'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN
I
After Wagner had completed the _Ring_, a work which, in regard to its
gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he
was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous
musician--more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or
Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph
than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had
dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have
dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as
his lackey--and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth
festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person
could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors
to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much
of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all;
Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of _his_
Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take
these three because they are three of the most successful financial
composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be
added. That is what they would have done: made a little money they
did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more
successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or
ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in
proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they
were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub,
it may be remarked, was a preciously comfortable one, and he made no
pretence about it being anything else. He was a successful man of
business; in spirit he was broken, exhausted, defeated.
That is the first point to be considered; the next is a corollary.
This man of dashed, broken hopes still needed the driving force of
either human passions, griefs or sorrows, or of great human ideals,
before he could compose ten notes. It is no desire of mine to scoff at
the Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian notions working in Wagner's brain
when he planned the _Ring_, and wrote its finest music; in art--as in
business, if it comes to that--one judges by results and results only.
But we can see that it was these ridiculous ideas, as perhaps I have
already pointed out, that were the postilion's whip to Wagner's
Pegasus. Of some men it can be said that no one knows anything of the
postilion's whip: of every artist concerning whom a fair tail of facts
is available and consultable we find a very distinct whip. We may
laugh at the idea of the "stories" to which Beethoven worked: who
would laugh at the Fifth Symphony would not even be laughed at. And I
have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that when Wagner set
to work on _Parsifal_ his most eager and greedy desire was to show the
world that he desired nothing. Knowing Bayreuth a failure, fancying
his whole life a failure, from a particular point of view, one idea
seized hold on him--- the idea that those who did not like his music
were in a pitiable condition, and compassion exhorted him to rescue
them, to redeem them. He meant to heap coals of fire upon a generation
that refused to recognise him as a prophet. He did it--with a double
vengeance: he made the detractors come to his knees and he made a
fortune out of them--them alone. For Bayreuth never became a
profitable investment for Jewish money until the one great Christian
drama of modern times was produced there.
_Parsifal_, in one form or another, had long fermented in Wagner's
brain. At first it was--incongruous though the thing may seem--either
_Jesus of Nazareth_ or _Wieland the Smith_; then _Parzival_ grew out
of the Siegfried idea; and at length, stimulated by the attentions and
help of poor Ludwig, he settled on _Parsifal_. These are matters not
of opinion, but of historical fact. Ludwig, when not masquerading in
woman's clothing, or ordering it from Paris, or appearing at private
performances in one opera or another, suffered from great attacks of
religion; and, unhappily for the art of music, what appealed to his
diseased brain from one side appealed to Wagner's tired brain from the
other side. Ludwig asked him to complete _Parsifal_ and he did so. I
doubt whether without the royal request he ever would have done so.
But in doing so he, as Americans say, "struck lucky." Throughout
Western Europe you have only to bawl the word "religion" and your
fortune is made; in America it is the same; on the two continents
innumerable fortunes have been made by bawling the word "religion." So
Wagner's conviction, Ludwig's desire, and advertisement possibilities,
all coincided; and thenceforth Bayreuth flourished--financially, if
not artistically or morally.
I shall devote little attention to _Parsifal_. The plot would disgrace
Wagner's memory if we did not know it to be the work of his tired-out
old age. The central idea is that of Renunciation; and I will give the
reader a skeleton, but a fair skeleton, of the plot, and ask him, Who
renounces anything? who gains anything by renouncing? or loses
anything by not renouncing? and, above all, what is any one called on
to renounce?
