BEGINNING OF FAME AND HOSTILITY
"Before the world of modern art I now could hope no more
for life."--WAGNER
The excursion to Teplitz in the early summer of 1842 for his wife's
health was of great importance in the development of Richard Wagner,
for it was there and then that he completed the outline of the book
of "Tannhäuser." When he had finished "Der Fliegende Holländer," he
searched for a new subject. That he had not yet discovered in what
direction his genius called him is demonstrated by the fact that he
was attracted by the story of the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by
Manfred, the son of the Emperor Friedrich II. He made a plan for a
book to be called "Die Sarazener." In this Mme. Schroeder-Devrient
was to have the rôle of a half-sister of Manfred, a prophetess, who
led the Saracens to victory and secured Manfred's coronation. The
plot was shown to Mme. Schroeder-Devrient some years later, but it
did not please her, and the work was dropped. And now there fell
into Wagner's hands a version of the "Tannhäuser" legend, and his
mind went flying back to Hoffmann's "Sängerkrieg," which he had
read in his youth. He started to run down the different versions of
the story, and in so doing came upon the legends of "Parzival" and
"Lohengrin." But it was the "Tannhäuser" legend which first absorbed
him, and at once he began the plan which he completed at Teplitz.
The general rehearsals for "Rienzi" began in Dresden in July, for
in spite of the anxiety of Wagner and his lack of information, the
preparations for the production of his work had been going on very
well. The summer past, the rehearsals were again pushed forward, and
the composer found valuable allies in Tichatschek, who was enamoured
of the title rôle, and Fischer, who saw the power and splendour of
the glowing score. For though "Rienzi" is a work entirely opposed
to the true Wagnerian methods and style, it is one of the greatest
creations of the real French school, to which it strictly belongs.
So on Oct. 20, 1842, the first of the Wagnerian works which still
hold the stage, was produced at the Dresden opera and Wagner awoke
the next morning to find himself famous. The performance was an
almost startling success. Singers, orchestra, public, and critics
were alike amazed and overwhelmed by the enormous breadth of style,
mastery of technic, and maturity of methods shown in the work.
Although the performance occupied six hours, the enthusiasm of the
audience was not abated. The next morning Wagner went to the theatre
to indicate the cuts which should be made in the over-long work,
and was met with a storm of protests by the singers. Tichatschek
declared that he would not spare a measure. "It is heavenly!" he
exclaimed. A second and a third performance were given with growing
receipts. At the third Reissiger resigned the conductor's bâton to
the young composer, and the public went wild with approval. All the
wretchedness of Paris was gone and forgotten. The star of genius was
in the ascendant; the Rhine had been Wagner's Rubicon.
In subsequent performances the work was divided into two parts, the
first and second acts being given on one evening, and the other three
on another. It was five years, however, before the opera travelled
as far as the stage of the opera at Berlin. Thence it went out into
all the world. But it was the end of what may be called Wagner's
first artistic period. The work was planned and executed on the
conventional lines of the Meyerbeerian grand opera, and the music
was a compound of French and Italian styles, with here and there a
burst of the real Wagner of the future. The artistic convictions
which were to develop into a complete theory of the music drama
in the mind of Wagner had come to him in the composition of the
"Flying Dutchman," and this work became the starting point of what is
commonly called his second period, in which he produced it, together
with "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin."
The winter at Dresden passed happily, for the young composer was
enjoying the first fruits of success. Heinrich Laube, the old friend
of Wagner and editor of the _Journal for the Polite World_, asked the
composer to furnish material for an autobiographic sketch, and this
Wagner wrote. This sketch will be found in the first volume of the
collected prose writings of the master. It ends with the start from
Paris for Dresden. The music of "Rienzi" began to be heard on the
concert stage, and the name of Wagner, to be noised about as that of
a man of high promise. It would have been extremely easy for him to
achieve pecuniary success by writing more works on the popular lines
of "Rienzi," but it was not in the man to sacrifice his artistic
conscience to public favour. Already the ideas which were to make
him famous in time, but which were first to throw musical Europe
into a ferment of dispute, had taken firm possession of his mind. In
March, 1843, August Roeckel, second music director at Dresden, and a
lifelong friend of Wagner, wrote to Ferdinand Praeger in London:
"Henceforth I drop myself into a well, because I am going
to speak of the man whose greatness overshadows that of all
other men I have ever met, either in France or England--our
friend Richard Wagner. I say advisedly, our friend, for
he knows you from my description as well as I do. You
cannot imagine how the daily intercourse with him develops
my admiration for his genius. His earnestness in art is
religious; he looks upon the drama as a pulpit from which
the people should be taught, and his views on a combination
of the different arts for that purpose open up an exciting
theory, as new as it is ideal."
