Tetralogy. Nothing satisfied me more completely at Bayreuth, both as
regards the actors and the dramatic effects. Fantastic creatures like
Alberich and Mimi, who seem to be out of their element in France, are
rooted deep down in German imaginations. The Bayreuth actors surpassed
themselves in making them startlingly lifelike, with a trembling and
grimacing realism. Burgstaller, who was then making his debut in
_Siegfried_, acted with an impetuous awkwardness which accorded well
with the part. I remember with what zest--which seemed in no way
affected--he played the hero smith, labouring like a true workman,
blowing the fire and making the blade glow, dipping it in the steaming
water, and working it on the anvil; and then, in a burst of Homeric
gaiety, singing that fine hymn at the end of the first act, which sounds
like an air by Bach or Händel.
But in spite of all this, I felt how much better it was to dream, or to
hear this poem of a youthful soul at a concert. It is then that the
magic murmurs of the forest in the second act speak more directly to the
heart. However beautiful the scenery of glades and woods, however
cleverly the light is made to change and dance among the trees--and it
is manipulated now like a set of organ stops--it still seems almost
wrong to listen with open eyes to music that, unaided, can show us a
glorious summer's day, and make us see the swaying of the tree-tops, and
hear the brush of the wind against the leaves. Through the music alone
the hum and murmur of a thousand little voices is about us, the glorious
song of the birds floats into the depths of a blue sky; or comes a
silence, vibrating with invisible life, when Nature, with her mysterious
smile, opens her arms and hushes all things in a divine sleep.
* * * * *
Wagner left _Siegfried_ asleep in the forest in order to embark on the
funereal vessel of _Tristan und Isolde_. But he left Siegfried with some
anguish of heart. When writing to Liszt in 1857, he says:
"I have taken young Siegfried into the depths of a lonely forest;
there I have left him under a lime-tree, and said good-bye to him
with tears in my eyes. It has torn my heart to bury him alive, and
I had a hard and painful fight with myself before I could do it....
Shall I ever go back to him? No, it is all finished. Don't let us
speak of it again."
Wagner had reason to be sad. He knew well that he would never find his
young Siegfried again. He roused him up ten years later. But all was
changed. That splendid third act has not the freshness of the first two.
Wotan has become an important figure, and brought reason and pessimism
with him into the drama. Wagner's later conceptions were perhaps
loftier, and his genius was more master of itself (think of the classic
dignity in the awakening of Brünnhilde); but the ardour and happy
expression of youth is gone. I know that this is not the opinion of most
of Wagner's admirers; but, with the exception of a few pages of sublime
beauty, I have never altogether liked the love scenes at the end of
_Siegfried_ and at the beginning of _Götterdämmerung_. I find their
style rather pompous and declamatory; and their almost excessive
refinement makes them border upon dulness. The form of the duet, too,
seems cut and dried, and there are signs of weariness in it. The
heaviness of the last pages of _Siegfried_ recalls _Die Meistersinger_,
which is also of that period. It is no longer the same joy nor the same
quality of joy that is found in the earlier acts.
Yet it does not really matter, for joy is there, nevertheless; and so
splendid was the first inspiration of the work that the years have not
dimmed its brilliancy. One would like to end with _Siegfried_, and
escape the gloomy _Götterdämmerung_. For those who have sensitive
feelings the fourth day of the Tetralogy has a depressing effect. I
remember the tears I have seen shed at the end of the _Ring_, and the
words of a friend, as we left the theatre at Bayreuth and descended the
hill at night: "I feel as though I were coming away from the burial of
someone I dearly loved." It was truly a time of mourning. Perhaps there
was something incongruous in building such a structure when it had
universal death for its conclusion--or at least in making the whole an
object of show and instruction. _Tristan_ achieves the same end with
much more power, as the action is swifter. Besides that, the end of
_Tristan_ is not without comfort, for life there is terrible. But it is
not the same in _Götterdämmerung_; for in spite of the absurdity of the
spell which is set upon the love of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, life with
them is happy and desirable, since they are beings capable of love, and
death appears to be a splendid but awful catastrophe. And one cannot say
the _Ring_ breathes a spirit of renunciation and sacrifice like
_Parsifal_; renunciation and sacrifice are only talked about in the
_Ring_; and, in spite of the last transports which impel Brünnhilde to
the funeral pyre, they are neither an inspiration nor a delight. One has
the impression of a great gulf yawning at one's feet, and the anguish of
seeing those one loves fall into it.
