'THE NIBELUNG'S RING' AND 'THE RHINEGOLD'
I
In the case of few artists is there an account of the creation of
their works worth serious consideration. In the colloquial as well as
the true sense of the word they are apt to be imaginative, and such a
story as Edgar Allen Poe's of the composition of the _Raven_ is not so
much imaginative as imaginary. The creative artist is usually the last
man in the world to give a veracious history of the genesis of his
creations, for the simple reason that he does not know, and, during
the later process of trying to find out, for his own private
satisfaction, he is given to invent theories--or, let us say,
hypotheses--which eventually he may come to believe pure fact. In
music the act of creation is often done in a hypnotic state. Goethe
mentions that his earlier songs were written in a state of
clairvoyance. Many much more recent poets seem to have achieved their
hugest popular successes whilst in a comatose state. Some, who also
managed to secure a success with the public, apparently conceived and
executed their mighty works in a state of hallucination--having
somehow got the idea into their heads that they were poets. Handel,
Mozart and Beethoven are three musicians who are known--if history may
be at all believed--to have composed in a hypnotic state: Handel would
sit for hours, unconscious of what went on around him; Mozart could
not be trusted with a knife at dinner--when he had a dinner; Beethoven
would pour cold water over his hands until the tenants beneath raised
violent objections. No such tales are related of Bach, of Haydn, of
Gluck, of Weber, nor of Wagner. If ever a man knew precisely what he
had been doing, even if he was not self-conscious at the moment of
doing it, that man was Wagner. He stands apart, therefore; apart from
some of the greatest composers. His case, I take it, is analogous to
that of a man who cannot remember a friend's address and thinks of it
that night in a dream: how he chances to dream he cannot tell, but he
knows what he has dreamt, and when.
It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently
characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace
with some certainty the growth of the _Nibelung's Ring_, both drama
and music, from its birth to its final execution. The history of the
building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily
complicated and entangled matter. Some of it had to be related earlier
in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled
up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us
begin with a few dates--
1848. Had studied the Nibelungen saga and
sketched the plan of the whole gigantic
work much as it now stands.
1850-51. Discusses _Siegfried's Death_ in letters
to Uhlig and Liszt. Begins the poem in
another form, which he abandons.
1852. Writes the poem for the work practically in
its final form; privately printed the
following year.
1853. Begins _Rhinegold_.
1854. Completes _Rhinegold_.
Begins the _Valkyrie_, and sketches _Siegfried_
at the same time.
1856. Completes _Valkyrie_.
Begins composition of _Siegfried_.
Completes first and begins second act of
_Siegfried_, and interrupts it to start work
on _Tristan_.
1859. _Tristan_ completed.
1867. _Mastersingers_ completed.
Composition of _Siegfried_ resumed.
_Siegfried_ completed.
_Dusk of the Gods_ begun.
_Dusk of the Gods_ completed.
1876. The _Ring_ given at Bayreuth.
Wagner was thus occupied with the _Ring_ for fully twenty-five years.
The _Rhinegold_ followed _Lohengrin_, but there was a gap of five
years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and
during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change.
In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the
_Rhine__gold_ and the _Valkyrie_; in the first there is little of the
passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others. While composing the
_Rhinegold_ his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had
the _Rhinegold_ been a better subject for the purpose they might have
reached maturity while writing it. But there is no human element in
it, and without that Wagner could not get on. We have already seen
that he abandoned the idea of the _Mastersingers_ for years--until, in
fact, he had created a soul for Sachs: then he went ahead and gave us
a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg. In the same way,
though he wrote some fine music in the _Rhinegold_, in richness,
splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the _Valkyrie_, where
he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be
called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human. He could not
compose unless he had the double inspiration, the human soul and the
pictorial environment. If I had to select three of Wagner's works to
live with I should take the _Valkyrie_, _Tristan_ and the
_Mastersingers_. In them we find inspiration and craftmanship in
absolute proportion; in the later dramas of the _Ring_ we shall see
how craftsmanship outran inspiration--sometimes with results that can
only be called deplorable. This matter must be reserved for discussion
until we deal with the operas separately.
The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it
took to write--for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a
single breath--but to the nature of the subject and the very German way
in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that
subject. In Chapter X, p. 193 and onward, the reader will recollect
certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to
these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this
gigantic opera. The letter on p. 227 is most characteristic of a
German. _Siegfried's Death_ did not explain enough, so an explanation
had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second
explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state
as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the _Rhinegold_,
was written--and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set
himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on
his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just
as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas
could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in
the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate
repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The
poem--or, more properly, the four opera-books--must now be summarised,
and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over
the same ground twice, or more than twice.
II
The central figure of the _Ring_, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He
is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The
luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some
mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the
hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be
rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the
minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now,
this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the
guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of
the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama
inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of
how the _dénouement_ came about, of the causes which brought it about,
which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive
attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at
all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been
arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this
sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to
hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a
violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily
abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles
to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form
the subject of three of the four dramas.
The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into
a Ring--the _Nibelung's Ring_--gives absolute power to its possessor.
It is accursed; the curse being what I have just mentioned--that the
power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his
nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely
free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions,
could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even
Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He
makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero:
the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed
it.
After this description of the main dramatic motive of the _Ring_,
those--if there are any now alive--who are unfamiliar with the work
may have no desire to see it, whilst those who know it may imagine
that I am purposely misrepresenting it. I beg both classes of readers
to be patient. If this were the whole _Ring_ it would indeed be a
barren, bleak and desolate affair. This is nothing more than the frame
which contains the dramas which make the _Ring_ the great work it
is--the dramas with their wealth of passion and colour, their hundred
varied emotions and scenes of love and tragedy. Before proceeding to
deal with them separately, let me again mention one point. There is
the flat contradiction between the Wotan who knows that when the
moment arrives his reign must automatically end, and the Wotan who
hopes to go on reigning by getting possession of the Ring through the
agency of a fearless hero who has struck no bargain with the powers
who are stronger than the gods. That contradiction is inherent in the
saga, and had Wagner been able to eliminate it--as he tried by diving
through the saga and to the myth behind--the very essence and
atmosphere of the drama would have been eliminated also. The idea of
predetermined destiny colours that drama throughout; the whole thing
might be the old Scandinavian way of stating a problem older than
Scandinavia, that of free-will and predestination.
III
The curtain rises, and we are in the depths of the Rhine; water-nymphs
sport about; Alberich, an evil being of the river, tries in vain to
catch them. The water grows brighter with the rising of the sun, and
the Rhinegold is seen to glow on the summit of a high rock. Defeated
in his attempts to capture a nymph, Alberich scales the rock, seizes
the gold and makes off with it. The silly creatures have told him that
their innocent toy, shaped into a ring, would confer upon its
possessor power to rule the whole world, on condition that he
surrendered love; and love being something Alberich is incapable of
understanding, though he is amorous enough, he willingly pays the
price for the sake of the power--that is, the power costs him nothing.
The light-giving gold being raped, darkness falls on the river.
The next scene is on a plateau; beyond it lies the valley of the
Rhine; further off is a mountain; light mists hover over the summit;
and, as they clear away in the early morning sunshine, a gorgeous
castle, Valhalla, gradually becomes visible. Wotan and Fricka his
wife lie in slumber. Fricka wakes first, and is startled, not to say
horrified, by the apparition. The Giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have
built the castle, and the promised payment is Freia, Fricka's sister,
whose apples all gods and goddesses must eat every day, else they will
fade and perish. Fricka tries to awaken Wotan: in his dreams he talks
of endless, omnipotent power, and of his castle, to be peopled by
heroes to fight for him against the brute forces of the earth. When he
is aroused he gazes at the building in deepest joy: _now_ his ambition
will be gratified. In vain Fricka expostulates, repeating (in homely
phrase), "What about Freia?" Wotan smiles a superior smile: he has
arranged that matter, and all will be well.
This is the beginning of Wotan's tragedy, the huge drama of which the
others constitute the working out. From this scene to the end we are
to see Wotan gradually forced into a corner. He has to learn by slow
degrees that you cannot have anything without paying the price. It is
in vain he argues with Fricka. She stands for law--inexorable law. She
seems a disagreeable woman, and it would be much more pleasant for
everybody concerned if she could be induced to hold her tongue and let
things take their course. So is what we call the law of gravitation a
disagreeable thing; all the same, we know that if we fall off a
house-roof we shall break our necks. In the Scandinavian cosmogony
Wotan holds sway only by treaties, bargains struck with the powers
that only sustain him so long as he sticks to his word, and are
capable of thrusting him down if he breaks his word. Even omnipotence
may be bought too dearly, and Wotan is not destined to taste the
sweets of even a quarter of an hour's omnipotence. In vain he tries to
evade responsibility, to get something for nothing; and his tragedy is
consummated when in _Siegfried_ he realises that omnipotence can never
be his. Then he renounces it.
