The thought of her humiliation maddens the high-spirited woman,

and she sends her maid, Brangäne, to summon the knight into her

presence. The knight parleys diplomatically with the messenger. Duty

keeps him at the helm, but once in port he will suffer no one but

himself to escort the exalted lady into the presence of the king. At

the last the maid is forced to deliver the command in the imperious

words used by her mistress. This touches the pride of Tristan's

squire, Kurwenal, who asks permission to frame an answer, and,

receiving it, shouts a ballad of his master's method of paying

tribute to Ireland with the head of his enemy; for the battle

between Tristan and Morold had grown out of the effort made by the

latter to collect tribute-money from England. It is a stiff stave,

rugged, forceful, and direct, in which the spirit of the political

ballad of all times is capitally preserved.

Isolde resolves to wipe out what she conceives to be her disgrace by

slaying Tristan and herself. Brangäne tries to persuade her that the

crown of Cornwall will bring her honor, and when Isolde answers

that it would be intolerable to live in the presence of Tristan and

not have his love, she hints that her mother had not sent her into

a strange land without providing for all contingencies. Isolde

understands the allusion to her mother's magical lore, and commands

that a casket be brought to her. Brangäne obeys with alacrity and

exhibits its contents: lotions for wounds, antidotes for poisons,

and, best of all,--she holds a phial aloft. Isolde will not have it

so; she herself had marked the phial whose contents were to remedy

her ills. "The death draught!" exclaims Brangäne, and immediately

the "Yo, heave ho!" of the sailors is heard and the shout of "Land!"

Throughout this scene a significant phrase is heard--the symbol

of death:--

[Musical excerpt]

Also the symbol of fate--a downward leap of a seventh, as in the

last two notes of the brief figure illustrative of the glance which

had inspired Isolde's fatal love.

At sight of land Tristan leaves the helm and presents himself before

Isolde. She upbraids him for having avoided her during the voyage;

he replies that he had obeyed the commands of honor and custom. She

reminds him that a debt of blood is due her--he owes her revenge for

the death of Morold. Tristan offers her his sword and his breast;

but she declines to kill the best of all Marke's knights, and

offers to drink with him a cup of forgiveness. He divines her

purpose and takes the cup from her hand and gives this pledge:

Fidelity to his honor, defiance to anguish. To his heart's illusion,

his scarcely apprehended dream, will he drink the draught which

shall bring oblivion. Before he has emptied the cup, Isolde snatches

it from his hands and drains it to the bottom. Thus they meet

their doom, which is not death and surcease of sorrow, as both had

believed, but life and misery; for Brangäne, who had been commanded

to pour the poison in the cup, had followed an amiable prompting and

presented the love-potion instead. A moment of bewilderment, and

the fated ones are in each other's arms, pouring out an ecstasy of

passion. Then her maids robe Isolde to receive the king, who is

coming on board the ship to greet his bride.

In the introduction to the second act, based upon this restless

phrase,--

[Musical excerpt]

we have a picture of the longing and impatience of the lovers before

a meeting. When the curtains part, we discover a garden before the

chamber of Isolde, who is now Cornwall's queen. It is a lovely night

in summer. A torch burns in a ring beside the door opening into

the chamber at the top of a stone staircase. The king has gone

a-hunting, and the tones of the hunting-horns, dying away in the

distance, blend entrancingly with an instrumental song from the

orchestra which seems a musical sublimation of night and nature in

their tenderest moods. Isolde appears with Brangäne and pleads with

her to extinguish the torch and thus give the appointed signal to

Tristan, who is waiting in concealment. But Brangäne suspects

treachery on the part of Melot, a knight who is jealous of Tristan

and himself enamoured of Isolde. It was he who had planned the

nocturnal hunt. She warns her mistress, and begs her to wait. Beauty

rests upon the scene like a benediction. To Isolde the horns are but

the rustling of the forest leaves as they are caressed by the wind,

or the purling and laughing of the brook. Longing has eaten up all

patience, all discretion, all fear. In spite of Brangäne's pleadings

she extinguishes the torch, and with wildly waving scarf beckons on

her hurrying lover. Beneath the foliage they sing their love through

all the gamut of hope and despair, of bliss and wretchedness. The

duet consists largely of detached ejaculations and verbal plays,

each paraphrasing or varying or giving a new turn to the outpouring

of the other, the whole permeated with the symbolism of pessimistic

philosophy in which night, death, and oblivion are glorified, and

day, life, and memory contemned. In this dialogue lies the key

to the philosophy which Wagner has proclaimed in the tragedy. In

Wagner's exposition of the prelude we saw that he wishes us to

observe "the one glimmering of the highest bliss of attainment" in

the "surrender of being," the "final redemption into that wondrous

realm from which we wander farthest when we try to take it by

force." For this realm he chooses death and night as symbols, but

what he means to imply is the nirvana of Buddhistic philosophy, the

final deliverance of the soul from transmigration. Such love as

that of Tristan and Isolde presented itself to Wagner as ceaseless

struggle and endless contradiction, and for this problem nirvana

alone offers a happy outcome; it means quietude and identity.

In vain does Brangäne sing her song of warning from the tower;

the lovers have been transported beyond all realization of their

surroundings; they sing on, dream on in each other's arms, until

at the moment of supremest ecstasy there comes a rude interruption.

Kurwenal dashes in with a sword and a shout: "Save thyself,

Tristan!" the king, Melot, and courtiers at his heels. Day, symbol

of all that is fatal to their love, has dawned. Tristan is silent,

though Marke bewails the treachery of his nephew and his friend.

From the words of the heart-torn king we learn that he had been

forced into the marriage with Isolde by the disturbed state of his

kingdom, and had not consented to it until Tristan, whose purpose

it was thus to quiet the jealous anger of the barons, had threatened

to depart from Cornwall unless the king revoked his purpose to make

him his successor, and took unto himself a wife. Tristan's answer to

the sorrowful upbraidings of his royal uncle is to obtain a promise

from Isolde to follow him into the "wondrous realm of night." Then,

seeing that Marke does not wield the sword of retribution, he makes

a feint of attacking Melot, but permits the treacherous knight to

reach him with his sword. He falls wounded unto death.

The last act has been reached. The dignified, reserved knight

of the first act, the impassioned lover of the second, is now a

dream-haunted, longing, despairing, dying man, lying under a lime

tree in the yard of his ancestral castle in Brittany, wasting his

last bit of strength in feverish fancies and ardent yearnings

touching Isolde. Kurwenal has sent for her. Will she come? A

shepherd tells of vain watches for the sight of a sail by playing

a mournful melody on his pipe:--

[Musical excerpt]

Oh, the heart-hunger of the hero! The longing! Will she never come?

The fever is consuming him, and his heated brain breeds fancies

which one moment lift him above all memories of pain and the next

bring him to the verge of madness. Cooling breezes waft him again

toward Ireland, whose princess healed the wound struck by Morold,

then ripped it up again with the avenging sword with its telltale

nick. From her hands he took the drink whose poison sears his heart.

Accursed the cup and accursed the hand that brewed it! Will the

shepherd never change his doleful strain? Ah, Isolde, how beautiful

you are! The ship, the ship! It must be in sight. Kurwenal, have

you no eyes? Isolde's ship! A merry tune bursts from the shepherd's

pipe:--

[Musical excerpt]

It is the ship! What flag flies at the peak? The flag of "All's

well!" Now the ship disappears behind a cliff. There the breakers

are treacherous. Who is at the helm? Friend or foe? Melot's

accomplice? Are you, too, a traitor, Kurwenal? Tristan's strength is

unequal to the excitement of the moment. His mind becomes dazed. He

hears Isolde's voice, and his wandering fancy transforms it into the

torch whose extinction once summoned him to her side: "Do I hear

the light?" He staggers to his feet and tears the bandages from his

wound. "Ha! my blood! flow merrily now! She who opened the wound is

here to heal it!" Life endures but for one embrace, one glance, one

word: "Isolde!" While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan's

corpse, Marke and his train arrive upon a second ship. Brangäne

has told the secret of the love-draught, and the king has come

to unite the lovers. But his purpose is not known, and faithful

Kurwenal receives his death-blow while trying to hold the castle

against Marke's men. He dies at Tristan's side. Isolde, unconscious

of all these happenings, sings out her broken heart, and expires.

And ere her ear might hear, her heart had heard,

Nor sought she sign for witness of the word;

But came and stood above him, newly dead,

And felt his death upon her: and her head

Bowed, as to reach the spring that slakes all drouth;

And their four lips became one silent mouth. {2}

Footnotes:

{1} "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," by H. E. Krehbiel.

{2} Swinburne, "Tristram of Lyonesse."

CHAPTER XIV

"PARSIFAL"

A lad, hotfoot in pursuit of a wild swan which one of his arrows has

pierced, finds himself in a forest glade on the side of a mountain.

There he meets a body of knights and esquires in attendance on a

king who is suffering from a wound. The knights are a body of men

whose mission it is to succor suffering innocence wherever they may

find it. They dwell in a magnificent castle on the summit of the

mountain, within whose walls they assemble every day to contemplate

and adore a miraculous vessel from which they obtain both physical

and spiritual sustenance. In order to enjoy the benefits which flow

from this talisman, they are required to preserve their bodies in

ascetic purity. Their king has fallen from this estate and been

grievously wounded in an encounter with a magician, who, having

failed in his ambition to enter the order of knighthood, had built

a castle over against that of the king, where, by practice of the

black art and with the help of sirens and a sorceress, he seeks the

ruin of the pure and celestial soldiery. In his hands is a lance

which once belonged to the knights, but which he had wrested from

their king and with which he had given the dolorous stroke from

which the king is suffering.

The healing of the king can be wrought only by a touch of the lance

which struck the wound; and this lance can be regained only by one

able to withstand the sensual temptations with which the evil-minded

sorcerer has surrounded himself in his magical castle. An oracle,

that had spoken from a vision, which one day shone about the

talisman, had said that this deliverer fool, an innocent simpleton,

pity had made knowing:--

[Musical excerpt--"Durch mitleid wissend, der reine Thor, harre sein'

den ich erkor." THE ORACLE]

For this hero king and knights are waiting and longing, since

neither lotions nor baths nor ointments can bring relief, though

they be of the rarest potency and brought from all the ends of the

earth. The lad who thus finds himself in this worshipful but woful

company is himself of noble and knightly lineage. This we learn from

the recital of his history, but also from the bright, incisive,

militant, chivalresque music associated with him:--

[Musical excerpt--THE SYMBOL OF PARSIFAL]

But he has been reared in a wilderness, far from courts and the

institutions of chivalry and in ignorance of the world lying beyond

his forest boundaries. His father died before he was born, and his

mother withheld from him all knowledge of knighthood, hoping thus

to keep him for herself. One day, however, he saw a cavalcade of

horsemen in brilliant trappings. The spectacle stirred the chivalric

spirit slumbering within him; he deserted his mother, followed after

the knights, and set out in quest of adventure. The mother died:--

[Musical excerpt--THE SYMBOL OF HERZELEIDE]

In the domain whither his quarry had led the lad, all animals were

held sacred. A knight (Gurnemanz) rebukes him for his misdeed in

shooting the swan, and rue leads him to break his bow and arrows.

From a strange creature (Kundry),--

[Musical excerpt--THE PENITENT KUNDRY]

in the service of the knights, he learns of the death of his mother,

who had perished for love of him and grief over his desertion. He is

questioned about himself, but is singularly ignorant of everything,

even of his own name. Hoping that the lad may prove to be the

guileless fool to whom knowledge was to come through pity, the

knight escorts him to the temple, which is the sanctuary of the

talisman whose adoration is the daily occupation of the brotherhood.

They walk out of the forest and find themselves in a rocky defile

of the mountain. A natural gateway opens in the face of a cliff,

through which they pass, and are lost to sight for a space. Then

they are seen ascending a sloping passage, and little by little the

rocks lose their ruggedness and begin to take on rude architectural

contours. They are walking to music which, while merely suggesting

their progress and the changing natural scene in the main, ever and

anon breaks into an expression of the most poignant and lacerating

suffering and lamentation:--

[Musical excerpt--SUFFERING AND LAMENTATION]

Soon the pealing of bells is heard:--

[Musical excerpt]

and the tones blend synchronously and harmonously with the music of

their march:--

[Musical excerpt--FUNDAMENTAL PHRASE OF THE MARCH]

At last they arrive in a mighty Byzantine hail, which loses itself

upward in a lofty, vaulted dome, from which light streams downward

and illumines the interior. Under the dome, within a colonnade, are

two tables, each a segment of a circle. Into the hall there come

in procession knights wearing red mantles on which the image of a

white dove is embroidered. They chant a pious hymn as they take

their places at the refectory tables:--

[Musical excerpt--"Zum letzten Liebesmahle Gerüstet Tag für Tag."

THE EUCHARISTIC HYMN]

The king, whom the lad had seen in the glade, is borne in on a

litter, before him a veiled shrine containing the mystical cup which

is the object of the ceremonious worship. It is the duty of the

king to unveil the talisman and hold it up to the adoration of the

knights. He is conveyed to a raised couch and the shrine is placed

before him. His sufferings of mind and body are so poignant that

he would liever die than perform his office; but the voice of his

father (Titurel), who had built the sanctuary, established the order

of knighthood, and now lives on in his grave sustained by the sight

of the talisman, admonishes the king of his duty. At length he

consents to perform the function imposed upon him by his office. He

raises himself painfully upon his couch. The attendants remove the

covering from the shrine and disclose an antique crystal vessel

which they reverently place before the lamentable king. Boys' voices

come wafted down from the highest height of the dome, singing a

formula of consecration: "Take ye my body, take my blood in token

of our love":--

[Musical excerpt--THE LOVE-FEAST FORMULA]

A dazzling ray of light flashes down from above and falls into the

cup, which now glows with a reddish purple lustre and sheds a soft

radiance around. The knights have sunk upon their knees. The king

lifts the luminous chalice, moves it gently from side to side, and

thus blesses the bread and wine provided for the refection of the

knights. Meanwhile, celestial voices proclaim the words of the

oracle to musical strains that are pregnant with mysterious

suggestion.

Another choir sturdily, firmly, ecstatically hymns the power

of faith:--

[Musical excerpt--THE SYMBOL OF FAITH]

and, at the end, an impressive antiphon, starting with the knights,

ascends higher and higher, and, calling in gradually the voices of

invisible singers in the middle height, becomes metamorphosed into

an angelic canticle as it takes its flight to the summit. It is

the voice of aspiration, the musical symbol of the talisman which

directs the thoughts and desires of its worshippers ever upward:--

[Musical excerpt--THE SYMBOL OF THE HOLY GRAIL]

The lad disappoints his guide. He understands nothing of the solemn

happenings which he has witnessed, nor does he ask their meaning,

though his own heart had been lacerated with pain at sight of the

king's sufferings. He is driven from the sanctuary with contumely.

He wanders forth in quest of further adventures and enters the

magical garden surrounding the castle of the sorcerer. A number of

knights who are sent against him he puts to rout. Now the magician

summons lovely women, clad in the habiliments of flowers, to seduce

him with their charms:--

[Musical excerpt--KLINGSOR'S INCANTATION]

They sing and play about him with winsome wheedlings and cajoleries,

with insinuating blandishments and dainty flatteries, with pretty

petulancies and delectable quarrellings:--

[Musical excerpt--"Komm, Komm, holder Knabe," THE SEDUCTIVE SONG OF

THE FLOWER MAIDENS]

But they fail of their purpose, as does also an unwilling siren whom

the magician invokes with powerful conjurations. It is Kundry, who

is half Magdalen, half wicked sorceress, a messenger in the service

of the pious knights, and as such hideous of aspect; a tool in the

hands of the magician, and as such supernaturally beautiful. It was

to her charms that the suffering king had yielded. To win the youth

she tells him the story of his mother's death and gives to him her

last message and--a kiss! At the touch of her impure lips a flood of

passion, hitherto unfelt, pours through the veins of the lad, and in

its surge comes understanding of the suffering and woe which he had

witnessed in the castle on the mountain. Also a sense of his own

remissness. Compassionate pity brings enlightenment; and he thrusts

back the woman who is seeking to destroy him. Finding that the wiles

of his tool have availed him naught, the wicked magician himself

appears to give battle, for he, too, knows the oracle and fears the

coming of the king's deliverer and the loss of the weapon which he

hopes will yet enable him to achieve the mystical talisman. He hurls

the lance at the youth, but it remains suspended in midair. The lad

seizes it, makes the sign of the cross, speaks some words of exorcism,

and garden, castle, damsels--all the works of enchantment disappear.

Now the young hero is conscious of a mission. He must find again

the abode of the knights and their ailing king, and bring to them

surcease of suffering. After long and grievous wanderings he is

again directed to the castle. Grief and despair have overwhelmed the

knights, whose king, unable longer to endure the torture in which he

has lived, has definitively refused to perform his holy office. In

consequence, his father, no longer the recipient of supernatural

sustenance, has died, and the king longs to follow him. The hero

touches the wound in the side of the king with the sacred spear,

ends his dolors, and is hailed as king in his place. The temptress,

who has followed him as a penitent, freed from a curse which had

rested upon her for ages, goes to a blissful and eternal rest.

* * *

Such is the story of Wagner's "Parsifal." It is the purpose of this

book to help the musical layman who loves lyric drama to enjoyment.

Criticism might do this, but a purpose of simple exposition has

already been proclaimed, and shall be adhered to lest some reader

think that he is being led too far afield. In this case the

exposition shall take the form of a marshalling of the elements of

the story in two aspects--religious and legendary. Careful readers

of English literature will have had no difficulty in recognizing in

it a story of the quest of the Holy Grail. Tennyson will have taught

them that the hero is that

Sir Percivale

Whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure;

that the talismanic vessel is

the cup itself from which our Lord

Drank at the last sad supper with His own;

that the lance which struck and healed the grievous wound in the

side of the king is the spear with which the side of the Christ was

pierced on Calvary. It is also obvious that the king, whose name

is Amfortas, that is, "the powerless one," is a symbol of humanity

suffering from the wounds of slavery to desire; that the heroic act

of Parsifal, as Wagner calls him, which brings release to the king

and his knights, is renunciation of desire, prompted by pity,

compassion, fellow-suffering; and that this gentle emotion it was

that had inspired knowledge simultaneously of a great need and a

means of deliverance. The ethical idea of the drama, as I set forth

in a book entitled "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" many years ago,

is that it is the enlightenment which comes through pity which

brings salvation. The allusion is to the redemption of mankind

by the sufferings and compassionate death of Christ; and that

stupendous tragedy is the prefiguration of the mimic drama which

Wagner has constructed. The spectacle to which he invites us, and

with which he hoped to impress us and move us to an acceptance of

the lesson underlying his play, is the adoration of the Holy Grail,

cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last Supper, bedizened with

some of the glittering pageantry of mediaeval knighthood and romance.

In the minds of many persons it is a profanation to make a stage

spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that

"Parsifal" is not only religious but specifically Christian; not

only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly

liturgical, partly Biblical. In narrating the incidents of the play

I have purposely avoided all allusions to the things which have been

matters of controversy. It is possible to look upon "Parsifal" as a

sort of glorified fairy tale, and to this end I purpose to subject

its elements to inquiry, and shall therefore go a bit more into

detail. Throughout the play Parsifal is referred to as a redeemer,

and in the third act scenes in which he plays as the central figure

are borrowed from the life of Christ. Kundry, the sorceress, who

attempts his destruction at one time and is in the service of the

knights of the Grail at another, anoints his feet and dries them

with her hair, as the Magdalen did the feet of Christ in the house

of Simon the Pharisee. Parsifal baptizes Kundry and admonishes her

to believe in the Redeemer:--

Die Taufe nimm

Und glaub' an den Erlöser!

Kundry weeps. Unto the woman who was a sinner and wept at His feet

Christ said: "Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Thy faith hath saved

thee. Go in peace." At the elevation of the grail by Parsifal after

the healing of Amfortas a dove descends from the dome and hovers

over the new king's head. What saith the Scripture? "And Jesus,

when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and

lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God

descending like a dove, and lighting upon him." (St. Matthew iii.

16.) It would be idle to argue that these things are not Biblical,

though the reported allusions to Parsifal as a redeemer do not of

necessity belong in the category. We shall see presently that the

drama is permeated with Buddhism, and there were a multitude of

redeemers and saviours in India besides the Buddha.

Let us look at the liturgical elements. The Holy Grail is a chalice.

It is brought into the temple in solemn procession in a veiled

shrine and deposited on a table. Thus, also, the chalice, within its

pall, is brought in at the sacrament of the mass and placed on the

altar before the celebrant. In the drama boys' voices sing in the

invisible heights:--

Nehmet hin mein Blut

Um unserer Liebe willen!

Nehmet hin meinem Leib

Auf dass ihr mein gedenkt!

Is there a purposed resemblance here to the words of consecration in

the mass? Accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim Corpus

meum. Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes. Hic est enim Calix sanguinis

mei! In a moment made wonderfully impressive by Wagner's music,

while Amfortas bends over the grail and the knights are on their

knees, a ray of light illumines the cup and it glows red. Amfortas

lifts it high, gently sways it from side to side, and blesses the

bread and wine which youthful servitors have placed beside each

knight on the table. In the book of the play, as the hall gradually

grows light the cups before the knights appear filled with red wine,

and beside each lies a small loaf of bread. Now the celestial

choristers sing: "The wine and bread of the Last Supper, once the

Lord of the Grail, through pity's love-power, changed into the blood

which he shed, into the body which he offered. To-day the Redeemer

whom ye laud changes the blood and body of the sacrificial offering

into the wine poured out for you, and the bread that you eat!" And

the knights respond antiphonally: "Take of the bread; bravely change

it anew into strength and power. Faithful unto death, staunch in

effort to do the works of the Lord. Take of the blood; change

it anew to life's fiery flood. Gladly in communion, faithful as

brothers, to fight with blessed courage." Are these words, or are

they not, a paraphrase of those which in the canon of the mass

follow the first and second ablutions of the celebrant: Quod ore

sumpsimus Domine, etc., and: Corpus tuum, Domine, etc.? He would

be but little critical who would deny it.

Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Wagner wished only

to parody the eucharistic rite. He wanted to create a ceremonial

which should be beautiful, solemn, and moving; which should be an

appropriate accompaniment to the adoration of a mystical relic;

which should, in a large sense, be neither Catholic, Protestant,

nor Buddhistic; which should symbolize a conception of atonement

older than Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than all records

of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom,

Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful;

and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive

suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German

Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind

scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested

by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the

first act only, and does not seem to have known how many connections

the Grail legend had with mediaeval Freemasonry or Templarism. There

are more elements associated with the old Knights Templars and their

rites in Wagner's drama than I am able to discuss. To do so I should

have to be an initiate and have more space at my disposal than I

have here. I can only make a few suggestions: In the old Welsh tale

of Peredur, which is a tale of the quest of a magical talisman, the

substitute for the grail is a dish containing a bloody head. That

head in time, as the legend passed through the imaginations of poets

and romances, became the head of John the Baptist, and there was a

belief in the Middle Ages that the Knights Templars worshipped a

bloody head. The head of John the Baptist enters dimly into Wagner's

drama in the conceit that Kundry is a reincarnation of Herodias,

who is doomed to make atonement, not for having danced the head off

the prophet's shoulders, but for having reviled Christ as he was

staggering up Calvary under the load of the cross. But this is

pursuing speculations into regions that are shadowy and vague. Let

it suffice for this branch of our study that Mr. Burnand has given

expression to the theory that the scene of the adoration of the

grail and the Love Feast may also have a relationship with the

ceremony of installation in the Masonic orders of chivalry, in

which a cup of brotherly love is presented to the Grand Commander,

who drinks and asks the Sir Knights to pledge him in the cup "in

commemoration of the Last Supper of our Grand Heavenly Captain, with

his twelve disciples, whom he commanded thus to remember him." Here,

says Mr. Burnand, there is no pretence to sacrifice. Participation

in the wine is a symbol of a particular and peculiarly close

intercommunion of brotherhood.

