A MONARCH TO THE RESCUE
"My King, thou rarest shield of this my
living."--WAGNER
Wagner went from Paris to Vienna, where he hoped that a production
of "Tristan und Isolde" might be arranged. The manager of the opera
house, when he learned that the composer was about to visit the city,
prepared a special performance of "Lohengrin." This took place on May
15, 1861, and for the first time Wagner himself heard the work which
has touched the hearts of so many thousands of his fellow-creatures.
At the end of each act the audience forced him to acknowledge its
applause, and at the conclusion of the performance he was called
before the curtain three times and compelled to make a brief speech.
Many times afterward did he refer to the intoxication of that
wondrous May night. Think of it! Thirteen years after it was written,
and eleven years after its first performance, the writer of the most
popular opera in the world heard it for the first time. And even then
this master, who had already written "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman,"
"Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Die Walküre," part of
"Siegfried," and "Tristan und Isolde," was a wanderer on the face of
the earth, an outcast, and could not make a living from his music.
His early works were now beginning to find their way to the stage,
but the royalties paid in the German theatres were too small and
the performances too infrequent to bring him in a satisfactory
income. His first effort, therefore, was to get "Tristan und
Isolde" produced, and to his great joy the manager of the Vienna
opera accepted the score. Preparations were at once made for the
production. But, alas! that was still far away. The rehearsals began
in the fall, but the tenor, Ander, was taken sick, and the whole
winter was lost. When the work was resumed, it dragged along at a
snail's pace, and finally, after fifty-four rehearsals, the drama
was abandoned as impossible. Ander, the Tristan, told Dr. Hanslick
that as fast as he learned one act he forgot another. Wagner, on the
contrary, asserted in after years that all the singers went through
the whole work with him at the piano. However, it is not difficult
to conceive that the artists of that day may have found "Tristan und
Isolde" impracticable, seeing that the work never was really _sung_
until within the last half-dozen years, when the greatest vocal
artists of the world appeared in it.
While the Viennese were floundering, Wagner found it necessary to do
something toward earning money, and so he undertook a concert tour.
In Carlsruhe, Prague, and Weimar negotiations for the production of
Tristan fell through, but in the last-named place Wagner was royally
received in the summer by Liszt and the other musicians. The general
amnesty which had been granted some years before to the rebels of
1848 made it possible for him to go openly to Germany, except the
kingdom of Saxony, and even that was soon opened to him. He planned
a tour, and reluctantly prepared to produce excerpts from his own
works, as the only means of advertising them. He confesses that dire
necessity forced him to this step so inconsistent with his theories,
and his enemies did not hesitate to taunt him with the inconsistency.
He was alone in his travels, for the winter of 1861 in Paris had
been the last straw on the back of the patient Minna. She could no
longer endure her life with this "monster of genius," who would
not be a faithful husband, who wrote works ridiculed by the world,
and could not earn bread and butter. She left him and went back to
Leipsic to live with her relatives. She and her husband never came
together again, though they occasionally referred to one another with
tolerance in their letters to third persons. Minna died in 1866.
The concert tour began in the winter of 1862, and Wagner travelled
in Germany and even into Russia. In the latter country alone did
his entertainments bring him in any substantial pecuniary returns.
He was in Moscow when he learned that the rehearsals of "Tristan
und Isolde" had been abandoned at Vienna. He had become indifferent
on the subject. He was almost convinced that he ought to give up
his attempt to be a composer. Mr. Finck notes that at one time he
seriously thought of going to India as a tutor in an English family.
Let it be borne in mind that in 1863, while he was still wandering
about, giving these concerts, he was fifty years old, and that, with
a surging consciousness within him that he had created immortal
works, he was stared at by people wherever he went as a freak and a
madman, and was caricatured and ridiculed by almost the whole press
of Europe. And all this because he had dared to say that an opera
was a poetic drama, and should be so written, so performed, and so
received by the public.
Yet in these years of hardship, sorrow, and discouragement he wrote
the text of his most humorous work. He took up and completed the
book of "Die Meistersinger," of which he had made a sketch in 1845,
just after the production of "Tannhäuser." This work was done in the
course of a temporary residence in Paris in the winter of 1861-62.
The text was published, or rather printed for circulation among his
friends, in 1862. The version now known to all music lovers shows
many changes. The copyright of the drama was sold to Messrs. Schott,
of Mainz, and accordingly Wagner went to Biebrich, a little town
opposite Mainz, to compose the music. He subsequently continued his
labours at Penzing, near Vienna, and there also he published the text
of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" as a piece of literature. He declared
that he did not expect to finish the music, and that he had no
hope of living to see the work performed. It was at this time that
Wagner's affairs sank into such a state that he was overwhelmed. He
decided to go to Russia and remain there the rest of his life. But
first he must finish the score of "Die Meistersinger." So he wrote
to his old friend, Mme. Wille, at Zurich, and asked her to receive
him for a short time. Like the familiar man in the play, he arrived
on the heels of his letter, and Frau Wille had to exert herself to
make all ready for the great man. But she realised that all Wagner's
doings and sayings would have historical importance, and she made
notes from which she afterward published a valuable article.
From this we learn that the great musician while in her home was
the prey of conflicting emotions, but was most frequently plunged
in despair. He had a deep, a passionate conviction of his own
powers. He was inspired with an absolute prevision of the worldwide
glorification that would come to his name when once his works were
adequately made known. And because of this he suffered agonies of
mind and heart while the scores lay silent in his desk. He cried out
against the niggardliness of a world which refused him a few luxuries
when he was preparing joy for so many thousands. He felt that the
time would come when the world would be ready to heap all kinds of
honours on his head, but he feared that it would come too late.
Yet in this state of mind the genius of production would not
sleep within him. He worked unceasingly at the score of "Die
Meistersinger," and, according to Mme. Wille's own account, with
a perfect satisfaction as to its greatness. Wagner had what has
frequently been called the vanity of men of genius. He spoke with
childish naïveté of his works. He spoke of himself without hesitation
as a great man, and he had not even the slightest consciousness
that a difference of opinion was possible. But such vanity is
pardonable in a man who so thoroughly justifies it. Cicero, Napoleon,
and Beethoven had a similar sort of vanity. The world has learned
to smile indulgently upon it. And whereas in Wagner's lifetime
his vanity and love of luxury made him perhaps not an altogether
agreeable companion, they detract in no way from his claims to
recognition as one of the most remarkable men ever born.
One day, while at the Willes', Wagner received word that his
Viennese creditors were on his track, and he resolved to go away.
He was at his wits' end, for everywhere "Tristan" was pronounced
impossible, and "Die Meistersinger" was refused before the score was
seen. He went to Stuttgart with the vain hope that he could arrange
for the performance of some of his operas there and thus earn enough
to stave off misfortune for a time. And even while he had fled,
his fortune was pursuing him. At last to this weary wanderer, this
"Flying Dutchman" of musical history, were to come rest and peace
and a perfect love. At last one dream of all his years of insatiable
longing was to be realised. At last his scores would sound "from off
the death-wan paper," and the world would learn the true might of
Richard Wagner.
In the preface to the poem of the "Nibelung's Ring," Wagner had
described the means and manner of performance--had, in a word, laid
down the plan of Bayreuth. But he felt that only a monarch could
afford to give the financial support to such a scheme, and he wrote,
"Will that king be found?" Now there was a young prince who fed his
soul on Wagner's works and who worshipped the master in secret.
At fifteen he had heard "Lohengrin," and, like all whose operatic
experience began with Wagner, he had become an ardent Wagnerite. He
had watched his idol's career of misfortune in helpless pity. And
then suddenly the King of Bavaria went to join his fathers and this
generous youth seated himself upon the throne. One of his first
acts was to send a messenger to bid Wagner come to his capital and
complete the majestic labours of his life in peace.
Herr Sauer, the appointed messenger, searched high and low. He delved
in Wagner's old haunts at Vienna, but the very memory of the mad
composer seemed to have gone. So he went down to Switzerland and
hunted in Zurich and Lucerne. But there was no Wagner. Then Baron
Hornstein, a minor composer, met him out in a boat on Lake Lucerne
and told him that Wagner was in Stuttgart. At any rate this is the
story told to Mr. Finck by Heinrich Vogl, the tenor, who said that
Wagner confirmed it. Sauer took Wagner to Munich, and there on May 4,
1864, he wrote to Frau Wille that it all seemed like a dream.
"He wants me to be with him always, to work, to rest, to produce
my works; he will give me everything I need; I am to finish my
Nibelungen and he will have them performed as I wish. I am to be
my own unrestricted master; not Kapellmeister--nothing but myself
and his friend. All troubles are to be taken from me; I shall have
whatever I need, if only I stay with him."
This enthusiastic youth of eighteen, with a royal treasury at his
disposal, and the splendid musical traditions of Munich reaching away
behind him to the era of Orlando Lasso, was to be the saviour of
Wagner's work. He was already a worshipper of the art of the master,
and he speedily proved himself to be attached to him by a deep
personal affection. On Lake Starnberg, no great distance from Munich,
the King gave Wagner a pretty villa, and there he spent the summer of
1864. The King's summer palace was only a mile or two away, and the
monarch and composer were much in one another's company. The young
King's friendship was of a passionate kind, such as only romantic
youths entertain, and, unfortunately, of the sort that was sure
in the course of time to lead to scandalous comment in the polite
society of a court.
In honour of his new patron Wagner wrote in that summer the
"Huldigungs Marsch," which has the romantic character implanted in
all Wagner's concert pieces. Here, too, at the wish of his young
patron, Wagner wrote his essay on "State and Religion" (Mr. Ellis's
translation, Vol. IV.). As in all the other writings of Wagner
bearing upon the conduct of a State, in this essay art is held up
as the panacea for all ills. He saw the ideal of the State embodied
in the person of the King, who by the nature of his position must
take life most seriously, and in whose inability to attain ideal
justice and humanity there is something tragic. But for these ideals
the King is bound to strive and so must lead a life of misery if he
does not seek the only solace, namely, religion. Then follows a long
definition of religion. How shall the King endure? By refreshing
his mind with the pleasing distractions of art. The essay easily
convinces the reader that Wagner was not, as he often wished to be, a
philosopher, but simply an artist whose reasoning flexibly followed
the flow of his ruling instincts.
So passed the first summer under the royal protection, pleasantly,
almost idyllically. But now serious work was to begin. In the autumn
the two friends returned to Munich. A residence in a quiet part of
the city was set apart for the use of Wagner, and he prepared to
resume the production of his masterpieces. Hans von Bülow, his former
pupil, was summoned with a view to his becoming the conductor of
"Tristan und Isolde." This beginning was effected in the summer, for
Mme. von Bülow, little dreaming whither she was going, arrived in
Munich with her two daughters in June, and Von Bülow followed the
next month. The influence of Cosima von Bülow upon Wagner began at
once. He had been lonely and depressed ever since his separation
from his wife, and the advent of this woman of artistic temperament
and commanding intellect, the fruit of the illicit union of Franz
Liszt and the brilliant Countess d'Agoult (the "Daniel Stern" of
French literature), aroused in him new conceptions of the "eternal
woman-soul."
Peter Cornelius, the pupil of Liszt and composer of the admirable
"Barber of Bagdad," was also summoned, and not far away lived the
young Hans Richter, afterward to be one of the principal conductors
of Wagner's music. The ardent young King was all eagerness to begin
the work of performance, but Wagner was hampered by the want of
singers capable of singing such new music as that of "Tristan und
Isolde." In Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife were found
representatives of the hero and heroine, but Wagner foresaw that
the method of singing the music drama of the future would need wide
study, and so he wrote a long paper on a plan for a school of music
in Munich. This paper gave a detailed outline of the operation
of a conservatory, and set forth as its purpose the artistic
interpretation of the works of the older German masters, and leading
thence to the treatment of the modern music drama. The old Munich
Conservatory was closed by the King's order in the early summer of
1865. But the plan to reopen it on the lines laid down by Wagner
failed through the hostility of the local musicians. It was reopened
in 1867 under Hans von Bülow, who was able to carry out Wagner's
ideas only to a limited extent.
In October the King decided that "Der Ring des Nibelungen" should
be produced, and the date was set for it three years thence. On
December 4 "Der Fliegende Holländer" was performed, and on December
11, January 1, and February 1 Wagner conducted concerts. In January
Gottfried Semper, the architect, was called to Munich to be
consulted about plans for the new theatre for the Nibelung dramas.
And meanwhile the preparations for the production of "Tristan" went
forward. Wagner's star was at last in the ascendant.