This is by way of being a digression; but, for a clear understanding
of this main drama of the _Ring_, it is absolutely necessary that we
should see the source of Wotan's troubles, and here it is: that Fricka
will not allow him, figuratively, to jump off a house-top without
breaking his neck. What she tells him swiftly proves true. Freia flies
in, pursued by the Giants, who demand to be paid. "You rule by
treaties alone," they say. Wotan looks anxiously round for Loge, the
treacherous god of fire and lies. He has promised to find something
that the Giants will accept instead of Freia; and when he enters he
confesses to failure--there is nothing, in the estimation of an
earth-born creature, that is equal to a woman. But he tells of the
theft of the gold; the Giants listen greedily, and they agree to take
it, if Wotan can get it, instead of Freia. Wotan has a double motive:
he does not want all the gold, or, indeed, any of it, save the Ring
shaped by the Nibelung; that he determines to grasp, else the Nibelung
will become _his_ master. He has trusted to lies and trickery, and has
been swindled; but so overpowering is his thirst for universal rule
that he again trusts himself to Loge. The Giants hold Freia as a
hostage; presently all the gods begin to lapse into a comatose
state--they have not eaten of her apples that day--and in desperation
Loge and Wotan set out for the Nibelung's abode. The Nibelungs are the
slaves and sons of toil; they labour incessantly for Alberich; him
only does Wotan fear: he must get the Ring from them at all costs. The
pair descend into the Nibelung's cave. The Ring is already forged, and
the Tarnhelm--the cap of invisibility--is made which enables him to
render himself invisible or to change himself into any animal he
wishes. By a trick Wotan gets Alberich into his power, carries him to
the upper earth, and only lets him go free after he has surrendered
Tarnhelm, Ring and all the hoard of gold. Then the turn of the Giants
comes. The pile of gold they demand must hide Freia from sight; and in
the end she can still be seen, and Wotan must sacrifice the one thing
precious to him, the Ring. That is accursed, and no sooner have Fafner
and Fasolt got it than they quarrel; Fafner kills Fasolt, and goes off
with all to change himself into a dragon and to hide himself in a
cavern with his treasure. Wotan, in his extremity, has summoned Erda,
the wisdom of the earth, and she has counselled him to give up the
Ring, and it is with horror that he sees how wise she was. But his
ambition is boundless; he cannot give up the idea of reigning supreme;
and when things seem at their worst he has a sudden inspiration--that,
already mentioned, of raising up a hero who will freely take the Ring
from Fafner, and, by letting Wotan have it, free of treaties, enable
him to reign supreme. The thought is told us only in the music, and
in the music only in the light of the later operas of the series. Then
the gods cross a rainbow bridge, somewhat hastily thrown up by Donner,
the god of storms, and enter Valhalla; and underneath the dreary wail
of the Rhinemaidens is heard as they lament their loss. With this the
_Rhinegold_ closes.
IV
Now let us consider the music of the _Rhinegold._
Already the discrepancy of styles has been referred to. The
_Rhinegold_, coming between _Lohengrin_ and _Tristan_, suffers from an
odd sort of pettiness of phrase--a pettiness which in all probability
we should not feel if we did not judge it by _Tristan_. The wide sweep
of the tide of music that we find in the _Valkyrie_ is absent; there
is a tendency to shorten the measures, a hesitation between boldly
going on, as in his later manner, and the symmetrical four-bar
measures of _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. The opening of the second
scene is in structure that of a Handel opera air: we have the
ritornello, and presently the same music is repeated as the
accompaniment of Wotan's salute to his castle. This smallness of
design, it must be remembered, is only comparative: compared with
anything of the sort done before, the design is big and broad. The
Wagner of the _Valkyrie_, of _Tristan_ and of the _Mastersingers_, has
not acquired full mastery of his new art; there are still plenty of
full closes, and, though words are not repeated, the effect at times
would hardly be more conventional if they were.
But in all the music we have the first-fruits of Wagner's walks
amongst the Swiss mountains. When he sent the book of the _Ring_ to
Schopenhauer, that crotchety critic wrote in it that it seemed mainly
concerned with clouds; and truly it very largely is. The _Rhinegold_
ends with a storm, the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; in
each Act of the _Valkyrie_ there is a storm; the Third Act of
_Siegfried_ opens with a storm; there is one storm in the _Dusk of the
Gods_. Wind screaming through the pines, the plash of rain, the
driving of thunder-clouds--these are the pictorial inspiration of the
_Ring_ as surely as old Nuremberg is the pictorial inspiration of the
_Mastersingers_. These Scandinavian gods are the divinities of river
and wood and mountain, and Wagner made full use of them. The _Ring_ is
far too lengthy, and the main drama is apt to get forgotten; the
repetitions, due to Wagner's desire not to let it be forgotten, are
wearisome. But one thing can never be forgotten--the sense of the open
air, the freshness of nature, the loveliness and health of the green
earth: that sense keeps the gigantic, overgrown thing sweet and an
endless delight.
