_Reproduction of a photograph from life, made in 1877, by Elliott &
Fry in London._
]
Mr. Dannreuther, who knew him well, testifies that he was most amiable
among his friends, with whom he was a very different person from “the
aggressive critic and reformer who addressed himself to the public.”
There is no doubt that Wagner was fully convinced of the tremendous
importance of his own work, and that he developed to its fullest extent
the exasperating egotism of a man whose whole soul is absorbed in his
aims. He was intolerant of opposition, and ungenerous in his views of
other musicians. He was dogmatic in style, even when most logical in
thought; and like many another genius, he had some very small
weaknesses, such as a sybaritic love for silk and satin clothing, and a
belief that the world ought to gratefully pay the expenses of his
support while he completed his great works. With all his peculiarities,
which were largely the outcome of his fierce struggle for recognition,
he possessed “a simple kindness of heart, an extreme sensibility.” As to
his manner of work, Dr. Praeger has given testimony:—
“Wagner composed at the piano, in an elegantly well-arranged studio.
With him composing was a work of excitement and much labor.... He
labored excessively. Not to find or make up a phrase; no, he did not
seek his ideas at the piano. He went to the piano with his idea already
composed, and made the piano his sketch book wherein he worked and
reworked his subject, steadily modelling his matter until it assumed the
shape he had in his mind.”
The names, dates of production, and principal singers of his
music-dramas have already been given, together with some mention of his
minor compositions. An overture (“Faust”), three marches, the “Siegfried
Idyll,” built on themes from the drama, a chorus, a male quartet, a
funeral march for Weber, five piano pieces, a few lovely songs (two of
them studies for “Tristan” music), and nearly a dozen arrangements
(among them piano scores of “La Favorita,” and “L’Elisir d’Amore,”
pathetic mementoes of his starving days in Paris), are the musical
remains of this genius, outside of his operatic works. The lyric stage
was the theatre of his career, and in the works prepared for it he
expended the force of his intellect, and developed the ideas that
proclaim him an epoch-maker. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to
the Wagner theories, and their practical exposition in the so-called
“music of the future,” which has become so intensely that of the
present. What is the Wagnerian theory of the opera? How does it differ
from that which preceded it? From what germs did Wagner develop it? How
has he embodied it? These are questions which naturally arise, and which
demand answers.
It may well be questioned whether Wagner had a wholly comprehensive view
of the essence and results of his own artistic theories. There can be no
doubt that much of his work was the fruit of what were in his own mind
vaguer inspirations, which he himself was unable to reduce to
theoretical formulæ. Therefore, while we may appeal to his prose
writings for evidence as to the sincerity and direction of his
intentions, we may readily agree with the assertion of Mr. Hadow that
“the arguments which have established the Wagnerian theory of opera are
to be found not in ‘Opera and Drama,’ but in the pages of ‘Tristan’ and
‘Parsifal.’”[8] It behooves us, therefore, to endeavor to trace the
development of the Wagnerian theory in the mind of its inventor, and in
order to do that we must follow the plan of Mr. Krehbiel,[9] and make
some inquiry into “the origin and nature of the lyric drama.”
Of the origin of the drama it is not the province of this article to
speak, but we may note that the introduction of music into plays was a
natural movement. In Italy, where the opera was born, choruses had been
sung in plays as far back as 1350, but up to 1597 the ecclesiastical
contrapuntal style prevailed, and in that year the speeches of a single
personage, in a comedy of Orazzi Beechi’s, were sung in five-part
choruses of sombre canonic form. The younger and more progressive minds
in Florence began to perceive the unsuitability of this kind of music to
the drama. In their search after a new form they were guided by the
revival of interest in classic antiquity, known as the Renaissance; and
they set about reconstructing the musical declamation of the Greeks.