This theory of a combination in one organic whole, of all the arts
tributary to the drama, each part to be as important, as essential as
the other, was the theory which Wagner now began to practice, which
he first attempted to illustrate in his "Flying Dutchman," and which
he subsequently preached in his principal prose writings. It was the
theory which met with active and obstinate opposition from those who
either would not or could not climb to Wagner's artistic altitude,
and who preferred to see in the opera nothing but a field for the
display of pretty vocal pieces and voices trained to sing them.
Wagner's theory made the music and the singing subordinate to the
dramatic design, transformed them from ultimate objects into means
of expression; and this was to his contemporaries a revolutionary
idea for which they were not prepared.
"Der Fliegende Holländer" was produced at the Dresden opera on
January 2, 1843, with Mme. Schroeder-Devrient as Senta, and Wagner
in the conductor's chair. The work proved to be a disappointment to
the public, which had looked for another "Rienzi" with glittering
processions, splendid scenery, and groupings, and imposing action
coupled with brilliant music. The simple story and action of the
"Dutchman," interpreted largely by music of a purely emotional
character, was too serious for the Dresden audience, and at that
period for audiences elsewhere. To us of the present day this work
is the essence of simplicity, and much of its music seems trivially
light. But to the Germans of 1843 it was a most sombre tragedy.
"My friends," Wagner says, "were dismayed at the result; they seemed
anxious to obliterate this impression on them and the public by an
enthusiastic resumption of 'Rienzi.' I was myself in sufficiently ill
humour to remain silent and leave the 'Flying Dutchman' undefended."
The critics of the day were nonplussed by the total departure from
the recognised conventions of the contemporaneous stage, and they
talked a deal of nonsense about the lack of melody in the work, a
sort of nonsense which some old-fashioned persons have not done
talking even yet. But we must remember that this new work was an
artistic revelation; and the general public never likes these.
It desires only to be amused in the theatre, and only after much
struggling yields to the power of genius, and renders homage to true
works of art. Wagner himself realised that the general public could
not be looked to for support in his radical departure from the easy
path of tuneful dalliance, in which it was accustomed to travel. In
his "Communication to My Friends" he says:
"From Berlin, where I was entirely unknown, I received from
two utter strangers, who had been attracted towards me by
the impression which 'The Flying Dutchman' had produced
upon them, the first complete satisfaction which I had been
permitted to enjoy, with the invitation to continue in the
particular direction I had marked out. From this moment I
lost more and more from sight the veritable public. The
opinion of a few intelligent men took the place in my mind
of the opinion of the masses, which can never be wholly
apprehended, although it had been the object of my labour
in my first attempts, when my eyes were not yet open to the
light."
On May 22 the opera was given at Riga, and on June 5 at Cassel under
direction of the famous composer, violinist, and conductor, Ludwig
Spohr. The poem had been submitted to him and he had spoken of it
as a little masterpiece. He had sent for the music, and at once
decided to produce the work. It seems strange that Spohr, a composer
of tendencies so different from Wagner's and so old a man (he was
sixty-nine), should have been one of the first to perceive the power
of the new genius. But in a letter to his friend Lüders he wrote:
"This work, though it comes near the boundary of the new
romantic school _à la_ Berlioz, and is giving me unheard-of
trouble with its immense difficulties, yet interests me in
the highest degree since it is obviously the product of
pure inspiration, and does not, like so much of our modern
operatic music, betray in every bar the striving to make a
sensation or to please. There is much creative imagination
in it, its invention is thoroughly noble, and it is well
written for the voices, while the orchestral part, though
enormously difficult, and somewhat overladen, is rich in
new effects and will certainly, in our large theatre, be
perfectly clear and intelligible."[15]
[Footnote 15: Spohr quotes this letter in his "Autobiography."]