The opening is as sublime in its simplicity as the first bars of the
_Lohengrin_ prelude. As the curtain rises on the depths of the Rhine,
"greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below," the lowest E flat
booms softly out (it has to be done by an organ pedal-pipe), the deep
voice of the river as it rolls massively on its course towards the
sea; and the effect is overwhelming. A theme then makes its appearance
in its first vague form, a theme which in one shape or another Wagner
uses throughout the four operas for the elemental beings--here, the
water nymphs, afterwards Erda. The mass of tone swells out; the music
becomes more active; and at last the voices of the Rhinemaidens are
heard. The whole of this is one of Wagner's most delightful things. It
is another illustration of his rule that a composer should never leave
a key as long as he can say what he wants while staying in it; for
some hundreds of bars there is no change, and then only a slight one.
With the entry of Alberich modulations begin. Here we have the
wonderful inventive Wagner: that figure, in the inner part of the
musical tissue, would alone stamp him as a great composer: the
composer who could invent such a theme could not possibly be a small
composer. The mock-coaxing of the nymphs might be a parody of the
Venusberg scene in _Tannhäuser_; and later on there occurs a passage
that might be a parody on parts of _Tristan_. When Alberich steals the
gold we get that degenerate form of the Valhalla theme repeated again
and again, and the full effect of the device is only felt when, with
the change of scene, we hear the passage in all its nobility and
splendour. Wotan's greeting to his new castle is rather grandiose than
really fine: one feels the theatrical baritone; one feels also that
the quality of homeliness which makes Sachs a great character is sadly
lacking. In the _Valkyrie_ this unpretentiousness, so to speak, is
always present, and the music gains proportionately in
impressiveness. Wotan's opening phrase, grand and sweeping though it
is, somehow evokes a vision of an Italian opera baritone expanding his
chest, with arms extended in the direction of the more expensive
seats: this is neither the mighty Wotan of the _Valkyrie_, nor even of
the underground scene in this opera.
Nor is the vocal writing, in another respect, that of the greatest
Wagner. I have already spoken of the perfect fusion of vocal and
orchestral parts which we find in _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_.
To that perfection Wagner had not attained when he began the _Ring_;
and much of this first speech of Wotan consists of notes written
simply to fit in with the Valhalla theme. That theme shows traces of
its descent from the Alberich motive--the greed for power--in that it
does not bear real development, but only variation; it is, in fact,
not a musical subject in the sense in which, say, the _Tristan_
subjects are musical subjects, but is, properly speaking, a figure.
But shaped to a stately rhythm and richly harmonised, and moreover
gorgeously orchestrated, it glitters with sufficient magnificence.
Fricka's remonstrances are at first querulous, but with the passage
beginning "Um des Gatten Treue besorgt" we get one of Wagner's
matchless bits of lovely melody. The entry of Freia, flying from the
Giants, is theatrically effective, and here we find for the first time
the phrase, already alluded to in the chapter on _Tristan_, which
throughout the _Ring_ is made to serve so many purposes. In this scene
I still feel the halting between the _Lohengrin_ style and later, the
indecision--nay, the uncertainty--in the handling of the musical
material. There are no regular four-bar measures and full closes as in
the earlier work; but a great deal is nothing more than dry recitative
disguised. The first scene of the _Rhinegold_ is purely symphonic:
even if Alberich's spasmodic, jerky exclamations seem to be written in
to fit the nature of this being, his whole mode of speech--harsh,
unmusical--renders the fact less glaring; and the tide of music flows
steadily on, reaching climax upon climax, until the final crash when
he disappears with the gold. Wagner did not find it possible to get
this continuity when he came to set to music the arguments amongst
Wotan, Fricka and Freia: there are short cantilenas, but they are
constantly broken by recitative.
