trilogy. Poor little Gutrune! She's worth the whole lot of them. She
at least was a gentle, soulful, loving woman, who was not troubling
her spirit with a desire for gold, but who was possessed of an
honest ambition to be the wife of the most important gentleman of
the district. Social position was not what she sought, for she had
that already. She was a Gibichung, which was the same in the Rhine
valley as being a Biddle in Philadelphia. No; what she yearned for
was distinction. She would have been a lady of the White House, if
possible, had she lived in our time. Anyhow, she was a woman with
whom one can sympathize, for she really liked Siegfried.
Last but not least of the "Rheingold" coterie are the giants. Fafner
is an admirable character. He knows just what he wishes and he goes
straight to the point. First of all, he wishes to possess himself of
Freia because she would serve two purposes; namely, to keep house
and cook for him and at the same time to preserve his youth. But the
lumbering Fasolt, that overgrown blond basso, must go and fall in
love with the simpering little soprano leggiere. How came Wagner not
to remember the law of operatic tradition?
It is only another instance of his lack of the sense of humor. Fafner
very properly disposes of Fasolt and goes off with the gold. And here
follows one of the genuinely poetic touches of the tragedy. This
scaly miser who has the hoard, the tarnhelm, and the ring, and who
simply snuggles them up in a cave without reaping a single benefit
from their possession, is put out of the drama by Siegfried, the
embodiment of careless youth, hot blood, and human passion. Possibly
Wagner thought of this, and possibly he did not; but at any rate we
may do so, and thus intensify our poetic mood.
What effect has the disappearance of the futile gods upon the
dramatic development of the story? Wotan is the hero of "Rheingold"
and "Walküre." These two sections of the drama are concerned with the
adventures of a god in search of a method of government. The hero of
"Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" is Siegfried, a mortal in search
of a _raison d'être_. The former plays bad politics and learns too
late that in statecraft as in business honesty is the best policy.
The latter follows the inspirations of youth and nature, and comes to
grief because he is the Parsifal of the north, a "guileless fool."
Musically "Rheingold" is a vorspiel. It introduces a few fundamental
themes, rings the harmonic changes on them, and makes way for the
real first movement, "Die Walküre." Of this work the music is the
salvation, for its second act is dramatically so feeble, so ill-made,
and so prosy that it would drive people out of the theatre were it
not for its melodic richness. Fricka's lecture of Wotan, one of
the vital scenes of the whole trilogy, is dramatically a bore; but
musically it is strong and interesting, and it approaches its end
with one of the most imposing phrases conceived by the wizard of
Bayreuth, the phrase with which Fricka intones the words:--
"Deiner ew'gen Gattin
Heilige Ehre
Schirme heut' ihr Schild."
"The holy honor of thy eternal spouse as a shield this day protects
her." That is Wagner's one proclamation of the majesty of Fricka
and the chastity of the law which she represented. It is the finest
musical thought in the whole second act of "Die Walküre," for, after
all, the much-vaunted "Todesverkündigung" is a situation rather
than a theme. The brass melody of it is not genuinely imposing,
especially when the impersonator of Brünnhilde does not know how to
appear mysterious and foreboding. The fight in the clouds is one of
Wagner's impracticable conceptions. When it is perfectly executed, it
is unconvincing; when it is not, it is quite incomprehensible, and
sometimes it is even comic.
Musically "Die Walküre" consists of the first and last acts, and the
first really begins with the duet between Siegmund and Sieglinde. All
that goes before is preparation, interesting by reason of its musical
narrative, but much too prolix, as all Wagner's explanations are.
Siegmund's narrative is three times as long as is necessary to afford
a reason for the hatred of Hunding. It would have been more subtle
and more dramatic, anyhow, to let Hunding's thirst for vengeance
rest entirely upon his discovery of the interest of his wife and the
visitor for each other.
But let that pass. The duet of Siegmund and Sieglinde is generally
accepted as one of Wagner's great achievements in sustained melody.
The love-song is babbled now by musical babes. It is very pretty, and
it has a manly ring, which we may all admire. But the third act of
"Die Walküre" dwells from beginning to end in the sunlit regions of
genius.
