Before I went to Bayreuth I had always believed that some magic spell
rested upon the Franconian hills like a musical benison; some mystery of
art, atmosphere, and individuality evoked by the place, the tradition,
the people. How sadly I was disappointed I propose to tell you,
prefacing all by remarking that in Philadelphia, dear old, dusty
Philadelphia, situated near the confluence of the Delaware and
Schuylkill, I have listened to better representations of the _Ring_ and
_Die Meistersinger_.
It is just thirty years since I last visited Germany. Before the
Franco-Prussian War there was an air of sweetness, homeliness, an
old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant
Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, _modern_ and insolent now
overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the _naïve_ quality that made dear
the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness,
flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the
pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of
all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of _doctrinaires_. They
eagerly dispute Wagner's meanings, and my venerable notions of the
_Ring_ were not only sneered at, but, to be quite frank with you,
dissipated into thin, metaphysical smoke.
In 1869 I fancied Reinecke a decent composer, Schopenhauer remarkable,
if somewhat bitter in his philosophic attitude towards life. Reinecke is
now a mere ghost of a ghost, a respectable memory of Leipsic, whilst
Schopenhauer has been brutally elbowed out of his niche by his former
follower, Nietzsche. In every _café_, in every summer-garden I sought I
found groups of young men talking heatedly about Nietzsche, and the
Over-Man, the _Uebermensch_, to be quite German. I had, in the innocence
of my Wissahickon soul, supposed Schopenhauer Wagner's favorite
philosopher. Mustering up my best German, somewhat worn from disuse, I
gave speech to my views, after the manner of a garrulous old man who
hates to be put on the shelf before he is quite disabled.
_Ach!_ but I caught it, _ach!_ but I was pulverized and left speechless
by these devotees of the Hammer-philosopher, Nietzsche. I was told that
Wagner was a fairly good musician, although no inventor of themes. He
had evolved no new melodies, but his knowledge of harmony, above all,
his _constructive_ power, were his best recommendations. As for his
abilities as a dramatic poet, absurd! His metaphysics were green with
age, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and
impracticable, while his Schopenhauerism, pessimism, and the rest sheer
dead weights that were slowly but none the less surely strangling his
music. When I asked how this change of heart came about, how all that I
had supposed that went to the making of the Bayreuth theories was
exploded moonshine, I was curtly reminded of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche again, always this confounded Nietzsche, who, mad as a hatter
at Naumburg, yet contrives to hypnotize the younger generation with his
crazy doctrines of force, of the great Blond Barbarian, of the Will to
Destroy--infinitely more vicious than the Will to Live--and the inherent
immorality of Wagner's music. I came to Bayreuth to criticize; I go away
praying, praying for the mental salvation of his new expounders, praying
that this poisonous nonsense will not reach us in America. But it will.
The charm of this little city is the high price charged for everything.
A stranger is "spotted" at once and he is the prey of the townspeople.
Beer, carriages, food, pictures, music, busts, books, rooms, nothing is
cheap. I've been all over, saw Wagner's tomb, looked at the outside of
_Wahnfried_ and the inside of the theater. I have seen Siegfried
Wagner--who can't conduct one-quarter as well as our own Walter
Damrosch--walking up and down the streets, a tin demi-god, a reduced
octavo edition of his father bound in cheap calf. Worse still, I have
heard the young man try to conduct, try to hold that mighty Bayreuth
orchestra in leash, and with painful results. Not one firm, clanging
chord could he extort; all were more or less arpeggioed, and as for
climax--there was none.
I have sat in Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for
its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling
there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in
bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner
has grown gray and the _Ring_ sounded antique to me, so strong were the
disturbing influences of my environment.
The bad singing by ancient Teutons--for the most part--was to blame for
this. Certainly when Walhall had succumbed to the flames and the
primordial Ash-Tree sunk in the lapping waters of the treacherous Rhine,
I felt that the end of the universe was at hand and it was with a sob I
saw outside in the soft, summer-sky, riding gallantly in the blue, the
full moon. It was the only young thing in the world at that moment, this
burnt-out servant planet of ours, and I gazed at it long and fondly, for
it recalled the romance of my student years, my love of Schumann's
poetic music and other illusions of a vanished past. In a word, I had
again surrendered to the sentimental spell of Germany, Germany by night,
and with my heart full I descended from the terrace, walked slowly down
the arbored avenue to Sammett's garden and there sat, mused and--smoked
my Yankee pipe. I realize that I am, indeed, an old man ready for that
shelf the youngsters provide for the superannuated and those who
disagree with them.
I had all but forgotten the performances. They were, as I declared at
the outset, far from perfect, far from satisfactory. The _Ring_ was
depressing. Rosa Sucher, who visited us some years ago, was a flabby
_Sieglinde_. The _Siegmund_, Herr Burgstalles, a lanky, awkward young
fellow from over the hills somewhere. He was sad. Ernst Kraus, an old
acquaintance, was a familiar _Siegfried_. Demeter Popovici you remember
with Damrosch, also Hans Greuer. Van Rooy's _Wotan_ was supreme. It was
the one pleasant memory of Bayreuth, that and the moon. Gadski was not
an ideal _Eva_ in _Meistersinger_, while Demuth was an excellent _Hans
Sachs_. The _Brünnhilde_ was Ellen Gulbranson, a Scandinavian. She was
an heroic icicle that Wagner himself could not melt. Schumann-Heink, as
_Magdalene_ in _Meistersinger_, was simply grotesque. Van Rooy's
_Walther_ I missed. Hans Richter conducted my favorite of the Wagner
music dramas, the touching and pathetic Nuremberg romance, and, to my
surprise, went to sleep over the _tempi_. He has the technique of the
conductor, but the elbow-grease was missing. He too is old, but better
one aged Richter than a caveful of spry Siegfried Wagners!
I shan't bother you any more as to details. Bayreuth is full of
ghosts--the very trees on the terrace whisper the names of Liszt and
Wagner--but Madame Cosima is running the establishment for all there is
in it financially--excuse my slang--and so Bayreuth is deteriorating. I
saw her, Liszt's daughter, von Bülow, and Wagner's wife--or rather
widow--and her gaunt frame, strong if angular features, gave me the
sight of another ghost from the past. Ghosts, ghosts, the world is
getting old and weary, and astride of it just now is the pessimist
Nietzsche, who, disguised as a herculean boy, is deceiving his
worshippers with the belief that he is young and a preacher of the
joyful doctrines of youth. Be not deceived, he is but another veiled
prophet. His mask is that of a grinning skeleton, his words are bitter
with death and deceit.
I stopped over at Nuremberg and at a chamber concert heard Schubert's
quintet for piano and strings, _Die Forelle_--and although I am no trout
fisher, the sweet, boyish loquacity, the pure music made my heart glad
and I wept.