To get the least offence from "Parsifal" it ought to be accepted in

the spirit of the time in which Christian symbolism was grafted on

the old tales of the quest of a talisman which lie at the bottom of

it. The time was the last quarter of the twelfth century and the

first quarter of the thirteenth. It is the period of the third

and fourth crusades. Relic worship was at its height. Less than a

hundred years before (in 1101) the Genoese crusaders had brought

back from the Holy Land as a part of the spoils of Caesarea, which

they were helpful in capturing under Baldwin, a three-cornered dish,

which was said to be the veritable dish used at the Last Supper of

Christ and his Apostles. The belief that it was cut out of a solid

emerald drew Bonaparte's attention to it, and he carried it away

to Paris in 1806 and had it examined. It proved to be nothing but

glass, and he graciously gave it back to Genoa in 1814. There it

still reposes in the Church of St. John, but it is no longer an

object of worship, though it might fairly excite a feeling of

veneration.

For 372 years Nuremberg possessed what the devout believed to be the

lance of Longinus, with which the side of Christ was opened. The

relic, like most objects of its kind (the holy coat, for instance),

had a rival which, after inspiring victory at the siege of Antioch,

found its way to Paris with the most sacred relics, for which Louis

IX built the lovely Sainte Chapelle; now it is in the basilica of

the Vatican, at Rome. The Nuremberg relic, however, enjoyed the

advantage of historical priority. It is doubly interesting, or

rather was so, because it was one of Wagner's historical characters

who added it to the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire. This

was none other than Henry the Fowler, the king who is righteous in

judgment and tuneful of speech in the opera "Lohengrin." Henry, so

runs the story, wrested the lance from the Burgundian king, Rudolph

III, some time about A.D. 929. After many vicissitudes the relic was

given for safe keeping to the imperial city of Nuremberg, in 1424,

by the Emperor Sigismund. It was placed in a casket, which was

fastened with heavy chains to the walls of the Spitalkirche. There

it remained until 1796. One may read about the ceremonies attending

its annual exposition, along with other relics, in the old history

of Nuremberg, by Wagenseil, which was the source of Wagner's

knowledge of the mastersingers. The disruption of the Holy Roman

Empire caused a scattering of the jewels and relics in the imperial

treasury, and the present whereabouts of this sacred lance is

unknown. The casket and chains, however, are preserved in the

Germanic Museum at Nuremberg to this day, and there have been seen,

doubtless, by many who are reading these lines.

There is nothing in "Parsifal," neither personage nor incident nor

thing, no principle of conduct, which did not live in legendary

tales and philosophical systems long before Christianity existed as

a universal religion. The hero in his first estate was born, bred,

went out in search of adventure, rescued the suffering, and righted

wrong, just as Krishna, Perseus, Theseus, OEdipus, Romulus,

Remus, Siegfried, and Wolf-Dietrich did before him. He is an Aryan

legendary and mythical hero-type that has existed for ages. The

talismanic cup and spear are equally ancient; they have figured

in legend from time immemorial. The incidents of their quest,

the agonies wrought by their sight, their mission as inviters of

sympathetic interest, and the failure of a hero to achieve a work of

succor because of failure to show pity, are all elements in Keltic

Quester and Quest stories, which antedate Christianity. Kundry, the

loathly damsel and siren, has her prototypes in classic fable and

romantic tale. Read the old English ballad of "The Marriage of Sir

Gawain." So has the magic castle of Klingsor, surrounded by its

beautiful garden. It is all the things which I enumerated in the

chapter devoted to "Tannhäuser." It is also the Underworld, where

prevails the law of taboo--"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither

Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where

Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules

came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily

integrity. The sacred lance which shines red with blood after it

has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear

which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old

Bardic day of Britain; it became the lance of Longinus which pierced

the side of Christ when Christian symbolism was applied to the

ancient Arthurian legends; and you may read in Malory's "Morte

d'Arthur" how a dolorous stroke dealt with it by Balin opened a

wound in the side of King Pellam from which he suffered many years,

till Galahad healed him in the quest of the Sangreal by touching

the wound with the blood which flowed from the spear.

These are the folklore elements in Wagner's "Parsifal." It is plain

that they might have been wrought into a drama substantially like

that which was the poet-composer's last gift to art without loss

of either dignity or beauty. Then his drama would have been like

a glorified fairy play, imposing and of gracious loveliness, and

there would have been nothing to quarrel about. But Wagner was a

philosopher of a sort, and a sincere believer in the idea that the

theatre might be made to occupy the same place in the modern world

that it did in the classic. It was to replace the Church and teach

by direct preachments as well as allegory the philosophical notions

which he thought essential to the salvation of humanity. For the

chief of these he went to that system of philosophy which rests on

the idea that the world is to be redeemed by negation of the will to

live, the conquering of all desire--that the highest happiness is

the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. This conception finds its

highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old

Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness

was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me

the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called

Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure

a compassionate sympathy for others. Asceticism was not put aside,

but regulated and ordered, wrought into a communal system. It was

purged of some of its selfishness by appreciation of the loveliness

of compassionate love as exemplified in the life of Çakya-Muni and

those labors which made him one of the many redeemers and saviours

of which Hindu literature is full. Something of this was evidently

in the mind of Wagner as long ago as 1857, when, working on "Tristan

und Isolde," he for a while harbored the idea of bringing Parzival

(as he would have called him then) into the presence of the

dying Tristan to comfort him with a sermon on the happiness of

renunciation. Long before Wagner had sketched a tragedy entitled

"Jesus of Nazareth," the hero of which was to be a human philosopher

who preached the saving grace of love and sought to redeem his time

and people from the domination of conventional law, the offspring

of selfishness. His philosophy was socialism imbued by love. Before

Wagner finished "Tristan und Isolde" he had outlined a Hindu play in

which hero and heroine were to accept the doctrines of the Buddha,

take the vow of chastity, renounce the union toward which love

impelled them, and enter into the holy community. Blending these two

schemes, Wagner created "Parsifal." For this drama he could draw

the principle of compassionate pity and fellow-suffering from the

stories of both Çakya-Muni and Jesus of Nazareth. But for the sake

of a spectacle, I think, he accepted the Christian doctrine of the

Atonement with all its mystical elements; for they alone put the

necessary symbolical significance into the principal apparatus of

the play--the Holy Grail and the Sacred Lance. {1}

Footnotes:

{1} "Parsifal" was performed for the first time at the Wagner

Festival Theatre in Bayreuth on July 28, 1882. The prescription

that it should belong exclusively to Bayreuth was respected till

December 24, 1903, when Heinrich Conried, taking advantage of the

circumstance that there was no copyright on the stage representation

of the work in America, brought it out with sensational success at

the Metropolitan Opera-house in New York. The principal artists

concerned in this and subsequent performances were Milka Ternina

(Kundry), Alois Burgstaller (Paraifal), Anton Van Rooy (Amfortas),

Robert Blass (Gurnemanz), Otto Görlitz (Klingsor) and Louise Homer

(a voice).

CHAPTER XV

"DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG"

The best definition of the true purpose of comedy which I know is

that it is to "chastise manners with a smile" (Ridendo castigat

mores); and it has no better exemplification in the literature

of opera than Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg." Wagner's

mind dwelt much on Greek things, and as he followed a classical

principle in choosing mythological and legendary subjects for his

tragedies, so also he followed classical precedent in drawing the

line between tragedy and comedy. "Tannhäuser," "Tristan und Isolde,"

"Der Ring des Nibelungen," "Parsifal," and, in a lesser degree,

"Lohengrin," are examples of the old tragedy type. To them the

restrictions of time and space do not apply. They deal with large

passions, and their heroes are gods or godlike men who are shattered

against the rock of immutable law--the "Fate" of the ancient

tragedians. His only significant essay in the field of comedy was

made in "Die Meistersinger," and this is as faithful to the old

conception of comedy as the dramas mentioned are to that of tragedy.

It deals with the manners, vices, and follies of the common people;

and, therefore, it has local environment and illustrates a period

in history. It was conceived as a satyr-play following a tragedy

("Tannhäuser"), and though there can be no doubt that it was

designed to teach a lesson in art, it nevertheless aims primarily

to amuse, and only secondarily to instruct and correct. Moreover,

even the most cutting of its satirical lashes are administered with

a smile.

As a picture of the social life of a quaint German city three and a

half centuries ago, its vividness and truthfulness are beyond all

praise; it is worthy to stand beside the best dramas of the world,

and has no equal in operatic literature. The food for its satire,

too, is most admirably chosen, for no feature of the social life of

that place and period is more amiably absurd than the efforts of the

handicraftsmen and tradespeople, with their prosaic surroundings,

to keep alive by dint of pedantic formularies the spirit of

minstrelsy, which had a natural stimulus in the chivalric life of

the troubadours and minnesingers of whom the mastersingers thought

themselves the direct and legitimate successors. In its delineation

of the pompous doings of the mastersingers, Wagner is true to

the letter. He has vitalized the dry record to be found in old

Wagenseil's book on Nuremberg, {1} and intensified the vivid

description of a mastersingers' meeting which the curious may read

in August Hagen's novel "Norica." His studies have been marvellously

exact and careful, and he has put Wagenseil's book under literal and

liberal contribution, as will appear after a while. Now it seems

best to tell the story of the comedy before discussing it further.

Veit Pogner, a rich silversmith, desiring to honor the craft of the

mastersingers, to whose guild he belongs, offers his daughter Eva

in marriage to the successful competitor at the annual meeting of

the mastersingers on the feast of St. John. Eva is in love (she

declares it in the impetuous manner peculiar to Wagner's heroines)

with Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian knight; and the knight

with her. After a flirtation in church during divine service,

Walther meets her before she leaves the building, and asks if she

be betrothed. She answers in the affirmative, but it is to the

unknown victor at the contest of singing on the morrow. He resolves

to enter the guild so as to be qualified for the competition. A

trial of candidates takes place in the church of St. Catherine in

the afternoon, and Walther, knowing nothing of the rules of the

mastersingers, some of which have hurriedly been outlined to him

by David, a youngster who is an apprentice at shoemaking and also

songmaking, fails, though Hans Sachs, a master in both crafts,

recognizes evidences of genius in the knight's song, and espouses

his cause as against Beckmesser, the town clerk, who aims at

acquiring Pogner's fortune by winning his daughter. The young

people, in despair at Walther's failure, are about to elope when

they are prevented by the arrival on the scene of Beckmesser. It is

night, and he wishes to serenade Eva; Sachs sits cobbling at his

bench, while Eva's nurse, Magdalena, disguised, sits at a window

to hear the serenade in her mistress's stead. Sachs interrupts

the serenader, who is an ill-natured clown, by lustily shouting

a song in which he seeks also to give warning of knowledge of

her intentions to Eva, whose departure with the knight had been

interrupted by the cobbler when he came out of his shop to work

in the cool of the evening; but he finally agrees to listen to

Beckmesser on condition that he be permitted to mark each error in

the composition by striking his lap-stone. The humorous consequences

can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more

and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable

tattoo on his lap-stone. To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture,

David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking

the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer

with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right

merrily until interrupted by the horn of a night watchman. The

dignity and vigor of Wagner's poetical fancy are attested by the

marvellous chose of the act. The tremendous hubbub of the street

brawl is at its height and the business of the act is at an end.

The coming of the Watchman, who has evidently been aroused by the

noise, is foretold by his horn. The crowd is seized with a panic.