Their work began with the production of “monodies,” or what we should
call to-day dramatic scenes for one voice. Encouraged by their success
in this direction, two of these enthusiasts, Ottavio Rinuccini, poet,
and Jacopo Peri, musician, wrote a pastoral called “Daphne.” This had
all the elements of modern opera, and its favorable reception at a
private performance led the two men to try again. This time they wrote
“Eurydice,” performed in public in 1600, and recognized as the first
opera. The pregnant achievement of Peri in these works was the
foundation of dramatic recitation. It was nothing like the recitation of
the Greeks, but it was a new and noble art form, in which music strove
to imitate the nuances of speech without ceasing to be music. “Soft and
gentle speech he interpreted by half-spoken, half-sung tones [modern
_parlando_], on a sustained instrumental bass; feelings of a deeper
emotional kind, by a melody with greater intervals, and a lively tempo,
the accompanying instrumental harmonies changing more frequently.”[10]
Peri’s theory, in short, was that recitative should copy speech, and
that his new art form, which was christened _drama per musica_, should
follow the Greek tragedies as its models. Claudio Monteverde advanced
along the path indicated by Peri, and furthermore began to make the
orchestra a potent factor in the musical exposition. But instrumental
music now exercised a baneful effect on the opera, and in Cavalli’s
“Giasone,” produced in 1649, we find the germs of the operatic aria,
modelled on the simple cyclical forms used by the fathers of the sonata.
Cavalli was opposed to recitative, and furthered the cause of simple
rhythmical tune in opera. This new style was easy of comprehension and
popular. Alessandro Scarlatti took it up and developed the aria so that
it became the central sun of the operatic system. The result was
inevitable. The person who could most beautifully sing an aria captured
the public heart; the singer became the dominating power in opera, and
the composer was relegated to a secondary place. From that time onward,
the history of the artistic development of opera is a series of contests
between the singer and the composer, with the supremacy mostly on the
side of the former. The result of this was the imposition upon the opera
of a number of meaningless, artificial forms, in which a musical purpose
was manifest, but a dramatic design wholly undiscernible. In Handel’s
time this artificiality had reached an absurd stage. The different kinds
of arias were labelled with extreme minuteness in the matter of
distinctions, and the composer was required to produce just so many in
each opera and in each act. No vocalist might have two consecutive
arias, nor might two arias of the same kind be sung in succession. But
in the second and third act the hero and the heroine each had a claim to
one grand scena followed by an _aria di bravura_, the latter being
designed simply to display agility in ornamental passages. These laws
were afterwards modified, but down to the time of Wagner’s supremacy an
opera librettist was expected to construct his book so that arias,
duets, trios, quartets, and ensemble numbers should be found at places
suitable to the composer. In short, the nature and purpose of the opera
had been lost sight of; it was no longer _drama per musica_, but _drama
pro musica_,—a vastly different thing.
The first resolute opposition to this style of thing was made by Gluck,
who had the same high regard for the classics of antiquity as Peri and
his confreres had. Gluck’s theories and purposes are succinctly
expressed in his preface to “Alceste.” He says:—
“I endeavored to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding
poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of
the situations without interrupting the action or weakening it by
superfluous ornament. My idea was that the relation of music to poetry
was much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well-disposed light
and shade to an accurate drawing, which animates the figure without
altering the outlines.... My idea was that the overture ought to
indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the
piece they are about to see; that the instruments ought to be introduced
in proportion to the degree of interest and passion in the words; and
that it was necessary above all to avoid making too great a disparity
between the recitative and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the
sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the movement and animation of a
scene. I also thought that my chief endeavor should be to attain a grand
simplicity; and consequently I have avoided making a parade of
difficulties at the cost of clearness.”
[Illustration:
Fac-simile autograph letter from Richard Wagner, written in Zurich,
May 30, 1853, addressed to some musical director, and advising him
to give “Tannhäuser” before producing “Lohengrin.”
]
[Illustration:
Fac-simile autograph musical manuscript written by Richard Wagner for
lithographic reproduction. Opening bars of the “Song to the Evening
Star,” from the full score of his “Tannhäuser” thus reproduced. The
original is in the Bibliotheca Musica Regia in Dresden.
