'TANNHÄUSER'
I
Wagner alternated between what we may call the worldly--the sensual or
animal, or love of outward show--and the magical, mystical or
religious. After _Die Feen_, a story of magic, he went to _Das
Liebesverbot_, a story of lust; then he went on to a drama of warring
ambitions, with the outer brilliant show of armed men, gorgeous
processions, conflagrations and what not in the way of spectacle.
After that we have the _Dutchman_, strange and remote and mysterious,
with some pages of passionless ecstasy as its culminating point. The
reaction came, and he wrote _Tannhäuser_, the opera we are now to
examine. It is largely based on sheer animal passion, though another
reaction takes place before the end is reached. That reaction proceeds
further in _Lohengrin_, which is sheer mysticism. _Tristan_ is pure
human passion--Tristan's soul is the antithesis of Lohengrin's. The
_Ring_ is, from beginning to end, a gorgeous spectacle, a
glorification of the grandeur and loveliness of the earth, the
splendour and beauty and strength of human life. Not even Wotan's
renunciation takes away a jot from its note of praise of
humanity--one might even say praise of the joy of living. _Parsifal_
is a denial of the value and richness and worthiness of human life:
the world is pushed away; and the hero attains perfect peace by
shutting himself up in a monastery with no women to disturb him. John
Willett recommended his son, when he went to London, to climb to the
top of the Monument--"there are no young women up there, sir"--and
Wagner evidently agreed with John Willett. Parsifal is left to pass
his days in walking, with the most preposterous steps ever seen on or
off the stage, in idle processions from nowhere to nowhere without any
object beyond walking, in making meals off invisible food, in
impressing his fellow-monks with puerile chemical and electrical
experiments, and perhaps, for a change, in going out to see trees and
rocks taking a constitutional. If to say this is to be flippant, well
then, I am flippant. The drama of _Parsifal_ is the least intelligent,
the most pretentious to intellectuality,-the most absurd and
ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music. Or, if we must
needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to
ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its
infamy. At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is
going on in every European capital as to whether _Parsifal_ can or
cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth
clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon
as possible. Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather
mock-religious, character of the Bayreuth performances, the
hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be
only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will
wish to say Bayreuth nay.
These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very
abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a
time. The _Dutchman_ was conceived before _Rienzi_ was finished;
_Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ were slowly shaping themselves in his
imagination while he scored the _Dutchman_; the _Mastersingers_
libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after
_Tannhäuser_ was finished, and before _Lohengrin_ was begun; the
composition of the _Ring_, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ went on
simultaneously. He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and
emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold.
First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way
for moments into another, so that the description I have given above
of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main
accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that
which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he
did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little
about _Parsifal_, because it, and not the _Mastersingers_, is the true
contrary and complement to _Tannhäuser_. _Parsifal_ is pitilessly
logical, _Tannhäuser_ wildly illogical; _Parsifal_ preaches the gospel
of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental
and moral growth: _Tannhäuser_ preaches nothing at all, but is an
affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations
between the two sexes, with a totally uncalled-for and incredible
falling away or repentance at the end, on the part of one who has in
no way sinned--to wit, Tannhäuser; the music of _Parsifal_ is sickly,
tired, with mystical chants that make one's gorge rise in disgust; the
music of _Tannhäuser_ is strong, healthy, full of manly passion--even
at its saddest it is free of the nauseating whining of _Parsifal_.
II
Tannhäuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel, led away by an
exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone
to live with Venus in the Hörselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries
to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is
shattered, and he is in the free open spring air. A shepherd boy plays
on his pipe and chants a song to spring; a procession of old pilgrims
to Rome passes; Tannhäuser, feeling his exaggeration of passions, sane
enough in themselves, to be a sin, praises the Almighty for his
deliverance from what seems now to him like an evil dream. Hunters'
horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhäuser's former
friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to
persuade him to return to his former life with them, but in vain,
until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of
the Landgrave's daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at
his unaccountable disappearance. Tannhäuser, at first incredulous, in
the end joyfully agrees to go back to the Wartburg, where the
Landgrave's castle can be seen, and the merry clatter of hunting horns
is heard on all sides as the curtain falls. It will be seen that there
is no vestige of the old stage trickery of the _Dutchman_ here: all
seems natural because all is inevitable; of songs and concerted pieces
we get plenty, but they grow spontaneously out of the drama: the drama
is not twisted and delayed for the sake of getting them in.
