From the outset squabbles and intrigues made Wagner's life bitter. He
did not do things by halves, and when he had succeeded in getting the
music school of Munich re-organized to suit his wishes, with Bülow as
chief director, the local musicians felt they had little cause to love
him. Bülow was appointed kapellmeister of the Court Theatre; reforms,
peculiarly disagreeable to those reformed, were set on foot; and
singers, players, _régisseurs_, who had anticipated sleeping away their
existence in the good old fashion, were violently awakened by this
reckless adventurer, charlatan, and what not, who had won the King's
ear. The invertebrate flunkeys attached to every Court were jealous of
his influence over the King, and did what they could to hinder the
execution of his plans. But Wagner was not the man to be hindered, and
if these backboneless crawling things made life at Munich so loathsome
to him that he sought peace to complete his work at Triebschen, near
Lucerne, nevertheless his plans were carried out. _Tristan and Isolda_
was produced in 1865 and _The Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ three years
later. If I had space, it would be amusing to quote the contemporary
criticisms passed on the first. _Tristan_ was hopelessly misunderstood
at the time, and even now it is misunderstood by many professed
Wagnerites. It created an uproar in Germany; in England our sires were
too busy singing the oratorios of Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn to pay
any attention.
_Tristan_ was the first opera to be finished after Wagner had published
his many theories, and it was their completest refutation. He himself
wrote afterwards that in composing it he found how far he had gone ahead
of his doctrines; but, as a matter of fact, he had not gone ahead of
them at all: he simply forgot all about them, and composed as if they
had no existence. In no opera in the world is there such an entire
absence of the calculation that working to a theory would have
involved. It is the most intense and, to use Wordsworth's word, the most
inevitable opera ever written. Words, music and action seem to have
originated simultaneously in the creator's brain. Writing to Liszt,
Wagner said he meant to express a love such as he had never experienced.
It was as well that he never experienced it: no human creature could
endure the strain for twenty-four hours. Here we have the elemental
passion of man for woman and woman for man in a degree of intensity that
is nothing less than delirium. The action is simple, the story is
simple. Isolda has nursed Tristan when he was picked up wounded; she has
loved him and he has loved her. He has killed her betrothed, Morold, and
she conceives it to be her duty to kill him, but she cannot. Tristan
dare not aspire to win her, and when she is claimed by his uncle, King
Mark of Cornwall, he is sent to bring her. At this point the opera
opens.
The prelude begins with one of the love themes; other themes are worked
in; the parts weave and interweave with each other, swelling and
mounting until a shattering climax is reached; then all subsides, and an
effect of terrible suspense is produced by the last subdued phrase in
the bass as the curtain rises, and we feel that something tragic is to
come. Here we have Wagner the full and ripe musician. As a technical
achievement this prelude is marvellous; the polyphony is as intricate
and yet as sure as anything in Bach or Mozart, part winding round part,
and each going its way steadily to the climax; and the white-hot passion
expressed by this means makes the thing a miracle. There is nothing like
it in _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. Here we are entirely free of the
Weberesque four-bar phrases; the rhythms are subtle and complex, though
to the ear they sound clear and simple enough. When the curtain goes up
we see a sort of tent arranged on the deck of a ship. From aloft a
sailor chants a wild sea-song, unlike any sea-song ever chanted off the
stage and yet redolent of the sea and salt winds.