The completeness of the popular failure of the "Flying Dutchman"
may be estimated from the fact that after the first performances in
Dresden it disappeared from the _répertoire_ of that opera for twenty
years. It was produced in Berlin in 1844, and it was ten years after
that when it was heard again anywhere. Wagner himself did not realise
either the fulness or the significance of the failure of this work.
He had only begun to experiment with his reformatory ideas, and that
the public was not ready to accept them with acclaim could not have
amazed him, though it doubtless brought him from the rosy heights
of sanguinity down to the shadier levels of dull fact. To awaken
from a hopeful dream, however illusive, is painful; and Wagner was
momentarily shocked and hurt. But as he had not yet grasped all the
details of his own theories, so he failed to perceive the utterness
of the public inability to comprehend his dawning purposes. It was
not till after the production of his "Tannhäuser," which some of his
most ardent admirers still regard as poetically his noblest tragedy,
that he realised the solitariness of his genius, the shallowness of a
public trained up to be lightly pleased.
Meanwhile he was appointed to a very important professional post.
The deaths of Kapellmeister Morlacchi in 1841 and "Musik-director"
Rastrelli in 1842 had made two vacancies in the Dresden Theatre.
Wagner was one of those who applied for the secondary position at
a salary of 1200 thalers (about $900) a year. Von Lüttichau, the
Intendant (manager), excited by the success of "Rienzi," thought
he had found a rare jewel, and supported Wagner, with the result
that the composer was appointed Hofkapellmeister at 1500 thalers
(about $1125). The position of Hofkapellmeister also carried with
it life incumbency, and a pension on retirement. On January 10,
1843, he conducted Weber's "Euryanthe," this being the customary
public "trial" representation. He then made an unsuccessful trip
to Berlin to try to push his "Rienzi." Before the close of the
month his appointment was formally made, and his first duty was to
assist Hector Berlioz, who arrived in Dresden on February 1, in the
rehearsals for his concerts.[16]
[Footnote 16: In his letters from Germany Berlioz wrote of Wagner
thus: "As for the young Kapellmeister, Richard Wagner, who lived for
a long while in Paris without succeeding in making himself known
otherwise than as the author of some articles published in the
_Gazette Musicale_, he exercised his authority for the first time
in helping me in my rehearsals, which he did with zeal and a very
good will. The ceremony of his presentation to the orchestra and
taking the oath took place the day after my arrival, and I found
him in all the intoxication of a very natural joy. After having
undergone in France a thousand privations and all the trials to which
obscurity is exposed, Richard Wagner, on coming back to Saxony, his
native country, had the daring to undertake and the happiness to
achieve the composition of the text and music of an opera in five
acts ('Rienzi'). This work had a brilliant success in Dresden. It
was soon followed by 'The Flying Dutchman,' an opera in three acts,
of which also he wrote both text and music. Whatever opinion one
may hold of these works, it must be acknowledged that men capable
of accomplishing this double literary and musical task twice with
success are not common, and that M. Wagner has given enough proof
of his capacity to excite interest and to rivet the attention of
the world upon himself. This was very well understood by the King
of Saxony; and the day that he gave his first kapellmeister Richard
Wagner for a colleague, thus assuring the latter's subsistence, all
friends of art must have said to His Majesty what Jean Bart answered
Louis XIV. when he made him a commander of a squadron: 'Sire, you
have done well.'"]
He served seven years as conductor at Dresden and in that time
rehearsed and conducted works by Weber, Spohr, Spontini, Mendelssohn,
Mozart, Beethoven, Marschner, Gluck, and others, gaining an immense
amount of valuable experience. The arrangement of Gluck's "Iphigenie
in Aulis," which he made for the performance of February 22, 1847, is
published and approved by critical authorities.
Concerts were given by the court orchestra, and in these he conducted
the leading orchestral works, making a special study of the
Beethoven symphonies. To this labour he applied all the results of
his early studies of Beethoven, and his own ideas about conducting,
together with some thoughts formed in listening to the Conservatoire
concerts in Paris. The results of these studies and experiences he
subsequently embodied in a book called "Ueber das Dirigen." (On
Conducting). Among his other duties a certain amount of attention
had to be given to the music of the Hofkirche. The choir consisted
of fourteen men and twelve boys, and there was a full orchestra of
fifty, including trumpets and trombones. Wagner said to Mr. Edward
Dannreuther, "The echoes and reverberations in the building were
deafening. I wanted to relieve the hard-working members of the
orchestra and female voices, and introduce true Catholic church music
_a cappella_. As a specimen I prepared Palestrina's 'Stabat Mater,'
and suggested other pieces, but my efforts failed." Wagner was as
true an artist in the matter of church music as he was in that of the
stage, and he returned with joy to the glorious treasure-house of
Roman art; but he found his public just as unfit for that as for his
new dispensations in the drama.
Wagner was made conductor of the Liedertafel, a chorus of men
organised in 1839, and also of the Saengerfest of 1843. It took place
in July of that year and the composer wrote for it "Das Liebesmahl
der Apostel," a biblical scene. The story of this celebration of
the Lord's Supper by the Apostles was this: The disciples being
assembled for the feast, the Apostles arrive with the information
that the penalty of death has been prescribed for teaching the
Christian faith. Alarm fills every breast and the assembly prays
to the Father to send them the Holy Spirit. Heavenly voices sound
from above, telling the supplicants that their prayer has been
granted. Then follows a convulsion of nature, caused by the descent
of the Spirit, and the Apostles and Disciples go forth to preach
the Gospel. A chorus of forty men represented the Disciples, and
the heavenly voices were consigned to an invisible choir singing in
the dome of the building. This bit of stage management, repeated in
"Parsifal," was the only feature of the work that attracted special
attention.[17] The correspondent of the Paris _Gazette Musicale_,
Schlesinger's paper, wrote, "This last work, the conception of which
is most daring, has produced an extraordinary effect, and one which
it is impossible to describe. The King after the concert was over
summoned the young author to him, and testified his satisfaction in
the most affectionate terms." But the _Gazette Musicale's_ Dresden
correspondent trusted much to the effect of distance in magnifying
the size of a popular demonstration. Wagner himself thought well
of this work, and lamented in a letter to Liszt in 1852 that choral
societies did not perform it. But the truth is that the most
noticeable qualities of the composition are purely theatrical,
showing that Wagner's genius was entirely for the stage and not for
the concert platform.
[Footnote 17: In reality the most striking feature of this work is
the complete silence of the orchestra till the descent of the Holy
Ghost. The composition, however, is weak.]
Spontini, the aged composer of "La Vestale," visited Dresden when
his work was produced under Wagner's direction, and was treated
by the young conductor with great veneration in spite of his
troublesome demands for adherence to his old manner of performing
the work. Wagner also entered heart and soul into a project which
the Liedertafel had long cherished, namely, to carry the remains of
Weber from London to Germany and inter them in the family vault at
Dresden. The Liedertafel had raised some money by concerts, and now
after Wagner had overcome the opposition of both the King and the
Intendant, an operatic performance was given for the aid of the plan.
The receipts, added to the funds already secured and augmented by
the proceeds of a benefit given in Berlin by Meyerbeer, enabled the
Liedertafel to send Weber's oldest son to London for the remains.
He returned in December, and on the fourteenth of that month the
ceremony of reinterment took place. The funeral music was arranged
by Wagner from two passages in "Euryanthe," and he delivered the
funeral oration, which was pronounced a masterly effort. It may be
read in his collected prose writings. Taken all in all, the work of
Wagner outside of the field of operatic composition was important
while he was in Dresden. He certainly amazed the Germans themselves
by his puissant revelations of the possibilities of the Beethoven
symphonies, and his interpretations of the works of other composers
were so striking and so far out of the conventional ruts into which
the easy-going kapellmeisters of the country had fallen that a
coterie of bitter opponents to him arose. Among them he was known
as Wagner, the iconoclast, and this deceptive appellation, applied
to him because he was not satisfied with indolent mediocrity and
slothful error, clung to him for many years, an empty formula which
its users could not justify.
