EARLY LIFE (CONTINUED)
I
In the second half of the eighteenth century some enthusiasts at
Leipzig had founded a series of concerts, with a very small orchestra,
which were given in "Apel's house"; in 1781 they migrated to the
Gewandhaus, and by this name the concerts were afterwards known. In
still later days Mendelssohn became conductor, and for brilliance and
neatness the concerts were famous throughout the world; then Reinecke
came and they became the most slovenly in the world--in this fine
quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could
hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no
modern music could get a hearing there. However, that did not greatly
matter; and the world owes the Gewandhaus concerts an everlasting debt
of gratitude.
Richard, we know, had never heard of Beethoven, had never heard a bar
of his music. At the Gewandhaus the symphonies were regularly played,
and to one of the performances he went, contented, with his head full
of his play, not dreaming of what was to happen to him ere the morrow.
Here are his own words: "I only remember that one evening I heard a
symphony of Beethoven's, for the first time, that it set me in a
fever, and on my recovery I had become a musician." This is from one
of his stories, but it describes with sufficient closeness what
actually happened. We know that saturated solutions of some salts at a
touch solidify into a mass of crystals, and as far as intentions were
concerned this, figuratively, happened to Richard: his purpose was
instantly set--he would be a musician--nay, he felt he _was_ a
musician. As to his proceedings, however, a better simile would be
that of a liquid into which you drop a little of another liquid and
immediately a violent commotion with much heat is set up. Beethoven's
music touched his young being, and a fermentation began which drove
him forthwith to make himself a perfectly equipped technical musician.
Almost like Teufelsdröckh and St. Paul, he was "converted" in the
twinkling of an eye.
The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius. The
bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the
dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while
the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of
Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded.
Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and
Beethoven took his place. When he started to compose seriously it was
Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained:
Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst
Beethoven wrote only utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and
it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre
music. But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse
to, compose came. He had heard, probably, all Weber's operas without
any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven's
symphonies, and the incidental music to _Egmont_, he at once realized
that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to
write it. Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a
thing as the technique of the novelist's trade, and believing in the
omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and
we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when
the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written.
When the incidental music to--whatever the name of his play
was--obstinately refused to be written, young Wagner may have said
something, though it is not on record; but having a finer instinct
than Carlyle he perceived the necessity of acquiring the technique of
his new trade. So he got possession of Logier's _Method_; in a few
days made a complete study of it; then he set to work in earnest
--with, alas! no more satisfactory fruits. Something that might serve,
however, was achieved, and the ambitious composer went on to a fresh
struggle. He had heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, so, taking
Goethe's _Laune des Verliebten_, he started a kind of fantasia,
concocting words and music together. An account of Wagner's youth
would be incomplete without some mention of these brave doings; they
show clearly how strong the instinct which led him on to the _Ring_
was in him at this early time--to what an unusual degree the child was
father of the man. But to take seriously his tragedy and these first
musical attempts, made at the unusually advanced age of sixteen, even
if I had seen them--which I have not: I do not know whether they are
in existence--would be preposterous.
Richard began to see that he could make no headway, and he persuaded
his family to let him take lessons from Gottlieb Müller, who must have
been a bad teacher for such a boy. Nothing was learnt. Richard was
told he must not do this and must not do that, and he was not told
what he might or should do; in the end both he and Müller grew
disgusted and the lessons were abandoned. I dare say Müller was in a
humdrum way a good coach; he could have prepared candidates for our
absurd academic examinations; but for an artistic genius, bursting
with inarticulate ideas and inchoate purposes he was worse than
useless. So Richard had to muddle along as he best might, while his
good relatives doubted whether he would ever be able to do anything at
all, until by good fortune he tried Theo. Weinlig. Weinlig saw what
was wrong and what was wanted; instead of Müller's "you must not do
this or that: it is against 'rule,'" he explained matters and showed
Richard that if he once learnt the tricks of the trade he would be
able to compose just as he liked; in six months Richard had become an
expert contrapuntist and could fugue it with students who had toiled
for years. "Now," said Weinlig at the last, "you will probably never
want to write a fugue, but the knowledge that you can will give you
confidence." According to the late Mr. Dannreuther his words were,
"You have learnt to stand on your own legs." So it came to pass that
Richard's ambition was fulfilled: he was a musician.
In the life of a being so extraordinary as Wagner it is not surprising
that he took many steps, each of which seemed the most momentous in
his career; but I think on the whole we must reckon this one, from the
amateur enthusiast to the fully equipped professional musician, the
most important. How long he would have been about it but for Weinlig's
timely aid cannot be said. He was steeping himself in Beethoven. He
could not play the piano, but he could read scores: Heinrich Dorn
declared that he copied those of the overtures with his own hands. He
arranged the Ninth Symphony and offered it to Schott, who declined it,
of course. Another arrangement, for four hands, was afterwards
accepted by Breitkopf, in exchange, it would seem, for a copy of the
full score of the same work. Possibly he had borrowed the copy he
worked from--or thumbed it until it fell to pieces. Dorn said he never
came across such a Beethoven enthusiast, and he felt sure something
would come of it. We know something did come of it. Weinlig had taught
him the principles of musical form as well as harmony and
counterpoint, and thus made the grasping of the plan of each
masterpiece an easier task; and to Weinlig the world owes a huge debt
of gratitude. Richard acknowledged the debt; and after Weinlig's death
in 1842 he dedicated _The Love-feast of the Apostles_ to his widow.
II
Richard, when he was some years older, said bluntly he cared little
for his family; and some of the Wagner-mad Bayreuth host point out
that the family did little for him and did not understand him. One
might ask why they should be expected to do much: they had plenty to
do in looking after themselves. But no questions and no appeals to
sweet reasonableness are needed, for the very patent fact is that his
family helped him to the uttermost limit of their means. Geyer first,
his widowed mother afterwards, then Rosalie and his brother Albert,
without a doubt Louise--all did their best to make his young existence
comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that
epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of
such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them,
and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was
fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own
with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a
little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first
appointment. Long after then he drained their resources and the
resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner,
as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish;
and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of
Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical
process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his
selfishness--namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for
to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very
charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without
Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the
difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his
quality; but it is pitiable to find writers--Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis,
Chamberlain and Wolzogen--sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to
glorify the defect as the quality.
In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as
a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn
was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years
make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the
influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the
younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre--to his own
confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture
in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a _Paukenschlag_,
every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful.
That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess.
Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us
hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two
to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but
first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life.
The Paris revolution of 1830 set all youthful Europe in a ferment. The
students of Leipzig university were not behind, and though Wagner did
not yet belong to the sacred circles he mixed much with them, hearing
them talk and doubtless doing not a little talking himself. At one
stroke, he says, he became a revolutionist; and, within his own
meaning of the word, a revolutionist he remained all his life. When we
deal with the period during which his revolutionary ideas got him into
serious trouble it will be time to discuss his views: for the present
we need only note that the conduct of the Leipzig students in various
riotous scenes that took place filled him more than ever with
admiration for them, and with a determination to enrol himself amongst
them as early as possible. He had quitted the Nicolai and gone to the
more congenial Thomas school; but he would not wait to finish his
course there. On February 28, 1831 he had his wish and matriculated.
He was, I say, spoilt in everything. Most German musicians who
received any education worth speaking of at that time got it because
of the ambition of infatuated parents to see their children turn out
successful lawyers or win high official positions, for Germans have a
touching trust in their government and its power of providing for
their children. Richard, however, had no taste either for law or
officialism--he knew indeed that lawyers and officials are the
parasites and curse of our civilization. He had evidently taken to
heart his Uncle Adolph's admonitions--"Remember how wide was the
culture of C.M. von Weber," etc.; and he entered the university with
the intention, as he imagined, of acquiring some of that culture. But
I fancy he deceived himself. As a schoolboy, as we have just noted, he
aspired to the glory of studentship; having won to that he seems to
have rested content. Certainly he did no work, attended no lectures.
His days and nights were devoted to two things, composition and
politics. With Apel and others whom he used to meet at a café he
denounced governments, police officials and the rest of it; at home he
composed overtures and finally a great symphony in C major. It is hard
to say which of his two occupations he took the more seriously.
The artist was growing up strong within him; but the injustice and
robbery he saw perpetrated on every side of him, the wholesale theft
of Poland by Russian officials--by which I mean the Tsar, his
ministers, his generals, soldiers, subservient judges and police--set
his blood aboil; and I suppose that, like other boys of his years, as
well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put
the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this
time that I have come across is there any hint of the poetic
atmosphere in which he should have lived. Surely in those days before
his health broke down, with his fervid imagination, his intimacy with
the masterworks of music and poetry, he must have drawn in a richer
air than the reek of a Leipzig café, his inner vision must have seen a
diviner light than the common light of the stodgy Leipzig streets,
with his inner ear he must have heard a music sweeter than the hoarse
arguments of students half-filled with lager-beer. In the accounts of
this time there is not--to use the phrase colloquially--a touch of
romance. Even his letters are stodgy. My surmise is that just as in
his boyhood the musical part of his nature lay latent and unsuspected
until Beethoven's music awoke it, so now the poetic part lay fallow
awhile, and he worked away at the technical side of his music,
mastering form and conventional development of themes, and in his
leisure spent his excess of energy in talking politics and
metaphysics. The C Symphony of the period can now be seen by all and
has often been played; and it supports my view very forcibly. When I
say there is no hint of Wagner in it I do not mean that the
phraseology does not resemble that of the later Wagner--one could
hardly expect that; I do mean that from _Die Feen_ onward there is
always atmosphere, always emotion and colour, in his music; while the
symphony is as bald, as unpoetical, as any mean street in Kennington.
I do not doubt that he had his poetic dreams, because with such a
nature he could not help it; but he must have been temporarily
indifferent to them, absorbed in mastering the purely technical part
of his business. If we compare the letters of the time with, say,
Keats's and Shelley's, it is startling to find him enthusing over the
affairs of the parish and seemingly turning his back on the great
thoughts of life, on life's colour, romance, poetry--call it what we
like. About the Poles he is enthusiastic and fiery enough. Hundreds of
these heroes passed through Leipzig, living on charity as they went to
their new homes in all quarters of the globe--where many of their
descendants live on charity to this day. Richard wept over their
griefs, and got the idea for a "Polonia" overture; and his ardour was
sufficiently hot to last out until 1836, when he wrote the work at
Königsberg. Or it may be that he had forgotten all about the Poles
till he got into the vicinity of their dismembered country. Richard
himself confesses to leading a dissipated life during this period; but
probably he exaggerated when in after years he began to realize the
brevity of life and to regret wasted hours. His guide, counsellor,
friend, and, I doubt not, inspirer of most of his great achievements,
Praeger, tells a fine story of this part of his life; and one can have
no hesitation in calling it a pack of lies. On the other hand, forger
though he was, Praeger is quite as worthy of credence as those writers
who want us to believe that Wagner as a boy of fourteen had a fully
developed character and clearly foresaw the _Ring_ and _Tristan_ as
things before him, only waiting to be accomplished. Richard was still
a boy, impulsive to the point of madness, a hotheaded fanatic, with
his character still in the making, his artistic purposes neither
defined nor capable of being defined. He was not yet a great man. But
he had the makings of a great man in him; and in the meantime it is
much that he gained the affection of most of the people he came
across. In fact it was as true now as ever it was in later life that
of those with whom he came in contact most became his friends and the
rest his enemies: few could disregard him or remain indifferent.
