A few of these will be welcome to the ordinary citizen visiting the
theatre to satisfy his curiosity, or his desire to be in the fashion,
by witnessing a representation of Richard Wagner's famous Ring of the
Niblungs.
First, The Ring, with all its gods and giants and dwarfs, its
water-maidens and Valkyries, its wishing-cap, magic ring, enchanted
sword, and miraculous treasure, is a drama of today, and not of a remote
and fabulous antiquity. It could not have been written before the second
half of the nineteenth century, because it deals with events which were
only then consummating themselves. Unless the spectator recognizes in
it an image of the life he is himself fighting his way through, it must
needs appear to him a monstrous development of the Christmas pantomimes,
spun out here and there into intolerable lengths of dull conversation by
the principal baritone. Fortunately, even from this point of view, The
Ring is full of extraordinarily attractive episodes, both orchestral and
dramatic. The nature music alone--music of river and rainbow, fire and
forest--is enough to bribe people with any love of the country in them
to endure the passages of political philosophy in the sure hope of a
prettier page to come. Everybody, too, can enjoy the love music, the
hammer and anvil music, the clumping of the giants, the tune of the
young woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon music and
nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion of simple
melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short, the vast
extent of common ground between The Ring and the ordinary music we use
for play and pleasure. Hence it is that the four separate music-plays
of which it is built have become popular throughout Europe as operas. We
shall presently see that one of them, Night Falls On The Gods, actually
is an opera.
It is generally understood, however, that there is an inner ring of
superior persons to whom the whole work has a most urgent and searching
philosophic and social significance. I profess to be such a superior
person; and I write this pamphlet for the assistance of those who wish
to be introduced to the work on equal terms with that inner circle of
adepts.
My second encouragement is addressed to modest citizens who may suppose
themselves to be disqualified from enjoying The Ring by their technical
ignorance of music. They may dismiss all such misgivings speedily and
confidently. If the sound of music has any power to move them, they will
find that Wagner exacts nothing further. There is not a single bar of
"classical music" in The Ring--not a note in it that has any other point
than the single direct point of giving musical expression to the drama.
In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first
subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and
codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal
points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente,
and other ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their
prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never driving at
anything of this sort any more than Shakespeare in his plays is driving
at such ingenuities of verse-making as sonnets, triolets, and the like.
And this is why he is so easy for the natural musician who has had no
academic teaching. The professors, when Wagner's music is played to
them, exclaim at once "What is this? Is it aria, or recitative? Is there
no cabaletta to it--not even a full close? Why was that discord not
prepared; and why does he not resolve it correctly? How dare he indulge
in those scandalous and illicit transitions into a key that has not
one note in common with the key he has just left? Listen to those false
relations! What does he want with six drums and eight horns when Mozart
worked miracles with two of each? The man is no musician." The layman
neither knows nor cares about any of these things. If Wagner were to
turn aside from his straightforward dramatic purpose to propitiate the
professors with correct exercises in sonata form, his music would at
once become unintelligible to the unsophisticated spectator, upon whom
the familiar and dreaded "classical" sensation would descend like the
influenza. Nothing of the kind need be dreaded. The unskilled, untaught
musician may approach Wagner boldly; for there is no possibility of a
misunderstanding between them: The Ring music is perfectly single and
simple. It is the adept musician of the old school who has everything to
unlearn: and him I leave, unpitied, to his fate.