At the Montsalvat of _Lohengrin_--ah! what a different
Montsalvat--Amfortas, lord of the tribe of monks, has flirted with a
lady, and a magician, Klingsor, has seized the sacred spear with which
Christ's side was pierced and inflicted on Amfortas an incurable
wound. That is the state of affairs when the curtain rises. Gurnemanz,
a faithful warder, talks with sundry squires, not yet fully degraded
to the order of knighthood, and tells them how through a certain
wondrous woman Amfortas fell from his high estate. The wondrous woman,
Kundry, disguised as a sort of Indian squaw, enters, coming, she says,
from far lands; exhausted, she flings herself in a thicket to
sleep--sleep--she says. Gurnemanz does not know who she is--nor, for
that small matter, do I--but she comes and serves these knight-monks
faithfully for whiles and then disappears; and generally, it seems,
during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured
pearl of a saint of a knight. Enter Parsifal, "the pure
fool"--Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away. He
carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides
of Montsalvat. He is too stupid to understand that he has done any
wrong--wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature. Gurnemanz explains
in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, "pure" fool, bursts
into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away. And now the
reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my
explanation. At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that
only the "pure fool" taught by suffering could redeem suffering
Amfortas: mankind, that is, could only be made perfect by a perfect
idiot. Gurnemanz thinks he has found the required man--and he has, if
only he knew it--and he takes him on the most curious promenade in the
history of mankind--to the Hall of the Grail. The two men do not walk:
it is the scenery that walks. "Here," says Gurnemanz, "time and space
are one."
Arrived there, we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than
anything we know of mediæval Christianity: a sort of mosque with a
huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart's Cocoa-rooms tables and
benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque. The pure fool is pushed
aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then
the service begins. It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord's Supper. When
the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away,
Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it all. "Nothing,"
Parsifal replies, and is immediately turned out of doors.
The origin of the guileless fool has already been indicated: this--as
it seems to us to-day--idiotic notion of the eighteenth century
started Wagner on the notion that if a modern child, with all the
developed brain of a modern child, could suddenly be transplanted into
a state of nature, all would be well with the world. What could
possibly happen? But it is silly to ask the question: the whole
juvenile population of the earth would have to be so transplanted, and
they would have to find a new earth to live on--at least an earth not
frequented by modern men and women.
In the next Act we are taken to Klingsor's magic castle. Klingsor
calls up Kundry and changes his castle into an enchanted garden full
of flower-maidens; Parsifal comes in, and, though curious about the
maidens, does not know what they would be at; he angrily drives them
off; Kundry calls him. She tells him of the death of his mother who
had loved him so dearly; he again weeps and learns the meaning of
compassion; Kundry kisses him, and he learns the meaning of sex and
temptation. In horror he casts her from him; Klingsor throws the spear
at him--the sacred Spear with which Christ's side was wounded, stolen
by Klingsor from Montsalvat--it remains suspended above his head; he
seizes and waves it, and at once garden, flower-maidens and all are
reduced to withered stalks and leaves. Parsifal returns, an
"enlightened" fool, and by touching the wound of Amfortas, cures him,
becoming himself head of the order.
The whole affair is a spectacle which I must say is disgusting to
healthy minds. The insinuations are frightful. Consider, reader,
seriously for a moment: Parsifal--Siegfried grown to manhood--knows
and cares nothing about womankind. As soon as he knows what a woman is
he revolts, learns through that knowledge and by his acquaintance with
suffering--acquaintance, I say, because he himself has never
suffered--that there are two cures for all the woes of humanity.
Discard women and pity the men. The thing is absurd, and suggests that
the mighty genius was on the verge of imbecility. But the desire to
please mad Ludwig accounts for it all in a very undesirable fashion.
Of the music it is not necessary to say more than that some of it is
fine. For the most part it lacks virility, though there are passages
of marvellous loveliness. The flower-maidens' waltz shows what Wagner
could do in that way; the Good Friday music, dating back to the
_Lohengrin_ days, is sweet and fresh. But the quasi-religious music
has no charms for me.