All the brawlers disappear behind doors. The sleepy Watchman stares

about him in amazement, rubs his eyes, sings the monotonous chant

which publishes the hour of the night, continues on his round, and

the moon shines on a quiet street in Nuremberg as the curtain falls.

In the third act Walther, who had been taken into his house by Sachs

and spent the night there, sings a recital of a dream; and Sachs,

struck by its beauty, transcribes it, punctuating it with bits of

comments and advice. Beckmesser, entering Sachs's shop when the

cobbler-poet is out for a moment, finds the song, concludes that it

is Sachs's own composition, and appropriates it. Sachs, discovering

the theft, gives the song to Beckmesser, who secures a promise from

Sachs not to betray him, and resolves to sing it at the competition.

The festival is celebrated in a meadow on the banks of the Pegnitz

River, between Fürth and Nuremberg. It begins with a gathering

of all the guilds of Nuremberg, each division in the procession

entering to characteristic music--a real masterpiece, whether

viewed as spectacle, poetry, or music. The competition begins, and

Beckmesser makes a monstrously stupid parody of Walther's song.

He is hooted at and ridiculed, and, becoming enraged, charges the

authorship of the song on Sachs, who coolly retorts that it is

a good song when correctly sung. To prove his words he calls on

Walther to sing it. The knight complies, the mastersingers are

delighted, and Pogner rewards the singer with Eva's hand. Sachs,

at the request of the presiding officer of the guild, also offers

him the medal as the insignia of membership in the guild of

mastersingers. Walther's experience with the pedantry which had

condemned him the day before, when he had sung as impulse, love, and

youthful ardor had prompted, leads him to decline the distinction;

but the old poet discourses on the respect due to the masters and

their, work as the guaranty of the permanence of German art, and

persuades him to enter the guild of mastersingers.

"Die Meistersinger" is photographic in many of its scenes,

personages, and incidents; but so far as the stage pictures which

we are accustomed to see in the opera-houses of New York and the

European capitals are concerned, this statement must be taken with

a great deal of allowance, owing to the fact that opera directors,

stage managers, scene painters, and costumers are blithely

indifferent to the verities of history. I have never seen a mimic

reproduction of the church of St. Catherine on any stage; yet the

church stands to-day with its walls intact as they were at the time

in which the comedy is supposed to play. This time is fixed by the

fact that its principal character, Hans Sachs, is represented as

a widower who might himself be a suitor for Eva's hand. Now the

veritable Sachs was a widower in the summer of the year 1560. I

visited Nuremberg in 1886 in search of relics of the mastersingers

and had no little difficulty in finding the church. It had not been

put to its original purposes for more than a hundred years, and

there seemed to be but few people in Nuremberg who knew of its

existence. It has been many things since it became secularized: a

painter's academy, drawing-school, military hospital, warehouse,

concert-hall, and, no doubt, a score of other things. When I found

it with the aid of the police it was the paint-shop and scenic

storeroom of the municipal theatre. It is a small building, utterly

unpretentious of exterior and interior, innocent of architectural

beauty, hidden away in the middle of a block of lowly buildings

used as dwellings, carpenter shops, and the like. That Wagner never

visited it is plain from the fact that though he makes it the

scene of one act of his comedy (as he had to do to be historically

accurate), his stage directions could not possibly be accommodated

to its architecture. In 1891 Mr. Louis Loeb, the American artist,

whose early death in the summer of 1909 is widely mourned, visited

the spot and made drawings for me of the exterior and interior of

the church as it looked then. The church was built in the last half

decade of the thirteenth century, and on its water-stained walls,

when I visited it, there were still to be seen faint traces of the

frescoes which once adorned it and were painted in the fourteenth,

fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; but they were ruined beyond

hope of restoration. In the Germanic Museum I found a wooden tablet

dating back to 1581, painted by one Franz Hein. It preserves

portraits of four distinguished members of the mastersingers' guild.

There is a middle panel occupied by two pictures, the upper

showing King David, the patron saint of the guild, so forgetful of

chronology as to be praying before a crucifix, the lower a meeting

of the mastersingers. Over the heads of the assemblage is a

representative of the medallion with which the victor in a contest

used to be decorated, as we see in the last scene of Wagner's

comedy. One of these decorations was given to the guild by Sachs

and was in use for a whole century. At the end of that time it had

become so worn that Wagenseil replaced it with another.

Church and tablet are the only relics of the mastersingers left

in Nuremberg which may be called personal. I had expected to find

autobiographic manuscripts of Sachs, but in this was disappointed.

There is a volume of mastersongs in the poet-cobbler's handwriting

in the Royal Library of Berlin, and one of these is the composition

of the veritable Sixtus Beckmesser; but most of the Sachs

manuscripts are in Zwickau. In the Bibliotheca Norica Williana,

incorporated with the Municipal Library of Nuremberg, there are

several volumes of mastersingers' songs purchased from an old

mastersinger some 135 years ago, and from these the students may

learn the structure and spirit of the mastersongs of the period of

the opera as well as earlier and later periods, though he will find

all the instruction he needs in any dozen or twenty of the 4275

mastersongs written by Hans Sachs. The manuscript books known serve

to prove one thing which needed not to have called up a doubt. In

them are poems from all of the mastersingers who make up the meeting

which condemns Walther in St. Catherine's church. Wagner has adhered

to the record. {2} The most interesting of Sixtus Beckmesser's

compositions is "A New Year's Song," preserved in the handwriting

of Sachs in the Royal Library at Berlin. This I have translated in

order to show the form of the old mastersongs as described by the

apprentice, David, in Wagner's comedy, and also to prove (so far

as a somewhat free translation can) that the veritable Beckmesser

was not the stupid dunce that Wagner, for purposes of his own,

and tempted, doubtless, by the humor which he found in the name,

represented him to be. In fact, I am strongly tempted to believe

that with the exception of Sachs himself, Beckmesser was the best

of the mastersingers of the Nuremberg school:--

A NEW YEAR'S SONG

By Sixtus Beckmesser

(First "Stoll")

Joy

Christian thoughts employ

This day

Doth say

The Book of old

That we should hold

The faith foretold;

For naught doth doubt afford.

The patriarchs with one accord

Lived hoping that the Lord

Would rout the wicked horde.

Thus saith the word

To all believers given.

(Second "Stoll")

God

Council held, triune,

When soon

The boon

The son foresaw:

Fulfilled the law

That we might draw

Salvation's prize. God then

An angel sent cross moor and fen,

('Twas Gabriel, heaven's denizen,)

To Mary, purest maid 'mongst men.

He greeted her

With blessings sent from heaven.

(The "Abgesang")

Thus spake the angel graciously:

"The Lord with thee,

Thou blessed she;

The Lord's voice saith,

Which breathes thy breath,

That men have earned eternal death.

Faith

Saves alone from sin's subjection;

For while weak Eve God's anger waked,

'Twas, Ave, thine the blest election

To give the world peace and protection,

Most blessed gift

To mortals ever given!"

In Nuremberg the veritable Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tännhauser,

Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before

the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy. Very

naïve and very archaic indeed are Hans Sachs's dramas compared with

Wagner's; but it is, perhaps, not an exaggeration to say that Sachs

was as influential a factor in the dramatic life of his time as

Wagner in ours. He was among the earliest of the German poets

who took up the miracle plays and mysteries after they had been

abandoned by the church and developed them on the lines which ran

out into the classic German drama. His immediate predecessors were

the writers of the so-called "Fastnacht" (Mardi-gras) plays, who

flourished in Nuremberg in the fifteenth century. Out of these

plays German comedy arose, and among those who rocked its cradle

was another of the mastersingers who plays a part in Wagner's

opera,--Hans Folz. It was doubtless largely due to the influence of

Hans Sachs that the guild of mastersingers built the first German

theatre in Nuremberg in 1550. Before then plays with religious

subjects were performed in St. Catherine's church, as we have seen,

the meeting place of the guild. Secular plays were represented in

private houses.

Hans Sachs wrote no less than 208 dramas, which he divided into

"Carnival Plays," "Plays," "Comedies," and "Tragedies." He dropped

the first designation in his later years, but his first dramatic

effort was a Fastnachtspiel, and treated the subject of Tannhäuser

and Venus. It bears the date February 21, 1517, and was therefore

written 296 years before Wagner was born. Of what is now dramatic

form and structure, there is not a sign in this play. It is merely

a dialogue between Venus and various persons who stand for as many

classes of society. The title is: "Das Hoffgesindt Veneris," or,

as it might be rendered in English, "The Court of Venus." The

characters are a Herald, Faithful Eckhardt, Danheuser (sic),

Dame Venus, a Knight, Physician, Citizen, Peasant, Soldier, Gambler,

Drunkard, Maid, and Wife. The Knight, Citizen, and the others appear

in turn before Venus and express contempt for her powers,--the

Knight because of his bravery, the Physician because of his learning,

the Maid because of her virtue, the Wife because of her honor.

Faithful Eckhardt, a character that figures in many Thuringian

legends, especially in tales of the Wild Hunt, warns each person in

turn to beware of Venus. The latter listens to each boast and lets

loose an arrow. Each boaster succumbs with a short lamentation. When

the play opens, Danheuser is already a prisoner of the goddess.

After all the rest have fallen victims, he begs for his release,

and they join in his petition. Venus rejects the prayer, speaks in

praise of her powers, and calls on a piper for music. A general

dance follows, whereupon the company go with the enchantress into

the Venusberg. The last speech of Venus ends with the line:--

So says Hans Sachs of Nuremberg.

There is but a single scene in "The Court of Venus." In other plays

written in after years, no matter how often the action demanded it,

there is neither change of scenes nor division into acts; and the

personages, whether Biblical or classical, talk in the manner of

the simple folk of the sixteenth century. Sachs's tragedy, "Von der

strengen Lieb' Herrn Tristrant mit der schönen Königin Isalden" ("Of

the strong love of Lord Tristram and the beautiful Queen Iseult"),

contains seven acts, as is specified in the continuation of the

title "und hat sieben Akte." It was written thirty-six years later

than the carnival play and three years after the establishment of

a theatre in Nuremberg by the mastersingers. Each act ends with a

triple rhyme. Though Sachs uses stage directions somewhat freely

compared with the other dramatists of the period, the personages

all speak in the same manner, and time and space are annihilated in

the action most bewilderingly. Thus, no sooner does Herr Tristrant

volunteer to meet Morhold der Held to settle the question of

"Curnewelshland's" tribute to "Irland" than the two are at it hammer

and tongs on an island in the ocean. All the other incidents of the

old legends follow as fast as they are mentioned. Tristrant saves

his head in Ireland when discovered as the slayer of Morhold by

ridding the country of a dragon, and is repeatedly convicted of

treachery and taken back into confidence by König Marx, as one may

read in Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." Sachs follows an old

conclusion of the story and gives Tristrant a second Iseult to wife,

and she tells the lie about the sails. The first Iseult dies of a

broken heart at the sight of her lover's bier, and the Herald in a

speech draws the moral of the tale:--

Aus dem so lass dich treulich warnen,

O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen,

Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh',

Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh.

Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren,

Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren.

Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen

Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen.

Dass stete Lieb' und Treu' aufwachs'

Im ehlich'n Stand', das wünscht Hans Sachs.

One of the most thrilling scenes in "Die Meistersinger" is the

greeting of Hans Sachs by the populace when the hero enters with the

mastersingers' guild at the festival of St. John (the chorus, "Wach'

auf! es nahet gen den Tag"). Here there is another illustration of

Wagner's adherence to the verities of history, or rather, of his

employment of them. The words of the uplifting choral song are not

Wagner's, but were written by the old cobbler-poet himself. Wagner's

stage people apply them to their idol, but Sachs uttered them in

praise of Martin Luther; they form the beginning of his poem

entitled "The Wittenberg Nightingale," which was printed in 1523.

