taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, +from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure. The +Dutchman is there to give character and atmosphere to the piece, but +dramatically he is nothing more than Senta's opportunity personified. +The girls spin on; a kind of forewoman, Mary, upbraids Senta with +idling and staring at the picture and dreaming away her life--for the +girl is quite open about her sympathy with the accursed seafaring +man. She wants Mary to sing the _Flying Dutchman_ ballad; Mary curtly +refuses; "Then," rejoins Senta, for all the world like a leading lady +in a melodrama giving the cue for the band to begin the royalty-song, +"I'll sing it myself"; and, despite protests, she does. It recounts, +of course, the story of the Dutchman prior to his meeting with Daland. +At the end she announces her intention of saving him; and while the +women are expostulating, Eric rushes in to add his voice to theirs. He +tells them Daland's ship is in sight; and all save he and Senta scurry +off to make preparations. Eric wishes to marry her, and pleads his +cause; she asks him what his griefs are compared with those of the +doomed man whose picture hangs on the wall. He (rightly) thinks her +semi-demented, and tells a dream he had: of the Dutchman entering, of +Senta at once giving herself to him, and then sailing away. His story +has a result precisely contrary to what he intended and hoped: her +ecstasy becomes more violent than ever; he (the Dutchman) seeks her +and she will share his grief with him. Eric rushes off in despair and +horror; Senta subsides; she prays that the Dutchman may be able to +find her--and her father and Vanderdecken enter. + +She stands mazed, not greeting her father nor uttering a word, gazing +at the stranger. Now Daland, I have already remarked, has noticed no +resemblance between this man and the picture, and he cannot understand +his daughter's silence. Finally she salutes him and asks about +Vanderdecken; and Daland, in haste, discloses his plan. Neither +Vanderdecken nor Senta speaks; so, with a stroke of the old-fashioned +opera trickery, Wagner makes Daland feel himself _de trop_ and go +away. Vanderdecken at once begins his story, and the pair sing a duet, +which I will deal with shortly; for the moment I need only remind the +reader that Senta's mind was made up in advance. When the Dutchman, +almost warningly, reminds her that it is nothing less than a life's +devotion he demands, she proudly answers, "Whoever you are, whatever +the curse on you, I will share your life and your doom." The +librettist now having need of his services for the finale, Daland +enters, and the act winds up with a showy trio. + +No further comment is needed on this act: in structure, like the +first, it is only old-fashioned opera. It is in the third act that the +inherent weakness of the story for operatic purposes shows with almost +disastrous results. Only the sheer force of the music averts a +complete breakdown. The problem was to show Senta literally faithful +unto death. Evidently it was impossible for Vanderdecken to claim and +carry off his bride forthwith. Had that been possible the work might +have terminated with a short scene to form the real finale of the +second act. But Vanderdecken had asked for a wife, and Daland would +not have dreamed of letting his daughter go until the proper ceremony +had taken place. Besides, Wagner was writing an opera with the very +practical view of a performance in the theatre; and in those days of +lengthy operas (_Rienzi_ at first played five and a half hours) the +public would have grumbled if they did not get enough for their +money. No manager would have looked at a work no longer than the first +and second acts of the _Dutchman_. The final scene could not be made +very lengthy; so the composer determined to pad out the act with pure +irrelevant music, and the librettist had to find him words. In a piano +score now before me the essential part of the act, the scene in which +Senta redeems the Dutchman, occupies twenty-four pages; and these are +preceded by fifty pages of choruses of sailors, maidens and ghosts. +Allowing for the larger space occupied by choruses on the printed +page, we are half-way through the act before serious business begins. +It must be owned that Wagner has done his work superbly, even making +use of it to a certain extent. Girls bring provisions and drinks for +Daland's crew, and there is a lot of chorus and counter-chorus and +dancing. Then both men and girls call upon the Dutch crew. There is no +response. The ship lies wrapt in gloom; and, half afraid, the girls +and Daland's men taunt them with being dead. But suddenly the hour +arrives for the Dutchman to sail. With perfect calm all around, a +hurricane shakes her sails and shrieks and pipes in the rigging, and +the waters roar and foam; the crew come to life and call for their +captain in a series of unearthly choruses. Daland's men, +horror-struck, make the sign of the cross; the spectres give a +"taunting laugh" and subside; once again all is peace, and the +sinister vessel lies there, the air seeming to thicken and grow +blacker about her. + +The women have gone off; the sailors occupy themselves with eating +and drinking; and Senta, pursued by Eric, comes on. He has heard of +the intended marriage, and begs passionately that she shall not +sacrifice herself, ending with a cavatina--a cavatina by Richard +Wagner!--in vain. But Vanderdecken has heard all from the +wings--another bit of old-fashioned stage trickery, like the +"asides"--and resolves that Senta shall not sacrifice herself. "For +ever lost," he cries, realizing that he is renouncing his last chance. +Senta declares her determination to follow him--she will redeem him +whether he wishes it or not; in a regular set trio she, he and Eric +thrash the matter out; she is not to be shaken; Eric gives a +despairing cry which brings on the women folk and the sailors. The +Dutchman says farewell, pipes up his spectral crew, who heave the +anchor, and he goes on board. As the ship moves off Senta throws +herself into the water; the ship falls to pieces; the sun rises, and +in its beams the "glorified forms" of the pair are seen mounting the +skies. Senta has had her way: she has worked out her destiny and +"saved" the wanderer. The curtain falls. + +This is the first of the genuine Wagner dramas, the first, therefore, +from which the Wagnerians have drawn, or into which they have read, +"lessons." As we get on I shall try to show that no moral can be +tacked on to any of Wagner's works. But supposing that he did wish to +teach us something in the _Dutchman_, what on earth can it be? Not, +surely, that one should not swear rash oaths in a temper? We have all +done that and needed no redeemer. There is no touch of essential +veracity in the old legend, a bit of puerile medieval fantasy; there +is no sort of proportion between the trivial offence and the appalling +punishment; even in an age which thought to oppose the will of the +Almighty the rankest blasphemy it can never have been considered +eternally just that a righteous and merciful Creator should deal out +such a punishment. Besides, in the ancient legend, as in Wagner's +book, the Almighty has little to do with the matter: it is the foul +fiend who snaps up Vanderdecken in his momentary lapse. Again, after +the first act Vanderdecken is second to Senta. Even the belated +attempt to show him heroic in his determination to sail off alone to +his doom has no dramatic point; it has no bearing on his salvation, +for nothing happens until Senta jumps into the sea, and we feel sure +nothing would have happened if she had not jumped. _That_ lesson, at +any rate--a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best--is not set +forth in the _Dutchman_. The only other possible one is that +self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I +say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of +Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such +self-sacrifice is not worthy, not beautiful; but, on the contrary, a +very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there +no lesson in the _Dutchman_, but the whole idea is so absurd that only +the power of the music enables us to swallow it at all. The condition +on which the Dutchman can be saved is purely arbitrary; what +difference ought it to make to him that some one, for the sake of an +idea, sacrifices herself? The "good angel" who proposed it must have +been temporarily out of her senses, and the Creator when he agreed +must have been nodding. And the whole business is smeared over with +German mawkish sentimentality--this business, I mean, of Senta +_loving_ the Dutchman. Had he seen and loved her, and resolutely +sailed off without her, and found his salvation in that, there would +be some semblance of reason; but the fumbling attempt to make +something of the man at the last moment is futile, and we are left +with nothing but sentimental sickliness, nauseating and revolting. In +a word, then, we must take the _Dutchman_ libretto as it is, +unreasonable, false: only a series of occasions for writing some fine +music. That it is nothing more than such a series I have endeavoured +to establish at all this length; because if it is worth understanding +Wagner at all, and if we wish to understand him, we must realise the +point he started from in his half-conscious groping after the opera +form which he only found in its full perfection in his _Tristan_ +period. + + +III + +In the music the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly +from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the +operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the +strength and beauty of much of the _Dutchman_ is one of those things +almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the +blatant clamour, of _Rienzi_ there is not a hint. The opera is by no +means all on the highest level, but a good third of it is, and there +are pages which Richard never afterwards surpassed. A dozen passages +are prophetic of the Wagner of _Tristan_ and the _Ring_. Let me begin +by quoting a few of these. The phrase (_a_, page 118) immediately +suggests _Tristan_, as it screams higher and higher with +ever-increasing intensity of passion; a variant of it (_b_) is charged +with the same feeling, and is used in the same way. The feeling is not +the same as in _Tristan_; both are used when Eric makes his last +despairing appeals to Senta. But look at (_c_). Compare it with one of +the themes (_d_) expressive of Wotan's anguish, and then recollect +that (_c_) is used when Vanderdecken, in veiled speech, tells Daland +of his woes. When Vanderdecken is yearning for Senta's love, and +trembling lest by telling the truth he should frighten her, we get +(_e_), afterwards developed with such poignant effect in the first and +last acts of _Tristan_. Vanderdecken enters with Daland, and Senta, +almost stunned, sets eyes on him for the first time. The musical +phrase is (_f_), which, simplified and more direct in its appeal, was +to be used when Siegmund and Sieglinda first gaze on one another. Then +the passage (_g_) is one which the reader will find mentioned in my +chapter on _Tristan_ (p. 263) as standing for quite a multitude of +things in the _Ring_. A curious case is the little phrase (_h_) which +occurs in the middle of the watchman's song. Of no significance here, +of what tremendous import it is in the first act of _Tristan_. + +None of these phrases or passages is developed with the power and +resource characteristic of Wagner's later work; but it is astonishing +that after the baldness and noise of _Rienzi_ he should have gone +straight on to invent such music at all. He was still groping his way, +and had to trust to the conventional framework of opera construction +to a large extent; that is, each act is divided into set numbers, even +when the numbers are based on music which has been heard before and to +which, therefore, a definite meaning has become attached. He could not +yet trust himself in an open sea of music, as he did in _Tristan_; +rather, we have a chain of lakes, the music sometimes overflowing out +of one into another. The marvellous continual development of themes +with intricate interweavings and incessant transmogrifications--all +this was part of the technique of the _Tristan_ period. Neither in the +_Dutchman_ nor in _Tannhaeuser_ nor in _Lohengrin_ is there any sign of +it. Of what may be called leitmotivs there are only three, the +Dutchman (_i_) and Senta (_j_), while a portion of the second (_k_) +may be regarded as a third, for it is used by itself, independently. +One little group of notes (_l_) I have seen described as a leitmotiv; +and if it is one, I should like to know what it stands for. As can be +seen, it is a bit of the Senta theme (fourth bar of _j_); and in the +overture a long connecting passage is built on it. But it also forms +part of the chorus of sailors in the first act, part of the watchman's +song in a varied form, part of another sailors' chorus (_m_); it is +the very backbone of the spinning chorus; and lastly, a large portion +of the spectral sailors' chorus is made up of it. I have no +explanation to offer--unless it be that Wagner, bent on suggesting the +sea throughout the opera, felt that this phrase helped him to sustain +the atmosphere. The sea, indeed, throughout the _Dutchman_, is the +background, foreground, the whole environment of the drama; in this +wild legend which came out of the sea, every action is related to the +sea, and one might say that the sea's voice is echoed in every one's +speech. The sea music, therefore, based on Senta's ballad--apart from +the leitmotivs which that contains--is of the very first importance. +The easiest way to get a firm grasp of the _Dutchman_ is to analyse +this ballad. Then in passing rapidly over the score afterwards we +shall see at a glance the structure of the whole, and how the new +thematic matter is either welded into this sea music or stodgily +interpolated. The song is too long to be transcribed here; but every +reader must have in his possession a copy at this time of day. There +are ten bars of introduction: in the eleventh, to the Dutchman theme, +Senta sings the "Yo-ho-ho"; at the fifteenth, with a glorious swing +and rush she dashes into the ballad-- + + "Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an, + Blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast? + Auf hohem Bord der bleiche Mann, + Des Schilfes Herr, wacht ohne Rast." + +This consists of eight bars--a four-bar section repeated. Then we get +the storm music, four bars of which I quote (_n_), and this is freely +employed throughout the opera. The storm subsides, and at bar +thirty-nine Senta sings to her own theme-- + + "Doch kann dem bleichen Manne Erloesung einstens noch werden, + Faend' er ein Weib, das bis in den Tod getreu ihm auf Erden." + +leading into the second part (_k_) to the words-- + + "Ach! Wann wirst du, bleicher Seemann, sie finden? + Betet zum Himmel dass bald + Ein Weib Treue ihm halt'!" + +The three themes are of very unequal power. The first is one of the +landmarks in musical history; neither Wagner himself nor any of the +other great masters ever hit upon a more gigantic theme, terrible in +its direct force at its announcement, still more terrible as it is +used in the overture and later in the drama. The second, Senta, is a +piece of sloppy German sentimentality: this is not a heroine who will +(rightly or wrongly) sacrifice herself for an idea, but a hausfrau who +will always have her husband's supper ready and his slippers laid to +warm on the stove shelf. It is significant that Senta herself in her +moment of highest exaltation does not refer to it: Wagner often +calculated wrong, but he never felt wrong. The third, the grief and +anguish of the condemned sailor, and pity for him, is one of the most +wonderful things in music; for blent with its pathos is the feeling of +a remoter time, the feeling that it all happened in ages that are +past, the feeling for "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long +ago." This sense of the past, the historic sense--call it what you +will--was thus strong in Wagner at this early period, and it grew even +stronger later on, finding its most passionate expression in _Tristan_ +and its loveliest expression in the _Mastersingers_. The faculty to +shape pregnant musical themes is the stamp of the great master. The +early men are supposed to have "taken church melodies" and worked them +up into masses: what they did was to take meaningless strings of +notes, bare suggestions, and give them form and meaning by means of +rhythm (for only boobies talk of the old church music not possessing +rhythm). The later composers sometimes followed the same +procedure--which is equivalent to a sculptor "taking" a block of +marble and hewing out a statue; but more and more they trusted to +their own imaginations. In either case the "mighty line" results; and +there is not a great composition in the world which has not great +themes; and, _vice versa_, when the themes are trivial the work +evolved from them is invariably trivial. I see modern works full of +cleverness and colour: I do not waste much time on them; there cannot +be anything in them, and they will not survive. Along with some weak +motives--or, to be more accurate, motives which are musically weak but +dramatically a help--Wagner has a huge list of tremendous ones, each a +landmark. However, this by way of digression. + +Music evolved from this ballad forms, as I have said, the structural +outline of the opera. The overture is almost entirely shaped out of +it, being one of that sort which is supposed to foreshadow the opera, +to tell the tale in music before we see it enacted on the stage. From +the _Dutchman_ onward Wagner nearly always constructed his +introductions--whether to whole operas or to single acts or even +scenes--on this plan, largely discarding the purely architectural +forms. Here, for example, we have at the outset the blind fury of the +tempest, taken and developed from (_n_), with the Dutchman theme. The +storm reaches its height, and there is a brief lull, and Vanderdecken +seems to dream of a possible redeemer; the elements immediately rage +again, with the wind screaming fiercely through sails and ropes, and +waves crashing against the ship's sides; he yearns for rest (_k_), +seems to implore the Almighty to send the Day of Judgment; and at +length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption +of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of +incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; +but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that +counts: the roar of the billows, the "_hui!_" of the wind, the dashing +and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's +men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," add even more colour. The motion of +the sea is kept up, partly with fresh musical material, until at last +it all but ceases; the watchman sings his song of the soft south wind +and falls asleep. Then the sky darkens, the Flying Dutchman comes in, +and the storm music rages once more. It is woven into Vanderdecken's +magnificent scena (surely the greatest opera scena written up to +the year 1842); and then disappears. In its place we get pages of +(for Wagner) wearisome twaddle. The reason is obvious. For the purpose +of explaining the subsequent movement of the drama there is a lot of +conversation which Weber, in the Singspiel, would have left to be +spoken, and Mozart would have set to dry recitative. Wagner was +determined that his music should flow on; but the inspiration of the +sea was gone, and he could only fill up with uninspired stuff. He had +not yet mastered his new musico-dramatic art; indeed, I much doubt +whether he realized its possibilities. In his _Tristan_ days he knew +how to avoid explanations on the stage; nothing in _Tristan_ needs +explanation; in the _Mastersingers_ and the _Ring_ his resources--his +inventiveness and technical mastery of music--were unbounded, and an +intractable incident he simply smothered in splendid music. Here, the +bargaining of Daland and Vanderdecken is a very intractable incident, +and in trying to make the best of it he made the worst. That is, he +would have saved us an appalling _longueur_ had he given us two +minutes of frank recitative in place of twenty minutes of make-believe +music--music in the very finest kapellmeister style of the period. +Even the passage quoted (_c_) is made nothing of. There are one or two +fine dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his ship +is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden," +with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very +dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the +composer's imagination. The sweet wind carries off the mariners to +their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar +of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the +point of, say, the quieter bits of Mendelssohn's _Hebrides_, but it +runs delicately along, and it more than serves. + +The figure (_l_), which has been so prominent in the overture and +sailors' choruses, is equally noticeable in the next act. The spinning +chorus, in fact, may be said to grow out of it. There is no break +between the two acts (Wagner's first intention was to go straight on, +making the _Dutchman_ an opera in one long act); the introduction to +the second is a continuation of the conclusion of the first. The +figure is repeated several times in a long diminuendo, changing the +key from B flat to A major, so we never cease to feel the presence of +the eternal sea. Inside the skipper's old-world house one is conscious +that the waves are plashing not far from the walls, and that the air +is salt and fresh there. There is a pervading dreamy atmosphere: again +we are carried away into far-off times; the scene has the unreality of +a dream, a dream of the sea. Mlle. Senta quickly shatters that +illusion with her passion and living young blood; but in memory one +always has this cottage, where women pass the days in singing, where +there are no clocks, and time can only be measured by the waves as +they break on the shore. The maiden's spinning song is small scale +music; nothing ambitious is wanted, and nothing ambitious is +attempted. As a bit of music it is infinitely superior to the clumsy +wooden bridal chorus in _Lohengrin_; the touch is light, the melodies +fresh and dainty, and the subdued hum of the wheels and the bustle are +suggested throughout without becoming monotonous. Not for a musical, +but for a purely theatrical, reason we get a snatch of (_k_); Senta is +not spinning; she is engaged in staring at the picture. After much +chattering she sings the ballad, and at the end declaims her intention +of saving the Dutchman to the music which is employed when she +actually accomplishes that feat. When Eric rushes in, the orchestra +has the usual operatic storm-in-a-teacup sort of stuff; the chattering +chorus of women getting ready for Daland's reception is neither here +nor there; Eric's expostulations are insignificant, and the air he +sings--with interruptions on the part of Senta--is by no means equal +to the better parts of the opera. Here Wagner has again been faced by +the difficulty he met in the first act: a prosaic scene had to be set +to poetic music, and the task was beyond him. Eric is one of the most +frightfully conventional personages in opera; he bores and exasperates +one to madness. He warbles away in the approved Italian tenor fashion +while one's enthusiasm is growing cold and one's interest waning. His +dream, however, in which he sees Senta meet the Dutchman, embrace him +and sail away with him, has a genuine ring. The atmosphere is strange, +almost nightmareish, with the Dutchman theme sounding up at intervals, +dreamlike. With the exception of the mere mention of this motive in +the score, the music is new, is not evolved out of previous passages; +but when Eric has finished we hear the Senta theme, both sections. +The Dutchman and Daland enter, and we hear (_f_) three times in all; +but there is no development of it. Daland's air is entirely fresh +matter; as is the opening of the big duet between the Dutchman and +Senta. + +We are now approaching the supreme moment of the drama. The Dutchman's +recitative-like beginning--declamation of the same type, and with the +same accent, as some recitative in the song-tournament in +_Tannhaeuser_--is noble in the highest degree; we have a recurrence of +the dream-atmosphere at Senta's words, "Versank ich jetzt in +wunderbares Traeumen?"--for though her fanaticism is all too real, when +her opportunity comes she is for the moment incredulous. It hardly +does to consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture. +Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into +some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away +her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of +hairs can alter the plain fact-- + + "Wirst du des Vaters Wahl nicht schelten? + Was er versprach, wie?--duerft' es gelten?" + +However, he has the honesty to warn her of her probable fate. She +rises to the occasion. She may be as mad as a hatter, but in the music +she is given to "Der du auch sei'st," her lunacy becomes sublimity. Up +to the moment of writing this white-hot glowing passage Wagner had +never reached the sublime: now for a few minutes he sustains it. +Again the breath of the sea is brought in when the Dutchman a second +time warns her, and the sea music roars as a sinister accompaniment. +Senta only becomes the more exalted. "Wohl kenn' ich Weibes heil'ge +Pflichten," she sings to music which is absolutely the finest page in +the opera. The pure white flame of a deathless devotion is here. I +doubt whether Wagner ever again in his life had such an ethereal +moment: it is sheer fervour and sweetness, unmixed with the hot human +passion of _Tristan_ or the smoky philosophies of the _Ring_. To wish +Senta had a reasonable cause for her ecstasy of self-immolation is, of +course, to wish the _Dutchman_ were not the _Dutchman_. In truth, we +must take the scenes as they come without inquiring too curiously; the +storm music which goes with the wanderer, and the moments of glorious +splendour that come to the redeeming woman, are things worth living to +have written and worth living to hear. + +The music of the last act I shall pass quickly over. The seamen's and +women's choruses are not particularly striking; the spectral choruses +certainly are. The sea music is here turned into something unearthly, +frightful; these damned souls have no hope of being saved, and in +their misery they scoff and mock and laugh hideously. More new musical +matter, some of it of a very fine quality, is introduced when Eric +again appeals to Senta; and the figure (_a_) is developed with +stupendous effect. In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off, +Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the +second--nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely +confined her to recitative. + +The _Flying Dutchman_, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a +manufacture, not, like _Tristan_, a growth. Much of the music does not +rise above the level of Spontini or Marschner; there are wearisome +pages, there are heavy chords repeated again and again with violin +figurations on top, there are lines of the verse repeated to fit in +with the conventional melodies in four-bar lengths. It was only a few +years before that Wagner, at Riga, had written enthusiastically about +Bellini and his melody, a type of melody he felt to be fresh and +expressive compared with the dry-as-dust mixture of Viennese melody +(_i.e._ the Haydn and Mozart type) and stodgy German counterpoint +which formed the bulk of Marschner's and Spontini's music; and here we +see him in the very deed of trying his hand at it. Very often the +result, it must be admitted, is lamentable. There was no Italian +suppleness and grace in Wagner's nature: when he was in deadly +earnest, and striving to express himself without thinking of models, +he wrote gorgeous stuff; when the inspiration waned, or when he +deluded himself with the belief that what he supposed to be +Bellini-like tunes really expressed the feeling of the moment, then he +gave us pages as dry and dreary as Spontini and Marschner at their +worst. Besides those I have already mentioned there are in the love +duet--if it can be called a love duet--mere figurations over bar on +bar on leaden-footed, heavy chords; and these figurations are not true +melody. These tunes in regular four-bar lengths are melody of an +amorphous sort; only when they were tightened up, made truer, more +pregnant--in a word, when they were so shaped as to stand really and +truly for the thought and feeling in the composer--did they become the +beautiful things we find in _Lohengrin_, foretelling the sublime +things we find in _Tristan_. Eric's tunes are as colourless as +Donizetti's. All this we may joyfully admit, knowing how much there is +to be said on the other side, and seeing in the _Dutchman_ only a +foretaste of Wagner's greatest work. A really great work it assuredly +is. We have the magnificent sea-music, and, in spite of outer +incoherences, the smell and atmosphere of the sea maintained to the +last bar of the opera. In his music at least Vanderdecken is a deeply +tragic figure. There is the ballad, by very far the finest in music; +there is Senta's declaration of faith. Whenever it was possible for +the composer to be inspired he instantly responded. Had he not lived +to write another note his memory would live by the _Dutchman_. It is +an enormous leap from _Rienzi_. There brilliancy is attained by huge +choruses and vigorous orchestration and rhythms that continually verge +on the vulgar. In the _Dutchman_ it is the stuff and texture of the +music that make the effect. Play _Rienzi_ on a piano, and you have +nothing; play the _Dutchman_, and you have immediately the roar of the +sea, the Dutchman's loneliness and sadness, Senta's exaltation. I have +spoken of Wagner having finished his apprenticeship when he went to +Magdeburg, and in a sense he had; but perhaps in the fuller sense he +finished it only with the _Dutchman_. He made mistakes, and thanks +largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared +to take another and a vaster leap--from the _Dutchman_ to +_Tannhaeuser_. He cast the slough of the old Italian opera form. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + +Some characteristics of his harmony and instrumentation will most +conveniently be considered later. For the present I wish to draw my +reader's attention rather to Wagner the musico-dramatist than to +Wagner the technical musician. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +DRESDEN + + +I + +When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger +which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The +first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown +lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with +many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to +be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and +we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and +grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual +insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live +in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before +he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north, +learning of the success of _Rienzi_, and little dreaming his profits +to be L45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the +conductorship of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any, +better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that +whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes +to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The +third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from the modern opera. +That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with +that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But +Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose +inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang +around a Court. + +Wagner did not wish to be kapellmeister--on the contrary, wished most +vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, +how he hoped to earn bread--he who had had only one opera produced, +and gained L45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such +questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his +operas--scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and +writing--he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr. +Micawber, whose contemporary, of course, he was. He flirted with von +Luettichau, the intendant of the theatre, a fine specimen of a court +barbarian. Wagner neither would nor wouldn't; and it was only when the +theatre found it could not well do without him, and asked him to say +definitely if he would, that he accepted the offer. We can imagine how +poor, stupid, unimaginative Minna would rejoice at the news. She ought +to have married a pork butcher, or would have behaved admirably as the +mistress of a beerhouse or cafe; but as the wife of a man of genius--! +To be the wife of the kapellmeister of one of Germany's principal +opera-houses--a court opera-house--that was almost, if not quite, as +good; and for the time she rested content with her lot. And we may +believe that Richard, too, felt a double gratification, even against +his deepest and truest instincts. The salary lifted a burden off his +shoulders for a while; and was he not appointed to the very post his +idol Weber had occupied? Nevertheless, things soon came to pass which +show how the Richard who set off from Pillau to Paris with his bare +travelling expenses, and the Richard who was to do yet madder things +hereafter, was the Richard of this middle period. This von Luettichau +said it was the rule of the court that a new conductor should serve a +year on trial. Wagner was quite brutally reminded that the mighty +Weber had been compelled to do so; and he was told _he_ must do so. He +point-blank refused; sent the Luettichau man a long explanation--which, +I dare say, was never read--of why he couldn't accept such terms; +spoke of the necessity of getting some sort of order and discipline +into an orchestra which Reissiger had allowed to go to pieces, etc., +etc. But he had to his credit, as we have seen, the triumphs of +_Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_; and it shows how much he was wanted that +Luettichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without +murmuring--a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official, +a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn +in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that +he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for +life. This was the least of his troubles. + +Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest +of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the +misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though +these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man +who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary +stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar +with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a +spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz--known +as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last +waltz"--must have been the fruit of a lucky accident--or perhaps he +did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not +come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing +is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression +made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on +Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how +entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got +through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay +regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned, +because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the +result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met +Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the +opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the +conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked +Wagner--possibly in a fit of consternation, thinking it might be +_his_ night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart +conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not +so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing, +smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat +and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The +bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who regard their +posts as more or less sinecures, wanted to go on in the old slovenly +fashion, rehearsing carelessly, hastily, or not at all, and quite +satisfied so long as they got through. During the first weeks of the +new regime the principal first violin declined to follow Wagner's +directions, and, moreover, had the impudence to tell our arrogant +Richard he was wrong, and, above all, to tell him in von Luettichau's +presence. Wagner, having the pen of a too-ready writer--like old +Sebastian Bach before him--sent in one of his long letters; and with +that the trouble ceased for the moment. But similar episodes seem to +have been of frequent occurrence during his six years of +conductorship. Still, he introduced discipline into the band, and, on +the whole, got on well with his men. With genuine artists, even of the +humblest sort, he was always on good terms. He had a fine fund of good +humour and sanguine cheerfulness, a ready wit and a kind heart; he won +the respect due to a man who really knew his work, knew what he +wanted, and how it could best be attained. What he wanted was +performances worthy of the house to which he had come as conductor. +Tricks were played on him, so that he had to direct operas which had +been insufficiently rehearsed or not at all rehearsed; and the press +made the most of shortcomings which he realized better than the +critics. + +He had compensations. August Roeckel became his assistant at the +theatre and a close personal friend; he had Heine, Fischer, Uhlig and +others amongst his intimates; and by what was undoubtedly the most +artistic section of the community he was made much of. The Liedertafel +chose him as its first Liedermeister. For the unveiling of a statue to +Friedrich August I he organized a gigantic musical festival, writing +for the occasion a hymn. Mendelssohn had composed something for the +event; and the whole affair made the Dresden folk open their mouths as +well as their ears. For the Liedertafel he wrote the _Love-feast of +the Apostles_, which was performed on July 6 of this year (1843) with, +so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious +press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment +of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a +Mendelssohnian psalm--and they would have grumbled even had they got +it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a +crime not to imitate him. + +At this time he appears to have been happy with Minna; the good lady +had all she wanted; and the rift within the lute did not show until +Wagner later on began to kick against the pricks. Perhaps the greatest +pleasure that he had at this time--perhaps the greatest he had had in +his life--came through old Spohr the violinist, then conductor (and +king) of the Cassel opera. Spohr had heard _Rienzi_ at Dresden, and, +antiquated stick though he was--as any one might guess who knows his +_Last Judgment_ or _Calvary_--he yet recognized in Wagner an original +and deeply sincere musician. He wrote, after seeing the _Flying +Dutchman_, "I believe I know my mind sufficiently to say that among +the dramatic composers of our day I consider Wagner the most gifted." +He produced the _Dutchman_ at Cassel, directing the representation +himself, and sent Wagner a letter which lifted that young man into the +seventh heaven of delight. Wagner always cherished the recollection of +this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician, +and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long +afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in +all literature. His answer to Spohr shows that at this time there were +no serious differences in the household; he speaks in terms of the +greatest affection of his wife, and regrets that she is not there to +share his joy. The Cassel performance took place June 5, 1843. It was +unsolicited: Spohr himself had asked for the score; and this had a +double or triple value to Wagner. Spohr's authority was immense +throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the +_Dutchman_, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every +other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere, +though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, and the +score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it +unopened. By the way, Berlioz was in Dresden at the time, doing +mountebank tricks with the orchestra, and after hearing, the +_Dutchman_ he went so far as to speak well of it. Liszt was +enthusiastic over _Rienzi_. + +When Spohr's letter arrived Minna was at Teplitz, ill; Wagner joined +her there immediately his holiday began, but not before writing to +Lehrs (July 7) that the book of _Tannhaeuser_ was finished. Whether +Lehrs received the letter I do not know, for he died on July 13. It +will be remembered that it was Lehrs who gave Wagner the _Saengerkrieg_ +from which he drew both _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_. Before dealing +with these operas, Wagner's first very great ones, we must pass in +review the remainder of the Dresden days, ending with the insurrection +of May 1849 and the flight to Switzerland. + + +II + +Nothing in Wagner's life has been less perfectly understood, or more +completely and wilfully misunderstood, than his share in this May +insurrection of 1849. He was never at any time a politician; of +politics he knew nothing, and he held the trade in profound, +undisguised contempt. He wrote much about the State, and in every +paragraph contrived to show the astounding breadth of his +ignorance--an ignorance of that kind which Dr. Johnson might have +described as not natural but acquired. Everlastingly he prattles +about the State until he throws us into a condition of imbecile +confusion. Then we resolutely sit down to his prose writings and track +his meaning or meanings. And at last we perceive this: the State in +his mind, the State he talked and wrote about, was something purely +ideal, such a State as has never existed, and at the present day, +nearly seventy years after Wagner's solitary plunge into practical +politics, seems as unlikely as ever to come into existence. He wanted +(1) an all-wise absolute monarch who should work the will of all his +subjects, no matter how conflicting their interests might be; (2) some +millions of these subjects to think alike on every conceivable +question--to think, that is, as Wagner thought; these millions to make +sublime sacrifice of themselves that Wagner's art-schemes might +prosper. All this, be it noted, was to be the barest basis and +beginning of the perfect State. How this point could be reached by our +imperfect human race was a question he scorned to discuss: he simply +assumed that it could be reached, and proceeded to further argument. +The point had to be attained in the first place; then humanity--by +which he meant German humanity--was to move upward, working out the +beast, talking German philosophy, reading what is called German poetry +(though Shakespeare might be tolerated), looking at what is called +German painting, listening to German music, dreaming thin, mystical +German dreams and munching thick German sausages. Thus should the +inhabitants of a small subsidiary State, whose kings could be, and +had been, made and unmade by other kings, create for themselves a new +heaven on earth and become the wonder of the world. + +It is very like sheer lunacy. But this account is no exaggeration of +Wagner's doctrine and plans. The one truth which emerges and speaks +unequivocally is that Richard, deeply dissatisfied with the theatre of +the day, and tracing its sad degeneracy to the corrupt state of +society, wished to see society upraised, not that men and women might +live more happily, but that a finer, nobler theatre might flourish. +The most magnificent egotist of the century, it seemed to him the +prime concern of mankind that Richard Wagner's works should be +understood and loved. Being an egotist also, if I may say so, on a +national scale, he thought humanity could only be redeemed by German +art. Disregarding the fact that Germany has had no painters, no poet +of the first rank, no genuine dramatist, and that before "our art," as +he persistently calls music, had got a root in Germany, three great +schools had flourished, the English, the Flemish and the +Italian--disregarding all this, he looked for the regeneration of the +human species by means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is +comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it +that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is +that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have +evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner +propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he assumed that +it could regenerate itself by wishing, or willing, and that then the +thousand years of peace would commence, with Richard as +conductor-in-chief. He could not see that humanity cannot jump out of +its shadow and regenerate itself, any more than gentlemen of +intelligence gone wrong on one point can see that Bacon could not have +written Shakespeare's plays, or that perpetual motion is a crazy +impossibility. + +It is curious to picture the share Richard took in the Dresden ferment +of 1848-49. Of course, all Europe was in a condition of excitement; +and the powers that were got their guns ready, and their men. +Political liberty was the thing aimed at: the "outs" wanted to be in. +Every right-thinking man must be in sympathy with the "outs." The +governments of Europe were in the hands of shameless place-seekers; +the working men, the merchants, all other classes were supposed to +labour and pay taxes for the benefit of these gentry. Money was +squandered on useless court-flummery while men were toiling sixteen +hours a day for bread. The aristocracy were resolved that this state +of affairs should continue; the average citizens were resolved that it +should not. What did Wagner propose?--obedience to the puppet king and +a reformed opera! It is small wonder that he was considered a +visionary. He made at least one speech, talking about the State, +meaning thereby something very different from the meaning his audience +attached to the word; he heard speeches, and undoubtedly in all +sincerity read his own thoughts into them. He thought the millennium +was at hand. When the fighting began he joined the revolutionists; +though I can nowhere find proof that he shouldered a musket. Had he +done so it is extremely probable he would have shot the man behind +him. It is hard to get at the truth about these days of May. Perhaps +he did help to escort supplies; but with his excitable brain we must +remember that what he thought he saw and what he actually did see may +be two very different things. A good many other people who were in +Dresden at the time have let their pretty fancies run away with them; +for their accounts of Wagner's doings contradict one another to such +an extent that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. I must confess +to a boundless distrust of "recollections" set down or spoken at any +length of time after the event. Ask, reader, ask any of your friends +to give an account of some striking occurrence of a year ago. In +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will not tally with yours. You +may be wrong or your friend may be wrong: in either case some one's +memory has played a trick. In this book I have omitted many a dozen +picturesque touches, simply because there is no proof of their truth +and every probability that they are false. It is perhaps enough to +remember that the hopes of liberty were crushed, that Roeckel, +Wagner's assistant and friend, was taken and afterwards sentenced to a +long term of imprisonment, and that Wagner had to run for safety. From +every point of view it was as well he got away from Dresden. If he had +not got away he would have shared Roeckel's martyrdom. Had the +revolution succeeded, a terrible disillusionment would have been his +share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no +more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be +set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of +liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys +could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he +afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had +had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might +have vegetated happily, in the Reissiger way, for life. Minna would +have been content. Being Richard Wagner, he felt his soul strangled; +and that Minna had for some time been worrying about what he might do +next is shown by his remark to a friend--that other people had their +enemies outside their houses: _his_ enemy sat at his own table. + + +III + +Things had not gone well at the theatre. In spite of performances +never before equalled in the town--nay, probably because of them--he +had enemies all around, especially in the Jew-controlled press. His +carefulness about rehearsals was called fussiness; his determination +that the singers should not at their own sweet pleasure mar fine +operas with interpolations, alterations and "liberties" generally, was +called interference with their rights. Even when he played +Beethoven's Pastoral and Ninth Symphonies, as they had never been +given before, he was impertinently taken to task by press scribblers +for departing from the Mendelssohn tradition. I have already expressed +the opinion that _Judaism in Music_ was a huge mistake; yet one must +own that when one considers how the Jews consistently attacked him for +venturing to challenge inferior Jew composers and conductors on their +own ground, the thing seems almost excusable. At any rate, it is +surprising that he dealt so tenderly with Mendelssohn. There is one +point always to be borne in mind. Wagner was assailed at this time not +so much _qua_ composer as _qua_ conductor. Now we of the generation of +to-day--the younger members, anyhow--are so accustomed to really able +conductors, that it is somewhat difficult to realize what things were +like throughout Europe in 1843-49. Perhaps the nearest approach to a +true idea may be formed by those who heard our own precious +Philharmonic Society under the late Cusins. As in London in the +'eighties, so in Dresden in the 'forties. Callous indifference to the +beauty of fine music and complete slovenliness in every detail of the +rendering of it went hand in hand. If Europe to-day is stocked with +competent conductors, that is a debt we owe to Wagner. Himself one of +the greatest conductors who has lived, he almost created a new art, +and by his immediate and direct example and through his pupils Buelow, +Richter, Levi and Seidl, not to mention his influence on Liszt, he +certainly created the school which has now ousted the older +inartistic men. It was precisely this fact that maddened the older men +and their friends. + +Another discomforting circumstance was Wagner's intense Germanism. It +was through his efforts that Weber's remains were brought from the +Roman Church in Moorfields and re-interred in Dresden (December, +1844); for the ceremony he compiled some funeral music and delivered +an oration. He was not content to claim Germany for the Germans: he +claimed all Europe, or at least all European art, for the Germans. The +Germans themselves were contentedly jogging on with the hybrid music +of Spontini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Wagner +never tired of telling them to create an art of their own, or really +he would have to do it for them. He did as well as talked and wrote; +he produced the nearest thing he could find to pure German opera--for +instance, Marschner's _Adolph von Nassau_ in 1845. Of course, he +ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period +appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an +atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon +his nerves and hastened the catastrophe--that of his taking active +part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies +outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to +court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor +should--no wonder he gave a sigh of relief at quitting Dresden. + +He had no option. The Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were +paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary +rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty +minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully +obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary to do +dirty work and to call the doing of it doing your "duty": duty is a +fine word that has covered a million crimes since it was invented. +Bakunin, who said Richard Wagner was "a visionary"--obviously meaning +a harmless fool--and many others got long terms of imprisonment. +Wagner had left the town without leave, and for that offence he was +dismissed from his post at the opera. Next, the police issued a +warrant for his arrest. + +He had gone quietly to visit Liszt at Weimar, meaning to "lie low" +till the storm had blown by. He was apparently quite unconscious of +having broken any laws. Liszt was not so easy in his mind. He made +inquiries: found that Wagner must bolt at once: it is supposed he +somehow "squared" the local police official to defer executing the +warrant; he got a passport in a false name, and six days after his +arrival Richard set out again on his travels. What need be recorded +about the journey to Zurich and the getting of Minna there, will best +be described when I come to tell of his settling down in his new abode +and the years he spent there. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +'TANNHAeUSER' + + +I + +Wagner alternated between what we may call the worldly--the sensual or +animal, or love of outward show--and the magical, mystical or +religious. After _Die Feen_, a story of magic, he went to _Das +Liebesverbot_, a story of lust; then he went on to a drama of warring +ambitions, with the outer brilliant show of armed men, gorgeous +processions, conflagrations and what not in the way of spectacle. +After that we have the _Dutchman_, strange and remote and mysterious, +with some pages of passionless ecstasy as its culminating point. The +reaction came, and he wrote _Tannhaeuser_, the opera we are now to +examine. It is largely based on sheer animal passion, though another +reaction takes place before the end is reached. That reaction proceeds +further in _Lohengrin_, which is sheer mysticism. _Tristan_ is pure +human passion--Tristan's soul is the antithesis of Lohengrin's. The +_Ring_ is, from beginning to end, a gorgeous spectacle, a +glorification of the grandeur and loveliness of the earth, the +splendour and beauty and strength of human life. Not even Wotan's +renunciation takes away a jot from its note of praise of +humanity--one might even say praise of the joy of living. _Parsifal_ +is a denial of the value and richness and worthiness of human life: +the world is pushed away; and the hero attains perfect peace by +shutting himself up in a monastery with no women to disturb him. John +Willett recommended his son, when he went to London, to climb to the +top of the Monument--"there are no young women up there, sir"--and +Wagner evidently agreed with John Willett. Parsifal is left to pass +his days in walking, with the most preposterous steps ever seen on or +off the stage, in idle processions from nowhere to nowhere without any +object beyond walking, in making meals off invisible food, in +impressing his fellow-monks with puerile chemical and electrical +experiments, and perhaps, for a change, in going out to see trees and +rocks taking a constitutional. If to say this is to be flippant, well +then, I am flippant. The drama of _Parsifal_ is the least intelligent, +the most pretentious to intellectuality,-the most absurd and +ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music. Or, if we must +needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to +ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its +infamy. At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is +going on in every European capital as to whether _Parsifal_ can or +cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth +clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon +as possible. Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather +mock-religious, character of the Bayreuth performances, the +hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be +only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will +wish to say Bayreuth nay. + +These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very +abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a +time. The _Dutchman_ was conceived before _Rienzi_ was finished; +_Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_ were slowly shaping themselves in his +imagination while he scored the _Dutchman_; the _Mastersingers_ +libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after +_Tannhaeuser_ was finished, and before _Lohengrin_ was begun; the +composition of the _Ring_, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ went on +simultaneously. He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and +emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold. +First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way +for moments into another, so that the description I have given above +of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main +accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that +which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he +did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little +about _Parsifal_, because it, and not the _Mastersingers_, is the true +contrary and complement to _Tannhaeuser_. _Parsifal_ is pitilessly +logical, _Tannhaeuser_ wildly illogical; _Parsifal_ preaches the gospel +of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental +and moral growth: _Tannhaeuser_ preaches nothing at all, but is an +affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations +between the two sexes, with a totally uncalled-for and incredible +falling away or repentance at the end, on the part of one who has in +no way sinned--to wit, Tannhaeuser; the music of _Parsifal_ is sickly, +tired, with mystical chants that make one's gorge rise in disgust; the +music of _Tannhaeuser_ is strong, healthy, full of manly passion--even +at its saddest it is free of the nauseating whining of _Parsifal_. + + +II + +Tannhaeuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel, led away by an +exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone +to live with Venus in the Hoerselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries +to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is +shattered, and he is in the free open spring air. A shepherd boy plays +on his pipe and chants a song to spring; a procession of old pilgrims +to Rome passes; Tannhaeuser, feeling his exaggeration of passions, sane +enough in themselves, to be a sin, praises the Almighty for his +deliverance from what seems now to him like an evil dream. Hunters' +horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhaeuser's former +friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to +persuade him to return to his former life with them, but in vain, +until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of +the Landgrave's daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at +his unaccountable disappearance. Tannhaeuser, at first incredulous, in +the end joyfully agrees to go back to the Wartburg, where the +Landgrave's castle can be seen, and the merry clatter of hunting horns +is heard on all sides as the curtain falls. It will be seen that there +is no vestige of the old stage trickery of the _Dutchman_ here: all +seems natural because all is inevitable; of songs and concerted pieces +we get plenty, but they grow spontaneously out of the drama: the drama +is not twisted and delayed for the sake of getting them in. + +In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight's return; she +enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness; +Tannhaeuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long +love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament. +The popular march is played; the hall becomes crowded; the Landgrave +makes a speech--satisfying to German audiences, no doubt, because it +praises German valour and music--and in announcing the subject on +which the minstrels shall enlarge, he hints that perhaps Tannhaeuser in +his contribution will let them know in what mysterious lands he has +sojourned during his long absence. The theme is, What is love, and how +do we recognize it? The prize will be given by the Princess, and it +shall be anything the successful singer chooses--that is, it shall be +the Princess. Wolfram stands up first and praises a mild platonic +attachment as being true love, and his sentiments win much applause. +Tannhaeuser sings passionately of the joys of burning fleshly desire, +though as yet his language is a little veiled. The audience, who are +the judges, make no sign; Elisabeth alone shows that in her heart she +goes with Tannhaeuser and not with Wolfram. Walther, in turn, tells +Tannhaeuser that he knows nothing of sincere love; Tannhaeuser grows +angry, and scoffingly tells him that if he wants cold perfection he +had better worship the stars; but he, Tannhaeuser, wants warm, living +flesh and blood and healthy desires in the woman he loves. Biterolf +calls Tannhaeuser a shameless blasphemer, and challenges him to combat; +Tannhaeuser replies bitterly; the surrounding nobles want to silence +him; his anger becomes rage, and his rage madness; Wolfram tries to +calm every one, but Tannhaeuser is now too far gone, and in "wildest +exaltation" he chants the hymn he sang to Venus in the first act. +"Only in the Venusberg can one experience the joys of true love," he +shouts; the ladies rush out in terror, leaving only Elisabeth; the men +attack Tannhaeuser. He would be killed, but Elisabeth suddenly +interposes--all stand aghast at the bare notion of her interceding for +so shameless a wretch; but in the end she gets her way. "Who would not +yield who heard the heavenly maid?" they sing; during a momentary +stillness the voices of young pilgrims following the elder to Rome are +heard; Tannhaeuser is pardoned on condition of joining them and +confessing to the pope and gaining his forgiveness; and, being a man +of uncontrollable passions, with fits of abject depression as low as +his ecstatic flights are high, he humbly acquiesces. The curtain comes +down in the second act as he goes off. + +The third act is, I say, quite illogical unless one accepts as a +truism, as Wagner accepted it, the patent absurdity that by +sacrificing him-or herself one being can save the soul of another +being. But Wagner was not a German of the Romantic epoch for nothing. +He believed the absurdity with a fervour now laughable, and was +especially enthusiastic when the sacrificed person was a woman: woman, +to his mind, was the redeemer of man: that was her _metier_. Senta +redeems Vanderdecken; in his last work Kundry redeems Parsifal by +thoughtfully dying so as to leave that unamiable idiot to lead the +higher life of the monastery, as I have described it. And somehow +Elisabeth is to redeem Tannhaeuser--also, it appears, by dying at an +appropriate moment. In the fit of depression and degradation following +his mad outburst the hero goes to Rome, interviews the pope, and +confesses all to him. "If you have dwelt with Venus," says the Lord's +vicar, "you are for ever cursed; God will not forgive you until my +staff of dry wood blossoms." At this sentence of eternal doom +Tannhaeuser, in the legend as Wagner found it, returned to the +Hoerselberg: in the story, as Wagner shaped it, he gets as near as the +Wartburg on his road back to Venus. By the roadside, as in the second +scene of the first act, Elisabeth is praying before the shrine where +Tannhaeuser had knelt to thank heaven for his deliverance; Wolfram +watches near. Both await the pilgrims from Rome. These arrive--and +Tannhaeuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says +Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from +all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while +Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are +heard; Tannhaeuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to +Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at +the Tournament of Song--only now the madness is the madness of +despair, not excessive exaltation--he calls on Venus. From the heart +of the mountain she answers; the scene grows wilder and wilder; he +sees Venus awaiting him; the air is filled with strange odours and +stranger music. Wolfram struggles to prevent Tannhaeuser going to +Venus; Venus calls him clearly and more clearly; suddenly Wolfram +says, "A maiden is even now making intercession for you at God's +throne--Elisabeth!" "Elisabeth!" echoes Tannhaeuser--stunned and +astonished. The mists clear away; from behind the scenes a requiem for +Elisabeth's soul is heard; Venus gives a final wail, "Woe! lost to +me!" and sinks into the earth; slowly morning dawns, and a funeral +train bearing Elisabeth on a bier slowly comes in. "Holy Elisabeth, +pray for me," Tannhaeuser cries, and, sinking down, he dies. More +pilgrims enter, bearing the pope's staff, which has miraculously +blossomed in token that God's mercy is greater than man's, and that +Tannhaeuser is pardoned; all sing a song of praise, and the opera +terminates. + +At the Dresden performances in 1845 this ending was cut, but that +Wagner reckoned it of the utmost importance is shown by a letter +written to Uhlig in 1851: "The reason for leaving out the announcement +of the miracle, in the Dresden change, was quite a local one: the +chorus was always bad, flat and uninteresting; also an imposing scenic +effect--a splendid, gradual sunrise was wanting." Now, in the +twentieth century, it is indeed hard to understand how an intellect so +keen as our Richard's, a dramatic and poetic instinct almost +infallible with regard to all other things, could have failed to see +and feel the absurdity of Elisabeth's death being necessary to +Tannhaeuser's salvation. Was it the only way to get rid of the lady--a +_pis aller_?--a last remnant of the old-fashioned technique? In the +original legend Tannhaeuser goes back to Venus: that would be +ineffective and leave Elisabeth's future unprovided for. On the other +hand, Wagner would never have selected the story for operatic +treatment at all had it not instantly shaped itself in his mind as it +now stands: he was, I say, obsessed by this notion of man's redemption +by woman; it was part of his creed and not to be questioned. So I +think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed +for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us +realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as +the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity. +Allowing for the time occupied in mediaeval days by the journey from +Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into +leaf and flower long, long before Elisabeth's death. While she was +waiting for Tannhaeuser to come in with the first band of pilgrims, the +second band was already on its way with the token of his pardon. We +need not be too inquisitive and wonder why Tannhaeuser should be +expected back with the first band when he had set out with the second, +and why Elisabeth could not at least exercise a little patience and +wait for the second. The point is that she does not wait, but goes +home to die, and, dying, is supposed--as Wolfram explicitly states--to +redeem a sinner who is already redeemed. Her sacrifice is an act of +suicidal insanity due to her lacking the common sense to reflect that +Tannhaeuser might arrive with the second contingent; it is foolish and +superfluous. + +This is the sole flaw in a very fine opera book. _Tannhaeuser_ is the +noblest expression in music of the glory and worth of human life. An +assertion of the glory and worth of human life is bound to be, as +_Tannhaeuser_ is, tragic; life and the value of life can only be +realized when we see life in conflict with death and overcome by +death. All the great tragedies are assertions of the joy of living, in +the deepest sense of the phrase--in the sense in which _Samson +Agonistes_ or Handel's _Samson_ are such assertions. Tannhaeuser +suffers defeat and is glorious, like Samson in his overthrow. Even +Elisabeth, a trifle mawkish though she may be, has loved life, and +only at the finish, when fate (or, as she would say, heaven) decides +against her, does she resign herself and renounce what cannot be hers. +This is the first of Wagner's operas the plot of which is virtually +all his own; for precisely the combination of the legend of Tannhaeuser +with the Tournament of Song makes it what it is and was--Wagner's +invention. All the stale old devices of explanatory asides are gone, +as are the convenient goings-off and comings-on of the _dramatis +personae_ at the sweet will of the composer who wants here a duet and a +trio there. The drama is self-explanatory--the librettist does not +shove on a character to explain it for him; as it unfolds, the +musician is given ample opportunities for all the songs or concerted +pieces that the heart of composer could long for--he has not by main +force and at all costs (in the way of unreasonableness) to drive +opportunities into the drama. + + +III + +In 1842 Wagner finished first _Rienzi_ and then the _Dutchman_; in +April of 1845, that is to say three years later, _Tannhaeuser_ was +complete, and in October of that year it was produced at Dresden. Its +success or non-success with the public and those strange animals the +critics does not greatly concern us to-day. Wagner's own account of +the proceedings is not very trustworthy. The opera was cut and +doctored to suit the singers--notably Tichatscheck; the first +performance seems to have missed fire, and at the second the house was +empty; at the third it was full; and, but for the intrigues of some +of the musicians and scribblers, and the insanity of the management, +it appears probable--one has a right to use so moderate a word--that +before long it might have won in Dresden the success it presently won +throughout Europe. That, I say, is not a matter for the twentieth +century to worry about; but the twentieth century is bound to marvel +over the obtuseness of the middle nineteenth in not recognizing the +advent of the greatest power that had yet meddled with high and +serious opera. (I do not mean that Wagner's was a greater musical +power than Mozart's and Beethoven's. But Mozart never had a libretto +to compare with Wagner's; and _Fidelio_, though serious enough in all +conscience, is not an opera at all.) In three years, 1842-45, the +growth of Wagner's strength was astounding, incredible. One sees at +once how the old stage devices have departed from the libretto, and +with them the fragmentary and jerky style of music; the intermittent +inspiration of the _Dutchman_ is replaced by an unchecked torrent of +inspired music. All the little suggestions of Bellini and Donizetti +are clean gone; the amorphous melody of the _Dutchman_ is gone, or +metamorphosed by being charged with energy, colour and meaning; every +phrase has character, and communicates a very definite shade of +feeling; in every phrase we feel how intense has been the inner +thought and emotion, and with what terrible directness these are +communicated to us. I say terrible directness because it is in +_Tannhaeuser_ that we first find the godlike Wagner hurling his +thunderbolts. It was Spohr who spoke of the godlike or titanic energy +of the music, and this energy finds expression, not as it did in +_Rienzi_, in noisy orchestration, big ensembles and thumping rhythms, +but, in a far greater degree than in the _Dutchman_, in the stuff of +the music itself. We find no more lumpish harmonies and basses of +leaden immovability: the basses stalk about with arrogant +independence, and the harmonic progressions, even when most daring and +perilous, are superbly poised. The old awkwardnesses, due to the +endeavour to copy and to be original at the same time, have +disappeared. Wagner wrote _Tannhaeuser_ entirely to express and to +please himself: he had given up the notion of being original; he was +bent only on being himself. + +He boasted that here, at last, was a sheer German opera. Well, that is +not in itself very much. Personally, I would rather be an Englishman +than a German; and few of us will be prepared to accept the view that +because a work of art, or so-called work of art, happens to be by a +German, it must therefore be a great work of art, or even a work of +art at all. Richard never lived down the tendency, natural in one, I +suppose, of a conquered tribe (the Saxons), to incorporate and +identify himself with his conquerors, and he glorified everything +Prussian as German, and everything German as perfect; but, even so +late as 1852, I cannot imagine that he quite understood what he meant +when he held forth on the subject of German art, its non-existence, +and--of all things--its supremacy. He certainly felt very keenly what +many members of every half-grown nation must feel--the necessity of +acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to +create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding +of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race, +an entity. Which, precisely, of the German races he would have +accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say. But the point is +that Wagner longed to create, and in _Tannhaeuser_ thought he had +created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that +he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself. He +had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner, +and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially +Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression. +Paradoxically, _Tannhaeuser_, while one of his least original +compositions--owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to +another--is one of his most original. He spoke the matter that was in +his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the +Weber idiom. + +Before examining the means by which the varying atmospheres of the +different scenes are got, I ask the reader to notice the way in which +the rather pointless, inexpressive melody of the _Dutchman_ appears +now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable. Compare +the musical illustration (_o_) on page 119 with (_a_) at the end of +this chapter. The type of tune is the same, but the first is +commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it occurs; +the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly +expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant +Tannhaeuser. Compare Daland's song in the _Dutchman_ with Wolfram's +description of how Elisabeth has pined, or Senta's last passages in +the final scene with Elisabeth's salute to the hall of song. We feel +at once how, by dropping Italian, French and mediocre German models, +and writing in the way that came natural to him, Wagner at once became +a composer of the first rank, from whom great expressive melodies +sprang spontaneously. The noble passages in the _Dutchman_ were drawn +out of him, despite his conscious or unconscious imitation of what +were considered the best models of the day, by sheer force of feeling; +and I pointed out how, when the situation gave him a chance, he took +it. In _Tannhaeuser_ he has become a splendid artist whose brain +refused to shape the commonplace. Later on his style was to become +more individual, more purely his own; but so far he had now got--and +it was a very long way. The pilgrims' chorus melody, which first +appears in the overture, is, to my mind, very Weberesque. It is not +particularly strong--for Wagner--and hardly bears the weight of the +brass with which it is afterwards thundered out; but think of it and +of Rienzi's prayer! The second part, of course, is Wagner at a sublime +height, but of that presently. What I wish is to give examples of how +he has discarded all the involutions, convolutions, twiddles and +twaddles of melody, and gone back to the simplicity and directness of +Weber and Beethoven. His earlier manner and type of tune, the +operatic manner of his day, had, I make no doubt, its origin in the +advisability, not to say the necessity, of writing so as to please +singers who could sing in the Italian style and no other. Wagner had +now ceased to think of singers' whims. He had a matter to find +utterance for, and he went to work in the most direct way, considering +nothing but his artistic aim. We know he conceived _Tannhaeuser_ at a +white heat, and in a condition of white heat wrote the words; and +though he afterwards cooled down and had, he said, to "warm up" to his +work again, yet he warmed up so effectually that he composed at +furious speed, haunted by a terror lest he should not live to complete +the opera. This fervour alone might account for his artistic +development in the _Tannhaeuser_ period. It drove him to find the +secret of the one true mode of expression--the law of simplicity, the +unvarying rule that anything more than is needed for the expression of +the thing to be expressed is bad art, and, in the long run, +ineffective. With greater simplicity in the melody came the greatest +possible simplicity in the harmony. There is a kind of awkwardness to +be found in the music of all the pundits which almost defies analysis. +The progressions are correct enough, are good enough grammar, yet the +result is more disconcerting, even distressing, to the ear than a +schoolboy's first efforts. Of this style of harmony the Italians were +masters, and too often in his _Rienzi_ days Wagner, thinking of his +"melody" (for at that time by "melody" he meant Bellini melody), +showed how little they could teach him in this respect. With the +simpler "melody" went the harmony--complicated as you like when the +occasion called, but never more complicated than the occasion +warranted. Compare with the war-chorus and march in _Rienzi_ the march +in the second act of _Tannhaeuser_, and the difference will be seen. +This march, by the way, ought to have been signed "after C.M. von +Weber." + + +IV + +_Tannhaeuser_ was written in an epoch of long or big works of every +description. Think of the length of the novels of Thackeray and +Dickens; think of the interminable _Ring and the Book_! Our immediate +ancestors were a long-enduring, often long-suffering, generation. +Perhaps they liked good value for their money. If so, Richard gave +them what they wanted. He himself must have felt he had done so in +_Tannhaeuser_, for fond though he was of his own music, he allowed it +to be cut freely. Even as it stands, the finale of the second act is +preposterous: the ripe and perfect artist who planned _Tristan_ would +never have done such a thing. But with regard to the finales--and they +are all too long--it certainly appears that Wagner deliberately made +use of crowds of people and masses of tone to carry through and +emphasize his dramatic purpose. In the first act every one is rejoiced +to have Tannhaeuser amongst them, and Tannhaeuser himself has much to +say on finding himself free of the Hoerselberg nightmare, and in +familiar, homely, human scenes once more. The anger of the nobles in +the second, Elisabeth's grief and intercession for her lover, her +self-abasement--it is part of the drama to make us feel these things +and time is required. The finale of the last act I give up altogether. +Nor can I understand why Elisabeth's prayer should be so long drawn +out. Elisabeth has "nothing to do with the case." However, Wagner +thought she had; so we can only be thankful when she finishes, and +after Wolfram's song the action recommences with the entry of +Tannhaeuser. The opera is planned on a huge scale, and in such works +_longueurs_ are apt to occur. + +The overture foretells the drama that is to ensue, but not +consecutively as in the _Dutchman_. We have the pilgrims' hymn, the +second section of which is one of those things of which one can truly +say that only Richard Wagner could have penned them. The accent of +grief is intensely passionate, yet it remains solemn, sublime. Then +the Bacchanal music and Tannhaeuser's chant in praise of Venus are +heard; but all the tumult dies down, and the pilgrims end the piece +not as it began, but triumphantly. We have here, as I have said, the +great Wagner, working confidently and with ease on a vast scale. The +curtain rises; and if we could not see the scene the music would tell +us of the billows of hot rose mist, and the dancers working themselves +up to frenzy. There is a hush, and the sweetest song ever sung by +sirens is heard, full of languor and soft seductiveness. When +Tannhaeuser starts up declaring he has heard the village chime in his +dreams, it is as if a breath of cool air, laden with the fragrance of +wild flowers, blew into that hot, steaming cavern. Music of +unimaginable beauty and freshness sings of the pleasant earth--the +green spring, the nightingale. When Venus coaxes him, he responds with +one of the world's greatest songs--the hymn to Venus. Her "Geliebter, +komm" is another piece of magic. The very essence of sensuality is in +it, and never was sin made to seem so lovely. One great theme follows +another. "Hin zu den kalten Menschen flieh'" is almost Schubertian in +its spontaneity. The music never flags; there are scarcely any of the +old formulas--not even, for example, to express Venus's anger; the +fund of melody seems inexhaustible. Three main points may be observed. +First, the dramatic propriety of every phrase is perfect--the music +wanted for each successive situation fitly to express the emotion of +the situation is infallibly forthcoming; the music invariably reveals +the inwardness of the situation. Second, in spite of following the +drama, move by move, so to speak, the continuity of the musical flow +is absolute; phrase seems to grow out of phrase (the drama being true +and the music always exactly expressive of the essence of the drama, +this follows as night the day); and partly by reason of this, and +partly owing to the simplicity of the themes and tunes, the total +effect is one of stately breadth. Third, the wealth of invention, the +constructive power, and the command of technical devices, place Wagner +in the first rank of sheer musicians. True, he could not write a +symphony such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote; but neither could +they have written a music-drama; the music-drama was his form, the +symphony theirs. + +In the next scene we have music of a different sort. A shepherd-boy +pipes and sings one of those songs which, for freshness and purity, +seem unapproachable--the watchman's song in the first act of the +_Dutchman_ is another example. The piping goes on while the elder +pilgrims chant a sort of marching tune as they pass--part of it is the +second section of the great hymn already described--the boy shouts +"Good luck!" after them, and Tannhaeuser, in an ecstasy of relief and +restfulness after the unceasing whirl of lust and fleshly delights +from which he has found deliverance, pours forth his soul in a +wonderful phrase. It is repeated afterwards when Tannhaeuser very +guardedly tells Elisabeth of the wonder of his deliverance; and indeed +it is expressive of a mood that became more and more characteristic of +Wagner as he grew older, as though he got momentary glimpses of some +blessed isle of rest where peace and relief from all earthly troubles +could be found. A few years later we find him writing to Liszt of his +longing for death as an escape; and though his appetite remained good, +and he seemed bent on having the best of everything on his table, we +can well believe that, overstrung by nature, in constant poor health, +and making stupendous demands on his nervous energy (like his own +Tannhaeuser), doing everything too much, he had moments--nay, days--of +reaction and feelings which he expressed quite sincerely in his +letters. This brief passage touches the sublime. The hunters enter, +and from the moment Wolfram begins his really beautiful song about +Elisabeth, it remains on Wagner's highest level. The finale is a set +piece, of course, and is in free and joyous contrast to the lurid heat +and sensual abandonment of the first scene. While the trees wave in +the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen +blow away at their horns--and Tannhaeuser has returned to his former +healthy life. + +In the second act we have Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song, +very charming; a duet with Tannhaeuser, very fine in parts, but not a +true love-duet; the popular march; and then the tournament. Now, +Wolfram's bid for favour seems to me both too literal and too long. He +does what undoubtedly the minstrels of old did--freely declaims his +verses, occasionally twanging his harp. He grows indeed almost fervent +in his praise of the quiet life, of adoring your beloved at a safe +distance and never disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about +human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share +Tannhaeuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as +Tannhaeuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a +dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme +shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhaeuser begins praise of the +thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned--too much so +for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat in +Wolfram's manner, but with much more energy. Again there is, as it +were, a glimpse of the Venusberg fire in the orchestra, and Tannhaeuser +sings another song, more intense, again, in passion than his first, +and ending with an aggressively fierce declaration of his creed. +Biterolf challenges him; the Venusberg music boils up once more--we +almost see the vision that is about to break on Tannhaeuser's inner +sight; he sings more passionately still the joys of a human love; +Wolfram again contends, giving us this time a really glorious song, +and the storm breaks: the Venusberg is before Tannhaeuser's eyes; the +violins sweep to their highest register, and remain there boiling and +dancing in a kind of divine fury; and in mad exaltation he chants his +hymn to Venus. Then the commotion occurs as I have described. + +Let us consider this scene a moment. For theatrical effect, in the +best sense, it is in most respects one of the greatest Wagner wrote. +There is the pomp of the entry of the knights and ladies, and +afterwards of the minstrels; the Landgrave's music is effective, which +is more than can be said for that usually allotted to the heavy father +in an opera; the business of arranging the order in which the +competitors shall stand up is accompanied by fragments of the graceful +march--or, rather, processional--to which the minstrels had entered, +and these come as a welcome preparation of the ear for the essential +part of the scene. Wolfram's first effort, I say, I can hardly +tolerate, considered as a piece of composition; yet, shortened, it +would be admirably in place. From the moment Tannhaeuser begins all is +perfect. Tannhaeuser's music grows in intensity, and Wagner is careful +not to give us a setback by allowing the other singers to throw +Wolfram-ian cold douches over us; on the contrary, they get excited, +too; and the orchestra is let loose with them by degrees, until in the +last outburst it is blazing and crackling as though it had gone as +completely mad as Tannhaeuser himself. The whole thing, with the +reservation I have made, must be admitted to be consummately managed +from the composer's as well as from the dramatist's point of view. + +What follows needs little discussion. Wagner knew quite well how to +represent a row on the stage without passing beyond the limits of what +is music. Here we have ample energy, but nothing demanding closer +notice until Elisabeth's interposition. Then at once we get stuff on a +high level. The culmination is reached in a series of melodies hardly +to be matched for pathetic beauty; the orchestra seems to throb with +emotion--a device which Wagner often employed extensively in the +_Ring_--the chorus join in, and a wondrous effect is obtained. The +ensemble is the last piece of this description Wagner was destined to +write. It is pure emotion, and not dramatic--that is, not +theatrical--and its warrant is that the drama at the moment is nothing +but a drama of emotions in conflict. The only musical-and-dramatic +effect now occurs where the voices of the young pilgrims are heard: it +is electrical. + +Wagner gave a title to the prelude of Act III, "Tannhaeuser's +Pilgrimage," and it differs only in that from his other preludes and +overtures. To those who know what is to follow it tells a story more +or less distinctly, while those who hear it for the first time must +feel the atmosphere and emotion, and thus be prepared for the drama. +It is built up of the pilgrims' marching song and one of Elisabeth's +melodies and a most expressive theme which depicts Tannhaeuser +painfully getting over the weary miles, with a sad heart, to seek the +pope's pardon; then comes in the Dresden Amen--the significance of +which will appear presently--then a crash followed by a mournful +phrase (taken entire from Beethoven), and some recitative-like +passages leading direct to the rising of the curtain. As music it is a +splendid thing, and, as I have said, it tells its tale plainly, when +one knows the tale. Almost immediately we hear the pilgrims' hymn of +rejoicing, with which the overture begins--the hymn of those whose +sins have been taken away. The pilgrims pass; Tannhaeuser is not +amongst them, and Wagner there gives Elisabeth a phrase which makes +one think that he had Schroeder-Devrient in his mind when he wrote the +part. That gifted lady used--Berlioz said abused--the device of +occasionally speaking, not singing, a few words; and here, where +Elisabeth, in despair, says, "Er kehret nicht zurueck," Wagner gives +her notes that can be either spoken or sung, and certainly are most +effective when spoken. The part, by the way, was not "created" by the +Schroeder-Devrient, but by Johanna Wagner, the daughter of that brother +Albert who had given him his first post in a theatre. I have nothing +further to say about the Prayer, nor about the "Star of Eve" song. As +night gathers over the autumn scene and Tannhaeuser enters, the music +at once leaps to life. Not that we have not heard some very lovely +things, notably a quotation in the orchestra from one of Wolfram's +competition songs; the star shines out, and Wolfram, his harp now +silent, sits gazing dreamily up in the direction Elisabeth has taken +homeward to die. But now we get a renewal of the furious energy of the +tournament scene. As Tannhaeuser declares his intention of returning to +Venus, the music crackles and roars for a moment; then it subsides to +broken phrases of utter despair as he describes his journey to Rome. +The Dresden Amen accompanies him at first with ethereal effect, and +afterwards with the utmost grandeur, as he tells how he knelt before +the Rood to pray--in a few bars every aspect of St. Peter's is brought +to our minds, and the atmosphere and colour. Wagner himself never +surpassed the declamatory passage of the pope's curse. Bach and Mozart +knew how to write recitative, but they rarely attempted to fill it +with anything approaching the intensity of meaning with which this +terrible recitative is filled. Then, again, the music boils, and with +unearthly effects the themes from the Hoerselberg scene sound out, now +from behind the scenes, now from the orchestra; the thing grows madder +and more mad, until suddenly Wolfram perceives the bier bearing +Elisabeth being carried down. "Elisabeth!" he cries, and a requiem is +heard from behind the scenes. As a stage effect I know only one thing +to match it. In _Hamlet_ the hero has been philosophizing to his +heart's content, when a funeral procession approaches-- + + _Hamlet_: What, the fair Ophelia? + + _Queen_: Sweets to the sweet, farewell.... + +Every one knows the magic of that stroke: the abrupt change of key, +the instant disappearance of bitterness, and the introduction of +pathos and pure beauty; so here the Venusberg music disappears like a +flame that is blown out. "Elisabeth!" Tannhaeuser echoes, and the +chorus chants solemnly "Der Seele Heil," etc. "Henry, thou art +redeemed," cries Wolfram; and then we have the final scene, the entry +of the young penitents with the pope's staff. The final chorus is +effective enough, though it suggests the audience getting up and +looking for their hats. + +As a whole, the music of _Tannhaeuser_ is characterized by intense +energy, the greatest definiteness, and richness and gorgeousness of +colouring. Inviting as must have been the opportunities offered in the +opening scene of indulging in a riot of voluptuous colour, the +definiteness is never lost. Through the whirling, dancing-mad +accompaniment runs a fibre of strong, clean-cut, sinewy melody. The +picture is drawn with firm strokes as well as painted with a full +brush. Or perhaps the better analogy would be to describe each scene +as an architecturally constructed fabric; and each is also so +constructed as to lead inevitably into the next. Hence, as already +pointed out, the artistic restraint and breadth in scenes where, with +such heat of passion at work, we might fear spasmodic jerkiness. + +When _Tannhaeuser_ was published, Wagner sent the score to Schumann, +and Mendelssohn also saw it. The comment of the latter was +characteristic: he liked a canon entry in the finale of the second +act; and indeed it was too much to hope that the successful purveyor +of oratorios should like or in the least understand so mighty, fresh +and passionate an opera. He did not understand Beethoven, and +virtually admitted as much without realizing how completely he had +committed himself. Moreover, opera was a form of art with which he had +no real sympathy. It is true his friend Devrient tells us that he was +anxious to write one, and would have done so had not his fastidious +taste prevented him ever finding a libretto to his liking--which is +equivalent to saying a man would have painted a fine picture could he +only have secured a good subject. In some respects Schumann was even +more antipathetic. Wagner, all who knew him declare, never ceased +talking; Schumann was a silent man--sometimes in a cafe a friend might +speak to him: Schumann would turn his back to the friend and his face +to the wall, and continue to imbibe lager. Wagner would talk for an +hour, and, getting no response, go away; he would afterwards declare +Schumann an "impossible" man, out of whom not a word could be got; +while Schumann would declare he could not tolerate Wagner, "his tongue +never stops." Schumann had no dramatic instinct, and no comprehension +for opera; in _Genoveva_--as, in fact, in his so-called dramatic +cantatas--he failed utterly: he went straight through the words, +setting them to music _pur et simple_, taking no thought for dramatic +propriety. The score of _Tannhaeuser_ simply puzzled him; he saw in it +only the music _pur et simple_, considered as which it was, of course, +very bad. It was not bad in all the ways he thought, however. His +remark about the clumsy orchestration long ago returned to roost. For +the rest, when he saw the opera performed he changed part of his mind, +and wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in +place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some +time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it +muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time--and I +have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was +Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach +himself to--a peripatetic barnacle. Later, he found Brahms, as all the +world soon found out, and revised his early notions of the greater +musician. But at first he was all enthusiasm and gush, and wrote +articles "explaining" _Tannhaeuser_. However, his views are of no +importance to-day. Liszt, generous soul, had the opera played at +Weimar at the earliest possible moment. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +'LOHENGRIN' + + +I + +_Lohengrin_ was first drafted in 1845--for Wagner during this period +allowed no grass to grow under his feet. He was a member of a coterie +that met at Angell's restaurant, and there on November 17 he read the +complete libretto to his friends and acquaintances. Schumann was +amongst them, and he bluntly asserted that such a libretto could not +be set. Others were more favourable, but many were doubtful. However, +that made little difference to Richard. He knew his own strength and +trusted his instinct; and however much he was urged to alter the +_denouement_, he stuck to his guns and his libretto. + +In point of structure the libretto of _Lohengrin_ closely resembles +that of its predecessor. There are even fewer set pieces, there are +more fragmentary speeches. The drama is so contrived as to let in the +set pieces naturally: of the old forced operatic business of sending +out or bringing in characters as seems advisable there is not a sign. +The story is on the whole simpler than that of _Tannhaeuser_. Lohengrin +is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the +Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and +where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow +born to the favoured ones. He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan +to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, who falsely accuse her of +having murdered her brother; he fights for her and overcomes the +accusers, first exacting a promise that she will never ask him his +name nor where he comes from. She promises, yielding herself +unconditionally to him; and so ends Act One. Next Ortrud, wife of +Telramund, gets Elsa's ear, begging for mercy, and contrives to poison +the girl's mind with doubts regarding Lohengrin; and when later the +wedding procession is nearing the church, Telramund himself accuses +Lohengrin before the king and all the crowd of sorcery and witchcraft. +Nothing happens at the moment; Telramund is pushed on one side, and +the procession goes its way. But in the next act, when Lohengrin and +Elsa are left alone she can no longer restrain her curiosity nor +conceal her fears: in spite of his warnings she questions him. At the +moment Telramund and other nobles rush in to assassinate him; he kills +Telramund, orders the other nobles to bear the body into the judgment +hall, and tells Elsa he must leave her. In the next scene he reveals +himself, and the swan returns to take him away. Ortrud mocks him and +tells how she, after all, has triumphed, for she changed Elsa's +brother into a swan; Lohengrin kneels and prays; the swan disappears +and the missing brother springs up; a dove descends and is attached by +Lohengrin to the boat, and he goes back to Montsalvat. + +Now I would ask the reader if this story is reasonable, if any +"meaning" or moral can be read into it. On the face of it Lohengrin's +conditions are preposterous. Yet he is bound by the laws of the magic +domain he comes from; he trusts Elsa and does battle on her behalf +without any proof of her innocence; and she has no patience to wait +for him to explain matters. On the other hand, he hears her prayer in +a magical way, and comes drawn in a magic boat; and she has a perfect +right to assume that he would not have fought for her if he had not +known by his arts that she was innocent. It was just over this +_denouement_, this forsaking of Elsa because of her inquisitiveness, +that many of Wagner's friends boggled; and nothing that he then or +afterwards wrote in defence of it seems to me worth a moment's serious +consideration. Mr. Ernest Newman suggests that perhaps Wagner was +using the savage's notion that in giving up your name you are placing +yourself in some one's power; but there is not a hint of that in the +drama. The thing to me is simply a fairy story. We must accept +Lohengrin and the conditions in which he lives, moves and has his +being. He is not his own master: somewhere far away he has an +all-powerful over-lord who, for no useful purpose to be comprehended +by mortal, sent him to rescue Elsa under these conditions. And I say +that, far from having a meaning, a "purpose," _Lohengrin_ is pure +romance, as innocent of moral ideas as any genuine mediaeval romance. +Wagner's "explanations," like Bishop Berkeley's, take a great deal of +explaining; and though Glasenapp, Wolzogen and the rest have covered +many reams of paper in doing it, we are not an inch nearer to +perceiving a grain of sense in the whole affair. There is only one +part of it which can be, in one sense, explained--Wagner's intense +acrimony in his treatment of the female puppet Elsa. Even in 1845 he +had grown restive under the insults and stupidity of court officials +and the Press, and doubtless he had threatened often enough to quit +for ever the degraded German theatre. He never could see that the +German theatre had never been any better than it then was, but on the +contrary, a great deal worse; he never realized that it was on the +up-grade, and that he was to be instrumental in elevating it. He was +like a mechanic called in (by destiny) to repair a rickety machine, +who because it won't go when he "wills" it, kicks it to pieces. The +Reissigers and the rest were simply parts of the machine that were out +of order: time and patience were required to eliminate them and put in +sound working parts. Wagner could not understand this any more than he +could understand why all German (or rather, Saxon) mankind should not +at once be perfect, think alike and form the ideal State. So, as he +could not kick the Dresden Court Opera to pieces, he long meditated +quitting it--so much he explicitly affirmed afterwards--and he must +have worried Minna sadly. She understood neither his qualities nor his +defects, his ideals nor the short-sighted impatience which rendered it +impossible for him ever to attain them: she saw only too clearly that +at any moment he might kick over the traces, and that the starvation +and misery of the Paris episode would have to be faced again. We can +readily picture him coming in raging after a conflict at the theatre +with official imbecility, and Minna, instead of sympathizing, +counselling him to be wise and temporize. His exasperation grew, and +only the events of 1849 prevented a rupture--so much seems +certain--and he vented his spleen by making Elsa a stupid, shallow, +faithless creature who feels no gratitude towards the hero who saved +her from being burnt, but by maddening female pertinacity, +wrong-headedness and wilfulness destroys her own and his happiness. As +the reader will perceive later, I by no means defend Wagner in this +domestic squabbling, but something must be said for him; I don't say, +either, that he created Elsa to express his views about his wife, but +I do say that his feelings account for the excess of his rancour +against his own creation. So pitiable a specimen of feminine +inquisitiveness, bad temper and ungenerosity has never been put on the +stage as the heroine of a grand opera. Possibly Lohengrin saw this; +and, neglecting his recent marriage-vow, he went back to Montsalvat, +where, as we know, there were no women. All this would have to be said +in the course of this book; and I say it now because it helps us to +understand a defect in the art of a beautiful opera. + +A beautiful opera _Lohengrin_ certainly is--the most beautiful of all +Wagner's operas. The story of it is a fairy story, as I have said, and +superficially a very ordinary sort of fairy story. We have the +distressed maiden in the hands of persecutors, the knightly hero who +rescues her, the maiden's faithlessness, and the contemptuous +departure of the hero. But Wagner has clothed the whole of this +work-a-day mediaeval legend in a wondrous atmosphere of mystical +beauty, and that beauty springs from the thought of the river. + + +II + +It is necessary to discuss as briefly as may be the leitmotiv, because +with _Lohengrin_ Wagner first began to use it with serious purpose. In +the _Dutchman_ two themes may be rightly described as leitmotivs; in +_Tannhaeuser_ not one theme may be rightly so described. While in +_Lohengrin_ Wagner showed himself as much as ever the inspired +musician, he made for the first time use of the leitmotiv for dramatic +as well as musical ends. There we find three leitmotivs: one intended +by the power of association of ideas to evoke on the instant the +vision of Montsalvat and the Grail; a second to recall the thought and +emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions +which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her. +The first (_a_, p. 191) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner +invented; the third (_d_)--not second--is a thing any one might have +concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use +as Wagner uses it; the second (_c_) is by way of being a study for the +best of the _Parsifal_ themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that +the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely +exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state +of decrepitude. + +The leitmotiv (_a_) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a +little bit (_b_) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from +the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than +anything else, which gives _Lohengrin_ the vividness of reality +combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of +the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off +mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as +delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his +brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but +the land of ever-enduring dawn--a land that other poets have dreamed +of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end +Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this +strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would +tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that +reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is +conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to +inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in +obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly +as a needle drawn by a magnet. + +The prelude opens with a series of chords, ascending, all on A. Handel +might have done this: none of the Viennese composers could, or perhaps +I should rather say, would, have done it. Beethoven got as near to the +naked truth as ever composer did in dealing with the emotions of +humanity; Mozart, too, worked his miracles; Weber, non-Viennese +though he was, gave us weird, fantastic pictures of fairy adventures +in the darkness of grim woods, but nothing more. It was left for +Wagner to give us in a few bars a picture, such as no painter could +have painted, of the blue heavens on an almost unimaginably fine day. +The blue sky, the thin, clear air, the sunlight, are all given us in +the first few bars. It is far from my wish to intrude my personal +history into these pages, but I wish to give a convincing example of +an episode of a sort familiar to all those who have experimented with +Wagner's music. A relative of mine, who had spent many of his earlier +years in travelling the southern Atlantic and the Pacific in sailing +vessels, heard me play on the piano, as an illustration of some +argument I was foolish enough to advance, these opening bars of the +_Lohengrin_ prelude. He immediately said, "That takes me back into the +Trades"--the sweet days of perfect peace in southern climes, where the +sky was blue for day after day and week after week, where the wind +sang cheerfully without change for weeks on end, where a delicious sun +made all men (no matter what the feeling was on those foul old ships) +feel good-natured and good-hearted. That is to say, my relative at +once felt the magical truthfulness of Wagner's touch: the sweet, clear +air, the sunlight; and that is the atmosphere Wagner wanted to +establish at the beginning of this most magical of operas. Out of the +blue sky comes the Montsalvat (not necessarily the Grail) motive; it +descends with ever-gathering fulness, through key after key, until at +last it culminates in a tremendous climax for the brass: then comes a +wondrous cadence, falling slowly, as a mountain stream falls over +slabs of smooth-worn mountain rock, until we get back to the original +atmosphere. The Montsalvat vision has faded away into the blue whence +it came. Wagner afterwards achieved some marvellous things, but none +more marvellous than this. + +The curtain rises: there is a rum-tum-tum by the orchestra. We are at +once in the discord of a turbulent armed camp: the fury of Telramund +against those who are not convinced of his evidently prejudiced view +that Elsa holds the lands he wishes to hold, is made to resound in the +orchestra as not the most expert Italian composer could make it +resound by the voices. When Elsa enters to defend herself the music +changes its character utterly; it is the embodiment of the sweetness +of young feminine kindly nature; and it is odd that Wagner, when +writing this music, which he fancied was the most German ever written, +should have gone so far as, in some of its finest parts, to steal bits +of the Austrian hymn, composed, as we may remember, by not even an +Austrian, but a Croatian, pure Slav, composer. Elsa's account of her +dream is not dramatic as Wagner, by the time he wrote his next work, +would have understood the term--in shape it is an Italian aria, and +everything is at a standstill until it is finished--yet it occurs +fittingly, and prepares us by ethereal music for the music of a +gentleman who is very unethereal. In form the whole scene is as near +as may be a regular Italian opera scene. King Henry the Fowler and his +nobles show mighty patience in sitting or standing it out to the end. +The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of +suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery +impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all +done with Wagner's consummate skill in writing purely theatrical +music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is +worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the +Lohengrin, "as hero," theme in its full splendour. Then comes the +fighting music, which, like all fighting music, is mediocre stuff, and +the gorgeous set piece, the finale. This last is quite old-fashioned +opera, but it is not forced in: it happens inevitably. The themes are +mainly new, but the Lohengrin heroic theme is worked in triumphantly. +Technically there is no advance or change in _Lohengrin_: the +counterpoint and interweaving of themes of _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_ were to come a few years later. Indeed, there is less +of Wagner the contrapuntal virtuoso in _Lohengrin_ than in +_Tannhaeuser_. + + +III + +In the music, as in the drama, the second act presents a total +contrast to the first. The music of the first is throughout full of +sunlight. At times it may be strident, violent, rather tumultuous; but +sweetness is the prevailing note, and as soon as Elsa comes on we have +the sheer loveliness of first her answers to the king, and then of +her vision; then comes Lohengrin, bringing with him the breath of the +land of eternal dawn, and of the shining river down which he was drawn +by the swan; then after the (rather theatrical) prayer, a few moments +of noise while the fighting is being arranged and carried out; then, +so to speak, the glorious midday sunshine of the finale. The second +act opens with two sinister phrases heard in the darkness (_e_ and +_f_)--Ortrud is planning vengeance, and the theme of Lohengrin's +warning and threat to Elsa is presently heard; that warning gives her +the hint as to the way of achieving vengeance. Ortrud and Telramund, +outcast, crouch there in the night; Ortrud deeply scheming, Frederick, +poor dupe, madly fuming, while the lights blaze at the palace windows, +and the trumpets sound out as the feast proceeds within. He rages, and +a theme (_f_) quoted is abruptly transformed into (_g_) as he bitterly +casts upon Ortrud the blame for their downfall. The vocal parts are +neither recitative nor true song; the orchestral tide is developed in +much the same symphonic style as in _Tannhaeuser_. We are still no +nearer to the perfect blending of the orchestral stream and the vocal +parts that we get in _Tristan_ and in the _Mastersingers_. The style +is not homogeneous: the stream is broken by theatrical exclamations +and snatches of recitative that not only break the flow, but differ in +character from the rest. But the elasticity of motion is a great +advance on _Tannhaeuser_: Wagner was coming to his own, and much of +_Tannhaeuser_ strikes one as cumbrous and heavy in comparison. That +sinister atmosphere of mystery is never lost; the gloom and the +wretched crouching figures, the fierce anger and Ortrud's alternate +cajoling and threatening may be said, without exaggeration, to sound +from the orchestra with as powerful an effect on the imagination as +the sights and sounds on the stage. Most magnificent is the descending +chromatic passage that accompanies Ortrud as she casts her spell again +over Frederick. It resembles closely an Erda theme of the _Ring_--as +is quite natural, for one chromatic scale cannot but resemble another. +The significance of the resemblance is that the strange harmonies are +also much alike, and the central idea is the same in the two cases: +the idea of old Mother Earth, her everlasting stillness in strange +places, her never-ceasing internal workings, her mysterious power. In +the _Ring_ there is nothing baneful in the conception: it is Nature at +work in her sleep amongst the silent hills: mysterious, indeed, but +doing no evil. Here it is the earth as conceived by the mediaeval mind, +the earth to which the coming of the White Christ had banished all the +gods of the older world, there to become the malevolent, malignant +divinities of the new world, and believed in as such by the first +adherents of the new religion. Frederick was a Christian, mediaeval +style, and he implicitly believes that Ortrud can call up wicked +spirits, and by their aid weave enchantments when the God of the East +is not looking. The same may be said of the king, and indeed all the +characters in _Lohengrin_: again I say the opera is a fairy drama in +which these things must be assumed and accepted. That wondrous +passage must have sounded doubly wonderful in the ears of two +generations back; blent with that second sinister Ortrud theme, it +accomplishes as much in a dozen or so bars as Weber could accomplish +in as many pages. That Ortrud theme seems to wind round Frederick's +soul until at last he is wholly in his wife's grip; and the scene ends +with an invocation to "ye Powers that rule our earthly lot"--the +malignant gods of the underworld. We, knowing the kind of music Wagner +had in his mind when he wrote the libretto of _Lohengrin_, can easily +understand Schumann's dismay when this scene was read to him: nothing +of the sort had been composed before. + +Suddenly Elsa appears on the balcony, and the character of the music +changes at once: all now is sweetness and light. Her serenade (to +herself) is a simple and very lovely thing, making full half of its +effect through its contrast with the harshness, agitation and gloom of +all that has gone before. There is a master-touch when Ortrud calls +softly, "Elsa": by one stroke, an abrupt strange chord, the whole +atmosphere is for the moment altered: the dreariness of the call is +unforgetable. There are many hints of Ortrud's purpose given out more +and more plainly till the climax is reached in her invocation to +Wotan, chief of the malignant divinities. (It is strange to think that +when he wrote this Wagner must already have had the other and more +celebrated Wotan in his thoughts.) Much of Elsa's melody is of a very +Weberesque quality--and is none the worse for it: far better that than +the touches of Bellini, Marschner and Spontini that abound in the +earlier operas. One or two other points may be noted. At the words +"Rest thee with me" we get a tune which might have grown out of one +previously heard and one in the bedroom scene--not only does the tune +resemble the others closely, but the rhythm of the phrases Elsa +addresses to Ortrud is the same as that of the phrases with which +Lohengrin seems to caress Elsa. There is, of course, no "significance" +in the sense in which the word is used by the Wagnerians. The short +duet following contains a divine melody, but Ortrud's "aside" is a +fairly lengthy one--forty bars--and is a bit of conventionalism which +Wagner soon discarded. The melody is played again as Elsa leads her +enemy into the house; Frederick returns to curse Ortrud and Lohengrin +in the same breath; all the sweetness goes out of the music as Elsa +disappears from view, and the scene closes as it opened, in gloom. + +As daylight breaks Wagner indulges in one of the effects he was fond +of at this period. The reveille is sounded from a turret, and an +answering call comes from a distance; and the two parties trumpet it +in alternation until every one is awakened. It is a quasi-musical +effect only: there is no invention: the trumpet chords serve the +purpose and nothing more. He never reverted to this rather bald method +of filling up time while his people are being got on the stage: +compare this passage with, for instance, Hagen's call in _The Dusk of +the Gods_. The latter is rich and full of picturesque music: it means +something and is, in fact, an effective piece in a concert-room. Or +take the watchman with his cow-horn in the _Mastersingers_; the music +is redolent of the old world; it impresses the imagination more than +an entry in Pepys--"the watchman calling two of the morning and a +thick snow falling." In the _Lohengrin_ days his method still requires +these _longueurs_, these dry patches: later his mastery over his +material enabled him to deal his theatrical and his musical stroke at +the same time. As knights and retainers flock in, a long and elaborate +chorus is sung--a musical, not a dramatic, chorus, almost as much in +the _Rienzi_ manner as in the manner of _Tannhaeuser_. It is curious to +observe how cautious and tentative Wagner was at this stage of his +growth. He was still groping, seeing only very dimly the destination +he would reach by the way he was taking. _Lohengrin_, had he followed +the plan he would certainly have adopted ten years later, would have +been terser, more closely dramatic, and would have made only a short +opera; there would have been fewer set numbers and a much smaller +quantity of the magnificent music. The whole idea, I have already +said, is not a dramatic one, but a musical one; and the advance on the +_Dutchman_ lies in the skill with which the musical opportunities seem +to grow out of the drama and are not pressed into it. In this respect +it is hardly an advance on _Tannhaeuser_; indeed three of the great +ensembles have not an adequate dramatic motive. That at the end of the +first act, splendid music though it is, is a quite operatic finale, so +conventional that only when rendered in the conventional operatic +manner does it sound and appear impressive. It becomes, when done in +this manner, a kind of dance, for towards the finish all the crowd +should form in long lines and go twining about in a ballet figure. In +this opening chorus of knights and retainers in the Second Act (scene +ii) the musical inspiration is intense; but words are repeated as +irrationally as in a Handel oratorio chorus; and the same is the case +in the bridal procession music. Wagner still had a hankering after +imposing spectacle and brilliant choral writing. That bridal +procession and chorus are, of course, supremely beautiful music: music +and spectacle were aimed at and achieved, not music and drama, in the +later Wagnerian sense. + +The scene of the interruption of the procession first by Ortrud and +then by Frederick has always seemed to me superfluous as well as +stagey. The whole thing is pure melodrama of the kind that used to be +popular until a very few years ago; and the music is as melodramatic +as the two incidents. The scene is far too long, and is thus rendered +doubly nonsensical. Only a few minutes before, the Herald has +announced the King's decree: any one harbouring either of the +offenders "will share his [it ought to be their] doom with life and +limb." Yet the offenders themselves are allowed to break up an orderly +procession and to hurl angry diatribes at the very people they have +been banned for seeking to injure. For many minutes Ortrud, encouraged +by a furious orchestra, pours forth a stream of insult directed at +Lohengrin and Elsa: she is not immediately seized and carried off to +be tortured: the bystanders utter a few exclamations, and leave Elsa +to reply for herself. When the king and Lohengrin enter they content +themselves with gentle remonstrances: even Frederick draws from them +only dignified if somewhat scornful protests. There has been some +other rather futile business: a few conspirators planning to support +Frederick in attacking not only Lohengrin, but the king. The flower of +a loyal army look on at all this and go on their way, leaving +Frederick free to make an attempt on Lohengrin's life in the third +Act. Again I emphasise a point because it reveals exactly how far +Wagner's art had got at this period. Well might he feel it necessary, +before proceeding to other masterpieces, to discover where he stood, +what was his ideal, and how he might attain it. For, observe, he +wanted to depict in music an imperious, ambitious, unscrupulous and +wicked woman with a temper that in the end is her own undoing; he felt +the necessity of contrasting her with Elsa, sweet, gentle and +lamentably weak--Elsa, who is strong, or, rather, pertinacious, only +once, and at the wrong time; and, third, he felt that his act would +terminate rather tamely with a mere wedding-march. The result is this +noisy melodramatic scene, with its melodramatic music. It could not be +otherwise. Music cannot express anger--at best it can only suggest. By +anger I mean human anger--the god's wrath of a Wotan is a different +matter. Bruennhilda knows Wotan to be angry by the raging storm that +marks his path through the heavens, by the lightnings and thunders; +and we have all enough of our primitive ancestors in us to feel in +some degree as they felt--indeed, plenty of people to-day see in a +storm a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty. Human anger has +never been put into music. Why, Ortrud alternates her rantings (mere +recitative) with beautiful phrases of the same pattern as those sung +by Elsa! The music for the orchestra is turbulent rather than +forcible; it is incoherent in the old-fashioned way: essentially--in +spite of a free use of discords--it is as old-fashioned as anything in +_Don Giovanni_. Frederick and Lohengrin have hot words, and Telramund +is supposed to be a hotheaded idiot and Lohengrin a spotless, handsome +hero; and lo! with due regard for the respective ranges of their +voices, they might sing each other's music and no harm done. When the +chorus enters a very imposing piece of music is wrought, largely out +of the Ortrud insinuating theme (_f_); but it is not dramatic music. +The ending with the resumption of the procession is one of Wagner's +noblest things. It is not in the customary sense of the phrase an +operatic finale, but a perfectly satisfying piece of music that +prepares us for a pause during which we can take breath before the +action of the drama is taken up again in the third Act. + + +IV + +In that act we have the central idea of the opera--the poetic and the +musical idea--clearly, definitely set forth--the idea of Montsalvat, +far away up the rippling river on which the white swan +floated--Montsalvat, the land of eternal dawn, where all things +remained for ever young, and the flowers and the corn grew always and +never faded nor fell to the sickle. It is the land Mignon aspired +to--"Oh let me for ever then remain young"--the impossible dream of +poets and millions of men and women who were not poets: Nirvana, with +a difference; that realm in which, tired with the struggles and fights +in the devious ways of this dark world, they should after death awake +refreshed in a serene light and pure air, thereafter to dwell for ever +in a state of untroubled blessedness, where all earth's puzzles solve +themselves, and life is seen to be complete. As Senta's ballad is the +germ of the _Dutchman_, so is Lohengrin's narrative, "In fernem Land," +the germ of this more beautiful opera. It plays a more important part +in _Lohengrin_ than does the ballad in the _Dutchman_. Without +exaggeration, the life, colour and emotion of the narrative wash +backwards and forwards over the _Lohengrin_ score, relieving scenes +that might be tedious and worrying--like those Ortrud scenes I have +just described--and making the beautiful pages still more beautiful. +The land of dawn, fresh and pure, the limpid river: these, the essence +of _Lohengrin_ and the pervading atmosphere, proceed from the +narrative. + +But much has to be got through before this point is reached. First, we +have the gorgeous prelude--the most brilliant Wagner wrote, and the +last he was to write that has no thematic connection with any portion +of the opera. Here we have no summary of the act, no hint of impending +disaster and tragedy, but simply a joyous, rattling preliminary to the +procession that escorts Lohengrin and Elsa to the bridal chamber. It +starts off with immense spirit, the music leaping straight up, +hesitating a moment on a cross-accent, then a noisy shake reaching its +highest note, and after a clash of the cymbals sliding off into the +more regular rhythm, broken slightly by occasional syncopations, in +which the piece as a whole is conceived. The melody in the bass that +follows, and the more tender strains of a middle section, are familiar +to every one nowadays--in fact, so familiar that we are likely to +overlook the intense originality of the whole thing. When we remember +the course the drama has now to take, the tragic beauty of its close, +we can perceive how exactly right Wagner's feeling was when he left +the plan he adopted throughout the _Dutchman_ and _Tannhaeuser_--the +plan either of summing up or foreshadowing the ensuing scenes, or of +making the prelude part of the first scene. Of course the music at the +beginning of Act II is rather in the nature of an introduction than of +a distinct prelude; but Act III is not prefaced by so much as that. +Rather, it suggests that since Elsa and Lohengrin entered the church +all has been rejoicing, and that we catch only the tail-end of the +feast as the party comes on the stage. + +The wedding chorus I pass over as rather trivial; and it contains +between the middle section and the repetition the eight most trivial +bars Wagner put to paper--I do not except the weakest portions of +_Rienzi_. The opening of the great love scene--the most curious love +scene in the world--is pure deliciousness. Nothing of the passion, +flaming hot and terrible, of _Tristan_ is here; only a sense of sheer +delight and happiness. Melody after melody--of a very Weberesque +pattern, of course, but sweet, voluptuous--is poured forth; and a +graver tone comes into the music only when Elsa begins timidly to lead +up to the questionings of Lohengrin which are her aim. She hints at +what she wants, and Lohengrin gives her, to a very pretty tune, an +answer that can merely be called sublimely fatuous. Drawing her to the +window, he bids her breathe in the odours from the flowers in the +moonlit garden beneath. "But," he blandly adds, "don't ask whence +their sweet scent comes, or you will its wondrous charm destroy." The +song is, I say, a pretty one; indeed, it is so pretty that but for the +enchantment of each successive phrase no one could stand the monotony +of so long a series of four-bar phrases. Of that fault in _Lohengrin_ +I shall have more to say presently. More dramatic, living, and less +mechanical stuff follows at once: Elsa is not to be put off in that +way, and in agitated strains to an agitated but not spasmodic +accompaniment she presses on towards disaster. Lohengrin's warning +sounds out, sinister; Lohengrin pleads, always stupidly, but to music +of growing intensity and grip; the measures are no longer cut to a +pattern, not incoherent as they are in the squabbles of the second +Act; and at last a passage of Wagner at his theatrical best is +reached when he solemnly warns her again--"Greatest of trusts, Elsa, I +have shown thee." To another most lovely theme he tries again to +soothe her: she will not listen, and the Ortrud theme begins to writhe +in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the +spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and +nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a +fretful woman who cannot get her way--a woman driven mad by baseless +jealousy--in fancy she sees the swan coming to lead Lohengrin away +from her; with mournful and dreary effect a fragment of the swan theme +sounds from the orchestra. This simple touch is weird to a degree +never dreamed of by all the purveyors of operatic horrors; it is +unearthly, uncanny, in its wild beauty. The climax is immensely +powerful, but very simple, and, above all, sheer art of the theatre. +There is a crash as Frederick rushes in to be instantly killed; a bass +passage tears down the scale to the depths; and the horns sustain two +pianissimo chords, two notes in each; then silence, broken only by +soft drum-beats to make the silence felt. Elsa has fainted, and as she +revives we hear a bit of the duet--Lohengrin's tenderness as he tends +her, and a fleeting dream of Elsa's, perhaps, seem to blend in it. All +is finished. + +To compare this duet with that in _Tristan_ would be profitless but +for one reason. Wagner had not yet reached that perfect mastery of his +art which enabled him, so to speak, to fuse the dramatic and the +musical inspiration. We saw how in the _Dutchman_ the music rose to +its full height and splendour when the drama was sincere and true; in +_Tristan_ drama and music are inseparable. In _Lohengrin_, where the +inspiration is, if not wholly, at any rate mainly, musical, the drama +seems at times to be somewhat of a hindrance. I have mentioned the +fine dramatic or stage touches; but the finest things occur when the +pair, singly or together, are singing music that would be as effective +on a concert platform as on the stage. The art, that is, is far away +from the art of the _Tristan_ duet. At many points the situation is +saved by Wagner's stage dexterity: only when the music is almost as +completely self-moulded as in a symphony, or any other form of +"absolute" music, is it at its best. For practical purposes with +Wagner the songs are "absolute" music: the words were his own, and he +could alter them to suit the musical exigency. + + +V + +The opening of the next scene is spectacular, and the music is not +striking--for Wagner, though Marschner or Spontini might have owned it +with pride. The entry of the nobles bringing Frederick's corpse, the +entry also of Elsa, "like Niobe, all tears," are theatrically +powerful. Elsa's entry is a particularly beautiful example of what I +have previously called Wagner's dramatict use of the leitmotiv. There +are twenty bars of accompaniment, and in that space we have three +motives, so arranged that those who knew their significance, but had +never seen the earlier portions of the opera, might easily read the +whole of Elsa's sad history. As she is led in, stricken down and +miserable, the warning theme is heard; then that winding, insidious +theme associated with Ortrud; and last, four bars of the music heard +in the first act when she stands helpless before the king and has +nothing wherewith to answer her accusers: she is as miserable now as +she was then, and the cause of it Lohengrin's edict and her defiance +of it under Ortrud's influence. The device I have always maintained to +be a naive one; but it may be used to a sublime end, as in the _Dusk +of the Gods_ funeral procession, or as here, to emphasize Elsa's +situation, and to remind us at once of her being the authoress of her +own destruction. This is followed by acclamations as Lohengrin enters, +and nothing further of note occurs until he declares that, for reasons +which he cannot give, he will not go forth to fight the foe with the +Brabantians; and this declaration is set to the same passage, or part +of it, in which he has lately warned Elsa not to question him (p. +175). The meaning of the words and the dramatic significance of this +musical phrase are beyond my understanding. If Lohengrin did not mean +to tell his secret the musical phrase might imply that he had no +intention of letting them ask for it. But he has come there with no +other intention than that of revealing everything--and, in a word, the +whole business is incomprehensible because there is nothing to be +comprehended--because it is sheer nonsense. How Wagner, even supposing +he had originally some other idea for the ending of the work, could +let so flat a contradiction of his final plan stand--this also is +more than I can understand; for in later years he saw his opera +performed. And at that I must leave the matter. Lohengrin presently +proceeds to disclose his secret in that wondrous "In fernem +Land"--surely the most superb thing of its sort ever written. The +vocal part is--as I have already pointed out, this is often the case +in Wagner--something between pure song and recitative; and here it is +of a quality he himself rarely matched--not even in _Tristan_. +Technically, it is a piece of descriptive music for instruments; but +the words which give it significance and point are set to phrases +themselves so beautiful, pathetic and inevitable that one feels that +the vocal part and the orchestral were begotten simultaneously in that +marvellous brain. In other chapters I will point to passages, +especially in the _Ring_, where quite obviously the voice part has +been laboriously worked in with instrumental music already conceived +in its final form; but that was in Wagner's later years, when the free +inspiration, enthusiasm and energy of his _Tristan_ and _Lohengrin_ +and _Mastersingers_ days had for ever departed. There is an accent of +passionate grief in Lohengrin's words to Elsa, and of remorse in +Elsa's wailings; but the most touching thing in this final scene is +the song in which he hands her his sword, horn and ring, to be given +to her brother should he return. The note of regret, especially in the +poignant "leb' wohl," reminds one irresistibly of Wotan's farewell to +Bruennhilda. The latter is broader, richer, vaster,--and yet the tender +simplicity of this is inexpressibly touching. After that the opera +proceeds to its conclusion in what one may call a normal manner: there +is nothing, anyhow, in the music that requires analysis. + + +VI + +_Lohengrin_ cannot be called Wagner's greatest achievement, but it is +a "fine," if not a "first careless rapture" whose freshness he never +quite recaptured. Yet, in a way, it is the most mannered of his works. +I know of no opera where one phrase, one harmony or set of harmonies, +or one violin figure is made to serve so many and such widely +different purposes; and not since the early seventeen hundreds had the +perfect cadence been so hard worked. Only two numbers are in other +than four-four time--the prayer and the wedding song. The melodies on +page upon page consist of regular four-bar lengths, commonly +terminating in a full close. We can admit all this--indeed, we must +admit it all--and then we are only bound the more to admire the vast +amount of variety Wagner got in spite of all the obstacles self-placed +in his way. His fondness for the diminished seventh, constantly +exploited throughout, was perhaps a fondness for his own adopted +child--for no one had ever properly employed it before: to him and to +every one at the time his use of it was new. Many points in his +prolonged passages which are simply arpeggios of the chord of the +diminished seventh must have seemed novel in the eighteen-forties, +though we hardly notice them now. The four-bar lengths send the +music along with a swing very different from the jerkiness of +contemporary opera music. The cadence is used only to attain, so to +speak, a fresh jumping-off place: there is no moment of real rest: +simultaneously with the attainment of a point of rest the new impulse +is felt, and away the thing flies again. But what compensates for all +these defects--and defects they are--is the perpetual presence of the +Montsalvat music: we are never long without hearing some of it. The +Montsalvat music is the source of the charm and fascination of the +opera, and its purity and freshness seem likely for ever to keep the +opera sweet. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +EXILE + + +I + +The journey to Zurich was a risky one. Wagner, the composer of what is +now the most popular of all operas, _Lohengrin_, might indeed pass +unnoticed, for the work had not been heard; but the composer of the +_Dutchman_ and of _Rienzi_, and perhaps of _Tannhaeuser_, and above all +the organizer and conductor of the largest musical festival ever held +in Dresden, could not easily slip past unobserved. As a matter of +fact, few or none of the officials seemed very anxious to catch him; +still, thousands of innocent persons were being taken by the +Prussians, "tried," and sent to long terms of penal servitude for +having done nothing--it being argued, apparently, that any one against +whom nothing could be proved must of necessity be guilty of some +crime. Wagner's first idea was simply to keep out of the way until +things had quieted down. It took things more than a couple of years to +quiet down. Meantime a warrant was out for Richard's arrest. His +movements between Dresden, Chemnitz and Freiberg are of no interest +nowadays; but things became a little exciting from the day, May 13 +(1849), when he arrived at Liszt's. I have related how for a week or +so all seemed well, and Wagner thought himself safe, being out of +Saxony. He even intended witnessing a representation of _Tannhaeuser_, +but the day before, if not sooner, the warrant was circulated in the +German fashion of those days, with a personal description which seems +to have been made purposely vague by some friendly hand, though more +naturally one would assume it to be due to official stupidity. Wagner +heard Liszt rehearsing something of his and was overjoyed, and also he +was so confident of his own security that he still wanted to stay to +hear _Tannhaeuser_. Liszt would not hear of it; he packed his friend +off under an assumed name to some other friends; they procured a +passport, and he travelled to Zurich via Jena and Coburg. It should be +put on record that in the meantime he ran the risk of being captured +by lingering to have a last hour with his wife. Towards the end of the +month he reached Zurich, and had no more fear of the Prussian police. + +We have already seen how sick he had grown of Dresden, where he +complained of being slowly stifled; but Liszt proposed--nay, +insisted--on something worse than Dresden--Paris. Wagner was now a +penniless, homeless wanderer, as he had been when he set out from Riga +ten years before; and Liszt fondly believed that only by making a hit +in Paris could he command any enduring success in Germany, and thus +gain money to live on, wherever he might happen to be. Liszt was the +good genie who found the funds, and Wagner, having nothing better to +propose, was bound to obey. So he stayed three days in Zurich and set +out; and a deal of good he did! He knew absolutely that such work as +his could scarcely hope to get so much as a bare hearing, and the +event proved him to be right. He submitted scenarios of several operas +to a French poet, and there, for all practical purposes, the business +ended. Here is a fragment from a letter to Theodor Uhlig, dated +Zurich, August 9, '49-- + + "I am living here, helped in communistic fashion by Liszt, in + good spirits, and I may say prosperously, according to my best + nature; my only and great anxiety is about my poor wife, whom I + am expecting here very shortly. To my very great astonishment, I + find that I am a celebrity here; made so, indeed, by means of + the piano scores of all my operas, out of which whole acts are + repeatedly performed at concerts and at choral unions. At the + beginning of the winter I shall go again to Paris to have + something performed and to put my opera matter into order. You + cannot imagine what joy one finds in frugality if one knows that + thereby the noblest thing, freedom, is assured; you know how + long I was brewing in my blood the Dresden catastrophe, only I + had no presentiment of the exact hurricane which would drive me + thence; but you are thoroughly convinced that all the annuities + and restitutions in the world would not induce me to become + again what, to my greatest sorrow, I was in Dresden. I have just + a last remnant of curiosity, however, and you would give me much + pleasure in letting me know how matters stand with you. My wife + has never found leisure to give me news of Dresden, the + theatre, and the band. Do relieve this last Dresden longing. Do + you happen to know anything definite about the state of the + police inquiry? The fate of Heubner, Roeckel and Bakunin + troubles me much. Anyhow, these persons ought not to be + imprisoned. But don't let me speak of it! In this matter one can + only judge justly and adequately if one looks at the period from + a lofty point of view. Woe to him who acts with sublime purpose, + and then, for his deeds, is judged by the police! It is a grief + and a shame which only our times can show." + +He had no real intention of returning to Paris. Earlier in the same +letter he speaks of ending the speculating by his proposed _Jesus of +Nazareth_. Indeed, the slavery of working for the market in Paris was +even more repugnant to him than the liveried bondage in Saxony. +Previous to the writing of this letter Liszt had lent him twelve +pounds, and by the end of July he was back in Zurich, and though, much +against his will, he did go to Paris again, and, in fact, much +farther, Zurich was thenceforth for some years his headquarters. His +host at first was an honest musician Alexander Mueller, who, I believe, +had known him in Wuerzburg long before; but he soon set up an +establishment of his own. + +His main purpose at this time was to try to clear in his brain the +confused mass of theories and speculations concerning music, and +especially opera, which had long been seething there. _Lohengrin_, the +reader must have observed, was not a road leading anywhere, but an +impasse; a step towards the attainment of his ideal it was not: it +was, on the whole, a step backwards, although it is a much more +beautiful work than _Tannhaeuser_. Wagner's mind, like Thoreau's, +Carlyle's, Brahms', needed filtering--an operation that could only be +performed in perfect peace and loneliness. Thoreau went to Walden; +Carlyle to Craigenputtock; Brahms at any rate retired from public +musical life. They worked out their own salvation. Wagner felt he must +do the same; as we know, he did the same: hence many of those terrible +volumes of prose-writings. His mental condition is indicated in +another few sentences from the letter quoted above-- + + "Yet I must frankly confess that the freedom which I here inhale + in fresh Alpine draughts is intensely pleasing to me. What is + the ordinary care about the so-called future of citizen life + compared with the feeling that we are not tyrannized over in our + noblest aims? How few men care more for themselves than for + their stomachs? Now I have made my choice, and am spared the + trouble of choosing; so I feel free in my innermost soul, and + can despise what torments me from without; no one can withdraw + himself from the evil influences of the civilized barbarism of + our time, but all can so manage that they do not rule over our + better self." + +We may as well note one point at once. When Thoreau, Carlyle and +Brahms went into their respective wildernesses, they maintained +themselves, as they thought merely proper. In this respect Wagner's +views did not coincide with theirs. He exclaims scornfully, "How few +men care more for themselves than for their stomachs!" What he meant +was that he should care for himself while his friends cared for his +stomach. As he cared a very great deal for his stomach, his demands +upon his friends were exorbitant and continuous. True, he offered the +fruits of his brain to the world at large, but all save the faithful +liked not the security. The creator of _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhaeuser_ +was quite justified in believing that he _ought_ to be supported, and +it may be that the respect we pay to the artists who starve it out is +only a complacent way of saying how pleased we are that no one asks us +to put our hands in our pockets. Nevertheless--! + +We must remember, however, that he had no money and no prospects, and +carried the burden of gigantic unfinished, un-begun projects; his +worldly situation was even more desperate than it had been in 1839. +The voyage from Pillau was a voyage into the unknown, undertaken in +the hope of securing something tangible--a performance of _Rienzi_ and +fame and money; the voyage on which he had set out was into an even +stranger unknown, a voyage into the world of ideas, without any +prospects whatever in the worldly sense. He was groping his way +confusedly towards something greater than he had hitherto +accomplished; but he knew neither what subject to select nor how to +treat it. Nature had laid this burden upon him: he took it up only +because he must; and, luckily for us, the giver of the burden had +granted him the arrogance, the courage, the imperviousness to the +estimation in which he might be held by others--if the reader likes it +better, the sheer cheek--to find the means of living while he carried +the burden to the appointed place and so achieved his end. When John +the Baptist went into the wilderness he found camel's hair to clothe +himself and wild honey to feed himself. Even these primitive luxuries +are not to be had for looking in modern Europe, and Wagner asked his +friends to supply a substitute for them. + +We find him suggesting to Liszt that a number of German princes might +combine to support him, and in return accept his works as he turned +them out; he suggested also that Liszt might himself guarantee him an +annuity. Liszt was from the beginning, and continued until the +appearance of King Ludwig in 1864, to be the most generous of helpers, +but he had ceased to go concertizing through Europe, and had not too +much money to spare. The Wesendoncks, Ritters, Wagner's own family, +all contributed as they could; but verily the man seemed to be a +bottomless abyss into which all the wealth of the world might be +dropped and still it would gape for more. If all his admirers in 1850 +had contributed a penny a month he might have been satisfied--if half +the number of his admirers in 1913 could have contributed a penny a +year he would have had more than even he could have spent. But no such +plan seemed to be feasible; and on Liszt fell the brunt, whilst the +others did what they could or thought fit to do. Wagner may +reasonably be defended against the charge of greed or luxury. He was +in chronic ill-health, and his stupendous exertions made it unlikely +he would ever be better. We can believe even Praeger when he tells us +that Wagner's skin was so sensitive that he could tolerate only the +finest silk next to it; for we know that from babyhood he was tortured +by eczema. Had he not coddled himself he would not have had the +strength and nerve to achieve anything at all. He never knew one day +where next day's food was to come from; he was a homeless exile. +Happiness he never knew: such men as Wagner are not created to be +happy. Publishers and opera-directors alike treated him scurvily. To +show his state of mind I quote a portion of another letter to Uhlig, +dated September, 1850, after the production of _Lohengrin_ at Weimar-- + + "Liszt spoke to me previously about an honorarium of thirty + louis d'or for _Lohengrin_--instead of which I had altogether + only 130 thalers. Further, he announced to me that I should + receive a commission to write _Siegfried_ for Weimar, and be + paid beforehand enough to keep me alive undisturbed until the + work was finished. Until now they preserve there the most + stubborn silence. Whether I should give _Siegfried_ to Weimar, + intending it to be produced there, is after all a question + which, as matters now stand, I would probably only answer with + an unqualified No! I need not begin to assure you that I really + abandoned _Lohengrin_ when I permitted its production at + Weimar. I certainly received a letter yesterday from Zigesar, + which informed me that the second performance--given, through + somewhat energetic remonstrance on my part, only after most + careful rehearsals, and without cuts--was a wonder of success + and of effect on the public, and that it was perfectly clear + that it was and would remain a "draw". Yet I need not give you + my further reasons when I declare that I should wish to send + _Siegfried_ into the world in different fashion from that which + would be possible to the good people there. With regard to this, + I am busy with wishes and plans which, at first look, seem + chimerical, yet these alone give me the heart to finish + _Siegfried_. To realize the best, the most decisive, the most + important work which, under the present circumstances, I can + produce--in short, the accomplishment of the conscious mission + of my life--needs a matter of perhaps 10,000 thalers. If I could + ever command such a sum I would arrange thus:--here, where I + happen to be, and where many a thing is far from bad--I would + erect, after my own plans, in a beautiful field, near the town, + a rough theatre of planks and beams, and merely furnish it with + the decorations and machinery necessary for the production of + _Siegfried_. Then I would select the best singers to be found + anywhere, and invite them for six weeks to Zurich. I would try + to form a chorus here, consisting, for the most part, of + amateurs; there are splendid voices here, and strong, healthy + people. I should invite in the same way my orchestra. At the new + year announcements and invitations to all the friends of the + musical drama would appear in all the German newspapers, with a + call to visit the proposed dramatic musical festival. Any one + giving notice, and travelling for this purpose to Zurich, would + receive a certain entree--naturally, like all the entrees, + gratis. Besides, I should invite to a performance the young + people here, the university, the choral unions. When everything + was in order I should arrange, under these circumstances, for + three performances of _Siegfried_ in one week. After the third + the theatre would be pulled down, and my score burnt. To those + persons who had been pleased with the thing I should then say, + 'Now do likewise.' But if they wanted to hear something new from + me, I should say, 'You get the money.' Well, do I seem quite mad + to you? It may be so, but I assure you to attain this end is the + hope of my life, the prospect which alone can tempt me to take + in hand a work of art. So--get me 10,000 thalers--that's all!" + +His friends, I say, did their best; but Liszt, though his generosity +had no bounds, still clung to the odd idea that Wagner should do +something for himself; also he could not get it out of his head that +the something could only be done in Paris. So, in another of the Uhlig +letters, dated more than six months anterior to the above, we find him +writing, half wearily, half defiantly-- + + "I have never felt the consciousness of freedom so beneficent + as now, nor have I ever been so convinced that only a loving + communion with others procures freedom. If, through the + assistance of X., I should be enabled to look firmly at the + immediate future without any necessity to earn a living, those + years would be the most decisive of my life, and especially of + my artistic career; for now I could look at Paris with calmness + and dignity; whereas, before, the fear of being compelled by + outward necessity to make concessions, made every step which I + took for Paris a false one. Now it would stand otherwise. + Formerly it was thus: 'Disown thyself, become another, become + Parisian in order to win for yourself Paris.' Now I would say: + 'Remain just as thou art, show to the Parisians what thou art + willing and able to produce from within, give them an idea of + it, and in order that they may comprehend thee, speak to them so + that they may understand thee; for thy aim is just this--to be + understood by them as that which thou art,' I hope you agree + with this. + + "So on January 16, 1850, I go to Paris; a couple of overtures + will at once be put into practice; and I shall take my completed + opera scheme: it is _Wiland der Schmied_. First of all I attack + the five-act opera form, then the statute according to which in + every great opera there must be a special ballet. If I can only + inspire Gustave Vaez, and impart to him the understanding of my + intention, and the will to carry it through with me, well and + good, if not, I'll seek till I find the right poet. For every + difficulty standing in the way of the understanding I, and the + subject connected with me, are attacked by the Press; if it is + a question of clearing away without mercy the whole rubbish and + cleansing with fresh water--in that matter I am in my right + element, for my aim is to create revolution whithersoever I + come. If I succumb--well the defeat is more honourable than a + triumph in the opposite direction; even without personal victory + I am, in any case, useful to the cause. In this matter victory + will only be really assured by endurance; who holds out wins + absolutely; and holding out with me means--for I am in no way in + doubt about my force of will--to have enough money to strike + hard and without intermission and not to worry about my own + means of living. If I have enough money, I must at once see + about getting my pamphlet on art translated and circulated. + Well, that will be seen when I am on the spot, and I shall + decide according to the means at my disposal. If my money comes + to an end too soon, I confidently hope for help from another + quarter--_i.e._ from the social republic, which sooner or later + must inevitably be established in France. If it comes + about--well, here I am ready for it, and, in the matter of art, + I have solidly prepared the way for it. It will not happen + exactly as my good-natured friends wish, according to their + predilection for the evil present time, but quite otherwise, + and, with good fortune, in a far better way--for, as they wish, + I only serve myself--but as I wish to serve all." + +The history of this third Paris episode is distressing enough; but we +to-day, knowing what Paris was and what Wagner was, need not trouble +much about it. I have passed over it quickly; but yet another excerpt +from an Uhlig letter may be given to show how matters did _not_ +progress (dated Paris, March 13, 1850)-- + + "So, my Parisian art-wallowings are given up since I recognized + their profane character. Heavens, how Fischer will rejoice when + he hears I have become a man of order! Everything strengthened + me in my ardent desire for renunciation. After endless waiting, + I at last receive the orchestral parts of my _Tannhaeuser_ + overture, and pay with pleasure fifteen francs carriage for + them. I then find that the parts have arrived much too soon, for + the Union Musicale has time for everything except for the + rehearsal of my overtures. I am, however, told that there may be + rehearsals at the end of this month, and actually under a + conductor who, in all the performances given under his + direction, carries out the happy idea of indicating _tempi, + nuances_, style in a manner quite different from that intended + by the composer; and with passionate conscientiousness, insists + on studying and conducting himself without ever allowing the + composer to expound his confused views about his own work. + Rocked in blissful dreams, I receive at last a letter of + Heine's, with an enclosure from Wigand--namely, a money-order + for ten louis d'or, which, from your letter, I had unfortunately + expected would come to twenty louis d'or. + + "In short, early to-morrow morning (at eight o'clock) I start + off with the intention of being back here at the end of the + month, for the possible rehearsals of my overture. + + "I am sorry for Heine and Fischer. Poor fellows! they picture me + floating along on a sea of Parisian hopes; they will be greatly + and painfully undeceived. Salute and console them. When my + cursed ill-humour of to-day has passed away, I will write to + Heine. To his fidelity must I present an earnest face. A + thousand greetings to my dear R----s, from whom I should so + much have liked to receive a line. The merchant M----, of + Dresden, will bring you something from me when he returns from + his great Parisian business trip; a good daguerreotype copy from + an excellent portrait which my friend Rietz has taken of me + here. + + "What more shall I write? I am all confusion about my hasty + departure. I have now only to write the verses to my _Wiland_; + otherwise the whole poem is finished--German, German! How my pen + flew along! This _Wiland_ will carry you all away on its wings; + even your friendly Parisian hopes. If K---- does not write soon, + I shall presume that he is raving too madly about Krebs. Krebs + is clever--so is Michalesi--what more do you want? But K---- + should restrain himself, and not give himself away so much as he + does, as with me! + + "Farewell! Another time you will receive a more sensible letter, + with a list of misprints in my last book. If people do not + comprehend me even after this work, if I am charged with + improprieties, I clearly see the reason; one cannot understand + my writings for the misprints. To my joy some one is playing + the piano overhead; but no melody, only accompaniment, which has + a charm for me, in that I can practice myself in the art of + finding melodies"-- + +And, finally, these few bitter lines, sent after his return to +Zurich-- + + "It is impossible for me to conduct my overture myself in Paris, + for this reason, that it will not be performed there at all, as + there was not proper time for rehearsal--perhaps "next year". I + received this answer on the eve of my departure from Paris, and + truly in a very pleasant quarter. I think I never laughed so + loud and so from the bottom of my heart as on that evening and + in that place." + +It will be seen that Wagner never ceased to work during all this +dreary time. He drafted his _Wieland the Smith_, made tentative shots +at what at length grew into the _Nibelung's Ring_, and poured forth an +enormous quantity of very prosy prose. Deferring a consideration of +this last, let me tell briefly what his everyday life was. Through a +little money from pamphlets, performing fees, etc., but mainly through +the generosity of friends, he managed to live; though, as I have said, +he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in +from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, +and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he +rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other +musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were +placed under his direction; and Hans von Buelow came to serve his +apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. +Wagner mentions a performance of the _Flying Dutchman_, which afforded +him pleasure; for though, as he himself says somewhere, the band +consisted of players more accustomed to play at dances than in grand +opera, and not a singer of celebrity took part, yet all were +painstaking, enthusiastic and sympathetic, and a fine representation +was the result. This was the work he did outside his own house; his +inside occupations I have mentioned. He lived with almost clockwork +punctuality. Every afternoon he walked, accompanied by his dog, +amongst the mountains, and to these walks may be attributed, I think, +the atmosphere and colour of the _Ring_ and its backgrounds. Wagner +was as great a master as has lived of pictorial music, and the hills +and ravines, the storms amongst the pines, were things he must have +craved to translate into terms of his own art. After all, he found +time also for a good deal of social intercourse, though the enormous +quantity of work he turned out makes this difficult to believe. But +Liszt visited him; Praeger undoubtedly did; Buelow, as said, was with +him for some time; the Wesendoncks, his greatest pecuniary benefactors +after a while, were there; Wille and his wife were there; Alexander +Ritter, son of Frau Ritter, who made Wagner a regular allowance from +1851 to 1856, became his firm friend, and afterwards married one of +his nieces; there were Baumgaertner and Sulzer--in fact, a bare list of +names would fill a few pages. We must not take Wagner's plaints in his +letters too seriously; he was an overworked, nervous man of moods; +like Mr. Micawber, he seems to have come home of an evening weeping +and declaring himself a ruined man, and in a few hours gone to bed +calculating the cost of throwing out bow windows to his house. +Throughout his life his resilience of spirit was one of his most +amazing characteristics: I have no doubt that in the depth of despair +he would write to Liszt swearing that he only wanted solitude; and in +an hour's time he would think it might be pleasant to spend an hour +with the Wesendoncks--and go. In the same way he longed earnestly for +death while spending all his friends' money on baths and cures and +doctors, and seeing to it that Minna provided the best of everything +for his table. The pile of work remains to show his life was one of +incredible industry. Between the end of 1848 and the end of 1854 he +wrote at least a dozen long pamphlets, and as many more that are not +so long; he wrote the words of the _Ring_ and composed and scored the +_Rhinegold_, and began the music of the _Valkyrie_. Further, he +revised the overture to Gluck's _Iphigenia in Aulis_, and +reconstructed his own _Faust_ overture. How on earth he managed his +interminable correspondence is more than I can guess. When we bear in +mind the calls upon his time by his superintendence of opera and +concerts, we cannot wonder that a man who did so much, and was born a +weakling, was rarely quite well, and incessantly complains of his +nerves. Yet these nerves, he wrote, gave him wonderful hours of +insight. + +There remains one thing to mention of these first Zurich years: his +operas were gradually spreading through Germany, and, especially, +Liszt had produced _Lohengrin_ at Weimar in 1850. It quickly became so +popular that before long Wagner could complain, or boast, that he was +the only German who had not heard it. His movements during these years +can easily be traced. Zurich remained his headquarters, but he went +hither and thither, mainly in search of health. But the chief cause of +his ill-health he carried with him--his irrepressible activity of +mind. Could some intelligent doctor have given him a dose to stop him +thinking for not less than one month, he would, I verily believe, have +enjoyed ten years of unbroken freedom from sickness. These flittings +are of no great interest in themselves; he never got far until his +famous expedition to London in the summer of 1855. But now it is time +to take a glance at the writings of the period. + + +II + +In the introduction I announced my intention of dealing with Wagner's +prose-writings only in so far as they reveal anything of value +concerning the artist. His theories have been explained and elucidated +to death; hundreds of books have been written about them; never was a +man so much explained; never did a man suffer more from the +explanations. The day when Wagner began, not to theorise, but to +publish his theorisings, was an unlucky one for him. He began with the +intention, and certainly in the hope, of making himself clear to +himself; as I have already remarked, he wanted to find what it was he +wanted to be at and how to get there; and if, having achieved his end, +he had put all his pages of reasoning in the fire, he would have done +himself no ill-service. But he needed money, and in the 'forties and +'fifties there were, strangely enough, numbers of people who would pay +money for such stuff. Anything dull, "philosophic" in tone, anything +full of long words, longer sentences, and meanings too profound to be +understood by mortal--anything of this sort was sure of a paying +audience, if small, in "philosophic" Germany, no matter how fallacious +were the premises, how wrong the history, how perverse the inferences. +Hundreds of people must have risen from reading Wagner's essays +feeling themselves very deeply intellectual. In his first Paris days +Wagner had at once flown to his prose-scribbling pen as an instrument +to procure him bread; now, in Zurich, while writing and arguing mainly +to free his own soul, he had an eye on the publisher and the public, +for he needed bread as much as ever he had needed it; and he needed +other things besides: all the luxuries he had grown accustomed to and +could have done without ten years earlier. He persuaded himself of the +validity of another reason why he should unload his prose-wares on the +world. He had written much at times in various papers with a +wholehearted wish to purify and advance art. Now he determined to be +himself John the Baptist walking, in defiance of the laws of nature, +miles in front of himself in the wilderness, crying out that he who +was to redeem German music and the German folk was coming. He actually +persuaded himself, I say, that by reading these lucubrations German +audiences would prepare themselves to understand his works--as yet in +process of incubation--at a first hearing! Fools we are, and slight; +but surely no man was ever a bigger fool than our poor Richard when he +thought that a great work of art could possibly or should be +understood at the first glance, and that the feat would be easy if +only one had read some theories of art beforehand. The contrary holds +true: if you have seen and felt Wagner's operas, you may understand +what he is talking about in his articles and pamphlets; but to read +these first is merely to bewilder yourself utterly when you go to see +the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very +brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be +remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been +well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there is, to my mind, only one +worth reading, Mr. Ernest Newman's valuable _Study of Wagner_. + +The French stories and articles are as good as anything Wagner wrote. +He had not yet fallen into the villainous German philosophic style, or +was restrained by the consciousness that he must write in a lingo that +could be translated into French. These pieces were written for bread +and bread alone in the terrible years of starvation, 1840-41. _An +End_ [of a German Musician] _in Paris_ is full of autobiography, and +intensely interesting on that account; it is interesting, too, because +of its display of the naive arrogance which leads Germans to believe +the whole world was made for Germans. This German musician, for +instance, arrives in Paris, where scores of French musicians--Berlioz +amongst them--are roughing it, if not actually starving in the +streets; yet he expects the French to find him employment in +preference to their own countrymen, their own flesh and blood. One can +overlook that, however; and the story is pathetic and beautifully +written. _A Pilgrimage to Beethoven_ is, in its way, a masterpiece. It +also is full of self-revelation; some of it conscious, some +unconscious. _A Happy Evening_ is another charming thing; the skit on +how Rossini's _Stabat Mater_ came to be composed is amusing, and is +cruel with a cruelty that was justified. The other articles are of no +particular value, save, perhaps, that on the overture; they are of an +ephemeral character and were evidently concocted when the writer was +fully aware he was writing for French readers, and if he hurt French +feelings or vanity, a French editor wouldn't print, wouldn't publish, +wouldn't pay. + +The next production of any importance is his autobiographical sketch, +and of this nothing need be said. So much of it as seemed to me +needful has been utilized in this book. The account of the bringing +home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial +interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can +imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work. +Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way +through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English +officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech +delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is +characteristic--exceptionally so even for Wagner of this period, +1844--in its assertion of the Germanity of Weber and Weber's music; +and his deep joy that at last the German musician's bones should +repose in German earth. This topic of Germanism haunted Wagner for +years, and I may have a little to say about it later. The account of +the 1846 rendering of the Choral Symphony is the most masterly +exposition of the right and the wrong way of playing orchestral music +to be found in any language. Wagner's method was, after all, very +simple: the conductor had to understand and feel the music aright, and +then pains, pains, never-ending pains must be expended on coaxing, +persuading, bullying or in some other way getting the band to +reproduce precisely what he felt. + +We now reach the mass of theatrical and philosophical writings on +opera, drama, and, indeed, art generally. I need do nothing more than +give the fundamental basis of them all, the one point which he argues +in a thousand ways through them all. Wagner would have it, then, that +just about the time he came into the world, or a little later, +all--nothing less than all--the arts had gone as far as they could +separately, each alone. Art in ancient days, before there were _arts_, +was a fusion of music, dancing, poetry, statuary and painting--the old +drama. That each form of art might develop its full possibilities, +they separated and each went its own way. Wagner was mainly concerned +with music and with drama (poetic drama). Music reached its apogee +with Beethoven. Regardless of the fact that after Beethoven had +introduced words in the Choral Symphony, he went on composing music of +unequalled depth and splendour without words, Wagner insisted that he +felt the impossibility of doing more without words. We hear, said +Wagner, all these sounds going on, this stream of melody, and it is +very delightful to the ear; but unfortunately the highly organized +brain of modern man steps in and insists on knowing what is the +matter. What is the meaning of it all? asks the inquisitive intellect. +Words are necessary to satisfy the intellect. On the other hand, +poetic drama, in its endeavour to express pure feeling, could go no +further than Goethe and Schiller without becoming mere gush--a sort of +music that was not music. Wherefore music must be added. But this +combination of music and poetry was insufficient; we must have the +thing in visible form before the eye--the acted music-drama. Then the +actors must understand statuesque poses and get into them; they must +understand painting and contrive to form themselves, together with the +scenic background and accessories, into pictures. So once again we +should have the perfect fusion of all the arts, and live happily ever +after. + +To me there is almost more lunacy in this than in Wagner's political +tenets. It is a pack of fallacies. Here is my answer-- + +(i) As to an Art which was a perfect fusion of all the arts, it was +never done and never at any time attempted. + +(ii) The finest music yet created has no words to it: the meaning is +perfectly clear without words. + +(iii) The highest poetic drama needs no music. Without verging on +gush, it affords expression to the deepest and most intense feeling. + +(iv) Fine poetry has been written in the dramatic form, though it will +not bear acting and was not intended to be acted. But we may +cheerfully concede that genuine drama ought to be acted. + +(v) The function of scenery is to suggest atmosphere and nothing more. +It cannot be a picture; it can only be an imitation of a picture. + +(vi) An actor who tried to look like a statue going through a variety +of poses would only make the audience laugh; or we should think he had +been taken ill. + +At every point Wagner's reasoning goes to the ground. His basic facts +are no facts, and his reasoning is absurd. All the essays on music and +on drama and on the music-drama are as much an expression of himself +as his music-dramas. I have in earlier chapters gone so far as even to +labour the point that he could not get on in music without the aid of +drama; and as he could never look beyond himself nor imagine that +what he could not do--_i.e._ compose pure music--some one else--_e.g._ +Schumann or Brahms--could do, he went out with absolute confidence to +persuade the world that he was right and all others were wrong. To +those who may be interested in the study of Wagner, the mighty +creative artist, as a cerebral curiosity, I commend Mr. Newman's book +aforementioned. Mr. Newman points out that Wagner was so magnificently +self-centred that he attributed all opposition to "misunderstanding." +To him it was incomprehensible that any one should say, "Yes, I +perfectly understand your argument; but I beg leave not to agree with +you." Any one who said that at once aroused his suspicions; such an +one, thought Wagner, cannot possibly be sincere. Hence the hot +denunciations of all and sundry who differed from him; hence the +nightmare phantom of an organized body of "persecutors." Had he not +been blinded by his wrath, and looked a little closer, he might have +seen that the persecutors, far from being an organized body or +confederacy, were fighting angrily, bitterly, amongst themselves. Many +of them had this in common: they could not understand and did not like +Wagner's music. That is different from the "wilful misunderstanding" +Wagner moaned about. These musicians could not help themselves; as +Sancho Panza remarks, "Man is as God made him, and generally a good +deal worse." + +The essay which provoked the widest and fiercest hostility, especially +amongst the Jews, was the _Judaism in Music_. Wagner started from two +premises, (i) That the Jews, being alien in thought and feeling, could +not express themselves in _our (i.e._ German) art; and (2) that had +they thought and felt like Germans, they would have succeeded no +better; for music--that is, song--is idealized speech, and the +gurglings and bubblings which do duty for speech with the Jews cannot +be idealized into anything beautiful. The answer is that very great +music has been written by Jews; that music was an English, a Flemish +and an Italian art before the Germans knew anything about it; that if +music must be idealized German speech, with its guttural chokings, the +less we have of it the better. The Jews paid little attention to +Wagner's arguments, but objected to his "personalities." Now, the +reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are +those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own +expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or +"chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own +whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal +attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and some of the worst of these +can be traced to Jew scribblers. Yet on the publication of _Judaism in +Music_ in the _Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik_, a wail went up from these +journalistic descendants of Elijah; and several prominent Jew +musicians signed and presented to the authorities of the Leipzig +conservatoire of music a petition praying that Brendel (the editor who +published the essay) might be dismissed from his post in the +conservatoire. These underhand tactics put the Jews out of court. +Nevertheless, Wagner's essay was a bad mistake. It is bad science, bad +history, bad argument; it did no person, no cause, any good, and it +worked a very great deal of harm. + +Wagner was at his best when writing about music or about musicians he +had known. A paper on Spontini, belonging to this period (Spontini +died in 1851), has a pleasant, generous note; and the account of the +pompous old gentleman's visit to Dresden a few years previous is +amusingly lifelike. The _Communication to my Friends_, a trifle +egotistical, is still full of interest. The article on musical +criticism is not so good as it might have been. Wagner had the utmost +contempt for the ordinary press criticism of the day: with that sort +of thing, he wrote Uhlig, one could not tempt the cat from behind the +stove. He knew what criticism should not be, but when he came to what +it should be his view was warped by the obsession that pure music had +reached its boundaries, and the future of music was involved with the +future of the music-drama. When his prejudices were not aroused, he +himself was the greatest critic who has lived: his programmes of the +Choral and Eroica Symphonies are masterpieces in their kind; and his +analysis of the _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture can never be surpassed. +Stage-managers have found his directions for the performing of +_Tannhaeuser_, _Lohengrin_ and the _Dutchman_ invaluable; they are also +sometimes read by conductors, and should be read by singers. They show +how in composing his operas Wagner meant every note he put to paper: +the most minute fibres of the musical growth are alive, a living part +of the organism. + + +III + +"I shall probably never come back to Germany." So wrote Wagner from +Paris on March 2, 1855, to his friend Wilhelm Fischer, stage-manager +and chorus-master at the Dresden opera. Wagner was then on his way to +London to direct a series of Philharmonic concerts. "It was a great +piece of folly for me to come to London...." So wrote Wagner from +London to Fischer a little--perhaps a month--later. It was, says Mr. +J.S. Shedlock in his admirable translation of the _Letters to Dresden +Friends_, "an unfortunate visit." But was it? and, if so, in what +sense? "The public of the Philharmonic concerts is very favourably +disposed towards me." "The orchestra has taken a great liking to me, +and the public approves of me." And as a matter of fact Wagner had no +reason to be dissatisfied with the visit, nor has Mr. Shedlock for +calling it "unfortunate." The whole situation is summed up in another +communication to Fischer, dated London, June 15, 1855-- + + "... The false reports about my quarrel with the directors of + the Philharmonic Society here and my consequent departure from + London are based upon the following incident-- + + "When I went into the cloak-room after the fourth concert, I + there met several friends, whom I made acquainted with my + extreme annoyance and ill-humour that I should ever have + consented to conduct concerts of such a kind, as it was not at + all in my line. These endless programmes, with their mass of + instrumental and vocal pieces, wearied me and tormented my + aesthetic sense; I was forced to see that the power of + established custom rendered it impossible to bring about any + reduction or change whatever; I therefore nourished a feeling of + disquietude, which had more to do with the fact that I had again + embarked on a thing of the sort--much less with the conditions + here themselves, which I really knew beforehand--but least of + all with my public, which always received me with friendliness + and approbation, often indeed with great warmth. + + "On the other hand, the abuse of the London critics was a matter + of perfect indifference to me, for their hostility only proved + to all the world that I had not bribed them, while it gave me, + on the contrary, much satisfaction to watch how they always left + the door open, so that had I made the least approach they would + have turned to different pitch; but naturally I thought of + nothing of the kind.... + + "On that evening I was really in a furious rage, that after the + A minor Symphony I should have had to conduct a miserable vocal + piece and a trivial overture of Onslow's; and, as is my way, in + deepest dudgeon I told my friends aloud that I had that day + conducted for the last time; that on the morrow I should send in + my resignation, and journey home. By chance a concert-singer, + R---- (a German-Jew youth) was present; he caught up my words + and conveyed them all hot to a newspaper reporter. Ever since + then rumours have been flying about in the German papers, which + have misled even you. I need scarcely tell you that the + representations of my friends, who escorted me home, succeeded + in making me withdraw the hasty resolution conceived at a moment + of despondency. + + "Since then we have had the _Tannhaeuser_ overture at the fifth + concert; it was very well played, received by the public in a + quite friendly manner, but not yet properly understood. + + "All the more pleased was I, therefore, when the Queen, who had + promised (which is a rare event, and does not happen every year) + to attend the seventh concert, ordered a repetition of the + overture. Now, if in itself it was extremely gratifying that the + Queen should pay no regard to my highly compromised political + position (which had been dragged to light with great malignity + by the _Times_), and without hesitation assist at a public + performance under my direction, then her further behaviour + towards me afforded me at last an affecting compensation for all + the contrarieties and vulgar animosities which I had here + endured. + + "She and Prince Albert, who both sat immediately facing the + orchestra, applauded after the _Tannhaeuser_ overture--with which + the first part concluded--with graciousness, almost amounting to + a challenge, so that the public broke out into lively and + prolonged applause. During the interval the Queen summoned me to + the _salon_, and received me before her court with the cordial + words, 'I am delighted to make your acquaintance; your + composition has enraptured me!' + + "In a long conversation, in which Prince Albert also took part, + she further inquired about my other works, and asked if it would + not be possible to have my operas translated into Italian, so + that she might be able to hear them, too, in London? I was + naturally obliged to give a negative answer, and, moreover, to + explain that my visit was only a flying one, as conducting for a + concert society--the only thing open to me here--was not at all + my affair. At the end of the concert the Queen and the Prince + applauded me again most courteously. + + "I relate this to you because it will afford you pleasure; and I + willingly allow you to make further use of this information, as + I see how much mistake and malice touching myself and my stay in + London has to be set right or defeated. + + "The last concert is on the 25th, and I leave on the 26th, so as + to resume in my quiet retreat my sadly interrupted work." + +Wagner was well paid for his work; he was well received in society; +the band liked him and the audiences liked him--the one cause of all +his grumbling was the character of the bulk of the music he had to +conduct. One might expect even a Wagner to prefer conducting a few +pieces of tedious stuff, even to put up with poor antediluvian Onslow, +rather than to return to his daily task of writing begging letters to +his friends from Zurich. Still, these are matters of taste, and each +to his own. + +To those who only know the Philharmonic to-day, in its more or less +repentant and reformed state, it may not seem odd that Wagner should +have conducted its concerts. But to those who remember it from, say, +twenty-five years ago to quite recent times, a certain incongruity is +apparent. Wagner, the sincere, fiery artist, the man devoted to, +swallowed up by, his art; the man who journeyed, with his wife and a +dog, all the way from Russia to Paris with his bare travelling +expenses in his pocket; who had been through a bloody revolution, and +was now a political refugee; who had written part of the _Ring_ and +had _Tristan_ "already planned in his head"; a conductor whose ideal +was nothing lower than perfection--this gentleman came from Zurich to +conduct a society whose membership was compact of trim and prim +mediocrity, and whose directors were mostly duffers. Can we wonder +that both sides were disappointed? These amiable directors never quite +recovered from the honour of having Mendelssohn to conduct for them; +and they undoubtedly looked upon Wagner as scarcely a next-best. The +days of oratorio had by no means finished yet; oratorio was the thing; +an instrumental concert was very well for a change once in a while, +provided there were plenty of Italian opera airs to sugar the nasty +pill; Haydn was the last word in symphony, the homage paid to +Beethoven being the merest lip-worship. The Philharmonic was certainly +no place for Wagner; yet, it must be insisted, there was no real +reason for grumbling on either side. Wagner got his money; the society +had one of the best seasons on its record. + +It is a pity that he who might have been the most valuable witness in +the matter should prove at every point to be the least trustworthy. +Ferdinand Praeger had known Wagner in his university days. They seem +to have been barely acquainted; but the moment Praeger found Wagner +was coming he scented advertisement for himself, as is usual with his +kind--the kind being the foreign professor settled in London. He will +have it that he arranged the whole business; but the terrible truth is +that he seems to have done no more than make his compatriot +comfortable in our dreary city. Certainly he did that, and Wagner +repaid it by inviting him to stay in Zurich, and the visit came off +duly. Sainton, who was by way of being a noted violinist, was head and +front of the offending from the directors' point of view--perhaps in +Wagner's view likewise. The directors were, to speak as the vulgar, in +a mortal stew. There was a small audience for orchestral functions in +those days, and Dr. Wylde, a worthy academic gentleman of no musical +distinction whatever, had started a rival series of concerts, and had +in this year, 1855, engaged no less a personage than Berlioz to +conduct. A rival was looked for; and since the directors knew little +or nothing of continental doings, as soon as Sainton told them one +Richard Wagner was their man, they agreed that negotiations should be +opened. Wagner came; and the visit ought to be interesting to English +musicians, for at Portland Terrace he scored part of the _Valkyrie_. +Moreover, he met Berlioz at dinner; but never those twain could meet +in other than a formal way. Neither liked the other; neither liked the +other's music; their rivalry in London mattered not two sous to the +one or one pfennig to the other, but they were both disappointed men +seeking appreciation and approbation on the continent. Wagner had +tried in Paris and Berlioz had tried in Germany. Wagner worked +stubbornly the whole time, and was mightily glad to get back to Zurich +in July. The episode is of small importance in Wagner's life; but the +attitude of the Press naturally filled him with disgust. He said if he +had paid the critics he would have received "favourable notices," and +when I reflect on the smallness of the critics' official salaries and +the splendour in which some of them lived I cannot but think he was +right: the money necessary to keep up big establishments had to be +found somewhere--where? + +During the next few years Wagner went many journeys, again mainly in +search of "cures," but never got far. He worked unceasingly at the +_Ring_, with the wildest plans in his head regarding performances. How +wild some of these must have seemed at the time may be judged from the +following paragraphs taken from a letter to Uhlig (Dec. 12, 1851). +This is, of course, earlier than the period we are now dealing with; +but he never departed from the idea, and it eventually took shape at +Bayreuth, a quarter of a century later. Here is the letter-- + + "For the moment, I can only tell you a little about the + intended completion of the great dramatic poem which I have now + in hand. Just reflect that before I wrote the poem, _Siegfried's + Death_, I sketched out the whole myth in all its gigantic + sequence, and that poem was the attempt--which, with regard to + our theatre, appeared possible to me--to give one chief + catastrophe of the myth, together with an indication of that + sequence. + + "Now, when I set to work to write out the music in full, still + keeping our modern theatre firmly in mind, I felt how incomplete + the proposed undertaking would be; the vast train of events, + which first gives to the characters their immense and striking + significance, would be presented to the mind merely by means of + epic narrative. + + "So to make _Siegfried's Death_ possible, I wrote _Young + Siegfried_; but the more the whole took shape, the more did I + perceive, while developing the scenes and music of _Young + Siegfried_, that I had only increased the necessity for a + clearer presentation of the whole story to the senses. I now see + that, in order to become intelligible on the stage, I must work + out the whole myth in plastic style. It was not this + consideration alone which impelled me to my new plan, but + especially the overpowering impressiveness of the subject-matter + which I thus acquire for presentation, and which supplies me + with a wealth of material for artistic fashioning which it would + be a sin to leave unused. Think of the contents of the narrative + of Bruennhilde, in the last scene of _Young Siegfried_; the fate + of Siegmund and Sieglind; the struggle of Wotan with his desire + and with custom (Fricka); the noble defiance of the Walkuere; the + tragic anger of Wotan in punishing this defiance. + + "Think of this from my point of view, with the extraordinary + wealth of situations brought together in one coherent drama, and + you have a tragedy of most moving effect; one which clearly + presents to the senses all that my public needs to have taken + in, in order easily to understand, in their widest meaning, + _Young Siegfried_ and the _Death_. These three dramas will be + preceded by a grand introductory play, which will be produced by + itself on a special opening festival day. It begins with + Alberich, who pursues the three water-witches of the Rhine with + his lust of love, is rejected with merry fooling by one after + the other, and, mad with rage, at last steals the Rhine gold + from them. + + "This gold in itself is only a shining ornament in the depth of + the waves (_Siegfried's Death_, Act III, Sc. i), but it + possesses another power, which only he who renounces love can + succeed in drawing from it. (Here you have the plasmic motive up + to _Siegfried's Death_. Think of all its pregnant consequences.) + The capture of Alberich; the dividing of the gold between the + two giant brothers; the speedy fulfilment of Alberich's curse on + these two, the one of whom immediately slays the other--all this + is the theme of this introductory play. + + "But I have already chattered too much, and even that is too + little to give you a clear idea of the vast wealth of the + subject-matter.... + + "But one other thing determined me to develop this plan; viz. + the impossibility which I felt of producing _Young Siegfried_ in + anything like a suitable manner either at Weimar or anywhere + else. I cannot and will not endure any more the martyrdom of + things done by halves. With this my new conception I withdraw + entirely from all connection with our theatre and public of + to-day; I break decisively and for ever with the formal present. + + "Do you now ask me what I propose to do with my scheme?