With the entry of the Giants the music makes, so to say, a fresh
start. The old themes are welded to or interwoven with new material,
and a perfect symphonic whole results, one that can be listened to
with delight without stage accessories. I do not mean that music
intended for the theatre should stand the test of playing away from
the theatre, but that here Wagner, while writing strictly and
immensely effective theatre music, has got such a grip of his art that
he can combine the two things, dramatic truth, and symphonic beauty
and cohesion. The flood sweeps on, undisturbed in its flow by the
entry of the other deities, or by the introduction of themes full of
significance in the light of their after development. But another fact
must not go unnoticed. There is in the _Rhinegold_ little of the
spring freshness of the _Valkyrie_. The melody associated with
Freia's apples is supremely beautiful; but it is a mere short phrase,
several times repeated, and the mass of music in which it is embedded
smells more of the study and the lamp than of the mountains and the
woods. The Froh theme, too, is a trifle flat: it does not effervesce
or sparkle: the "dewy splendour" of the _Valkyrie_ music is not on it.
This is not to be hypercritical: it is to compare, as one must, a
great achievement with an achievement in all respects very much,
immeasurably, greater. Had we only the _Rhinegold_, with all its
plentiful lack of inspiration and its theatricality, it would rank
very high; but Wagner himself in the _Valkyrie_ set the standard by
which inevitably it must be judged.
When Wotan and Loge descend to the Nibelung's cave to steal the
treasure Wagner frankly lets himself loose. Here we have the
hobgoblins of the Teutonic imagination and the rude, boisterous,
humorous Wotan of the Scandinavian imagination--the Odin who tried to
drink the sea dry and laughed to find he could not. As the
once-celebrated Sir Augustus Harris declared, "This is pantomime."
Perhaps the scene is unduly protracted, but the music goes on merrily
enough. The renewed altercation with the Giants calls for little
remark. When, however, the Giants demand the Ring and Wotan calls up
Erda, the wisdom of the earth, a passage occurs which, though more or
less of an irrelevant interpolation, gives Wagner a chance of putting
forth his strength. Erda rises to most mysterious music, counsels
Wotan to surrender the Ring, and sinks down again to her sleep; and
one forgets the irrelevancy in the thrill of this vision of the Mother
Earth, the spirit that sleeps amongst the everlasting hills. Finally
the composer gets his great chance, and shows that, like Handel and
his own Donner, he "could strike like a thunderbolt." The gods are all
disheartened; mists have gathered; Donner--our old friend Thor--raises
his hammer and smashes something; there is a flash of lightning and a
peal of thunder; the mists and clouds clear away; and we see there the
rainbow bridge over which the gods wend on their way to Valhalla. We
have Wagner the sublime pictorial musician. The Rainbow motive is
perhaps not very graphic in itself, but it serves as a basis for a
delicious passage--evening calm and sunset after storm--comparable
only with a parallel passage in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The
storm itself is Wagner in the plenitude of his power. It is short: it
is not "worked up": in a few strokes, brief and telling as Donner's
own hammer-strokes, the whole thing is done. Then the Valhalla music,
glorified by a gorgeous accompaniment, is heard again, only
interrupted by the wail of the Rhinemaidens below, sorrowing for the
loss of their pretty, harmless toy. Wotan hears the cry, and passes on
to feast in his castle. Grim care goes with him; but he has the
consoling idea of the free hero and the irresistible sword. So ends
the _Rhinegold_--Fricka content to have both Wotan and Freia; the
other gods not much concerned about anything; Wotan full of
apprehensions and also of determination--determination to rule without
paying the price of rulership.
V
I have attempted nothing more than a broad and rough description of
the _Rhinegold_. The opera was planned as a prelude, and suffers from
the defects of the plan, as well as from the fact that it was written
before Wagner's new method was ripe. He wrote to Liszt that the music
came up "like wild," or, as an irreverent critic once observed, like
mould on a pot of jam; and the second description is truer than the
speaker thought. The _Rhinegold_ has aged faster than any other of the
great works. Alongside of the sublime we find the petty; after phrases
as sweet and fresh as raindrops on young spring leaves we find stodgy,
"made," music; the atmosphere is not preserved. But gigantic
possibilities are opened out. The Rhine music is afterwards used to
splendid ends; the Spear motive, which makes its first appearance in
rather a trivial form--it might be a quotation from Weber or
Spohr--becomes later one of the crowning glories of the _Ring_; the
Fire music--the Loge theme--comes out at once in its full
magnificence. It is fair criticism to say that had Wagner written the
opera again after finishing the _Valkyrie_ he might have wrought up
his material into a perfect work of art. A mere mortal, even the
greatest mortal, could hardly be expected to attempt the task, and the
_Rhinegold_ is a little less than perfect. Moreover, it is
superfluous. We can follow the _Valkyrie_, _Siegfried_ and the _Dusk
of the Gods_ quite well without it. Still, it is a part of Wagner's
scheme, and for many a long year will be enjoyed for its power and
beauty, a power and beauty that seem small only in comparison with the
greater operas.