To the old history of Nuremberg written by Wagenseil, Wagner went

for other things besides the theatre and personages of his play.

From it he got the rules which governed the meeting of the

mastersingers, like that which follows the religious service in the

church of St. Catherine in the first act, and the singular names

of the melodies to which, according to David, the candidates for

mastersingers' honors were in the habit of improvising their songs.

In one instance he made a draft on an authentic mastersinger melody.

The march which is used throughout the comedy to symbolize the guild

begins as follows:--

[Musical excerpt]

Here we have an exact quotation from the beginning of the first

Gesetz in the "Long Tone" of Heinrich Müglin, which was a tune

that every candidate for membership in the guild had to be able to

sing. The old song is given in full in Wagenseil's book, and on the

next page I have reproduced a portion of this song in fac-simile, so

that my readers can observe the accuracy of Wagner's quotation and

form an idea of the nature of the poetic frenzy which used to fill

the mastersingers, as well as enjoy the ornamental passages (called

"Blumen" in the old regulations) and compare them with the fiorituri

of Beckmesser's serenade.

There is no doubt in my mind but that Wagner's purpose in "Die

Meistersinger" was to celebrate the triumph of the natural, poetical

impulse, stimulated by healthy emotion and communion with nature,

over pedantry and hide-bound conservatism. In the larger study of

the opera made in another place, I have attempted to show that the

contest is in reality the one which is always waging between the

principles of romanticism and classicism, a contest which is

essentially friendly and necessary to progress. The hero of the

comedy is not Walther, but Sachs, who represents in himself both

principles, who stands between the combatants and checks the

extravagances of both parties. {3}

Like Beethoven in his "Leonore" overtures written for the opera

"Fidelio," Wagner constructs the symphonic introduction to his

comedy so as to indicate the elements of his dramatic story, their

progress in the development of the play, and, finally, the outcome.

The melodies are of two sorts conforming to the two parties into

which the personages of the play can be divided; and, like those

parties, the melodies are broadly distinguished by external

physiognomy and emotional essence. Most easily recognized are the

two broad march tunes typical of the mastersingers and their

pageantry. One of them has already been presented. Like its

companion,--

[Musical excerpt]

which opens the prelude, it is a strong, simple melody, made on the

intervals of the diatonic scale, square-cut in rhythm, firm and

dignified, and, like the mastersingers, complacent and a trifle

pompous in stride. The three melodies which are presented in

opposition to the spirit represented by the mastersingers and their

typical music, are disclosed by a study of the comedy to be

associated with the passion of the young lovers, Walther and Eva.

They differ in every respect--melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic,--from

those which stand for the old guildsmen and their rule-of-thumb

notions. They are chromatic, as see this:--

[Musical excerpt]

and this (which is the melody which in a broadened form becomes that

of Walther's prize song):--

[Musical excerpt]

and this, which is peculiarly the symbol of youthful ardor:--

[Musical excerpt]

Their rhythms are less regular and more eager (note the influence of

syncopation upon them); they are harmonized with greater warmth and

infused with greater passion. In the development of the prelude

these melodies are presented at first consecutively, then as in

conflict (first one, then another pushing forward for expression),

finally in harmonious and contented union. The middle part of the

prelude, in which the opening march tune is heard in short, quick

notes (in diminution, as the theoreticians say) maybe looked upon as

caricaturing the mastersingers, not in their fair estate, but as

they are satirized in the comedy in the person of Beckmesser.

Footnotes:

{1} "Joh. Christophori Wagenseilii De Sacri Rom. Imperii Libera

Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio. Accedit, De Germaniae

Phonascorum Von Der Meister-Singer Origine, Praestantia, Utilitate,

et Institutis, Sermone Vernaculo Liber. Altdorf Noricorum Typis

Impensisque Jodoci Wilhelmi Kohlesii. CID ICD XCVII."

{2} I quote from Wagenseil's book--he is writing about the history

of the mastersingers: "Nach der Stadt Mäyntz, hat in den Stätten

Nürnberg und Strassburg / die Meister-Singer-Kunst sonderlich

floriret / wie dann auchXII. Alte Nürnbergische Meister annoch im

Beruff sind; so mit Namen geheissen / 1. Veit Pogner. 2. Cuntz

Vogelgesang. 3. Hermann Ortel. 4. Conrad Nachtigal. 5. Fritz

Zorn. 6. Sixtus Beckmesser. 7. Fritz Kohtner. 8. Niclaus Vogel.

9. Augustin Moser. 10. Hannss Schwartz. 11. Ulrich Eisslinger.

12. Hannss Foltz."

{3} "In the musical contest it is only the perverted idea of

Classicism which is treated with contumely and routed; the

glorification of the triumph of Romanticism is found in the

stupendously pompous and brilliant setting given to the

mastersingers' music at the end. You see already in this prelude

that Wagner is a true comedian. He administers chastisement with a

smile and chooses for its subject only things which are temporary

aberrations from the good. What is strong, and true, and pure, and

wholesome in the art of the mastersingers he permits to pass through

his satirical fires unscathed. Classicism, in its original sense as

the conservator of that which is highest and best in art, he leaves

unharmed, presenting her after her trial, as Tennyson presents his

Princess at the close of his corrective poem, when

"All

Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,

And left her woman, lovelier in her mood

Than in her mould that other, when she came

From barren deeps to conquer all with love."

--"Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," by H. E. Krehbiel, p. 95.

CHAPTER XVI

"LOHENGRIN"

In the last hundred lines of the last book of his epic poem to which

Wagner went for the fundamental incidents, not principles, of his

"Parsifal," Wolfram von Eschenbach tells the story of one of the

Grail King's sons whom he calls Loherangrin. This son was a lad when

Parzival (thus Wolfram spells the name) became King of the Holy

Grail and the knights who were in its service. When he had grown

to manhood, there lived in Brabant a queen who was equally gifted

in beauty, wealth, and gentleness. Many princes sought her hand in

marriage, but she refused them all, and waited for the coming of one

whom God had disclosed to her in a vision. One day a knight of great

beauty and nobley, as Sir Thomas Mallory would have said, came to

Antwerp in a boat drawn by a swan. To him the queen at once gave

greeting as lord of her dominions; but in the presence of the

assembled folk he said to her: "If I am to become ruler of this

land, know that it will be at great sacrifice to myself. Should you

nevertheless wish me to remain with you, you must never ask who

I am; otherwise I must leave you forever." The queen made solemn

protestation that she would never do aught against his will. Then

her marriage with the stranger knight was celebrated, and they abode

together long in happiness and honor. But at the last the queen was

led to put the fatal question. Then the swan appeared with the boat,

and Loherangrin, for it was he, was drawn back to Montsalvat, whence

he had come. But to those whom he left behind he gave his sword,

horn, and ring.

There are other mediaeval poems which deal with the story of

Lohengrin, more, indeed, than can or need be discussed here. Some,

however, deserve consideration because they supply elements which

Wagner used in his opera but did not find in Wolfram's poem. Wagner

went, very naturally, to a poem of the thirteenth century, entitled

"Lohengrin," for the majority of the incidents of the drama. Thence

he may have drawn the motive for the curiosity of Elsa touching the

personality of her husband. Of course, it lies in human nature, as

stories which are hundreds if not thousands of years older attest;

but I am trying, as I have been in preceding chapters in this book,

to account for the presence of certain important elements in

Wagner's opera, and so this poem must also be considered. In it

Lohengrin rescues Elsa, the Duchess of Brabant, from the false

accusations of Telramund, the knight having been summoned from

Montsalvat (or "Monsalväsch," to be accurate) by the ringing of a

bell which Elsa had taken from a falcon's leg. The knight marries

her, but first exacts a promise that she will never seek of him

knowledge of his race or country. After the happy domestic life of

the pair has been described, it is told how Lohengrin overthrew the

Duke of Cleves at a tournament in Cologne and broke his arm. The

Duchess of Cleves felt humiliated at the overthrow of her husband by

a knight of whom nothing was known, and wickedly insinuated that it

was a pity that so puissant a jouster should not be of noble birth,

thereby instilling a fatal curiosity into the mind of the Lady of

Brabant, which led to questions which Lohengrin answered before the

emperor's court and then disappeared from view. From "Der jüngere

Titurel," another mediaeval poem, came the suggestion that the

mysterious knight's prowess was due to sorcery and might be set at

naught if his bodily integrity were destroyed even in the slightest

degree. In the French tale of "Le Chevalier au Cygne," as told in

the "Chansons de geste," you may read the story of Helyas, who was

one of seven children of King Oriant and Queen Beatrix, who were

born with silver chains around their necks. The chains being removed

with evil purpose, the children turned into swans and flew away--all

but one, Helyas, who was absent at the time. But Helyas got

possession of all the chains but one, which had been wrought into a

cup, and one day, when he heard the sound of wings, and six swans

let themselves down into the water, he threw the chains around their

necks, and they at once assumed the forms of his brothers. Also how,

one day, Helyas, from the window of his palace, saw a swan drawing a

boat, and how he donned his armor, took a golden horn, and was drawn

away to Nimwegen, where Emperor Otto was holding court. There he

found that the Count of Blankenbourg had accused his sister-in-law,

the Duchess of Bouillon, of having poisoned her husband, and had

laid claim to the duchy. There was to be a trial by ordeal of

battle, and while the duchess waited for the coming of a champion,

lo! there was the sound of a horn, and Helyas came down the river in

a boat drawn by a swan, undertook the cause of the innocent lady,

slew her accuser, and married her daughter. For long she was a good

and faithful wife, and bore him a child who became the mother of

Godfrey de Bouillon, Baldwin de Sebourg, and Eustace de Boulogne.

But one day she asked of her lord his name and race. Then he bade

her repair to Nimwegen, and commending her and her daughter to the

care of the emperor, he departed thence in a swan-drawn boat and was

never seen more.

Here we have the essentials of the story which Wagner wrought into

his opera "Lohengrin" Only a few details need be added to make the

plot complete. The meeting of Lohengrin and Elsa takes place on the

banks of the river Scheldt in Brabant. The King has come to ask

the help of the Brabantians against the Huns, who are invading

Germany. He finds Brabant in a disturbed state. The throne is

vacant; Count Frederick of Telramund, who has his eyes upon it,

had offered his hand in marriage to Elsa, who, with her brother,

Gottfried, had been left in his care on the death of their father,

but had met with a refusal. He had then married Ortrud, a Frisian

princess. She is the last of a royal line, but a pagan, and

practises sorcery. To promote the ambition of herself and her

husband, she has changed Gottfried into a swan by throwing a magical

chain about his neck, and persuaded Telramund to accuse Elsa of

having murdered the boy in the hope of enjoying the throne together

with a secret lover. The King summons Elsa to answer the charge and

decrees trial by ordeal of battle. Commanded to name her champion,

she tells of a knight seen in a dream: upon him alone will she

rely. Not until the second call of the Herald has gone out and

Elsa has fallen to her knees in prayer does the champion appear. He

is a knight in shining white armor who comes in a boat drawn by a

swan. He accepts the gage of battle, after asking Elsa whether or

not she wants him to be her husband if victorious in the combat, and

exacting a promise never to ask of him whence he came or what his

name or race. He overcomes Telramund, but gives him his life; the

King, however, banishes the false accuser and sets the stranger over

the people of Brabant with the title of Protector. Telramund is

overwhelmed by his misfortunes, but Ortrud urges him to make another

trial to regain what he has lost. The knight, she says, had won by

witchcraft, and if but the smallest joint of his body could be taken

from him, he would be impotent. Together they instil disquiet and

suspicion into the mind of Elsa as she is about to enter the

minster to be married. After the wedding guests have departed, her

newly found happiness is disturbed by doubt, and a painful curiosity

manifests itself in her speech. Lohengrin admonishes, reproves,

and warns in words of tenderest love. He had given up greater

glories than his new life had to offer out of love for her. A

horrible fear seizes her: he who had so mysteriously come would as

mysteriously depart. Cost what it may, she must know who he is. She

asks the question, but before he can reply Telramund rushes into

the room with drawn weapon. Elsa has but time to hand Lohengrin his

sword, with which he stretches the would-be assassin dead on the

chamber floor. Then he commands that the body be carried before the

King, whither he also directs her maids to escort his wife. There is

another conclave of King and nobles. Lohengrin asks if he had acted

within his right in slaying Telramund, and his deed is approved by

all. Then he gives public answer to Elsa's question:

In distant lands, where ye can never enter,

A castle stands and Montsalvat its name;

A radiant temple rises from its center

More glorious far than aught of earthly fame.