]
These words make it plain that Gluck distinctly perceived the
fundamental principle of artistic truth in opera,—that the music must be
considered as a means and not an end. He felt that the music should be
devoted, not to the exploitation of musical possibilities, but to the
faithful expression of the emotions of the characters on the stage. His
reforms met with determined opposition, and some of his contemporaries
complained bitterly that they were compelled to pay two florins “to be
passionately excited and thrilled instead of amused.” But while Gluck
made sweeping changes for the better, he failed to reach the root of all
evil. He did not abolish from the operatic stage the set forms, which
made the musician the superior officer of the poet, commanding the
insertion of here a solo and there a duet. The continuance of these
forms was conserved, too, by the splendid genius of Mozart, who breathed
into them a verisimilitude which they had not before possessed. The
glorious boy had no reformer’s blood in his veins, but with the instinct
of spontaneous mastership he made the spirit of his music vital, even
though its form was conventional. He founded no school, but he was an
excuse for the continuance of old traditions by others less gifted than
himself. So only twenty-six years after Gluck’s death all Europe went
mad over “Ditanti palpiti,” and the name of Rossini became the watchword
of the lyric stage. The opera was regarded as a parade ground for great
singers, and its music was expected to be cast in the simplest melodic
moulds, so that it could be hummed, strummed, whistled, or indifferently
sung by the most poorly equipped amateurs. All conception of the opera
as a drama employing music as a means of expression had been lost, and a
man who asserted that its model had originally been and ought always to
be the Greek play would have been stared at as one unsound of mind. That
there were a few who were ready to raise from triviality so splendid an
art form was proved by the gathering of warm and faithful adherents
around the banner of reform raised by Wagner.
Like most young artists he began his career by imitating the work of the
acknowledged masters of his time. As we have already seen, he had no
novel ideas in the composition of “Die Feen.” He simply tried to imitate
Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner. At this time the music of Beethoven was
his ideal. Heinrich Dorn has testified that no young musician could
possibly have known the works of the immortal symphonist more
thoroughly. But Wagner soon saw very clearly that it was not in his
power to adopt the Beethovenian style to the lyric drama. For models for
his second work, therefore, he chose Auber and Bellini. The former’s
“Massaniello” had opened his eyes to the value of action with brisk
music to accompany it. The latter’s “Montecchi e Capuletti,” or rather
Schroeder-Devrient’s inspiring performance of Romeo, had given him
suggestions as to the dramatic possibilities of vocal melody. In his
second work, “Das Liebesverbot,” he tried to effect a combination of the
styles of these two masters. It must not be supposed that he was
searching merely for popular applause. He was intensely in earnest even
at that stage of his career, and his aim was to produce real art. He did
not yet perceive the utter falsity of the prevailing system, though he
was honest in his endeavor to make it tell the truth. In his
autobiographical sketch he records thus the ideas raised in his mind by
the Bellini performance:—
“I grew doubtful as to the choice of the proper means to bring about a
great success; far though I was from attaching to Bellini a signal
merit, yet the subject to which his music was set seemed to me to be
more propitious and better calculated to spread the warm glow of life
than the painstaking pedantry with which we Germans, as a rule, brought
naught but laborious make-believe to market. The flabby lack of
character of our modern Italians, equally with the frivolous levity of
the latest Frenchmen, appeared to me to challenge the earnest,
conscientious German to master the happily chosen and happily exploited
means of his rivals, in order then to outstrip them in the production of
genuine works of art.”
Artistic sincerity of purpose, then, was already the man’s moving force.
The immediate impulse which led him to take the first step in the
development of his own individuality was the conviction that the
provincial public of the smaller German cities was incapable of forming
a judgment as to the value of a new work. He, therefore, began “Rienzi”
with a determination to write an opera which could be produced only at a
grand opera house, and he decided not to trouble his mind as to what
theatre of that rank would give him an entrance. He says:—
“I allowed naught to influence me except the single purpose to answer to
my subject. I set myself no model, but gave myself entirely to the
feeling which now consumed me, the feeling that I had already so far
progressed that I might claim something significant from the development
of my artistic powers, and expect some not insignificant result. The
very notion of being consciously weak or trivial, even in a single bar,
was appalling to me.”