The feebleness of Wotan here loses itself in a sea of infinite
pathos. The power of the magic hand of Wagner in the creation of
dramatic atmosphere is seen in the tumultuous storming of the Valkyrs
through the inky air. "How now, ye secret black and midnight hags;
what is't ye do?" The salutation of Macbeth to the witches pales
before the lightnings of the winged steeds. Into the midst of this
festival of the furies plunges the ill-assorted pair, Brünnhilde and
Sieglinde.
Thundering upon their traces comes Wotan, the irate god, whose
well-meant efforts to escape the complications wrought by his own
misdeeds have been thwarted by the erring wish maiden. Hearken to the
old scold berating his frightened daughters: "Out with ye, hussies.
Your sister has been disobedient. Speak to her, and I'll whip ye,
too."
Slinking away into the waning storm, they leave the father and
the foolishly loving daughter together. The mighty seething of the
musical sea subsides, leaving a deep underrunning swell of feeling.
The billowing rush of the Valkyr theme gives way to the plaintive
flow of the motive of Brünnhilde's pleading, one of the most
poignantly expressive melodies ever conceived by Wagner. How it wells
upward in the tender voices of the wood wind!
The stricken Valkyr grovels at the feet of the perplexed Wotan. What
will he do with her? The two engage in a long and unnecessary wordy
wrangle over the deed of the goddess. Wagner must talk, talk, talk.
He is a German dramatist. His music alone saves him from perdition.
Prate as he may of the organic union of the arts, the magic of melody
and harmony is his wand of transformation.
With that he lifts the tiresome rehearsal of the incidents of
"Rheingold" by Wotan to eloquence. With that he changes the
hair-splitting of Tristan and Isolde to the most passionate of love
duets. With that he makes almost a miracle of Siegfried's condensed
narrative in the last act of "Götterdämmerung." The theory is a
perfect one; Wagner's practice is wholly faulty. His music saves him.
He is sometimes no better than an old-fashioned opera librettist, and
writes long pages of bald text simply in order to clothe them with
musical glory.
Brünnhilde complains: "Why are you angry at me, father?" He answers,
"You know well enough what you've done." "You told me to do it,"
says she. "But afterward I told you not to do it," says he. "But you
really didn't mean that. You wished me to protect Siegmund," declares
Brünnhilde. "You made the other order because you were afraid of
Fricka." And then Brünnhilde takes forty lines to tell Wotan what she
did, which both he and we already know. Wotan takes just forty lines
more to tell Brünnhilde that while he has been struggling with his
problems she has had nothing to do but enjoy herself (how many mortal
fathers talk thus to their daughters)! and that now he has no further
use for her light soul.
Thus they bandy words till finally we come to Hecuba. Wotan tells
her that she is to be put to sleep and that the man who awakens
her shall have her. She begs for the protection of the magic fire,
and this far-seeing god stares amazed and enraptured at the birth
of a new idea. Glorious! He will commit this precious jewel of his
soul to the guardianship of his arch enemy, Loge, the fire spirit,
the treacherous, the shifty, the ultimate destroyer, not only of
Brünnhilde, but of Walhalla and its futile brood.
Oh, Wagner, how much more prescient were the skalds than thou! But
who thinks of all this while the performance is in progress? No one.
The triumphant music swells to the very bursting point of emotional
rhapsody. The entrance of the farewell of Wotan is one of the
sublimest conceptions of the master craftsman in tone.
But there is a moment, a great, overmastering, torrential moment, in
this scene, which is equalled only once or twice elsewhere in the
trilogy. It is the moment when Brünnhilde and Wotan stand and gaze
one upon the other, like the transformed Tristan and Isolde, and
the plaintive, pitiful motive of the Valkyr's pleading rises into
a tremendous, pealing burst of passionate yearning, which sets the
whole orchestra reeling and rocking with the poignancy of its melody
and wrings the tears from the eyes of the listener.
That is the climax of "Die Walküre." It is the victory of the
child's love over the futile and disappearing All-Father. It is the
last utterance of the majesty of Walhalla. Thenceforward godhood
disappears not only from Brünnhilde, but from all Walhalla. The human
hero is now to come, to see, and to command.