I have often regretted that Wagner's first conception of _Siegfried_
changed in the course of years; and in spite of the magnificent
_dénouement_ of _Götterdämmerung_ (which is really more effective in a
concert room, for the real tragedy ends with Siegfried's death), I
cannot help thinking with regret how fine a more optimistic poem from
this revolutionary of '48 might have been. People tell me that it would
then have been less true to life. But why should it be truthful to
depict life only as a bad thing? Life is neither good nor bad it is just
what we make it, and the result of the way in which we look at it. Joy
is as real as sorrow, and a very fertile source of action. What
inspiration there is in the laugh of a great man! Let us welcome,
therefore, the sparkling if transient gaiety of _Siegfried_.
Wagner wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug: "I have, by chance, just been
reading Plutarch's life of Timoleon. That life ended very happily--a
rare and unheard-of thing, especially in history. It does one good to
think that such a thing is possible. It moved me profoundly."
I feel the same when I hear _Siegfried_. We are rarely allowed to
contemplate happiness in great tragic art; but when we may, how splendid
it is, and how good for one!
"TRISTAN"
Tristan towers like a mountain above all other love poems, as Wagner
above all other artists of his century. It is the outcome of a sublime
conception, though the work as a whole is far from perfect. Of perfect
works there is none where Wagner is concerned. The effort necessary for
the creation of them was too great to be long sustained; for a single
work might means years of toil. And the tense emotions of a whole drama
cannot be expressed by a series of sudden inspirations put into form the
moment they are conceived. Long and arduous labour is necessary. These
giants, fashioned like Michelangelo's, these concentrated tempests of
heroic force and decadent complexity, are not arrested, like the work of
a sculptor or painter, in one moment of their action; they live and go
on living in endless detail of sensation. To expect sustained
inspiration is to expect what is not human. Genius may reveal what is
divine; it may call up and catch a glimpse of _die Mütter_, but it
cannot always breathe in the exhausted air of this world. So will must
sometimes take the place of inspiration; though the will is uncertain
and often stumbles in its task. That is why we encounter things that jar
and jolt in the greatest works--they are the marks of human weakness.
Well, perhaps there is less weakness in _Tristan_ than in Wagner's
other dramas--_Götterdämmerung_, for instance--for nowhere else is the
effort of his genius more strenuous or its flight more dizzy. Wagner
himself knew it well. His letters show the despair of a soul wrestling
with its familiar spirit, which it clutches and holds, only to lose
again. And we seem to hear cries of pain, and feel his anger and
despair.
"I can never tell you what a really wretched musician I am. In my
inmost heart I know I am a bungler and an absolute failure. You
should see me when I say to myself, 'It ought to go now,' and sit
down to the piano and put together some miserable rubbish, which I
fling away again like an idiot. I know quite well the kind of
musical trash I produce.... Believe me, it is no good expecting me
to do anything decent. Sometimes I really think it was Reissiger
who inspired me to write _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_."
This is how Wagner wrote to Liszt when he was finishing this amazing
work of art. In the same way Michelangelo wrote to his father in 1509:
"I am in agony. I have not dared to ask the Pope for anything, because
my work does not make sufficient progress to merit any remuneration. The
work is too difficult, and indeed it is not my profession. I am wasting
my time to no purpose. Heaven help me!" For a year he had been working
at the ceiling of the Sixtine chapel.
This is something more than a burst of modesty. No one had more pride
than Michelangelo or Wagner; but both felt the defects of their work
like a sharp wound. And although those defects do not prevent their
works from being the glory of the human spirit, they are there just the
same.
I do not want to dwell upon the inherent imperfections of Wagner's
dramas; they are really dramatic or epic symphonies, impossible to act,
and gaining nothing from representation. This is especially true of
_Tristan_, where the disparity between the storm of sentiment depicted,
and the cold convention and enforced timidity of action on the stage, is
such that at certain moments--in the second act, for example--it pains
and shocks one, and seems almost grotesque.