His apprenticeship was by no means run out in 1832. He had written and
heard performed some overtures, and he set to work and completed the
big Symphony in C major, "in the style of Beethoven"; and this done he
went for a holiday and to gain some little experience in Vienna. That
he could afford such a trip, when at the age of nineteen he could not
contribute a penny to the household expenses, bears out what I have
said about the assistance he received from his family. He contributed
nothing, and, considering his headstrong temper, only a courageous or
reckless man would have prophesied that he would ever be able to
contribute anything. However, to Vienna he went, and heard
_Zampa_--many more times than he wished. He heard Strauss' waltzes and
liked them; he saw Raymund's forgotten achievements and waxed eloquent
about them too. He seems to have learnt nothing but a lively contempt
for a frivolous people who had forgotten how lately Beethoven had died
amongst them--only five years before; a people who danced and made
merry and went philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off
its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was
light-hearted and gay then; and having seen what there was to be seen
he went back to Leipzig _via_ Prague. Here he sketched _Die Hochzeit_;
met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all
events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a
fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown
professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as
principal of the Prague conservatoire.
He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was
performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and
Aria were sung by one Henriette Wüst at a "declamatorium" in the
Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given
at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following
year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by
a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play,
_King Enzio_, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly
while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a
"declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of
spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear
on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck--afterwards
Schumann--played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious
idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his
directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as
thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when
one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to
rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic
and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians
like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London,
owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had
thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics
what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins
(and with him J.W. Davison of the _Times_) knew Wagner to be a great
musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was
not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was
not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered
when solid incomes are at stake.
At the Gewandhaus--and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through
a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn _allegro_--Richard got his
first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may
be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be
done. He knew the ninth symphony by heart, and was also entranced by
the blended loveliness and strength of Mozart's symphonies: played
here, all the effects and points he could plainly see in the score
disappeared. He knew better, even thus early, than to think the two
great composers capable of writing the kind of academic stuff which
looks like music on paper and when played sounds like anything you
like excepting music. He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped
through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of
colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and
soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit.
At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for
writing operas of his own. _Masaniello_ in its way opened his eyes as
much as Beethoven's symphonies had done. Not only the bustle, but the
clean sweep of the thing from beginning to finish of each act, with
brilliant climaxes in the finales, made him stare and gasp in
amazement. Weber he admired; but Weber's power lay in the beauty and
picturesqueness of his music: in _Masaniello_ the music made its
effect because of the theatrical skill with which it was used. The
same thing he felt in _William Tell_. These two men, Auber and
Rossini, were masters of the art of writing effectively for the
theatre. The drama of their operas was not particularly striking nor
lofty, the music did not come near Beethoven's, Mozart's, nor even
Weber's in beauty, but their mastery in writing theatre-music carried
them through triumphantly. The problem was, then, to acquire their
skill and use it for a high and noble purpose; and this Richard at
once attempted to do. He planned and wrote the words of _Die
Hochzeit_. He laid it aside because Rosalie disliked the plot; but
immediately he proceeded to another opera, _Die Feen_, which he
completed at Würzburg. The book of _Die Hochzeit_ is dated December 5,
1832, Leipzig. On January 10 of the following year his symphony was
given; on the 12th he replied to his brother Albert--now singer,
actor and stage-manager at the Würzburg theatre--accepting an
invitation to stay with him; a few days later he set out, reaching his
destination towards the end of the month.
III
Wagner had scarcely time to look around him before his brother Albert
offered him the post of chorus-master. The salary was magnificent--£1
(of our money) per month for about six months in the year; the work
was hard. We need only note with regard to it that he here heard, and
in the process of drilling his choristers undoubtedly got to know very
well, all the popular successes of the day. His own account is that he
liked them; and it is significant that during this period he heard
Meyerbeer's _Robert the Devil_. At the moment it does not seem to have
affected his compositions; but in a very few years Meyerbeer's
example, if not his music, had a most marked influence in shaping his
career. For the present he worked at _Die Feen_, and as soon as the
theatre closed and Albert and his wife went elsewhere to perform in
the off-season--just as German, French, Italian and American singers
come to Covent Garden now during the summer--he had plenty of time. By
New Year's day of '34 the work was complete. Parts of it were rendered
by some Music Union; but soon Richard left Würzburg, having gained
much experience if not any money. He was offered a post at Zurich;
but though that town was destined to be his home for years long
afterwards, it evidently did not tempt him then, for he returned to
Leipzig.