And as the curtain slowly shuts the pathetic figures from our sight,
Loge--flickering, fluttering Loge--satisfied for once that he is
master of the situation, sings out the comedy in the major mode. The
spiritual tonality of Loge for once is fixed and inexorable. The
sleep of Brünnhilde is the prologue to her immolation, and the fire
at her bedside is the precursor of the fire of her funeral pyre which
shall engulf the futile gods. "Rest, perturbed spirit." Rest in the
victorious publication of thy conquest in fundamental harmonies. A
primeval element art thou not, but a physical investiture of the
shifting soul. Thou art the master of this hour--yea, even of the
unconscious Brünnhilde and the equally unconscious Wagner. He builded
better than he knew. The seed of the serpent hath bruised the heel of
the woman.
III--BACK-WORLDS GODS AND OVER-WOMAN
And those same torches, flaring by her bed,
Lighted her downward path among the dead.
MELEAGER.
(_Translated by_ JANE MINOT SEDGWICK.)
The drama of "Siegfried" opens with a reintroduction of one of
Wagner's most subtle studies. Mime in "Rheingold" plays almost no
part at all. There the local interest of Niebelheim is centred
in that peevish parody of Napoleonic ambition, Alberich, whose
curse is launched upon the entire succeeding series of incidents.
In "Siegfried" Alberich is shown to us a helpless watcher on the
outskirts of events, the complement of the wondering Wotan.
Both of the principal workers on the beginning of the web have been
forced to let the threads slip from their feeble hands. Siegfried,
the young, hot-blooded embodiment of humanity, and Mime, the last
receptacle of underground craft and cunning, struggle for the
supremacy. Alberich is absurd.
The battle of the dwarfs in the first scene of the second act is
one of Wagner's pieces of grotesquery. Did he see the ridiculous
aspect of it? One can hardly believe so. He seems to take it very
seriously, but it refuses to be serious. Mime, however, is a genuine
creation. Search opera from its inception to the disclosure of this
extraordinary work and you will not find another such product of the
imagination. Mime is the perfect type of a low cunning mind plotting
to use a noble and generous nature for its own ends and then to
consign that nature to destruction.
A ward politician or a Wall Street operator Mime might have been in
a more advanced state of society. It was his misfortune and not his
fault that he was born a cave-dweller. Wagner falls into ludicrous
difficulties in his endeavors to disclose the inner workings of
this nature. In the first act he has recourse to the old-fashioned
operatic duet, in which two persons standing at opposite sides of the
stage bellow antagonistic sentiments at the top of their lungs, yet
do not hear each other.
The factitious veritism of the music drama crumbles into absurdity
in the presence of this illogical scene. Wagner as frankly asks us
to accept the unreal conventions of the stage as ever did Donizetti
or Meyerbeer. And this, too, in the midst of his most elaborate and
pretentious creation. But here again music, heavenly maid, saves
the situation. The splendor of the climax of the forging episode
dazzles judgment. One cannot analyze the dramatic verities when his
heart is thumping under his ribs with the trip-hammer rhythm of this
tremendous composition.
In the second act, when Mime is endeavoring to induce Siegfried to
take the potion, we are asked to understand that the bird has warned
Siegfried, and that the hero is enabled to discern behind Mime's
utterances the real meanings which he strives to conceal. Wagner's
conception was dramatically impracticable, and so he makes Mime utter
his secret thoughts aloud, so that we, as well as Siegfried, may know
them.
It is a cumbersome and feeble device. Here again, however, the music
comes to the dramatist's aid. The exquisitely artistic contrast
between the craft and malice of Mime and the ingenuousness of the
youthful hero is expressed perfectly by the opposing natures of their
musical measures, and a final touch of most eloquent suggestion is
supplied by the half-whispered instrumental repetition of the bird
phrase. This is dramatic music of the most potent.
The keynote of Mime is sounded in the orchestra in the beginning of
Act I. with the motive of reflection,--that hollow, sinister duet
of two bassoons, so devilish, so serpentine in the mockery of its
descending thirds. Whoever before heard the lascivious harmony of the
third made to chant a psalm of mischief? Deep reflection, far-sighted
wickedness, lies in those few sinister, sepulchral notes, and as the
curtain rises and shows us the shaggy little elf bent hopeless over
his forging and searching his evil mind for some solution of the
problem of the lost hoard, we fall with him into a frame of mind fit
for treasons.