But while admitting that _Tristan_ is a symphony that is not suitable
for representation, one also recognises its blemishes and, above all,
its unevenness. The orchestration in the first act is often rather thin,
and the plot lacks solidity. There are gaps and unaccountable holes, and
melodious lines left suspended in space. From beginning to end, lyrical
bursts of melody are broken by declamations, or, what is worse, by
dissertations. Frenzied whirlwinds of passion stop suddenly to give
place to recitatives of explanation or argument. And although these
recitatives are nearly always a great relief, although these
metaphysical reveries have a character of barbarous cunning that one
relishes, yet the superior beauty of the movements of pure poetry,
emotion, and music is so evident, that this musical and philosophical
drama serves to give one a distaste for philosophy and drama and
everything else that cramps and confines music.
But the musical part of _Tristan_ is not free either from the faults of
the work as a whole, for it, too, lacks unity. Wagner's music is made up
of very diverse styles: one finds in it Italianisms and Germanisms and
even Gallicisms of every kind; there are some that are sublime, some
that are commonplace; and at times one feels the awkwardness of their
union and the imperfections of their form. Then again, perhaps two ideas
of equal originality come together and spoil each other by making too
strong a contrast. The fine lamentation of King Mark--that
personification of a knight of the Grail--is treated with such
moderation and with so noble a scorn for outward show, that its pure,
cold light is entirely lost after the glowing fire of the duet.
The work suffers everywhere from a lack of balance. It is an almost
inevitable defect, arising from its very grandeur. A mediocre work may
quite easily be perfect of its kind; but it is rarely that a work lofty
aim attains perfection. A landscape of little dells and smiling meadows
is brought more readily into pleasing harmony than a landscape of
dazzling Alps, torrents, glaciers, and tempests; for the heights may
sometimes overwhelm the picture and spoil the effect. And so it is with
certain great pages of _Tristan_. We may take for example the verses
which tell of excruciating expectation--in the second act, Isolde's
expectation on the night filled with desire; and, in the third act,
Tristan's expectation, as he lies wounded and delirious, waiting for the
vessel that brings Isolde and death--or we may take the Prelude, that
expression of eternal desire that is like a restless sea for ever
moaning and beating itself upon the shore.
* * * * *
The quality that touches me most deeply in _Tristan_ is the evidence of
honesty and sincerity in a man who was treated by his enemies as a
charlatan that used superficial and grossly material means to arrest and
amaze the public eye. What drama is more sober or more disdainful of
exterior effect than _Tristan_? Its restraint is almost carried to
excess. Wagner rejected any picturesque episode in it that was
irrelevant to his subject. The man who carried all Nature in his
imagination, who at his will made the storms of the _Walküre_ rage, or
the soft light of Good Friday shine, would not even depict a bit of the
sea round the vessel in the first act. Believe me, that must have been a
sacrifice, though he wished it so. It pleased him to enclose this
terrible drama within the four walls of a chamber of tragedy. There are
hardly any choruses; there is nothing to distract one's attention from
the mystery of human souls; there are only two real parts--those of the
lovers; and if there is a third, it belongs to Destiny, into whose hands
the victims are delivered. What a fine seriousness there is in this love
play. Its passion remains sombre and stern; there is no laughter in it,
only a belief which is almost religious, more religious perhaps in its
sincerity than that of _Parsifal_.
It is a lesson for dramatists to see a man suppressing all frivolous
trifling and empty episodes in order to concentrate his subject entirely
on the inner life of two living souls. In that Wagner is our master, a
better, stronger, and more profitable master to follow, in spite of his
mistakes, than all the other literary and dramatic authors of his time.
* * * * *
I see that criticism has filled a larger place in these notes than I
meant it to do. But in spite of that, I love _Tristan_; for me and for
others of my time it has long been an intoxicating draught. And it has
never lost anything of its grandeur; the years have left its beauty
untouched, and it is for me the highest point of art reached by anyone
since Beethoven's death.
But as I was listening to it the other evening I could not help
thinking: Ah, Wagner, you will one day go too, and join Gluck and Bach
and Monteverde and Palestrina and all the great souls whose names still
live among men, but whose thoughts are only felt by a handful of the
initiated, who try in vain to revive the past. You, also, are already of
the past, though you were the steady light of our youth, the strong
source of life and death, of desire and renouncement, whence we drew our
moral force and our power of resistance against the world. And the
world, ever greedy for new sensations, goes on its way amid the
unceasing ebb and flow of its desires. Already its thoughts have
changed, and new musicians are making new songs for the future. But it
is the voice of a century of tempest that passes with you.