Here at once began one of those squalid intrigues which drive serious
opera-composers crazy. Several of Richard's pieces had been played; he
had occupied one responsible position and been asked to take another;
he had the finished score of his opera; and he was young and by nature
sanguine to the verge of lunacy. He thought he had only to call on the
Intendant of the opera with his masterpiece and its production would
be assured. He did call, and soon he received a promise that his work
would be done. But Leipzig was now Mendelssohn's stronghold and no
rival could be tolerated. One of the great man's friends and admirers,
Hauser, determined that the work should not be done. He opined that
Wagner did not know how to compose nor how to orchestrate; he found
the music lacking in warmth. This from a worshipper of Mendelssohn
seems a little amusing to-day; but it had a result bad for Wagner in
1834. Underground work went on; and while Wagner waited with what
patience he could muster--and I expect that was not much--hoping every
day to hear that rehearsals had commenced, his score was quietly put
on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of
operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than
barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the
beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much
a few years ago. It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did
not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely
they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession
in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should
be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the
Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two
great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could
tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When
Brendel published the notorious _Judaism in Music_ it is true many
Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some
Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel
should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals,
and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans
for it to be desirable for _them_ to raise the cry of persecution.
Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I
come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the
reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all
protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I
dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish.
Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the
negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be
wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his _Die
Feen_ overture made a hit. He heard Schröder-Devrient in Bellini's
_Montechi e Capuleti_, and found to his astonishment that a great
singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high
value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich
Laube--the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so
scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for
themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he
was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the _Zeitung für
die Elegante Welt_--- a curious title for a journal which frequently
praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for
another holiday, this time to Teplitz, where he sketched _Das
Liebesverbot_, his second opera to get finished and the first to be
performed--performed, by the way, in a very unusual fashion. Obviously
his spirits were not damped: obviously, also, the family which is
supposed not to have assisted him assisted him to the extent, at any
rate, of enabling him to take a holiday he could not pay for. He had
as yet not earned sufficient for his travelling expenses from Leipzig
to Würzburg and back, to say nothing of holiday trips. As on this trip
he planned _Das Liebesverbot_ his thanks were due to his family for
being able to begin that work. It is true he had Apel as a friend, but
he had not yet formed the habit of borrowing right and left, nor is
there any hint in his correspondence of Apel having paid his expenses.
I wish now to pass rapidly over two fresh adventures--the
conductorship at Magdeburg and that at Königsberg; but first let me
point out how the boy's was changing to a man's character. It is
plain that he worked very hard at Würzburg, for the score of _Die
Feen_ is a big one, and teaching his chorus must have occupied many
hours a day. It is equally plain that he set to work with the greatest
vigour on the new opera. Now, Nietzsche declared that Wagner by sheer
will and energy "made himself a musician." That is pure nonsense; but
it points to an important characteristic--namely, Wagner did not, even
at the age of twenty, trust to inspiration alone, as with his hot and
impulsive nature we might have expected, but also to unremitting work.
For the remaining fifty years of his life the labours of each day were
almost incredible.
IV
At this point the reader must be asked to bear in mind that the
operatic companies with which Wagner was connected in these early
days--until he left Riga in 1839 and set sail for Paris _via_
London--were unlike anything in existence to-day. Dickens in _Nicholas
Nickleby_ and Thackeray in _Pendennis_ gave us pictures of the old
stock theatrical companies, with all their good-fellowship, jealous
rivalries, lack of romance and understanding of the dramatic art, and
abundance of dirt. One has only to read Wagner's accounts of the
enterprises at Würzburg, Magdeburg, Königsberg, and even at Riga, or
to glance at his letters of the period, to see that these concerns
differed in no essential from the companies ruled over by Mr.