It was at this time that, smarting under the failure of his public
to understand him, and half inclined to return to the easy path of
popular success indicated by the triumph of "Rienzi," he showed
to Mme. Schroeder-Devrient the sketch of "Manfred." She, however,
was not pleased with the story and dissuaded him from attempting
to develop it. That his own artistic conscience was at work, too,
is shown by the words written by him in the "Communication to My
Friends."
"Through the happy change in the aspect of my outward
lot; through the hopes I cherished of its even still more
favourable development in the future; and finally through
my personal, and in a sense, intoxicating contact with a
new and well-inclined surrounding, a passion for enjoyment
had sprung up within me, that led my inner nature, formed
among the struggles and impressions of a painful past,
astray from its own peculiar path. A general instinct that
urges every man to take life as he finds it now pointed
me, in my particular relations as artist, to a path which,
on the other hand, must soon and bitterly disgust me.
This instinct could only have been appeased in life on
condition of my seeking as artist to wrest myself renown
and pleasure by a complete subordination of my true nature
to the demands of the public taste in art. I should have
had to submit myself to the mode, and to speculation on its
weaknesses; and here, on this point at least, my feeling
showed me clearly that, with an actual entry on that path,
I must inevitably be engulfed in my own loathing. Thus the
pleasures of life presented themselves to my feeling in
the shape alone of what our modern world can offer to the
senses; and this again appeared attainable by me as artist
solely along the direction which I had already learnt to
recognise as the exploitation of our public art-morass. In
actual life I was at like time confronted--in the person
of a woman for whom I had a sincere admiration--with the
phenomenon that a longing akin to my own could only imagine
itself contented with the paltriest return of trivial love;
a delusion so completely threadbare that it could never
really mask its nature from the inner need.
"If at last I turned impatiently away and owed the strength
of my repugnance to the independence already developed in
my nature both as artist and as man, so did that double
revolt of man and artist inevitably take on the form of a
yearning for appeasement in a higher, nobler element; an
element which, in its contrast to the only pleasures that
the material present reads in modern life and modern art,
could but appear to me in the guise of a pure, chaste,
virginal, unseizable and unapproachable ideal of love. What
in fine could this love-yearning, the noblest thing my
heart could feel, what other could it be than a longing for
release from the present, for absorption into an element of
endless love, a love denied to earth, and reachable through
the gates of death alone? And what again at bottom could
such a longing be but the yearning of love; aye, of a real
love, seeded in the soil of fullest sentience--yet a love
that could never come to fruitage on the loathsome soil
of modern sentience? The above is an exact account of the
mood in which I was when the unlaid ghost of 'Tannhäuser'
returned again and urged me to complete his poem."
In these sentences one can easily find the mind of the Wagner who
wrote "Tristan und Isolde," and this statement of the mood of
the time explains why "Tannhäuser" stands more closely related
to "Tristan" than any other of the master's works. Urged now
by his artistic soul and dissuaded by the intuition of Mme.
Schroeder-Devrient from yielding to a dangerous impulse, he turned
once more to "Tannhäuser" and completed the work in April, 1844.
"With this work I penned my death warrant," he says; "before the
world of modern art I now could hope no more for life. This I felt;
but as yet I knew it not with full distinctness:--that knowledge I
was not to gain till later."
Every work that Wagner wrote was, at least in so far as it was
related to his own life, epoch-making; and the birth of "Tannhäuser"
marks a departure so wide that it must receive special consideration.
The great Wagner war began with the production of this drama, and
in it the composer's opponents first discovered those "unmusical"
traits which they celebrated for half a century, till the applause
of the civilised world drowned out their noise. The hint at the
dissatisfaction of the man with the "paltriest return of trivial
love" shows us that the inability of the good Minna to enter into the
lofty aspirations of her husband and her inevitable sympathy with the
false impulses urging toward swift pecuniary success had already set
at work in the mind of Wagner those dangerous longings which were
eventually to lead to their separation.