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
M. Saint-Saëns has had the rare honour of becoming a classic during his
lifetime. His name, though it was long unrecognised, now commands
universal respect, not less by his worth of character than by the
perfection of his art. No artist has troubled so little about the
public, or been more indifferent to criticism whether popular or expert.
As a child he had a sort of physical repulsion for outward success:
"De l'applaudissement
J'entends encor le bruit qui, chose assez étrange,
Pour ma pudeur d'enfant était comme une fange
Dont le flot me venait toucher; je redoutais
Son contact, et parfois, malin, je l'évitais,
Affectant la raideur."[110]
[Footnote 110:
Of applause
I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
About to spot me; I feared
Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
Affecting obstinacy.
These verses were read by M. Saint-Saëns at a concert given on 10 June,
1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his
_début_, which he made in 1846. It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he
gave his first concert.]
Later on, he achieved success by a long and painful struggle, in which
he had to fight against the kind of stupid criticism that condemned him
"to listen to one of Beethoven's symphonies as a penance likely to give
him the most excruciating torture."[111] And yet after this, and after
his admission to the Academy, after _Henry VIII_ and the _Symphonie avec
orgue_, he still remained aloof from praise or blame, and judged his
triumphs with sad severity:
"Tu connaîtras les yeux menteurs, l'hypocrisie
Des serrements de mains,
Le masque d'amitié cachant la jalousie,
Les pâles lendemains
"De ces jours de triomphe où le troupeau vulgaire
Qui pèse au même poids
L'histrion ridicule et le génie austère
Vous mets sur le pavois."[112]
M. Saint-Saëns has now grown old, and his fame has spread abroad, but he
has not capitulated. Not many years ago he wrote to a German journalist:
"I take very little notice of either praise or censure, not because I
have an exalted idea of my own merits (which would be foolish), but
because in doing my work, and fulfilling the function of my nature, as
an apple-tree grows apples, I have no need to trouble myself with other
people's views."[113]
[Footnote 111: C. Saint-Saëns, _Harmonie et Mélodie_, 1885.]
[Footnote 112: C. Saint-Saëns, _Rimes familières_, 1890.
You will know the lying eyes, the insincerity
Of pressures of the hand,
The mask of friendship that hides jealousy.
The tame to-morrows
Of these days of triumph, when the vulgar herd
Crowns you with honour;
Judging rare genius to be
Equal in merit to the wit of clowns.
]
[Footnote 113: Letter written to M. Levin, the correspondent of the
_Boersen-Courier_ of Berlin, 9 September, 1901.]
Such independence is rare at any time; but it is very rare in our day,
when the power of public opinion is tyrannical; and it is rarest of all
in France, where artists are perhaps more sociable than in other
countries. Of all qualities in an artist it is the most precious; for it
forms the foundation of his character, and is the guarantee of his
conscience and innate strength. So we must not hide it under a bushel.
* * * * *
The significance of M. Saint-Saëns in art is a double one, for one must
judge him from the inside as well as the outside of France. He stands
for something exceptional in French music, something which was almost
unique until just lately: that is, a great classical spirit and a fine
breadth of musical culture--German culture, we must say, since the
foundation of all modern art rests on the German classics. French music
of the nineteenth century is rich in clever artists, imaginative writers
of melody, and skilful dramatists; but it is poor in true musicians, and
in good and solid workmanship. Apart from two or three splendid
exceptions, our composers have too much the character of gifted amateurs
who compose music as a pastime, and regard it, not as a special form of
thought, but as a sort of dress for literary ideas. Our musical
education is superficial: it may be got for a few years, in a formal
way, at a Conservatoire, but it is not within reach of all; the child
does not breathe music as, in a way, he breathes the atmosphere of
literature and oratory; and although nearly everyone in France has an
instinctive feeling for beautiful writing, only a very few people care
for beautiful music. From this arise the common faults and failings in
our music. It has remained a luxurious art; it has not become, like
German music, the poetical expression of the people's thought.
