Part 7
Thus we find him impelled by the demands as well as the artistic possibilities of a fruitful story to the construction of his great tetralogy, consisting of the dramas eventually named “Das Rheingold” (“The Rhinegold”), “Die Walküre” (“The Valkyrie”), “Siegfried,” and “Die Götterdämmerung” (“The Dusk of the Gods”). A further incentive to the creation of this four-part work was his belief that the true lyric play should be modelled after the Greek drama, in whose literature he found the trilogy of Æschylus—the “Agamemnon,” “Chœphoræ,” and “Eumenides” and “The Seven against Thebes,” believed to have been the final play of a tetralogy. He began to labor at this gigantic undertaking without any definite hope of its performance; indeed, with doubts as to his living to complete it. So great, however, was his enthusiasm that, in spite of the formidable artistic problems which he had to solve and the novelty and complexity of his own musico-dramatic system, now to be developed for the first time to its logical outcome, he had the poem completed and printed for private circulation early in 1853.[3]
“During the summer of 1853 he visited a place near Saint Maurice, and from there he undertook a trip into the North of Italy.... It was during a sleepless night at Spezzia that the first ideas of the ‘Rheingold’ music passed through his mind. He brought his journey to an end, and hastened to regain his tranquil home at Zurich, that he might not commence such a work on Italian soil.”[4] The score of “Das Rheingold” was completed in May, 1854. The next month he began “Die Walküre” and finished all save the instrumentation in the winter of 1854–55. The score was done in 1856, and in 1857 most of the first two acts of “Siegfried” were composed and orchestrated. His labors had been interrupted by the production of “Tannhäuser” at Zurich in 1855, by a visit from his best of friends, Liszt, and by a journey to London to conduct the concerts of the Philharmonic Society from March to June, 1855. He felt that he must accept this engagement or, as he said in a letter to Praeger, “renounce the public and all relations with it once and for all.”[5]
[Illustration:
BAYREUTH HILL AND THE THEATRE OF THE FESTIVALS.
From a photograph. ]
A more important interruption, however, was to come. In 1851, Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Parerga und Paralipomena” was published, and created a sensation which called attention to his earlier philosophical work, “The World as Will and Representation” (1818), hitherto unnoticed in the glare of Hegel’s and Schelling’s success. Wagner plunged into Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy with ardor. At the same time he was reading Godfrey von Strassburg’s “Tristan,” and conceived the idea of embodying Schopenhauer’s pessimism in a story of unhappy passion. He read Strassburg’s poem to Praeger, who was visiting him, and spoke of its adaptability to operatic treatment. The next morning at breakfast, in a fit of abstraction, he conceived some of the love music. Now the desire seized him to write a work which could be completed and produced. Moreover he needed money. And to end all, a mysterious agent appeared with a commission for an opera from the Emperor of Brazil. Wagner hesitated about the commission, but he began “Tristan and Isolde.” He finished the poem early in 1857, the music of the first act in the winter, the second act in Venice, March 2, 1859, and the third act in Lyons, August, 1859.
[Illustration:
THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE, SHOWING RESIDENCE OF RICHARD WAGNER.