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
Isolda is lying on a couch, her face buried in her hands; Brangaena
stands by. In the sailor's song she has fancied some gibe at herself,
for she is being carried off against her will by the man she loves to
wed an old man she has never seen. She starts up in rage, and then,
realizing her position, asks Brangaena where they are. Now, Wagner, if
he scarcely considered the prima donna, took great pains with the lesser
characters, and Brangaena never opens her mouth without giving us
something of magical beauty and tenderness. Quite unconscious of the
impending tragedy, she remarks that they are drawing near Cornwall, and
that before evening they will land there. The gently-rolling sea is kept
before us by an accompaniment made out of a phrase of the sailor's
song. "They will land"--that means to Isolda that she will become the
property of the old man she has never seen, and lose for ever the man
she has no hope of gaining, the man whom she has every good reason to
hate and despise. This is a drama of passion pitted against
reason--against everything excepting passion, and Wagner loses no chance
of making the situation clear. Here, as in every other opera, he is, if
not first a dramatist, yet always a dramatist. "Never!" screams Isolda,
and curses the vessel and all that it holds. Astounded, Brangaena tries
to comfort her; but Isolda is a woman, and means to have her way. There
must be plenty of air in such a deck-tent, but Wagner, with a spite that
is itself somewhat feminine, makes her, in feminine fashion, complain of
a want of it; so one of the curtains is drawn aside, and she can see
what she wants to see: Tristan standing on what seems to be the prow,
but is really the stern, of the vessel. There he stands, the man she
hates and loves, and shows no sign of discomposure, although the
helmsman invariably holds the tiller at such an angle that the ship must
be gyrating like a teetotum, thus offering a simple, if coarse,
explanation of Isolda's qualms. The music up till now has been made up
of the fragment last quoted of the sailor's song, and one of the love
themes--a simple phrase of four notes, out of which lengthy passages are
woven. When the curtain is drawn a fragment of the sea-song is again
heard, and then this love phrase is taken up by the orchestra and
filled with sinister, smouldering passion. Isolda's anger gathers and
mounts against Tristan, and when this theme arrives
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
it is the announcement of her determination that death for both of them
shall end an impossible situation. This, however, we do not learn until
later; for the moment the theme conveys little special meaning to us. It
is when we hear the drama a second time that its appalling tragic force
is felt. Isolda tells Brangaena to command Tristan to come to the
pavilion. Kurvenal, his servant, sings a scoffing song, in which all the
sailors join, in spite of Tristan's endeavour to stop them. Brangaena
rushes back and hurriedly closes the curtains. Isolda, half-crazed,
tells the whole story as it occurred previous to the rising of the
curtain--how she nursed the wounded Tristan, found him to be the slayer
of her betrothed, took his sword and was about to kill him, when he
opened his eyes, and the sword dropped from her listless fingers.
Brangaena is sufficiently astonished; Isolda works herself up into a
paroxysm of fury; and now the drama is indeed on foot. Brangaena has a
long, lovely, soothing passage to sing, and in her over-anxiety to serve
her mistress she accidentally suggests to Isolda the very means of
revenging herself on Tristan, and terminating at the same time her own
misery. "You remember your mother's art," says Brangaena: "do you think
she would have sent me over-seas with you without a means of helping
you?" Isolda knows it is the love-potion she means. She has only to
drink the contents of a small flask, and old King Mark will become at
least tolerable to her. The flask is in a casket, and another is there,
as Isolda knows, full of a deadly poison. She commands Brangaena to pour
out the poison. Brangaena, terrified, beseeches, implores; but Isolda
insists; and in the midst of the dispute the sailors suddenly roar out
their "Yo-heave-ho!" The sea had ceased, as it will in moments of
preoccupation or intense emotion, to haunt our ears for a time; now it
breaks in again, and we feel as if it had really never ceased. Kurvenal
enters, and tells them to get ready to land. Isolda tells him
point-blank that she will not stir until Tristan has come to demand her
pardon for a sin he has committed. Brusquely, Kurvenal says he will
convey the message; Brangaena again prays to her mistress to spare her.
"Wilt thou be true?" replies Isolda; and the voice of Kurvenal is heard:
"Sir Tristan!"