And Loge? Is the embodiment of craft absent? Not he. Loge deserts not
his kind. In the flickering flame of the forge he lurks in waiting.
He will weld the sword "Nothung," which was shivered on Wotan's
spear, and this time it will shatter that spear and break the power
of the futile and disappearing gods. Loge will answer the call of
Siegfried and rise in his might. Joyously will he blaze to melt the
splinters, for this forging is but another act in the drama of his
triumph. How can the dotard Wotan sit by the hearthstone playing at
riddles with Mime and not feel the breath of Loge on his neck?
What a new and unheard of thing is the vocal style of Mime! The
creation of this weird recitation is one of Wagner's most notable
achievements. The sharp, cackling treble staccato, which sinks ever
and anon into an indescribable gurgle of subterranean low tones and
again rises to a shrill and infantile falsetto,--this is something
that no old-time musician, who appealed to the outward ear alone,
could ever have conceived. Its importance in the expression of
grotesque and grim humor cannot be overestimated. It is neither
speech nor song. It is not recitative. It is not declamation. It is
simply the snarling, the barking, the whining of malice, cowardice,
and sneaking treachery. It is the very thing itself that Wagner
sought. It was a triumph of genius.
Has it ever occurred to you, gentle reader, that up to the last act
of "Siegfried" this same music of Mime supplies the only psychologic
element in the play so far as the musical part is concerned? Mime is
the one scheming, introspective character in the work. Every musical
thought in the score which is connected with him reveals an inner
life. The rest is nearly all scenic or external music.
Siegfried's entrance is bodied forth in a gust of forest freshness
sweeping into the noisome air of the cavern. The famous wanderlied of
the youth is not introspective. It breathes not the yearning of the
hero for a free life, but the spirit of the unbounded world itself.
It is a song of the receding horizon.
The bandying of conundrums between Wotan and Mime leaves all
the psychology to the dwarf. The rest is commemorative. It is a
repetition of old themes to recall Siegmund and Sieglinde, the
Giants and their unrequited labor, Walhall and its vanishing
limelight glories. Take again the opening scene of Act II. How
much introspection is there in Wotan's interesting interview with
the unseen Fafner? Atmospheric, indeed, this music is, but not
psychologic. It has a very suspicious resemblance to the famous scene
before the tomb of Ninus in "Semiramide." But it is conducted more
decorously, and instead of "Oh, horror!" we hear the more comforting
"Lass't mich schlafen."
In the scene which follows we are presented with the picture of the
young hero reclining under a linden tree and reflecting on his unique
position in the primeval world. He hears the murmur of the wind among
the branches of the trees and watches the shadows play at hide and
seek. The music is purely descriptive and scenic. A bird carols among
the foliage. It is a strain of unaffected melody, and surely none
would affront a cheerful birdling by charging it with psychologic
intent.
The young man, seeking for some channel of cheerful communication
with his own antecedents, tries to fashion a pipe on which to imitate
the bird's lay. In vain. So, forth with the familiar waldhorn and
therewith wind a challenging blast. How did Siegfried learn his own
musical theme? There is a psychologic tangle here, but it was in
the thinking of Wagner, not in that of the hero. Siegfried had no
business to know that there was an orchestra and that he had a theme.
But let that pass.
Behold Fafner, clad in the shapeless form of a thing that never
was, lumbering out of the cavern and wagging his sapient head and
bannered tail with the aid of all too visible wires. Oh, Siegfried
and Fafner, Fafner and Siegfried, which of ye is the more comic? Was
it not cruel to place a "treasure of the world," a "smiling hero,"
in such a position, to make him do combat amid hissing steam and the
shock of thunderous battle music with a most disillusioning dragon of
papier-maché? Again hear the external music, the sword and the vigor
of the young man.
After the fight the bird sings once more, this time in a soprano
voice and with text. Mime enters and psychology reappears. After
Mime's death, more external music, till the bird tells of the
enchanted Princess asleep on the mountain top, and then there is
a burst of hot blood, a rush of musical energy which has in it
something more than mere external description. Nevertheless, in all
music there is nothing else which so clearly demonstrates the ease
with which the purely pictorial in the tone art may be confounded
with the introspective as this second act of "Siegfried," for here
the mood of nature and the mood of the chief actor, whose soul is to
be laid bare, are one.