And there a vessel of most wondrous splendor,

A shrine, most holy, guarded well doth rest,

To which but mortals purest service render--

'Twas brought to earth by hosts of angels blest!

Once every year a dove from heaven descendeth

To strengthen then its wondrous powers anew:

'Tis called the Grail--and purest faith it lendeth

To those good knights who are its chosen few.

To serve the Grail whoe'er is once elected

Receives from it a supernatural might;

From baneful harm and fraud is he protected,

Away from him flees death and gloom of night!

Yea, whom by it to distant lands is bidden

As champion to some virtuous cause maintain,

Well knows its powers are from him never hidden,

If, as its knight, he unrevealed remain.

Such wondrous nature is the Grail's great blessing,

Reveal'd must then the knight from mortals flee:

Let not rest in your hearts a doubt oppressing,--

If known to you he saileth o'er the sea.

Now list what he to you in troth declareth:

The Grail obeying here to you I came.

My father Parzival, a crown he weareth,

His knight am I and Lohengrin my name! {1}

A prohibition which rests upon all who are served by a Knight of the

Grail having been violated, he must depart from thence; but before

going he gives his sword, horn, and ring to Elsa, and tells her that

had he been permitted to live but one year at her side, her brother

would have returned in conduct of the Grail. The swan appears to

convey him back to his resplendent home. Ortrud recognizes the chain

around its neck and gloats over her triumph; but Lohengrin hears her

shout. He sinks on his knees in silent prayer. As he rises, a white

dove floats downward toward the boat. Lohengrin detaches the chain

from the neck of the swan. The bird disappears, and in its place

stands Gottfried, released from the spell put upon him by the

sorceress. The dove draws the boat with its celestial passenger

away, and Elsa sinks lifeless into the arms of her brother.

In this story of Lohengrin there is an admixture of several elements

which once had no association. It is the story of an adventure of a

Knight of the Holy Grail; also a story involving the old principle

of taboo; and one of many stories of the transformation of a human

being into a swan, or a swan into a human being. This swan myth is

one of the most widely spread of all transformation tales; it may

even be found in the folk-stories of the American Indians. To

discuss this feature would carry one too far afield, and I have

a different purpose in view.

* * *

The two Figaro operas, the discussion of which opened this book,

were composed by different men, and a generation of time separated

their production. The opera which deals with the second chapter of

the adventures of Seville's factotum was composed first, and is the

greater work of the two; yet we have seen how pleasantly they can be

associated with each other, and, no doubt, many who admire them have

felt with me the wish that some musician with sufficient skill and

the needful reverence would try the experiment of remodelling the

two and knitting their bonds closer by giving identity of voice

to the personages who figure in both. The Wagnerian list presents

something like a parallel, and it would be a pleasant thing if two

of the modern poet-composer's dramas which have community of subject

could be brought into similar association, so that one might be

performed as a sequel to the other. The operas are "Lohengrin" and

"Parsifal." A generation also lies between them, and they ought

to bear a relationship to each other something like that existing

between "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." Indeed,

the bond ought to be closer, for one man wrote books and music

as well of the Grail dramas, whereas different librettists and

different composers created the Figaro comedies. But it will

never be possible to bring Wagner's most popular opera and his

"stage-consecrating play" into logical union, notwithstanding that

both deal with the legend of the Holy Grail and that the hero of one

proclaims himself to be the son of the hero of the other. Wagner

cast a loving glance at the older child of his brain when he quoted

some of the "swan music" of "Lohengrin "in "Parsifal"; but he built

an insurmountable wall between them when he forsook the sane and

simple ideas which inspired him in writing "Lohengrin" for the

complicated fabric of mediaeval Christianity and Buddhism which

he strove to set forth in "Parsifal." In 1847 Wagner was willing

to look at the hero of the quest of the Holy Grail whom we

call Percival through the eyes of his later guide, Wolfram von

Eschenbach. To Wolfram Parzival was a married man; more than that--a

married lover, clinging with devotion to the memory of the wife from

whose arms he had torn himself to undertake the quest, and losing

himself in tender brooding for days when the sight of blood-spots

on the snow suggested to his fancy the red and white of fair

Konwiramur's cheeks. Thirty years later Wagner could only conceive

of his Grail hero as a celibate and an ascetic. Lohengrin glories in

the fact that he is the son of him who wears the crown of the Grail;

but Parsifal disowns his son.

This is one instance of the incoherency of the two Grail dramas.

There is another, and by this second departure from the old legends

which furnished forth his subject, Wagner made "Lohengrin" and

"Parsifal" forever irreconcilable. The whole fabric of the older

opera rests on the forbidden question:--

Nie solist du mich befragen, noch

Wissen's Sorge tragen,

woher ich kam der Fahrt,

noch wie mein Nam' und Art. {2}

So impressed was Wagner with the significance of this dramatic

motive sixty years ago, that he gave it a musical setting which

still stands as the finest of all his many illustrations of the

principle of fundamental or typical phrases in dramatic music:--

[Musical excerpt--"Nie sollst du mich befragen"]

And no wonder. No matter where he turned in his studies of the

Grail legend, he was confronted by the fact that it was by asking a

question that the seeker after the Grail was to release the ailing

king, whom he found in the castle in which the talismans were

preserved, from his sufferings. In the Welsh tale of Peredur and

the French romances the question went only to the meaning of the

talismans; but this did not suffice Wolfram von Eschenbach, who

in many ways raised the ethical standard of the Grail legend. He

changed the question so as to make it a sign of affectionate and

compassionate interest on the part of the questioner; it was no

longer, "What mean the bloody head and the bleeding lance?" but

"What ails thee, uncle?"

Wagner was fond, a little overfond, indeed, of appealing to the

public over the heads of the critics, of going to the jury rather

than the judge, when asking for appreciation of his dramas; but

nothing is plainer to the close student than that he was never

wholly willing to credit the public with possession of that high

imaginativeness to which his dramas more than those of any other

composer make appeal. His first conception of the finale of

"Tannhäuser," for instance, was beautiful, poetical, and reasonable;

for the sake of a spectacle he reconstructed it after the original

production and plunged it into indefensible confusion and absurdity.

A desire to abstain as much as possible from criticism (that not

being the purpose of this book) led me to avoid mention of this

circumstance in the exposition of "Tannhäuser"; but I find that I

must now set it forth, though briefly. In the original form of the

opera there was no funeral procession and no death of the hero

beside the bier of the atoning saint. The scene between Tannhäuser

and Wolfram was interrupted by the tolling of a bell in the castle

to indicate the death of Elizabeth and the appearance of a glow of

rose-colored light across the valley to suggest the presence of

Venus. By bringing the corpse of Elizabeth on the stage so that

Tannhäuser might die by its side, Wagner was guilty of worse than an

anachronism. The time which elapses in the drama between Elizabeth's

departure from the scene and her return as a corpse is just as long

as the song which Wolfram sings in which he apostrophizes her as his

"holder Abendstern"--just as long and not a moment longer. There

is no question here of poetical license, for Wolfram sings the

apostrophe after her retreating figure, and the last chord of

his postlude is interrupted by Tannhäuser's words, "Ich hörte

Harfenschlag!" Yet we are asked to assume that in the brief interim

Elizabeth has ascended the mountain to the Wartburg, died, been

prepared for burial, and brought back to the valley as the central

object of a stately funeral.

It would have been much wiser to have left the death of Elizabeth

to the imagination of the public than to have made the scene

ridiculous. But Wagner was afraid to do that, lest his purpose be

overlooked. He was a master of theatrical craft, and though he could

write a tragedy like "Tristan und Isolde," with little regard for

external action, he was quite unwilling to miss so effective a

theatrical effect as the death of Tannhäuser beside Elizabeth's

bier. After all, he did not trust the public, whose judgment he

affected to place above that of his critics, and for this reason,

while he was willing to call up memories of his earlier opera by

quoting some of its music in "Parsifal," he ignored the question

which plays so important a rôle in "Lohengrin," and made the healing

of Amfortas depend upon a touch of the talismanic spear--a device

which came into the Grail story from pagan sources, as I have

already pointed out.

Now, why was the questioning of Lohengrin forbidden? Wolfram von

Eschenbach tells us, and his explanation sufficed Wagner when he

made his first studies of the Grail legends as a preparation for

"Lohengrin." It was the Holy Grail itself which pronounced the

taboo. An inscription appeared on the talisman one day commanding

that whenever a Knight of the Grail went into foreign lands to

assume rule over a people, he was to admonish them not to question

him concerning his name and race; should the question be put, he

was to leave them at once. And the reason?

Weil der gute Amfortas

So lang in bittern Schmerzen lag,

Und ihn die Frage lange mied,

Ist ihnen alles Fragen leid;

All des Grales Dienstgesellen

Wollen sich nicht mehr fragen lassen.

The same explanation is made in the mediaeval poem "Lohengrin." We

are not called upon to admire the logic of Wolfram and the Knights

of the Grail, but nothing could be plainer than this: The sufferings

of Amfortas having been wofully prolonged by Parzival's failure to

ask the healing question, the Knights of the Grail were thereafter

required by their oracular guide to prohibit all questioning of

themselves under penalty of forfeiture of their puissant help.

When Wagner wrote his last drama, he was presented with a dilemma:

should he remain consistent and adhere to the question as a dramatic

motive, or dare the charge of inconsistency for the sake of that bit

of spectacular apparatus, the sacred lance? He chose inconsistency

and the show, and emphasized the element of relic worship to such

a degree as to make his drama foreign to the intellectual and

religious habits of the time in which he wrote. But this did not

disturb him; for he knew that beauty addresses itself to the

emotions rather than the intellect, and that his philosophical

message of the redeeming power of loving comnpassion would find

entrance to the hearts of the people over all the obstacles that

reason might interpose. Yet he destroyed all the poetical bonds

which ought or might have existed between "Parsifal" and "Lohengrin."

It was Wagner who created the contradiction which puts his operas

in opposition by his substitution of the sacred lance as a dramatic

motive for the question. But poets had long before taken the

privilege of juggling with two elements of ancient myths and

folk-tales which are blended in the story of Lohengrin. Originally

there was no relationship between the Knight of the Holy Grail and

the Swan Knight, and there is no telling when the fusion of the

tales was made. But the element of the forbidden question is of

unspeakable antiquity and survives in the law of taboo which

exists among savages to-day. When Wagner discussed his opera in

his "Communication to My Friends" he pointed out the resemblance

between the story of Lohengrin and the myth of Zeus and Semele. Its

philosophical essence he proclaimed to be humanity's feeling of

the necessity of love. Elsa was "the woman who drew Lohengrin from

the sunny heights to the depths of earth's warm heart. . . . Thus

yearned he for woman--for the human heart. And thus did he step down

from out his loneliness of sterile bliss when he heard this woman's

cry for succor, this heart cry from humanity below." This is all

very well, and it would be churlish to say that it is not beautifully

reflected in Wagner's drama; but it does not explain the need of the

prohibition. A woman who loves must have unquestioning faith in her

husband--that is all. But there are two ancient myths which show

that the taboo was conceived as a necessary ingredient of the

association of divine men with human women. Let both be recalled,

for both have plainly gone over into the mediaeval story.