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
A minute of frightful suspense occurs while Isolda is waiting for
Tristan; and, as the situation is to be one of the most poignant in the
drama, it is only fitting that Wagner should prelude it with one of his
most tremendous passages. Isolda tells Tristan what is his crime, and
how she had meant to slay him. He offers her his sword to carry out her
old purpose, and she laughs at him. "A pretty thing," she says, "it
would be for me to go to King Mark as his bride with his nephew's blood
on my hands. We must drink together to our friendship, that all may be
forgotten." Brangaena has been tremblingly preparing the potion, and,
not knowing what to do--not daring to give the poison, not daring to
disobey her mistress--she has poured out the elixir of love. Isolda
hands it to Tristan, who fully understands Isolda's meaning and half of
her intention--if, indeed, there is another half, for Wagner has given
Isolda a true touch of womanly character in leaving it uncertain whether
or not she really means to poison herself. He takes the cup and drinks;
she, with a cry of "Betrayed, even here!" snatches it from him and
drinks also.
Here we have got many leagues away from _Lohengrin_, with its scene
between a man and a jealous, ungenerous, querulous woman, and
_TANNHÄUSER_, with its contest between an impossible platonic affection
and piggish lust. There is not a touch of staginess about Isolda; she
was not born in the green-room. In her we have two elemental passions in
conflict--her love for a man, and her hatred for the same man after he
has shown manly gratitude by preparing her a lot that is loathsome to
her. The character of Tristan is not so transparent or simple. He had
loved Isolda--so much is certain; but whether he gave her up to curry
favour with the King (he himself says as much afterwards), whether he
dares not ask for her for himself, whether he does not know that Isolda
loves him--about all this we know nothing.
What we do know is that standing there on the deck of the ship are two
very tragic figures. They have drunk poison; they are consumed with
passion one for the other; death is close at hand, and there is nothing
to prevent them confessing their love and dying in each other's arms. If
Wagner meant us to accept the love elixir as the genuine spring of the
immediate drama, he might have saved himself the trouble. It is the
imminent presence of death that brings their love to light, as it is
their love that takes them to death. They gaze upon one another, and
rush into each other's arms. Brangaena, turning round, is horrified to
see what her officiousness has accomplished. The music rolls on in a
torrent of almost unendurable sweetness; the ship reaches land, and the
curtain drops as Tristan and Isolda, oblivious of all but themselves and
their passion, stagger in one another's arms, and the trumpets sound
without as the King approaches to claim his bride.
I hope I have succeeded in setting forth clearly the forces at work and
the nature of the two people on whom they are working. Writers have
indulged in grotesque pages of explanation and speculation, from which
they might have been saved by a careful reading of the libretto,
supplemented by a slight acquaintance with the music. The subject might
easily have become intricate--in fact, hopelessly involved and
entangled--but Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft, and
knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all as clear as the day.
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, and those who do not like it must turn to another
opera.
If the drama is clear, so is the music. Wagner's powers were now at
their fullest and ripest; in invention, technical skill, mastery of the
colours of the orchestra, he towers far above every composer born in the
nineteenth century. Nietzsche, in one of his many quarrelsome diatribes,
says Wagner _determined_ to be a musician and made himself one by sheer
will-power. But not by taking much thought, nor by determination, nor by
exercise of will-power, does any man become an artistic inventor, as
Nietzsche would have perceived had he himself been capable of more than
spasmodic, fragmentary thought. _Tristan_ is full of great melodies:
gigantic themes, like that which is played while Isolda awaits Tristan's
entrance; tender ones, like the music given to Brangaena; passionate and
intolerably sweet, like the duet of the pair after the drinking of the
philtre. The other acts contain even more amazing things, and to them we
shall come in due time. First let us note how Wagner sustains his
background and atmosphere throughout the first act. At times, when our
attention has to be concentrated on the personages on the opening stage,
the sea song theme, with its smell of the pungent, salt sea air,
disappears; then, as I have remarked, it gradually creeps in again, so
that we do not realize that it has ever been absent; or, again, as
during the conversation between Isolda and Brangaena, it breaks in
abruptly, with the roar of the seamen's voices and Kurvenal's savage
orders. It is managed with the most consummate skill. Though the tent
blots out a view of the ocean, yet the mast and bellying sail (which
ought to be visible), and the miraculous music, preserve an ever-present
sense of the sea, and in that atmosphere of keen freshness and ozone the
characters begin to work out their destiny. To understand Wagner's real
greatness and the personal quality that differentiates his art from the
art of all other musicians, let us try to realize what this means. Weber
and Mendelssohn had written picturesque music; they gave us landscapes,
the rolling sea, black woods, moaning winds; and having done that, they
were satisfied. But where they left off Wagner began; their completed
picture was for him nothing more than a background. Against it he placed
his characters, with their different thoughts and emotions fully
expressed. Now, in music you cannot express two or more conflicting
emotions, even if you have two themes, each of which shows its own
emotion when played separately, and set them going together. However
many parts a piece of music may be written in, it is the mass of tone
reaching our ears, it is the _ensemble_, that makes the effect. It is
obvious, then, that when Wagner puts a shrieking female on the deck of a
ship which is shouldering its way through a gently-rolling sea, the same
music must serve for the lady and the sea: it must suggest the sea and
express the lady's emotions. He could not give picturesque music to the
orchestra and let the female indulge in real screams, or even musical
imitations of real screams. That would be to step beyond the boundaries
of art; for neither real screams nor their imitations are beautiful,
and--if a truism may be pardoned to complete a nice sentence--without
beauty there can be no art. In spite of much nonsense that has been
written and talked, Wagner never sacrificed beauty. Those foolish tales
which I used to read in my youth--of how Wagner appropriately, if
daringly, sustained discords through long discordant situations--what
are they but the blatherskite of long-tongued persons who could talk
faster than they could think? Wagner would not sacrifice beauty. He
made the characters say, in notes as well as words, what they had to
say; he always got the colour and atmosphere of the scenic surroundings
into the music. By inspiration and marvellous workmanship he made each
phrase serve a double purpose: it expresses the emotion of the person
who sings, it gives the atmosphere in which the person is singing. More
than anything else, it is this that gives his music its individual
character. Such music is bound to remain for ever fresh. So long as
trees and grass, rain and sunshine, running waters and flying cloud-scud
are things sweet to man's thought, so long will the music of Wagner's
operas remain green, always new and refreshing, full and satisfying. He
often achieved the task, or helped himself to achieve it, by showing us
Nature in sympathy with the human mood of the moment (see the second
scene in _Tannhäuser_, the last act of _Tristan_, the whole of the last
act of _The Valkyrie_); but he succeeds equally well without these
touches of his unrivalled stage-craft.
Further back I referred to Wagner's earlier and later use of the
_leit-motif._ In its naive, primitive simplicity the device is certainly
not highly artistic. When our academic gentry use it in their festival
oratorios, they are supposed to show themselves very advanced. But what
purpose, musical or other, is subserved by arbitrarily allying a musical
phrase to a personage or an idea and blaring it out whenever that
personage or idea comes to the front? Wagner early realized the
uselessness of the proceeding, and, as I pointed out, in _Tannhäuser_
there are no _leit-motifs_, though passages and parts of passages are
repeated. In _Lohengrin_ it is used rather for a dramatic than a musical
purpose. By the time he wrote _Tristan_ he had learnt the splendid
artistic uses to which a rather commonplace device could be put. The
differences between the _leit-motif_ in _Lohengrin_ and the _leit-motif_
in _Tristan_ are two: in _Tristan_ they are more significant--indeed,
they are pregnant to bursting--and more fully charged with energy and
colour; also they are not stated and restated in their elementary form
as in _Lohengrin_, but continually subjected to a process of
metamorphosis. This last mode of developing a theme he probably learnt
from Liszt, and without it both _Tristan_ and the _Ring_ would be very
different. But while these are the most striking characteristics of
Wagner's later leading themes and mode of using them, it must be
remembered that he was now absolute master of every device of operatic
art previously known, and of many he invented as he went along. The same
theme in _Tristan_ has a dozen functions to fulfil; it may be changed
almost out of recognition to suit a particular occasion, and a few