--First + of all to carry it out, so far as my poetical and musical powers + will allow. This will occupy me at least three full years. And + so I place my future quite in R----'s hands; God grant that + they may remain unfalteringly true to me! + + "I can only think of a performance under quite other conditions. + I shall erect a theatre on the banks of the Rhine, and issue + invitations to a great dramatic festival. After a year's + preparation, I shall produce my complete work in a series of + four days. + + "However extravagant this plan may be, it is, nevertheless, the + only one to which I can devote my life and labours. If I live to + see it accomplished, I have lived gloriously; if not, I die for + something grand. Only this can still give me any pleasure." + +His creditors from Dresden were everlastingly at his heels; even in +Dresden, with a substantial and regular salary, he could not keep out +of debt--though it must be remembered that older debts pursued him +from the Riga days, and even earlier. By April of 1856 the _Valkyrie_ +was scored and _Siegfried_ begun; next year he finished the first act +of the latter. His life, apparently, went on pretty much as before; +but the financial situation was rapidly becoming intolerable--even to +him. The famous invitation to write an opera for Rio de Janeiro +arrived, and he promptly set to work on the subject he had mentioned +in a letter to Liszt a few years before, _Tristan and Isolda_. His +health grew worse than ever, and somehow he found the means to spend +the winter in Venice. Then he settled for a while in Lucerne, and +completed _Tristan_. + +Afterwards he removed to Paris, where in 1860 he gave some concerts; +in the same year the score of _Tristan_ was issued; next year came the +_Tannhaeuser_ fiasco at the opera, and later he heard _Lohengrin_, in +Vienna, for the first time; next he stayed for a while at Biebrich, +and finally settled in Vienna. + +This is all the biography of ten of the fullest years of his life that +we need trouble about at present. His everyday existence is only +diversified and variegated by little anecdotes not worth repetition. +He was everywhere, of course, the musical lion. And, speaking of +animals, he always had a few: it had been a real grief to him some +years before when his parrot died when it had just mastered a passage +of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. + +When he finished _Tristan_ in August of 1859, his prospects were, so +to speak, as bright as before. It may here be mentioned, by way of +showing how bright that was, that when, four years later, an attempt +was made to give _Tristan_ at Vienna, the work was abandoned after at +least fifty rehearsals. + +His letters, first to his faithful servitor Uhlig, who died in 1853 at +the age of thirty-one, and then to Fischer, are full of requests to +get scores copied, to send them here, there and everywhere, and to +collect honorariums. But, as I have said, for years he had hungry +creditors snapping at his heels, and they devoured most of the fruits +of his early genius. It is a fact to be faced that Wagner never in all +his life earned his livelihood. He earned more than average men +require to live comfortably upon; but he was unceasingly extravagant, +and denied himself nothing. He had been hungry in his early Paris +days; for the remainder of his life he bent himself to the task of +making up for that spell of famine. The precariousness of his income, +the insecurity of his position, fostered the habit of self-indulgence; +by nature the reverse of miserly, if he had money to-day he spent it, +reflecting that he might have none to-morrow. His debts, moreover, +were not entirely for what we may call personal extravagances. So +confident and sanguine was he that he had the full scores of his +operas published at his own expense; and the charges had to be met out +of what the operas brought him. And so when he had finished _Tristan_ +in 1859 the outlook was of the blackest. + +It was not less than a disaster that, during this period, 1849-59, +Wagner got to know the writings of Schopenhauer. In my first chapter I +pointed out how from his youth Wagner was fond of dabbling in +pseudo-philosophy, and this had strengthened rather than weakened its +hold on him as he grew older. For some time Feuerbach was his mentor. +It is idle to ask what he saw in Feuerbach. It has long been a +commonplace that rightly to understand an author you must meet him +half-way. Wagner did more than that: he went the whole way, and often +a long way beyond. What he read was not Feuerbach, but the thousand +ideas that the merest chance sentences of Feuerbach aroused in his +seething brain. Feuerbach, however, was sent about his business as +soon as Schopenhauer entered. Wagner immediately wrote +enthusiastically to Liszt, telling how peace and light had come into +his soul; and one might wonder what particular doctrine of the grumpy +old pseudo-philosopher had this remarkable effect. (This is to assume +it to have had the effect. As a bare matter of fact it hadn't. +Wagner's soul knew no peace until he died.) It was the great gospel of +Renunciation. After reading this, in his own way, Wagner realized, if +you please, that both _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_ preached the same +doctrine; and one can only retort that, if they preach any doctrine at +all--which they don't, thank heaven!--it is not that. But +Schopenhauerism might easily have ruined _Tristan_--did not ruin it +only because Wagner himself, when writing it, was consumed with a +fervour of passion that is the negation of Schopenhauerism. It is +responsible, however, for many of the _longueurs_ of the _Ring_, as, +for instance, in Act II of the _Valkyrie_, when Wotan stops the action +to give Bruennhilde an elementary lesson in Schopenhauer-cum-Wagner +metaphysics. The funny thing is that Wagner never renounced anything: +to the end he was greedy, avid of life. He might have benefited by a +careful study of Schopenhauer's pungent phrases; but instead of thus +developing his own natural gift in that direction, his sentences +afterwards grew longer and more complicated than ever. His Beethoven +is a splendid essay; how much finer it might have been had he not +wasted so many pages on what he took to be Schopenhauer's science! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +'TRISTAN AND ISOLDA' + + +I + +For those who have ears, eyes and understanding _Tristan and Isolda_ +is Wagner's most perfect work, is the finest opera in the world. +Unluckily there are in the world far too many persons who are not +content to have a work of supreme art, but must needs read into it +old, stale platitudes: when they have proved it to be an exposition of +these platitudes they conceive that they have deserved the gratitude +of the people for interpreting the artist and of the artist for having +interpreted him, having made his meaning clear. As I have written +elsewhere of _Tristan_, "Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft +and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all clear as the +day"; but the commentators have rushed in with their comments between +the stage and the audience only to obscure everything and bamboozle +people who are at least as capable as themselves of understanding the +drama. The platitudes read into _Tristan_ are of two sorts, truisms +and lying commonplaces. To take one of the latter kind, some one many +long years ago got off the pretty phrase, "love and death are one"; +and poetasters and fiftieth-rate dramatists have ever since continued +to assert as a profound and original truth that love and death are +one. What on earth they understand by it, if they mean anything at +all, is much more than I can guess. But I know that love and death are +not one, that love is life, and death is death. We have had it pointed +out a thousand times that the "moral" of _Tristan_ is that these two +opposites are one; and in the latest books and articles about Wagner +the same game is kept merrily going. I can extract no such moral. +Perhaps some unfortunate essays and letters of Wagner gave the +commentators their cue and lead; for Wagner, when he put away his +music-paper and sat down to his writing-paper, often showed himself a +willing victim of catch-phrases; also many sentences of the drama can +be construed as paraphrases of this particular catch-phrase--for +example, "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod, sehnend verlangter +Liebestod." Such utterances as these, however, have a specific and +different meaning altogether, as will presently be seen. I can by no +means believe even Wagner capable of writing a three-act music-drama +to prove the truth of a catch-phrase or that he would have dreamed of +using such a catch-phrase as the motive of his music-drama. The +commonplaces drawn from _Tristan_ and gravely set forth as the +"meanings" of the operas are as numberless as sands on the sea-shore +and rather less valuable. That young women should not make a practice +of marrying old men, that illicit passions and intrigues may bring on +disaster, that it is madness to make love to another man's wife in a +garden, observable by all, that it is greater madness still to keep on +when a maidservant is screaming that some one is coming--these rules +of conduct are very well in their way and might commend themselves to +the denizens of Clapham; but, again, I hardly think Wagner would have +constructed a great music-drama to enunciate them. Nor did he +construct his music-drama to expound a philosophy. For a long time the +air was thick with arguments _pro_ and _con_ with regard to the amount +of Schopenhauer he had made use of in his libretto. Now, it is true +that both Tristan and Isolda indulge at times in something +approximating to the Schopenhauer terminology; but of Schopenhauer's +or any other philosophy I cannot find a trace. For that we must turn +to _Parsifal_. In _Tristan_ there are no "meanings"--none save the +very plain meaning of the drama and the meaning of the music, which is +plainer still. + +It seems to me desirable in this way to clear off misunderstandings +and to indicate with precision my point of view. When Wagner wrote +_Tristan_ he wrote a tragic opera of passion and treachery and death, +and only as a tragic opera can I regard it. Every sentence in it is +accounted for by the course the drama takes; no further explanation is +called for; and I shall certainly not waste my readers' time by +picking out a few words here and there and trying to construe them +into a metaphysical exposition: there is quite enough to digest +without that. Even the longing for death which Tristan expresses as +the only cure for the woes of an impossible life arises from the +drama; Tristan no more preaches Schopenhauer than he preaches Buddhism +when he exclaims "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod." Wagner chose the +subject of _Tristan_ not to expound anything, but for the prosaic +reason that he wanted to raise money and the subject seemed the most +promising for the purpose. This is put beyond a doubt by a letter to +Liszt dated July 2, 1858. Everything seemed to work against him; +_Rienzi_ proved a failure when it was put on at Weimar, and nothing +could be hoped for in that quarter; the pecuniary situation was +desperate. He had received a commission from the Emperor Pedro I of +Brazil for an opera, and thought _Tristan_ a likely theme. As early as +December of 1854 he had written to Liszt mentioning it as planned in +his head; and in this letter of '58 he says, "... I saw no other way +open to me but to negotiate with Haertel, and I chose for this subject +_Tristan_, then scarcely begun, because I had nothing else. They +offered to pay me half the honorarium (two hundred louis d'or)--that +is, one hundred louis d'or--on receipt of the score of the first act, +and I made all the haste I could to complete it. That is why this poor +work was hurried on in such a business-like manner." It seems rather +comical now that the world's most magnificent, and certainly most +profound, musical tragedy should have been commenced to be sung by an +Italian company in such an out-of-the-way spot as Rio de Janeiro and +in the hope of pleasing semi-barbarian ears; and it is rather a pity +it never found its way there. One thing is certain: the press +criticisms could not have been more foolish than those that greeted +the opera when it was produced in Munich. + +Exactly where Wagner got the idea from I cannot say. Of course, in +one shape or another the legend exists in every European literature; +and probably he had been familiar with it for years. Praeger's story +of Wagner getting hold of Gottfried von Strassburg's interminable +version in the summer of 1855 and conceiving the thing in a flash +might very well be true; only, unluckily for Praeger, the letter to +Liszt in the previous year shows it to be in another sense a story. By +September 1857 the poem was done, and Wagner at once set to work on +the music. He had sketched the first act by the end of the same year, +and in the early part of '59 the whole opera was complete. We have +just seen one reason for pressing forward "this poor work ... in such +a business-like manner"; but even without the pecuniary inducement I +fancy he would have composed quickly. _Tristan_ is one of those works, +like Carlyle's _French Revolution_, which one feels had either to be +written rapidly or not at all. The music seems to have welled forth in +a red-hot torrent, and his pen could not choose but fly over the +paper. None the less we are compelled to marvel at the industry, the +concentrated and continuous and patient energy of the man; for the +_Tristan_ score is as complicated as any ever written, and the mere +number of notes to be set down might well have appalled him. Handel +could write a _Messiah_ in three weeks and Mozart a _Don Giovanni_ +overture in a few hours; but their scores are mere skeletons compared +with _Tristan_, a score which neither Handel nor Mozart could copy in +a much longer time than three weeks. We may hope that Wagner received +his remaining hundred louis d'or, for the Brazilian scheme came to +nothing, and he had to wait seven long years before _Tristan_ got its +first performance. But for the "kingly friend," mad Ludwig II, it +would not have been performed at all; and afterwards other theatres +found it too difficult, or the directors, with true inborn official +insolence, seemed to glory in not so much as looking at the score. We +will now look at it. + +Out of one or another of the various versions of the legend Wagner +extracted the core--the plain, direct story of the passion of a pair +of tragic lovers. Tristan and Isolda love one another with a devouring +love, and circumstances will not allow them to be united; they find a +refuge in death from an existence intolerable without love; and this +is essentially the whole story. In its older form the tale consisted +mainly of what to the modern mind are excrescences--the intrigues, +fights, adventures and what not so dear to the mediaeval mind. Wagner +sheared away this mass of overgrowth; or perhaps it would be truer to +say he hewed his way to the statue within, from out of the old stuff +picked out the elements that made just the drama as it had shaped +itself in his brain. Here is the story. Tristan, nephew of King Mark +of Cornwall, had gone a-warring in Ireland and had there slain Morold, +the betrothed of Isolda; and to Isolda he sends as a present Morold's +head. He is himself wounded, and by chance it is Isolda, "a skilful +leech," who nurses him back to health. She has found in Morold's head +a splinter of a sword-blade, and finds it was broken out of Tristan's +weapon. Full of anger, she raises the sword to slay the sick man: he +opens his eyes, and "the sword dropped from my fingers"--her doom is +upon her: henceforth she loves the slayer of her lover. Though Tristan +loves her he does not ask for her, but with many protestations of +gratitude and friendship sails away to Cornwall. Next occurs one of +those things at which most of us are apt to boggle: Tristan goes home, +it would appear, only to suggest that his aged uncle should marry +Isolda the peerless beauty; Mark consents, and sends Tristan to ask +for her. Tristan afterwards confesses that ambition led him to do +this; but in any case it was very close to a deed of downright +treachery, unless the fact was that Tristan did not suspect Isolda's +love for him, or thought his station too humble. Wagner's language is +ambiguous, and probably he intended his meaning to be the same. Isolda +has no two opinions about his conduct. It had been her duty to kill +him in the first place, and her love, her destiny, Frau Minna--call it +what you will--betrayed her; and now she is betrayed by the man whose +life she saved. Had she spoken one word in her father's castle Tristan +would not have returned to Cornwall: in all likelihood his head would +have been sent as an acknowledgment of Morold's. Her fury knows no +bounds; her grief and sense of ignominious humiliation almost defy +expression; her contempt for Tristan, when she finds words for it, is +scathing. All this we learn as the opera proceeds; but we should know +the facts of the history before seeing the work the first time, else +the first act is bewildering, for matters have arrived just at this +point when the curtain rises. + + +II + +The prelude is the only operatic prelude in the world which is an +integral, organic part of the drama; it cannot be omitted without +detriment to the drama. In several of Mozart's operas the overture, by +means of a modulation, is made to lead without a break into the first +scene; Gluck had done precisely the same thing; Wagner, in the +_Mastersingers of Nuremberg_, did the same thing. But in the cases of +Gluck and Mozart and of Wagner in the _Mastersingers_, if by chance +the parts of the overture were missing, the opera could start away and +go on merrily, and we should miss nothing but the preliminary pleasure +of hearing the overture. In the case of _Tristan_, where Wagner's art +of combining the music and drama in an indivisible whole was at its +culminating point--a point from which it gradually receded--this is +not conceivable. If the band parts of the _Tristan_ prelude were +mislaid it would be well to omit the first act altogether. What Wagner +tried to do in the _Flying Dutchman_--to make the whole opera a solid +thing from which not one bar might be subtracted without ruining the +whole effect--he achieved once, and once only, in _Tristan_. + +What may seem an irrelevancy turns on this very point. There is no +necessity for reasoning about a work of art; yet there is both +pleasure and mental profit in doing so in certain instances. If there +is any necessity at all for understanding Wagner's mind and Wagner's +art, we may as well do it as thoroughly as we can. Therefore the +reader will perhaps bear with me patiently if I point out something he +has doubtless discovered for himself, namely, that _Tristan_ is +Wagner's only opera in which music and drama had birth simultaneously +in his brain. He himself, in several significant passages in his prose +writings, indicated this. He said that when, after several years +devoted to expounding his theories in essays,--mainly, he said, to +make these theories clear to himself: mainly, I think, for the +accruing cash--he began _Tristan_, he immediately found he had left +the theories far behind. That is, he constructed his dramas, without +thinking of theories or traditions, simply as a common-sense +dramatist-musician should, building up the whole edifice with two +hands at once, the dramatist's pen in one hand, the musician's in the +other. He also said that when he set down the words the music was +already (in an amorphous state--we must presume he meant) in his +brain. It was to this effect he wrote in _Opera and Drama_ the most +skilful defence ever put together by a creative artist--or rather not +so much a defence as a plea for his particular form of art, or perhaps +an explanation of the form. + +This is entirely different from his procedure with the _Ring_, or +indeed any of his works, not even excepting the _Dutchman_. The +_Dutchman_, he said, grew out of Senta's ballad; but I have already +shown that this statement was a mere piece of self-deception: not the +whole of the _Dutchman_, not one-tenth of it, grows out of Senta's +ballad; Senta's ballad is not an oak-trunk with all the solos, duets, +choruses and the rest growing out as branches with leaves grow from a +trunk--it is a scaffold-pole upon which these things are tacked in an +almost unparalleled fervour of imagination. That Wagner recognized +this is plainly seen in the prose remarks he penned, in very cold +blood, in his after years, when he looked at his first really fine +work as though it had come from the hand of some other composer. Gluck +had not one-thousandth part of Wagner's sheer genius, or, born into +the nineteenth century, he might have done the thing as Wagner did it +in _Tristan_; Mozart had not one-hundredth part of Wagner's +intellectual power, or, born into the nineteenth century, he might +have done it. Wagner alone did it. _Tristan_ is a feat accomplished +once and for all; at this moment it is impossible to imagine such a +feat ever being done again. Those of us who live on for another five +hundred years may see something like it; but even then _Tristan_ will +not be old-fashioned--not older-fashioned, at any rate, than +_Antigone_ or _Hamlet_, and perhaps less old-fashioned than _Macbeth_ +or _Lear_. The breath, the spirit, which is eternal life, is in it, +and it can only perish when the human race perishes. + +Far too much theorising has been done about Wagner, and I would not +add my quota did I not hope that this small contribution would save +complicated explanations, now that I come to deal with the concrete, +so to say, with the very stuff of _Tristan_, the words and the music. +We are to be prepared for a drama of human passion in sharpest +conflict with a dispassionate, indifferent, even antagonistic world. +The passion is the naked elemental thing, the love of a man for a +woman and a woman for a man; and these twain, had they lived on an +island by themselves, might have been happy or unhappy, and felt the +passion fade away and no one a penny the worse. As it is, everything +seems to oppose them; shock after shock comes upon them; until in the +end they are content, feel themselves blest, to be allowed to pass out +of life. We are shown them in four clearly defined phases: first, +loving one another but the love unconfessed; second, the love admitted +and the world opposing it; third, love at its height and the world +breaking in upon it; last, love beaten in the fight and retreating to +the realms of death. Throughout the drama there is no musical theme +representing the idea of the antagonistic world. There are a dozen +love-themes and two death-themes and a great number of what in a +symphony would be called subsidiary themes. By far the most important +theme in the whole opera is that with which the prelude opens, one +made up of a couple of phrases (_a_, p. 274). + +I shall not for the moment discuss the full significance of the themes +as subsequently unfolded: it suffices now to note the use they are +put to in this prelude. A continuation of this love subject presently +is announced (_b_); then the poison motive (_c_); and finally yet +another love theme. A tremendous climax is worked up: the very ecstasy +and madness of love; it dies down, and the prelude ends with a +sinister and tragic phrase (_d_), leading straight to a sea-song sung +from the masthead of a vessel, on which the curtain rises. + +No melody ever sang more clearly of the sea; no melody was ever less +like a sailor's chanty. I have quoted words and tune in full (_f_). +The words set the drama a-going; out of the phrase marked (_g_) the +main body of the music of the first scene is spun. Isolda very +naturally thinks an insult is aimed at herself: it is the spark that +sets a light to the explosive material that has been accumulating in +her heart for heaven knows how long. She curses the ship, Tristan, and +every one concerned in the conspiracy that is to rob her of the man +she loves and hand her over as a slave to the old man she has never +seen. Brangaena, her maid, scared out of her wits, begs to know the +truth; Isolda screams for air, which she assuredly seems to need; the +curtains at the back of her pavilion are opened, and there, on the +stern of the vessel, stands Tristan, the enemy whom she loves. From +the masthead comes again the sailor's song. This time it does not +immediately arouse Isolda to fury; for now her purpose is set--to kill +Tristan: take her revenge and end her own life of misery. "Once +beloved, now removed, brave and bright, coward knight. Death-devoted +head, death-devoted heart," she sings, gazing at Tristan; and at the +last words we hear the tremendous death-or murder-theme (_h_), a theme +whose sinister meaning is afterwards unfolded. She sends Brangaena to +order Tristan to come into her tent. He bitterly avoids understanding +her meaning; Brangaena becomes more urgent; Kurvenal, Tristan's +servant, a faithful watch-dog, asks to be allowed to reply; Tristan +says he can. Kurvenal bellows out a song praising Tristan as the +heroic slayer of Isolda's betrothed, Morold. Brangaena precipitately +retreats and closes the curtains; Isolda and she face one another in +the tent, the second nearly prostrate with dismay, the first boiling +with wrath and shame at the insult hurled at her. She now tells +Brangaena the whole of the preceding history--her nursing of Tristan +and his monstrous treatment of her--and finishes with another curse. +Brangaena tries to soothe her; Isolda, outwardly quietened, inwardly +is planning how to carry out her purpose; Brangaena unknowingly +suggests the means. "In that casket is a love potion: drink that, you +will love your aged bridegroom and be happy once again." She opens the +casket; "not that phial," says Isolda, "the other." The poison motive +(_c_) sounds under the agitated upper strings: "the deadly draught," +Brangaena shrieks: at this point the shouting of the sailors is heard +as they begin to shorten sail; Kurvenal enters brusquely and bellows +at Isolda the order to prepare to land. She refuses to move until +Tristan has come in to ask her pardon "for trespass black and base." +Here she begins to speak in terrible double-meanings: it is not +Tristan's discourtesy on the voyage he must apologise for, but the +more tragic occurrences leading up to his bearing her away to +Cornwall. She orders Brangaena to prepare the draught, and awaits her +victim. + +She stands there outwardly composed while one of the finest passages +in the whole of the world's music betrays her inward anxiety and +suspense (_i_). It is useless to describe the scene in any detail: the +words are simple and seemingly direct; the marvellous music alone +reveals their fateful, fearful significance. Isolda asks Tristan to +sink the ancient quarrel between them--caused by the slaying of +Morold--and drink a cup together; he knows perfectly well a large part +of her meaning--that she means to poison him. Whether she herself +intends what presently occurs no one can tell: I doubt whether Wagner +knew much or cared at all. Tristan knows how great is the crime he +must make amends for: not merely Morold's death, but the winning of +Isolda's heart, the desertion, the cruel coming to claim her as his +uncle's bride; he says he will drink--only in oblivion can he find +refuge from the toils in which he has involved himself; he lifts the +cup to his lips, drinks, and as he drinks Isolda, crying "Betrayed, +even here," snatches the cup from him and drains it. + +Brangaena has betrayed her: the cup contains not the poison but the +love-potion. In this stroke there is no fairy-tale or pantomime +foolery. The course the drama now pursues is determined not by a magic +draught, a harmless infusion of herbs, but by the belief of the +lovers that they have taken poison and are both doomed. Whether +Tristan had previously known Isolda to love him does not matter: he +knows it now. It has been remarked that the language is ambiguous: or +rather, Isolda in her rage may easily be supposed to go beyond the +truth when she speaks of having exchanged love-vows with Tristan. She +knows that he loves her. They have only a few minutes to live and to +love: why not speak? They stand gazing at one another in a state of +tremulous emotion, and at last rush into each other's arms. The hoarse +voices of the sailors are heard outside hailing King Mark; the ship +has reached land; Brangaena enters, and is horrified to find that +_both_ have taken the potion; the pair cling to one another; a stream +of the most passionate music in existence sweeps on: Brangaena tries +to attire Isolda in the royal cloak; Kurvenal shouts to Tristan that +the king is coming; Tristan can understand nothing--"What king?" he +asks; the deck is crowded with knights; and the curtain falls as the +lovers embrace and the trumpets announce the arrival of King Mark. + +Before dealing more fully with the music of this act let me quote a +few words I wrote elsewhere on the dramatic course of the whole opera. +"The end of each act sees the lovers in a situation which is at heart +the same, though in externals different. Rapt in each other, they care +nothing about the sailors, attendants, approaching crowds, and the +rest, at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they +scarcely understand Mark's passionate affection--they only know it is +an enemy of their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees +them from life, which means an incessant trouble and interruption to +them. The tragedy deepens and grows more intense with each successive +scene; each separates them more widely from life and all that life +means, until in the last act the divorce is complete. This is the +purpose of the drama: this _is_ the drama...." When Wagner conceived +Tristan he was as fine a master of stage-craft as has ever lived; and +certainly by very far the finest who ever wrote "words for music." The +first scene prepares us to understand clearly and to grasp firmly the +forces that are presently to be let loose and run the drama on to its +tragic denouement; and after that, scene follows scene with absolute +inevitability. + + +III + +During Wagner's five years of theorising after quitting Dresden in +1849 he had thought of subjects and written parts of the _Ring_. +Tristan is the greatest work he completed. A reservoir full of music +must have accumulated in his brain; and he seems now to have opened +the sluices. Never did a more fiery impetuous stream flow from any +composer: never was there, in a word, more inspired music. The +profusion of the material is wonderful, and even more wonderful is the +concentrated quality of that material. In the _Ring_ and +_Parsifal_--as in _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhaeuser_--there are _longueurs_; +in _Tristan_ there are none: not a bar can be cut; there is not a bar +that does not hold us. In a paradoxical mood, or irritated, by being +obstinately, wilfully, stupidly regarded as one of the trade setters +of opera-texts, Wagner declared to Buelow that "one thing is certain, I +am not a musician." This has been interpreted as meaning, "I am no +musician," whereas, of course, he meant he was very much more than a +musician: which, in a sense, he was. He was not a greater genius than +Mozart and Beethoven, who had nothing of the dramatist in them, nor +than Shakespeare, who was not, technically at least, a musician; but +he was something different from both species of men--a dramatist who +could not get the drama out of himself without the aid of music, and a +musician who could not beat out his music without the aid of drama. +Music and drama had simultaneous birth in the case of _Tristan_, and +it is difficult to describe and criticise them separately. There is no +other way of doing it, however, and as the drama is the structural +foundation I have dealt with it first; but the music is of not less +importance. + +Many readers will remember how, not so very many years ago, a common +criticism of Wagner's music was that it possessed no melody. Happily +at this time of day there is no need to try to disprove this; for when +we hear the first act of _Tristan_ the first thing to strike us must +surely be its richness in melody. It teems with tunes--it is an +unbroken tune from the first note of the prelude to the last chord of +the act. At times we feel the terrific energy as something that might +easily grow wearying to the nerves, and then comes a long song, such +as Brangaena's remonstrance to Isolda, which is a sheer delight to the +ear and prepares us for the next dramatic outburst. That is the first +thing to strike us; the next is the perfect skill with which the sound +and feeling, the very breath, of the sea are kept ever present. The +body of the music is made up of music growing out of the passage in +the sailor-song (_g_); this goes through a hundred transformations, +and is put to a hundred uses as the action progresses; and the swing +and lilt of it never fail to conjure up a vision of smooth rollers and +the sea-wind filling the sail and driving the ship fast towards +Cornwall. It takes one shape when Brangaena tells Isolda that they +will land before evening; and in nearly the same shape it returns when +Brangaena goes to bid Tristan enter her mistress's presence; in the +meantime lengthy passages have been woven from it during Isolda's +first angry outburst; in one form or another it is worked again and +again, always conveying just the feeling of the moment, yet never +losing its original colour. Wagner's mastery of the art of pictorial +suggestion, while faithfully and logically expressing, explaining and +enforcing the actors' emotion, is here at its supremest height. In the +_Ring_ he often wrote purely pictorial music for a few pages with +simple, almost speaking, parts for the singers, trusting, as he well +could, to the stage situation explaining itself and making its own +effect. But the burning passion with which _Tristan_ is filled +necessitated another mode of treatment, a mode which Wagner alone +amongst musicians had the art and strength to employ. Other +composers, notably Weber and Mendelssohn, had given the world grand +scenic music; but where they left off Wagner began. Their picture is +an end in itself: Wagner's are settings for the dramatic action. + +There are not many leitmotivs in _Tristan_, and they are used for +ideas and passions--never for personages. Tristan, Isolda, Mark, +Brangaena and Kurvenal have none of them a representative theme. Each +act has its own themes--a multitude of them--each carried through the +act in which it appears, and nowhere else employed; only (_a_) and +(_h_) appear throughout the opera. Some small use is made of (_c_), +but once the poisoning episode is done with the subject ceases to have +any significance. That marked (_h_) is of great importance. Its effect +is terrible when Isolda is enticing, or compelling, Tristan to drink +the cup. The sailors break in with their "Yo, heave ho!" and Tristan, +bewildered, asks, "Where are we?" Isolda, with sinister purpose, +replies, "Near to the end!" The intense originality, due to their +being closely allied to the dramatic meaning, of all the themes should +be noted: only one, the second part of the love-theme (_a_), suggests +any other music. It is reminiscent of the introduction of Beethoven's +Sonata "Pathetique," and, after all, the phrase was not new when +Beethoven employed it. + + + +IV + +We have seen in this first act, if not the birth of love, at any rate +the avowal. The scene is laid on the sea, fresh, breezy, salt, +bracing, suggestive of infinite energy and possibilities. We are now +to witness it in its ripeness: not by any means a healthy ripeness, +but ecstatic to the point of frenzy, burning to the point of madness, +tumultuous, unbridled passion and lust; and, as these violent delights +have violent ends, ending in tragedy. When the curtain rises the +picture is in exquisite contrast with that presented in the first act. +Well did Wagner know the value of the scenic environment; he always +got it just and true and, from the artistic point of view, in sympathy +with the prevailing emotion. The demands on the scene-painters and +stage-machinists are nothing in _Tristan_ compared with those made in +the _Ring_ and _Parsifal_; but when the directions are complied with, +as I understand they occasionally are (I have seen them carried out +once), nothing more gorgeously effective can be dreamed of. Instead of +the morning air of Act I we have a warm summer night in a luxuriant +garden; on the left is a castle with steps leading up to the door, and +a burning torch makes the dark night darker; trees at the back and on +the right are massed black against the dark sky; in the centre under a +tree there is a seat for the convenience of the lovers. At the very +first glance we are taken into the atmosphere for a great +love-scene--the most magnificent love-scene ever conceived; and also +we are carried ages back--back to a time that never existed. This +old, world-old feeling, this sense of the past, is present to some +degree in the first act; but here the music makes it of overwhelming +power, and just as in the first act the sea is always present, so here +the sense of a remote period is never allowed to leave us. + +When the first chord of the brief, passionate introduction was first +heard in a theatre nearly half a century ago, it sent a shudder +through every professional class-room in every conservatoire in +Europe, and the theme is perhaps the most important in the act (_j_); +and the cutting, almost raucous chord lets us know at once that big +doings are at hand. Another theme follows--one of impatience and sick +anxiety: it is that which is played again when Isolda, hardly able to +contain herself while waiting for Tristan, wildly waves her +handkerchief, beckoning to him. Another and most lovely melody is +heard (_k_); and then some of the love-music which is played when he +does come and rushes to her arms. This leads straight to the rising of +the curtain, and Brangaena is seen on the steps by the torch, keeping +watch and listening to the horns of a hunting party; the sounds are +growing fainter in the distance. + +Isolda enters, and Brangaena vainly tries to dissuade her from meeting +Tristan. This night hunt, she swears, is a scheme of Melot's for the +betrayal of Tristan, his foe. Isolda laughs. Melot is Tristan's +friend, and the night hunt was arranged that the lovers might meet. +They dispute to some of Wagner's loveliest melodies. The theme (_k_) +flows along as an accompaniment, and becomes more prominent when +Isolda says she can no longer hear the horns; she hears the gentle +plash of the brook running from the fountain--as "in still night alone +it laughs on my ear"--the party of hunters must be many miles off. The +signal for Tristan is the extinguishing of the torch, and the music +associated with this deed now is used again in the last act in another +form. Brangaena prays her mistress not to put it out: it means death, +she says, and as a sort of subsidiary death-theme this melody is +afterwards used. Isolda is too completely mastered by desire to +listen. When Brangaena curses herself for having changed the magic +drinks she is laughed at. To music filled with passion and of perfect +beauty she says the whole business was arranged by Venus, goddess of +love, and we hear yet another love-theme (_l_); then to the crash of +what we must call the torch-theme, blent with the death-theme from Act +I, she throws down the torch and frantic with impatience awaits her +lover. + +He enters, and after some delirious pages not to be described in words +the pair fall to talk in Schopenhauerian terminology about the light +and the dark. But the passion never goes out of the music. On the +contrary, it grows in intensity, for the madness of the meeting is +nothing to the white-hot passion we get later; and in spite of the +terminology the meaning of both Tristan and Isolda is perfectly clear. +Light has been, and is, the enemy of their love; in the garish light +of day Tristan, filled with daylight dreams of ambition, first made +over to Mark, so to speak, his rights in Isolda; "is there a pain or a +woe that does not awaken with daylight?" he asks; and now, declared +lovers, they may only meet in the dark: during the day they must be +distant strangers. They know whither fate is driving them: Isolda has +said as much to Brangaena: "she may end it ... whatsoe'er she make me, +wheresoe'er take me, hers am I wholly, so let me obey her solely." +They are embodiments of sheer passion; love is the most selfish of +passions, and placed as they are, realising that they live only for +and in that passion, they have no thought for any one else, regarding +the outer world, the world of daylight, as their foe. Isolda does not +hesitate to remind Tristan of his perfidy in the days of light; and +he, far from defending himself, finds it quite sufficient to remark +that he had not then come under the sway of night: that is, they have +no ordinary human affection for each other. If they had, neither would +lead the other into such danger. Shakespeare did not, could not, make +his lovers live so entirely in their passion as this: he had no music +to express himself by, and had to speak through human beings. So when +Romeo says, "let me stay and die," Juliet instantly hurries him away. +Tristan and Isolda know they are wending to death, and are content. + +Their feelings subside into soft languor, and then they sing the +sublime hymn to night. Brangaena's voice is heard from the +watch-tower, warning them of approaching danger; and they heed her +not. Again she sings to them that the danger is imminent--night is +departing; Tristan, resting his head on the bosom of his mistress, +simply says, "Let me die thus." The catastrophe is at hand. The duet +reaches its glorious climax; Brangaena gives a shriek from her tower; +Kurvenal rushes in yelling "Save yourselves," but it is too +late--Mark, Melot and the other huntsmen come in quickly, and--the +game is up. The red dawn slowly breaks; Tristan hides Isolda with his +cloak; Melot turns to Mark and says, "Did I not tell you so?"--his +ruse has succeeded quite well enough. And now follows a scene which +has proved a stumbling-stock to many. + +The ordinary dramatist or play-monger would drop the curtain on this +denouement; and undeniably it would be what is called an effective +"curtain." However, effective curtains were not Wagner's business in +planning _Tristan_; he had long since passed through that stage. He +could not after such a curtain--the sort of curtain that ends many an +opera--have carried out the plan of _Tristan_--to show us the lovers +realising their impossible situation in life and deliberately seeking +death as the refuge. Tristan and Isolda care nothing for shame and +disgrace: they care only for their love, and their love relentlessly +drives them into their grave. Mark has a great affection for them +both, and precisely on that account he is their enemy. He begins a +long expostulation: "How is it that the two people dearer to him than +all the world have so betrayed his trust?" It is lengthy, and must +needs be so; each proof he gives them of his love only more clearly +defines his real significance and relation to them. Tristan does not +fear Melot: he dreads Mark's affection. He (Tristan) calls out, +"Daylight phantoms! morning visions, empty and vain--away, begone!" +but Mark continues, putting in a dozen ways the same question, "Why, +why have they done this?" It is not the behaviour of a barbaric king; +but we must remember that Wagner's Mark is not, and is not intended to +be, the legendary Mark any more than Tristan and Isolda are the +legendary Tristan and Isolda: he is the personification of human +affection, a thing to which they, enthralled by elemental love, are +indifferent--detest, indeed, as interfering with their love. When he +ends Tristan knows he has no explanation to offer--none that Mark +could possibly understand: human affection and elemental human passion +are unintelligible to one another. He replies that he cannot answer +Mark's "Why?" and turning to Isolda asks whether she will follow him +whither he is now going--the land of eternal night. He, not Mark, +plans his death. Isolda answers straightway that she will follow. +Tristan and Melot fight, but Tristan allows his treacherous foe to run +the sword through him, and he falls. _Then_ we get the curtain; +Tristan has done with this world and has started out for another, and +the drama has taken a second step towards its goal. + +This, held for long to be bad craftsmanship, is consummate, daring +craftmanship. _Tristan_ is a drama of spiritual conflicts; and those +who do not like that sort had better try something by the trade +playwrights of to-day. + + +V + +The music of the first act is largely fierce, angry, turbulent, often +bitter music, blent and merging into music expressive of fierce +desire, the hunger of the man after the woman, of the woman after the +man. There is one moment of sweet longing--the moment after Isolda and +Tristan have drunk the fatal potion; but instantly the torrent breaks +forth, and though it is in a way sweet, the sweetness is mixed with +fire; the stream is as a stream of molten lava, scalding, consuming. +The note of the music to the second act is utterly different; there is +fire, indeed, a golden fire; there is greedy impatience and +restlessness; but the fire does not scorch nor scald, the impatience +is not despairing, the love is not--as it certainly is in the first +act--that passion which is but one remove from deadly hate. Almost at +the beginning of the first act Isolda, devoured by a longing for +revenge, schemed to murder Tristan, and she does not falter in her +purpose until he has taken the drink; the reaction has all the +violence of a cataclysm; all is delirium; there is not a moment of +happy lingering over the joy of a possible; new life; there is no time +for that, no thought of it. All is burning wrath and hate and equally +burning lust and greed for the possession of the beloved one's body. +In the second act the anger has died out, and in the whirl of the +music, though at its maddest, there is a fulness, an assured sense of +coming satisfaction; and the excitement settles down into long, +drawn-out, luscious, voluptuous strains as the lovers, held in each +other's arms, exchange the sweet confidences usual (I suppose) on such +occasions. + +Musically the act may be regarded--conveniently, though roughly and +crudely--as a kind of symphony, in four sections which to an extent +overlap. We have section one from the first bar of the prelude to +Tristan's entry; section two, the impassioned duet; three, from the +hymn to night until the lovers are discovered; and four, from that +point to the end. Many of the themes are worked right through, but the +sections vary vastly in colour, atmosphere and feeling. The variety +unified into a completely satisfying whole is astounding. Amongst the +really great musicians only four possessed the organising brain in +this degree--Wagner himself, Beethoven, Handel and Bach. This act is +even more completely an organic whole than the first; every part +performs its functions and retains its individuality, yet all the +parts are co-ordinated. I have seen miraculous pieces of machinery in +which each part seemed to be alive and doing its duty independent of +the others; yet all working together to achieve one purpose. The score +of _Tristan_ is as marvellous--indeed, more so, for the purpose is not +a mechanical one, but the expression, with rigid fidelity to truth, of +the most subtle and exquisite feelings. + +I have said earlier that in evolving his purely musical structures +Wagner adopted one plan. He not only used the subjects of his operas +for the overtures, or (as in the present case) of the preludes to the +acts, but he makes them tell a story dramatically. Merely to use +themes for an opera as conventional subjects to be treated in symphony +form had been done; but Wagner never dreamed of adopting a form and +imposing it on his material from outside; with him the form is +determined by the material and the significance the material bore in +his mind. This is very different from deliberately writing a symphonic +poem--deliberately sitting down in cold blood and setting to work to +illustrate a story. _That_ method is antithetical to Wagner's; a +symphonic poem writer is simply a setter of opera texts, one who +follows with devout care the book of words put before him--with this +difference, that the opera-writer must, to some extent at least, +consider his words, his singers, his stage, while the composer of +symphonic poems can do just as he pleases and consider no one's +convenience, shortening this section or lengthening that as the +musical exigencies demand, while making use of some tale or a poem as +an excuse for writing in a form which in itself is unintelligible and +illogical. So far as Wagner could he let music and drama grow up +together; then to start with the right atmosphere he took certain +themes and spun a piece of music from them, letting the themes, as I +have said, unfold themselves logically and determine the form. The +result is always a fine piece of music; and thousands of listeners +have derived artistic enjoyment from the _Mastersingers_ overture, +the _Lohengrin_ prelude and _Tristan_ prelude without troubling to +trace the story as it is plainly told. In the prelude to Act II here, +for example, no one need seek a story, though it is obvious enough. +First we have the daylight theme, peremptorily, harshly announced; +then the impatience of Isolda, then her longing, then her thoughts of +love and her hopes of fulfilment, and just before the curtain rises +the crash which accompanies the extinction of the torch. + +I have already alluded to the old-world atmosphere got at once by the +horn calls and the lovely passage in which Isolda sings of the brook +"laughing on" in the still night; but in this first scene, which is by +comparison a mere introduction to the duet, we find a thousand +beautiful things. At this period of his life Wagner was by no means so +economical as he afterwards became; he squandered his pearls with +prodigal hands. In a few pages are enough melodies and themes to set +up a Puccini--or for that matter a Strauss or an Elgar--for life. The +blending of the death-theme with one of the love-themes, when Isolda +speaks of love's goddess, "the queen who grants unquailing hearts ... +life and death she holds in her hands," is one of the miracles of +music--stern beauty made up of defiance of fate and careless +voluptuousness. In the very next melody to make its appearance, the +second bar after the change to the key of A, we may note what I think +is the first sign of one of the many mannerisms of Wagner's "third +period," as we call it--the period extending from _Tristan_ to the +finishing of the _Ring_ (_Parsifal_ being as the tail to the dog, or +perhaps the tin-kettle tied to the tail). It is the phrase quoted +(_l_). Those five notes of the second bar were to be made to serve +many purposes hereafter; and the Wagnerites will insist that this was +done for a high artistic reason. Perhaps it was; but to me it seems +that it is found so frequently sometimes because Wagner wanted to +utter precisely the same emotion as he had employed it for earlier, +and sometimes because, like all other composers, at times he found his +invention flagging. In the second scene of this act of _Tristan_ it +plays a conspicuous part, and is indeed one of the most pregnant love +motives of the drama--perhaps the most prolific of subsidiary themes +and passages. + +The big duet beats description, and its structure must only be +discussed briefly. A figure which forms part of the music played while +Isolda impatiently awaits Tristan is turned into the whirling +accompaniment to impassioned and incoherent exclamations as they first +embrace; then to the seething mass of tone is added (_l_), and +gradually out of chaos and confusion emerges one clean-cut melody +after another. The daylight-theme which begins the introduction is +Protean in the shapes it assumes, and the emotions, now hot passion, +now the gentlest tenderness, it is made to express. The ferment +settles down, and we get the hymn to night and a series of melodies +which are love's own voice speaking. The dreamy voluptuousness that +pervades these duets comes from songs written by Wagner as studies. +They were not over highly esteemed by his friends, but he had his +revenge. This night in the garden--with the black night above and the +black trees around, the flowers, the musical brooklet, and the voice +of the caller heard at times from the roof--is the greatest thing of +the kind in all music: in all the arts, I know only the balcony scene +in _Romeo and Juliet_ which may be said to approach it. Melody upon +melody, delicate and sweet to the ear as the perfume of night flowers +and grasses to the nostrils, floats past; until at last the sheer +delight of the thing seems to work up the lovers to a state of +heavenly rapture, and in the final verse of the hymn to night they +pray only to be removed from the dangers of returning day; and here +the strains swell to an intensity of yearning for peace quite +unprecedented in music. And, as we know, their prayer is immediately +answered in a fashion they were hardly prepared for. + +Mark's address is deeply touching; and it is odd that when attacked by +Melot Tristan's accents are almost his. The sublime is again touched +when Tristan asks Isolda to follow him and in her answer. Melot then +stabs him, and the curtain drops to one of Mark's reproachful phrases +thundering from the orchestra. This, then, is Tristan's answer to +Mark's questioning--told in the music, not in the words. + + +VI + +Who first uttered that immortal piece of nonsense, Love and death are +one, I cannot say. The Greek conception of Death as Eros with an +inverted torch is quite different: it is a kind of _Tod als Freund_ +idea; we are called out of life by an irresistible force or god, which +god must be love, else he would not want us. The inverted torch is the +sign that shows whither he calls us. It had a mighty fascination for +many fine minds of the second-rate sort last century; and judging from +the phraseology of _Tristan_ it seems to have captured Wagner. He was +everlastingly bewildering himself with cheap catch-phrases which +happened, through suggestion or otherwise, to stir his emotions. He +took up one philosophical and political system after another, only to +abandon them in turn; but they left a kind of sediment in his mind, +and one never feels sure that the pellucid stream of his music-drama +will not the next moment be gritty to the palate with some of this +outworn stuff. The bits of Schopenhauer's broken brickbats embedded in +the libretto of _Tristan_ serve their turn, though a finer and more +poetical way of saying the same things might have been found. But +Wagner did not find that more poetical way, so let us rejoice that +through this uncouth lingo Wagner managed to get into a sort of verse +the idea that night was the friend of Tristan's love and day its +enemy, and that in the end everlasting night is best of all. In his +letters, however, we find him playing with the love and death notion, +though he must have known that love is not death, but life; that if +love and death are one, then death and love are also one, and to be in +love is to be in death, to be dead--which is preposterous: corpses +don't love. Presently we shall see that Isolda died in a state of +exaltation akin to the state of being in love; but that does not +establish the thesis. Blake, for hours before he died, shouted till +the ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God: +does that prove that mysticism and death are one? Mr. Chamberlain, in +his exegesis of _Tristan_, will have it that Wagner composed the opera +to demonstrate the truth of a very trite and ridiculous lie. The fact +is, Wagner's was far more a feeling, emotional, imaginative brain than +a thinking one, and in the hazy, steamy, overheated thinking part he +often let idle phrases play about without himself firmly grasping +their meaning or want of it. Anyhow, if he had done what Mr. +Chamberlain and many others say he did, we should have found it in the +last act. Instead, there is not a word on the subject. Wagner's +thinking might be misty: his dramatic instinct was supremely right and +sure. + +In the first act Isolda and Tristan enjoy their love only for a few +minutes; the world, daylight, breaks in and separates them. In the +second they revel in it for hours; the world, daylight, again +separates them. In the last the world again breaks in; but Tristan has +already found his refuge in death, and Isolda, obedient to her +promise, follows him, and they are joined, safe from the annoyances of +the "phantoms of the day," in "the impregnable fortress," the grave. +The action, as in the preceding portions of the drama, is of the +simplest. On his bed of pain and sorrow Tristan lies wounded and +unconscious. Kurvenal has got him away from Mark's court in Cornwall +to his own castle in Brittany; and now he has been brought out into +the castle yard for coolness and air. It is hot, sultry, close; the +sea in the distance seems to burn; the castle is dilapidated and +overgrown with weeds. Kurvenal watches by his master; from outside the +saddest melody ever conceived is heard on a shepherd's pipe. Presently +the shepherd looks over the wall and asks how the master fares, does +he still sleep? If he awakes it will only be to die, replies Kurvenal; +unless the lady leech (Isolda) comes there is no hope. A moment after +Tristan comes out of his coma, wanders in his mind a little, but at +last understands where he is and that Isolda will come. At that news +he works himself into a condition of unbounded excitement, fancies he +sees the ship bringing Isolda, but at the sound of that sad, droning +pipe melody, and when Kurvenal tells him it is a signal that no ship +is yet in sight, he lapses into unconsciousness again. Then he wakes +up, goes over the whole history of his love for Isolda, and faints +once more; once more he half awakes and as in a dream sees the ship +decked with flowers speeding over the summer sea. Suddenly the +shepherd strikes in with a lively tune: "Isolda is at hand," cries +Kurvenal. "Hasten to bring her," shouts Tristan, and Kurvenal does so. +Tristan, left to himself, goes mad for sheer joy, staggers off his +couch, tears his bandages off so that his wound bleeds afresh, and +Isolda rushes in just in time to catch him in her arms, where he dies +murmuring "Isolda." She laments over his body and sinks down beside +it. Another alarm is given; Kurvenal barricades the gate; Mark, Melot +and the rest break it down, and there is a terrible hand-to-hand +fight; Kurvenal is run through with a spear, and creeps to his +master's side, to die, groping for his hand. Brangaena enters, and she +and Mark try to explain how she has told the whole story of the potion +to Mark; how Mark has come, too late, to unite the lovers. Isolda does +not listen; presently she rises to sing the matchless death-song; she +sees Tristan before her, smiling, transfigured, his love envelopes her +as in billows; she is his now, at last, for aye; and, exhausted, she +again sinks down beside Tristan, and dies. + +There is thus in _Tristan_ next to no action--no more than serves to +turn spiritual forces loose and helps to interpret various spiritual +states. The spectator is interested, indeed, in the _doings_ of the +people on the stage only in the first act. Isolda's command to Tristan +to come before her, Tristan's evasions, Kurvenal's rude answer, the +rough gibing bit of sailor chorus, the episode of the two chalices +--the love potion and the poison--the scene between Isolda and Tristan +in which he offers her his sword and tells her to take her revenge by +killing him forthwith, the drinking, the wild embraces and the arrival +of the ship in port amidst the clatter of triumphant trumpets--such +things might have been, and were, done by Wagner in his _Tannhaeuser_ +days. But consider how little is done in the second act and in the +third. These two portions of the music-drama are more symphonic than +operatic, and it is small wonder that in the days when good folk +expected to see opera when they went into an opera-house, they thought +they had been diddled when they were given _Tristan_ for their money. +If anything so new and unexpected were sprung upon us to-day we should +raise the same cry as was raised when _Tristan_ was given nearly half +a century ago. The introduction opens with a phrase (_m_) of threefold +meaning. It is clearly derived from the second phrase of the first +love-theme (_a_, page 274); it is a realistic representation in music +of Tristan's stertorous breathing; it expresses his delirious state of +mind--chiefly, however, in the upward-drifting thirds and fourths with +which it ends at each occurrence. Then comes the music associated with +his suffering and the "lady leech." The whole passage is then +repeated, and afterwards we get the shepherd's pipe (_n_). This forms +the prelude, and the music of the short scene with the shepherd is +practically the same. Some new matter is brought in, for dramatic +rather than sheer musical purposes, as Tristan awakens; but the next +subject that I need call attention to is the noble one which comes in +when Kurvenal assures him he is safe in his own castle (_o_). The +whole of Tristan's subsequent ravings are made up of reminiscences, +more or less distorted, of various passages out of the first and +second acts, as he goes over, as in a dream, his recent life--the +sight of Isolda, the scene on the ship and that in the garden. Another +new theme to be noted is blazed out by the orchestra when Kurvenal +tells him Isolda has been sent for. When he sinks back exhausted and +no ship is in sight the shepherd's pipe keeps wandering through his +brain with strange, weird, terrible effect, mixing with fragments of +other themes; he gathers strength, and his despair rises to frenzy as +he curses himself--"'Twas I by whom [the draught] was brewed"--to a +phrase overwhelming in its intensity of expression (_p_), and again +collapses. + +Presently follow a few pages of perhaps the divinest music to be found +in Wagner's scores, Tristan's dream of Isolda crossing the summer sea. +To an evenly pulsing gentle accompaniment we hear first the second +part of a love-theme (_q_), then fragments of others, till the point +of supernal, Mozartean beauty is touched at "full of grace and loving +mildness." The pathos of it is almost intolerable: no one could stand +the strain another second, when after the cry, "Ah, Isolda, how fair +art thou," he rouses himself to anger because Kurvenal cannot see on +the rolling waters what he with his inner vision sees so bright and +clear. How any one could, even at a first hearing, fail to realize +that the composer of this sublime passage was by far, infinitely far, +the mightiest and tenderest composer of opera music who has +lived--this is a phenomenon that passes our comprehension nowadays. +The scene where the shepherd sounds his pipe to signal the coming of +the boat, and Tristan, his delight wrought up until it grows into +anguish, goes mad and tears off his bandages, baffles description. It +is made up of the love music of the first and second acts, the +melodies being metamorphosed in marvellous fashion. At the last he +sees Isolda throwing down the torch as she did in Act II, and as +darkness comes over his eyes we hear the same music combined with the +love-themes. There is only one thing of the kind to match Isolda's +lament--Donna Anna's grief over her father's body in _Don Giovanni_. +The rest of the act is largely made up of music which has been heard +before. The death-song is an extended and glorified version of the +hymn to night; and the close is of sad, tragic sweetness. The lovers +are joined together and at peace--but in the everlasting darkness of +the grave. + +Any one who has heard _Tristan_ a few times will begin to notice that, +despite the endless variety of the music, it possesses an odd +homogeneity. After hearing it fifty or a hundred times one begins to +feel it to be comparable--if such a comparison could be made--to an +elaborate oration delivered in one breath. The whole thing, complete +in every detail, must (one thinks) have come bodily into the +composer's mind in one inconceivable moment of inspiration and +insight. Of course we know it was not so. A god may think a world into +being in that way: a mortal requires time and unflagging energy to +produce a masterpiece. We know that Wagner incorporated his own +studies in his masterpiece; we can see how theme is evolved from +theme. But the unity is so complete that if some sketches were to come +to light showing that the last form of some of the music was in +existence before the portions from which it seems to be evolved, I +should not be in the least surprised, so perfect is the unity, so +inevitably does every note fall into its proper place to express the +feeling of the occasion. I take it that when he drafted the words he +had before him a prophetic shadow of what the music was to be; and +when he came to compose, the uninterrupted white heat of inspiration +and enormous cerebral energy and intellectual grip of his matter, and +the boundless invention which provided that matter for him, so to +speak, so that he had only to pick it up ready made, enabled him to +make that more or less dim, prophetic shadow a living, concrete +reality. Never, from the first bar to the last, does the inspiration +fail him; there is not a phrase that says less, or says it less +adequately than the situation demands, than he has led us to expect. +Old Spohr, when he heard _Tannhaeuser_, though his ears rebelled +against the unaccustomed discords, spoke about the Olympian +inspiration and energy he felt in the work; and this criticism--and +very just and fine criticism it was: as just and fine as it was +unexpected from an old-world musician such as Spohr--is equally +applicable to _Tristan_. In its power and perfection it seems the +handiwork of one of the gods. The very truth of every phrase, and the +fulness of utterance with which every phrase expresses the emotion of +the moment, has given rise to a common delusion or absurdity: that in +the Wagnerian opera every phrase is evolved or developed out of the +previous one. If Wagner ever thought of adopting such an insane +procedure he would have been puzzled to know how and where to start. +He might, perhaps, have evolved the first from the last, and thus got +a perfect rounded whole--a serpent with its tail in its mouth. As a +matter of prosaic, or poetical, fact, Wagner, in all his work, +incessantly introduces fresh matter, and dozens of themes appear, are +worked out, and disappear entirely. + +Now, when all this overgrowth of rubbishy comment is being swept away, +and those who contemned Wagner are disappearing with those who +battened on him and his memory, _Tristan and Isolda_ remains, a +world-masterpiece, the most powerful, beautiful, sweet and tender +embodiment to be found in any art of elemental human love in all its +splendour, loveliness, fearfulness, terror and utter selfishness. +Thousands of years hence, when Europe has sunk under the waves and +fresh continents have arisen, perhaps a stray copy by hazard preserved +in the Fiji Islands will come to light, will be deciphered by pundits, +and a new race will see in it a primitive but consummate work of art, +and the pundits will argue themselves black in the face about the name +of the composer, whether he was Wagner or another man of the same +name. In the meantime millions of our epoch will have understood it, +loved it, and seen in it a thousand times more than we see in it +to-day, and many thousand times more than I could say in the preceding +pages. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + + +VII + +By way of a footnote to this chapter I may be allowed to add a few +words about the smaller characters. All that Wagner took from the old +legends was the suggestion for the two lovers who sinned and perished +for their sin. Crudely or coarsely, gentlemanly (as in Tennyson), +refined and spiritualized, that idea is the central idea of every form +of the tale. To these two people Wagner added Brangaena and Kurvenal, +and, taking only the name of King Mark, he created a new personage, +unlike any of the older versions of the man, necessary for the +exposition of his idea. Brangaena is the most difficult part to sing +and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress. She has not +a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last +recitative. Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely +appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable +pathos. His phrase to Tristan, "The wounds from which you languish +here all shall end their anguish," is as touching in its rough, +uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master. That is +all Kurvenal is--a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it +requires a very great artist to interpret it. David Bispham's +impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen. Mark's +reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are +also very hard to render. In fact, only fine opera singers can take +any of these parts without coming to grief. The invisible sailor must +be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with +no little skill. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG' + + +I + +The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing +_Tristan_, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The +struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard +and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few +victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next +chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the +reader, to consider the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ immediately after +_Tristan_. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the +second opera in its true chronological order. The _Nibelung's Ring_ +was still in abeyance; _Tristan_ finished, Wagner, in search of means +of subsistence--the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast +giving out--undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, +Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861 +his last hopes of a Paris success with _Tannhaeuser_ were extinguished; +his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of +debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as +bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a +simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours +of gloom fulfilled." The _Mastersingers_ had been sketched, as we +know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the +character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an entirely +different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he +worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he +was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the +outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer +world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but +given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once +became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of +the _Mastersingers_ his contentment should endure any length of time. +No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels +again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862 +that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in +the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say, +will occupy us presently. + +In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many +another city, a guild of minstrels--at once poets and musicians. The +name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as +for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing +_Tannhaeuser_, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic +pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the _Mastersingers_ +that hangs from _Tannhaeuser_ I beg the reader not to ask me. There is +this similarity: the central scene of each is a minstrel-contest; +there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the +other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of +resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not +developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the +want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a +benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he +went ahead and wrote the poem. + +All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a +skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the +prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his +daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on +record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number +of entries--as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not +compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was +that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter. +There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and +Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the +_Mastersingers_, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and +goodly sport is expected. Hans Sachs himself, though past middle-age, +loves her, and might well hope to win; Beckmesser, another master of +the guild, means to do his best; and a young knight, Walther von +Stolzing, has just become infatuated with her and she with him. He +cannot strive in the contest, however, not being a master; and when he +submits to a trial the guild rejects him with scorn. Things have +arrived at this point at the end of the first Act. In the next, +Walther and Eva, desperate, resolve to fly under cover of darkness; +Sachs overhears them planning and sings a curious sort of +warning-song, letting them know that he is on the look-out and will +prevent the elopement; Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva, and David, an +apprentice, thinks he has come after _his_ (David's) sweetheart and +falls to fisticuffs with him; there is a street row, amidst which Eva +escapes into her father's house, while Sachs pulls Walther into his. +In the third Act Eva, who has already told Sachs quite plainly enough +that if only a master may win her, and Walther cannot become a master, +she prefers him to any other, practically repeats her hint. But +Walther has composed another song and Sachs has devised a scheme: if +Walther sings his song he is certain to be the victor, and Sachs has +determined that by hook or by crook he must sing it. Beckmesser grabs +the song, under the impression it is by Sachs; Sachs, without +committing himself, tells him to make use of it at the contest if he +can. The people gather to watch and hear and judge; Beckmesser makes a +muddle of the song and is laughed off the scene; then Sachs pleads +Walther's case, and he is allowed, though not a master, to sing. He +triumphs, and by one stroke is admitted to the guild and wins the +prize. Virtually the play ends here. Sachs' winding-up address can +only be dealt with in connection with the music. + + +II + +The personality, the soul, of Sachs, its conflict with itself, its +victory over itself and renunciation--undoubtedly Wagner felt this to +be the centre of the action of the play, and undoubtedly without it he +could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It +gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour +is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would +be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and +then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into +one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of +old Nuremberg--a vision as indissolubly blent with music as was the +vision of the river and the swan with the music of _Lohengrin_. One +may say truly that once the germ of the dramatic action was in +Wagner's brain he needed the musico-pictorial inspiration of the +scenic environment and atmosphere before the thing took final shape +and he could compose the music. He says explicitly this was so in the +case of the _Dutchman_; in _Tannhaeuser_ it is perhaps a little less +obviously the case. But even in that second of the great operas we +need only read his directions for the right performing of it to see of +what importance to him were the different scenes--the hot, steaming +cave of Venus, the fresh spring morning by the roadside, the great +hall of song--about which he was very particular--the autumn woods in +the last act. In his letters to Uhlig this comes out very plainly: for +instance, he gives as his reason for cutting down the finale of the +last act that it was impossible at Dresden to get a glorious sunrise, +with which the work should end. I have already laid sufficient stress +on the true source of _Lohengrin_; in _Tristan_ adequate and +appropriate scenery is absolutely demanded to sustain the atmosphere; +and here, in the _Mastersingers_, music and a series of pictures go +together, and the pictures seem to inspire the music--or rather, music +and pictures are parts of the first inner vision. + +Mediaeval Nuremberg, with its thousand gable-ends, its fragrant +lime-trees and gardens, its ancient customs, its processions of the +guilds and crafts, its watchman with his horn and lantern, calling the +hour, its freshness and quaint loveliness by day and its sweetness on +soft summer nights--it is these Wagner employed all his superb +musico-pictorial art to depict; they are the background to the purely +human element of the play, and at the same time they help to express +that element. If the _Mastersingers_ was a little less successful as a +work of art we should still have to regard it as an amazing _tour de +force_. The opera is far too great for that term--one at once of +praise and of reproach. The music is full of the spirit of a past +world; but the feeling of that world is not got by the use of +artificially archaic phrases or harmonies. Kothner's reading of the +rules of correct minstrelsy is one of the exceptions, and the +night-watchman's crying of the hour is another; but these, as Lamb +said of Coleridge's philosophic preaching, are "only his fun." The +melodies are often quite Weberesque in contour; the harmonies are +either plain work-a-day ones or modern--so modern that no one had used +them before. Nor it is by the sadness of the music alone that he gains +his end: some of the merriest scenes belong, by reason of the music, +to mediaeval times. By his art, the intensity of his feeling for those +times, and the fidelity with which he could express every shade of +feeling, he conjures up this vision out of the dead and dusty past, +makes the dead and dusty past live again, takes us clean into it and +keeps us there a whole evening without for a moment letting the spell +be broken. It is significant that the very title he gave his work is a +peremptory warning to us of what to expect: it is not _Hans Sachs_, +nor _Walther von Stolzing_, nor even the _Mastersinger_, etc., but in +the plural form, the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_. This is not to cast +doubt on Wagner's sincerity when he declared that he only got the +creative impulse to go on with his work when he had conceived Sachs as +Sachs now stands: it is only to say that his extraordinary sense of +colour, atmosphere, and his historical sense, led him to do much more +than he thought he was doing and perhaps realized he had done. + +The overture as plainly as the title of the opera proclaims the +composer's purpose: it sums up the solid and pompous old burghers, the +impudent apprentices, the love of Walther and Eva, and says nothing +about Sachs. As an afterthought, in fact, Sachs is left for the +prelude to the third act. As a piece of music, detachable from the +opera, and by no means an integral part of it as is the case with the +_Tristan_ prelude, the overture transcends every other work of +Wagner's. As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ +fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of +musical art--not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the +musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to +produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty. The energy of +the thing is almost superabundant; the gorgeous colouring is dazzling; +and every minutest fibre of it lives. The first theme is another +landmark in musical history. The harmonisation is extraordinary, not +only for its gigantic strength, but for the free employment of +chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so +employed throughout the _Mastersingers_ that it sounds diatonic. +Throughout _Tristan_ and in the Venusberg music of _Tannhaeuser_ +chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; but here we have +music that is as solid, equable, serene as a Handel eight-part chorus. +With consummate skill the stream of music is, so to say, led on to the +theme that always accompanies the mastersingers, as distinguished from +the citizens, of Nuremberg; next Walther's song is extemporised upon +(no other phrase serves) for a couple of minutes--the most passionate +page in the opera--and after that come the apprentices. We shall +presently observe that Wagner in this opera made light-hearted fun of +the pundits, and as if to show them that he had a right to do so he +played with the devices that to them were a very serious business +indeed. What to them was an end--I mean all the tricks of +counterpoint--was to him a means to expression: more expressive music +was never dreamed of in a musician's imagination, and at the same time +he accomplished with ease part-writing that the most skilful +contrapuntists could only perform by labouring long at expressionless, +stale old themes first contrived before the Flood to "work well," as +the phrase goes. The apprentices' music, then, is an instance: Wagner +takes the solid burghers' theme and writes it in notes one-quarter the +length, so that it sounds four times as fast. The effect is +unexpectedly droll, the music skips about in the most irresponsible +way, and (when one knows what it is meant for) depicts the gambols of +the herd of young rascals who come on the scene in the first act. This +contrivance, called "diminution," is resorted to again presently when +the mastersingers' theme, in notes of half the length, is used as an +accompaniment to a combination of Walther's song and the burghers' +music. There is a good deal of _tour de force_ about this, but the +result justifies the means: the superb melody swings over the +ponderous bass, both melody and bass singing out clear and strong +amidst an animated, bustling and whirling sea of merry tunes. + +Composers generally left the composition of the overture till last--as +it were doing the thing only because an overture had to be +written--but Wagner knew the importance of his work and must have +composed this one very early; for in 1862, five years earlier than +the completion of the opera and six before the first representation, +he directed a performance of it in the Gewandhaus at Leipzig. He never +was a favourite in that stodgy city, the headquarters of musical +Judea, and the audience is said to have been scanty. In fact, he +himself said that, although he gave concerts only to gain money, he +never made any profits until he went to Russia. The audience, if +small, was enthusiastic. But, without entertaining any delusions about +persecution and the deliberate ignoring of his work, it is easy to see +that such music as this could not possibly be understood at once. +Though this overture is clarity itself to our ears, it is terribly +complicated, and the style was absolutely new. I doubt whether the +players quite knew, as our players know now, what they were doing; for +here was something quite alien from the patchwork of four-bar measures +which constituted the ordinary symphonic novelty at that time. There +was no "form"--no statement of first and second subject, no +working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no +recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains +were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the +part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring--these were a +mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting. +Worst of all, even in those days there were Wagnerites. Chief amongst +them was Wagner. A Wagnerite is a person who devotes his days and his +nights to raising a stone wall of misunderstanding between the +composer's music and the ears of the audience; and at this game Wagner +was an adept. The generation rising up to-day finds it hard to see +what an earlier generation found to carp at in Wagner's music; in +fifty years' time the war between Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites will +be inexplicable, and the story of it may not improbably be regarded as +grossly exaggerated, if not a pure myth. Men of my generation know +very well it was an ugly and stupid reality; we know also it was +brought about by the Wagnerites. Not Wagner's "discords," his "lack of +melody," his "formlessness" and so on hindered an almost instantaneous +appreciation of his music, but the "explanations" of the music. Things +easy to grasp, many things as old as the eternal hills, were +"explained" as being terribly difficult, and the world was told of the +"revolution" Wagner had brought about in music. No wonder many good +folks were distrustful; no wonder many would not listen to it, +believing the Wagnerites' claim that their master had rejected all the +rules observed by previous composers. Wagner's own account of this +overture is enough to turn a man's hair grey and to break a woman's +heart. Had he only written a good deal less prose--or none at all! + +The opera is entirely a praise of pure, true song, and is the longest +song in existence. Nearly all the characters are supposed to be +singers; in the first act are two beautiful pieces of song; in the +second a fine song saves the young lovers from making fools of +themselves and a bad song provokes a street riot; the opera winds up +with the presentation of the prize to the composer of a song. If there +must be a hero in the opera that song is the hero. We hear snatches of +it from time to time, and at the last it comes out in all its glory +with a choral accompaniment. There are interludes, of course--Wagner +knew better than to cloy our ears with sweetness too long sustained; +but the whole work must be regarded as one great song, of which the +clear-cut songs interspersed are parts. Even in the 'sixties, when +nothing later than _Lohengrin_ was known, the charge was brought +against the composer that his music was unvocal and could not be sung +--the _Mastersingers_ was his answer. The overture leads into the +first piece of song, the chorale that forms a vital part of the +musical texture as the opera proceeds. We see part of the inside of a +church and Walther making signs to Eva, who is clearly not attending +to her devotions. Most readers are aware that in Germany it was the +custom for the organist to play short interludes between the lines of +hymn-tunes--a preposterous trick, but one which Bach put to a splendid +use; and here Wagner transfers these interludes to the orchestra and +makes them serve as a voice for Walther's feelings on seeing Eva for a +second time: on the first occasion, the day before, they had fallen in +love with each other. The next real song-music begins to flow with the +entry of the singers' guild; but meantime there has been some music of +the sort we have noticed as forming a large part of _Tristan_. +Recitative--often broken sentences and mere ejaculations--merges +imperceptibly into passionate melody, and this in its turn gives way +to recitative, the whole thing being held together by the fairly +continuous flow of the orchestral accompaniment. The apparatus, in a +word, is precisely the same as in _Tristan_. In this first scene +Walther pleads his suit with Eva and her maidservant Magdalena; then +we have the apprentices, amongst them Magdalena's sweetheart David, to +some rollicking choruses and to their own music--the burghers' music +played four times as fast; and next David instructs Walther in the +rules to be observed if he wishes to compose a master-song and to be +admitted to the guild. Here Wagner indulges in positively uproarious +satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint +and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less +ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music +Wagner wrote in his _Rienzi_ days, with sneers at the Jewish composers +of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he +wants to learn how to sing, not to cobble boots. + +The entry of the masters is a scene that only Wagner could have +executed. A stream of Mozartian melody ripples on as the men shake +hands and go through the conventional business of the gathering of +people on the stage: what in the operas of the day--a dozen instances +might be mentioned--is wearisome stodge is here turned into a thing of +surpassing beauty. These shifting shadows of the old world become for +the moment alive; yet we see them as though across the centuries +through the magical web of music. The steady swaying motion of the +accompaniment--and, of course, the whole charm lies in the +accompaniment--has a curious resemblance to the duet of the Don and +Zerlina in the first act of _Don Giovanni_, though Mozart's score is +simplicity itself compared with this. This use of a kind of rocking +figure led many younger musicians astray; and I make a comparison +between their use of it and Wagner's with no intention of being odious +to any one, but to show exactly where Wagner's superiority lay. Take a +composer of very fine genius, Anton Dvorak, and look at a beautiful +number (beautiful in a primitive, almost savage way) in his _Stabat +Mater_, the _Eia, mater_. The theme of this (_a_, page 318) is a +descendant, with several of Wagner's subjects, and three or four at +least of Sir Edward Elgar's, of the opening of Handel's "Ev'ry +valley." Dvorak's form of it is quite original, but he never gets any +further: he cannot develop his subject. He adds an echoing, antiphonal +phrase; but even with this help he gets no further. At a first hearing +of this really very sincere and for moments entrancing work one hopes +for the best at the end of the first dozen bars; but better is not to +be. The theme becomes an accompanying figure to some not very engaging +choral passages: in the invention of the theme the whole force seems +to have gone out of the man: he has no power of achieving a climax +save by the addition of instruments: a growing climax to him means +nothing more than growing noise, and the grand climax is only the +noisiest passage of all. The one figure is repeated over and over +again, always with more instruments, until at last the complete +battery of the modern orchestra is hard at it, and Dvorak's resources +are at an end. Now look at our mighty Wagner. He takes the simplest of +figures (_b_), plays with it, with seeming carelessness, for a while, +then adds what is, technically, a counterpoint to it; he develops that +counterpoint, adds melody on melody--always keeping his figure going, +that the thing may be held together--until, after a rich and ever +broadening and deepening tide of music, he gets his climax at the +predetermined dramatic moment; and the climax does not consist of +noise, but is in the stuff of the music. Development, real +development, is not mere juggling with musical subjects, but +continuous invention of melodies, and the driving-force behind it is +the ceaseless craving of the spirit to express itself fully. + +Even more striking than this instance is the treatment of a figure +heard first when Pogner announces to the assembled mastersingers his +intention of giving his daughter Eva as the prize in next day's +contest. "To-morrow is Midsummer Day," he sings, and this figure (_c_) +sounds from the orchestra. It is made up of two distinct sections. +That formed by the first two bars is used largely as an accompaniment, +but it continually comes round to the third and fourth bars, and +counterpoints are added until at last we are far away from the +beginning, though, as in the example discussed above, the figure welds +all together into a coherent whole for the intellect to grasp apart +from the appeal the music makes to "the feeling." This "feeling" of +Wagner's was absolutely right, it was infallible; and in consequence +we find a curious state of affairs is promptly established. The rich, +joyous strain of music, lull of the feeling of summer, immediately +becomes what was, so to say, at the back of Wagner's mind--the sense +of a spring not known to ordinary mortals, the everlasting spring of +Montsalvat, a spring full of promise and just as full of regrets, the +spring Tennyson sings of-- + + Is it regret for buried time + That keenlier in sweet April wakes? + +The enchanting flood of music wells up from the orchestra, and the +vocal writing for Pogner is in Wagner's most lordly manner: there is +not a hint of the mechanical "faking" which characterises similar +passages in the _Ring_. If it was necessary to think that one part was +written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done +first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its +intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems +impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived +simultaneously. The interweaving becomes ever more marvellous as the +speech proceeds, the burgher theme in a varied form being added, until +at last, with the acclamations of the masters, it culminates in a +passage at once dramatically true, supremely beautiful and as +elaborate in its texture as any Bach fugue. We used to hear much of +the necessity for ambitious young composers to devote years to the +study of text-book counterpoint--indeed, the failure of many youthful +gentlemen to achieve anything on the grand scale has often been +attributed to their lack of diligence, their want of patience with +professorial instruction: yet here we have music which, from the +scientific point of view, is as perfect as any in the world, composed +by a daring soul who had no more than six months' teaching. It may be +remarked in passing that Spohr, in his naive way a good enough +fugue-writer, never received any instruction at all: in point of +effectiveness his fugues beat anything coming from the Jadassohn and +Hauptmann pupils. + +With the re-entry of Walther and his proposal as a member of the guild +by Pogner, we get another of these great phrases, half-theme, +half-accompanying figure, and then Walther's spring song. He describes +how, sitting by the hearth in winter, he first learnt the art of +minstrelsy from reading "das alte Buch" of the greatest of minstrels, +Walther von der Vogelweide; then when the winter had passed he heard +the birds in the green trees singing the selfsame song. Thematically +this is much richer than the spring-song in, for instance, the +_Valkyrie_, and for the best of reasons--that in the _Valkyrie_ is +incidental, part of a long duet woven from quite other material, while +that in the _Mastersingers_ is itself the material of a large portion +of the opera. The tune of the first stanza in the _Valkyrie_ is only +referred to once again throughout the work; and by far the most +expressive part is made out of a love-theme previously heard. In the +_Mastersingers_ song there is subject-matter enough to make a whole +opera. From this point it is impossible to quote themes--they are far +too long. In this respect a writer on music is at a disadvantage with +a writer on literature; the latter can cite long passages to establish +a case or illustrate his meaning; the unfortunate musical writer must +refer his readers to scores, and it is inconvenient to sit amidst a +pile of these--and Wagner's are the longest and weightiest in +existence--and dive now here, now there, to follow the author without +danger of mistaking him. The most important passage in Walther's song +begins at bar 13 (counting from the beginning of the nine-eight +measure); and it is developed in as masterly a fashion as any of the +earlier subjects, only now the style is symphonic, in the Viennese +way, as the others were contrapuntal. The whole thing is full of the +yearning spirit of spring; and, not at all strangely, bears a marked +family likeness to Siegfried's song about his mother in the _Ring_. +Throughout the deliberations of the masters the music remains at a +high level: there are no _longueurs_; dry recitative and barren +attempts to treat prose poetically alike are absent. Kothner's +delivery of the rules of the art are good-natured fun; Wagner, with +his parody of eighteenth-century mannerisms, laughing at the wiseacres +who wished to tie down modern musicians to the procedure of their +forbears. Walther's trial song, with its gorgeous instrumentation, and +the rush of the winds of March through budding woods, is even finer +than the first; and it contains passages which are employed with +exquisite effect in the next Act. There occurs a deal of what can only +be called musical horseplay as Beckmesser, the pedant type, hidden +behind a curtain, marks Walther's "mistakes"; then comes the only +phrase (_d_) in the opera which can be said to be definitely associated +with Hans Sachs. It stands first for Sachs' honest longing for the +_new_; and afterwards it is made to express the longing in his soul +for other things. With the consummate craftsmanship Wagner possessed +at this period he adds to the score the utterance of the masters' +disapproval, of Sachs' approval, of Beckmesser's pedantic +maliciousness, of the riotous fooling of the apprentices, until we +have them all hard at work united in accompanying Walther's song in +what is nothing more nor less than a grand operatic finale. The thing +is justified theatrically, so to speak, rather than truly +dramatically; for though the masters manifest dissatisfaction by their +ejaculations, and the 'prentices, seeing the way the wind blows, get +out of hand, and chant their scoffing song in the most uproarious +fashion, Walther, inspired by a sense that he is right and a +determination not to be put down, continues his song to the end. Then +he proudly quits the room and the rest follow in confusion, leaving +Sachs for a moment to show his vexation; then the curtain drops. + + +III + +The music of this Act is of the highest order of beauty and never +falls to the level of mere prettiness; from the first note to the +last it is vigorous, sturdy. The combination of strength with delicacy +and gentleness is extraordinary: one feels that the reserve of this +strength behind it all must be unlimited. The orchestration is like +the music: it is always exactly appropriate to the music. One +characteristic of the themes should be noted: with the solitary +exception of that expressive of the deep longing in the heart of Sachs +(_d_) all are singable. Even the burgher motive can be sung and is +sung. When we consider the other operas we perceive that this is by no +means always the case. The _Dutchman's_ motive is not so much sung as +jodelled by Senta; the Montsalvat music is rather orchestral than +vocal; all the motives in _Tristan_ are either orchestral or +declamatory. In saying this I do not at all underrate the other +operas: simply I wish to point out the very marked difference in the +quality of the music. The _Mastersingers_ is a long song, and the +first act the first verse of it. Such a profusion of melodies has +never been scattered over one act of an opera--not songs simply +pleasing to the ear, but constituting subjects surcharged with feeling +and capable of unfolding, as the opera goes on, into fresh forms of +the rarest beauty and splendour. We cannot lay our finger on a +superfluous bar, not one that can be cut without badly injuring the +whole work. This criticism applies to the other two acts. As new +material is introduced it is all singable; though harmonious effects +are freely used they are all there to enforce the melody. The swan, or +river, phrase in _Lohengrin_ is, of course, purely an effect of +harmony; but in this glorification of song Wagner seemed determined to +trust entirely to song and use his harmonic resources and +devices--which were inexhaustible--another day. Only once does he +resort to them: in the third act when Walther tells Sachs he has had a +lovely dream, by a single unexpected chord he gets the dream +atmosphere he wanted. At the same time the harmonies throughout are +freer, more daring, than they are even in _Tristan_. They are managed +with consummate mastery, the sharp collisions of the many winding +voices of the orchestra occurring infallibly in precisely the right +place. As I have said, not Bach himself managed a score of many parts +with finer mastery, nor gives one a more satisfying sense of complete +security; not Bach, nor Handel, nor Mozart was a greater +contrapuntist; instructively, instinctively, he knew the way his +stream of music was going, and so mighty a craftsman had he grown that +to achieve new harmonies and harmonic progressions by the interweaving +of many melodies, each individual and expressive, seems almost like +child's-play to him. But the old saying, easy reading means hard +writing, is true in the case of the _Mastersingers_. We have only to +glance at Wagner's letters to see the labour all his later works cost +him, and his incessant complaints about the state of his nerves are +significant. The writing of the _Mastersingers_ was spread over six +years. It does not matter whether it was written easily or with +difficulty--the marvel is that it was written at all. + + +IV + +The first act is the song of spring, the second one of a beauteous +summer night. The night slowly falls, and lights are seen at the +windows of the gabled houses. The apprentices put up the shutters of +the shops and bar the doors. We have old Nuremberg before our eyes; by +Sachs' door is the inevitable elder-tree, by Pogner's the just as +inevitable lime; and as surely as Schumann caught the scent of flowers +from a piece of Chopin's, do we catch the fragrance of those trees in +Wagner's music. The 'prentices, hard at work, merrily chant +"Midsummer's Eve" ("Johannestag"--not a precise translation), and +banter David concerning that very serious matter, his courtship of +Magdalena, the accompaniment being spun largely from the midsummer +theme of the first act. The atmosphere, sweet, clear, redolent of the +old world, and seeming to sparkle with excitement about the coming +joys of the morrow, is first created by a prelude scarce thirty bars +long. Through more than half of this section we get shakes and +arpeggios on one (technical) discord (_e_), with snatches of the +midsummer theme, and the exhilaration of the eve of a holiday given to +us in this very simplest of ways shows the miracle worker in his +happiest mood. Like the opening of the _Rhinegold_, this brief prelude +is an exemplification of Wagner's advice to young composers--never +travel out of the key you are in if you can say in it what you have to +say. The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal--in fact, the +whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the +note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But +presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is +Beckmesser or no one. Dramatically the scene is of the lightest, but +Wagner seizes the opportunity to paint a musical picture of Nuremberg +as Pogner holds forth on the festivities arranged for the morrow; +never did he give us anything more delightful than this picture of a +mediaeval city, anything more beautifully or more fully charged with +the sense of the past. They go in, and shortly Sachs comes out; he +tells David to arrange his tools and get away to bed, and sits down, +intending to work outside. The hammering motive (_f_) sounds out +vigorously for a couple of minutes; but Sachs is already dreaming of +Walther's song, and presently we get a phrase of it in a shape of +superb beauty--the fifty times distilled essence of spring is in +it--then another bit of it is taken and used as an accompaniment with +most enchanting effect: one feels the cool night breeze touching +Sachs' cheek, and, as in the introduction, one scents the aroma of +lime and elder-- + + "The elder scent floats round me; so mild, so rich it falls, + Its sweetness weighs upon me; words from my heart it calls...." + +With its gently rocking motion and the tremolando in the bass it is as +beautiful in its way as the opening scene, already discussed, of the +second Act of _Tristan_--the picture of the brook running through the +darkness from the fountain in King Mark's castle garden. Sachs +abruptly ceases, and sets to work; and the hammering phrase is heard +again, now combined with the beginning of another subject, liker than +ever to Siegfried's great song--the very harmonies as well as the +general rhythm are the same--and this subject is developed before long +into the Cobbler's song. But "and still that strain I hear"; and he +stops and dreams again over Walther's song. "Springtime's behest, +within his breast, on heart and voice there was laid," he sings; and +to music compact of sheer loveliness he praises the song, terminating +with a passage which I take to be nine bars of vocal writing as fine +as can be found in the whole of music--"The bird who sang this morn." + +Eva steals out from her father's door, and at once the dramatic motive +of the action deepens. We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the +night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's +heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element +comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether +there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and +she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love. +Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the +other shaped from a fragment of Walther's first song; these two are +gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in +expressiveness, until Eva's secret is no secret from the audience, +though Sachs himself is supposed not to be at first quite sure about +it. When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase +(_d_), and its full significance is brought out. The real Hans Sachs, +we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young +girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily. That, obviously, was +too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera--every one would +have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been +pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the +libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this: that Wagner +created a soul for _his_ Sachs. Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending +of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the +haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for +his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a +pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and +disastrous cad. In the trial scene he has already half divined +Walther's object, and the theme (_d_) in its application hints not +only at his longing to grasp "the new" in Walther's song, but also his +longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to +renounce her in favour of the younger suitor. Towards the end of the +opera, when Sachs brings the young pair together he says (to music +quoted from _Tristan_) he would not play the part of King Mark and +thus invite his Isolda to find a Tristan. I ask the reader to compare +this phrase with one form of the first love-theme in _Tristan_ (_g_). +The essential notes are the same; but as a melody is made to sound +another and different thing by varying the harmonies, there is in the +Sachs phrase a touch of sadness, nearly hopelessness, but no hint of +it in the _Tristan_ form. The true meaning is not obvious when it +first occurs: Sachs seems simply to be the appreciator of true art and +to be standing up for the true artist Walther against the barren +pedant Beckmesser. + +And I beg leave here to make a digression. I have spoken of Wagner's +obsession by the notion that he could by his union of drama, music, +pictorial art, etc., make his work clear enough to be understood at a +first performance: in his letters he referred to a plan for giving the +_Ring_ only once and then burning the theatre and the score--he did +not add the composer and the artists. Unfortunately this view has been +taken as a tenable one by good critics, and it has been argued +seriously that such a phrase as (_d_) is meaningless, because its +significance becomes apparent only in the second act. No great work of +art can be seen at one glance--least of all Wagner's. If a painter +puts before us a picture, say, of Perseus and Andromeda, we know at +any rate what it is about; and there is no difficulty in understanding +a Madonna. But, with the exception of the _Dutchman_, Wagner reshaped +all his subjects so that, for instance, an acquaintance with the +Nibelung legends is rather a hindrance than a help to a swift +understanding of the _Ring_. At first his King Mark is a puzzle to +those who know the Arthurian legends; and in the same way, if the +Sachs of history is confounded with Wagner's Sachs, we are at once +utterly at sea. But a knowledge of Wagner's Sachs can scarcely be +acquired from the words alone: more is told us in the music than in +the words; and before we can grasp the drama as well as Wagner's use +of phrases we must hear the opera many, many times. I deny that this +is an illegitimate mode of appeal to an audience; I deny that the +indispensability of knowing an opera thoroughly before you judge it is +to imply that it is less than a very great work of art; I affirm that +the nobler, profounder, more beautiful a work of art, the more +necessary it is to be able to look at every passage with a full +consciousness of all that is to come after, as well as of what has +gone before. Wagner himself was compact of contradictions, and so, +while trying to create his operas in such fashion that a single +performance would suffice to reveal their splendour, he took the +precaution to write detailed explanations which might serve the same +purpose as many previous performances; and he also wrote explanations +of Beethoven's symphonies. + +Throughout this long scene the tender stream of melody flows on, never +lapsing into anything approaching prettiness or feebleness, flooding +us with an overwhelming sense of a far-away past, while full utterance +is found for Eva's anxiety, then her despair, and her wish, timidly +spoken, to give herself to Sachs rather than to be won by Beckmesser. +A scene of such length, constructed on such a plan, could have been +carried through by no other composer than Wagner--the sweetness, +variety and dramatic strength and truth are Wagner at his ripest and +best. After Eva's heart has been opened to us he takes up (_d_), and +though Sachs is a little grumpy--the effort to resign Eva inevitably +though insensibly showing itself--we learn all about him and share +his secret, too, in a very short while. Then Magdalena calls Eva and +tells her Beckmesser intends to serenade her, and goes in to take her +place at the window; and then comes the only love-duet in the opera. +Walther appears; and Eva chants a melody that is surely first cousin +to one of the greatest in _Euryanthe_. As we get on we find it harder +to give any adequate idea of the enchantment of the thing. The gentle +evening wind makes its voice heard, low, soft; and Walther, scorning +the masters who compose and sing only by rule--and, by the way, what +would Wagner have done in the days when a musician had to play and +sing before he could be understood or ever heard as a composer?--works +himself up to a state of tumultuous indignation; then a strange noise +is heard in the distance, the watchman's cow-horn. A minute's silence, +and next one of the sweetest melodies in all music--expressive of the +love of Walther and Eva, but also full of that feeling for the remote +past; then the entrance of the watchman, with his warning to the folk +to look after their lights and fires: it is ten o'clock (late hours) +in our city, and disaster must be kept off at all costs. Sachs has +heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off +disaster in one shape at any rate: he places a light so that they +cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but +that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to +perform his serenade. From this point Wagner, without ever ceasing to +be the consummate artist or allowing the old-world atmosphere to +weaken its hold on our senses, lets himself go like a schoolboy out +for a holiday. He begins his splendid song, a parable: Eve was well +enough off in the Garden of Eden, but when she took a wrong step the +Lord sent a shoemaker to save her. The words are in the very spirit of +the Middle Ages: a materialistic, naive, literal handling of spiritual +things; but the most devout of believers can find no cause of offence. +The song opens, as I have mentioned, in the rhythm (4-4 instead of +3-4) of the Sword scene, the harmonies being practically the same. The +tune is one of Wagner's finest: indeed, if we did not know what he +could do, if we could not hear the opera once in a while, we should +refuse to believe that such dignity and beauty of utterance could be +kept up alongside of the grave old cobbler's humorous bedevilment. +Beckmesser wants to serenade Eva--mistaking Magdalena at the window in +Eva's dress for that lady; Sachs insists on finishing Beckmesser's new +shoes for the contest of the morrow, and revenges himself for the +insult inflicted upon Walther in the morning by striking one blow for +every mistake. Before this is arranged there is a long altercation, +and as the heat of the men's temper dies down that sweet love melody +of the old world creeps in again; but then the farce commences. +Beckmesser's song is almost outrageous caricature; the parody of the +academics of Wagner's day who made no mistakes from the academic point +of view, and yet could write nothing that sounded right, is +excruciatingly funny; then David, under the impression that the chief +of the academics is serenading Magdalena, comes out, goes in to fetch +a stick, comes out again armed, and sets to work with it upon +Beckmesser; the good burghers have been annoyed by Beckmesser's +caterwauling and Sachs' hammering; out they come to keep their streets +in order; and the tumult begins in serious earnest. Every one hits at +every one else, as Irishmen hit, it is said, at Donnybrook Fair; +Beckmesser is sadly injured; Sachs kicks David indoors, Eva and +Magdalena are got in to Pogner's; Sachs gets Walther in with him also; +the row dies down. No one save Sachs and David knows how it started; +no one knows why it ends. It is--allowing for the lapse of four +centuries--rather like a cab accident in London or any other great +city: ladies in night attire look out of windows, and, seeing their +husbands engaged in deadly warfare, in the very spirit of Miss Miggs +begin to empty pails of cold water over the combatants +indiscriminately. Apparently this cools the ardour of everybody. One +by one the crowd makes for shelter; the watchman's horn is heard a few +streets away; and when he arrives with his lantern and stick a few +minutes later the alley and platz are deserted. The moon shines out on +the lovely scene; the old man chants his call--it is eleven of the +night; all the world should be in bed; all the lights and fires should +be out; he goes off, leaving us the wondrous picture of old Nuremberg +sleeping in the heart of old Germany; and the curtain slowly falls. A +very ineffective "curtain" it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in +the 'sixties, and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; +but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of +the dramatic works of the world. + +It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a +scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now. I have +referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested +throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this +mastery. Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and +also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with +nobility. Sachs' song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its +joviality we feel the greatness of the man--a man so great in +character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving +banners are needed to make him impressive: he remains, even while he +works at his last and sings a sort of club-dinner song, the simple +cobbler-poet, great by reason of his sincerity and his artist-soul. +The street scrimmage is the most realistic thing of the sort ever +attempted, not to say achieved. It is customary to describe the music +as a fugue, and, if that is so, no more unfugue-like fugue was ever +penned. It begins with a parody of a fugue, the answer being announced +before the subject--that is, what purports to be the answer occurs a +fifth instead of a fourth below; then what purports to be the subject +is re-announced one tone above its first statement, and answered, as +before, a fifth below. Then the melody of Beckmesser's grotesque is +brought in and treated contrapuntally, with what theorists call free +imitation in the accompaniment. Fugue, real or tonal, there is none. + + +V + +This midsummer night's orgy over, we next have midsummer day. The +curtain rises; the early morning sun shines through the windows of +Sachs' house; Sachs sits there, a book on his knees, but dreaming, not +reading. But before the rising of the curtain there is a prelude to +tell us of his musings. When we know the opera this piece is easy +enough to follow. He thinks over the events of the past night, and +passes through thought into dream, getting clean away from earth into +a serener air--and coming slowly back to earth again. Structurally +this piece is on the same plan as others of the preludes--that of the +third act of _Tannhaeuser_, for example. It is nonsense to say the +piece is meaningless because it cannot be fully grasped at a first +hearing: I have already spoken of the fallacy involved in that +contention--the fallacy that a work of art should be completely +comprehensible at a first hearing. It is equally nonsensical to decry +the "literary" method of composition: that method was the method of at +least two others of the great composers, Haydn and Beethoven, who +"worked to a story." In fact, all these unreasonable reasoners who +tell us these fine incontrovertible pieces of absurdity place +themselves on the same level as the pundits who pointed out that +because Wagner used the piano when composing, therefore he could not +compose--forgetting Haydn's explicit statement that he always composed +at the piano; forgetting how Mozart spent hours and days at the piano +in doing the creative work of a new opera; forgetting that Beethoven +used the piano even when he could no longer hear it (see Schindler's +or Ries' account of the composition of the "Appassionata" sonata). As +a mere piece of music, a succession of tones and combinations of +tones, the rare quality of this prelude cannot but be felt; and though +we may not at once grasp its full significance, no one can miss the +sequence of the emotions expressed--the grave reflection of the +opening, the hymn-like succeeding passage, the gradual mounting of the +music into a beauteous, calm morning air, some realm of ecstatic peace +far above the clouds, the gradual return to the mood of the opening. +When we do know what it is all about the expression of the different +stages of feeling is felt to be more precise--that is all. + +The prelude prepares for Sachs' monologue, a profound thing, and one +moreover entirely new--had Shakespeare been a musician he might have +done something like it. Then David the Irresponsible enters, and we +get some more of Wagner's exquisite fooling; next we have Walther with +his "dream," out of which the Prize-song is made. This is a long +scene--perhaps a little too long--for Wagner seems to have been +determined that if the audience did not feel the beauty of his melody +it should not be for want of hearing it often enough. As Walther +sings Sachs takes it down in tablature, calling out to him what +sections are next required. Sachs then declares that this is indeed a +master-song, and will win Walther the prize he so much desires; he and +Walther go off to attire themselves for the contest, and Beckmesser +limps in. In dumb show he describes his aches and pains and shows how +he is thinking of his thrashing of the night before; and what he does +not say the orchestra says very plainly for him. There is far too much +of it--for English tastes, at any rate--before he is alarmed by +discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs' handwriting. He +snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great +ceremony, and there is a row--Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and +suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other. Let +me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner's stage +craftsmanship at its best. There is nothing conventional in the way +Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser his chance: what more +natural than that they should go to prepare themselves? Nor is the +finding of the manuscript one of those things that give people who +don't like opera cause to blaspheme: Sachs simply left it on the table +to dry until he returned for it. Compare this scene with that in +Verdi's _Falstaff_, where that fat hero, hiding behind a screen, must +be supposed not to hear an elaborate ensemble number sung by the other +characters--an instance which one might presume to be intended to make +the "aside" so ridiculous that no one would ever dare to use it again. +Wagner, for the time, at any rate, had ceased to make demands on the +credulity of his audiences or their meek acceptance of a preposterous +convention. The business is kept up too long, as I have just +confessed; and this is perhaps explained by Wagner's evident desire to +make fun of the men who for years had called him a charlatan, a bad +musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his +living. Still, it is a small blot on a big opera. The music for such +incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the +cases of a _tour de force_. But even its inferiority is made to serve +a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of +Eva and her conversation with Sachs. Beckmesser has gone away joyfully +with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song +by Sachs--who has told him he can do what he likes with it--and +revealing the fact that, despite all his boasting, in his heart he +knows the cobbler to be immeasurably his superior. In music hardly to +be matched for sensuous beauty Eva's trembling perturbation and hopes +and fears are exquisitely suggested; then with the arrival of Walther, +and also of Magdalena and David, we get a little more fooling, +followed by one of Wagner's loveliest and most amazing feats, the +quintet. If only for one reason it is amazing. Only a few years before +the notes were set down, and certainly only a year or two before the +thing was planned in the libretto, he had vehemently declared, in +essays and letters, that never again would he compose anything in the +operatic style: he was for ever done with opera; henceforth +music-drama alone would occupy him. And lo! here, at the very first +opportunity, we find him not merely writing a grand opera finale to +his first act--which he could justify; a rough-and-tumble finale to +his second act--which he could justify; but a set concerto piece in +the middle of his third act--which according to his own theories at +any rate, he could not justify! He might well avow that when he came +to compose _Tristan_ he discovered he had gone far beyond his +theories. The justification for the quintet is its beauty and the fact +that it finds expression for the feeling of the moment. All the same, +I have heard it encored more than once; and an encore in the middle of +the act of a Wagner music-drama, or even music-comedy, is almost +inconceivable. + + +VI + +The two pairs, Walther and Eva, and David and Magdalena, having been +joined together, and David having been freed from his 'prentice +servitude by a hearty box on the ear, the quintet having been sung and +(as just remarked) sometimes encored, Wagner gathers himself together +for a gigantic scene as characteristic of his genius as anything he +conceived: no one, indeed, but Wagner could have done or would have +thought of attempting such a scene. He has shown us the masters of +Nuremberg in conclave, the apprentices romping and joking, the crowd +in the street losing its head; and how he gives us a picture of the +town on a fete-day, with the trade-guilds marching to the +singing-contest. The tailors, the shoemakers, the bakers and the +butchers all file past, chanting the merits of their various callings, +finally gathering on the meadow outside the town to await the arrival +of the chief burghers. It is a picture, not a dramatic scene, and to +judge only from the text might suggest the _Rienzi_ way of planning +things. It is not, however, a spectacle in the sense in which we apply +that word to some of the _Rienzi_ scenes; there is nothing pompous +about it, no recourse is made to gorgeous costumes. The artisans march +past in their holiday clothes, each guild bearing its banner; the +banners wave in the bright sunlight, and there is plenty of colour as +well as of bustle and gaiety; but all is homely in style--there is not +a noble person in the crowd--and the thing is carried through by the +vividly imagined music, the energy and sparkle of it, the positive +splendour of the orchestration. The various guild-choruses are full of +humour, the many ridiculous things being saved from lapsing into mere +horseplay and nonsense by the endless series of beautiful tunes. This +part of the business ends with a waltz which shows that Wagner might, +had he chosen, have been the finest writer of dance-music in Europe, +and driven the Strausses and the rest from the field. + +The signal is given of the masters' approach, and as Sachs comes on +the whole crowd presses to greet him with a setting of his own song to +Martin Luther. The transition from the jollity of the dancing to the +solemnity, nay, sublimity, of this chorus is managed with perfect +deftness: there is no incongruity. It is this song that passed through +Sachs' brain when we found him absorbed in meditation at the beginning +of the act. The poem--written by the historical Sachs--is itself +beautiful, and Wagner has made it immortal; only he at his ripest and +best could combine in an opera-chorus such strength with such +sweetness, combine the directness of a part-song with the free play of +parts, with never a touch of formalism. It must be held to be one of +the most superb things in an opera which is as nearly perfect as ever +opera is likely to be. + +This over, we are gradually prepared for the ridiculous and +preposterous again. Beckmesser is to make his bid for Eva's hand with +what he supposes to be a song by Sachs; and to an accompaniment of +music which, lively and graceful enough, is purposely of no very +distinctive character. The preparations are made. By the time he +mounts the heap of turf to address his audience we are ready for him. +Of course he makes a fine ass of himself. He has not had time to +memorise the poem of the song, and with extravagant fun Wagner makes +him change the poetical and serious words into words of most ludicrous +significance. Walther's melody he has not got hold of at all, and in a +state of intense nervousness tries to fit the words to the burlesque +tune of his previous night's serenade. The accents all fall in the +wrong place; and as he stumbles miserably along the crowd begins to +titter. Wagner of course was parodying and satirising the pedants of +his own day, especially the composers of psalms who could not set a +straightforward Bible sentence without making nonsense of it. Readers +acquainted with the ordinary musical setting of a portion of the +Church of England service, or the average organist's anthem, will know +what I mean: the average organist seems to consider it a point of +artistry, if not indeed of honour, to accentuate the words so as to +leave the meaning as little intelligible as possible; and in many +cases--I have some before me now--he contrives to make them +nonsensical. It was this sort of thing, perpetrated by the very men +who denied him any musical gift, that Wagner held up to derision in +Beckmesser's song. The tittering swells into a roar, and at last +Beckmesser, cursing Sachs for a deceiver and false friend, flies. With +that, fooling ends. To music of a rare sweet gravity Sachs invites the +"volk" to hearken to the song when given by the man who composed it. +Walther steps up and sings; as he goes on the people again make +themselves heard, but to praise, not to deride; towards the finish +their voices form a choral accompaniment, and we have the counterpart +to the finale of the first act. Walther wins the day and Eva; and, +slightly against his will, he is made a Master. There is an address +from Sachs, in which he exhorts Walther and all present not to despise +art, but to honour it as being (for this is what his speech amounts +to) the heart's blood of national life. Preachments are not usually +stimulating, but this one is mercifully brief, and is accompanied by +fine, melodious strains. With its contrapuntal weaving it leads to +the final chorus, and also it puts Sachs back again into the position +from which the importance of Walther's song has thrust him: it is a +last reminder that the opera is a glorification of song, and that the +masters have a sacred trust--to guard song pedantry and commercialism. +The work closes with a grand chorus made up of familiar music, a +glorious blaze and riot of orchestral and choral colour. + + +VII + +The second section of this chapter contains what I have to say by way +of summing up. Let me repeat that the _Mastersingers_ is notable for +the endless flow of beautiful melodies, neither broken and scrappy +nor, on the other hand, approaching monotony: there is infinite +variety combined with magnificent breadth; for the nobility hidden +under homeliness--a characteristic most marked in Sachs' music; for +miraculous colouring now pitched in a low and tender key, now blazing +as in the last finale; for the picture of Nuremberg in the old time, +and for the vigour and fun with which the old life is depicted. It is +Wagner's one cheerful opera, and from some points of view, perhaps, +his most perfect; nowhere else did he try to keep on a high and even +level of pure song for so long; it does not strain our nerves, and +will bear hearing perhaps more frequently than anything else he wrote. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +KING LUDWIG + + +In resuming Wagner's biography we may conveniently take it up after +the completion of _Tristan_ in August, 1859. I summarised the events +leading up to his beginning on the _Mastersingers_; but it is +necessary to go over some of the ground in a little more detail to +show in what a terrible plight Wagner had been landed when King Ludwig +II of Bavaria sent for him. He was bankrupt financially, in health and +in hope. Like the nose of his boyish hero, everything turned to dust +the moment he touched it. Concerts in Paris nearly brought utter +ruin--would have brought utter ruin had not a woman friend and admirer +come to the rescue. He gained no money by his concert tour until, as +he said, he got to St. Petersburg, and there the amount cannot have +been stupendous. He laboured with brain, heart and hand to give the +world masterpieces; the world responded by not responding at all--by +taking absolutely no notice. In Paris he made many valuable friends, +but they were useless to him for the realisation of his projects. They +might help him from moment to moment, and did help him to remain alive +and to avert calamities: a secure and peaceful living they could not +guarantee him: they could not assist him in getting his works +properly performed, or performed at all. I have already discussed the +mistaken policy, on his part, of writing so much about himself, and +the futility of his German friends taking up the pen on his behalf. +The friends meant well, and there was nothing else they could do; but +at the time their efforts resulted in nothing. He published the words +of the _Mastersingers_ and of the _Ring_, and the consequence was only +that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity +as the second to music. It is hard to say who did him the greatest +amount of harm--his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies +on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days. +Whatever was done for him, whatever he did for himself, whatever was +done against him, it seemed all one: he walked steadily on into the +thickest of grimy fogs. By romping over Europe like any itinerant +conductor of this day, he might earn an uncertain livelihood: as for +any prospect of getting on with his _Mastersingers_, his _Ring_ and a +score of other plans bubbling in his head, that was a receding +prospect indeed: every year, every month, made the prospect still more +remote. His music was either misunderstood or disliked: certainly the +man's writings and the writings of his friends resulted in _him_ being +disliked. When he settled in Vienna after the triumphs of his earlier +operas he speedily discovered this sad truth, but did not discover the +reason why. His life had been a long tragedy, and with this collapse +of his Vienna hopes he seemed to touch the lowest depths. + +So he got away from Vienna, and one day had a visitor. This gentleman +said, in effect, that King Ludwig II had just ascended the throne, and +would be glad of a call. Instantly the grimy fog cleared away; all was +splendid sunshine: in that sunshine Richard was henceforth to bask and +the fruits of his genius were to ripen. He went to Munich, and there +were prompt results. In 1865 _Tristan_ was (at last) produced; he was +enabled to make a new start on the _Mastersingers_, which was +eventually produced in Munich in 1868. But in Munich, as elsewhere, +the inevitable occurred. Wagner suddenly became the "favourite," quite +as in mediaeval times, of a not very popular king, one of a line noted +for mental and moral deficiency; and, without consulting any of the +powers that had ruled for a long time in Bavaria, in his mad +enthusiasm he set about "reforming" everything. Apparently he wanted +within twenty-four hours to set up a Saxon Utopia in the midst of a +people who hated the Saxons. He wanted to establish a new opera-house, +where perfect artists were to give perfect performances for audiences +that did not pretend to be perfect. As such performances could not +possibly pay, the audiences, besides putting down the price of +admittance, had, as taxpayers, to make good the deficits. King Ludwig +was supposed to do it; but where on earth was Ludwig's money to come +from if not out of the taxpayers' pockets? Then there was to be +founded a genuine school of music--an excellent scheme, but one, +again, which could not possibly be profitable, or for some time earn +enough to cover its expenses. Who was to pay?--of course King Ludwig: +that is, the taxpayers. And Wagner was not only known (with absolute +certainty) to wish to divert from the pockets of "placemen" funds they +had learnt to consider their perquisites, with a view of turning +Munich into a musical paradise on earth: it seemed to many that he was +gaining such an ascendancy over the feeble mind and will of the king +that shortly he would be dictator of the country. That view was not +well-founded: Wagner, dreamer though he was, had a strong practical +vein in his character: if he saw that one of his dreams could be +realised he realised it at the first opportunity; if he saw it could +not be realised he explained it in an article and left others to make +the first effort at realisation. The man who created Bayreuth was not +the man to imagine altogether vainly that he could, per favour of a +king, whom he must have known to be utterly weak, turn some millions +of citizens and villagers into an Utopian nation of art-lovers and so +on. But hatred surrounded him everywhere; the machinery of the state +came early to a standstill, and, finally, the king had to ask him to +withdraw for a longer or shorter while. + +This is the plain truth of an affair concerning which there has been +an immense amount of lying on both sides. The scandals about the +personal relations of the king and Wagner I leave to the vampires; as +for the gentry who will have it that Wagner was "persecuted" out of +Munich by Jews, Christians, journalists and bank-managers, I leave +them to anybody who likes to take them up. That Wagner had to quit +Munich was a sad thing in his life--a very sorrow's crown of sorrow; +and it was a bad thing for German music. It put back the clock many +years. But, sad though it was for Wagner, in the long run it proved +good for him. He would have composed little more in such a city--a +city so misgoverned and misguided as Munich: his days would have been +filled with bitterness, his nerves would have been quickly shattered +by intrigues. He was now amply provided for; a villa--the celebrated +"Triebschen"--was taken for him on the shores of Lucerne, and here he +settled and remained for some years. Here he finished the _Ring_ and +planned Bayreuth. + +Another thing which contributed to his unpopularity was his relations +with his own and another man's wife. Hans von Buelow, his pupil, had +married Liszt's daughter Cosima: that lady became infatuated with +Wagner, and Wagner with her, and they virtually eloped together. +Minna's cause was eagerly taken up by musicians, operatic people +generally, and journalists, though none of them cared a rap about +Minna. The most scandalous stories were circulated, and Wagner came to +be thought not only a charlatan cadger living on the State funds, but +one who used those funds to satisfy his carnal and other appetites. +His silk dressing-gowns, his gorgeous apartments, his sybarite +feastings, were the common talk of the newspapers: while he was +slaving, as the saying goes, twenty-six hours out of twenty-four, the +common fancy was taught to picture him as taking his ease in +unheard-of luxury. + +These matters have nearly all been indirectly dealt with already, and +as we come to review the situation, this is what we find. Minna was an +impossible wife for such a man: she never could understand why he +could not have remained quietly at his post in Dresden, indifferent to +good or bad opera representations, and unambitious concerning the +proper artistic production of his own works. When calamity followed +calamity, to her all the trouble seemed due to Richard's +pig-headedness; and she would at once have grown cheerful and +good-natured had he burned his finished and unfinished scores and +written "something popular." She was, I say, impossible. Cosima, for +her part, found Buelow impossible. A splendid character in many ways, +he was as wayward and quarrelsome a man as has lived. So Richard and +Minna drifted apart, and Buelow and Cosima drifted apart, and in the +end Richard and Cosima drifted together. The censures that still are +passed at times on their conduct are hypocritical and grotesque. The +people who pass them are usually people who think that the Ten +Commandments were made only to be observed by the poorer classes, or +by other people, not themselves, and are willing enough to excuse +offences against the marriage laws when they are committed by folks of +exalted social position. The whole truth about the Richard-Cosima +affair will evidently never be known; no one has told; three of the +four concerned have passed away; and those writers to-day who pretend +to know most are precisely those whom I suspect of knowing least. + +The charge of living in luxurious surroundings is well enough +founded--Wagner undoubtedly did love them: he said so himself. What +did the luxury amount to? A few carpets, chairs, a silk dressing-gown, +and sufficient to eat and drink! He certainly worked hard enough for +them and had a right to them. It is odd to think that most of those +who brought these charges against him themselves grasped at as much +luxury as they could get: had King Ludwig spent his money on _them_ +there would have been no objections raised, and doubtless they would +have given us _Rings_ and _Mastersingers_. This must be the judgment +of every sane person. + +However, Wagner settled peacefully at Triebschen, and remained there +until the Bayreuth idea took solid and visible shape. He completed the +_Mastersingers_ and _Siegfried_, and made progress with the _Dusk of +the Gods_. When Minna died in 1868 he immediately married Cosima. The +idea of what ultimately became Bayreuth took shape. Bayreuth was first +thought of for a very prosaic reason. The town theatre at that time +possessed the largest stage in Germany, and in many respects was far +ahead of every other German theatre, and this drew the attention of +Wagner and his friends to the spot. Various causes combined to make +the idea of giving the first performances of the _Ring_ in this +theatre an utter impracticability, and Wagner reverted to his old pet +idea of building a theatre for himself. An eminent architect, +Gottfried Semper, cheerfully helped at planning a building which +should unite the utmost artistic usefulness with the smallest possible +expense. The house is long out-of-date, but in the 'seventies it +seemed a marvel. The seats were so arranged that every one commanded, +theoretically, the same view of the stage; the stage was fitted with +the most modern machinery, lights and so on. The orchestra was sunk, +so that the movements of the conductor and his fiddlers should not +distract the attention of the audience; the auditorium was darkened, +so that everything happening on the stage could be seen with the +greatest possible clearness. When the good burghers of a decaying +mediaeval town found what was going to happen to them they rejoiced, +for they foresaw invasions of millions of aliens who would not hurt +them but would pay out handsomely, and renew the days of the town's +prosperity. Sites were granted free of cost, both for Wagner's own +house--Villa Wahnfried--and the Festival Theatre. When the foundation +of the latter was laid, brass bands and processions took an important +part in the proceedings. + +From the very start the enterprise was looked on as a commercial one. +Wagner's house was built, but work at the theatre had soon to be +stopped for want of money. Numerous Wagner societies were started to +raise it; concerts innumerable were given with the same object; the +composer himself laboured incessantly; and eventually it was possible +to resume building. But the very means, or some of the means, adopted +to raise money aroused fierce antagonism amongst the musicians who +did not believe in Wagner, or had been attacked by him and his +disciples, and put into their hands a weapon of counter-attack. +"Begging" was a term freely employed; and a thousand newspapers were +found willing--nay, anxious--to insinuate or to state boldly that the +money was badly needed to enable the composer to live on a sumptuous +scale. When, in the summer of 1876, the first cycle of the _Ring_ was +given, no artistic undertaking could have made a worse start. People +did not know what they were asked to see and to hear; they did know +that all these scandalous rumours had been flying about for years, +that the "entertainment" was not ordinary opera, that the opening of +Bayreuth was to mark the beginning of a millennium--a new moral, +religious, political and goodness knows what sort of era. Bayreuth +from the first had attracted a very disagreeable set of persons, men +whom fathers would not allow to speak to their daughters--or to their +sons. Wagner himself had invited ridicule by claiming that his theatre +was not to be a mere opera-house, but, as he told Sir Charles Halle, +the centre of the intellectual and artistic world. "A noble ambition!" +scornfully replied the pianist. In a word, nothing was done to +conciliate; everything was done to create resentment and opposition. +King Ludwig's unpopularity must not be forgotten. Not Bavarians only, +but all the German-speaking peoples, knew Bavarian national finances +to be in a deplorable, desperate condition, and it seemed to them +scandalous that State funds should be used--as, rightly or wrongly, +was thought--for Ludwig's own gross, unspeakable pleasures. While the +Germans were thus alienated, Wagner immediately after 1871 had stirred +up the wrath of the French by speaking of the German army as the +"world-conquerors"; he had angered the English musicians by the many +remarks concerning them uttered by or attributed to him after his +exploits with the Philharmonic society. He had written against the +Jews, and though their finest musicians were with him, the bulk were +against him. + +That the performances were in many respects admirable, indeed without +any precedent, we are bound to believe. The artists, great and little, +had toiled for months to attain perfection. Most of the orchestra, +headed by Wilhelmj, had slaved without payment that there might be no +deficiencies in their department. The stage machinery, crude though it +seems to us nowadays when we read of it, was on all sides reckoned +marvellous. Interminable rehearsals had been held, Wagner supervising +them all. In the end, even the anti-Wagnerites who went to curse, +admitted that unheard-of results had been achieved: they would not +give in about the music, which remained, in their crass ears, "without +form or melody"; and we may therefore the more readily accept their +testimony as to Wagner's supremacy as a musical director. The late Mr. +Joseph Bennett's reports--and he was till his last breath a violent +anti-Wagnerite--are typical: they may be read in the files of the +_Daily Telegraph_, and are well worth reading. But, alas! when those +heartless people called accountants came to add up their mysterious +sums and to put figures on the credit side and on the debit side, they +proved incontestably that an appalling deficit was the most obvious +result of the whole proceedings; and if Wagner had any doubts, the +steady inflowing tide of bills to be met must have finally convinced +him. To pay the deficit, dresses and scenery had to be sold; and for a +time, at any rate, it was clear the theatre could not open again. +Wagner, in his old age, had to commence once again giving concerts, in +London amongst other places, to raise funds. Ludwig had done much, and +dared go no further. A huge subscription was arranged, and a large +amount of money had been collected, when help came from somewhere, +whereupon the subscriptions were returned. The detractors and +slanderers who had shouted that all the money asked for in the name of +Bayreuth was really destined to pay for Wagner's and King Ludwig's own +private amusements received, if a vulgar phrase is allowable, a +violent blow in their noisy mouths. Wagner paid no further heed to +them, but went on working out his plans. The old dream referred to in +his letters to Uhlig had been realised; he had his ideal theatre, he +had given ideal performances, and he reckoned he had given the Germans +an art. And now let us see what that art was. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND 'THE RHINEGOLD' + + +I + +In the case of few artists is there an account of the creation of +their works worth serious consideration. In the colloquial as well as +the true sense of the word they are apt to be imaginative, and such a +story as Edgar Allen Poe's of the composition of the _Raven_ is not so +much imaginative as imaginary. The creative artist is usually the last +man in the world to give a veracious history of the genesis of his +creations, for the simple reason that he does not know, and, during +the later process of trying to find out, for his own private +satisfaction, he is given to invent theories--or, let us say, +hypotheses--which eventually he may come to believe pure fact. In +music the act of creation is often done in a hypnotic state. Goethe +mentions that his earlier songs were written in a state of +clairvoyance. Many much more recent poets seem to have achieved their +hugest popular successes whilst in a comatose state. Some, who also +managed to secure a success with the public, apparently conceived and +executed their mighty works in a state of hallucination--having +somehow got the idea into their heads that they were poets. Handel, +Mozart and Beethoven are three musicians who are known--if history may +be at all believed--to have composed in a hypnotic state: Handel would +sit for hours, unconscious of what went on around him; Mozart could +not be trusted with a knife at dinner--when he had a dinner; Beethoven +would pour cold water over his hands until the tenants beneath raised +violent objections. No such tales are related of Bach, of Haydn, of +Gluck, of Weber, nor of Wagner. If ever a man knew precisely what he +had been doing, even if he was not self-conscious at the moment of +doing it, that man was Wagner. He stands apart, therefore; apart from +some of the greatest composers. His case, I take it, is analogous to +that of a man who cannot remember a friend's address and thinks of it +that night in a dream: how he chances to dream he cannot tell, but he +knows what he has dreamt, and when. + +It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently +characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace +with some certainty the growth of the _Nibelung's Ring_, both drama +and music, from its birth to its final execution. The history of the +building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily +complicated and entangled matter. Some of it had to be related earlier +in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled +up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us +begin with a few dates-- + +1848. Had studied the Nibelungen saga and +sketched the plan of the whole gigantic + work much as it now stands. + +1850-51. Discusses _Siegfried's Death_ in letters + to Uhlig and Liszt. Begins the poem in + another form, which he abandons. + +1852. Writes the poem for the work practically in + its final form; privately printed the + following year. + +1853. Begins _Rhinegold_. + +1854. Completes _Rhinegold_. + Begins the _Valkyrie_, and sketches _Siegfried_ + at the same time. + +1856. Completes _Valkyrie_. + Begins composition of _Siegfried_. + Completes first and begins second act of + _Siegfried_, and interrupts it to start work + on _Tristan_. + +1859. _Tristan_ completed. + +1867. _Mastersingers_ completed. + Composition of _Siegfried_ resumed. + _Siegfried_ completed. + _Dusk of the Gods_ begun. + _Dusk of the Gods_ completed. + +1876. The _Ring_ given at Bayreuth. + +Wagner was thus occupied with the _Ring_ for fully twenty-five years. +The _Rhinegold_ followed _Lohengrin_, but there was a gap of five +years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and +during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change. +In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the +_Rhine__gold_ and the _Valkyrie_; in the first there is little of the +passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others. While composing the +_Rhinegold_ his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had +the _Rhinegold_ been a better subject for the purpose they might have +reached maturity while writing it. But there is no human element in +it, and without that Wagner could not get on. We have already seen +that he abandoned the idea of the _Mastersingers_ for years--until, in +fact, he had created a soul for Sachs: then he went ahead and gave us +a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg. In the same way, +though he wrote some fine music in the _Rhinegold_, in richness, +splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the _Valkyrie_, where +he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be +called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human. He could not +compose unless he had the double inspiration, the human soul and the +pictorial environment. If I had to select three of Wagner's works to +live with I should take the _Valkyrie_, _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_. In them we find inspiration and craftmanship in +absolute proportion; in the later dramas of the _Ring_ we shall see +how craftsmanship outran inspiration--sometimes with results that can +only be called deplorable. This matter must be reserved for discussion +until we deal with the operas separately. + +The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it +took to write--for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a +single breath--but to the nature of the subject and the very German way +in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that +subject. In Chapter X, p. 193 and onward, the reader will recollect +certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to +these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this +gigantic opera. The letter on p. 227 is most characteristic of a +German. _Siegfried's Death_ did not explain enough, so an explanation +had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second +explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state +as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the _Rhinegold_, +was written--and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set +himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on +his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just +as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas +could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in +the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate +repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The +poem--or, more properly, the four opera-books--must now be summarised, +and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over +the same ground twice, or more than twice. + + +II + +The central figure of the _Ring_, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He +is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The +luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some +mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the +hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be +rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the +minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now, +this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the +guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of +the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama +inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of +how the _denouement_ came about, of the causes which brought it about, +which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive +attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at +all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been +arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this +sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to +hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a +violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily +abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles +to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form +the subject of three of the four dramas. + +The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into +a Ring--the _Nibelung's Ring_--gives absolute power to its possessor. +It is accursed; the curse being what I have just mentioned--that the +power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his +nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely +free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions, +could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even +Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He +makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero: +the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed +it. + +After this description of the main dramatic motive of the _Ring_, +those--if there are any now alive--who are unfamiliar with the work +may have no desire to see it, whilst those who know it may imagine +that I am purposely misrepresenting it. I beg both classes of readers +to be patient. If this were the whole _Ring_ it would indeed be a +barren, bleak and desolate affair. This is nothing more than the frame +which contains the dramas which make the _Ring_ the great work it +is--the dramas with their wealth of passion and colour, their hundred +varied emotions and scenes of love and tragedy. Before proceeding to +deal with them separately, let me again mention one point. There is +the flat contradiction between the Wotan who knows that when the +moment arrives his reign must automatically end, and the Wotan who +hopes to go on reigning by getting possession of the Ring through the +agency of a fearless hero who has struck no bargain with the powers +who are stronger than the gods. That contradiction is inherent in the +saga, and had Wagner been able to eliminate it--as he tried by diving +through the saga and to the myth behind--the very essence and +atmosphere of the drama would have been eliminated also. The idea of +predetermined destiny colours that drama throughout; the whole thing +might be the old Scandinavian way of stating a problem older than +Scandinavia, that of free-will and predestination. + + +III + +The curtain rises, and we are in the depths of the Rhine; water-nymphs +sport about; Alberich, an evil being of the river, tries in vain to +catch them. The water grows brighter with the rising of the sun, and +the Rhinegold is seen to glow on the summit of a high rock. Defeated +in his attempts to capture a nymph, Alberich scales the rock, seizes +the gold and makes off with it. The silly creatures have told him that +their innocent toy, shaped into a ring, would confer upon its +possessor power to rule the whole world, on condition that he +surrendered love; and love being something Alberich is incapable of +understanding, though he is amorous enough, he willingly pays the +price for the sake of the power--that is, the power costs him nothing. +The light-giving gold being raped, darkness falls on the river. + +The next scene is on a plateau; beyond it lies the valley of the +Rhine; further off is a mountain; light mists hover over the summit; +and, as they clear away in the early morning sunshine, a gorgeous +castle, Valhalla, gradually becomes visible. Wotan and Fricka his +wife lie in slumber. Fricka wakes first, and is startled, not to say +horrified, by the apparition. The Giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have +built the castle, and the promised payment is Freia, Fricka's sister, +whose apples all gods and goddesses must eat every day, else they will +fade and perish. Fricka tries to awaken Wotan: in his dreams he talks +of endless, omnipotent power, and of his castle, to be peopled by +heroes to fight for him against the brute forces of the earth. When he +is aroused he gazes at the building in deepest joy: _now_ his ambition +will be gratified. In vain Fricka expostulates, repeating (in homely +phrase), "What about Freia?" Wotan smiles a superior smile: he has +arranged that matter, and all will be well. + +This is the beginning of Wotan's tragedy, the huge drama of which the +others constitute the working out. From this scene to the end we are +to see Wotan gradually forced into a corner. He has to learn by slow +degrees that you cannot have anything without paying the price. It is +in vain he argues with Fricka. She stands for law--inexorable law. She +seems a disagreeable woman, and it would be much more pleasant for +everybody concerned if she could be induced to hold her tongue and let +things take their course. So is what we call the law of gravitation a +disagreeable thing; all the same, we know that if we fall off a +house-roof we shall break our necks. In the Scandinavian cosmogony +Wotan holds sway only by treaties, bargains struck with the powers +that only sustain him so long as he sticks to his word, and are +capable of thrusting him down if he breaks his word. Even omnipotence +may be bought too dearly, and Wotan is not destined to taste the +sweets of even a quarter of an hour's omnipotence. In vain he tries to +evade responsibility, to get something for nothing; and his tragedy is +consummated when in _Siegfried_ he realises that omnipotence can never +be his. Then he renounces it. + +This is by way of being a digression; but, for a clear understanding +of this main drama of the _Ring_, it is absolutely necessary that we +should see the source of Wotan's troubles, and here it is: that Fricka +will not allow him, figuratively, to jump off a house-top without +breaking his neck. What she tells him swiftly proves true. Freia flies +in, pursued by the Giants, who demand to be paid. "You rule by +treaties alone," they say. Wotan looks anxiously round for Loge, the +treacherous god of fire and lies. He has promised to find something +that the Giants will accept instead of Freia; and when he enters he +confesses to failure--there is nothing, in the estimation of an +earth-born creature, that is equal to a woman. But he tells of the +theft of the gold; the Giants listen greedily, and they agree to take +it, if Wotan can get it, instead of Freia. Wotan has a double motive: +he does not want all the gold, or, indeed, any of it, save the Ring +shaped by the Nibelung; that he determines to grasp, else the Nibelung +will become _his_ master. He has trusted to lies and trickery, and has +been swindled; but so overpowering is his thirst for universal rule +that he again trusts himself to Loge. The Giants hold Freia as a +hostage; presently all the gods begin to lapse into a comatose +state--they have not eaten of her apples that day--and in desperation +Loge and Wotan set out for the Nibelung's abode. The Nibelungs are the +slaves and sons of toil; they labour incessantly for Alberich; him +only does Wotan fear: he must get the Ring from them at all costs. The +pair descend into the Nibelung's cave. The Ring is already forged, and +the Tarnhelm--the cap of invisibility--is made which enables him to +render himself invisible or to change himself into any animal he +wishes. By a trick Wotan gets Alberich into his power, carries him to +the upper earth, and only lets him go free after he has surrendered +Tarnhelm, Ring and all the hoard of gold. Then the turn of the Giants +comes. The pile of gold they demand must hide Freia from sight; and in +the end she can still be seen, and Wotan must sacrifice the one thing +precious to him, the Ring. That is accursed, and no sooner have Fafner +and Fasolt got it than they quarrel; Fafner kills Fasolt, and goes off +with all to change himself into a dragon and to hide himself in a +cavern with his treasure. Wotan, in his extremity, has summoned Erda, +the wisdom of the earth, and she has counselled him to give up the +Ring, and it is with horror that he sees how wise she was. But his +ambition is boundless; he cannot give up the idea of reigning supreme; +and when things seem at their worst he has a sudden inspiration--that, +already mentioned, of raising up a hero who will freely take the Ring +from Fafner, and, by letting Wotan have it, free of treaties, enable +him to reign supreme. The thought is told us only in the music, and +in the music only in the light of the later operas of the series. Then +the gods cross a rainbow bridge, somewhat hastily thrown up by Donner, +the god of storms, and enter Valhalla; and underneath the dreary wail +of the Rhinemaidens is heard as they lament their loss. With this the +_Rhinegold_ closes. + + +IV + +Now let us consider the music of the _Rhinegold._ + +Already the discrepancy of styles has been referred to. The +_Rhinegold_, coming between _Lohengrin_ and _Tristan_, suffers from an +odd sort of pettiness of phrase--a pettiness which in all probability +we should not feel if we did not judge it by _Tristan_. The wide sweep +of the tide of music that we find in the _Valkyrie_ is absent; there +is a tendency to shorten the measures, a hesitation between boldly +going on, as in his later manner, and the symmetrical four-bar +measures of _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_. The opening of the second +scene is in structure that of a Handel opera air: we have the +ritornello, and presently the same music is repeated as the +accompaniment of Wotan's salute to his castle. This smallness of +design, it must be remembered, is only comparative: compared with +anything of the sort done before, the design is big and broad. The +Wagner of the _Valkyrie_, of _Tristan_ and of the _Mastersingers_, has +not acquired full mastery of his new art; there are still plenty of +full closes, and, though words are not repeated, the effect at times +would hardly be more conventional if they were. + +But in all the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner's walks +amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the _Ring_ to +Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly +concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The _Rhinegold_ +ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in +each Act of the _Valkyrie_ there is a storm; the Third Act of +_Siegfried_ opens with a storm; there is one storm in the _Dusk of the +Gods_. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the +driving of thunder-clouds--these are the pictorial inspiration of the +_Ring_ as surely as old Nuremberg is the pictorial inspiration of the +_Mastersingers_. These Scandinavian gods are the divinities of river +and wood and mountain, and Wagner made full use of them. The _Ring_ is +far too lengthy, and the main drama is apt to get forgotten; the +repetitions, due to Wagner's desire not to let it be forgotten, are +wearisome. But one thing can never be forgotten--the sense of the open +air, the freshness of nature, the loveliness and health of the green +earth: that sense keeps the gigantic, overgrown thing sweet and an +endless delight. + +The opening is as sublime in its simplicity as the first bars of the +_Lohengrin_ prelude. As the curtain rises on the depths of the Rhine, +"greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below," the lowest E flat +booms softly out (it has to be done by an organ pedal-pipe), the deep +voice of the river as it rolls massively on its course towards the +sea; and the effect is overwhelming. A theme then makes its appearance +in its first vague form, a theme which in one shape or another Wagner +uses throughout the four operas for the elemental beings--here, the +water nymphs, afterwards Erda. The mass of tone swells out; the music +becomes more active; and at last the voices of the Rhinemaidens are +heard. The whole of this is one of Wagner's most delightful things. It +is another illustration of his rule that a composer should never leave +a key as long as he can say what he wants while staying in it; for +some hundreds of bars there is no change, and then only a slight one. +With the entry of Alberich modulations begin. Here we have the +wonderful inventive Wagner: that figure, in the inner part of the +musical tissue, would alone stamp him as a great composer: the +composer who could invent such a theme could not possibly be a small +composer. The mock-coaxing of the nymphs might be a parody of the +Venusberg scene in _Tannhaeuser_; and later on there occurs a passage +that might be a parody on parts of _Tristan_. When Alberich steals the +gold we get that degenerate form of the Valhalla theme repeated again +and again, and the full effect of the device is only felt when, with +the change of scene, we hear the passage in all its nobility and +splendour. Wotan's greeting to his new castle is rather grandiose than +really fine: one feels the theatrical baritone; one feels also that +the quality of homeliness which makes Sachs a great character is sadly +lacking. In the _Valkyrie_ this unpretentiousness, so to speak, is +always present, and the music gains proportionately in +impressiveness. Wotan's opening phrase, grand and sweeping though it +is, somehow evokes a vision of an Italian opera baritone expanding his +chest, with arms extended in the direction of the more expensive +seats: this is neither the mighty Wotan of the _Valkyrie_, nor even of +the underground scene in this opera. + +Nor is the vocal writing, in another respect, that of the greatest +Wagner. I have already spoken of the perfect fusion of vocal and +orchestral parts which we find in _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_. +To that perfection Wagner had not attained when he began the _Ring_; +and much of this first speech of Wotan consists of notes written +simply to fit in with the Valhalla theme. That theme shows traces of +its descent from the Alberich motive--the greed for power--in that it +does not bear real development, but only variation; it is, in fact, +not a musical subject in the sense in which, say, the _Tristan_ +subjects are musical subjects, but is, properly speaking, a figure. +But shaped to a stately rhythm and richly harmonised, and moreover +gorgeously orchestrated, it glitters with sufficient magnificence. +Fricka's remonstrances are at first querulous, but with the passage +beginning "Um des Gatten Treue besorgt" we get one of Wagner's +matchless bits of lovely melody. The entry of Freia, flying from the +Giants, is theatrically effective, and here we find for the first time +the phrase, already alluded to in the chapter on _Tristan_, which +throughout the _Ring_ is made to serve so many purposes. In this scene +I still feel the halting between the _Lohengrin_ style and later, the +indecision--nay, the uncertainty--in the handling of the musical +material. There are no regular four-bar measures and full closes as in +the earlier work; but a great deal is nothing more than dry recitative +disguised. The first scene of the _Rhinegold_ is purely symphonic: +even if Alberich's spasmodic, jerky exclamations seem to be written in +to fit the nature of this being, his whole mode of speech--harsh, +unmusical--renders the fact less glaring; and the tide of music flows +steadily on, reaching climax upon climax, until the final crash when +he disappears with the gold. Wagner did not find it possible to get +this continuity when he came to set to music the arguments amongst +Wotan, Fricka and Freia: there are short cantilenas, but they are +constantly broken by recitative. + +With the entry of the Giants the music makes, so to say, a fresh +start. The old themes are welded to or interwoven with new material, +and a perfect symphonic whole results, one that can be listened to +with delight without stage accessories. I do not mean that music +intended for the theatre should stand the test of playing away from +the theatre, but that here Wagner, while writing strictly and +immensely effective theatre music, has got such a grip of his art that +he can combine the two things, dramatic truth, and symphonic beauty +and cohesion. The flood sweeps on, undisturbed in its flow by the +entry of the other deities, or by the introduction of themes full of +significance in the light of their after development. But another fact +must not go unnoticed. There is in the _Rhinegold_ little of the +spring freshness of the _Valkyrie_. The melody associated with +Freia's apples is supremely beautiful; but it is a mere short phrase, +several times repeated, and the mass of music in which it is embedded +smells more of the study and the lamp than of the mountains and the +woods. The Froh theme, too, is a trifle flat: it does not effervesce +or sparkle: the "dewy splendour" of the _Valkyrie_ music is not on it. +This is not to be hypercritical: it is to compare, as one must, a +great achievement with an achievement in all respects very much, +immeasurably, greater. Had we only the _Rhinegold_, with all its +plentiful lack of inspiration and its theatricality, it would rank +very high; but Wagner himself in the _Valkyrie_ set the standard by +which inevitably it must be judged. + +When Wotan and Loge descend to the Nibelung's cave to steal the +treasure Wagner frankly lets himself loose. Here we have the +hobgoblins of the Teutonic imagination and the rude, boisterous, +humorous Wotan of the Scandinavian imagination--the Odin who tried to +drink the sea dry and laughed to find he could not. As the +once-celebrated Sir Augustus Harris declared, "This is pantomime." +Perhaps the scene is unduly protracted, but the music goes on merrily +enough. The renewed altercation with the Giants calls for little +remark. When, however, the Giants demand the Ring and Wotan calls up +Erda, the wisdom of the earth, a passage occurs which, though more or +less of an irrelevant interpolation, gives Wagner a chance of putting +forth his strength. Erda rises to most mysterious music, counsels +Wotan to surrender the Ring, and sinks down again to her sleep; and +one forgets the irrelevancy in the thrill of this vision of the Mother +Earth, the spirit that sleeps amongst the everlasting hills. Finally +the composer gets his great chance, and shows that, like Handel and +his own Donner, he "could strike like a thunderbolt." The gods are all +disheartened; mists have gathered; Donner--our old friend Thor--raises +his hammer and smashes something; there is a flash of lightning and a +peal of thunder; the mists and clouds clear away; and we see there the +rainbow bridge over which the gods wend on their way to Valhalla. We +have Wagner the sublime pictorial musician. The Rainbow motive is +perhaps not very graphic in itself, but it serves as a basis for a +delicious passage--evening calm and sunset after storm--comparable +only with a parallel passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The +storm itself is Wagner in the plenitude of his power. It is short: it +is not "worked up": in a few strokes, brief and telling as Donner's +own hammer-strokes, the whole thing is done. Then the Valhalla music, +glorified by a gorgeous accompaniment, is heard again, only +interrupted by the wail of the Rhinemaidens below, sorrowing for the +loss of their pretty, harmless toy. Wotan hears the cry, and passes on +to feast in his castle. Grim care goes with him; but he has the +consoling idea of the free hero and the irresistible sword. So ends +the _Rhinegold_--Fricka content to have both Wotan and Freia; the +other gods not much concerned about anything; Wotan full of +apprehensions and also of determination--determination to rule without +paying the price of rulership. + + +V + +I have attempted nothing more than a broad and rough description of +the _Rhinegold_. The opera was planned as a prelude, and suffers from +the defects of the plan, as well as from the fact that it was written +before Wagner's new method was ripe. He wrote to Liszt that the music +came up "like wild," or, as an irreverent critic once observed, like +mould on a pot of jam; and the second description is truer than the +speaker thought. The _Rhinegold_ has aged faster than any other of the +great works. Alongside of the sublime we find the petty; after phrases +as sweet and fresh as raindrops on young spring leaves we find stodgy, +"made," music; the atmosphere is not preserved. But gigantic +possibilities are opened out. The Rhine music is afterwards used to +splendid ends; the Spear motive, which makes its first appearance in +rather a trivial form--it might be a quotation from Weber or +Spohr--becomes later one of the crowning glories of the _Ring_; the +Fire music--the Loge theme--comes out at once in its full +magnificence. It is fair criticism to say that had Wagner written the +opera again after finishing the _Valkyrie_ he might have wrought up +his material into a perfect work of art. A mere mortal, even the +greatest mortal, could hardly be expected to attempt the task, and the +_Rhinegold_ is a little less than perfect. Moreover, it is +superfluous. We can follow the _Valkyrie_, _Siegfried_ and the _Dusk +of the Gods_ quite well without it. Still, it is a part of Wagner's +scheme, and for many a long year will be enjoyed for its power and +beauty, a power and beauty that seem small only in comparison with the +greater operas. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +'THE VALKYRIE' + + +I + +The _Rhinegold_ suffers from a plethora of undeveloped themes, some of +which are treated at length as the _Ring_ proceeds. Of all announced +only two remain unchanged, the Valhalla and the Fire themes. The +first, I have just remarked, is not susceptible of development, and is +only slightly varied throughout the _Ring_; the second does not demand +development, but is varied much as Beethoven varied his melodies in +his last pianoforte sonatas. The most important of those that are +metamorphosed is the Spear motive. The Spear is the symbol at once of +Wotan's sovereignty and of his bondage. On its shaft, the world +ash-tree stem, are graven the mystic laws by virtue of which he rules; +did he break these laws his power would be gone from him. The essence +of the laws lies in the sanctity of compacts, and so we first hear its +representative theme when the Giants come to claim Freia as payment +for the building of the Burg: it makes its appearance quietly, +unobtrusively, almost apologetically, and might be, as I have said, a +fragment from Spohr or Weber. Its treatment in a simple snatch of +two-part canon, one part following the other at half-a-bar's distance, +seems like a mild gibe at those who only live for and by conventions. +When it reappears in the Second Act of the _Valkyrie_ it is +altogether a different thing: here we have Wotan the ruler determined +at all costs to rule and using to the full the power the Spear confers +on him. Like many of the greatest musical subjects, it is simple +beyond the daring of the minor composers, merely an unbroken scale +descending in heavy, emphatic steps to the lower octaves: it is +authority personified, will that brooks no opposition. This motive, +the Valhalla motive and the fire motive are the principal ones carried +into the _Valkyrie_ from the _Rhinegold_; and an immense amount of new +musical matter is introduced. We see no more of the inferior deities: +we hear the stroke of Donner's hammer in a storm _Lied_, and Loge +appears as consuming flame in the last act; but, excepting Wotan, only +Fricka is seen again in human shape. The stage is now occupied by +human beings, raised up, it is true, by Wotan himself, and by some +other mysterious beings, also raised up by Wotan, one of whom, _the_ +Valkyrie, Bruennhilda, is condemned in the final scene to become human. + +Two dramas, the huge encircling tragedy of Wotan in conflict with his +wife Fricka, the goddess of laws and covenants, especially the +covenant of marriage, and the subsidiary tragedy of Siegmund and +Sieglinda, are combined in perfect proportions in the _Valkyrie_. The +story at first sounds a little complicated; but the reader, bearing in +mind what has already been said of Wotan's Master-idea, can have no +difficulty whatever in following it. The Master-idea, we know, is to +raise up a hero who, acting freely, independent of and ever defying +the gods, will wrest the Ring from Fafner. Wotan, then, has descended +from his Valhalla, and, taking an earthly wife, begotten two children, +Siegmund and Sieglinda, who know themselves to be of the tribe of the +Volsungs. These he deserts. Sieglinda is taken captive and made the +loveless wife of Hunding; Siegmund, alone in the world, wanders hither +and thither, meeting ill-luck everywhere--ill-luck prepared by his +father. At last, in attempting to rescue a maiden from some raiders, +he is forced to fly. As he runs through the depths of an unknown +forest a storm breaks upon him, and he takes shelter, utterly +exhausted, in the house of Hunding. At this point the curtain rises. + +The scene is the inside of Hunding's dwelling, built round a great +ash-tree; on the right the fire burns on the hearth. The steady roar +of the storm outside is heard, broken by shocks as the wind buffets +the trees and the house and by the plashing of the rain. The room is +empty; presently the door is roughly dashed open from outside and +Siegmund staggers in. "Whatever this house may be, I must rest here," +he says, and throws himself on the hearth. (We must bear in mind that +the hearth was sacred: if my enemy took refuge on mine I might starve +him out, but so long as he stayed there I might not hurt him.) +Sieglinda enters; the two do not recognise one another; he calls for +water; she brings him mead. Presently they fall to talking; and it is +seen that the inevitable must happen. Hunding enters abruptly; they +sit down to supper; Siegmund discloses his identity, so far as he +knows it--all but his name; Hunding recognises the very man he has +been chasing, and gives him shelter for the night, but warns him that +in the morning he, without a weapon, must fight. He calls for his +night-draught, sends Sieglinda into the sleeping-room, and follows +her. She glances repeatedly from Siegmund to a spot on the ash-trunk; +but he does not take her meaning. + +There follows a strange and beautiful scene. Siegmund lies down to +rest; the fire glimmers fitfully, then blazes up, revealing at the +point on the trunk at which Sieglinda had gazed a shining sword-hilt, +the blade embedded in the trunk. Still Siegmund does not understand, +and the fire dies down; he is beginning to slumber when Sieglinda +enters and calls him. He starts up; she has put a sleeping-powder in +Hunding's cup, and they are safe; and thus begins the greatest +love-duet, next to the _Tristan_, in the world. Sieglinda tells how +when she, full of grief, was wedded to Hunding, a grey old man, with +one eye, clad in a blue cloak, came in uninvited, drove the sword +Nothung into the ash-tree, and said that it should belong to the hero +strong enough to draw it out. From all parts warriors came, but none +could move it. Sieglinda feels that the appointed man has come; +Siegmund grasps the weapon and triumphantly pulls it out. Then they +reveal their names, and recognise one another as brother and sister, +and the Act ends. + +This is the first step towards Wotan's discomfiture. The significance +of the Sword theme in the _Rhinegold_ at the moment when he has the +Master-idea will now be apparent. The sword was so endowed by Wotan +that only a fearless hero could use it; therefore, when Siegmund draws +it from the wood, Wotan, watching from Valhalla, knows he has +succeeded in raising up the hero he needed. Siegmund had been tested +by all manner of misfortune; no harder life could have been his; Wotan +had never aided him, but thrown disasters in his path; and had he +failed or succumbed Wotan's device would have failed. But freely, +independently, with no help from the god, he had come through all, and +now his own strength enabled him to take the sword to--to what?--to +work Wotan's will! That is, in creating Siegmund, even in testing him, +in preparing for him a weapon that none could stand against, Wotan, +far from successfully accomplishing his purpose, was accomplishing his +ruin. Disillusionment comes swiftly. The first deed of his hero is to +break two of the most sacred laws of heaven--laws binding on Wotan +until he gets the Ring--for he carries off another man's wife, who is, +moreover, his own sister. The punishment for that is matter for the +next Act. At the end of the first we have seen that Wotan's +Master-idea is a delusion. He might as well go and kill Fafner himself +and take the Ring as breed a hero to do it for him with the aid of a +magic sword. If he did so it would be by virtue of the power conferred +on him by the runes on the Spear; and by those runes--those +laws--Siegmund must be, and is, promptly judged and punished. + + +II + +Before the rising of the curtain we have the first and one of the +greatest of the ear-pictures of the _Valkyrie_. There is no preamble; +at once the strings begin in repeated quavers to sustain (virtually) a +long D, while the basses start off with a figure many times +repeated--a figure which is simply a bold variant of the bass figure +in Schubert's _Erl-king_. So, for that matter, is the long D. Schubert +drew a fine picture of storm in black wood; but he was limited by the +form he wrote in and the instruments he wrote for. The energy, +superhuman energy, of the thing is amazing: the storm throbs in the +forest: one feels the pulse of the storm-god; the _sforzando_ shocks +and shrieks add to the terrific wildness of the scene. Pitilessly, +ever higher and higher, the wind shrieks, always to that beating bass, +until, amid the clatter and screaming, we hear Donner, exulting in his +mad strength and swinging his mighty hammer as he rides. The lightning +crackles vividly in the orchestra, the thunder rolls, crashes and +growls, and the thunder-god can almost be heard betaking himself off +to continue his riot afar. Then a labouring, panting and struggling +phrase--scarcely a theme--is heard as the storm slightly lulls; the +curtain rises and we see Hunding's dwelling, and Siegmund bursts in. + +The music of the earlier portion of the first scene is not of the same +intrinsic quality, nor need it be. We have the setting before our +eyes, and the stupendous power of what has just been heard leaves in +our minds a vivid impression of what is going on out of doors. +Sieglinda comes in, surprised to find a stranger there at all, +especially on so wild a night; Siegmund asks for water; she brings it; +finding he is likely to fetch trouble on her head, he is for going. +But there is sympathy between them, and various Volsung motives and +phrases of the rarest beauty and expressiveness tell us why; and she +tells him to wait. "Hunding I will await here," says Siegmund. It is +in this scene that a passage occurs like one which I have referred to +in the chapter on the _Dutchman_--the phrase is marked (_f_) on p. +118. The _Dutchman_ phrase is longer and at the same time less +poignant; here it is brief and extraordinarily expressive; there it is +not developed, nor, after some repetitions, heard again; here it is +made the most of musically and appears so late as in the _Dusk of the +Gods_. But the situations are analogous. Senta gazes, rapt, on +Vanderdecken; Sieglinda and Siegmund look on one another and passion +begins to dawn. This is worth noting as showing that Wagner used the +leitmotiv spontaneously, so to speak, and not always as the result of +deliberate calculation. Like all the other composers, he had his +mannerisms: having invented a melody to find utterance for a feeling +or set of feelings, when similar feelings had to be expressed again it +was natural to him to use again the first melody, or something very +like it. No composer, not even Beethoven, was more resolutely bent on +writing _truthful_ music; and having once found the music to express +certain shades of feeling, he was like a writer who, having said +something as well as he can say it, prefers repeating himself to +trying to achieve a superficial appearance of variety. Wagner, I +think, repeated himself quite unconsciously very often: when the +repetition is conscious of course we have at once the genuine +leitmotiv; but it is the maddest of errors to see in every resemblance +between phrases the deliberate employment of the leitmotiv. + +The pair have drunk mead together and stand looking at one another; +the storm has died away; and from the orchestra come passages of +wondrous delicacy, tenderness and freshness, scored by a perfect +master. Suddenly the clanking of a horse's hoofs is heard; "Hunding!" +exclaims Sieglinda; the door is again thrown open and the black, +ferocious barbarian stalks in. His theme is, figuratively, as black, +gloomy, sinister and forbidding as himself; and the heavy, sullen +tones of the battery of tubas which announces it intensify its +effectiveness a hundredfold. Hunding is no villain of the piece, but a +simple, surly chief of a tribe of savage fighters, and Wagner's music +exactly describes him. Save for Siegmund's recital of his woes, the +remainder of the scene remains sullen and gloomy; Siegmund, however, +has some touching passages, and notably a phrase of unearthly +strangeness when he tells how he came back to his hut and found his +father gone, only a wolf-skin lying there; and a bit of the Valhalla +motive in the orchestra thrills one with its suggestiveness. One is +carried into the dimmest recess of a forest where man has never been, +far back in a period so old that it is ridiculous to call it ancient. +Throughout the music is in Wagner's grandest manner; the vocal writing +is perfect; and though there are plenty of theatrical strokes, they +are done in a nobler way than the mere opera way of _Tannhaeuser_ and +_Lohengrin_. In a word, the music is big: the breadth and sweep are +enormous: the greatest Wagner has arrived, the Wagner who has gone far +beyond the hesitations and littlenesses even of the _Rhinegold_. +Hunding is characterised more clearly and with more decisive strokes +than Hagen in the last opera of the _Ring_, partly because there is +more genuine inspiration in the _Valkyrie_, partly, perhaps, because +Hunding is a much simpler personage. + +That strange scene where Siegmund lies on the hearth again, and, +realising his desperate situation, calls on his father the Volsung for +aid, is musically and dramatically splendid in its colour and force. +As he thinks of Sieglinda a feeling of spring again comes into the +music; thus is strengthened the beautiful music she is given; then +comes the avowal of love, and the flying open of the door. Outside, +the trees are seen in the moonlight, the dripping green leaves +glistening; and Siegmund sings a spring-song never to be beaten for +freshness (though, as I have pointed out, not equal in musical +significance to Walther's song in the _Mastersingers_); there comes +the magnificent scene of the plucking out of the Sword; the +recognition of the two as brother and sister; and the final +impassioned outburst which ends the scene as with a blaze of fire. + +This Act will ever be accounted one of Wagner's most magnificent and +fully inspired. The superb vocal writing, the beauty and sheer +strength of the orchestral parts, the gorgeous colouring, and the +human passion blent with the sense of the green yet fiery spring, all +go to make up a thing unique in opera. A tide of life rushes through +it all; and the man's technical accomplishment was so fine and +complete that he found immediate incisive expression for every shade +of emotion, or complex blend of emotions, and every sensation. The +jealous, savage ferocity of Hunding is there; Siegmund's and +Sieglinda's despair, hope and final burst of ecstatic joy; and at the +same time we seem to smell the fresh, wet earth and leaves and to see +the sparkling moonlight. + + + +III + +The Second Act opens in a wild and rocky place amongst the mountains. +Siegmund and Sieglinda have fled; Hunding is in hot pursuit; and now +Wotan stands, the mighty war-god, brandishing his spear, and calling +his daughter Bruennhilda, the Valkyrie, to favour and aid Siegmund. She +joyfully assents and goes off, and Wotan exults. He persists in +deceiving himself: Bruennhilda, his own daughter, was created to +execute his purposes: the Runes make him accountable for her actions, +just as he is now for Siegmund's and in the later operas for +Siegfried's. As in the _Rhinegold_, Fricka instantly bids him remember +what and _how_ he is. As the goddess of covenants, laws, she wants +vengeance wreaked on Siegmund and Sieglinda: they have broken the most +sacred of all covenants in the eyes of a woman, the marriage covenant. +Vainly Wotan pleads that the Valkyrie works unaided: she presses him, +until at last he swears a sacred oath on his spear that Siegmund shall +die. Bruennhilda comes in, whooping her war-call, but her voice drops +at the sight of Fricka. Fricka, who thoroughly despises all the +Valkyrie maidens as being born out of true wedlock, tells her to take +her orders from Wotan, and goes off triumphant. Wotan, deeply +despondent, terrifies Bruennhilda with his grief; she casts down her +spear and shield and kneels before him, imploring him to tell the +cause. + +Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: +Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian +terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been +explained amply in the _Rhinegold_ and in the scene we have just +witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again--with dreary +and soporific effect. Bruennhilda, as love incarnate, pleads for the +man and woman whose only crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws +are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; +he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. +Sadly Bruennhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is +subject to--for how should love know aught of greed for power?--picks +up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to +warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save +in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen +one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard +she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the +woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he +cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps--the Valkyrie having +thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Bruennhilda +advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come to call thee hence"; he raises +his head, sees her, and knows his fate. This is the final crushing +blow; the Volsung had always deserted him; but he had found the magic +sword and thought the promised help would not fail him in his worst +need. (Truly the gods treat us as toys to be broken at pleasure!) He +refuses to go, and speaks blasphemy of the high gods; Bruennhilda is +horrified: here she is going to take him to Valhalla to feast on +delights for ever--and he scorns her. He ridicules Valhalla and Wotan +and the serving-maidens: he wonders who the Valkyrie is, so beautiful +and cold and stern. The scene is one of the fullest dramatic +intensity: at last Siegmund asks whether, if he goes to Valhalla, he +will find his wife there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," is +the answer: Siegmund for the moment is crushed, but again rebels, and +takes his sword to kill first Sieglinda and then himself. Bruennhilda +is overcome with admiration: _this_, at any rate, this love she can +understand; she tells him to prepare to fight Hunding and she will +help him. + +The next scene is unmatched, even in Wagner, for its terror and the +swiftness with which the climax comes on. Clouds gather; Hunding's +horn is heard and his voice; Siegmund leaves Sieglinda and goes off +cheerfully and confidently to meet his foe. Thicker gather the clouds; +thunder peals and lightnings flash; the antagonists are heard calling +as they seek each other in the darkness; Sieglinda speaks in her +dreams; as she awakes, Hunding and Siegmund are seen in the dim light +high up amongst the rocks; Bruennhilda encourages Siegmund, guarding +him with her spear; he is about to strike Hunding down; there is an +angry red glare, and Wotan shatters the sword with his spear; Hunding +runs his spear through Siegmund; Sieglinda shrieks and falls +insensible to the ground. Slowly the red light fades; "Go, tell Fricka +I have sent you," Wotan says bitterly, and at his nod Hunding falls +dead; Bruennhilda has run round, picked up the shards of the Sword, +and, gathering Sieglinda in her arms, rushed away. There is a moment +of suspense; the tragedy is accomplished; and now Wotan must punish +Bruennhilda for disobeying his commands; and amidst thunders and +lightnings, in flaming wrath, he rides off, and the curtain falls. + +The drama of Siegmund and Sieglinda is ended; the second inner drama, +that of Wotan and Bruennhilda, is begun. Love, the best part of Wotan's +nature, has risen against him in his endeavour to rule; she cannot +prevent him destroying the creatures he has made, but she can defy +him. That sort of rule would be intolerable, so love shall be put away +from him and he will still rule. And, love being discarded, there is +no reason why he should not still get the Ring, by fair or foul means, +and reign--loveless indeed, but in no fear of Fafner or the Nibelung, +black Alberich. + + +IV + +As a musical structure the Second Act divides more easily and clearly +than the first into sections: the sections, indeed, are boldly +defined. First there is a prelude formed of the scene in which Wotan, +rejoicing in the coming combat, directs Bruennhilda to see to it that +Hunding is slain; and this is followed by what may be regarded as the +main first movement--the dispute between Wotan and Fricka, terminating +in his taking the oath; then comes his monologue, addressed, of +course, to Bruennhilda ("In talking to thee it is with myself I seem to +speak," to transcribe approximately what he says); Bruennhilda's +warning to Siegmund follows, and then the finale, the catastrophic +climax with Siegmund's death. + +The prelude opens with the same fiery impetuosity as that to the First +Act. It is largely made up of what in the guide-books used to be +called the "Flight motive"--as though a serious composer would or +could invent a motive of Running away!--and as the opening bar may be +taken as a variation of the Sword theme, and the thing ends with what +we learn to be a tune associated with the Valkyries, a really fertile +and picturesque mind may see in it a musical account of Siegmund +flying with the Sword and pursued, for good or evil, by the Valkyrie. +What we really feel in it is the harshness of the opening discords, +the agitation, the power, all forming a fitting prelude to what we see +when the curtain rises, the barren rocks, and Wotan, exultant, calling +Bruennhilda. His phrases have, indeed, a glorious vigour, as have +Bruennhilda's in her answer. Her war-whoop plays an important part in +the Third Act. Fricka's music is royally imperious at first: such +declamation had never been thought of in the world before; but there +is rare beauty of an austere kind--the beauty of holiness--afterwards, +as she momentarily drops her dignity and pleads her cause. She gains +the day and departs, and after Wotan's tedious meditation comes the +most magnificent music of all. We hear the Fate theme--a strange +phrase that seems to question destiny without ever getting an +answer--and a subject taken bodily from Mendelssohn and made into a +new thing filled with a curious blending of wistful and tender pity, +mystery and power. It gives us a glimpse into the very heart of +Bruennhilda, obeying her father because she must, and revolting against +the task. Siegmund's declamation is a fine example of Wagner's finest +vocal writing at this period--the style which I have referred to as +something between recitative and true song. That is, it remains +metrical without the slightest tendency to fall into regular four-bar +measure, or any other regular measure; yet it decidedly is not +recitative. But as the prevailing mood becomes more exalted, so does +the music become more lyrical, and the ending of the dialogue, when +Bruennhilda's emotion swamps every other consideration than rescuing +the lovers, is sheer song. The orchestral part is symphonic +throughout, with a few dramatic pauses. One of the most wonderful of +these is at Bruennhilda's reply: "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more." +There is no wailing, no sadness, in the accompaniment--only simple +chords; and the simple voice-phrase, evidently intended to be +half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different +order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the +melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be +remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is +none of the contrapuntal intricacy of _Tristan_: the pictorial +requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, +both--if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned--for the abstract colour +of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use of +chords permitted. Wagner never ceases to make us feel that the drama +passes amidst the wild mountains and woods: the drama is poignant +enough in all conscience, and the scenery is an aid to it. We have the +purely pictorial Wagner with the gathering storm--the voices calling +amongst the clouds. The sinister growling of the approaching thunder +is heard, and, still more sinister, the harsh notes of Hunding's +horn; the orchestra rages louder and louder, Sieglinda mutters in her +dream, the Valkyrie's call is heard encouraging Siegmund, the crash as +the Sword is splintered, and then an awful silence. The action has +been long delayed, but the catastrophe arrives with appalling +swiftness at the end, and the music is equal to the opportunity. It is +not wholly theatre music: that passage in the bass, galloping up and +down the scale against a _tremolando_ accompaniment, is in itself fine +music; even Hunding's rough cow-horn makes a musical effect. When +Wotan's fury breaks forth and he rides off in godlike wrath--even here +the music is glorious, taken simply as music. Had all the _Ring_ been +done with the superb mastery of this and the preceding Act, we should +have an art creation to be set above every other art achievement in +the world--above anything done by AEschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare. + + +V + +Like the First Act, the Third begins with a storm of rain, wind, +thunder and lightning; like First and Second, it opens with a display +of energy before which all listeners are as leaves in the wind. As +panoramic displays translated into music all the three introductions +are likely enough to be misunderstood; so at the outset let us +carefully bear in mind Wagner's intention at the beginning of the last +Act of the _Valkyrie_--to show, with unequalled force and splendour, +the strength of the god, soon to be shown as nothing before the +strength of Bruennhilda. Bruennhilda, let us always remember, stands for +human love, affection--not love in the _Tristan_ sense--but that love +of which Goldsmith sang that He "loved us into being"; the love of +human being for human being so strong that not for so many thousands a +year as a judge, so many pitiable hundreds a year as a magistrate, +immortality as an omnipotent ruler or a Wotan, will it perpetuate or +permit a wrong on a human being. To win omnipotence Wotan has +inflicted wrong upon wrong--wrong upon wrong on those he had created +for his purpose, on those the fine part of his nature loved. The fine +part of his nature revolts and conquers him. He struggles on, shorn of +nine-tenths of his strength, and it is not until the Third Act of +_Siegfried_ that he sees himself beaten and acknowledges it; but the +ending of the gods, which really began with Wotan's first grasp at +universal power, is first in this last Act of the _Valkyrie_ clearly +foretold. Wotan comes on clothed in thunders and lightnings to punish +Bruennhilda because she fought on the side of the higher instead of the +lower part of his nature--his higher self is cast from him, only (he +thinks) to unite later with a force (a hero) independent of him to +gain him his sovereignty. + +The tempest rages and roars; the Valkyries arrive "by ones, by twos, +by threes," at the Valkyries' Rock; and presently, in hotter haste +than the rest, Bruennhilda comes in, bringing Sieglinda. She tells her +(Bruennhilda's) sisters how she has defied Wotan, the All-father; they +are scandalised, and desert her; Sieglinda feebly begs her to take no +more trouble--there is nothing left to live for; Bruennhilda tells her +she carries within her the seed of the highest hero of all the world; +Sieglinda is filled with joy, revives, and flies to the cave in the +wood where Siegfried is destined to be born. Wotan comes on with his +thunders and lightnings and calls for Bruennhilda; at last she answers, +and he announces her punishment: she shall be deprived of her godhood +and left on the mountains to become the wife and slave of the first +man that passes. The other maidens wail in protest; in anger he bids +them begone; Bruennhilda, overcome with shame, sinks at his feet. The +storm slowly dies away; Bruennhilda rises and pleads her cause--"Is +this crime of mine so shameful?--in protecting Siegmund the Volsung I +simply followed what I knew to be the dictates of your own innermost +heart." At first Wotan will scarcely hear her; gradually he relents. +But he cannot go back on his oath, on the sentence he has pronounced; +and in the end he yields her this much--that she shall lie guarded by +a wall of fire, only to be claimed by a hero who, not fearing his +spear, will pass through the fire. Then he bids her an everlasting +farewell; lays her to sleep in her armour, covered by her shield, her +weapon by her side; calls up the fire, and casting a last sad look on +her, his favourite child, goes slowly off as the curtain falls. + +The drama here is of the most poignant kind; the scenic surroundings +are of the sort Wagner so greatly loved--tempest amidst black +pine-woods, with wild, flying clouds, the dying down of the storm, +the saffron evening light melting into shadowy night, the calm +deep-blue sky with the stars peeping out, then the bright flames +shooting up; and the two elements, the dramatic and the pictorial, +drew out of him some pages as splendid as any even he ever wrote. The +opening, "the Ride of the Valkyries," is a piece of storm-music +without a parallel. There is no need here for Donner with his hammer: +the All-father himself is abroad in wrath and majesty, and his +daughters laugh and rejoice in the riot. There is nothing uncanny in +the music: we have that delight in the sheer force of the elements +which we inherit from our earliest ancestors: the joy of nature +fiercely at work which is echoed in our hearts from time immemorial. +The shrilling of the wind, the hubbub, the calls of the Valkyries to +one another, the galloping of the horses, form a picture which for +splendour, wild energy and wilder beauty can never be matched. + +Technically, this Ride is a miracle built up of many of the +conventional figurations of the older music. There is the continuous +shake, handed on from instrument to instrument, the slashing figure of +the upper strings, the kind of basso ostinato, conventionally +indicating the galloping of horses, and the chief melody, a mere +bugle-call, altered by a change of rhythm into a thing of superb +strength. The only part of the music that ever so remotely suggests +extravagance is the Valkyrie's call; and it, after all, is only a +jodel put to sublime uses. Out of these commonplace elements, elements +that one might almost call prosaic, Wagner wrought his picture of +storm, with its terror, power, joyous laughter of the storm's +daughters--storm as it must have seemed to the first poets of our +race. The counterpoint is not so obviously wonderful as in _Tristan_ +and the _Mastersingers_, but only a contrapuntist equal to Bach and +Handel could have written such counterpoint. We may gain a clearer +idea of what this means if we compare, not to the disadvantage of one +or the other, this Ride with Berlioz's "Ride to the Abyss." At first +sight, Berlioz seems the more daring. He trusts to a persistent rhythm +and to orchestral effects. There is no inner structure--the separate +parts, or batteries of parts, have no individuality: nothing of the +sort is attempted or indeed wanted. The horses gallop on like mad +things: their pace cannot be checked; themes, properly speaking, there +are none--we hear the screeches of fearsome wild-fowl, the excitement +and the noise increase, until at last the catastrophe is reached, and +the final climax is the terrible gibberish-chant of all the devils in +hell. Regarded as sheer music, the thing gets as far by the twentieth +bar as ever it gets. The piece is as near to pure colour in music as +can be attained. Why, Wagner with his counterpoint seems old-fashioned +and formal by comparison! The four constituents, the wild laughter of +the shakes of the wood-wind, the slashing figure of the strings, the +galloping figure of the bass, the Ride theme--had these been used by +any one save Wagner the result would have been unendurably wooden. But +Wagner had unlimited harmonic resources at his disposal; and he had +the determination and the gift to achieve perfect truth in his +delineation of a storm. Delineation, I say, for here we have drawing +as well as colour. Of colour there is plenty: notice, for example, the +use of the brass against the descending chromatics; but the colour is +mainly harmonic. In a sense Wagner was not an innovator: so long as +the methods of his mighty predecessors served him he sought no +others--effects, whether of orchestration or of melody, were to him +simply means: never for a second was he beguiled into regarding them +as ends; and every musician knows that plenty of them came at his +call, more readily and spontaneously than in the case of any of the +later musicians. + +It is worth looking at the plan of this Ride--which is, be it +remembered, only the prelude to the gigantic drama which is to follow. +After the ritornello the main theme is announced, with a long break +between the first and second strains; and again a break before it is +continued. Then it sounds out in all its glory, terse, closely gripped +section to section, until the Valkyries' call is heard; purely +pictorial passages follow; the theme is played with, even as Mozart +and Beethoven played with their themes, and at the last the whole +force of the orchestra is employed, and his object is attained--he has +given us a picture of storm such as was never done before, and he has +done what was necessary for the subsequent drama--made us feel the +tremendous might of the god of storms. A few of my readers may know +Handel's "Horse and his Rider" chorus--how he piles mass on mass of +tone until in the end we seem to see a whole irresistible sea rushing +over Pharaoh and his host. Wagner does a thing perfectly analogous; +but as I have remarked with regard to Weber and Mendelssohn and their +picturesque music, where Handel, having painted his tremendous +picture, had achieved his end and was satisfied and left off, is just +the point where Wagner begins what to him is much the more important +thing, the drama. The omnipotent master of Valhalla comes on apace: +the storm is a mere indication of what is coming. + +A word must be said, too, about the words for such scenes as this. +Words had to be found, as in the first song of the Rhinemaidens, and +it is hard to see what else Wagner could have done than what he has +done. Like reversed Lohengrins they tell one another their name and +station at great length. This may be a vestige of the older +stage-craft: certainly there is none of it in the two great dramas +that followed the _Valkyrie_. It is not for even the minor personages +of a Wagner drama to come down to the footlights and take the audience +into their confidence. But, as I say, words were indispensable, and +Wagner found the best he could--I suppose. The defect is a tiny one; +none the less it is a defect. + +With the final crash of the Ride a new element is introduced. The +godlike rejoicing in sheer strength disappears, and an agitated theme +sounds out--if, indeed, we may call it a theme--and then we get a lull +after all the hurly-burly. Bruennhilda and Sieglinda come in; +Bruennhilda tells of her disobedience, and like a flock of wild-fowl +disturbed the other Valkyries squeak and gibber in disgust and +horror. The music here is perhaps the most operatic part of the +opera--Bruennhilda begging first one and then another to aid her; one +after another refusing in very conventional phrases. The scene is +indispensable, and the music is, so to speak, coldly adequate: music +has no tones to express primness. With the voice of Sieglinda the +music at once begins to live in Wagner's own curious fashion. She has +nothing left in life, wishes to cause sorrow to no one, wishes only to +be left alone to die. Wagner well knew when the drama could make its +effect almost unaided--when, in fact, to write deliberately pathetic +music in the older style would be to overdo things. Sieglinda's +phrases are simple, many of them exquisite, most of them designed to +be sung parlando, rather spoken than really sung. Bathos is avoided: +the deepest depths of genuine pathos are touched. In fact the +technique of the scene is that of parts, only parts, of the previous +act. But with Bruennhilda's announcement to Sieglinda we get the great +lyrical Wagner, we get the germ of the magnificent harangue of the +last act of the _Dusk of the Gods_, and we get the mightiest of the +Siegfried themes. With the entrance of Wotan the music which concludes +the Second Act recurs: the All-powerful clothed in wrath and flame; +then comes his denunciation of Bruennhilda, another specimen of the +lyrical Wagner. Even more characteristic of Wagner is the dying down +of the storm. We can _see_ the setting sun and the departing +storm-clouds in the music, and with these we are made to feel the +abating wrath of the god. And then comes the noblest piece of +recitative in all music. The words in which Bruennhilda appeals to her +father have already been (roughly) quoted: to give an idea of the +musical phrases would require too many pages of this book. The Sleep +theme enters as Wotan sees a way to the great compromise--the +compromise foredoomed to bring him to ruin. He will put Bruennhilda to +sleep to await the hero; but he will hedge her in with fire so that +the hero shall be a true one. With the indescribable finesse, +subtlety, of his own particular art, Wagner lets us feel how +Bruennhilda, in begging to be protected in this (rather unusual) way, +is reading only her own father's thought: he seems for a long time to +contend, but at last yields. The music steadily increases in force and +passion, and at each stage where one would think the composer could +strike no harder he immediately does it. More and more of the divine +fury pours into the music, until the climax is reached in the bars +preceding the Farewell. + +In the meantime we have had the wonderful Eternal Love theme--not +sexual love, but the mystic force that created the worlds and holds +them in their courses: in all Wagner there is no nobler and sweeter +passage than that in which Bruennhilda first sings it. The vivid +musical description of the crackling flames which are to surround her +is another of an unequalled series of marvels. The Farewell I have +already compared with that at the end of _Lohengrin_: the voice part +is at times in Wagner's own style of song-recitative, but a great deal +of it is sheer simple melody. No master has excelled, or perhaps +matched, Wagner in the art of expressing the most profound and +poignant pathos without ever a suspicion of letting it lapse into +bathos; and this he does by--what at first it may seem ridiculous to +say of so opulent and luxurious a genius as Wagner's--by his +instinctive artistic austerity. The word is not too strong to be +applied to the resolute simplicity which enabled him to write such +melodies as those of which I am now speaking and the Farewell in +_Lohengrin_: the temptation to let himself go, to wallow in sadness +and to wring our bowels must have been almost too tremendous to be +resisted by the man who within a year or so planned _Tristan_. In art, +harrowing our feelings never pays, and his self-repression has its +exceeding great reward: we could not feel more with Wotan's desolating +grief--one stroke more and we should rebel: we should know that our +most sacred feelings were being exploited--that an endeavour was being +made to gain our applause for a work of art by an illegitimate appeal +at one particular moment to those feelings. I have dwelt a little on +this because we all know _Tristan_ and its author, and though there is +little self-repression in that work--where it is not required--and +physically there was little but self-indulgence in its author's +nature, it is well to realise that the artist rose immeasurably +superior to the man. It must have come to us all at one time or +another with something of a shock to find that the voluptuous Wagner +of _Tannhaeuser_ could be as austere as Milton. Austerity is not +barrenness--not the barrenness that would result from imitating the +austerity of the old church composers with their hundred rules and +regulations: the harmony is as free as could be wished; at the needful +moment the melodies pass without hesitation from key to key; but when +we have long known them and learnt to understand them we find them at +heart to be idealised folk-tunes--simple and indescribably pathetic, +as the situation demands. + +An instance of Wagner's subtle feeling is the passage where Wotan +"kisses away" Bruennhilda's godhood and lays her to sleep, as one with +the rocks and stones of mother earth, Erda, whose music accompanies +the act. Wotan, like Alberich, has renounced love; so just previously +we have heard the corresponding passage from the _Rhinegold_. We have +the lulling Sleep theme, and then comes the Fire-music, a thing +unmatched--and, so far as I know, never attempted--in all music. The +mighty Spear strikes the ground to the mighty Spear theme; the earth +seems to shiver as the fire comes up; then the flames mount, yellow +against the deep blue sky; the Loge music sparkles in the orchestra, +the strings sustain a continuous whizz and roar, and over it all, and +at times in it or under it, swings that lulling Sleep theme. If it is +not too futile a word to use, the Siegfried "heroic" theme, as Wotan +uses it in commanding the fire (Loge) that only the noblest hero ever +born shall pass to Bruennhilda, is the most pompous form in which it +appears throughout the _Ring_; but the situation warrants it, demands +it. Amidst the roar of the fire and with the divine lulling phrase, +fragments of the Farewell are heard; and twice, as Wotan looks back on +his daughter, we hear the Fate theme--the Scandinavian sense that this +tragedy _mysteriously had to be_: the mighty god and lord of the +universe himself knows and feels that the things preordained must +happen. He goes slowly off; the central tragedy is virtually +accomplished; to the end the fire blazes and sparkles, and the curtain +descends on a soft chord. The revolving seasons will pass; strange +events will happen in the outer world of men; Bruennhilda will sleep +there, the guarding fire seen from afar by awe-stricken warrior +tribes. + +The spring freshness of the music, its vivid pictorial quality, the +intense human feeling expressed, its profound sense of the past and +the mystery of things, the godlike power, place it hardly second, if +indeed second, to _Tristan_. There are love-duets in music which may +be compared with those in _Tristan_: there is nothing with which the +music of the _Valkyrie_ may be compared. The grandeur of Handel's +picture-painting in _Israel in Egypt_ is a different quality +altogether. Handel is unapproachable; but he worked with a different +aim, in a different way, and in a different material. Wagner's music +is beautiful and sublime, and he blent the human element with the +others in a fashion no other musician has attempted. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +'SIEGFRIED' + + +I + +In a letter to Liszt Wagner says he would not have undertaken the toil +of completing so gigantic a work as the _Ring_ but for his love of +Siegfried, his ideal of manhood. It is as well, from one point of +view, that his love of his ideal was so intense, for in consequence we +have the _Ring_; but from another point of view it is not so well, for +the youth Siegfried is the least lovable, perhaps the most inane and +detestable character to be found in any form of drama. He is a +combination of impudence, stupidity and sheer animal strength--mere +bone and sinew; his courage comes from his stupidity. The courage and +strength and impudence carry him through to his one victory; then his +stupidity leads him straight to destruction. He possesses not one fine +trait: he is as weak in will and intellect as he is strong in muscle. +In the 'fifties and 'sixties not only Germans but men of all other +nationalities seem to have vainly imagined they had solved all the +problems of this very difficult world by assuming and proclaiming that +might is right. Bismarck acted on this belief; our own Carlyle, +Tennyson and Ruskin preached it; and Wagner, being a feeble creature +physically, fell naturally, inevitably, a victim to the old delusion, +and set to work to glorify the strong man. There is a further +explanation. I need not do more than refer to an idea which took +definite form during the eighteenth century, that as many of the +defects and problems of modern life spring from the very conditions +under which our civilisation alone is possible, a return to a state of +nature, without government, clothes, or even houses to live in, would +be a return to the garden of Eden before the Fall. We see this notion +working in Wagner's mind continually in the prose writings, and in his +last opera we see Parsifal, the "pure fool," "redeeming" an +over-civilised world. To glorify the idiot absolute in this fashion +was to out-Rousseau Rousseau--though Wagner would have scorned the +suggestion. In _Siegfried_ he goes by no means so far; but he goes +quite far enough. Siegfried is no idiot; but he certainly is an +unamiable, truculent savage. He has been reared by a dwarf and +cripple, Mime, and the first we see of him is on his entry with a wild +bear in leash, which beast he drives at his terrified foster-father. +The justification is that he feels instinctively that Mime is bad, low +and cunning--and it does not justify him: Mime, with an ulterior +purpose, it is true, has saved him from death by starvation in his +infancy, and nurtured him, and the least Siegfried could do was to +leave the abject creature in peace. It is true also that he is mending +Siegfried's sword--but this is to anticipate. I cannot accept +Siegfried as a specimen of the highest heroic humanity. The boldness +of a man who because of his dull wits cannot realise danger is of no +use in this world under any imaginable conditions. Siegfried knows no +fear. There is a story of two officers conversing during a battle. One +asked, "Are you afraid?" Reply: "If you were as afraid as I am you +would run away." One, the tale assumes, had a finely organised brain, +the other brute force and insensibility. Which is the nearer approach +to an ideal of noble manhood? Wagner's _Siegfried_ answers, brute +ferocity. Judged by his own standard how would Wagner himself +stand?--as splendidly organised a brain as that possessed by any man +born into the nineteenth or any other century? + + +II + +The continuous clink-clink-clink of a metalworker's hammer is heard; +the curtain rises, and we first see through an opening at the back of +the stage the bright green shining forest; as our eyes grow accustomed +to the darkness in the front we gradually perceive a rude smithy in a +cave, with an anvil, a forge with a smouldering fire, and a deformed +dwarf, Mime, at work trying to piece together the shards of the broken +sword. That sword was Siegmund's, shattered by a blow of Wotan's +spear; and long ago it was to this cave Sieglinda fled, bearing with +her the fragments. Siegmund and Sieglinda are long dead, Sieglinda +after giving birth to Siegfried; not far off is Hate-cave, where the +dragon Fafner lies guarding his precious gold amongst it the Ring; +far away Bruennhilda sleeps on the mountain, surrounded by her wall of +fire. There she lay on the evening of Siegmund's death; there she has +lain since. The world has gone on its way; Siegmund and Sieglinda have +departed; Siegfried has grown to manhood; year by year the young +shoots in the forest have sprouted and the leaves spread to the +sunlight: as we see the forest now, so was it on that fateful day, and +so it has been as the successive summers came. Siegmund lived, died, +and his memory has almost perished; save to the dwarf, the very name +of Sieglinda is unknown; other men have lived and died: nature only +goes on her course, the trees each year bringing forth fresh leaves to +repair last year's losses, as though the lives and deaths of brave men +and women were nothing to her. The earth is sweet and pleasant, but +nature must attend to her own affairs, and her indifference to the +affairs of men, her unchangeableness amidst all the vicissitudes of +men's lives, compel us to realise in such a scene as this at once her +own eternal youthfulness and man's brief, ephemeral existence. At one +stroke Wagner creates the atmosphere for his drama, and gives us as no +other artist has ever given it a sense of the unfathomable mystery of +the world and of life. + +The dwarf taps away with his hammer; he longs to patch up the sword +that Siegfried may kill the dragon and he, Mime, get the hoard; he +bewails his weakness, but he does his best. All his labour proves +useless--the sword refuses to be mended; and in comes Siegfried with +his bear. The bear is driven off into the woods; there is a long +altercation and an explanation; Siegfried cannot believe that, as he +has been told, Mime is his father, and he learns the truth. He softens +into something approaching manhood as he hears of his mother's death; +and finally rushes off into the forest, leaving Mime again to his +task. Then follows a scene to be accounted for in only one way. First, +the scene: Mime sits in despair, and there enters an old man with his +slouch-hat drawn down over one eye, wearing a dark blue cloak (it +ought to be dotted with stars), and carrying a spear or staff in his +hands. He gains the sacred hearth, converses with Mime, and finally +bets him his head that he cannot answer three questions. Much to my +surprise when I first saw the score of _Siegfried_, these form merely +an excuse for going again over the ground covered in the _Rhinegold_ +and the _Valkyrie_. The Scandinavian hegemony is expounded, and other +matters are gracefully touched on; the only point is made when the +last question is propounded and Mime cannot answer: Who is it shall +forge the sword, slay Fafner, take the hoard, pass through the fire +and take Bruennhilda for his wife? The old man laughs, leaves Mime his +head, but tells him it will fall to the hero who can do all these +things, the hero who knows not fear. He goes off; thunder is heard; +strange lights flicker amongst the trees; and Mime falls into an +ecstasy of terror, suffering all the agonies of a waking nightmare, +until the spell is abruptly broken by the entry of Siegfried. Why we +should have the two previous dramas of the _Ring_ told again in this +way is the puzzle. In the letter to Uhlig (p. 227) Wagner had plainly +given his reasons for writing the _Rhinegold_ and the _Valkyrie_--to +set before the audience clearly and vividly the events leading up to +_Siegfried's Death_, in action, not in narrative. We have seen them in +action, and lo! we get them in narrative! Wagner's idea must have been +to show us Wotan, realising how matters had passed beyond his control, +going about the world as the Wanderer, watching the development of +things and awaiting the inevitable day. He gives us the very awe and +thrill of our Scandinavian forbears with the apparition of the +grey-bearded man in his cloak coloured like deep night--the terrible +god that they believed walked the earth and might enter their +homesteads at any moment. Of course, as we shall see presently, the +answer to the third question prepares the next stage of the drama. But +as to why the whole story of the _Ring_ should be repeated--well, even +gods must have something to talk about if they wish to talk at all; +and the scene serves to sustain and to intensify the atmosphere in +which the whole drama is enacted, the atmosphere of the old sagas. But +I cheerfully concede that it is far too long, and in many respects an +artistic error. + +The real drama of _Siegfried_, considering it as a separate, +self-contained opera, is now prepared for, and forthwith begins. We +know Siegfried and the task before him; we know Mime and _his_ +task--to find out if Siegfried can be made to fear, and if he cannot, +to encourage him to kill the dragon, win the gold, and then to poison +him. He tries Siegfried with stories of terror, asks him if he has +never felt afraid of this, that and the other; and finding that this +is the veritable Hero, makes his preparation. Siegfried takes the +splinters of the sword--the splinters no smith can weld +together--files them to dust, melts the dust, re-casts the sword and +finishes it. Meantime Mime, working on, brews his poisonous broth, +muttering to himself about his purpose. At the end Siegfried tests the +sword and proves it true by splitting the anvil. All sorts of +allegorical meanings may be found in this gigantic scene; but the +plain meaning is that to a hero, unique, unparalleled in the history +of the world, a patched-up weapon, used previously by lesser men, is +useless: his sword must be new, and only he himself can forge it. + + +III + +Before dealing further with the drama of _Siegfried_ I wish, for a +reason, to say a few words about the music of this First Act. From +_Tannhaeuser_ onward Wagner showed in the music of his operas a +complete mastery of what can only be called the business-artistic side +of his art, or perhaps a complete knowledge of effectiveness. In so +long an affair as an opera, and especially a Wagner opera, +effectiveness depends largely on contrast, not simply between scene +and scene of an act, but also in a more marked degree between act and +act of an opera. In the _Dutchman_ there is none of this larger +contrast, and could hardly be, for the _Dutchman_ was originally +planned as an opera in one act. There is contrast enough, but he +contrasts set-piece with set-piece, scene with scene, not act with +act. In _Tannhaeuser_ he works on the bigger scale and contrasts act +with act: the opening of the Second reveals a totally different mood +from that of the First, and the Third is entirely different from +either. This is true of the _Valkyrie_; but the _Rhinegold_, like the +_Dutchman_, is all of a piece, and is, moreover, the prelude to a huge +drama. When we come to _Siegfried_ we see at once how he was planning +his music on a still vaster scale: the atmosphere of _Siegfried_ is in +contrast, almost violent contrast, with that of the _Valkyrie_. The +music of the last act of the _Valkyrie_ is of a different character +altogether from that of the beginning of _Siegfried_. This is not +merely due to the development of Wagner's genius and his technical +power, but can be shown to be deliberately planned. Indeed, it ought +not to need any demonstration, knowing as we do know his knowledge and +grip of what is effective in the theatre. It would be absurd to +suppose that he was not perfectly well aware that every one would yawn +if after hearing the _Valkyrie_ his audience found _Siegfried_ to be +simply a continuation of the _Valkyrie_, found the two operas to be +virtually the same work with the scissors put through the score at an +arbitrarily chosen point. Consider the scenery of the two operas: +First Act of the _Valkyrie_, Hunding's hut with the smouldering fire; +Second, a rocky defile in the mountains and no particular weather; +Third, storm round the Valkyries' rock, black flying clouds, the pines +tossing their branches to the tempest, and, at the end, a peaceful +evening sky and then the yellow flames shooting up against it. We must +note the change to the beginning of _Siegfried_: a dark cave, and +outside it the forest, green, fresh and bright; Second Act, the +entrance to Hate-cave, time, night, long before dawn, and at the end a +summer morning, with the sun shimmering on the grass and the trees +gently murmuring in the wind; Third, a rocky ravine in the early +morning, grey storm-clouds scudding past, the wind whistling; at the +end, a mountain top, Bruennhilda sleeping, the peaceful trees, a horse +quietly grazing, morning sunlight. This sequence shows how carefully +the matter was schemed; and we may now turn to the music. + +When the same leitmotivs are largely employed throughout a long +operatic work there must be a superficial, or, if I may say so, +external, monotony in the character of the music. A first glance at +the scores reveals to the eye the same series of notes and chords +repeated again and again; to any but the most attentive listener a +first hearing leaves the impression of the same themes and passages +endlessly repeated. But any one who leaves the theatre on an evening +after the _Valkyrie_ bearing with him a vivid memory of the brilliance +and sweetness of the close must at the very least be struck by the +sombre colouring of the opening of _Siegfried_ the following evening. +I do not mean the orchestral colouring, but the intrinsic thing, the +music itself. The tapping of the hammer on steel goes on, and in mock +seriousness the orchestra gives out a series of prolonged sighs or +groans of the most lugubrious character, reaching a climax as poor +miserable Mime at last gives up his job in despair. Mime, we must +remember, is a half-comic personage; and were his music allotted to +some heroic man facing an impossible task it would be much the same, +save that Wagner would not have so exaggerated the hysterical emotion. +To depict a being facing an impossible task with no noble, but with +only an ignoble, motive requires such an exaggerated mode of +expression. Mime's grief is real enough, but the cause of it +contemptible. After a considerable deal in this mournful key comes the +sudden entry of the bright young savage Siegfried, driving the bear. +His first theme is simply a bugle hunting call: Siegfried was then +nothing but a hunter, a wild child of the forest. But as he gets on +with what he has to say Wagner warms up to his work, and we get many +inspired pages, some of them showing the tendency to indulge in +counterpoint of the finest sort which manifested itself more fully in +the _Mastersingers_, though here the movement is fuller of rude +impetuosity. The movement--for it is a distinct movement--in which +Siegfried describes how he had often looked into the smooth-running +brook, and seeing his reflection there knew he did not resemble Mime, +who therefore could not be his father--for the cub is like the +bear--is one of Wagner's loveliest, and full of a delicate pastoral +feeling (again, in contrast with everything in the _Valkyrie_). The +Wanderer music is sublime. The theme was borrowed from Liszt, and +Liszt ought to have been grateful, for the possibilities of his own +musical subject were surely unfolded to him for the first time. In the +music here, even more than in the vision of the stage, we have the +grey Wanderer of the Scandinavian imagination--the mystery of wood, +mountain, river and ravine, with human sadness superadded, is clearly +communicated to us. Passing over the repetitions from the preceding +operas, concerning which I have already said sufficient, we come to +the nightmare music, where Wagner once more manifests that miraculous +gift of depicting, in terms of music, light and colour, a personal +emotion. We can see the flickering lights glaring amongst the trees +and feel Mime's terror. + +The forge scene is one of Wagner's most stupendous efforts--for really +inspired, not mechanical, energy it is by far the greatest thing in +the opera. As Siegfried sets to work pulling the bellows, his first +call "Nothung!" (the name of the Sword) is practically the same as the +cobbler's song in the _Mastersingers_; but immediately after it goes +off into a sheer song of spring and the joy of spring; while the +bellows groan and the fire roars the feeling of growing green forest +life overflows into the music, and the intoxicating exhilaration is +expressed as only Wagner himself had expressed it before. When the +hammering business begins we again find a likeness to the Sachs music, +but what a