The first is the one to which Wagner made allusion: Jupiter has

given his love to Semele. Wickedly prompted by the jealous Juno,

Semele asks her august lover to grant her a wish. He promises

that she shall have her desire, and confirms his words with the

irrevocable oath, swearing by the Stygian flood. Semele asks him

then to appear to her in all his celestial splendor. The god would

have stopped her when he realized her purpose, but it was too late.

Sorrowfully he returned to the celestial abode and fearfully he put

on his lesser panoply. Arrayed in this he entered the chamber of

Semele, but though he had left behind him the greater splendors,

the immortal radiance consumed her to ashes.

That is one story; the other is the beautiful fable, freighted with

ethical symbolism, which Apulcius gave to literature in the second

century of the Christian era, though, no doubt, his exquisite

story is only the elaboration of a much older conceit. Psyche, the

daughter of a king, arouses the envy of Venus because of her beauty,

and the goddess's anger because of the feeling which that beauty

inspires among men. She resolves to punish her presumptuous mortal

rival, and sends Cupid as her messenger of vengeance. But the God

of Love falls himself a victim to the maiden's charms. The spell

which he puts upon her he cannot wholly dissipate. Hosts of admirers

still follow Psyche, but no worthy man offers her marriage. Her

parents consult the oracle of Apollo, who tells him that she is

doomed to become the wife of a monster who lives upon a high

mountain. The maiden sees in this a punishment meted out by Venus

and offers herself as a propitiatory sacrifice. Left alone by

parents and friends, she climbs the rocky steeps and falls asleep

in the wilderness. Thither come the Zephyrs and carry her to a

beautiful garden, where unseen hands serve her sumptuously in a

magnificent palace and the voices of invisible singers ravish her

cars with music. Every night she is visited by a mysterious being

who lavishes loving gifts upon her, but forbids her to look upon

his face, and disappears before dawn. Psyche's sisters, envious

of her good fortune and great happiness, fill her mind with wicked

doubt and distrust. A fatal curiosity seizes upon her, and one night

she uncovers her lamp to look upon the form of her doting companion.

Instead of the monster spoken of by the oracle, she sees the

loveliest of the immortals. It is Cupid who lies sleeping before

her, with snowy wings folded, and golden ringlets clustering about

his shoulders. Anxious for a closer view, Psyche leans over him,

but a drop of hot oil falls from the lamp upon his shining skin.

The god awakes, and without a word flies out of the window. Palace

and garden disappear, and Psyche is left alone to suffer the

consequences of her foolish curiosity. After wandering long in

search of the lost one, she wins the sympathy of Ceres, who advises

her to seek out Venus and offer reparation. She becomes the slave of

the goddess, who imposes cruel tasks upon her. But at length Cupid

can no longer endure to be separated from her, and goes to Jupiter,

who intercedes with Venus and wins her forgiveness for Psyche. Then

the supreme god gives her immortality, and she becomes forever the

wife of Cupid.

There are two other points, one legendary, one historical, which

ought to be mentioned for the sake of those who like to know the

sources of stories like that of Lohengrin. The ancient Angles had

a saga which told of the arrival in their country of a boat,

evidently sailless, oarless, and rudderless, containing only a

child surrounded by arms and treasure. They brought him up and

called him Skéaf (from which word our "sheaf"), because he lay upon

a bundle of grain. He became king of the people, and, when he felt

death upon him, commanded to be carried back to the shore where he

had been found. There lay the boat in which he had come, and when

his dead body was placed in it, it moved away of its own accord.

From him descended a race of kings. Here, I am inclined to see a

survival of the story of Danaë and her child Perseus found floating

on the sea in a chest, as sung by Simonides. The historical element

in "Lohengrin" is compassed by the figure of the king, who metes out

justice melodiously in the opening and closing scenes. It is King

Henry I of Germany, called the Fowler, who reigned from A.D. 918 to

936. He was a wise, brave, and righteous king, who fought the savage

Huns, and for his sake the management of the festival performances

at Bayreuth, in 1894, introduced costumes of the tenth century.

Footnotes:

{1} John P. Jackson's translation.

{2} In Mr. John P. Jackson's translation:--

Ne'er with thy fears shalt task me,

Nor questions idly ask me:

The land and from whence I came,

Nor yet my race and name.

CHAPTER XVII

"HÄNSEL UND GRETEL"

In many respects "Hänsel und Gretel" is the most interesting opera

composed since "Parsifal," and, by being an exception, proves

the rule to which I directed some remarks in the chapter on "Don

Giovanni." For a quarter of a century the minds of musical critics

and historians have been occupied at intervals with the question

whether or not progress in operatic composition is possible on the

lines laid down by Wagner. Of his influence upon all the works

composed within a period twice as long there never was a doubt;

but this influence manifested itself for the greater part in

modifications of old methods rather than the invention of new.

In Germany attempts have been made over and over again to follow

Wagner's system, but though a few operas thus produced have had a

temporary success, in the end it has been found that the experiments

have all ended in failures. It was but natural that the fact should

provoke discussion. If no one could write successfully in Wagner's

manner, was there a future for the lyric drama outside of a return

to the style which he had striven to overthrow? If there was no

such future, was the fact not proof of the failure of the Wagnerian

movement as a creative force? The question was frequently answered

in a spirit antagonistic to Wagner; but many of the answers were

overhasty and short-sighted. It needed only that one should come

who had thoroughly assimilated Wagner's methods and had the genius

to apply them in a spirit of individuality, to demonstrate that

it was possible to continue the production of lyric dramas without

returning to the hackneyed manner of the opposing school. The

composer who did this was Engelbert Humperdinck, and it is

particularly noteworthy that his demonstration acquired its most

convincing force from the circumstance that instead of seeking his

material in the myths of antiquity, as Wagner did, he found them

in the nursery.

While emphasizing this fact, however, it is well not to forget that

in turning to the literature of folklore for an operatic subject

Humperdinck was only carrying out one of the principles for which

Wagner contended. The Mährchen of a people are quite as much a

reflex of their intellectual, moral, and emotional life as their

heroic legends and myths. In fact, they are frequently only the

fragments of stories which, when they were created, were embodiments

of the most profound and impressive religious conceptions of which

the people were capable. The degeneration of the sun god of our

Teutonic forefathers into the Hans of Grimm's tale, who could not

learn to shiver and shake, through the Sinfiotle of the "Volsunga

Saga" and the Siegfried of the "Nibelungenlied," is so obvious that

it needs no commentary. Neither should the translation of Brynhild

into Dornröschen, the Sleeping Beauty of our children's tales.

The progress illustrated in these examples is that from myth to

Mährchen, and Humperdinck in writing his fairy opera, or nursery

opera if you will, paid tribute to German nationality in the same

coin that Wagner did when he created his "Ring of the Nibelung."

Everything about "Hänsel und Gretel" is charming to those who can

feel their hearts warm toward the family life and folklore of

Germany, of which we are, or ought to be, inheritors. The opera

originated, like Thackeray's delightful fireside pantomime for great

and small children, "The Rose and the Ring." The composer has a

sister, Frau Adelheid Wette, wife of a physician in Cologne. She,

without any particular thought of literary activity, had been in

the habit of writing little plays for production within the family

circle. For these plays her brother provided the music. In this way

grew the first dramatic version of the story of Hänsel and Gretel,

which, everybody who has had a German nurse or has read Grimm's

fairy tales knows, tells the adventures of two children, a brother

and sister, who, driven into the woods, fell into the toils of the

Crust Witch (Knusperhexe), who enticed little boys and girls into

her house, built of gingerbread and sweetmeats, and there ate them

up. The original performers of the principal characters in the play

were the daughters of Frau Wette. Charmed with the effect of the

fanciful little comedy, Herr Humperdinck suggested its expansion

into a piece of theatrical dimensions; and the opera was the result.

It was brought forward for the first time in public on December 23,

1893, in Weimar, and created so profound an impression that it

speedily took possession of all the principal theatres of Germany,

crossed the channel into England, made its way into Holland,

Belgium, and Italy, and reached America within two years. Its first

performance in New York was in an English version at Daly's Theatre

on October 8, 1895. There were drawbacks in the representation which

prevented a success, but after it had been incorporated in the

German repertory of the Metropolitan Opera-house in the season of

1895-1896 it became as much of a permanency as any opera in the list.

Humperdinck has built up the musical structure of "Hänsel und

Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much

fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it

from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the

occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The

little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear

a strong family resemblance to two little songs which the children

sing at the beginning of the first and second acts, and which are

veritable nursery songs in Germany. These ditties and the principal

melodies consorted with them contribute characteristic motifs out

of which the orchestral part is constructed; and these motifs are

developed in accordance with an interrelated scheme every bit as

logical and consistent as the scheme at the bottom of "Tristan und

Isolde." As in that stupendous musical tragedy, the orchestra takes

the part played by the chorus in Greek tragedy, so in "Hänsel und

Gretel" it unfolds the thoughts, motives, and purposes of the

personages of the play and lays bare the simple mysteries of the

plot and counterplot. The careless happiness of the children, the

apprehension of the parents, promise and fulfilment, enchantment and

disenchantment--all these things are expounded by the orchestra in a

fine flood of music, highly ingenious in contrapuntal texture, rich

in instrumental color, full of rhythmical life, on the surface of

which the idyllic play floats buoyantly, like a water-lily which

starts and slides

Upon the level in little puffs of wind,

Tho' anchored to the bottom.

It is necessary, because the music is so beautiful and also because

the piece, like the "Leonore" overtures of Beethoven and the

"Meistersinger" prelude of Wagner (of which, indeed, it is a pretty

frank imitation) is a sort of epitome of the play, to spend some

time with the prelude to "Hänsel und Gretel." After I have done

this I shall say what I have to say about the typical phrases of

the score as they are reached, and shall leave to the reader the

agreeable labor of discovering the logical scheme underlying their

introduction and development. The prelude is built out of a few

themes which are associated with some of the most significant

elements of the play. Not one of them is a personal label, as is

widely, but erroneously, supposed to be the case in Wagner's dramas.

They stand for dramatic ideas and agencies, and when these are

passed in review, as it is purposed shall be done presently, it will

be found that not the sinister but the amiable features of the story

have been chosen for celebration in the overture. Here, too, in what

may be called the ethical meaning of the prelude, Humperdinck has

followed the example of Wagner in the prelude to his comedy. Simply

for the sake of identification hereafter names will be attached to

the themes out of which the prelude is constructed and which come

from the chief melodic factors of the opera. The most important of

these is the melody sung by the horns at the beginning:--

[Musical excerpt]

Let it be called the "Prayer Theme," for the melody is that of the

prayer which the little ones utter before laying themselves down to

sleep in the wood. The melody seems to be associated throughout the

opera with the idea of divine guardianship, and is first heard in

the first scene, when Hänsel, having complained of hunger, Gretel

gently chides him and holds out comfort in the words (here I use

the English version of the opera):--

When past bearing is our grief

God, the Lord, will send relief.

Humperdinck's splendid contrapuntal skill shows itself in a most

varied use of this theme. Once in the prelude it appears in three

different forms simultaneously, and in an augmented shape it forms

the substratum of the prelude, while other themes are cunningly

woven above it. The second theme is an exceedingly bright and

energetic little phrase with which the rapid portion of the prelude

begins. It shall be called the "Counter-Charm" theme, because it is

the melodic phrase which serves as a formula with which the spell

which the witch puts upon her victims is released by her as well as

by the children who overhear it. When it occurs in the play it has

this form:--

[Musical excerpt--"hocus pocus elder bush!"]

Words and music come from the mouth of Gretel when she releases

Hänsel from the spell in the third act, and from that of Hänsel when

he performs the same office for the gingerbread children. After two

phrases of minor significance there comes the "Theme of Fulfilment,"

so called because of its association with the answer to the prayer

for protection in the woods. Thus it forms part of the dawn music at

the beginning of the third act when the children are awakened by the

Dewman. It makes up the original part of the song of this Dawn Fairy

and is the melody to which Hänsel and Gretel sing their explanation

to the wondering gingerbread children:--

The angels whispered in dreams to us in silent night

What this happy day has brought to light.