Of course the prelude is in its way, but only in its way, a beautiful
thing. One almost hears the beating of angels' wings; the remnant of
old church melody, fitted into the most modern of modern rhythms,
sings out; the old _Tannhäuser_ and _Rienzi_ Dresden Amen comes out
pompously if not very effectively. On the whole a splendid _tour de
force_ is accomplished. But as soon as the singers are introduced we
feel the lack of the inspiration of former days; the writing is not
vocal writing at all; it is simply notes chosen at will or at random
to fit in with the chord sequences that were constantly shaping
themselves in Wagner's brain--not sequences that sprang, as he himself
would have expressed it, from "the feeling." The woes of Amfortas are
described by the orchestra with a coldness that would have surprised
or stunned Wagner in his _Tristan_ days: had Meyerbeer done it no
paper would have carried his hot words. When Parsifal shoots the Swan,
Gurnemanz has two or three moments of true emotion: the rest ought to
be silence and is rubbish. The parody of the Lord's Supper is
deplorable: we have already heard enough of the music in the prelude
without having to go through it again. Klingsor's magic music is mere
theatricalism; about Kundry's account of Parsifal's mother I remain in
some doubt: it is certainly beautiful, but to those of us who know the
corresponding scene in _Siegfried_ it is rather beggarly. Parsifal's
denunciation of Kundry after she has kissed him has not a word of the
old truthful Wagner in it: Wagner had written so magnificently about
the ecstatic state of Palestrina and such of the other church
composers as he knew, that he must, absolutely must, have realised
that his _Parsifal_ stuff was essentially untrue. Theatrically, the
end of the Second Act sounds true; but it will not bear rehearing. The
opening of the Third Act, again, is false; and the ending of the whole
business is tawdry stuff such as Meyerbeer might have been proud to
sign. Technically, the old man retained his hand; but to compare this
decrepit stuff with the music of the _Valkyrie_ would be preposterous,
and I have no wish to write more about it.
II
_Parsifal_ having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to
arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans
bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he
imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a
financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful
unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony
in C, worked away at his _Parsifal_ arrangements; his heart ruptured
and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded
life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can
do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death
sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man
could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a
prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest
detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid
her hair by his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests
there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending?
We must regard _Parsifal_ as the last sad quaverings of a beloved
friend: after that came peace, immortal peace.
III
Amongst musicians of the first rank stand four commanding, tremendous
figures. First comes Handel, by far the greatest personality of them
all: him I beg permission to think the greatest man who has yet
lived--greater than Cæsar or Napoleon. After him came Gluck, a
triumphant bourgeois; then Beethoven, whose domination was the result
of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose
supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or
a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time;
he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pugnacity
landed him in bankruptcy, and enabled him finally to win a fortune by
oratorio when no one would listen any longer to his operas. Gluck was
from the first a popular composer: there were rows, it is true, but
they did not concern him; he had always an assured public. Beethoven
had throughout his working life an ample pension and the friendship of
princes. Wagner had no such friends until he was sixty years old; he
had no pension; he offended every opera director in Germany by telling
those gentry that they knew nothing of their business; he got mixed up
with revolutionists, and, mainly because he was a man of unusual
ability, was regarded as dangerous by every bureaucrat. He was fast
becoming a popular composer; and he left his successes behind him and
went on to change opera in a fashion never attempted by Gluck or any
other composer. He was the most consummate contrapuntist of his age:
therefore the critics and professors declared he knew nothing about
counterpoint. He wrote the loveliest melodies of the nineteenth
century: therefore it was generally agreed that the gift of melodic
invention had been denied him by a merciful Providence, who reserved
that gift for the Jews and their friends. He could hold neither his
tongue nor his pen; if a bull may be excused, he replied before he was
attacked, he hit back before he was struck. Proud as Satan, and
through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and
yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his
friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with
his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising
about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring
he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even
one single opera of the _Ring_ to be given, and then allowing single
operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself--there never was in
the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of
universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813.
All this we may joyfully concede, knowing how much may be said on the
other side. Wagner not only was the most stupendous personage born
into the nineteenth century: he was also one of the noblest, most
generous men that have lived. There is not a mean trait in his
character. He endured privation, actual starvation; he was shamefully
treated; his wife did not believe in his genius; his simplest actions
were misinterpreted; frantic endeavours were made to hound him out of
the public life of opera; his publishers took advantage of his poverty
to try to rob him; the scores of his masterpieces were returned
unopened from theatres--in some cases they were not returned, and he
had infinite difficulty to secure them; moreover, he was ill all his
life: yet he never lost faith in mankind, and when he became,
comparatively, a well-to-do man he went on doing generous deeds as
though nothing had happened. With humbugs and pretenders he would have
no dealings; but no genuine young artist ever asked his help in vain.
He spared even that rancorous decadent Nietzsche; he owned his
obligations to that soul of chivalry, Liszt. He spared that mediocre
person Meyerbeer; he treated Mendelssohn with almost exaggerated
courtesy. He fought a terrific fight with all the forces of reaction
and stupidity, and he came through untainted, unstained; if he sorely
belaboured the charlatans, he had all the finest musicians, and all
other fine artists, on his side. The composer who won and held the
friendship and esteem of such men as Liszt, Cornelius, Jensen, Tausig
and Bülow, not to mention the admiration of our own Swinburne, is not
a man to be dismissed by enumerating his defects. Some of us, I
suppose, will admit that we may possibly have our defects: none of us,
so far as I know, can possibly claim his great qualities.
He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he
let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily
life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible
personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an
angel and the understanding of an archangel to put up with him. We see
that every one did put up with him; every one who knew him had the
same faith in his genius as he himself had; every one who knew
him--really knew him--loved him. Those who did not know him belaboured
him in the press or by word of mouth, and much honour and profit did
they get by it. He stands unsmirched by the mud thrown by his
detractors; he stands undamaged even by the adulation of his admirers.
Let us consider for a moment what the man's personal character and
momentum enabled him to achieve. Finely endowed personalities like
Mozart and Chopin did much: did they write a _Ring_ or a _Tristan_?
The question needs no answer. Did they or the still mightier Beethoven
dream of creating a Bayreuth? In the midst of years of privation
Richard Wagner planned and partly executed the _Ring_; he completed
_Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_; as quite a young man he had dreamed
of a Bayreuth; as an old man he turned his dream into a reality. He
had his lieutenants--big men always have their lieutenants--but the
idea, the purpose, and the force behind were his and nobody else's
than his. Bayreuth does not stand for very much to-day; in the
'seventies it stood for a fierce attack on the general sloppiness of
opera performances all the world over, for the setting up of an ideal
to which there is no parallel in the history of the art of music.
Nothing but the personal force of this one man accomplished this
thing--personal force accompanied by a wholehearted devotion to his
art. I suppose the inventors of steam-engines and the builders of
giant dams have an ideal, too, in their crazy craniums, but they
invent and work with a very definite idea of personal gain. Wagner
hoped for no gain, and he gained little, though, as I have said, as
much as he wanted. He was helped by the only noble-hearted king born
into the nineteenth century; but he found that king and inspired him.
He risked everything for his idea; if his works have grown to be
valuable assets since his death, they were not during his lifetime. By
unheard-of energy while suffering privation--even of the ordinary
necessities of life--he went on and created masterpieces, and then by
creating Bayreuth set up a standard of musical execution that no one
before him had thought possible. All the great conductors of the last
fifty years are, musically, his offspring. Without him we should have
been without a Richter, or Richter's introducer to the English, an
Alfred Schulz-Curtius; without these two men we should have no Robert
Newman or Henry J. Wood. Wagner's influence has been further-reaching
than many of us think; and that influence was due not more to the
consummate skill of the musician than to the character of the man.
Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human--in
painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose. He made what we consider
mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of
passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?--but how few they
are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the
centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were
the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not
know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in
Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book
by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the
ages have produced--the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart,
Beethoven and Michael Angelo: a man it is an honour to have known as
it is a disgrace to have scorned--the one man born into the last
century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise.
INDEX
_Abendzeitung_ (Dresden), 75
Apel, August, 41, 51
Auber, D.F.E.,
_Masaniello_, 47, 89;
compared with Meyerbeer, 67, 68
Avenarius, Eduard,
marries Cäcilie Geyer, 72
Bakunin, Michael, 136, 196
Baumgärtner, Wilhelm, 209
Bayreuth, 71, 323, 325-329, 400, 407, 409, 410
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 25, 26, 330, 331, 347, 350, 356, 371, 408, 416;
his influence on Wagner, 33-35, 42, 62;
arrangements of, by Wagner, 37;
_Fidelio_, 148
Bellini, Vincenzo, 50, 92, 116, 150, 178
Bennett, Joseph, 328
Berlioz, Hector,
Wagner's criticism on, 71;
tragedy of his life, 72;
praises the _Flying Dutchman_, 128;
in London, 225;
his relations with Wagner, 226;
his "Ride to the Abyss," 370
Bethmann, Heinrich, 52, 54
Bispham, David, 277
Brahms, Johannes, 164
Brangaena, 245-248
Brazil,
Wagner receives a commission from, 230, 237
Brendel, Karl Franz, 50, 218
Brockhaus, Friedrich,
marries Louise Wagner, 32
Bülow, Cosima von,
and Wagner, 60, 323-325
Bülow, Hans von, 71, 250, 418;
serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, 208;
married to Cosima Liszt, 323, 324
_Communication to my Friends_, 219
Cornelius, Peter, 71, 418
Cusins, W.G., 46, 134
Dannreuther, Edward, 37, 67
Davison, J.W., 46
Dietsch, Pierre, 80
Dorn, Heinrich, 32, 37, 39, 40, 57
_Dusk of the Gods, The_, 178, 188, 325, 356, 373, 398;
analysis and criticism, 400-406
Dvoràk, Anton,
compared with Wagner, 291, 292
Elgar, Sir Edward, 291
_End in Paris, An_, 212, 213
_Europa_, 75
_Feen, Die_, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 60-63. 72, 86, 93, 137
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 232, 408
Fischer, Wilhelm, 76, 126, 205, 206, 220, 231
_Flying Dutchman, The_, 65, 66, 80, 81, 127, 128, 137, 170,
187, 219, 243, 356, 385;
analysis and criticism, 94-120;
produced at Zurich, 208
_Gazette Musicale, La_, 70, 75
Gewandhaus Concerts, 33, 45, 46
Geyer, Cäcilie, 14, 16, 30, 72
Geyer, Ludwig, 4, 6-14;
marries Frau Wagner, 8; his death, 14
Geyer, goldsmith at Eisleben, 11, 17
Glasenapps _Life of Wagner_, 8, 16, 19, 39, 66, 167
Gluck, 416, 417;
his _Iphigenia in Aulis_ overture revised by Wagner, 209, 219
Goethe, J.W. von, _Die Laune des Verliebten_, 35
Götterdämmerung. _See_ Dusk of the Gods
Gottfried von Strassburg, _Tristan_, 238
Gozzi, _La Donna Serpente_, 60
Habeneck, F.A., 69, 70
Hallé, Sir Charles, 64, 73, 327
Handel, G.F., 11, 330, 331, 390, 416;
the "Horse and his Rider" chorus, 371, 372;
_Israel in Egypt_, 377
Hanslick, Eduard, 164
_Happy Evening, A_, 213
Harris, Sir Augustus, 346
Hauser, Franz, 49
Heine, Heinrich, 64, 66, 70, 76-78, 94, 126, 205, 206
Heubner, Otto, 196
_Hochzeit Die_, 45, 47
Hoffmann, E.T.A., 30
_Huldigungsmarsch_, 59
Jensen, Adolf, 71, 418
_Jesus of Nazareth_, 196
Jews, Wagner and the, 49, 50, 57, 217-219
Joly, Anténor, 69, 74
_Judaism in Music_, 31, 50, 134, 217-219
_Kaisermarsch_, 59
Kittl, Friedrich, 45
Laube, Heinrich, 51, 70
Lehrs, F. Siegfried, 72, 82, 128
Leitmotiv, discussion of the, 170, 356, 357
Lewald, August, 75
_Liebesverbot, Das_, 51, 53, 56, 72, 74, 86, 137
Liszt, Cosima. _See_ Wagner, Cosima
Liszt, Franz, 71, 128, 156, 237, 238, 348, 378, 388;
his first acquaintance with Wagner, 82, 83;
helps him to escape to Zurich, 136, 194;
produces _Tannhaüser_ at Weimar, 164;
sends him to Paris, 194;
his generosity and friendship, 195, 196, 199, 202, 208, 418;
produces _Lohengrin_, 200, 201, 210
_Lohengrin_, 72, 82, 128, 137, 196, 197, 219, 332, 341, 358, 375;
analysis and criticism, 165-192;
the leitmotiv first introduced, 170;
produced by Liszt at Weimar, 200, 201, 210
_Love-feast of the Apostles, The_, 38, 126
Ludwig II, King, 239, 319, 321, 322, 327-329, 395, 409, 410, 413
Lüttichau, von, 76, 77, 79, 80, 122, 123, 125
Lytton, Bulwer, _Rienzi_, 55, 84
Marschner, Heinrich August, 61, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187;
his _Adolph von Nassau_, 135
_Mastersingers, The_, 109, 111, 179, 279, 319-321, 325, 333,
341, 344, 358, 387, 388, 395, 398;
the story, 280, 281;
the influence of Nuremberg, 282, 283;
the overture, 284-288;
analysis and criticism, 288-318;
produced at Munich, 321
Mendelssohn, Felix, 33, 49, 57, 58, 73, 126, 364, 372, 407, 418;
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ overture, 61;
_Hebrides_, 112;
his comment on _Tannhäuser_, 163
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 55, 407, 414, 415, 418;
_Robert the Devil_, 48;
his treatment of Wagner, 67-71, 73, 74, 80;
his influence on _Rienzi_, 84-86
Müller, Alexander, 196
Müller, Gottlieb, 36
_My Life_, 67
Napoleon I, his flight from Leipzig 4. 5, 31
Newman, Mr. Ernest, 130, 167, 212, 217
_Nibelung's Ring, The_. See _Ring_
Nicolai School, Leipzig, 27
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 52, 418
Overtures: "Polonia," 43;
D minor, 45;
C major, 45;
_King Enzio_, 45;
_Faust_, 62, 70, 209;
_Columbus_, 70, 75
_Parsifal_, 16, 138-140, 170, 379;
analysis and criticism, 409-416
Pätz, Johanna Rosina, 3
Pecht, Friedrich, 70
Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, commissions an opera from Wagner, 230, 237
Philharmonic Society, the, 33, 45, 46, 134;
concerts conducted by Wagner, 220-226
_Pilgrimage to Beethoven, A_, 213
Pillet, Léon, 80
Planer, Minna, marries Wagner, 53, 54.
_See_ Wagner, Minna.
Poe, Edgar Allen, 330
Poland, Wagner's sympathy with, 41, 43
Praeger, Ferdinand, 43, 68, 200, 208, 225, 238
Raymund, his "magic dramas," 44
Reinecke, Carl, 33, 45, 46
Reissiger, Gottlieb, 77, 79, 123-125
_Rhinegold, The_, 209, 299, 350, 351, 354, 358, 376, 383, 385, 396;
composition of, 332-334;
analysis and criticism, 337-349
_Rienzi_, 55, 61, 62, 68, 69, 73, 74, 81, 82, 117, 127, 128;
completed and sent to Dresden, 75-80;
accepted, 80;
Meyerbeer's influence on, 84, 85;
analysis and criticism, 86-93;
its success, 91, 121;
a failure at Weimar, 237
Rietz, Julius, portrait of Wagner by, 206
_Ring of the Nibelung, The_, 105, 111, 137,176, 207-209, 226-230,
320, 323, 325, 378;
first cycle given at Bayreuth, 327-329;
summary of its growth, 330-334;
analysis of its main dramatic motive, 334-337;
Schopenhauer's criticism, 342,
_see_ also the separate operas
Ritter, Alexander, 208
Ritter, Frau, 199, 208
Roeckel, August, 126, 132, 133, 196
Rossini, G.A., 55, 407;
_William Tell_, 47;
_Stabat Mater_, 213
Sainton, Prof., 225
_Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg_, 72, 82, 128
_Saracen Young Woman_, 81, 82
Schlesinger, Maurice, 69, 70, 75, 82, 121
Schopenhauer,
his influence on Wagner, 231-233, 236, 265, 408;
his criticism on the _Ring_, 342, 397
Schröder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, 50, 76-79, 160
Schubert's _Erl-king_, 355
Schumann, Clara, 45
Schumann, Robert, 51;
on _Tannhäuser_, 163, 164;
on _Lohengrin_, 165, 177
Scribe, Eugène, 74, 85, 97
Semper, Gottfried, 325
Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 20
Shedlock, Mr. J.S., 220
_Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-230, 325, 332, 414;
analysis and criticism, 378-399
_Siegfried's Death_, 227-230, 332, 334, 383
_Siegfried Idyll_, 59, 60
Spohr, Ludwig, 294, 350;
produces the _Flying Dutchman_ at Cassel, 127;
on _Tannhäuser_, 149, 272
Spontini, Gasparo, 62, 116, 150, 178, 187;
Wagner's essay on, 219
Strauss, Johann, 44
Sulzer, Jakob, 209
Symphony in C major, 41, 42, 44, 45, 56-59, 72, 73, 415
Swinburne, A.C., 415, 418
_Tannhäuser_, 30, 60, 72, 82, 92, 128, 137-140, 219,
341, 343, 358, 376, 384. 385;
analysis and criticism, 140-164;
production and reception, 147, 148;
opinions on, 163, 164;
produced by Liszt at Weimar, 164
Tausig, Karl, 71, 418
Thomä, Jeannette, 23
Tichatschek, 78, 147
Tieck, Ludwig, _Tannhäuser_, 30
Tomaschek, Wenzel, 45
"Triebschen," 323, 395
_Tristan_, 105, 106, 109, 111, 137, 187, 333, 341, 343, 344,
353, 365, 375. 377, 395, 398, 399, 414;
rehearsed at Vienna and abandoned, 231;
folly of commentators on, 234-236, 266;
intended for Rio, 230, 237;
completed, 230, 238;
produced at Munich (1865), 237, 239, 321;
origin of, 237, 238;
preliminaries of the story, 239-241;
analysis and criticism, 241-277
Uhlig, Theodor, 126, 145, 195, 200, 202, 205, 219, 226, 231, 283, 329, 383
Vaez, Gustave, 203
_Valkyrie, The_, 209, 226, 230, 294, 332, 333, 341, 343, 344, 383,
385, 388, 389, 398;
analysis and criticism, 350-377
Verdi's _Falstaff_, 311
Victoria, Queen, and Wagner, 222, 223
Villa Wahnfried, 326
Wagner, Adolph, 2, 3, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 41
Wagner, Albert, 7, 8, 10, 16, 22, 24, 48
Wagner, Carl Friedrich, father of Richard, 2-5;
his death, 5, 8
Wagner, Clara, 10, 16, 22, 24
Wagner, Cosima, second wife of Richard, 60, 323-325, 419
Wagner, Friederike, 23
Wagner, Gottlob Friedrich, 3
Wagner, Johanna, daughter of Albert, 160
Wagner, Johanna Rosina, mother of Richard, 3, 5, 6, 8, 14,15, 16, 24, 28
Wagner, Julius, 10, 11, 16
Wagner, Louise, 7, 10, 24, 30, 31, 32
Wagner, Minna, first wife of Richard, 53, 54, 65, 121, 122, 126, 127,
128, 133, 168, 169, 195, 207, 323-325
Wagner, Ottilie, 16, 30
Wagner, Richard (for Works see under separate headings),
birth and ancestry, 1-3;
absence of precocity, 11 12;
schooldays at Dresden, 17-24;
early training in theatrical matters, 18-19;
his love of the theatre, 21;
Weber's influence, 25;
at school at Leipzig, 26, 40;
his debt to his uncle, 28-30, 41;
unable to play the piano, 31, 37, 73;
"converted" by Beethoven, 33-35;
early compositions, 35. 36. 45;
studies under Weinlig, 36-38;
his arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, 37;
helped by his family 38, 44, 51;
his egotism, 39;
matriculates, 40;
his revolutionary fervour, 40, 41, 43;
visits Vienna, 44;
at Prague, 45;
works performed at the Gewandhaus concerts, 45;
chorus-master at Würzburg, 48;
returns to Leipzig, 49;
his industry, 52, 53, 209, 298;
his marriage, 53, 54;
obtains conductorships at Magdeburg, 53, Königsberg, and Riga, 54;
sails to London, 55, 64-67;
meets Meyerbeer at Boulogne, 67-69;
disappointments in Paris, 69-75;
goes to Dresden, 82, 83;
first acquaintance with Liszt, 82, 83;
Kapellmeister at Dresden, 122-126, 133-135;
his relations with Minna, 126, 127, 133, 168-169, 323, 324;
his political views, 128-131;
his share in the May insurrection of 1849, 128, 131, 132, 136;
his Germanism, 135, 149, 150, 214;
flees to Zurich, 136, 193, 194;
goes to Paris, 194, 195;
returns to Zurich, 196;
friendship of Liszt, 194, 196, 199;
his demands on his friends, 198-200;
his ill-health, 200;
his scheme for producing _Siegfried_, 200-202, 227-229;
third visit to Paris, 203-207;
life in Zurich, 207-210;
his prose-writings, 210;
speech at the re-interment of Weber, 214;
his theory on the fusion of the arts, 214-216;
unable to comprehend opposition, 217;
directions for performing his operas, 219;
visit to London, 220-226;
settles in Vienna, 230, 320;
his extravagance, 231;
influence of Schopenhauer, 231-233, 236, 265;
disappointments and failures, 278, 319, 320;
the chief Wagnerite, 287;
invited to Munich by King Ludwig, 319, 321;
ambitious schemes, 321, 322;
obliged to leave Munich, 322, 323;
retires to "Triebschen," 323, 395;
elopes with Cosima von Bülow, 323, 324;
marries Cosima, 325;
Bayreuth, 325-329;
his worship of brute force, 378, 379;
completion of the _Ring_, 400, 407;
outward success, 407;
his death, 415;
his character and achievement, 416-421
Wagner, Rosalie, 7, 10, 15, 16, 22, 24, 32, 39
Wagner, Siegfried, 71
Wagner, Sophie (Wendt), 23
Wagnerites, the, 287
Walther von der Vogelweide, 294
Weber, Carl Maria von, 13, 55, 350, 372, 390;
his influence on Wagner, 13, 25, 34, 35, 41, 61, 92, 150,
153, 177, 185, 284;
his re-interment at Dresden, 135, 213 214;
_Euryanthe_, 13, 38, 305;
_Der Freischütz_, 13, 25
Weber, Dionys, 45, 46
Weinlig, Theodor, 36-38, 57
Wendt, Sophie, marries Adolph Wagner, 23
Wesendoncks, the, 199, 208
Wieck, Clara, _see_ Schumann, Clara
Wigand, Otto, 205
_Wiland der Schmied_, 203, 206, 207
Wilhelmj, August, 328
Wille, Dr. and Frau, 208
Wüst, Henriette, 45
Wylde, Dr. Henry, 225
_Young Siegfried_, 227-229
Zigesar, von, 201