From a photograph. ]
In September of the same year he went to Paris with a faint hope of getting the new work, or one of his earlier ones, produced. M. Carvalho, of the Théâtre-Lyrique, was favorably inclined toward “Tannhäuser,” but afraid. Wagner gave a concert and lost money. Then help came from an unexpected quarter. Under the persuasion of the Princess de Metternich the Emperor ordered a production of “Tannhäuser” at the Grand Opéra. The text was translated into French, a great number of rehearsals was held, $40,000 were spent on the mounting, and Wagner was allowed to select his own singers. The cast he chose was as follows: Tannhäuser, Niemann; Elizabeth, Mlle. Saxe; Venus, Mlle. Tedesco; the Shepherd, Mlle. Reboux; the Landgrave, Cazaux; and Wolfram, Morelli. In his first interview with the director of the Opera, Wagner was informed that a ballet in the second act was an absolute necessity, because the subscribers, chiefly members of the Jockey Club, never arrived till the middle of the evening, and they demanded a ballet at that time for their especial delectation. Wagner refused to introduce a meaningless dance into his second act, but “saw in the first act, at the luxurious court of Venus, a most perfect opportunity for a choreographic scene of some real meaning.”[6] In accordance with this idea he rewrote the Venus scene, arranging what is now known as the Paris version of “Tannhäuser.” M. Adolphe Jullien’s account of the production on March 13, 1861, and the ensuing performances (Chap. VIII.) is careful and candid; and it settles conclusively the fact that the failure of the work was due to the persistent opposition of the members of the Jockey Club, who blew hunting whistles, indulged in hisses and catcalls, and otherwise made such a disturbance that the work did not get a fair hearing. Wagner withdrew it after three performances, in spite of the increase of receipts, which ran as follows: first, 7,491 francs (subscription, 2,790); second, 8,415 francs (subscription, 2,758); third, 10,764 francs (subscription, 230). The smallness of the subscription at the third performance is accounted for by its having been given on Sunday night in order to get rid of the irate subscribers, who, nevertheless, went _en masse_, buying admission tickets. Wagner fully comprehended the meaning of it all. “Never,” he said, “have I been in the least disposed to doubt the Parisian public when it is upon an impartial ground.”
Through the intercession of the Princess de Metternich he received permission in 1861 to return to Germany. The succeeding three years, owing to the smallness of the royalties on his operas, were years of pecuniary distress. His hopes in “Tristan” were shattered, for after fifty-seven rehearsals at Vienna it was shelved as impracticable. In 1861 (May 15) at Vienna he had the pleasure of hearing “Lohengrin” for the first time. He was encouraged to begin a new work, and he took up his old sketch of “Die Meistersinger” made in 1845. In “Tannhäuser” he had drawn a picture of a contest of song among knightly minnesingers; in this comic opera he gave a humorous representation of a contest among the common people. In the winter of 1861–62 he finished the libretto, though he afterwards made alterations. He went to a little place opposite Mayence to work on the music. He gave a number of concerts to keep the wolf from the door, and in 1864 published the poem of “Der Ring des Nibelungen” with a pathetic renunciation of all hope of living to see it completed or performed. Pecuniary distress finally broke his spirit, and in 1864 he accepted an invitation to live in Switzerland. He was on his way thither when his earthly providence intervened.
This providence was the young King Ludwig II. of Bavaria, a sincere lover of art and a warm admirer of Wagner. Hardly had he mounted the throne before he sent a messenger after the composer with the words, “Come here and finish your work.” Wagner’s joy may be imagined. He went to Munich, where he was provided with a stipend of $500 a year from the king’s private purse. One of the musician’s first acts was to compose his familiar “Huldigungs Marsch” (“March of Allegiance”). He received the royal order to complete the “Nibelungen” in the fall of 1864; his allowance was increased, and a house given him. The king began to talk about building a theatre for the production of the tetralogy; “Tristan und Isolde” was put in preparation, and Hans von Bülow was summoned to conduct it. On June 10, 1865, this formidable work was produced in exact accordance with the composer’s ideas. The original cast was as follows: Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld; Isolde, Frau Schnorr von Carolsfeld; King Mark, Zottmayer; Kurvenal, Mitterwurzer; Melot, Heinrich; Brangäne, Frl. Deinet; Shepherd, Simons; Steersman, Hartmann. In December, 1865, the composer went to live at the Villa Triebschen, on Lake Lucerne, where he finished “Die Meistersinger,” twenty-two years after he had made the first sketch. It was produced under Von Bülow at Munich on June 21, 1868, with these principals: Eva, Frl. Mallinger; Magdalena, Frau Dietz; Hans Sachs, Betz; Walther, Nachbauer; David, Schlosser; Beckmesser, Hölzel. While at Triebschen he also continued his work on the “Nibelungen,” and in June, 1870, had finished the first act of “Die Götterdämmerung.”
It was in this year that he married a second time. His first wife had never understood his artistic ideas, and the two were wholly without sympathy, though Wagner never ceased to speak with kindness of Mina. His professional intercourse with Von Bülow led to his intimate acquaintance with Cosima von Bülow, the daughter of Liszt. Wagner found in her the comprehension and sympathy which he craved. Mina was unable to endure the supremacy of the more brilliant woman, and in 1861 left her husband and went to Dresden. She died in 1866, and in 1870, Cosima, having secured a divorce from Von Bülow, became Mme. Wagner, destined to survive her husband and perpetuate his triumphs.
Now began the remarkable series of events with which Wagner’s career culminated. The king abandoned his idea of building a Wagner theatre in Munich, and the composer selected Bayreuth as a place adapted, by reason of its seclusion, to the consummation of his ambitious plans. Money had to be raised, and Emil Heckel, of Mannheim, conceived the notion of Wagner Societies. The success of his scheme was beyond expectation. Such organizations were founded all over the world—even in Milan and New York—and more than $200,000 was subscribed. Wagner settled in Bayreuth in April, 1872, and on May 22 gave a concert to celebrate the beginning of the building of the theatre. The music of the tetralogy was finished in November, 1874, and rehearsals were begun under Hans Richter. The first performances were given on Aug. 13, 14, 16, and 17. The work was twice repeated in the same month. The principals were: Wotan, Betz; Loge, Vogel; Alberich, Hill; Mime, Schlosser; Fricka, Frau Grün; Donner and Gunther, Gura; Erda and Waltraute, Frau Jaïde; Siegmund, Niemann; Sieglinde, Frl. Schefzky; Brünnhilde, Frau Materna; Siegfried, Unger; Hagen, Siehr; Gutrune, Frl. Weckerlin; Rhinedaughters, Frl. Lili and Marie Lehmann and Frl. Lambert; concert-master, Wilhemj; conductor, Hans Richter. The performances, like all successive festivals at Bayreuth, attracted music lovers from all over the world and called forth volumes of criticism, favorable and bitterly unfavorable.
[Illustration:
PALAZZO VENDRAMIN, VENICE, WHERE RICHARD WAGNER DIED.
From a photograph. ]
A very large deficit caused Wagner to try the experiment of grand concerts in London in 1877; but he made only $3,000 out of that venture. Wagner’s last work was now well under way. Early in life, as already noted, he had read Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival,” and in 1857, at Zurich, he began his own “Parsifal,” with a sketch of the Good Friday music. The completed libretto was published Dec. 25, 1877. The sketch of the first act was finished early in 1878, and the whole was completed April 25, 1879. The instrumentation was finished at Palermo, Jan. 13, 1882.[7] The first performance took place at Bayreuth on July 25, 1882, and the work was given altogether sixteen times that summer. The performers who alternated in the principal parts were as follows: Parsifal, Winklemann, Gudehus, and Jäger; Kundry, Materna, Brandt, and Malten; Gurnemanz, Scaria and Siehr; Amfortas, Reichmann and Fuchs; Klingsor, Hill, Degele, and Plank. Conductors, Hermann Levi and Franz Fischer. “Parsifal” was assailed fiercely by the now numerous opponents of Wagner’s musical system, but it has continued to draw great crowds to Bayreuth years after its creator’s death. The power of this and the other dramas was due not only to their inherent truth and beauty, but also to the manner of their production. As an American newspaper correspondent (W. S. B. Mathews) wrote:—
“‘Parsifal,’ as here given, is a revelation. The performance is of such a consistently elevated character, and so evenly carried out in every department, as to make one realize that in his whole life he has never before witnessed an artistic presentation of opera.”
[Illustration:
LUIGI TREVISAN.
Richard Wagner’s Venetian Gondolier. Drawn by Giacomo Favretto. ]
In the autumn of 1882, Wagner went to live in Venice. His health had been failing. He recuperated sufficiently to conduct a performance of his youthful Symphony in C; but on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1883, as M. Jullien relates, “as he was about to step into his gondola, some discussion arose, and he gave way to a fit of anger; suddenly he started up from his seat, choking, and cried, ‘I feel very badly!’ He fell fainting. They carried him to his bed, and when his physician, Dr. Keppler, arrived, in all haste, he found him dead in the arms of his wife, who believed him sleeping.” On Feb. 18 he was buried in the garden of his villa, “Wahnfried” (“Fulfillment of Ideal”), at Bayreuth. He left one son, Siegfried, the fruit of his second union.
This outline of a remarkable career, in which artistic success was pursued by pecuniary embarrassment, in which envy, malice, and vituperation barked at the heels of progressive intellect, will best be closed by the quotation of a few lines concerning the man’s personality. M. Jullien, who writes with kindness and yet with candor, says:—
“The most striking thing about Richard Wagner, at first sight, was the extraordinary life and energy which animated this insignificant body, surmounted by a very large head, with an enormous frontal development.... His bright eyes and pleasant glance softened the strongly marked face, and his mouth, notwithstanding the undue prominence of nose and chin, had a singular expression of sweetness and affability. With his extreme rapidity of movement, gait, and gesture, he gave from the first an impression of unusual and powerful originality; he fascinated by his conversation, so animated was he on all subjects which interested him, and he always acted out his discourse. He was violent, even explosive in temper; with him gayety, like wrath, was tempestuous and overflowing.”
[Illustration:
RICHARD WAGNER
_Reproduction of a photograph from life, made in 1877, by Elliott & Fry in London._ ]
Mr. Dannreuther, who knew him well, testifies that he was most amiable among his friends, with whom he was a very different person from “the aggressive critic and reformer who addressed himself to the public.” There is no doubt that Wagner was fully convinced of the tremendous importance of his own work, and that he developed to its fullest extent the exasperating egotism of a man whose whole soul is absorbed in his aims. He was intolerant of opposition, and ungenerous in his views of other musicians. He was dogmatic in style, even when most logical in thought; and like many another genius, he had some very small weaknesses, such as a sybaritic love for silk and satin clothing, and a belief that the world ought to gratefully pay the expenses of his support while he completed his great works. With all his peculiarities, which were largely the outcome of his fierce struggle for recognition, he possessed “a simple kindness of heart, an extreme sensibility.” As to his manner of work, Dr. Praeger has given testimony:—
“Wagner composed at the piano, in an elegantly well-arranged studio. With him composing was a work of excitement and much labor.... He labored excessively. Not to find or make up a phrase; no, he did not seek his ideas at the piano. He went to the piano with his idea already composed, and made the piano his sketch book wherein he worked and reworked his subject, steadily modelling his matter until it assumed the shape he had in his mind.”
The names, dates of production, and principal singers of his music-dramas have already been given, together with some mention of his minor compositions. An overture (“Faust”), three marches, the “Siegfried Idyll,” built on themes from the drama, a chorus, a male quartet, a funeral march for Weber, five piano pieces, a few lovely songs (two of them studies for “Tristan” music), and nearly a dozen arrangements (among them piano scores of “La Favorita,” and “L’Elisir d’Amore,” pathetic mementoes of his starving days in Paris), are the musical remains of this genius, outside of his operatic works. The lyric stage was the theatre of his career, and in the works prepared for it he expended the force of his intellect, and developed the ideas that proclaim him an epoch-maker. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to the Wagner theories, and their practical exposition in the so-called “music of the future,” which has become so intensely that of the present. What is the Wagnerian theory of the opera? How does it differ from that which preceded it? From what germs did Wagner develop it? How has he embodied it? These are questions which naturally arise, and which demand answers.
It may well be questioned whether Wagner had a wholly comprehensive view of the essence and results of his own artistic theories. There can be no doubt that much of his work was the fruit of what were in his own mind vaguer inspirations, which he himself was unable to reduce to theoretical formulæ. Therefore, while we may appeal to his prose writings for evidence as to the sincerity and direction of his intentions, we may readily agree with the assertion of Mr. Hadow that “the arguments which have established the Wagnerian theory of opera are to be found not in ‘Opera and Drama,’ but in the pages of ‘Tristan’ and ‘Parsifal.’”[8] It behooves us, therefore, to endeavor to trace the development of the Wagnerian theory in the mind of its inventor, and in order to do that we must follow the plan of Mr. Krehbiel,[9] and make some inquiry into “the origin and nature of the lyric drama.”
Of the origin of the drama it is not the province of this article to speak, but we may note that the introduction of music into plays was a natural movement. In Italy, where the opera was born, choruses had been sung in plays as far back as 1350, but up to 1597 the ecclesiastical contrapuntal style prevailed, and in that year the speeches of a single personage, in a comedy of Orazzi Beechi’s, were sung in five-part choruses of sombre canonic form. The younger and more progressive minds in Florence began to perceive the unsuitability of this kind of music to the drama. In their search after a new form they were guided by the revival of interest in classic antiquity, known as the Renaissance; and they set about reconstructing the musical declamation of the Greeks. Their work began with the production of “monodies,” or what we should call to-day dramatic scenes for one voice. Encouraged by their success in this direction, two of these enthusiasts, Ottavio Rinuccini, poet, and Jacopo Peri, musician, wrote a pastoral called “Daphne.” This had all the elements of modern opera, and its favorable reception at a private performance led the two men to try again. This time they wrote “Eurydice,” performed in public in 1600, and recognized as the first opera. The pregnant achievement of Peri in these works was the foundation of dramatic recitation. It was nothing like the recitation of the Greeks, but it was a new and noble art form, in which music strove to imitate the nuances of speech without ceasing to be music. “Soft and gentle speech he interpreted by half-spoken, half-sung tones [modern _parlando_], on a sustained instrumental bass; feelings of a deeper emotional kind, by a melody with greater intervals, and a lively tempo, the accompanying instrumental harmonies changing more frequently.”[10] Peri’s theory, in short, was that recitative should copy speech, and that his new art form, which was christened _drama per musica_, should follow the Greek tragedies as its models. Claudio Monteverde advanced along the path indicated by Peri, and furthermore began to make the orchestra a potent factor in the musical exposition. But instrumental music now exercised a baneful effect on the opera, and in Cavalli’s “Giasone,” produced in 1649, we find the germs of the operatic aria, modelled on the simple cyclical forms used by the fathers of the sonata. Cavalli was opposed to recitative, and furthered the cause of simple rhythmical tune in opera. This new style was easy of comprehension and popular. Alessandro Scarlatti took it up and developed the aria so that it became the central sun of the operatic system. The result was inevitable. The person who could most beautifully sing an aria captured the public heart; the singer became the dominating power in opera, and the composer was relegated to a secondary place. From that time onward, the history of the artistic development of opera is a series of contests between the singer and the composer, with the supremacy mostly on the side of the former. The result of this was the imposition upon the opera of a number of meaningless, artificial forms, in which a musical purpose was manifest, but a dramatic design wholly undiscernible. In Handel’s time this artificiality had reached an absurd stage. The different kinds of arias were labelled with extreme minuteness in the matter of distinctions, and the composer was required to produce just so many in each opera and in each act. No vocalist might have two consecutive arias, nor might two arias of the same kind be sung in succession. But in the second and third act the hero and the heroine each had a claim to one grand scena followed by an _aria di bravura_, the latter being designed simply to display agility in ornamental passages. These laws were afterwards modified, but down to the time of Wagner’s supremacy an opera librettist was expected to construct his book so that arias, duets, trios, quartets, and ensemble numbers should be found at places suitable to the composer. In short, the nature and purpose of the opera had been lost sight of; it was no longer _drama per musica_, but _drama pro musica_,—a vastly different thing.
The first resolute opposition to this style of thing was made by Gluck, who had the same high regard for the classics of antiquity as Peri and his confreres had. Gluck’s theories and purposes are succinctly expressed in his preface to “Alceste.” He says:—
“I endeavored to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of the situations without interrupting the action or weakening it by superfluous ornament. My idea was that the relation of music to poetry was much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well-disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing, which animates the figure without altering the outlines.... My idea was that the overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are about to see; that the instruments ought to be introduced in proportion to the degree of interest and passion in the words; and that it was necessary above all to avoid making too great a disparity between the recitative and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the movement and animation of a scene. I also thought that my chief endeavor should be to attain a grand simplicity; and consequently I have avoided making a parade of difficulties at the cost of clearness.”
[Illustration: