[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected
without note.]
RICHARD WAGNER
HIS LIFE AND HIS DRAMAS
A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF THE MAN AND AN EXPLANATION OF HIS WORK
BY
W.J. HENDERSON
AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF MUSIC," "PRELUDES AND STUDIES," "WHAT IS GOOD
MUSIC?" ETC.
[Illustration]
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_The Knickerbocker Press_
1902
Copyright, 1901
BY
W.J. HENDERSON
Set up, electrotyped, and printed, November, 1901
Reprinted February, 1902
_The Knickerbocker Press, New York_
[Illustration: Richard Wagner]
TO
ROBERT EDWIN BONNER
PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to supply Wagner lovers with a single
work which shall meet all their needs. The author has told the story
of Wagner's life, explained his artistic aims, given the history of
each of his great works, examined its literary sources, shown how
Wagner utilised them, surveyed the musical plan of each drama, and
set forth the meaning and purpose of its principal ideas. The work
is not intended to be critical, but is designed to be expository.
It aims to help the Wagner lover to a thorough knowledge and
understanding of the man and his works.
The author has consulted all the leading biographies, and for
guidance in the direction of absolute trustworthiness he is directly
indebted to Mme. Cosima Wagner, whose suggestions have been carefully
observed. He is also under a large, but not heavy, burden of
obligation to Mr. Henry Edward Krehbiel, musical critic of _The New
York Tribune_, who carefully read the manuscript of this work and
pointed out its errors. The value of Mr. Krehbiel's revision and
his hints cannot be over-estimated. Thanks are also due to Mr. Emil
Paur, conductor of the Philharmonic Society, of New York, for certain
inquiries made in Europe.
The records of first performances have been prepared with great care
and with no little labour. For the dates of those at most of the
European cities the author is indebted to an elaborate article by E.
Kastner, published in the _Allgemeine Musik. Zeitung_, of Berlin, for
July and August, 1896. The original casts have been secured, as far
as possible, from the programmes. For that of the "Flying Dutchman"
at Dresden--incorrectly given in many books on Wagner--the author
is indebted to Hofkapellmeister Ernst von Schuch, who obtained it
from the records of the Hoftheater. The name of the singer of the
Herald in the first cast of "Lohengrin," missing in all the published
histories, was supplied by Hermann Wolff, of Berlin, from the records
of Weimar. The casts of first performances in this country are not
quite complete, simply because the journalists of twenty-five years
ago did not realise their obligations to posterity. The casts were
not published in full. The records have disappeared. The theatres
in some cases--as in that of the Stadt--have long ago gone out of
existence and nothing can be done. As far as given the casts are, the
author believes, perfectly correct.
CONTENTS
PART I--THE LIFE OF WAGNER
CHAPTER PAGE
I--THE BOYHOOD OF A GENIUS 1
II--THE FIRST OPERAS 14
III--KÖNIGSBERG AND RIGA 27
IV--"THE END OF A MUSICIAN IN PARIS" 38
V--BEGINNING OF FAME AND HOSTILITY 50
VI--"LOHENGRIN" and "DIE MEISTERSINGER" 64
VII--"ART AND REVOLUTION" 73
VIII--PREACHING WHAT HE PRACTISED 85
IX--A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND 96
X--A SECOND END IN PARIS 105
XI--A MONARCH TO THE RESCUE 117
XII--SOME IDEALS REALISED 127
XIII--FINIS CORONAT OPUS 136
XIV--THE LAST DRAMA 146
XV--THE CHARACTER OF THE MAN 154
PART II--THE ARTISTIC AIMS OF WAGNER
I--THE LYRIC DRAMA AS HE FOUND IT 167
II--THE REFORMS OF WAGNER 178
III--THE MUSICAL SYSTEM 189
IV--THE SYSTEM AS COMPLETED 200
PART III--THE GREAT MUSIC DRAMAS
INTRODUCTORY 213
RIENZI 221
DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER 234
TANNHÄUSER UND DER SÄNGERKRIEG AUF WARTBURG 250
LOHENGRIN 270
I--THE BOOK 272
II--THE MUSIC 283
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE 293
I--SOURCES OF THE STORY 294
II--WAGNER'S DRAMATIC POEM 300
III--THE MUSICAL EXPOSITION 315
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG 328
DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN 355
I--THE SOURCES OF THE POEMS 364
II--THE STORY AS TOLD BY WAGNER 388
III--THE MUSIC OF THE TRILOGY 422
PARSIFAL 446
I--THE ORIGINAL LEGENDS 447
II--THE DRAMA OF WAGNER 461
III--THE MUSICAL PLAN 473
APPENDIX A--THE YOUTHFUL SYMPHONY 481
APPENDIX B--WAGNER AND THE BALLET 487
INDEX 491
PART I