[Musical excerpt]

There is a fourth theme, the "Theme of Rejoicing" which is the

inspiration of the dance which the gingerbread children execute

around Hänsel and Gretel to celebrate their release from the

enchantment put upon them by the wicked Witch.

At the parting of the curtain we see the interior of the hut of a

poor broom-maker. Specimens of his handiwork hang upon the walls. A

tiny window beside the door in the background, shows a glimpse of

the forest beyond. Hänsel and Gretel are at work, he making brooms,

she knitting. Gretel sings an old German folk-song, beginning thus:--

[Musical excerpt--"Suse liebe suse was raschelt im stroh?"]

All the melodies in this act have a strong family resemblance, but

this song, a cradle song of the long ago, is the only one not

composed by Humperdinck. Miss Constance Bache has failed, in her

English translation, to reproduce the quaint sentiment of the

old song, which calls attention to the fact that all geese are

shoeless. It is not for want of leather,--the shoemaker has that in

plenty,--but he has no lasts, and so the poor things must needs go

barefoot. The song invites a curious historical note. "Suse" and

"Sause" were common expressions in the cradle songs which used to be

sung to the Christ-child in the German churches at Christmas when

the decadent nativity plays (now dwarfed to a mere tableau of the

manger, the holy parents, and the adoring shepherds and magi) were

still cultivated. From the old custom termed Kindeiwiegen, which

remained in the German Protestant Church centuries after the

Reformation, Luther borrowed the refrain, "Susaninne" for one of his

Christmas chorales. The beginning of the little song which Gretel

sings used to be "Sause liebe Ninne," which, of course, is Luther's

"Susaninne." The song dominates the whole of the first act. Out

of portions of its melody grows a large part of the instrumental

accompaniment to the melodious recitative in which the dialogue is

carried on. Through expressive changes, not only in this act, but

later also, it provides a medium for much dramatic expression. A

little motif with which the orchestra introduces it develops into

a song, with which Hänsel greets his sister's announcement that

a neighbor has sent in some milk, and when Gretel, as soon as

she does, attempts to teach Hänsel how to dance, the delightful

little polka tune which the two sing is almost a twin brother to

the cradle song.

It is the gift of milk which directly brings the sinister element

into the play. The mother comes home weary, hungry, and out of

humor. She finds that the children have neglected their work, and

while attempting to punish them she overturns the milk jug. It is

the last straw, and, with threats of a terrible beating if they do

not bring home a heaping basket of berries for supper, she drives

the little ones out into the forest. Exhausted, she falls asleep

beside the hearth. From the distance comes the voice of the

broom-maker trolling a song which is now merry, now sad. He enters

his hut in great good humor, however, for he has sold all his wares

and comes with his basket loaded with good things to eat and no

inconsiderable quantity of kümmel in his stomach. Till now, save for

the few moments which followed the entrance of the mother, the music

has echoed nothing but childish joy. All this is changed, however,

when the father, inquiring after his children, learns that they have

gone into the woods. He tells his wife the legend of the Witch of

the Ilsenstein and her dreadful practices, while the orchestra

builds up a gruesome picture out of fragments from the innocent song

which had opened the act. Fearful for the fate of her children, the

mother dashes into the forest, followed by the broom-maker.

A musical delineation of a witch's ride separates the first and

second acts. It is a garishly colored composition beginning with a

pompous proclamation of the "Theme of the Witch":--

[Musical excerpt]

This is interwoven with echoes from the song of the broom-maker,

and, as might be expected, a great deal of chromatic material, such

as seems indispensable in musical pictures of the supernatural.

Towards the close the weird elements gradually disappear and give

way to a peaceful forest mood, pervaded by a long-drawn melody from

the trumpet, accompanied by sounds suggestive of the murmuring of

trees. The parting of the curtain discovers a scene in the depths

of the woods. Gretel sits under a large tree weaving a garland of

flowers. Hänsel is picking strawberries. The sun is setting. Gretel

sings another folk-song, the meaning of which is lost to those who

are unfamiliar with the song in the original. It is a riddle of

the German nursery: "A little man stands in the forest, silent and

alone, wearing a purplish red mantle. He stands on one leg, and

wears a little black cap. Who is the little man?" Answer:--the

Hagebutte; i.e. the rose apple, fruit of the rose tree. After the

Witch's ride, nothing could be more effective in restoring the

ingenuous mood essential to the play than this song, which is as

graceful and pretty in melody as it is arch in sentiment. With the

dialogue which follows, a variation of the closing cadence of the

song is sweetly blended by the orchestra. Hänsel crowns Gretel Queen

of the Woods with the floral wreath, and is doing mock reverence to

her when a cuckoo calls from a distance. The children mimic the cry,

then playfully twit the bird with allusions to its bad practice of

eating the eggs of other birds and neglecting its own offspring.

Then they play at cuckoo, eating the strawberries in lieu of eggs,

until the basket is empty. They remember the threat of their mother,

and want to fill the basket again, but darkness is settling around

them. They lose their way, and their agitated fancy sees spectres

and goblins all around them. Hänsel tries to reassure his sister

by hallooing, and scores of voices send back echoes, while the

cuckoo continues its lonely cry. Gretel is overcome by fear for a

moment, and Hänsel, too, succumbs to fright when he sees a figure

approaching through the mist. But it is not a goblin, as the

children think--only the Sandman, a little gray, stoop-shouldered

old man, carrying a bag. He smiles reassuringly and sings a song of

his love for children, while he sprinkles sleep-sand in the eyes of

the pair. The second part of his song introduces another significant

phrase into the score; it is the "Theme of Promise," to which the

Sleep Fairy sings the assurance that the angels give protection and

send sweet dreams to good children while they are asleep:--

[Musical excerpt]

"Sandman has been here," says Hänsel, sleepily; "let us say our

evening blessing." They kneel and repeat the prayer to the melody

which has been called the "Prayer Theme," then go to sleep in each

other's arms. All has been dark. Now a bright light pierces the

mist, which gathers itself into a cloud that gradually takes the

shape of a staircase reaching apparently from heaven to earth. The

orchestra plays a beautiful and extended piece of music, of which

the principal melodic material is derived from the themes of

"Prayer" and "Promise," while seven pairs of angels descend the

cloud-stairs and group themselves about the little sleepers, and

a golden host extends upward to the celestial abode. By this time

the scene is filled with a glory of light, and the curtain closes.

The greater part of the dramatic story is told in, the third act.

The opening of the curtain is preceded by a brief instrumental

number, the principal elements of which are a new theme:--

[Musical excerpt]

and the "Theme of Fulfilment." The significance of the latter in

this place is obvious: the promised benison to the children has

been received. The former theme is a pretty illustration of what

has already been said of Humperdinck's consistent devotion to the

folk-song spirit in his choice of melodies. The phrase has an

interrogatory turn and is, in fact, the melody of the mysterious

question which comes from the house of the Witch a few minutes

later, when the children help themselves to some of the toothsome

material out of which the magic structure is built:--

[Musical excerpt--"Nibble, nibble, mouskin, Who's nibbling at my

housekin?"]

Simple as this little phrase is, it is yet a draught from a

song-game that comes nigh to being universal. No phrase is more

prevalent among nursery songs than that made up of the first six

notes. The original German song itself has come down to American and

English children, and enthusiastic folklorists see in it a relic

of the ancient tree worship and an invocation of Frau Holda, the

goddess of love and spring of our Teutonic ancestors. It is the

first phrase of the German, "Ringel, ringel, reihe," which our

children know as "Ring around a rosy." It was an amiable conceit of

the composer's to put such a tune into the mouth of the Witch at a

moment of terror in the play. By it he publishes his intention

not to be too utterly gruesome in his treatment of the hag. This

intention, moreover, he fulfils in the succeeding scene. The Witch

appears weird and wicked enough in appearance, in her discordant

laugh, and the instrumental delineation of her, but when she sings

to the children, she is almost ingratiating. Of course, she is

seeking to lure them to a horrible fate, but though she does not

deceive them for even a moment, her musical manner is much like

theirs, except when she is whirling through the air on a broomstick.

When the curtain opens on the third act the scene is the same as at

the close of the second, except that morning is breaking and the

background is filled with mist, which is slowly dissipated during

the song of the Dewman (Dawn Fairy), who sprinkles dew on the

sleeping children as he sings. The beginning of his song is like

that of the Sandman, but its second part consists of the melody of

"Fulfilment" instead of that of "Promise." Gretel is the first to

awake, and she wakes Hänsel by imitating the song of the lark. He

springs up with the cry of chanticleer, and lark's trill and cock's

crow are mingled in a most winsome duet, which runs out into a

description of the dream. They look about them to point out the spot

where the angels had been. By this time the last veil of mist has

withdrawn from the background, and in the place of the forest of

firs the gingerbread house stands glistening with barley sugar in

the sunshine. To the left is the Witch's oven, to the right a cage,

all inside a fence of gingerbread children. A duet of admiration and

amazement follows in a new, undulatory melody. Hänsel wants to enter

the house, but Gretel holds him back. Finally they decide to venture

so far as to nibble a bit. Hänsel stealthily breaks a piece of

gingerbread off the corner, and at once the voice of the Witch is

heard in the phrase already quoted:--

Nibble, nibble, mousekin,

Who's nibbling at my housekin?

After a moment of alarm Gretel picks up a bit of the gingerbread

which had fallen from Hänsel's hand at the sound of the Witch's

voice, and the duet of enjoyment is resumed in a higher key. Then

a second piece of gingerbread is stolen and munched, and the weird

voice is heard again; but this time without alarm. The Witch

stealthily approaches and throws a noose about Hänsel's neck. They

have fallen into her clutches, and in a luring song she tells of

the sweetmeats which she keeps in the house for children of whom

she is fond. Hänsel and Gretel are not won over, however, by her

blandishments, and try to run away. The Witch extends her magic

wand and chants the charm which deprives her victims of the power

of motion, beginning:--

[Musical excerpt--"Hocus pocus witches' charm"]

This phrase stands in the score as the antithesis of the

"Counter-Charm" mentioned in the analysis of the prelude. It

illustrates an ingenious constructive device. Desiring to send

Gretel on an errand a moment later, the Witch disenchants her

with the formula,

Hocus, pocus, elderbush,

already described as the first theme of the Allegro in the prelude.

It is an inversion of the theme of enchantment, a proceeding

analogous to reversing the rod, or spelling the charm backward.

Wagner makes use of the same device in "Götterdämmerung" when he

symbolizes the end of things by inverting the symbol of the original

elements in "Das Rheingold." The Witch now discloses her true

character, and in the exuberance of her demoniac glee indulges in

a ride on a broom, first repeating some jargon in imitation of the

cabalistic formulas common to mediaeval necromancy. Frau Wette's

lines are partly a copy of the Witch's multiplication table in

Goethe's "Faust." The play hurries to its catastrophe. Gretel gives

Hänsel power of motion by repeating the "Counter-Charm," which she

has overheard from the Witch, and the children push the hag into

her own oven while she is heating it to roast Hänsel. The two then

break into a jubilant waltz, which the composer designates the

Knusperwalzer, i.e. the "Crust Waltz." A frightful explosion

destroys the Witch's oven, and with the crash the gingerbread

covering falls from the children, who formed the fence around the

house. They are unable to move, being still partly under a spell,

but when Hänsel repeats the "Counter-Charm," they crowd around their

deliverers and sing their gratitude. The parents of Hänsel and

Gretel, who have been hunting them, appear on the scene. Out of the

ruins of the oven the happy children drag the figure of the Witch

baked into a monstrous gingerbread, and dance around it hand in

hand. At the last all join in a swelling utterance of the "Prayer

Theme" to the words, "When need is greatest God is nearest."

End of Project Gutenberg's A Book of Operas, by Henry Edward Krehbiel