minutes later, for a dramatic purpose, it may be stated in all its
original plainness. I advise all who wish to understand _Tristan_ not to
fret themselves with those rascally and stupid guide books which merely
addle the brain with their interminable lists of motives. Throughout the
opera new matter is continually introduced, with old themes, changed or
unchanged, woven into the tissue; and to go hunting for these old
themes, to try to recognise them whenever they crop up, is not only to
lose one's enjoyment of the music, but to run a fair risk of
misapprehending it altogether, and the drama as well. This jack-fool
twaddle about there being not a single phrase in an opera which has not
grown out of another is manifestly absurd--for out of what does the
first one grow?--and utterly untrue. In every scene of _Tristan_ an
enormous amount of new material is added; it is the richest thematically
of all the operas. But this labelling of nearly every phrase as the
This, That, or the Other motive has confused thousands of people; they
fatigue themselves by incessantly trying to remember the significance of
a phrase which resembles one that has been heard before; and instead of
letting the music make its natural and proper effect, they grow
bewildered, and blame Wagner for what is in reality the fault of the
analysis-makers. To follow _Tristan_, one need not know more than the
few fragments I have quoted above; in fact, without any knowledge
whatever it can be followed. The themes have no arbitrary significance
attached to them; they are expressive music and tell their own tale.
But, of course, when one has heard the opera many times--and twenty
performances, supplemented by a study of Von Bülow's incomparable piano
arrangement of the score, are hardly enough to enable us to begin to
comprehend the real richness and vastness of _Tristan_--then gradually
new features are found, new lights are thrown by the use of
_leit-motifs_, and slowly the music yields us that multiplicity of
complex delights--delights intellectual, emotional, or purely
sensuous--that only the greatest works of art can give. Take, for
example, the theme which Isolda sings when she perceives death to be the
only cure for her woes. Later, when she is compelling Tristan to drink
the poison-cup, the sailors break out into "Yo-heave-ho!" and he says,
"Where are we?" "Near to the end!" she says, to the accompaniment of
this same theme. To one who barely remembers the phrase the effect is
marked enough, but to one who knows every phrase and its associations
the double meaning is almost horrifying. It is idle to search out such
points as this with the aid of a guide, for while you are waiting for
them you lose the music in which they are set; the prevailing mood
eludes you, and the points themselves fail to make their effect. There
is another danger. People easily go _leit-motif_ mad, and their insane
imagination creates a _leit-motif_ out of any two phrases that have a
superficial and accidental resemblance. _Tristan_ and the _Ring_ are not
musical puzzles. The themes are quite able to look after themselves, and
to assert themselves at the proper moment. Many of them are not
_leit-motifs_ at all. The passage out of the sea-song, which is heard
constantly through the first act, is not a _leit-motif_, nor are many of
the other subjects. They receive symphonic development; but, after all,
the opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony do not form a
_leit-motif_. I have dwelt at length upon this, for misguided people
have blinded both themselves and others as to Wagner's true aims and
methods and the splendour of the accomplished thing by trying to read
into his music a host of trifling and pettifogging allusions which he
never intended. There is enough to break our minds upon without
troubling about these.
In the second act we are left in the dark as to what has happened since
we left Isolda in Tristan's arms on the deck of the ship. Some years ago
an excited discussion took place on a very momentous question--"Did
Isolda marry King Mark or not?" If not, it was strange that she should
have been left free enough apparently to see Tristan whenever she
wished, and Mark's expostulations at the end of the act seem rather
unwarranted in the mouth of a man whose honour, in the Divorce Court
sense, has not been smirched; yet, on the other hand, it is unlikely
that a legendary King, with the bride in his palace, would wait so long
for the marriage as to allow the many pretty incidents mentioned by
Brangaena to happen. Yet again, if they were married, Mark, in the third
act, shows a more than heroic willingness and less than cuckold
readiness to let Isolda go free. Probably Wagner never gave the problem
a moment's consideration, which is hardly surprising when we consider
his own multitudinous love affairs. He was not writing a Sunday-school
tract, but a drama of passion so intense that purity, prudence and all
such considerations were thrown to the winds.