In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight's return; she
enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness;
Tannhäuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long
love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament.
The popular march is played; the hall becomes crowded; the Landgrave
makes a speech--satisfying to German audiences, no doubt, because it
praises German valour and music--and in announcing the subject on
which the minstrels shall enlarge, he hints that perhaps Tannhäuser in
his contribution will let them know in what mysterious lands he has
sojourned during his long absence. The theme is, What is love, and how
do we recognize it? The prize will be given by the Princess, and it
shall be anything the successful singer chooses--that is, it shall be
the Princess. Wolfram stands up first and praises a mild platonic
attachment as being true love, and his sentiments win much applause.
Tannhäuser sings passionately of the joys of burning fleshly desire,
though as yet his language is a little veiled. The audience, who are
the judges, make no sign; Elisabeth alone shows that in her heart she
goes with Tannhäuser and not with Wolfram. Walther, in turn, tells
Tannhäuser that he knows nothing of sincere love; Tannhäuser grows
angry, and scoffingly tells him that if he wants cold perfection he
had better worship the stars; but he, Tannhäuser, wants warm, living
flesh and blood and healthy desires in the woman he loves. Biterolf
calls Tannhäuser a shameless blasphemer, and challenges him to combat;
Tannhäuser replies bitterly; the surrounding nobles want to silence
him; his anger becomes rage, and his rage madness; Wolfram tries to
calm every one, but Tannhäuser is now too far gone, and in "wildest
exaltation" he chants the hymn he sang to Venus in the first act.
"Only in the Venusberg can one experience the joys of true love," he
shouts; the ladies rush out in terror, leaving only Elisabeth; the men
attack Tannhäuser. He would be killed, but Elisabeth suddenly
interposes--all stand aghast at the bare notion of her interceding for
so shameless a wretch; but in the end she gets her way. "Who would not
yield who heard the heavenly maid?" they sing; during a momentary
stillness the voices of young pilgrims following the elder to Rome are
heard; Tannhäuser is pardoned on condition of joining them and
confessing to the pope and gaining his forgiveness; and, being a man
of uncontrollable passions, with fits of abject depression as low as
his ecstatic flights are high, he humbly acquiesces. The curtain comes
down in the second act as he goes off.
The third act is, I say, quite illogical unless one accepts as a
truism, as Wagner accepted it, the patent absurdity that by
sacrificing him-or herself one being can save the soul of another
being. But Wagner was not a German of the Romantic epoch for nothing.
He believed the absurdity with a fervour now laughable, and was
especially enthusiastic when the sacrificed person was a woman: woman,
to his mind, was the redeemer of man: that was her _métier_. Senta
redeems Vanderdecken; in his last work Kundry redeems Parsifal by
thoughtfully dying so as to leave that unamiable idiot to lead the
higher life of the monastery, as I have described it. And somehow
Elisabeth is to redeem Tannhäuser--also, it appears, by dying at an
appropriate moment. In the fit of depression and degradation following
his mad outburst the hero goes to Rome, interviews the pope, and
confesses all to him. "If you have dwelt with Venus," says the Lord's
vicar, "you are for ever cursed; God will not forgive you until my
staff of dry wood blossoms." At this sentence of eternal doom
Tannhäuser, in the legend as Wagner found it, returned to the
Hörselberg: in the story, as Wagner shaped it, he gets as near as the
Wartburg on his road back to Venus. By the roadside, as in the second
scene of the first act, Elisabeth is praying before the shrine where
Tannhäuser had knelt to thank heaven for his deliverance; Wolfram
watches near. Both await the pilgrims from Rome. These arrive--and
Tannhäuser is not amongst them. "He will return no more," says
Elisabeth despairingly; and she prays to the Virgin to free her from
all earth's griefs. Then she wends her way up to the castle while
Wolfram remains to sing his song of renunciation. Ominous sounds are
heard; Tannhäuser, tattered and woe-begone, enters, tells his tale to
Wolfram, and, working himself into a condition of madness as he did at
the Tournament of Song--only now the madness is the madness of
despair, not excessive exaltation--he calls on Venus. From the heart
of the mountain she answers; the scene grows wilder and wilder; he
sees Venus awaiting him; the air is filled with strange odours and
stranger music. Wolfram struggles to prevent Tannhäuser going to
Venus; Venus calls him clearly and more clearly; suddenly Wolfram
says, "A maiden is even now making intercession for you at God's
throne--Elisabeth!" "Elisabeth!" echoes Tannhäuser--stunned and
astonished. The mists clear away; from behind the scenes a requiem for
Elisabeth's soul is heard; Venus gives a final wail, "Woe! lost to
me!" and sinks into the earth; slowly morning dawns, and a funeral
train bearing Elisabeth on a bier slowly comes in. "Holy Elisabeth,
pray for me," Tannhäuser cries, and, sinking down, he dies. More
pilgrims enter, bearing the pope's staff, which has miraculously
blossomed in token that God's mercy is greater than man's, and that
Tannhäuser is pardoned; all sing a song of praise, and the opera
terminates.
At the Dresden performances in 1845 this ending was cut, but that
Wagner reckoned it of the utmost importance is shown by a letter
written to Uhlig in 1851: "The reason for leaving out the announcement
of the miracle, in the Dresden change, was quite a local one: the
chorus was always bad, flat and uninteresting; also an imposing scenic
effect--a splendid, gradual sunrise was wanting." Now, in the
twentieth century, it is indeed hard to understand how an intellect so
keen as our Richard's, a dramatic and poetic instinct almost
infallible with regard to all other things, could have failed to see
and feel the absurdity of Elisabeth's death being necessary to
Tannhäuser's salvation. Was it the only way to get rid of the lady--a
_pis aller_?--a last remnant of the old-fashioned technique? In the
original legend Tannhäuser goes back to Venus: that would be
ineffective and leave Elisabeth's future unprovided for. On the other
hand, Wagner would never have selected the story for operatic
treatment at all had it not instantly shaped itself in his mind as it
now stands: he was, I say, obsessed by this notion of man's redemption
by woman; it was part of his creed and not to be questioned. So I
think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed
for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us
realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as
the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity.
Allowing for the time occupied in mediæval days by the journey from
Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into
leaf and flower long, long before Elisabeth's death. While she was
waiting for Tannhäuser to come in with the first band of pilgrims, the
second band was already on its way with the token of his pardon. We
need not be too inquisitive and wonder why Tannhäuser should be
expected back with the first band when he had set out with the second,
and why Elisabeth could not at least exercise a little patience and
wait for the second. The point is that she does not wait, but goes
home to die, and, dying, is supposed--as Wolfram explicitly states--to
redeem a sinner who is already redeemed. Her sacrifice is an act of
suicidal insanity due to her lacking the common sense to reflect that
Tannhäuser might arrive with the second contingent; it is foolish and
superfluous.
This is the sole flaw in a very fine opera book. _Tannhäuser_ is the
noblest expression in music of the glory and worth of human life. An
assertion of the glory and worth of human life is bound to be, as
_Tannhäuser_ is, tragic; life and the value of life can only be
realized when we see life in conflict with death and overcome by
death. All the great tragedies are assertions of the joy of living, in
the deepest sense of the phrase--in the sense in which _Samson
Agonistes_ or Handel's _Samson_ are such assertions. Tannhäuser
suffers defeat and is glorious, like Samson in his overthrow. Even
Elisabeth, a trifle mawkish though she may be, has loved life, and
only at the finish, when fate (or, as she would say, heaven) decides
against her, does she resign herself and renounce what cannot be hers.
This is the first of Wagner's operas the plot of which is virtually
all his own; for precisely the combination of the legend of Tannhäuser
with the Tournament of Song makes it what it is and was--Wagner's
invention. All the stale old devices of explanatory asides are gone,
as are the convenient goings-off and comings-on of the _dramatis
personæ_ at the sweet will of the composer who wants here a duet and a
trio there. The drama is self-explanatory--the librettist does not
shove on a character to explain it for him; as it unfolds, the
musician is given ample opportunities for all the songs or concerted
pieces that the heart of composer could long for--he has not by main
force and at all costs (in the way of unreasonableness) to drive
opportunities into the drama.
III
In 1842 Wagner finished first _Rienzi_ and then the _Dutchman_; in
April of 1845, that is to say three years later, _Tannhäuser_ was
complete, and in October of that year it was produced at Dresden. Its
success or non-success with the public and those strange animals the
critics does not greatly concern us to-day. Wagner's own account of
the proceedings is not very trustworthy. The opera was cut and
doctored to suit the singers--notably Tichatscheck; the first
performance seems to have missed fire, and at the second the house was
empty; at the third it was full; and, but for the intrigues of some
of the musicians and scribblers, and the insanity of the management,
it appears probable--one has a right to use so moderate a word--that
before long it might have won in Dresden the success it presently won
throughout Europe. That, I say, is not a matter for the twentieth
century to worry about; but the twentieth century is bound to marvel
over the obtuseness of the middle nineteenth in not recognizing the
advent of the greatest power that had yet meddled with high and
serious opera. (I do not mean that Wagner's was a greater musical
power than Mozart's and Beethoven's. But Mozart never had a libretto
to compare with Wagner's; and _Fidelio_, though serious enough in all
conscience, is not an opera at all.) In three years, 1842-45, the
growth of Wagner's strength was astounding, incredible. One sees at
once how the old stage devices have departed from the libretto, and
with them the fragmentary and jerky style of music; the intermittent
inspiration of the _Dutchman_ is replaced by an unchecked torrent of
inspired music. All the little suggestions of Bellini and Donizetti
are clean gone; the amorphous melody of the _Dutchman_ is gone, or
metamorphosed by being charged with energy, colour and meaning; every
phrase has character, and communicates a very definite shade of
feeling; in every phrase we feel how intense has been the inner
thought and emotion, and with what terrible directness these are
communicated to us. I say terrible directness because it is in
_Tannhäuser_ that we first find the godlike Wagner hurling his
thunderbolts. It was Spohr who spoke of the godlike or titanic energy
of the music, and this energy finds expression, not as it did in
_Rienzi_, in noisy orchestration, big ensembles and thumping rhythms,
but, in a far greater degree than in the _Dutchman_, in the stuff of
the music itself. We find no more lumpish harmonies and basses of
leaden immovability: the basses stalk about with arrogant
independence, and the harmonic progressions, even when most daring and
perilous, are superbly poised. The old awkwardnesses, due to the
endeavour to copy and to be original at the same time, have
disappeared. Wagner wrote _Tannhäuser_ entirely to express and to
please himself: he had given up the notion of being original; he was
bent only on being himself.
He boasted that here, at last, was a sheer German opera. Well, that is
not in itself very much. Personally, I would rather be an Englishman
than a German; and few of us will be prepared to accept the view that
because a work of art, or so-called work of art, happens to be by a
German, it must therefore be a great work of art, or even a work of
art at all. Richard never lived down the tendency, natural in one, I
suppose, of a conquered tribe (the Saxons), to incorporate and
identify himself with his conquerors, and he glorified everything
Prussian as German, and everything German as perfect; but, even so
late as 1852, I cannot imagine that he quite understood what he meant
when he held forth on the subject of German art, its non-existence,
and--of all things--its supremacy. He certainly felt very keenly what
many members of every half-grown nation must feel--the necessity of
acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to
create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding
of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race,
an entity. Which, precisely, of the German races he would have
accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say. But the point is
that Wagner longed to create, and in _Tannhäuser_ thought he had
created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that
he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself. He
had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner,
and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially
Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression.
Paradoxically, _Tannhäuser_, while one of his least original
compositions--owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to
another--is one of his most original. He spoke the matter that was in
his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the
Weber idiom.