Crummles and Miss Costigan's manager. Life went on in an utterly
careless way: the rehearsal for the day over, the company met in cafés
or beer-gardens and stayed there until it was time to move, in view of
the evening performance; any one who had a shilling spent it, while
those who had no shillings accepted their friends' hospitality and
hoped for the good time coming. Ladies quarrelled and then kissed;
gentlemen threatened to kill each other in honourable duel and sank
their differences deep in lager; one member left, another joined, some
members seemed to go on for ever; the great times were always coming
and never came. There was a company of this sort, the head being one
Bethmann, that wintered at Magdeburg and in the spring and summer
months played at Lauchstädt and Rüdelstadt; and Wagner got the
position of conductor--the first real position he had yet held, for
the Würzburg office, after all, was a very small affair. He now went
out to conquer the world for himself; he became nominally
self-dependent, though neither now nor in the future was he really so.
He did the usual round with his troop, arriving at Magdeburg in
October; and arriving there, he tells us, he at once plunged into a
life of frivolity. This may be true, but we must again note the
stupendous industry which enabled him to finish _Das Liebesverbot_ in
so short a time. The most important event in Richard's life about this
time was his engagement to Minna Planer. She is said to have been a
handsome young woman; and, as impecuniosity is everlastingly an
incentive to marriage, of course he married her. In the meantime he
thoroughly enjoyed directing all the rubbish of the day, the season
ended and he returned to Leipzig.
The next season barely began before Bethmann, according to custom,
went bankrupt; the company disbanded, and Richard was left with a
young wife and nothing to live on. An engagement at Königsberg proved
no better; but at last the conductorship of the opera at Riga was
offered to him, so off he went eagerly, never dreaming, we may
suppose, of the extraordinary adventures that lay before him. Here in
outward peace he was to remain until 1839, rehearsing and directing
operas; but here also he was inspired with the first idea that showed
he had grown into the Richard Wagner we all know. He toiled away at
the theatre, nearly driving the singers crazy with the ceaseless work
he demanded from them; and to his family, when they had news from him
or of him, it must have seemed as though he had already one foot on
the ladder and it was only a matter of time for him to climb to the
dizzy height of Hofkapellmeister of one of the larger opera-houses. No
one, however, who had only known Richard prior to this period could
realize how rapidly the new environment was to form and ripen his
character.
He was now about twenty-three years of age and a master of his trade.
He had written two operas and saw little likelihood of either being
played--for his advantage, at least. He had composed some instrumental
things, but he knew that the theatre and not the concert-room was his
vocation. He must have reflected that even writers of successful
operas had died in poverty, either utterly abject, as Mozart died, or
comparative, as Weber died. On the other hand Rossini had made a
fortune and Meyerbeer was making one. What then? Well, Wagner wanted
neither to die poor nor to die at all: all his life he claimed from
the world luxuries as a right. He felt his powers at least equal to
Rossini's and far superior to Meyerbeer's (though at this time he
ranked Meyerbeer high). His artistic conscience was not so sensitive
as it afterwards became: he actually liked the sparkling French and
Italian stuff which was so popular. So, then, he would challenge
Meyerbeer on his own ground! And as all the musical fashions had to
come from Paris he would go to Paris and make a bid for fortune. Such
must have been the process of reasoning which led Wagner to take his
first great step in life.
For the present it is sufficient to say that out of Bulwer Lytton's
novel _Rienzi_ he took material to weave a libretto that would afford
opportunities for a great spectacular opera; and set to work and wrote
two acts of the music. Finally he took ship from Pillau to London,
bringing with him his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching
Paris ultimately. And on that journey I must leave him for the
present, pausing a little to consider the music he had composed up to
this time (not including the incomplete _Rienzi_).