With the opening of Act III. we have the scene between Wotan and
Erda. Here, again, the character of the music is chiefly descriptive.
The storm is contrasted with the vague tonalities and muted voicing
of Erda's music. After the spear of Wotan is shattered by the
rewelded "Nothung," Loge fills the mountains with his radiance and
his shimmering music. The last of the futile and disappearing gods
has passed from the scene of action. The human drama which is to
lead to the dusk of the high ones has begun. Loge's labor is almost
completed.
With the change from the pealing music to which Siegfried ascends
the mountain to the long-drawn strains of the strings which lead
him to the couch of his desire, we enter upon a scene of soul
revelation. What a marvellous inspiration of genius is the awakening
of Brünnhilde! She went to sleep a weeping, supplicating goddess,
deprived of her divinity. She wakes to the majestic chords which
announce her assumption of a grander divinity, the might and majesty
of perfect womanhood. The duo between her and Siegfried is all
psychologic, not subtle, for the blazing of passion is not subtle,
but none the less the delineation of an inward state.
Of all the dramas of the tetralogy "Siegfried" is that in which pure
beauty is most plentiful. Here is a problem for musical philosophers.
Is Strauss not a maker, but a product? Is the embodiment of subtle
psychologic problems in tone hostile to unaffected beauty? Must the
lyric drama follow the march of symphonic music into the screaming
regions of the Strauss soul analysis? "Siegfried" is quite devoid
of the elements of tragedy. The death of Fafner is not tragic; on
the contrary, it is comic. There is even a touch of bathos in the
dying speech of the transmogrified Bottom of the Wagnerian drama. The
conundrum scene is childish. The bird belongs to the world of the
infantile fairy tale. But the spirit of buoyant youth is in the work.
Its music is nearly all external, and unaffectedly beautiful.
"Siegfried," revelling in purely descriptive music, devoid of mental
sickness contracted from much study of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche,
breathes the spirit of a free world's youth.
Little is left to be said, or much, for "Götterdämmerung" must be
treated as a separate drama or dismissed shortly in the light of
what has already been written. In this drama we come to the drawing
together of the threads, the stretto of the dream fugue. Behold
Brünnhilde, who has given all her wisdom to Siegfried and hence has
none left for herself, sending him out in quest of further reputation
as a mighty hero. There is something pathetic in this and also
pitiably modern. Must husbands have had outings in the elemental days
even as now? Was the epic man inconstant of soul? Ah Brünnhilde! A
wise woman would go with him. It is not good for man to be alone.
Siegfried arrives at the domicile of the desirable Gibichung family
and accepts an unknown drink from a pretty girl he never saw before.
His rusticity beams from his guileless countenance, and to Hagen, the
experienced one, he is as the ripe pear on the low-hanging bough.
Pitiable weakling Siegfried! Call ye this a hero of all the world?
Pitiable Gunther, you do well to swear blood brotherhood with him.
You are a well-mated pair. Pitiable Gutrune! Siegfried was not for
you, though your drink did make him forget that he remembered and
dream that he forgot.
In the hands of Hagen, the only really clever person in the drama,
these three are as clay in the hands of the potter. Hagen could not
command success, because Loge was more powerful than he, and the
ultimate ruin of the gods would have been deferred had Hagen gained
possession of the accursed ring; but he deserved success, and that,
as Sempronius was long ago informed, was something worthy of respect.
Two elements of this final drama remain confronting us. They are
the most tremendous of all Wagner's heroines, the completed woman,
Brünnhilde, and the most potent of all psychologic music outside of
"Tristan und Isolde." When Siegfried, in the end of the drama bearing
his name, hurls the flood of human love at the reduced Valkyr, he
awakens in her that which lifts her above principalities and kingdoms.
"Indeed I love thee. Come,
Yield thyself up--my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
Almost might Tennyson have substituted his words for those of Wagner,
and truly they are more graceful. In "Götterdämmerung" we find
Brünnhilde with her womanhood completed. Filled full to the lips
and eyes with love, she is risen to a majesty which as the laughing
Valkyr she never knew. Compared with her Olympian splendor, the
fumbling weakness of her sire becomes indeed pitiable. With what
heroine is she to be compared? Set her for a moment over against
Isolde, who also died upon her true love's body.