Before examining the means by which the varying atmospheres of the
different scenes are got, I ask the reader to notice the way in which
the rather pointless, inexpressive melody of the _Dutchman_ appears
now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable. Compare
the musical illustration (_o_) on page 119 with (_a_) at the end of
this chapter. The type of tune is the same, but the first is
commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it occurs;
the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly
expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant
Tannhäuser. Compare Daland's song in the _Dutchman_ with Wolfram's
description of how Elisabeth has pined, or Senta's last passages in
the final scene with Elisabeth's salute to the hall of song. We feel
at once how, by dropping Italian, French and mediocre German models,
and writing in the way that came natural to him, Wagner at once became
a composer of the first rank, from whom great expressive melodies
sprang spontaneously. The noble passages in the _Dutchman_ were drawn
out of him, despite his conscious or unconscious imitation of what
were considered the best models of the day, by sheer force of feeling;
and I pointed out how, when the situation gave him a chance, he took
it. In _Tannhäuser_ he has become a splendid artist whose brain
refused to shape the commonplace. Later on his style was to become
more individual, more purely his own; but so far he had now got--and
it was a very long way. The pilgrims' chorus melody, which first
appears in the overture, is, to my mind, very Weberesque. It is not
particularly strong--for Wagner--and hardly bears the weight of the
brass with which it is afterwards thundered out; but think of it and
of Rienzi's prayer! The second part, of course, is Wagner at a sublime
height, but of that presently. What I wish is to give examples of how
he has discarded all the involutions, convolutions, twiddles and
twaddles of melody, and gone back to the simplicity and directness of
Weber and Beethoven. His earlier manner and type of tune, the
operatic manner of his day, had, I make no doubt, its origin in the
advisability, not to say the necessity, of writing so as to please
singers who could sing in the Italian style and no other. Wagner had
now ceased to think of singers' whims. He had a matter to find
utterance for, and he went to work in the most direct way, considering
nothing but his artistic aim. We know he conceived _Tannhäuser_ at a
white heat, and in a condition of white heat wrote the words; and
though he afterwards cooled down and had, he said, to "warm up" to his
work again, yet he warmed up so effectually that he composed at
furious speed, haunted by a terror lest he should not live to complete
the opera. This fervour alone might account for his artistic
development in the _Tannhäuser_ period. It drove him to find the
secret of the one true mode of expression--the law of simplicity, the
unvarying rule that anything more than is needed for the expression of
the thing to be expressed is bad art, and, in the long run,
ineffective. With greater simplicity in the melody came the greatest
possible simplicity in the harmony. There is a kind of awkwardness to
be found in the music of all the pundits which almost defies analysis.
The progressions are correct enough, are good enough grammar, yet the
result is more disconcerting, even distressing, to the ear than a
schoolboy's first efforts. Of this style of harmony the Italians were
masters, and too often in his _Rienzi_ days Wagner, thinking of his
"melody" (for at that time by "melody" he meant Bellini melody),
showed how little they could teach him in this respect. With the
simpler "melody" went the harmony--complicated as you like when the
occasion called, but never more complicated than the occasion
warranted. Compare with the war-chorus and march in _Rienzi_ the march
in the second act of _Tannhäuser_, and the difference will be seen.
This march, by the way, ought to have been signed "after C.M. von
Weber."
IV
_Tannhäuser_ was written in an epoch of long or big works of every
description. Think of the length of the novels of Thackeray and
Dickens; think of the interminable _Ring and the Book_! Our immediate
ancestors were a long-enduring, often long-suffering, generation.
Perhaps they liked good value for their money. If so, Richard gave
them what they wanted. He himself must have felt he had done so in
_Tannhäuser_, for fond though he was of his own music, he allowed it
to be cut freely. Even as it stands, the finale of the second act is
preposterous: the ripe and perfect artist who planned _Tristan_ would
never have done such a thing. But with regard to the finales--and they
are all too long--it certainly appears that Wagner deliberately made
use of crowds of people and masses of tone to carry through and
emphasize his dramatic purpose. In the first act every one is rejoiced
to have Tannhäuser amongst them, and Tannhäuser himself has much to
say on finding himself free of the Hörselberg nightmare, and in
familiar, homely, human scenes once more. The anger of the nobles in
the second, Elisabeth's grief and intercession for her lover, her
self-abasement--it is part of the drama to make us feel these things
and time is required. The finale of the last act I give up altogether.
Nor can I understand why Elisabeth's prayer should be so long drawn
out. Elisabeth has "nothing to do with the case." However, Wagner
thought she had; so we can only be thankful when she finishes, and
after Wolfram's song the action recommences with the entry of
Tannhäuser. The opera is planned on a huge scale, and in such works
_longueurs_ are apt to occur.
The overture foretells the drama that is to ensue, but not
consecutively as in the _Dutchman_. We have the pilgrims' hymn, the
second section of which is one of those things of which one can truly
say that only Richard Wagner could have penned them. The accent of
grief is intensely passionate, yet it remains solemn, sublime. Then
the Bacchanal music and Tannhäuser's chant in praise of Venus are
heard; but all the tumult dies down, and the pilgrims end the piece
not as it began, but triumphantly. We have here, as I have said, the
great Wagner, working confidently and with ease on a vast scale. The
curtain rises; and if we could not see the scene the music would tell
us of the billows of hot rose mist, and the dancers working themselves
up to frenzy. There is a hush, and the sweetest song ever sung by
sirens is heard, full of languor and soft seductiveness. When
Tannhäuser starts up declaring he has heard the village chime in his
dreams, it is as if a breath of cool air, laden with the fragrance of
wild flowers, blew into that hot, steaming cavern. Music of
unimaginable beauty and freshness sings of the pleasant earth--the
green spring, the nightingale. When Venus coaxes him, he responds with
one of the world's greatest songs--the hymn to Venus. Her "Geliebter,
komm" is another piece of magic. The very essence of sensuality is in
it, and never was sin made to seem so lovely. One great theme follows
another. "Hin zu den kalten Menschen flieh'" is almost Schubertian in
its spontaneity. The music never flags; there are scarcely any of the
old formulas--not even, for example, to express Venus's anger; the
fund of melody seems inexhaustible. Three main points may be observed.
First, the dramatic propriety of every phrase is perfect--the music
wanted for each successive situation fitly to express the emotion of
the situation is infallibly forthcoming; the music invariably reveals
the inwardness of the situation. Second, in spite of following the
drama, move by move, so to speak, the continuity of the musical flow
is absolute; phrase seems to grow out of phrase (the drama being true
and the music always exactly expressive of the essence of the drama,
this follows as night the day); and partly by reason of this, and
partly owing to the simplicity of the themes and tunes, the total
effect is one of stately breadth. Third, the wealth of invention, the
constructive power, and the command of technical devices, place Wagner
in the first rank of sheer musicians. True, he could not write a
symphony such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote; but neither could
they have written a music-drama; the music-drama was his form, the
symphony theirs.
In the next scene we have music of a different sort. A shepherd-boy
pipes and sings one of those songs which, for freshness and purity,
seem unapproachable--the watchman's song in the first act of the
_Dutchman_ is another example. The piping goes on while the elder
pilgrims chant a sort of marching tune as they pass--part of it is the
second section of the great hymn already described--the boy shouts
"Good luck!" after them, and Tannhäuser, in an ecstasy of relief and
restfulness after the unceasing whirl of lust and fleshly delights
from which he has found deliverance, pours forth his soul in a
wonderful phrase. It is repeated afterwards when Tannhäuser very
guardedly tells Elisabeth of the wonder of his deliverance; and indeed
it is expressive of a mood that became more and more characteristic of
Wagner as he grew older, as though he got momentary glimpses of some
blessed isle of rest where peace and relief from all earthly troubles
could be found. A few years later we find him writing to Liszt of his
longing for death as an escape; and though his appetite remained good,
and he seemed bent on having the best of everything on his table, we
can well believe that, overstrung by nature, in constant poor health,
and making stupendous demands on his nervous energy (like his own
Tannhäuser), doing everything too much, he had moments--nay, days--of
reaction and feelings which he expressed quite sincerely in his
letters. This brief passage touches the sublime. The hunters enter,
and from the moment Wolfram begins his really beautiful song about
Elisabeth, it remains on Wagner's highest level. The finale is a set
piece, of course, and is in free and joyous contrast to the lurid heat
and sensual abandonment of the first scene. While the trees wave in
the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen
blow away at their horns--and Tannhäuser has returned to his former
healthy life.
In the second act we have Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song,
very charming; a duet with Tannhäuser, very fine in parts, but not a
true love-duet; the popular march; and then the tournament. Now,
Wolfram's bid for favour seems to me both too literal and too long. He
does what undoubtedly the minstrels of old did--freely declaims his
verses, occasionally twanging his harp. He grows indeed almost fervent
in his praise of the quiet life, of adoring your beloved at a safe
distance and never disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about
human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share
Tannhäuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As soon as
Tannhäuser gets up the mighty spirit of Wagner begins to work. With a
dramatic abruptness that startles one, a fragment of a Venusberg theme
shoots up; then a few chords, and Tannhäuser begins praise of the
thing he understands by love. His strains are impassioned--too much so
for another of the troubadours, Walther, who follows somewhat in
Wolfram's manner, but with much more energy. Again there is, as it
were, a glimpse of the Venusberg fire in the orchestra, and Tannhäuser
sings another song, more intense, again, in passion than his first,
and ending with an aggressively fierce declaration of his creed.
Biterolf challenges him; the Venusberg music boils up once more--we
almost see the vision that is about to break on Tannhäuser's inner
sight; he sings more passionately still the joys of a human love;
Wolfram again contends, giving us this time a really glorious song,
and the storm breaks: the Venusberg is before Tannhäuser's eyes; the
violins sweep to their highest register, and remain there boiling and
dancing in a kind of divine fury; and in mad exaltation he chants his
hymn to Venus. Then the commotion occurs as I have described.
Let us consider this scene a moment. For theatrical effect, in the
best sense, it is in most respects one of the greatest Wagner wrote.
There is the pomp of the entry of the knights and ladies, and
afterwards of the minstrels; the Landgrave's music is effective, which
is more than can be said for that usually allotted to the heavy father
in an opera; the business of arranging the order in which the
competitors shall stand up is accompanied by fragments of the graceful
march--or, rather, processional--to which the minstrels had entered,
and these come as a welcome preparation of the ear for the essential
part of the scene. Wolfram's first effort, I say, I can hardly
tolerate, considered as a piece of composition; yet, shortened, it
would be admirably in place. From the moment Tannhäuser begins all is
perfect. Tannhäuser's music grows in intensity, and Wagner is careful
not to give us a setback by allowing the other singers to throw
Wolfram-ian cold douches over us; on the contrary, they get excited,
too; and the orchestra is let loose with them by degrees, until in the
last outburst it is blazing and crackling as though it had gone as
completely mad as Tannhäuser himself. The whole thing, with the
reservation I have made, must be admitted to be consummately managed
from the composer's as well as from the dramatist's point of view.
What follows needs little discussion. Wagner knew quite well how to
represent a row on the stage without passing beyond the limits of what
is music. Here we have ample energy, but nothing demanding closer
notice until Elisabeth's interposition. Then at once we get stuff on a
high level. The culmination is reached in a series of melodies hardly
to be matched for pathetic beauty; the orchestra seems to throb with
emotion--a device which Wagner often employed extensively in the
_Ring_--the chorus join in, and a wondrous effect is obtained. The
ensemble is the last piece of this description Wagner was destined to
write. It is pure emotion, and not dramatic--that is, not
theatrical--and its warrant is that the drama at the moment is nothing
but a drama of emotions in conflict. The only musical-and-dramatic
effect now occurs where the voices of the young pilgrims are heard: it
is electrical.
Wagner gave a title to the prelude of Act III, "Tannhäuser's
Pilgrimage," and it differs only in that from his other preludes and
overtures. To those who know what is to follow it tells a story more
or less distinctly, while those who hear it for the first time must
feel the atmosphere and emotion, and thus be prepared for the drama.
It is built up of the pilgrims' marching song and one of Elisabeth's
melodies and a most expressive theme which depicts Tannhäuser
painfully getting over the weary miles, with a sad heart, to seek the
pope's pardon; then comes in the Dresden Amen--the significance of
which will appear presently--then a crash followed by a mournful
phrase (taken entire from Beethoven), and some recitative-like
passages leading direct to the rising of the curtain. As music it is a
splendid thing, and, as I have said, it tells its tale plainly, when
one knows the tale. Almost immediately we hear the pilgrims' hymn of
rejoicing, with which the overture begins--the hymn of those whose
sins have been taken away. The pilgrims pass; Tannhäuser is not
amongst them, and Wagner there gives Elisabeth a phrase which makes
one think that he had Schröder-Devrient in his mind when he wrote the
part. That gifted lady used--Berlioz said abused--the device of
occasionally speaking, not singing, a few words; and here, where
Elisabeth, in despair, says, "Er kehret nicht zurück," Wagner gives
her notes that can be either spoken or sung, and certainly are most
effective when spoken. The part, by the way, was not "created" by the
Schröder-Devrient, but by Johanna Wagner, the daughter of that brother
Albert who had given him his first post in a theatre. I have nothing
further to say about the Prayer, nor about the "Star of Eve" song. As
night gathers over the autumn scene and Tannhäuser enters, the music
at once leaps to life. Not that we have not heard some very lovely
things, notably a quotation in the orchestra from one of Wolfram's
competition songs; the star shines out, and Wolfram, his harp now
silent, sits gazing dreamily up in the direction Elisabeth has taken
homeward to die. But now we get a renewal of the furious energy of the
tournament scene. As Tannhäuser declares his intention of returning to
Venus, the music crackles and roars for a moment; then it subsides to
broken phrases of utter despair as he describes his journey to Rome.