To bring this about we should need a combination of conditions that are
very rare in France; though such conditions went to the making of
Camille Saint-Saëns. He had not only remarkable natural talent, but came
of a family of ardent musicians, who devoted themselves to his
education. At five years of age he was nourished on the orchestral score
of _Don Juan_;[114] as a little boy
"De dix ans, délicat, frêle, le teint jaunet,
Mais confiant, naïf, plein d'ardeur et de joie,"[115]
he "measured himself against Beethoven and Mozart" by playing in a
public concert; at sixteen years of age he wrote his _Première
Symphonie_. As he grew older he soaked himself in the music of Bach and
Händel, and was able to compose at will after the manner of Rossini,
Verdi, Schumann, and Wagner.[116] He has written excellent music in all
styles--the Grecian style, and that of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries. His compositions are of every kind: masses, grand
operas, light operas, cantatas, symphonies, symphonic poems; music for
the orchestra, the organ, the piano, the voice, and chamber music. He is
the learned editor of Gluck and Rameau; and is thus not only an artist,
but an artist who can talk about his art. He is an unusual figure in
France--one would have thought rather to find his home in Germany.
[Footnote 114: C. Saint-Saëns, _Charles Gounod et le Don Juan de
Mozart_, 1894.]
[Footnote 115:
But ten years old, slightly built and pale,
Yet full of simple confidence and joy (_Rimes familières_).
]
[Footnote 116: Charles Gounod, _Mémoires d'un Artiste_, 1896.]
In Germany, however, they make no mistake about him. There, the name of
Camille Saint-Saëns stands for the French classical spirit, and is
thought worthiest to represent us in music from the time of Berlioz
until the appearance of the young school of César Franck--though Franck
himself is as yet little known in Germany. M. Saint-Saëns possesses,
indeed, some of the best qualities of a French artist, and among them
the most important quality of all--perfect clearness of conception. It
is remarkable how little this learned artist is bothered by his
learning, and how free he is from all pedantry. Pedantry is the plague
of German art, and the greatest men have not escaped it. I am not
speaking of Brahms, who was ravaged with it, but of delightful geniuses
like Schumann, or of powerful ones like Bach. "This unnatural art
wearies one like the sanctimonious salon of some little provincial town;
it stifles one, it is enough to kill one."[117] "Saint-Saëns is not a
pedant," wrote Gounod; "he has remained too much of a child and become
too clever for that." Besides, he has always been too much of a
Frenchman.
[Footnote 117: Quoted from Saint-Saëns by Edmond Hippeau in _Henry VIII
et L'Opéra français_, 1883. M. Saint-Saëns speaks elsewhere of "these
works, well written, but heavy and unattractive, and reflecting in a
tiresome way the narrow and pedantic spirit of certain little towns in
Germany" (_Harmonie et Mélodie_).]
Sometimes Saint-Saëns reminds me of one of our eighteenth-century
writers. Not a writer of the _Encyclopédie_, nor one of Rousseau's camp,
but rather of Voltaire's school. He has a clearness of thought, an
elegance and precision of expression, and a quality of mind that make
his music "not only noble, but very noble, as coming of a fine race and
distinguished family."[118]
He has also excellent discernment, of an unemotional kind; and he is
"calm in spirit, restrained in imagination, and keeps his self-control
even in the midst of the most disturbing emotions."[119] This
discernment is the enemy of anything approaching obscurity of thought or
mysticism; and its outcome was that curious book, _Problèmes et
Mystères_--a misleading title, for the spirit of reason reigns there and
makes an appeal to young people to protect "the light of a menaced
world" against "the mists of the North, Scandinavian gods, Indian
divinities, Catholic miracles, Lourdes, spiritualism, occultism, and
obscurantism."[120]
His love and need of liberty is also of the eighteenth century. One may
say that liberty is his only passion. "I am passionately fond of
liberty," he wrote.[121]
[Footnote 118: Charles Gounod, _"Ascanio" de Saint-Saëns_, 1890.]
[Footnote 119: _Id., ibid._]
[Footnote 120: C. Saint-Saëns, _Problèmes et Mystères_, 1894.]
[Footnote 121: _Harmonie et Mélodie_.]