Wagner never wrote words fraught with greater significance. To sit down
with a determination to not be weak or trivial in a single bar, and to
be always faithful to his subject, and yet to construct his opera on the
prevailing models, was for a man of Wagner’s intellectual power and
artistic temperament to discover the radical defects of the opera of his
day. He could not follow his models without being consciously weak or
trivial at times. An examination of the libretto of “Rienzi” shows that
while there is carelessness in the poetry, the dramatic construction is
excellent. No better opera libretto dates from the time of its
production. But it was constructed, as Wagner confessed, to enable him
“to display the principal forms of grand opera, such as introductions,
finales, choruses, arias, duets, trios, etc., with all possible
splendor.” Consequently, while there is much in the music that is noble,
dignified, and characteristic of Wagner, there is more that is weak,
trivial, and imitative. “Rienzi” is a very good opera of the old sort,
and the dramatic force of its book, together with the excellence of much
of its music, has kept it favorably before the public. But it lacks
artistic coherency, because its fundamental principle is false; and
Wagner knew it before he had completed the work. The writer of this
article does not believe that this master, as some of his warmest
admirers have asserted, began “Rienzi” with a deliberate intention of
catering to a depraved public taste for the sake of success. Wagner
earnestly craved success at that time; he needed money, and he yearned
for public recognition; but his own words show that he was deluded into
supposing that artistic work could be done on the lines of the popular
opera of his day. It required the writing of “Rienzi” to bring to his
mind the convictions, which were put to test in “The Flying Dutchman,”
after he had abandoned the hope of pecuniary success. This is not the
place for a discussion of the relative importance of objectivity and
subjectivity in art; but it is certain that “The Flying Dutchman” is the
result of an overwhelming desire for self-expression. Wagner at this
period of his mental growth could have cried with Omar Khayyám:—
“I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me,
And answered, ‘I myself am heaven and hell.’”
Overcome by his first real draught of the bitterness of life, he found
that his emotional moods were clamoring for expression. With the
splendid egotism of genius, he discerned the sorrow of a world in his
own suffering. To dramatize this became his burning desire. The legend
of the Ahasuerus of the sea, cursed by his own determination to overcome
obstacles, opposed by all the powers of nature, seemed to Wagner the
embodiment of his own experience; and he turned to the work of making an
opera out of it, with no purpose except a complete and convincing
expression of the prevailing moods of his own soul. And it was thus that
he came upon the fundamental principles of the theory which set the
musical world agog and raised up lions in his path. The first conviction
that came to him was that of the superiority of a legendary over a
historical story. He subsequently wrote of it thus:—
“In this and all succeeding plans, I turned for the selection of my
material once for all from the domain of history to that of legend....
All the details necessary for the description and presentation of the
conventionally historic, which a fixed and limited historical epoch
demands in order to make the action clearly intelligible,—and which are
therefore carried out so circumstantially by the historical novelists
and dramatists of to-day,—could be here omitted. And by this means the
poetry, and especially the music, were freed from the necessity of a
method of treatment entirely foreign to them, and particularly
impossible as far as music was concerned. The legend, in whatever nation
or age it may be placed, has the advantage that it comprehends only the
purely _human_ portion of this age or nation, and presents this portion
in a form peculiar to it, thoroughly concentrated, and therefore easily
intelligible.... This legendary character gives a great advantage to the
poetic arrangement of the subject for the reason already mentioned,
that, while the simple process of the action—easily comprehensible as
far as its outward relations are concerned—renders unnecessary any
painstaking for the purpose of explanation of the course of the story,
the greatest possible portion of the poem can be devoted to the
portrayal of the inner _motives_ of the action,—those inmost motives of
the soul, which, indeed, the action points out to us as necessary,
through the fact that we ourselves feel in our hearts a sympathy with
them.”[11]
The second conviction that came to him was that of the folly of writing
music at random, instead of clinging to the musical investiture of a
mood once formed. This led him to the abandonment of the set forms of
the established opera, and to the adoption of his own plan of making the
music and poetry an artistic unit. His words in regard to this matter
are worth quoting:—
“The plastic unity and simplicity of the mythical subjects allowed of
the concentration of the action on certain important and decisive
points, and thus enabled me to rest on fewer scenes with a perseverance
sufficient to expound the motive to its ultimate dramatic consequences.
The nature of the subject, therefore, could not induce me, in sketching
my scenes, to consider in advance their adaptability to any particular
musical form, the kind of musical treatment being in each case
necessitated by these scenes themselves. It could, therefore, not enter
my mind to engraft on this my musical form, growing, as it did, out of
the nature of the scenes, the traditional forms of operatic music, which
could not but have marred and interrupted its organic development. I
therefore never thought of contemplating on principle and as a
deliberate reformer the destruction of the aria, duet, and other
operatic forms; but the dropping of those forms followed consistently
from the nature of my subjects.”[12]
[Illustration: