1832-1841.
STORM AND STRESS.
In Vienna--His Symphony Performed--Modern Ideas--"The
Fairies,"--"Das Liebesverbot"--Becomes Kapellmeister--Mina
Planer--Hard Times--Experiences and Studies--"Rienzi"--Paris--First
Disappointments--A Faust Overture--Revival of the German
Genius--Struggle for Existence--"The Flying Dutchman"--Historical
Studies--Returning to Germany.
_The God who in my breast resides,
He cannot change external forces._--Goethe.
Beethoven's life has acquainted us with the pre-eminence of Vienna as
a musical centre. In the summer of 1832 Wagner visited the city, but
found himself greatly disappointed as he heard on all sides nothing
but "Zampa," and the potpourris of Strauss. He was not to see the
imperial city again until late in life and as the master, crowned
with fame. In music and the opera Paris had the precedence. The
Conservatory in Prague however performed his symphony, though right
here he was destined to feel that the reign of his beloved Beethoven
had but scarcely begun.
In the succeeding winter the same symphony was performed in Leipzig.
"There is a resistless and audacious energy in the thoughts, a stormy
bold progression, and yet withal a maidenly artlessness in the
expression of the main motives that lead me to hope for much from the
composer;" so wrote Laube, with whom Wagner had shortly before become
acquainted. Here again we recognize the stormy, restless activity of
the time, which thenceforth did not cease, and brought about the unity
of the nation and of art. The ideas which prevailed among the
students' clubs, the theories of St. Simon and would-be reformers
generally had captivated the young artist's mind. In the "Young
Europe," Laube advocated the liberal thoughts of the new century, the
intoxication of love, and all the pleasures of material life. Wagner's
head was full of them and Heine's writings and the sensual
"Ardinghello" of Heinse helped to intensify them.
For a time however his better nature retained the mastery. Beethoven
and Weber remained his good genii. In 1833 he composed an opera, "The
Fairies," modelled after their works, the text of which displayed the
earnest tendency of his nature. A fairy falls in love with a mortal
but can acquire human life only on condition that her lover shall not
lose faith and desert her, however wicked and cruel she may appear.
She transforms herself into a stone from which condition the yearning
songs of her lover release her. It is a characteristic feature of
Wagner's ideal conception of love that the lover then is admitted to
the perpetual joys of the fairy world, as a reward for his faith in
the object of his love. The work was never performed. Bellini, Adam,
and their associates controlled the stage in Germany, and he was
greatly disappointed. That grand artiste, Schroeder-Devrient, who
afterwards was to become so essential to Wagner, had achieved unusual
success in these light operas, especially in the role of _Romeo_.
He observed this and comparing the sparkling music of these French and
Italians with the German Kapellmeister-music which was then coming
into vogue, it seemed indeed tedious and tormenting. Why should not he
then, this youth of twenty-one, ready for any deed and every pleasure,
earnestly longing for success, enter upon the same course? Beethoven
appeared to him as the keystone of a great epoch to be followed by
something new and different. The fruit of this restless seething
struggle was "Das Liebesverbot oder die Novize von Palermo," his first
opera which reached a performance.
The material was taken from Shakspeare's "Measure for Measure," not
however without making its earnestness conform to the ideas of "Young
Europe," and leaving the victory to sensualism. _Isabella_, the
novice, begs of the puritanical governor her brother's life, who has
forfeited it through some love affair. The governor agrees to grant
the pardon, on condition that she shall yield to his desires. A
carnival occurs, and, as in "Masaniello," a young man who loves the
maiden, incites a revolution, exposes the governor, and receives
_Isabella's_ hand. The spirit which pervades this tempestuous
carnival pleasure is sufficiently characterized by a verse in the only
chorus-number, which has appeared in print from this opera: "Who does
not rejoice in our pleasure plunge the knife into his breast!"
There were, it will be observed, two radically different
possibilities of development. The "sacred fervor of his sensitive
soul," which he had nourished with the German instrumental music, had
encountered the tendency to sensualism, and, as we find so often in
Wagner's works, these two elements of our nature were powerfully
portrayed, with the victory ever remaining to the judicious and
serious conception of life. Struggles and sorrows of various kinds
were to bring this "sacred earnestness" again into the foreground, to
remain there forever afterward.
In the autumn of 1834, during which this text had been written, Wagner
accepted the position of Kapellmeister at the Magdeburg theatre and
thus entered the field of practical activity. The position suited him
and he soon proved himself an able director, especially for the stage.
His skill in music, composed for the passing moment, soon gained for
him the desired success and induced him to compose the music to the
"Liebesverbot." "It often gave me a childish pleasure to rehearse
these light, fashionable operas, and to stand at the director's desk
and let the thing loose to the right and left," he tells us. He did
not seek in the least to avoid the French style but on the contrary
felt confident, that an actress like Schroeder-Devrient could even
in such frivolous music invest his _Isabella_ with dignity and
value. With such expectations in art and life before him, he took
unhesitatingly the serious step of engaging himself to Mina Planer, a
beautiful actress at the Magdeburg theatre, who unfortunately however
was never destined to appreciate his nobler aspirations.
In the spring of 1836, before the dissolution of the Magdeburg troupe,
an overhasty presentation of his opera was given, the only one that
ever took place. It was said of it by one: "There is much in it, and
it is very pleasing. There is that music and melody, which we so
rarely find in our distinctive German operas." He had himself for some
time completely neglected "The Fairies." The score of both operas is
in the possession of King Louis of Bavaria. They were to be followed
by one destined to survive--"Rienzi."
He had sought in vain to secure a performance of the "Liebesverbot,"
first in Leipzig, then in Berlin. In the latter city he saw one of
Spontini's operas performed and for the first time fully recognized
the meagre resources of the native stage, particularly in scenic
presentation. How Paris must have aroused his longing where Spontini
had introduced the opera upon a grander scale and with stronger
ensemble! The financial difficulties however, which followed
the dissolution of the Magdeburg theatre and the failure of his
compositions forced him to continue his connection still longer with
the German stage, wretched as it was. He next went to Koenigsberg. The
position there was not sufficiently remunerative to protect him from
want, now that he was married. One purpose he kept constantly in view,
namely, to perform some splendid work of art and with it free himself
from his embarrassing position. In every interesting romance he sought
the material for a grand opera. Among others, he selected Koenig's
"Hohe Braut," rapidly arranged the scenes and sent the manuscript to
Scribe in Paris, whose endorsement was considered essential, and whose
"Huguenots" had just helped to make Meyerbeer one of the stars of the
day. Nothing came of it however. Of what importance in this direction
was Germany at that time? The Koenigsberg troupe was also soon
dissolved. "Some men are at once decisive in their character and their
works, while others have first to fight their way through a chaos of
passions. It is true however that the latter class obtain greater
results," it is said in one account of this short episode. He was soon
to accomplish such an achievement. In the city of Koenigsberg, the old
seat of the Prussian kings, he had won a friend for life who, as will
subsequently appear, proved of service to him. The general character
of life in Prussia also greatly contributed to strengthen in him that
independent bearing of which Spontini's imperious splendor had given
him a hint, and which subsequently was to invest his own art with so
much importance in the world's history.
During a visit to Dresden in 1837 he came across Bulwer's "Rienzi, the
Last of the Tribunes," in which he became deeply interested, the more
so that the hero had been in his mind for some time. The necessities
of subsistence now drove him across the borders to Riga. His Leipzig
friend Dorn was there, and Karl Holtei had just organized a new
theatre. He was made director of music and his wife appeared in the
leading feminine roles. Splendid material was at hand and Wagner went
zealously to work. He was obliged however to produce here also the
works of Adam, Auber, and Bellini, which gave him a still deeper
insight into the degradation of the modern stage, with its frivolous
comedy, of which he had a perfect horror. About this time he became
familiar with the legend of the "Flying Dutchman," as Heine relates
it, with the new version that love can release the Ahasuerus of the
sea. The "fabulous home sickness," of which Heine speaks, found an
echo in his own soul and excited it the more. He studied moreover
Mehul's "Joseph in Egypt" and under the influence of the grave and
noble music of this imitator of the great Gluck, he felt himself
"elevated and purified." Even Bellini's "Norma," under the influence
of such impressions, gained a nobler tone and more dignified form than
is really inherent in the music. "Norma" was at that time even given
for his benefit! He now took up the "Rienzi" material in earnest and
projected a plan for the work which required the largest stage for
its execution. The lyric element of the romance, the messengers of
peace, the battle hymns, and the passion of love had already charmed
his purely musical sense. It was however by a solid work for the
theatre, of which the main feature should not be simply "beautiful
verses and fine rhymes" but rather strength of action and stirring
scenes, aided by all available means for producing effect through
scenery and the ballet, that he hoped to win success at the Paris
grand opera. In the fall of 1838 he began the composition.
The first two acts had scarcely been completed when Paris stood
clearly before the poet-composer's eyes. Meanwhile the contract with
Holtei drew to a close, but there were difficulties in the way that
could not easily be removed. He had contracted many debts and without
proof of their liquidation no one could at that time leave Russia.
Flight was determined upon. His friend from Koenigsberg, an old and
rich lumber merchant, in whose house he had spent many a social
evening, took his wife in a carriage over the border, passing her as
his own, while Wagner escaped in some other way. At Pillau they went
on board a sailing vessel, their first destination being London. Now
began the real lifework of Wagner, which was not to cease until he,
who had struggled with poverty and sorrow, was to see emperors and
kings as guests in his art-temple at Baireuth.
The long sea voyage of twenty-five days, full of mishaps, had a very
important bearing upon his art. The stormy sea along the Norwegian
coast and the stories of the sailors who never doubled the existence
of the "Flying Dutchman," gave life and definite form to the legend.
He remained but a short time in London, seeing the city and its two
houses of Parliament, and then went to Boulogne-sur-Mer. He remained
there four weeks, for Meyerbeer was there taking sea baths, and his
Parisian introductions were of the highest importance. The composer of
the "Huguenots" immediately recognized the talent of the younger
artist, and particularly praised the text to "Rienzi," which Scribe
was soon to imitate for him in his weak production of "The Prophet."
At the same time he pointed out the obstacles to success in the great
city which it would be extremely difficult for one to overcome without
means or connections. Wagner however relied on his good star and
departed for that city which he conceived to be the only one that
could open the way to the stage of the world for a dramatic composer.
The result of the visit to Paris was an abundance of disappointments,
but it added largely to his experience, increased his strength, nay
more, even gave rise to his first great work.
Meyerbeer recommended him to the director of the Renaissance Theatre
and besides acquainted him with artists of note. An introduction to
the Grand Opera however was out of the question for one who was an
utter stranger. Through Heinrich Laube, then in Paris, he made the
acquaintance of Heine, who was much surprised that a young musician
with his wife and a large Newfoundland dog should come to Paris, where
everything, however meritorious, must conquer its position. Wagner
himself has described these experiences in Lewald's "Europa," under
the title of "Parisian Fatalities of Germans." His first object was
to win some immediate success and he accordingly offered to the above
named director the "Liebesverbot," which apparently was well suited to
French taste. Unfortunately this theatre went into bankruptcy, so all
his efforts were fruitless. He now sought to make himself known
through lyrics set to music and wrote several, such as Heine's
"Grenadiers," but a favorite amateur balladist, Loisa Puget, reigned
supreme in the Paris salons, and neither he nor Berlioz could obtain
a hearing. His means were constantly diminishing and a terrible
bitterness filled his soul against the splendid Paris salons and
theatre world, whose interior appeared so hollow.
It happened one day that he heard the Ninth symphony at a performance
of the Conservatory, whose concerts were always splendidly and
carefully executed, and, as before, it stirred his inmost soul. Once
more his genius came to his rescue. He felt intuitively--what we now
know with historical certainty--that this work was born of the same
spirit which bore Faust, and thus in him also this "ever restless
spirit seeking for something new" was called into being and activity.
The overture to Faust, in reality the prelude of a Faust symphony,
tells us in tones of mighty resolve that his power to do and to will
still lived, and would not yield till it had performed its part. This
was toward the close of the year 1840.
"The God, who in my breast resides,
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
Though all my energies he guides,
He cannot change external forces.
Thus by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and life a thing unblest."
With such a confession he regained strength to battle against Parisian
superficiality, which even in the sacred sphere of art seemed to seek
only for outward success and to admire whatever fashion dictated. His
criticisms on the condition of life and art in Paris are very severe.
Even the noble Berlioz does not escape censure from the artist's
stand-point, while Liszt, who resided there at the time, he had not
yet learned to appreciate. But again the saving genius of his art,
German music, rose resplendent, and she it was who recalled him to his
own self and to art.
He now entirely gave up the "Liebesverbot," as he felt that he could
not respect himself unless he did so. He thought of his native land.
A heroic patriotism seized him, although tinged with a political
bearing, for he did not forget the Bundestag and its resistance to
every movement for liberty, and yet withal he beheld the coming
grandeur of his fatherland. Now he himself first fully comprehended
Rienzi's words about his noble bride, whom he saw dishonored and
defiled, and a deep anger awakened in him those mighty exhorting
accents which his enthusiasm had already intoned in Rienzi's first
speech to the nobility and the people, and which had not been heard in
Germany since Schiller's days. As Rienzi resolved not to rest until
his proud Roma was crowned as queen of the world, so now there flashed
through him also the conviction, as he has so beautifully said in
speaking of Beethoven's music, that the genius of Germany was destined
to rescue the mind of man from its deep degradation. In the merely
superficial culture, which the Semitic-Gallic spirit had impressed
upon the period, and with which it held all Europe as in a net of
iron, he saw only utter frivolity. The great revolution had brought
about many political and social reforms but the liberation of the
soul, like that accomplished by the Reformation, it had not effected.
There was a material condition and mental tendency which he afterward,
not without reason, compared with the times of the Roman emperors.
Heine and his associates formed the literary centre, but even more
effective in its influence was Meyerbeer's grand opera. The imperious
sway of fashion had usurped the place of real culture and the problem
was therefore again to elevate culture with his art to its proper
sphere. He became more and more conscious of a mission which went far
beyond the realm of mere art-work. Even in this foreign land, which
had treated him so coldly and with such hostile egoism, he was to find
the ways and means to carry out his mission and to create for us
actual human beings instead of phantoms. In his "Parisian Fatalities,"
Wagner said of the Germans in Paris that they learned anew to
appreciate their mother tongue and to strengthen their patriotic
feeling. "Rienzi" was an illustration of this patriotic sentiment. He
now resolved to produce this composition for Dresden and the thought
gave him fresh zeal for work. Elsewhere, he says of the Germans: "As
much as they generally dread the return to their native land, they yet
pine away from it with homesickness." Longing for home! Had he not
once before beheld a being wasting away in the constant longing for
the eternal home and yet destined never to find rest? The "Flying
Dutchman" recurred to his imagination and to the outward form of the
ever-wandering seaman was added the human heart, constantly longing
for love and faithfulness. After having come to an understanding with
Heine, he rapidly arranged the material of this Wandering Jew of the
sea. A fortunate circumstance, the return of Meyerbeer to Paris, even
gave promise that the work might secure a hearing at the grand opera.
That he might be at rest while engaged on this work he earned his
daily bread by arranging popular operas for cornet-a-piston. He
submitted to this deep humiliation for he was conscious of the prize
to be obtained by "serving." A partial compensation in thus working
for hire he found in the permission given him by the sympathetic
music publisher, Schlesinger, to write for his _Gazette Musicale_ to
which he contributed many brilliant articles. In these he could at
least do in words what he was not allowed to do otherwise. He could
disclose the splendor of German music, and never before has anyone
written of Mozart, Weber, and Beethoven with keener appreciation or
profounder thought. Of the last named he proposed to write a
comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a
publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin
races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of
the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits
under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he
had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was
his last tribute to the Grand Opera. They have forever extinguished
the genre in style by exhausting its capabilities.
[Footnote A: The letter appears in the book entitled "Mosaics,"
published in Leipzig, 1881.]
In the meantime "Rienzi" had been accepted at Dresden, and he now
hoped through Meyerbeer's influence to see it also accepted by the
Grand Opera. The director, however, had been so well pleased with the
"Flying Dutchman" that he wished to appropriate the poem for himself,
or rather for another composer. In order therefore not to lose
everything, Wagner sold the copyright for Paris for 500 francs and it
soon after appeared as "Vaisseau Phantome." It naturally followed that
for the present his most urgent task was to complete the work for
himself and in his own way. The performance of the "Freischuetz" had
increased his ambition and his other experiences had completely
disgusted him with the modern Babylon. The romance--for such it
was--was soon finished. He had allowed a beautiful myth simply to tell
its own story and had avoided all the nonsense of the opera with its
finales, duets, and ballets, wishing simply to reveal to his
countrymen once more the divine attributes of the soul. But now that
the romance was to be set to music he feared that his art might have
deserted him, so long had it remained unused. However the work
progressed rapidly enough. He had in his mind as the main motive of
the work, _Senta's_ ballad, and around it clustered at once the whole
musical arrangement of the material. The Sailor's Chorus and the
Spinning Song were popular melodies, for the "Freischuetz" continually
kept them humming in his ears. In seven weeks the work was completed,
with the exception of the overture, which every day's pressing wants
retarded for a few weeks longer.
Leipzig and Munich promptly declined the work with which he had
proposed to salute his fatherland once more. The latter city declared
that the opera was not adapted to Germany! Through Meyerbeer's
influence it was then accepted in Berlin. Thus hated Paris led to the
production of two works in which he touched strings that find their
fullest response only in a German's heart. The prospect of returning
to his fatherland delighted him. What could be more natural than that
his mind strove to study more and more closely the spirit and
development of his fatherland, in order to raise other and better
monuments to it? He renewed his studies in German history, although
solely for the purpose of finding suitable material for operas. At
first, Manfred and the brilliant era of the Hohenstauffens attracted
him. But this historic world at once and utterly disappeared when he
beheld that figure in which the spirit of the Ghibellines attained in
human form its highest development and greatest beauty--_Tannhaeuser_!
His previous readings in German literature had made him familiar with
the story, but he now for the first time understood it. The simple
popular tale stirred him to such a degree that his whole soul was
filled with the image of its hero. It revealed the path to the
historic depths of our folk-lore to which Beethoven's and Weber's
music had long since given him the clues. The story had some
connection with the "Saengerkrieg auf Wartburg," and in this contest,
he saw at once the possibility of fully revealing the qualities of his
hero, who raises the first German protest against the pretended
culture and sham morality of the Latin world. The old poem of this
"Saengerkrieg," is further connected with the legend of Lohengrin.
Thus it was that in foreign Paris he was destined to gain at once and
permanently a realization of the native qualities of our common
nature, which, from primeval times, the German spirit has put into
these legends.
After a stay of more than three years abroad, he left Paris, April 7,
1842. "For the first time I saw the Rhine; with tears in my eyes, I, a
poor artist, swore to be ever loyal to my German fatherland," he says.
Have we not seen that this "poor artist" with the might of his magic
wand has created a world of new life, and what is far more, has
aroused the genius of his people, aye, the very soul of mankind, and
has led his epoch and his nation to the achievement of new and
permanent intellectual results?
We now come to his first efforts towards the accomplishment of such
results. They were to cost hard labor, anxiety, struggles, and pain of
every kind indeed, but they were done and they stand to-day.