THE LIFE OF WAGNER
RICHARD WAGNER
CHAPTER I
THE BOYHOOD OF A GENIUS
"O kindischer Held! O herrlicher Knabe."--SIEGFRIED
The ancestry of Richard Wagner has been traced as far as his
grandfather. This good man was Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, a custom
house official, whose life-work it was to see that nothing was
smuggled into Leipsic through the city gates. Gottlob Friedrich had
a son to whom was given the second name of his father. Friedrich
Wagner was a clerk of police. He had a considerable acquaintance
with languages, and spoke French so well that when the French army
under Napoleon occupied the city, he was appointed by Marshal Davoust
to organise the police. Wagner's father was born in 1770, and his
life was short. It is known that he had a taste for the theatre and
for verse. After the battles of October 18 and 19, 1813, at the
gates of Leipsic, when Napoleon's power was broken in Germany, the
accumulation of dead around the city caused an epidemic fever, and
among its victims was the police clerk Wagner. He passed away on
November 22, 1813, leaving among other children a male babe of six
months, destined to immortalise his name. This child was Wilhelm
Richard Wagner, born May 22, 1813, in "The House of the Red and White
Lion," No. 88 Hause Brühl.
Wagner's mother, whom his father married in 1798, was Johanna Rosina
Bertz, who died in 1848. Richard was the youngest of nine children,
the others being Albert, Carl Gustav, Johanna Rosalie, Carl Julius,
Luise Constanze, Clara Wilhelmine, Maria Theresia, and Wilhelmine
Ottilie. Of these Albert became an actor and singer of considerable
importance and finally stage manager in Berlin. He married Elise
Gollmann, a singer with a remarkably extensive voice, who is said
to have sung "Tancredi" and "The Queen of the Night" equally well.
She bore him a daughter, Johanna, who became one of the most eminent
sopranos of her time, and was the original Elizabeth in "Tannhäuser"
at the age of seventeen. Wagner's sister Johanna Rosalie was an
actress and Clara was a singer.
When the epidemic had carried off the police clerk, the widow was
in straitened circumstances. Her oldest son was only fourteen years
old and not competent to contribute to the support of the large
family. The governmental pension was small and she had no fortune of
her own. At this trying period Ludwig Geyer, an old friend of her
husband, asked her to be his wife, and although only nine months had
elapsed since Friedrich Wagner's death, she, like a sensible woman,
accepted the offer. Geyer was a man of talent and well fitted to be
the parental guide of the young Richard. He was an actor, a singer,
an author, and a portrait painter. As a singer he once appeared
in "Joseph in Egypt," when that opera was produced by Weber on his
assumption of the conductor's bâton at the Dresden opera. His gift
for portrait painting is said almost to have reached genius. He was
the writer of several comedies, and one of his plays, "The Slaughter
of the Innocents," is still well known in Germany. To celebrate the
sixtieth birthday of Richard Wagner his family at Bayreuth surprised
him with a performance of this play, and he was much touched by it,
for he always cherished a deep affection for his stepfather.
Owing to the employment of Geyer in a Dresden theatre, the whole
family removed to that city. Here the education of the future
composer began in earnest. The home influences were the example of
Geyer and the sweet, gentle affection of the mother, to whom her
children were the first of all considerations. The outside influence
was found in the Dresden Kreuzschule, where the boy was entered
under the name of Richard Geyer. This schooling, however, was not
begun till after the death of the stepfather. In the beginning Geyer
thought that Richard would make a good painter, but, the composer
tells us in his autobiographic sketch, "I showed a very poor talent
for drawing." Geyer died on September 30, 1821, still cherishing
the belief that there was some sort of promise in the boy. "Shortly
before his death," says the brief autobiography, "I had learnt to
play 'Ueb' immer Treu und Redlichkeit' and the then newly published
'Jungfernkranz' upon the pianoforte; the day before his death I was
bid to play him both these pieces in the adjoining room; I heard him
then with feeble voice say to my mother: 'Has he perchance a talent
for music?' On the early morrow, as he lay dead, my mother came into
the children's sleeping room and said to each of us some loving word.
To me she said: 'He hoped to make _something_ of thee.' I remember,
too, that for a long time I imagined that something indeed would come
of me."
Wagner was eight years old when his stepfather died, and in order
that the mother's cares might be lightened, he was sent for a year
to live with a brother of Geyer at Eisleben, where he attended a
private school. It was in December, 1822, that he began to go to the
Kreuzschule in Dresden. If ever there was a childhood in which the
future man was foreshadowed it was that of Wagner. His biographers
have with one accord set down the statement that the boy showed no
promise in his early years. Look at them and see for yourself. At the
Kreuzschule he conceived a profound love for the classicism of Homer,
and to the delight of his teacher, Herr Silig, translated the first
twelve books of the Odyssey out of school hours. He revelled in the
fascinations of mythology, and his fancy was so stimulated that when
commemorative verses on the death of one of the boys were asked for,
Wagner's, having been pruned of some extravagances, were crowned with
the halo of type.
Thereupon this child of eleven resolved to become a poet. He
projected vast tragedies on the plan of Apel's "Polyeidos" and "Die
Aetolier." He plunged into the deeps of Shakespeare and translated
a speech of Romeo into metrical German. Finally he began a grand
tragedy, which proved to be compounded of elements from "Hamlet" and
"King Lear." He laboured on this for two years. "The plan," he says,
"was gigantic in the extreme; two-and-forty human beings died in the
course of this piece, and I saw myself compelled in its working out
to call the greater number back as ghosts, since otherwise I should
have been short of characters for my last acts."
Huge poetic projects already throbbing in the young brain, music,
too, seized him for her own. He would not stay away from the piano,
and so the tutor who was guiding him through the mazes of Cornelius
Nepos engaged to teach him the technic of the instrument. But the
wayward Wagner would not practice. The moment that the tutor's back
was turned he began to strum the music of "Der Freischütz" by ear,
and he learned to perform the overture with "fearful fingering."
The teacher overheard him and said that nothing would come of his
piano studies. And so it proved, for Wagner never learned to play
the piano. Yet was there nothing in all this to show the bent of
the young mind? Was it not a childhood meet for him who was one day
to project tragedies before undreamed of on the lyric stage, and to
cut loose from all the traditions of operatic music? And was it not
a good omen when at last there fell across his childhood the shadow
of his artistic progenitor, Weber? "When Weber passed our house on
his way to the theatre," writes Wagner, "I used to watch him with
something akin to religious awe!" Indeed, Weber used to enter the
house to talk to the sweet Frau Geyer, who was well liked among
artists, and so perhaps the little Richard looked into the luminous
depths of the eyes of the composer of "Der Freischütz."
Weber became the idol of his boyhood, and no doubt the worship of
this real genius had some influence on the bent of Wagner's musical
thought. It is narrated of him that, when he was not permitted to
go to the theatre to hear "Der Freischütz," he used to stand in the
corner of a room at home and count the minutes, specifying just what
was going on at each particular instant and finally weeping, so that
his mother would yield and send him happy off to the performance.
However, in 1827 the family returned to Leipsic and that was the
end of young Richard's close observation of Weber. A still more
serious influence now entered into his life, for at the concerts
of the Leipsic Gewandhaus he first heard the works of Beethoven.
The overture to "Egmont" fired him with a desire to preface his own
drama with such a piece of music. So he borrowed a copy of Logier's
treatise on harmony and counterpoint and tried to learn its contents
in a week. This was the crucial test of his genius. If he had not
been born to be a composer, the difficulties which he encountered in
his solitary struggle with the science of music would have turned
him aside from the study forever. But it was not so. He says in his
autobiography: "Its difficulties both provoked and fascinated me;
I resolved to become a musician." And thus we find Wagner, whose
childhood has been pronounced insignificant, at the age of fifteen
already a dramatist and eager to be a composer. To be sure, he was
not a prodigy, but the future of the man was marked out plainly by
the child; and we shall see that from this time he moved steadily
toward the goal of his ambition.
The progress was not accomplished without a struggle. As he himself
tells us in his autobiography, his family now unearthed his great
tragedy, and he was severely admonished that in the future it would
be well for him to give less attention to Melpomene and more to his
text-books. But he was not to be turned aside from his purpose.
"Under such circumstances," he says, "I breathed no word of my secret
discovery of a calling for music; but nevertheless I composed,
in silence, a sonata, a quartet, and an aria. When I felt myself
sufficiently matured in my private musical studies, I ventured forth
at last with their announcement. Naturally, I now had many a hard
battle to wage, for my relatives could only consider my penchant
for music as a fleeting passion--all the more as it was unsupported
by any proofs of preliminary study, and especially by any already
won dexterity in handling a musical instrument." We laugh, perhaps,
at this awkward boy in his lumbering struggles, but there was
something large in it all. He aimed at the top, and from the outset,
pathetically enough, as it afterward proved, tried to hitch his
"waggon to a star."
The family so far humoured his new ambition as to engage a music
teacher for him, Gottlieb Müller, afterward organist at Altenburg.
But a sorry time this honest man had with his eccentric young pupil.
The boy was at this time head over ears in the romanticism of Ernst
Theodor Hoffmann, then recently dead and still in the height of his
fame in Germany. The astounding fecundity of this writer's invention
of marvellous incidents inflamed the boy's mind, and threw him into
a state of continual nervous excitement. He says himself that he
had day-dreams in which the keynote, third and dominant, seemed to
take form and to reveal to him their mighty meanings. But he would
not study systematically, and his family apparently had ground for
believing that music would soon be abandoned for some other fancy.
Instead of treading patiently the rocky path of counterpoint, the
impatient boy endeavoured at one leap to reach the top of the musical
mountain, and wrote overtures for orchestra. One of them was actually
performed in a theatre in Leipsic under the direction of Heinrich
Dorn. It was, as Wagner confessed, the culminating point of his
folly. The parts of the string instruments in score were written in
red ink, those of the wood in green, and those of the brass in black.
"Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," he says, "was a mere Pleyel sonata by
the side of this marvellously concocted overture." At every fourth
measure the tympani player had a note to be played forte, and when
the audience had recovered from its astonishment at this wonderful
effect, it burst into laughter.
But all these strivings were not in vain. As Adolphe Jullien notes
in his "Richard Wagner," the influence of the Hoffmann stories was
not lost; "for the 'Brothers of Serapion' contained an account of the
poetical tourney at Wartburg, and some germs of 'The Meistersinger'
are found in another story by Hoffmann, 'Master Martin, the Cooper of
Nuremberg.'" Dorn, the conductor, became interested in young Wagner,
and afterwards proved to be a valuable friend. The boy modestly and
sincerely thanked him for producing the overture, and Dorn replied
that he had at once perceived the boy's talent and that furthermore
the orchestration had not needed extensive revision. Wagner now
seemed to feel his own need of some sort of regular study, for he
matriculated at the University of Leipsic, chiefly in order that he
might attend the lectures on æsthetics and philosophy. Here again
his want of application made itself apparent, and he entered into
the dissipations of student life with avidity. But he soon wearied
of them and once more settled down to the study of music, this time
under Theodor Weinlig, who sat in the honoured seat of Bach as the
cantor of the Thomas School.
In less than half a year Weinlig had taught the boy to solve the
hardest problems of counterpoint, and said to him, "What you have
made your own by this dry study, we call self-dependence." At this
time, too, Wagner became acquainted with the music of Mozart and
its influence upon his mind was very healthful. He laboured to rid
himself of bombast and to attain a nobler simplicity. He wrote a
piano sonata in which he strove for a "natural, unforced style in
composition." This sonata was published by Breitkopf and Härtel, and
was, so far as the records show, Wagner's real Opus 1. It shows no
trace of inspiration, and can rank only as a conservatory exercise.
It was followed by a polonaise in D for four hands, Opus 2, and this
was also printed by Breitkopf and Härtel. It is nothing more than
school work, like its predecessor. The third work was a fantasia in
F sharp minor for piano. The restraining power of the teacher is
less apparent in this composition, which remains unpublished. In
his article on Wagner in Grove's "Dictionary of Music," Mr. Edward
Dannreuther quotes at some length from a personal conversation
with the composer, who described Weinlig's method of teaching. It
was a plain and practical method, in which example and precept
were judiciously combined. Wagner said to Mr. Dannreuther, "The
true lesson consisted in his patient and careful inspection of
what had been written." It was fortunate for Wagner that he had
such a mentor, and that he was in the beginning of his career as
a composer compelled to learn and practice the old forms in which
the fundamental laws of music found their perfect exemplification.
His readiness to depart from the straight and narrow path would
have led him into insuperable difficulties, and perhaps to hopeless
discouragement, had he not possessed so kind and trustworthy a guide.
Young Wagner now launched upon musical activities of no small
magnitude for one so youthful. In the year 1830 he made a pianoforte
transcription of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and in a letter dated
Oct. 6 he offered it to the Messrs. Schott, of Mayence. The offer
was not accepted. He also wrote to the Peters Bureau de Musique,
offering to make piano arrangements at less than the usual rates.
In 1831 he composed two overtures, one a "Concert Ouvertüre mit
Fuge" in C, and the other in D minor. This one is dated Sept. 26,
with emendations dated Nov. 4. It was performed at one of the
Gewandhaus concerts on Dec. 25, 1831. The _Allgemeine Musikalische
Zeitung_ said of it: "Much pleasure was given us by a new overture
by a composer still very young, Herr Richard Wagner. The piece was
thoroughly appreciated, and, indeed, the young man promises much: the
composition not only sounds well, but it has ideas and it is written
with care and skill, with an evident striving after the noblest."[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted from "Wagner and his Works," by Henry T. Finck. 2
vols., New York, 1893.]
In 1832, when he was 19 years old, he wrote a symphony in C major.[2]
The biographers of Wagner have agreed to disagree about this
symphony, even the usually accurate Mr. Finck calling it a work in C
minor. It is, however, plainly enough in C major. The history of this
composition was peculiar. When he had finished it Wagner put it in
his trunk and started for Vienna, "for no other purpose than to get a
glimpse of this famed musical centre. What I heard and saw there was
not to my edification; wherever I went I heard 'Zampa' or Strauss's
potpourris on 'Zampa'--two things that were an abomination to me,
especially at that time." On the homeward journey he tarried a while
in Prague, where he made the acquaintance of Dionys Weber, director
of the Conservatory. This gentleman's pupils rehearsed the symphony.
The score was next submitted to the directors of the Gewandhaus
concerts at Leipsic.
[Footnote 2: See Appendix _A_.]
The managing director was Rochlitz, editor of the _Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung_, an authority on music, and he invited Wagner
to call on him. "When I presented myself, the stately old gentleman
raised his spectacles, saying, 'You are a young man indeed! I
expected an older and more experienced composer.'" The symphony was
tried, and on Jan. 10, 1833, it was produced at a Gewandhaus concert.
In the season of 1834-5 Wagner, who was in Leipsic, forced his score
on the attention of Mendelssohn, then the conductor of the Gewandhaus
concerts, in the hope of getting another performance. Mendelssohn put
the manuscript away, and, though he often saw Wagner, never spoke
of the work. Wagner was too modest to ask him about it, and so the
score was lost. In 1872 the orchestral parts were found in an old
trunk left by Wagner in Dresden in the course of the revolutionary
disturbances of 1849.
With the composition of this symphony, Wagner's apprenticeship in
instrumental music may be said to have ended. His next venture was
across that magic border which separates the orchestra from the
stage. His period of juvenility was not quite ended, but he may be
said to have finished the preparatory stage of his career and to be
about to enter on the first years of serious struggle toward his real
goal. His boyhood was fairly indicative of his nature. Restless,
dissatisfied, eager to reach the topmost heights, and not suited with
the means at hand, we yet find him experimenting with the methods of
those who preceded him, analysing and assimilating the musical past,
and learning to conquer musical forms. In the juvenile symphony he
showed that he had honestly solved the problems of construction, that
he had mastered the formal materials of his art. The wise Schumann
said, "Mastery of form leads talent to ever increasing freedom."
At nineteen years of age, with the methods of Beethoven and Mozart
firmly fixed in his mind, the young Wagner had produced a symphonic
composition, which, while imitative in both themes and treatment,
showed astonishing musical vigour and an enterprising spirit. The boy
was on the verge of manhood, artistically as well as physically.