dissimilarity from the petty tapping of Mime! Mime's +theme, and that of all the Nibelung smiths, is characteristic enough; +they are not contemptible in themselves, though through them we find +the whole tribe of these smiths to be contemptible; and the tremendous +swing of this second section of Siegfried's song makes every other +smith's song seem by comparison contemptible. Finally, when Nothung is +ready for action there is a coruscation of light from the orchestra as +the Sword theme, which, of course, we have heard long before, and the +Siegfried-the-hunter theme are blared out and the anvil is split. + +Many other points must be left until later. I wish for the present to +give a notion of Wagner's powers at the time he wrote the earlier +portions of _Siegfried_. Had the whole opera been equal to these +portions it might have ranked with the _Valkyrie_. But though his +powers were not yet on the wane, as we get on we shall see that the +subject was getting a little stale. He had not the smallest hope of +seeing his work performed. If ever a man wrote purely for posterity it +was Wagner at this period; and though the general inspiration remained +as deep and powerful as ever, we cannot be surprised if the continuous +white heat of the _Valkyrie_ was checked and broken very often. The +surprising thing is that so circumstanced he achieved so much. + + +IV + +The story of the next Act is so simple that I shall deal with it and +the music at the same time. Near Hate-cave black Alberich, who first +steals the gold, ceaselessly watches: he cannot gain the gold, but its +attraction is irresistible. So he watches while we hear the snarling +music associated with him; and we can feel all the old-time horror of +the malignant semi-deities of the black forests and streams and caves. +Mime and he dispute angrily: Siegfried is about to slay the dragon, +the "Wurm," and the question is who is to have the gold. The music is +all of the sort that Wagner alone after Weber could write--wild, full +at times of frenzied energy, full also, if so forced a phrase may be +permitted, of black colour--black-green made audible as was the thick +darkness that might be felt made to be felt by Handel. Anger cannot be +directly expressed in music; but these dreary snarling noises from the +orchestra and the peculiar use made of the human voice--a use to be +referred to later--enable Wagner to indicate it indirectly in a way +effective on the stage. (We may note once again the contrast between +two successive scenes--the brilliance, the straightforward vigour of +the close of Act I, and these tortuous phrases at the beginning of Act +II.) Day begins to lighten, and Siegfried enters; he reclines on a +green bank and hearkens to a bird carolling amidst the rustling +branches. He tries to imitate its notes on a reed cut with his sword, +that emits strange noises; and at last, annoyed by his lack of +success, he petulantly blows a blast on his horn. This arouses Fafner, +who grumbles and discloses his hiding-place; and presently an +extraordinary reptile, one the like of which never was on sea or land, +comes forth to destroy the intruder. Siegfried (like the ordinary +audience) seems disposed to laugh, but when the monster opens its +giant jaws and sends out flames and steam, and red lights begin to +glare in its eyes, he sees serious matters are at hand. He prepares +for combat, and the battle is terrific, if not very convincing. At +last, however, he penetrates the odd brute in a vital part; it rolls +over and makes dying prophecies; at the last it asks its conqueror's +name and, having learnt it, groans that name once and dies. Siegfried +thereupon penetrates into the cave and returns with the hoard; then he +throws himself once more upon the green bank. + +If the reader thinks I treat this episode rather flippantly, let me +promptly admit that this is so. It is pantomime of the most grotesque +sort, not serious opera. The dragon would not frighten a child. The +whole thing is an artistic mistake: the fight should take place with +the beast wholly or nearly out of sight: an occasional lash of the +tail, with plenty of smoke and red fire, would be much more effective +than this construction of lath and pasteboard. The music hardly ever +reaches a high level. There is not in existence any fine music +descriptive of any form of fighting; and here slashing passages on the +strings, blares of the brass, shrieks of the wood-wind, do not cover +the inevitable failure of invention. Fafner's dying speech is better, +for Wagner had something urgent to say on his own account: he wishes +to urge on us the significance of Siegfried's coming career; and he +does it with immense impressiveness. The day of the Ending of the gods +comes a little nearer when Siegfried takes possession of the Ring and +places it on his finger. As was arranged from the beginning of time, +things are taking their course; Fate, answering none who questions, +works out her plans silently, mysteriously, inexorably. A sense of our +darkness regarding our destiny fills the music with a profound +emotion. + +If there has been too much of the pantomimic grotesque so far, Wagner +soon offers us compensations. The music now is amongst his freshest +and most fragrant. A reservation must be made touching the absolute +perfection of its beauty, but only a minute one. When first the bird +sang sweetly in the branches outspread above Siegfried's head we heard +the beginning of the piece known in the concert room as "Forest +Voices," the most exquisite sylvan picture ever done in music. A low +rippling figure, or rather part-figure and part-melodic theme, is +heard: it mounts higher, descends again, sways about, swells and dies +away; other melodies are interwoven with it; it becomes more rapid in +its motion, and grows louder until we feel the wind getting up and the +leaves dancing, and then comes the voice of the bird. This may sound a +little high-falutin', but is the only way in which I can render my +impression. The picture is so absolutely convincing that many readers +who, like myself, first heard the thing in a concert room will +remember that with the one hint conveyed by the title no scenery was +needed to make its meaning and feeling quite clear. The bird-voice is +managed with consummate art: a penny toy would have enabled the +composer to give a faithful imitation of bird-song--and would have +spoilt the faithfulness of the whole picture. So Wagner has translated +the real bird-song into terms of art, and thereby given us its spirit +while sufficiently suggestive of the original. It is not sustained for +long. Siegfried, as I have described, tries to cut a reed so as to +imitate it, and there is some innocent fooling as he only gets odd +squeaks out of his instrument; then comes the combat with the Dragon, +and he returns to his place. The one tender spot in his nature, +awakened by the thought of his mother, who died for him, is touched by +the bird-song and the sweet morning; he is filled with vague, +sorrowful yearnings--and presently the bird sings again. But after +killing the monster he had touched its blood--it burnt his finger, +which he instinctively put in his mouth; and the taste of the blood +endows him with the faculty of understanding the speech of beasts and +birds. So now when the bird sings it is a human voice uttering words. +It is with regard to this I make a reservation. The abrupt entrance of +the human voice startles one: the picture is for a moment distorted, +made artificial. After a few hearings one grows accustomed to the +incongruity; but I still think Wagner would perhaps have done better +to let Siegfried tell us what he hears. This is, however, a mere +guess; and it savours of impudence to suggest what so great a composer +as Wagner should have done. The bird first warns Siegfried against +Mime. Mime crawls in with his basin of poisoned soup, meaning to offer +his "son" some refreshment after the labours of the morning. In +whining accents, verging on the ludicrous--for I have said that Mime +is semi-comic--he professes his love; but the dragon's blood also +enables Siegfried to understand what he means, and, just as Beckmesser +in singing the stolen song utters words very different from those he +means, so Mime in what he intends to be affectionate strains tells us +his real purpose. Siegfried plays with him as a cat plays with a +mouse, and at last plunges the sword into him--and from a thicket +comes the malignant laugh of Alberich, barked to Mime's own hammering +phrase. Disgusted, Siegfried returns to his resting place, but the +bird again engages his attention: it sings of the maiden afar off on +the mountain sleeping hedged in by the fire through which he alone can +break. Siegfried's longings take definite form: he will win the +maiden; the bird promises to lead him; it flutters off; he follows; +the curtain drops. + +Thus ends one of Wagner's most splendid scenes--certainly the finest +in this opera. The passion of the music, its vivid picturesque +quality, its freshness, go to make it one of the many things of +Wagner's for which no parallel can be found. Wagner's technique had +now reached that supreme height which made _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_ possible; and the spontaneous energy of his +inspiration was unabated. The Act, we may remember, was actually +completed after those two operas, but it was planned and partially +executed before. + + +V + +During the long interval that elapsed between the execution of the +earlier portion of the Second Act of _Siegfried_ and the resumption of +his work many things happened to Wagner. He composed _Tristan_ and the +_Mastersingers_; he went through his worst years of utter despair; he +was taken up by King Ludwig. As I have mentioned, he went to +Triebschen to complete the _Ring_ for the sake of his conception of +the hero Siegfried--and he went there a jaded man. And there is an +unmistakable quality in the music of his Third Act. In _Tristan_ and +the _Mastersingers_ we have the perfectly mature Wagner; inspiration, +invention and technical accomplishment are perfectly balanced. What we +feel immediately in the third act of _Siegfried_ is a certain +over-ripeness--as if the writing of music had become too easy. As we +proceed I shall give some instances of this, though not so many as +might be given. + +Siegfried is now on the point of reaching the height of his fortunes. +He has the Sword, has killed the Dragon, secured the Ring and the +magic cap which will enable him to change himself into any shape he +pleases. Following the fluttering bird he comes to a pass on the +mountain-side and encounters Wotan who, we know, had sworn that none +who feared his Spear should pass through the fire. He endeavours to +stop the Hero, who shatters the Spear. Siegfried passes on; the flames +leap up at his approach and subside as he boldly goes on. He finds +Bruennhilda sleeping, awakes her with a kiss, overcomes her resistance, +and the opera concludes with a triumphant love-duet. This is the +skeleton of what is, dramatically if not musically, the most important +of the three acts. + +The curtain rises on this mountain pass in a dark dawn: an angry cold +wind whistles and screams, and wild wet clouds are flying. Wotan +stands there; presently he summons Erda, who rises, as in the +_Rhinegold_, with a "frosty light" about her; he asks her what will be +the upshot of the day's doings. Her answer is no answer, and Wotan +replies for her: Siegfried will pass and take Bruennhilda--and then the +End of the gods. The dramatic object of this scene I have never been +able to grasp. Both Wotan and Erda know what the end will be; and I +can only take it that Wagner, fully aware that each of the constituent +operas of the _Ring_ would certainly be performed separately, wanted +to make his intention and the whole plot clear to those who had not +seen the earlier parts of the work. Musically it shows signs of that +over-ripeness I have just spoken of. The introduction is magnificent: +the leaping figure on the strings, the subject that serves for Erda +here (and elsewhere in different shapes for all the elemental beings), +mounting up against it, the phrase expressive of Wotan's anguish +(from Act II of the _Valkyrie_), the Spear theme rising by degrees and +ever increasing force, the whole leading up to the Wanderer +music--these at once tell a story and paint a picture of tempest +amongst the wild mountainous rocks. Had Schopenhauer heard this music +it would have justified his remark about the use of clouds. From the +moment that Wotan begins his invocation the quality falls: the motive +is, for Wagner, a poor, mechanical thing; and an appearance of life is +only kept up by marked rhythms, forced changes of key, and noisy +orchestration. Erda's music is not on the highest level. The colour is +there, and an atmosphere is gained largely through the employment of +music previously heard; but the vocal phrases are not true song, nor +that blending of true song with recitative of which we have already +noticed so many examples. + +With the approach of Siegfried, however, at once the superb artist +shows himself: a complete piece made from the fire-music, the +bird-music, and Siegfried the hunter's theme is begun, to be +interrupted for a while, then resumed and worked up into a glorious +thing. The interruption is the scene between Siegfried and his +grandfather the Wanderer. It brings the tragedy of Wotan more vividly +than ever before us, and is from every point of view not only +justified but necessary. Siegfried scoffs at the old dotard, who loves +the boy as his own flesh and blood (if one may say this of a pagan +god) doomed to death by his forbear's ambition and errors. At last +Siegfried, impatient to go on, smashes the Spear and ascends the path +to where we see the distant glow of the flames. The music is supremely +noble and touching, with just a hint here and there of over-facility: +I mean chiefly that the vocal phrases are not tense and full of +character as are those in the _Valkyrie_: they seem to have been _put +in_ to fit the orchestral web. In an earlier chapter I spoke of this +weakness in the _Ring_; and from this point onward till the end of +Wagner's writing days, unless he was writing undisguised song, the +liability to this weakness increased. The over-ripeness shows itself +also in the structure of the music: the parts lack definition (as +microscopists would say). Formalism is not at all a desirable thing; +but if we examine the great works, differing widely in character, +_Tristan_, the _Mastersingers_ and the _Valkyrie_, we find the utmost +distinctness combined with perfect freedom and expressiveness. Even as +early as the Second Act of _Siegfried_ the freedom threatens to +degenerate into sloppiness--or, to put it rather more mildly, at least +into vagueness. Perhaps he felt this himself; for certainly at the end +of the act we are discussing, and often in the _Dusk of the Gods_, he +gives us straightforward song. At best his song-recitative is sublime; +at worst it is insufferably tedious. + +The gorgeous journey to the mountain-top is resumed as Siegfried +disappears amongst the rocks and Wotan goes off. We are now done with +him: his last ineffectual stand for supremacy having collapsed, as he +fore-knew it would, he returns to Valhalla to await the end. There is +darkness for a while; then light returns, and we find the scene that +of the termination of the _Valkyrie_. The mountain-top is sunlit; +Bruennhilda's horse Grani is contentedly at graze; Bruennhilda, covered +with her shield, her spear by her side, sleeps, motionless. Siegfried +comes over some rocks at the back of the stage, gazes around him in +wonder, finally discovers Bruennhilda, and with a kiss awakens her. At +first the godhood has not quite gone out of her, and "Woe! woe!" she +cries, as she realises her fate. But womanhood is strong within her; +she yields; hails Siegfried as the highest hero of all the world, and +the opera ends. + +The music is nearly throughout the superb Wagner. The long ascending +violin passage which accompanies Siegfried's amazed gazing at the +wonders around him, chief amongst them Bruennhilda, is imagined with +absolute truth; Bruennhilda's Greeting to the sun is Wagner in the +plenitude of his powers, blending music which depicts her outspread +arms with human rapture in an incomparable way; Siegfried's masterful +and passionate entreaties are quite in the strain of Tristan, though +the Scandinavian atmosphere prevails; Bruennhilda's awe-stricken song, +"O Siegfried, highest hero," interprets the birth of love in a woman's +breast with, again, absolute truth; and that the man who had lately +written _Tristan_ could write such a finale is not the least +astounding of Wagner's feats. + +The Siegfried Idyll, made of the Siegfried Themes, is, in a word, the +most beautiful thing he ever wrote. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +'THE DUSK OF THE GODS' + + +I + +This, the last of Wagner's really great works, was composed in hot +haste for the first Bayreuth festival. True, the festival did not take +place until some time after its completion; but at the moment Wagner +anticipated an immediate performance. There is nothing more pathetic, +nothing sadder, than the picture of the mighty world-composer +struggling against petty odds to complete what might have been a +world-masterpiece, and failing because of his hurry. He was sixty +years of age; worn by constant combat; worried even then by stupid +persecutions and the uncertainties of life; and he went on, if not +joyfully, at least indomitably, unconquerably. The result is a work +gigantic in idea, but far too rapid and facile in the execution. His +pen seems to have run of its own accord; the scenes are spread out to +a length positively appalling; pages on pages show no trace of +inspiration. Yet the _Dusk of the Gods_ is an opera no other composer +could have achieved; and with all its defects it will be a high and +holy joy to generations not yet born. + +The last hour of the old gods has come; the Norns spin their web on +the Valkyries' rock; it breaks, and they sink into the earth, knowing +that all is finished. Dawn breaks, and Siegfried and Bruennhilda come +out of their cavern; Siegfried must now go forth to deeds of +derring-do, for, like Lovelace, "how could he love her, dear, so much, +loved he not honour more?" She bids him go, and he goes; the flames +immediately spring up again round her dwelling--for what reason Wagner +does not explain. Neither does he explain why Bruennhilda does not +travel with her husband--the explanation is made only too obvious +afterwards. He travels to the Rhine, and there meets Hagen, Guenther +and Guenther's sister Gutruna. Hagen, the son of Alberich, is more or +less like Mime, a half-super-natural being, malignant, diabolical, +with only one idea, that of getting possession of the gold, and, above +all, of the Ring. He knows of Siegfried's "deed," and knows that +Siegfried is coming that way; but he keeps the story to himself, and +tells Guenther and Gutruna of the fearless hero and of Bruennhilda +sleeping on the mountain-top encircled by fire. Guenther desires the +woman, Gutruna the man. But only Siegfried can pass through the fire. +Pat to the moment he arrives, and enters leading Grani. Hagen offers +him drink which contains a powder which destroys his memory; he +forgets all about Bruennhilda, but not, apparently, about the magic +cap; he gazes in rapture at Gutruna, and in a few minutes the pact is +made--Siegfried shall take Guenther's form and win Bruennhilda for him; +in return he will have Gutruna, who is more than willing. The two men +go off together, and the scene changes again to the Valkyries' rock. +Bruennhilda sits alone looking at the Ring; Waltraute, one of the +Valkyries, rushes in and demands that Ring. She relates how for want +of it Wotan, dreading that it may fall into the hands of Alberich, +sits gloomy and silent in Valhalla. But Bruennhilda is now wholly woman +and has no sympathy with the gods; she refuses the Ring, and Waltraute +goes off in despair. The flames begin to flicker and dance; +Siegfried's horn is heard; and presently he enters in Guenther's form, +or at least as nearly in it as can be managed on the stage. He claims +and seizes Bruennhilda, sends her into the sleeping-chamber, and, +swearing truth to his new friend Guenther, follows with his drawn sword +ready to place between him and his bride. + +So the act closes. Bruennhilda's horror and shame are unspeakable; she +cannot understand; Wotan had promised her the great hero, and this +promise is broken and a last humiliation inflicted on her. The act is +intolerably long; even were every moment crowded with Wagner's most +glorious music the strain on our attention would be terrific. But the +music is by no means uniformly of Wagner's best; for pages on pages +his sheer craftsmanship fairly gallops away with him. The Norn scene +is as purely theatrical as anything he wrote; the atmosphere is, so to +speak, artificially weird. The scene between Siegfried and Bruennhilda +is more inspired; and the journey to the Rhine is one of Wagner's +finest bits of picture-painting. The change of feeling towards the end +is superb: a sense of foreboding and dread comes into the music and +prepares us for the coming disaster. But when the curtain rises on +the hall of the Gibichungs we at once get more artificiality and +theatricality. In using the word theatrical I do not mean there is any +return to, for instance, the _Rienzi_ style: the music is theatrical +in Wagner's own later way: it seems to fit the situation, but the +appearance is an appearance only: the stuff is superficial: the +feeling of the moment is not expressed--the music, in a word, is +essentially the same as that of many inferior but clever opera +composers, only, of course, the Wagner idiom is always there. The +Waltraute scene is fine, being largely made up of old material; but I +cannot say much for the scene between Bruennhilda and Siegfried. In +this first act two important themes are introduced, the Tarnhelm theme +and that of the draught of forgetfulness. The first is of the +theatrical type: it is a leitmotiv of the same sort as Lohengrin's +warning to Elsa; the other is a miracle, one of the wonders of music. +It gives one in a brief phrase Siegfried's dazed sense that something +has gone from him, a strange sense of loss; and it has the pathos the +moment demands. As for the draught of forgetfulness itself, it cannot +be explained as symbolical of anything; it must be accepted as we +accept the Tarnhelm and the Rhinemaidens and black Alberich. + + +II + +In the Second Act the scene is again the Gibichungs' hall. Siegfried +and Guenther are away, and Hagen watches by night; his father, +Alberich, crawls up from the river and counsels him as to how to get +possession of the Ring; then he disappears as dawn begins to show. The +music is weird and sinister in Wagner's finest manner. Siegfried comes +in and says Guenther and his bride will soon arrive, and goes off with +Gutruna, happy as a child; in a magnificent piece of music, largely +constructed of a harsh phrase associated with Hagen, he (Hagen) calls +up the clansmen and women; a pompous bit of chorus greets Guenther and +Bruennhilda, and then once more we are plunged into a sea of +theatricality. To her amazement, Bruennhilda finds Siegfried there with +his new bride, unmindful of her. In rage she denounces him and +declares he has shared the joys of love with her; he denies it; but +Guenther is shamed, and has no doubt that Siegfried has played him +false. Siegfried goes merrily off, and Guenther, Hagen and Bruennhilda +swear that he must die. In the music we get any amount of physical +energy and dramatic emphasis; but we know this is no longer the Wagner +of the _Valkyrie_. I pass over the Act briefly now, because I can only +repeat what I have said before. Of course all the consummate skill of +the master is there. + +The Third Act opens by the river-side. Siegfried has wandered away +from a hunting party, and is attracted by the song of the +Rhinemaidens--a regular set piece in the oldest-fashioned of forms, +but marvellously beautiful. The nymphs try to coax him to throw them +the Ring, which he had wrested from Bruennhilda; he refuses, and they +tell him that this day he must die. The other hunters come in, and +Siegfried is asked to tell of his adventures, and as he does so Hagen +offers him a cup of wine into which he dropped another powder; +Siegfried's memory gradually returns, and to Guenther's horror he +relates how he first scaled the mountain, passed the fire and won +Bruennhilda. He means on the first occasion, but it shames Guenther once +again. Hagen points in the air and asks Siegfried what he sees above +him; two black ravens fly over. Siegfried turns to look at them, and +Hagen instantly thrusts a spear into his back; the ravens wing their +way to Valhalla to tell Wotan that the fatal hour has come. In a +sublime passage Siegfried the dying hero sings of Bruennhilda, and +dies. Every one save Hagen is horror-stricken; the body is picked up +and carried downward through the moonlit mists over the mountain, and +the gorgeous funeral march is played. This is built up on Wagner's +customary plan: it tells the story of the Volsung race, now ended by +the death of Siegfried. + +In the second scene of the Act there is one fine passage--Bruennhilda's +long address--and the rest is manufactured with dexterity and quite +uninspired. The body is brought in; Hagen wishes to take the Ring, and +a thrill is sent through us as the dead man's arm rises threateningly. +Guenther interferes, and Hagen kills him; Bruennhilda comes on and sees +clearly everything; Gutruna claims Siegfried as hers--"he never was +yours; he is mine," Bruennhilda replies, and (by trick of true +stage-craft) Gutruna is seen to kneel down by the side of her dead +brother. She is absolutely alone--even Siegfried, dead, is taken from +her, and she instinctively creeps to the only thing that is in any +sense hers. Bruennhilda orders the funeral fire to be built; the body +is put on it and consumed: Bruennhilda mounts Grani and scatters the +ashes, and with them the Ring, into the river; the waters rise, and +Hagen rushes after the Ring, to be drawn down; Wotan's power went when +the spear was shattered, and now that the Ring is returned to the +Rhine no other power controls Loge. He flares up, and we see Valhalla +on high in flames. + +So ends the _Dusk of the Gods_ and the whole gigantic cycle. A noble +race has come and gone, and the world is prepared to make a fresh +start. I have discussed the music as we went along, and there is +nothing more to add. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN + + +I + +After Wagner had completed the _Ring_, a work which, in regard to its +gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he +was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous +musician--more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or +Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph +than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had +dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have +dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as +his lackey--and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth +festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person +could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors +to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much +of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all; +Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of _his_ +Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take +these three because they are three of the most successful financial +composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be +added. That is what they would have done: made a little money they +did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more +successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or +ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in +proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they +were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub, +it may be remarked, was a preciously comfortable one, and he made no +pretence about it being anything else. He was a successful man of +business; in spirit he was broken, exhausted, defeated. + +That is the first point to be considered; the next is a corollary. +This man of dashed, broken hopes still needed the driving force of +either human passions, griefs or sorrows, or of great human ideals, +before he could compose ten notes. It is no desire of mine to scoff at +the Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian notions working in Wagner's brain +when he planned the _Ring_, and wrote its finest music; in art--as in +business, if it comes to that--one judges by results and results only. +But we can see that it was these ridiculous ideas, as perhaps I have +already pointed out, that were the postilion's whip to Wagner's +Pegasus. Of some men it can be said that no one knows anything of the +postilion's whip: of every artist concerning whom a fair tail of facts +is available and consultable we find a very distinct whip. We may +laugh at the idea of the "stories" to which Beethoven worked: who +would laugh at the Fifth Symphony would not even be laughed at. And I +have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that when Wagner set +to work on _Parsifal_ his most eager and greedy desire was to show the +world that he desired nothing. Knowing Bayreuth a failure, fancying +his whole life a failure, from a particular point of view, one idea +seized hold on him--- the idea that those who did not like his music +were in a pitiable condition, and compassion exhorted him to rescue +them, to redeem them. He meant to heap coals of fire upon a generation +that refused to recognise him as a prophet. He did it--with a double +vengeance: he made the detractors come to his knees and he made a +fortune out of them--them alone. For Bayreuth never became a +profitable investment for Jewish money until the one great Christian +drama of modern times was produced there. + +_Parsifal_, in one form or another, had long fermented in Wagner's +brain. At first it was--incongruous though the thing may seem--either +_Jesus of Nazareth_ or _Wieland the Smith_; then _Parzival_ grew out +of the Siegfried idea; and at length, stimulated by the attentions and +help of poor Ludwig, he settled on _Parsifal_. These are matters not +of opinion, but of historical fact. Ludwig, when not masquerading in +woman's clothing, or ordering it from Paris, or appearing at private +performances in one opera or another, suffered from great attacks of +religion; and, unhappily for the art of music, what appealed to his +diseased brain from one side appealed to Wagner's tired brain from the +other side. Ludwig asked him to complete _Parsifal_ and he did so. I +doubt whether without the royal request he ever would have done so. +But in doing so he, as Americans say, "struck lucky." Throughout +Western Europe you have only to bawl the word "religion" and your +fortune is made; in America it is the same; on the two continents +innumerable fortunes have been made by bawling the word "religion." So +Wagner's conviction, Ludwig's desire, and advertisement possibilities, +all coincided; and thenceforth Bayreuth flourished--financially, if +not artistically or morally. + +I shall devote little attention to _Parsifal_. The plot would disgrace +Wagner's memory if we did not know it to be the work of his tired-out +old age. The central idea is that of Renunciation; and I will give the +reader a skeleton, but a fair skeleton, of the plot, and ask him, Who +renounces anything? who gains anything by renouncing? or loses +anything by not renouncing? and, above all, what is any one called on +to renounce? + +At the Montsalvat of _Lohengrin_--ah! what a different +Montsalvat--Amfortas, lord of the tribe of monks, has flirted with a +lady, and a magician, Klingsor, has seized the sacred spear with which +Christ's side was pierced and inflicted on Amfortas an incurable +wound. That is the state of affairs when the curtain rises. Gurnemanz, +a faithful warder, talks with sundry squires, not yet fully degraded +to the order of knighthood, and tells them how through a certain +wondrous woman Amfortas fell from his high estate. The wondrous woman, +Kundry, disguised as a sort of Indian squaw, enters, coming, she says, +from far lands; exhausted, she flings herself in a thicket to +sleep--sleep--she says. Gurnemanz does not know who she is--nor, for +that small matter, do I--but she comes and serves these knight-monks +faithfully for whiles and then disappears; and generally, it seems, +during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured +pearl of a saint of a knight. Enter Parsifal, "the pure +fool"--Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He +carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides +of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any +wrong--wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains +in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts +into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the +reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my +explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that +only the "pure fool" taught by suffering could redeem suffering +Amfortas: mankind, that is, could only be made perfect by a perfect +idiot. Gurnemanz thinks he has found the required man--and he has, if +only he knew it--and he takes him on the most curious promenade in the +history of mankind--to the Hall of the Grail. The two men do not walk: +it is the scenery that walks. "Here," says Gurnemanz, "time and space +are one." + +Arrived there, we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than +anything we know of mediaeval Christianity: a sort of mosque with a +huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart's Cocoa-rooms tables and +benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque. The pure fool is pushed +aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then +the service begins. It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord's Supper. When +the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away, +Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it all. "Nothing," +Parsifal replies, and is immediately turned out of doors. + +The origin of the guileless fool has already been indicated: this--as +it seems to us to-day--idiotic notion of the eighteenth century +started Wagner on the notion that if a modern child, with all the +developed brain of a modern child, could suddenly be transplanted into +a state of nature, all would be well with the world. What could +possibly happen? But it is silly to ask the question: the whole +juvenile population of the earth would have to be so transplanted, and +they would have to find a new earth to live on--at least an earth not +frequented by modern men and women. + +In the next Act we are taken to Klingsor's magic castle. Klingsor +calls up Kundry and changes his castle into an enchanted garden full +of flower-maidens; Parsifal comes in, and, though curious about the +maidens, does not know what they would be at; he angrily drives them +off; Kundry calls him. She tells him of the death of his mother who +had loved him so dearly; he again weeps and learns the meaning of +compassion; Kundry kisses him, and he learns the meaning of sex and +temptation. In horror he casts her from him; Klingsor throws the spear +at him--the sacred Spear with which Christ's side was wounded, stolen +by Klingsor from Montsalvat--it remains suspended above his head; he +seizes and waves it, and at once garden, flower-maidens and all are +reduced to withered stalks and leaves. Parsifal returns, an +"enlightened" fool, and by touching the wound of Amfortas, cures him, +becoming himself head of the order. + +The whole affair is a spectacle which I must say is disgusting to +healthy minds. The insinuations are frightful. Consider, reader, +seriously for a moment: Parsifal--Siegfried grown to manhood--knows +and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is +he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with +suffering--acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never +suffered--that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity. +Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that +the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to +please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion. + +Of the music it is not necessary to say more than that some of it is +fine. For the most part it lacks virility, though there are passages +of marvellous loveliness. The flower-maidens' waltz shows what Wagner +could do in that way; the Good Friday music, dating back to the +_Lohengrin_ days, is sweet and fresh. But the quasi-religious music +has no charms for me. + +Of course the prelude is in its way, but only in its way, a beautiful +thing. One almost hears the beating of angels' wings; the remnant of +old church melody, fitted into the most modern of modern rhythms, +sings out; the old _Tannhaeuser_ and _Rienzi_ Dresden Amen comes out +pompously if not very effectively. On the whole a splendid _tour de +force_ is accomplished. But as soon as the singers are introduced we +feel the lack of the inspiration of former days; the writing is not +vocal writing at all; it is simply notes chosen at will or at random +to fit in with the chord sequences that were constantly shaping +themselves in Wagner's brain--not sequences that sprang, as he himself +would have expressed it, from "the feeling." The woes of Amfortas are +described by the orchestra with a coldness that would have surprised +or stunned Wagner in his _Tristan_ days: had Meyerbeer done it no +paper would have carried his hot words. When Parsifal shoots the Swan, +Gurnemanz has two or three moments of true emotion: the rest ought to +be silence and is rubbish. The parody of the Lord's Supper is +deplorable: we have already heard enough of the music in the prelude +without having to go through it again. Klingsor's magic music is mere +theatricalism; about Kundry's account of Parsifal's mother I remain in +some doubt: it is certainly beautiful, but to those of us who know the +corresponding scene in _Siegfried_ it is rather beggarly. Parsifal's +denunciation of Kundry after she has kissed him has not a word of the +old truthful Wagner in it: Wagner had written so magnificently about +the ecstatic state of Palestrina and such of the other church +composers as he knew, that he must, absolutely must, have realised +that his _Parsifal_ stuff was essentially untrue. Theatrically, the +end of the Second Act sounds true; but it will not bear rehearing. The +opening of the Third Act, again, is false; and the ending of the whole +business is tawdry stuff such as Meyerbeer might have been proud to +sign. Technically, the old man retained his hand; but to compare this +decrepit stuff with the music of the _Valkyrie_ would be preposterous, +and I have no wish to write more about it. + + +II + +_Parsifal_ having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to +arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans +bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he +imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a +financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful +unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony +in C, worked away at his _Parsifal_ arrangements; his heart ruptured +and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded +life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can +do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death +sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man +could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a +prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest +detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid +her hair by his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests +there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending? +We must regard _Parsifal_ as the last sad quaverings of a beloved +friend: after that came peace, immortal peace. + + +III + +Amongst musicians of the first rank stand four commanding, tremendous +figures. First comes Handel, by far the greatest personality of them +all: him I beg permission to think the greatest man who has yet +lived--greater than Caesar or Napoleon. After him came Gluck, a +triumphant bourgeois; then Beethoven, whose domination was the result +of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose +supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or +a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time; +he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pugnacity +landed him in bankruptcy, and enabled him finally to win a fortune by +oratorio when no one would listen any longer to his operas. Gluck was +from the first a popular composer: there were rows, it is true, but +they did not concern him; he had always an assured public. Beethoven +had throughout his working life an ample pension and the friendship of +princes. Wagner had no such friends until he was sixty years old; he +had no pension; he offended every opera director in Germany by telling +those gentry that they knew nothing of their business; he got mixed up +with revolutionists, and, mainly because he was a man of unusual +ability, was regarded as dangerous by every bureaucrat. He was fast +becoming a popular composer; and he left his successes behind him and +went on to change opera in a fashion never attempted by Gluck or any +other composer. He was the most consummate contrapuntist of his age: +therefore the critics and professors declared he knew nothing about +counterpoint. He wrote the loveliest melodies of the nineteenth +century: therefore it was generally agreed that the gift of melodic +invention had been denied him by a merciful Providence, who reserved +that gift for the Jews and their friends. He could hold neither his +tongue nor his pen; if a bull may be excused, he replied before he was +attacked, he hit back before he was struck. Proud as Satan, and +through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and +yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his +friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with +his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising +about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring +he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even +one single opera of the _Ring_ to be given, and then allowing single +operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself--there never was in +the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of +universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813. + +All this we may joyfully concede, knowing how much may be said on the +other side. Wagner not only was the most stupendous personage born +into the nineteenth century: he was also one of the noblest, most +generous men that have lived. There is not a mean trait in his +character. He endured privation, actual starvation; he was shamefully +treated; his wife did not believe in his genius; his simplest actions +were misinterpreted; frantic endeavours were made to hound him out of +the public life of opera; his publishers took advantage of his poverty +to try to rob him; the scores of his masterpieces were returned +unopened from theatres--in some cases they were not returned, and he +had infinite difficulty to secure them; moreover, he was ill all his +life: yet he never lost faith in mankind, and when he became, +comparatively, a well-to-do man he went on doing generous deeds as +though nothing had happened. With humbugs and pretenders he would have +no dealings; but no genuine young artist ever asked his help in vain. +He spared even that rancorous decadent Nietzsche; he owned his +obligations to that soul of chivalry, Liszt. He spared that mediocre +person Meyerbeer; he treated Mendelssohn with almost exaggerated +courtesy. He fought a terrific fight with all the forces of reaction +and stupidity, and he came through untainted, unstained; if he sorely +belaboured the charlatans, he had all the finest musicians, and all +other fine artists, on his side. The composer who won and held the +friendship and esteem of such men as Liszt, Cornelius, Jensen, Tausig +and Buelow, not to mention the admiration of our own Swinburne, is not +a man to be dismissed by enumerating his defects. Some of us, I +suppose, will admit that we may possibly have our defects: none of us, +so far as I know, can possibly claim his great qualities. + +He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he +let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily +life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible +personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an +angel and the understanding of an archangel to put up with him. We see +that every one did put up with him; every one who knew him had the +same faith in his genius as he himself had; every one who knew +him--really knew him--loved him. Those who did not know him belaboured +him in the press or by word of mouth, and much honour and profit did +they get by it. He stands unsmirched by the mud thrown by his +detractors; he stands undamaged even by the adulation of his admirers. + +Let us consider for a moment what the man's personal character and +momentum enabled him to achieve. Finely endowed personalities like +Mozart and Chopin did much: did they write a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_? +The question needs no answer. Did they or the still mightier Beethoven +dream of creating a Bayreuth? In the midst of years of privation +Richard Wagner planned and partly executed the _Ring_; he completed +_Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_; as quite a young man he had dreamed +of a Bayreuth; as an old man he turned his dream into a reality. He +had his lieutenants--big men always have their lieutenants--but the +idea, the purpose, and the force behind were his and nobody else's +than his. Bayreuth does not stand for very much to-day; in the +'seventies it stood for a fierce attack on the general sloppiness of +opera performances all the world over, for the setting up of an ideal +to which there is no parallel in the history of the art of music. +Nothing but the personal force of this one man accomplished this +thing--personal force accompanied by a wholehearted devotion to his +art. I suppose the inventors of steam-engines and the builders of +giant dams have an ideal, too, in their crazy craniums, but they +invent and work with a very definite idea of personal gain. Wagner +hoped for no gain, and he gained little, though, as I have said, as +much as he wanted. He was helped by the only noble-hearted king born +into the nineteenth century; but he found that king and inspired him. +He risked everything for his idea; if his works have grown to be +valuable assets since his death, they were not during his lifetime. By +unheard-of energy while suffering privation--even of the ordinary +necessities of life--he went on and created masterpieces, and then by +creating Bayreuth set up a standard of musical execution that no one +before him had thought possible. All the great conductors of the last +fifty years are, musically, his offspring. Without him we should have +been without a Richter, or Richter's introducer to the English, an +Alfred Schulz-Curtius; without these two men we should have no Robert +Newman or Henry J. Wood. Wagner's influence has been further-reaching +than many of us think; and that influence was due not more to the +consummate skill of the musician than to the character of the man. + +Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human--in +painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose. He made what we consider +mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of +passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?--but how few they +are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the +centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were +the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not +know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in +Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book +by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the +ages have produced--the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart, +Beethoven and Michael Angelo: a man it is an honour to have known as +it is a disgrace to have scorned--the one man born into the last +century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise. + + + + +INDEX + +_Abendzeitung_ (Dresden), 75 + +Apel, August, 41, 51 + +Auber, D.F.E., + _Masaniello_, 47, 89; + compared with Meyerbeer, 67, 68 + +Avenarius, Eduard, + marries Caecilie Geyer, 72 + +Bakunin, Michael, 136, 196 + +Baumgaertner, Wilhelm, 209 + +Bayreuth, 71, 323, 325-329, 400, 407, 409, 410 + +Beethoven, Ludwig van, 25, 26, 330, 331, 347, 350, 356, 371, 408, 416; + his influence on Wagner, 33-35, 42, 62; + arrangements of, by Wagner, 37; + _Fidelio_, 148 + +Bellini, Vincenzo, 50, 92, 116, 150, 178 + +Bennett, Joseph, 328 + +Berlioz, Hector, + Wagner's criticism on, 71; + tragedy of his life, 72; + praises the _Flying Dutchman_, 128; + in London, 225; + his relations with Wagner, 226; + his "Ride to the Abyss," 370 + +Bethmann, Heinrich, 52, 54 + +Bispham, David, 277 + +Brahms, Johannes, 164 + +Brangaena, 245-248 + +Brazil, + Wagner receives a commission from, 230, 237 + +Brendel, Karl Franz, 50, 218 + +Brockhaus, Friedrich, + marries Louise Wagner, 32 + +Buelow, Cosima von, + and Wagner, 60, 323-325 + +Buelow, Hans von, 71, 250, 418; + serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, 208; + married to Cosima Liszt, 323, 324 + + +_Communication to my Friends_, 219 + +Cornelius, Peter, 71, 418 + +Cusins, W.G., 46, 134 + + +Dannreuther, Edward, 37, 67 + +Davison, J.W., 46 + +Dietsch, Pierre, 80 + +Dorn, Heinrich, 32, 37, 39, 40, 57 + +_Dusk of the Gods, The_, 178, 188, 325, 356, 373, 398; + analysis and criticism, 400-406 + +Dvorak, Anton, + compared with Wagner, 291, 292 + + +Elgar, Sir Edward, 291 + +_End in Paris, An_, 212, 213 + +_Europa_, 75 + + +_Feen, Die_, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 60-63. 72, 86, 93, 137 + +Feuerbach, Ludwig, 232, 408 + +Fischer, Wilhelm, 76, 126, 205, 206, 220, 231 + +_Flying Dutchman, The_, 65, 66, 80, 81, 127, 128, 137, 170, + 187, 219, 243, 356, 385; + analysis and criticism, 94-120; + produced at Zurich, 208 + + +_Gazette Musicale, La_, 70, 75 + +Gewandhaus Concerts, 33, 45, 46 + +Geyer, Caecilie, 14, 16, 30, 72 + +Geyer, Ludwig, 4, 6-14; + marries Frau Wagner, 8; his death, 14 + +Geyer, goldsmith at Eisleben, 11, 17 + +Glasenapps _Life of Wagner_, 8, 16, 19, 39, 66, 167 + +Gluck, 416, 417; + his _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture revised by Wagner, 209, 219 + +Goethe, J.W. von, _Die Laune des Verliebten_, 35 + +Goetterdaemmerung. _See_ Dusk of the Gods + +Gottfried von Strassburg, _Tristan_, 238 + +Gozzi, _La Donna Serpente_, 60 + + +Habeneck, F.A., 69, 70 + +Halle, Sir Charles, 64, 73, 327 + +Handel, G.F., 11, 330, 331, 390, 416; + the "Horse and his Rider" chorus, 371, 372; + _Israel in Egypt_, 377 + +Hanslick, Eduard, 164 + +_Happy Evening, A_, 213 + +Harris, Sir Augustus, 346 + +Hauser, Franz, 49 + +Heine, Heinrich, 64, 66, 70, 76-78, 94, 126, 205, 206 + +Heubner, Otto, 196 + +_Hochzeit Die_, 45, 47 + +Hoffmann, E.T.A., 30 + +_Huldigungsmarsch_, 59 + + +Jensen, Adolf, 71, 418 + +_Jesus of Nazareth_, 196 + +Jews, Wagner and the, 49, 50, 57, 217-219 + +Joly, Antenor, 69, 74 + +_Judaism in Music_, 31, 50, 134, 217-219 + + +_Kaisermarsch_, 59 + +Kittl, Friedrich, 45 + + +Laube, Heinrich, 51, 70 + +Lehrs, F. Siegfried, 72, 82, 128 + +Leitmotiv, discussion of the, 170, 356, 357 + +Lewald, August, 75 + +_Liebesverbot, Das_, 51, 53, 56, 72, 74, 86, 137 + +Liszt, Cosima. _See_ Wagner, Cosima + +Liszt, Franz, 71, 128, 156, 237, 238, 348, 378, 388; + his first acquaintance with Wagner, 82, 83; + helps him to escape to Zurich, 136, 194; + produces _Tannhaueser_ at Weimar, 164; + sends him to Paris, 194; + his generosity and friendship, 195, 196, 199, 202, 208, 418; + produces _Lohengrin_, 200, 201, 210 + +_Lohengrin_, 72, 82, 128, 137, 196, 197, 219, 332, 341, 358, 375; + analysis and criticism, 165-192; + the leitmotiv first introduced, 170; + produced by Liszt at Weimar, 200, 201, 210 + +_Love-feast of the Apostles, The_, 38, 126 + +Ludwig II, King, 239, 319, 321, 322, 327-329, 395, 409, 410, 413 + +Luettichau, von, 76, 77, 79, 80, 122, 123, 125 + +Lytton, Bulwer, _Rienzi_, 55, 84 + + +Marschner, Heinrich August, 61, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187; + his _Adolph von Nassau_, 135 + +_Mastersingers, The_, 109, 111, 179, 279, 319-321, 325, 333, + 341, 344, 358, 387, 388, 395, 398; + the story, 280, 281; + the influence of Nuremberg, 282, 283; + the overture, 284-288; + analysis and criticism, 288-318; + produced at Munich, 321 + +Mendelssohn, Felix, 33, 49, 57, 58, 73, 126, 364, 372, 407, 418; + _Midsummer Night's Dream_ overture, 61; + _Hebrides_, 112; + his comment on _Tannhaeuser_, 163 + +Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 55, 407, 414, 415, 418; + _Robert the Devil_, 48; + his treatment of Wagner, 67-71, 73, 74, 80; + his influence on _Rienzi_, 84-86 + +Mueller, Alexander, 196 + +Mueller, Gottlieb, 36 + +_My Life_, 67 + + +Napoleon I, his flight from Leipzig 4. 5, 31 + +Newman, Mr. Ernest, 130, 167, 212, 217 + +_Nibelung's Ring, The_. See _Ring_ + +Nicolai School, Leipzig, 27 + +Nietzsche, Friedrich, 52, 418 + + +Overtures: "Polonia," 43; + D minor, 45; + C major, 45; + _King Enzio_, 45; + _Faust_, 62, 70, 209; + _Columbus_, 70, 75 + + +_Parsifal_, 16, 138-140, 170, 379; + analysis and criticism, 409-416 + +Paetz, Johanna Rosina, 3 + +Pecht, Friedrich, 70 + +Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, commissions an opera from Wagner, 230, 237 + +Philharmonic Society, the, 33, 45, 46, 134; + concerts conducted by Wagner, 220-226 + +_Pilgrimage to Beethoven, A_, 213 + +Pillet, Leon, 80 + +Planer, Minna, marries Wagner, 53, 54. +_See_ Wagner, Minna. + +Poe, Edgar Allen, 330 + +Poland, Wagner's sympathy with, 41, 43 + +Praeger, Ferdinand, 43, 68, 200, 208, 225, 238 + + +Raymund, his "magic dramas," 44 + +Reinecke, Carl, 33, 45, 46 + +Reissiger, Gottlieb, 77, 79, 123-125 + +_Rhinegold, The_, 209, 299, 350, 351, 354, 358, 376, 383, 385, 396; + composition of, 332-334; + analysis and criticism, 337-349 + +_Rienzi_, 55, 61, 62, 68, 69, 73, 74, 81, 82, 117, 127, 128; + completed and sent to Dresden, 75-80; + accepted, 80; + Meyerbeer's influence on, 84, 85; + analysis and criticism, 86-93; + its success, 91, 121; + a failure at Weimar, 237 + +Rietz, Julius, portrait of Wagner by, 206 + +_Ring of the Nibelung, The_, 105, 111, 137,176, 207-209, 226-230, + 320, 323, 325, 378; + first cycle given at Bayreuth, 327-329; + summary of its growth, 330-334; + analysis of its main dramatic motive, 334-337; + Schopenhauer's criticism, 342, + _see_ also the separate operas + +Ritter, Alexander, 208 + +Ritter, Frau, 199, 208 + +Roeckel, August, 126, 132, 133, 196 + +Rossini, G.A., 55, 407; + _William Tell_, 47; + _Stabat Mater_, 213 + + +Sainton, Prof., 225 + +_Saengerkrieg auf Wartburg_, 72, 82, 128 + +_Saracen Young Woman_, 81, 82 + +Schlesinger, Maurice, 69, 70, 75, 82, 121 + +Schopenhauer, + his influence on Wagner, 231-233, 236, 265, 408; + his criticism on the _Ring_, 342, 397 + +Schroeder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, 50, 76-79, 160 + +Schubert's _Erl-king_, 355 + +Schumann, Clara, 45 + +Schumann, Robert, 51; + on _Tannhaeuser_, 163, 164; + on _Lohengrin_, 165, 177 + +Scribe, Eugene, 74, 85, 97 + +Semper, Gottfried, 325 + +Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 20 + +Shedlock, Mr. J.S., 220 + +_Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-230, 325, 332, 414; + analysis and criticism, 378-399 + +_Siegfried's Death_, 227-230, 332, 334, 383 + +_Siegfried Idyll_, 59, 60 + +Spohr, Ludwig, 294, 350; + produces the _Flying Dutchman_ at Cassel, 127; + on _Tannhaeuser_, 149, 272 + +Spontini, Gasparo, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187; + Wagner's essay on, 219 + +Strauss, Johann, 44 + +Sulzer, Jakob, 209 + +Symphony in C major, 41, 42, 44, 45, 56-59, 72, 73, 415 + +Swinburne, A.C., 415, 418 + + +_Tannhaeuser_, 30, 60, 72, 82, 92, 128, 137-140, 219, + 341, 343, 358, 376, 384. 385; + analysis and criticism, 140-164; + production and reception, 147, 148; + opinions on, 163, 164; + produced by Liszt at Weimar, 164 + +Tausig, Karl, 71, 418 + +Thomae, Jeannette, 23 + +Tichatschek, 78, 147 + +Tieck, Ludwig, _Tannhaeuser_, 30 + +Tomaschek, Wenzel, 45 + +"Triebschen," 323, 395 + +_Tristan_, 105, 106, 109, 111, 137, 187, 333, 341, 343, 344, + 353, 365, 375. 377, 395, 398, 399, 414; + rehearsed at Vienna and abandoned, 231; + folly of commentators on, 234-236, 266; + intended for Rio, 230, 237; + completed, 230, 238; + produced at Munich (1865), 237, 239, 321; + origin of, 237, 238; + preliminaries of the story, 239-241; + analysis and criticism, 241-277 + + +Uhlig, Theodor, 126, 145, 195, 200, 202, 205, 219, 226, 231, 283, 329, 383 + + +Vaez, Gustave, 203 + +_Valkyrie, The_, 209, 226, 230, 294, 332, 333, 341, 343, 344, 383, + 385, 388, 389, 398; + analysis and criticism, 350-377 + +Verdi's _Falstaff_, 311 + +Victoria, Queen, and Wagner, 222, 223 + +Villa Wahnfried, 326 + + +Wagner, Adolph, 2, 3, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 41 + +Wagner, Albert, 7, 8, 10, 16, 22, 24, 48 + +Wagner, Carl Friedrich, father of Richard, 2-5; + his death, 5, 8 + +Wagner, Clara, 10, 16, 22, 24 + +Wagner, Cosima, second wife of Richard, 60, 323-325, 419 + +Wagner, Friederike, 23 + +Wagner, Gottlob Friedrich, 3 + +Wagner, Johanna, daughter of Albert, 160 + +Wagner, Johanna Rosina, mother of Richard, 3, 5, 6, 8, 14,15, 16, 24, 28 + +Wagner, Julius, 10, 11, 16 + +Wagner, Louise, 7, 10, 24, 30, 31, 32 + +Wagner, Minna, first wife of Richard, 53, 54, 65, 121, 122, 126, 127, + 128, 133, 168, 169, 195, 207, 323-325 + +Wagner, Ottilie, 16, 30 + +Wagner, Richard (for Works see under separate headings), + birth and ancestry, 1-3; + absence of precocity, 11 12; + schooldays at Dresden, 17-24; + early training in theatrical matters, 18-19; + his love of the theatre, 21; + Weber's influence, 25; + at school at Leipzig, 26, 40; + his debt to his uncle, 28-30, 41; + unable to play the piano, 31, 37, 73; + "converted" by Beethoven, 33-35; + early compositions, 35. 36. 45; + studies under Weinlig, 36-38; + his arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, 37; + helped by his family 38, 44, 51; + his egotism, 39; + matriculates, 40; + his revolutionary fervour, 40, 41, 43; + visits Vienna, 44; + at Prague, 45; + works performed at the Gewandhaus concerts, 45; + chorus-master at Wuerzburg, 48; + returns to Leipzig, 49; + his industry, 52, 53, 209, 298; + his marriage, 53, 54; + obtains conductorships at Magdeburg, 53, Koenigsberg, and Riga, 54; + sails to London, 55, 64-67; + meets Meyerbeer at Boulogne, 67-69; + disappointments in Paris, 69-75; + goes to Dresden, 82, 83; + first acquaintance with Liszt, 82, 83; + Kapellmeister at Dresden, 122-126, 133-135; + his relations with Minna, 126, 127, 133, 168-169, 323, 324; + his political views, 128-131; + his share in the May insurrection of 1849, 128, 131, 132, 136; + his Germanism, 135, 149, 150, 214; + flees to Zurich, 136, 193, 194; + goes to Paris, 194, 195; + returns to Zurich, 196; + friendship of Liszt, 194, 196, 199; + his demands on his friends, 198-200; + his ill-health, 200; + his scheme for producing _Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-229; + third visit to Paris, 203-207; + life in Zurich, 207-210; + his prose-writings, 210; + speech at the re-interment of Weber, 214; + his theory on the fusion of the arts, 214-216; + unable to comprehend opposition, 217; + directions for performing his operas, 219; + visit to London, 220-226; + settles in Vienna, 230, 320; + his extravagance, 231; + influence of Schopenhauer, 231-233, 236, 265; + disappointments and failures, 278, 319, 320; + the chief Wagnerite, 287; + invited to Munich by King Ludwig, 319, 321; + ambitious schemes, 321, 322; + obliged to leave Munich, 322, 323; + retires to "Triebschen," 323, 395; + elopes with Cosima von Buelow, 323, 324; + marries Cosima, 325; + Bayreuth, 325-329; + his worship of brute force, 378, 379; + completion of the _Ring_, 400, 407; + outward success, 407; + his death, 415; + his character and achievement, 416-421 + +Wagner, Rosalie, 7, 10, 15, 16, 22, 24, 32, 39 + +Wagner, Siegfried, 71 + +Wagner, Sophie (Wendt), 23 + +Wagnerites, the, 287 + +Walther von der Vogelweide, 294 + +Weber, Carl Maria von, 13, 55, 350, 372, 390; + his influence on Wagner, 13, 25, 34, 35, 41, 61, 92, 150, + 153, 177, 185, 284; + his re-interment at Dresden, 135, 213 214; + _Euryanthe_, 13, 38, 305; + _Der Freischuetz_, 13, 25 + +Weber, Dionys, 45, 46 + +Weinlig, Theodor, 36-38, 57 + +Wendt, Sophie, marries Adolph Wagner, 23 + +Wesendoncks, the, 199, 208 + +Wieck, Clara, _see_ Schumann, Clara + +Wigand, Otto, 205 + +_Wiland der Schmied_, 203, 206, 207 + +Wilhelmj, August, 328 + +Wille, Dr. and Frau, 208 + +Wuest, Henriette, 45 + +Wylde, Dr. Henry, 225 + + +_Young Siegfried_, 227-229 + + +Zigesar, von, 201 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Richard Wagner, by John F. 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