The Dresden Amen accompanies him at first with ethereal effect, and
afterwards with the utmost grandeur, as he tells how he knelt before
the Rood to pray--in a few bars every aspect of St. Peter's is brought
to our minds, and the atmosphere and colour. Wagner himself never
surpassed the declamatory passage of the pope's curse. Bach and Mozart
knew how to write recitative, but they rarely attempted to fill it
with anything approaching the intensity of meaning with which this
terrible recitative is filled. Then, again, the music boils, and with
unearthly effects the themes from the Hörselberg scene sound out, now
from behind the scenes, now from the orchestra; the thing grows madder
and more mad, until suddenly Wolfram perceives the bier bearing
Elisabeth being carried down. "Elisabeth!" he cries, and a requiem is
heard from behind the scenes. As a stage effect I know only one thing
to match it. In _Hamlet_ the hero has been philosophizing to his
heart's content, when a funeral procession approaches--
_Hamlet_: What, the fair Ophelia?
_Queen_: Sweets to the sweet, farewell....
Every one knows the magic of that stroke: the abrupt change of key,
the instant disappearance of bitterness, and the introduction of
pathos and pure beauty; so here the Venusberg music disappears like a
flame that is blown out. "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser echoes, and the
chorus chants solemnly "Der Seele Heil," etc. "Henry, thou art
redeemed," cries Wolfram; and then we have the final scene, the entry
of the young penitents with the pope's staff. The final chorus is
effective enough, though it suggests the audience getting up and
looking for their hats.
As a whole, the music of _Tannhäuser_ is characterized by intense
energy, the greatest definiteness, and richness and gorgeousness of
colouring. Inviting as must have been the opportunities offered in the
opening scene of indulging in a riot of voluptuous colour, the
definiteness is never lost. Through the whirling, dancing-mad
accompaniment runs a fibre of strong, clean-cut, sinewy melody. The
picture is drawn with firm strokes as well as painted with a full
brush. Or perhaps the better analogy would be to describe each scene
as an architecturally constructed fabric; and each is also so
constructed as to lead inevitably into the next. Hence, as already
pointed out, the artistic restraint and breadth in scenes where, with
such heat of passion at work, we might fear spasmodic jerkiness.
When _Tannhäuser_ was published, Wagner sent the score to Schumann,
and Mendelssohn also saw it. The comment of the latter was
characteristic: he liked a canon entry in the finale of the second
act; and indeed it was too much to hope that the successful purveyor
of oratorios should like or in the least understand so mighty, fresh
and passionate an opera. He did not understand Beethoven, and
virtually admitted as much without realizing how completely he had
committed himself. Moreover, opera was a form of art with which he had
no real sympathy. It is true his friend Devrient tells us that he was
anxious to write one, and would have done so had not his fastidious
taste prevented him ever finding a libretto to his liking--which is
equivalent to saying a man would have painted a fine picture could he
only have secured a good subject. In some respects Schumann was even
more antipathetic. Wagner, all who knew him declare, never ceased
talking; Schumann was a silent man--sometimes in a café a friend might
speak to him: Schumann would turn his back to the friend and his face
to the wall, and continue to imbibe lager. Wagner would talk for an
hour, and, getting no response, go away; he would afterwards declare
Schumann an "impossible" man, out of whom not a word could be got;
while Schumann would declare he could not tolerate Wagner, "his tongue
never stops." Schumann had no dramatic instinct, and no comprehension
for opera; in _Genoveva_--as, in fact, in his so-called dramatic
cantatas--he failed utterly: he went straight through the words,
setting them to music _pur et simple_, taking no thought for dramatic
propriety. The score of _Tannhäuser_ simply puzzled him; he saw in it
only the music _pur et simple_, considered as which it was, of course,
very bad. It was not bad in all the ways he thought, however. His
remark about the clumsy orchestration long ago returned to roost. For
the rest, when he saw the opera performed he changed part of his mind,
and wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in
place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some
time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it
muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time--and I
have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was
Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach
himself to--a peripatetic barnacle. Later, he found Brahms, as all the
world soon found out, and revised his early notions of the greater
musician. But at first he was all enthusiasm and gush, and wrote
articles "explaining" _Tannhäuser_. However, his views are of no
importance to-day. Liszt, generous soul, had the opera played at
Weimar at the earliest possible moment.
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