The act opens with a very Proteus of a theme. Its entrance is like a
thunder-clap in a cloudless sky. The conductor lifts his stick, and
then--
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
--an unprepared discord which must have pained the ears and grieved the
hearts of the ordinary opera-goers and pedants when the opera was first
given. This subject is used in connection with the notion of daylight as
a nuisance to lovers in the subsequent conversation of Tristan and
Isolda--a notion which we shall examine presently. Presently another
subject is heard, one of which extensive use is made in the first
scene--
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
The curtain rises. It is a sultry summer night; the black woods stand
round a garden; on the left is the castle of Mark, with a torch blazing
at the doorway, making the surrounding night blacker. Sounds of
hunting-horns are dying away in the distance. Brangaena and Isolda are
there listening, and Brangaena, to music of enchanting beauty, is
warning Isolda that the hunters can be no great way off. "Listen to the
brook," says Isolda. "How could I hear that if the horns were near?"
Then comes one of Wagner's matchless bits of painting--the brook
rippling through the silent night. Isolda is now going to extinguish the
torch, as a signal to Tristan that he may approach. Brangaena protests,
and warns Isolda against Melot, who has arranged this night hunt as a
trap to catch Tristan; and she bewails the officiousness which led her
to substitute the love-philtre for the poison. The rest of the scene may
be passed over. The music is woven out of themes just quoted, and
another which will play a big part in the love-duet:
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
Of course, Isolda prevails. Brangaena is sent to keep watch, and Isolda
throws down the torch to the Death motive. Tristan rushes in, and the
most passionate love-duet ever written begins.
After the first ecstasies have subsided the lovers converse. They must
talk about something--what should it be? As Wagner's thoughts were
occupied with Schopenhauer at the time, he makes them talk a sort of
pseudo-Schopenhauer. Light is their enemy; only in
night--extinction--can perfect joy be found. It was the deceitful
phantoms of daylight--worldly ambitions--that betrayed Tristan into
acting so basely towards Isolda (before the drama opens); it was the
light of the torch that kept him so long from her this night; and now in
the darkness they find rapturous peace. This is the substance of what is
said. Twice Brangaena warns them that the dawn is at hand, but they do
not heed her. Her songs are exquisite enough, surely, but the lovers,
steeped in their bliss, have no ears for them. Their own music is far
more beautiful:
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
And again:
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
The lovers are presently awakened. At the very climax of a mad,
tumultuous passage Brangaena gives a scream; Kurvenal rushes in, and
then--enter Mark, Melot and the other hunters. Melot's trap has worked
satisfactorily.
The cold red dawn slowly breaks. The phantoms of the daylight have
broken in upon the dream of night, which alone is true. It is here that
many would have the act terminate. Such an ending would leave the idea
of the act half expressed, and shatter the noble architectonical scheme
of the whole drama. The idea of the act--that the light is the lovers'
enemy, the dark their friend and refuge--has to be worked out to prepare
for the last act; the idea of the drama--that the lovers must be seen
gradually thrust away from life (which is light) to death (which is
eternal night)--must be carried one step further. Mark, in an agony of
grief, asks them why they, the two he loves best in the world, dishonour
him in so frightful a fashion. He presses home to them their sin and his
suffering, his affection and their indifference to it; and he ends up
with the question, "Why?" Tristan cannot answer; he perceives only that
Mark's love is a more terrible menace for them than any trap laid by
Melot. Without their passion they cannot live, and it is not Melot and
the general outside world that threaten to sunder them, but their
protector and dearest friend. The passion is irresistible, and Tristan
faces the inevitable. He asks Isolda if she will follow him where he is
now going: she replies that she will; and he, after taunting Melot with
his treachery, lets him thrust him through with his sword. The drama has
moved a stage further on, and there remains now only the logical
completion. Anyone who thinks all this is to read into the opera a
meaning that is not there merely accuses me of being greater than
Wagner; without this we have only a commonplace Divorce Court episode.
The next act takes place in the courtyard of Tristan's castle in
Brittany. It is in a state of decay. In the hot afternoon sun the sea
shines like burnished metal, and Tristan, who has been brought there by
Kurvenal, lies delirious. Presently one of the saddest songs ever
written sounds from a shepherd's pipe without. It half awakens Tristan,
and he talks of it--how it has haunted him since his childhood. Kurvenal
tells him Isolda has been sent for. He becomes more and more delirious,
and at last, after an outburst, he faints; then awakens and sings the
sublime passage in which he sees Isolda coming over-seas, the ship
covered with sweet-smelling flowers. The accompaniment to this piece of
magic is a figure taken from the fourth theme I have quoted in this
chapter. It is given at first to the horns, and over it sways a lovely
melody, leading to Tristan's cry of "Oh, Isolda!" which occurs again and
again until Isolda does come.
[Illustration: Some bars of music]
There are few tender and beautiful and pathetic things in music to
match it. Presently the horn of the shepherd is heard again; but this
time it plays a lively tune, as a signal that the ship is in sight.
Tristan goes mad for joy, and tears the bandages from his wounds. As
Isolda rushes in he staggers into her arms, and dies there to the
phrases in which they had first spoken after drinking the love-philtre.
Isolda's plaints are as touching and profound as those of Donna Anna in
_Don Giovanni_ after her father has been murdered. There is again
tumult; even at the last the lovers cannot be left alone; another ship
comes in sight, and Melot and Mark's warriors rush in. Kurvenal fights
and kills Melot, and is himself stabbed. He receives the wound, and
feels his way to his master's side, and dies groping for his hand. Mark
and Brangaena come in. She has confessed to the mistake she made in
giving the wrong potion, and he has come to make all well. Isolda pays
no attention, but, after a beautiful phrase from Brangaena, rises and
sings the wonderful Death song. The drama is now ended; the lovers'
passion has led them whither they knew it was leading them from the
beginning. Night has come on, and Isolda falls on Tristan's body and
dies, fulfilling the promise she had made--that where he went she would
follow. And so ends the greatest music-drama ever written, and the
greatest likely to be written for centuries to come.
We must pass on now to _The Mastersingers_, an old idea of Wagner's. The
music was completed at Triebschen. Here is nothing of the tension,
burning passion, and unfathomable depth of _Tristan_, but a pretty
love-story, with some comedy and more than a little of very broad farce.
In it Wagner determined to satirize the musical pedants, and he did so
with considerable acerbity. But it is not to see his enemies roughly
handled that we go to _The Mastersingers_: it is to hear one of Wagner's
two most beautiful operas. There is no need to go through it closely, as
in the case of _Tristan_. The methods are those of _Tristan_; we have
the themes used as _leit-motifs_, and also long passages woven out of
them and new matter; we have the harmonic freedom of _Tristan_, the same
gorgeous orchestration, and even more than the same marvellous
polyphonic writing. But, broadly speaking, the drama counts for
comparatively little, and the opera consists of a series of enchanting
songs and scenes. The very title tells us that we are not simply to
follow the destinies of a hero and heroine. The person mostly in
evidence is Hans Sachs, a sort of heavy father, who has some of the most
glorious music. The young lover comes along--Walther--and tries to win
Eva by gaining the prize in a contest of minstrels; Beckmesser, a
pedant, opposes him. Sachs supports him, and he wins. Every note of the
music can readily be understood. There are regular set numbers provided
for in the structure of the libretto, so as to come in naturally; there
is even a sextet--which I have often heard encored--and the opera winds
up with a chorus. It disproves Wagner's theory that in the Ninth
Symphony Beethoven had said the last word in pure music, and that
henceforth words would always be necessary; for here the text is often a
mere excuse for using the human voice, and little of the music would be
unintelligible without it.