𝐅𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝟏𝟑.𝟏𝟖𝟖𝟑 𝐑𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐞.
𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐫𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐞 𝟏𝟖𝟖𝟔 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝.
𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 „𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞“ 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐫𝐞𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐱 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐥.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟏𝟗𝟎𝟐.
The world of music : the great composers by Brémont, Anna, comtesse de:
There are those who believe in an unwritten law, according to which genius, however oppressed, however obscured it may be by surrounding circumstances, must, like the rays of the sun, eventually penetrate the densest of clouds and wax victorious above its late enemies. These people allow no credit to adventitious circumstances, none to the timely appearance on the battle-field of a deus ex machind, without whose generous aid it is difficult to see how genius could have procured that crust of bread which even the most gifted of mankind cannot dispense with.
As a true knight militant of his vocation, a hero of energy, a fighter whom defeat could only render more obstinate, Wagner cannot be easily matched, and yet it is hard to imagine that his name would have emerged from the heap of obloquy, ridicule, and censure which buried it out of sight, had not a mighty friend arisen for him, a man comparable only to his own impersonations of Lohengrin and Tannhauser. A figure of mediaeval chivalry, eccentricity, romance, a veritable Don Quixote — perhaps the only one that has existed in our days — that belated Minstrel-King came into the world seven hundred years behind his time, and was placed by a satirical freak of nature on a throne of the realistic, practical, business-like, anti-sentimental wane of the nineteenth century. Poor, generous, poetic Ludwig of Bavaria ! You were not born to review battalions, to receive frock-coated ambassadors, to have your actions bespattered by the venom oi fin de Steele papers ; your place was among the Minnesingers of old, the warriors of the lyre, the bidders for the grace of Madye faire,' the knightly order of the Holy Graal. He knew it well ; there was self-conscious significance in those princely edifices which arose like magic on lofty crags, inaccessible save to a trusted few, secluded from the vulgar gaze, where, at the witching hour of night, the royal hermit would disport himself on lonely lakes, clad in the long forgotten garb of a mythical age. He knew it well when in the limpid mountain lake he sought a watery grave rather than give up his enchanting dream, true to the last to romance, true to the last to his role as troubadour, that idealistic fiction to which the vitiated air of our world would be as subtle poison.
Was Ludwig mad ? There are many still who think otherwise. But whether mad as a man and as a sovereign, as an artist he was sublime, and by the world of music his name will ever be revered as the preserver of Wagner !
For now at last it is acknowledged on all hands that the preservation of Wagner is a meritorious act. The fight against him has been long and bitter. In its intensity nothing can be found to equal it. Rival factions have intensified their strife with all the venom of spiteful animosity. * There is no one to approach the master' is the cry of his adherents, proudly dubbing with this exclusive title the object of their affection. * Wagner is nothing but a charlatan, totally devoid of genius, totally devoid even of the sense of music ' is retorted by assailants every whit as fierce. Even an authority usually calm and impartial, the weighty and judicial Fetis, pronounces in 1864 that Wagnerism is dead and buried, and that the operas of Tannhduser and Lohengrin are already forgotten. We in 1892 know better than that. Whatever may be the fate of the master's later works — and in regard to them the smoke of the battle has not yet cleared — we know that few operas are more popular than the ones known. We know also that even Paris, unbelieving Paris, prejudiced against Wagner as a German among Germans, after first making the performance of his music a subject of political dissension, now listens with rapture to the strains, and unequivocally admits their overwhelming merit.
To decry the productions of a composer who has worked his way to the front in the teeth of universal opposition, as senseless trash, is ridiculous ; on the other hand, those who elevate Wagner to the situation of first of all the great are probably equally wide of the mark. Because Wagner is a great musician there is no need for Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and others to abdicate. Because he is a radical reformer, it does not follow that the whole school of opera will follow in his wake ; indeed, there are serious reasons against it, reasons of cost, reasons of time, and finally, reasons of popular taste. Yet, had he done nothing beyond giving to us Lohengrin and Tannhduser^ the name of Wagner would shine as a star of the first order in the musical firmament.
Many are coming round to that opinion. * He possesses genius,' they say ; ' the pity is that it is employed in the wrong cause.' But is there not something like divine inspiration required to produce that dogged determination, that invincible fixity of purpose, that fierce obstinacy, only intensified by maddening reverses and the bitter condiment of pecuniary adversity, for which his equal cannot be found ? Ought the work of a man to be condemned beforehand — who, hunted down by creditors, belittled by critics, hooted out of theatres, and pursued by that most galling of scourges, ridicule, sits down to compose that trilogy? This, the most attacked of all his works, is a giant conception, which, as he sadly writes, he knows he can never hope to hear during his life- time, a work which necessitates a special theatre and other expenses, before which even the admirers of his most successful competitor, Meyerbeer, might have stood aghast, while he, ill-starred enthusiast, cannot obtain a hearing for his less pretentious works.
The master has been so recently among us, his name and exploits have been so much a matter of our own generation, that we find it difficult to realise that he was only a few years younger than Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, all of whom long dead, appear to us in the light of history far removed. Born at Leipzig in 1 81 3, he inherited theatrical and literary tastes from his father, who was fond of disporting himself on the amateur stage. Several of his brothers and sisters adopted the stage as a profession, and at least two of them attained to a high degree of excellence. To complete the character of these surroundings, his step-father, Geyer, of whom Wagner always spoke with the greatest affection, was also an actor. It does not appear that the boy, though otherwise exceptionally gifted, had a talent for painting ; and yet this was the vocation which for a short time was selected for him. At school, in Dresden, whither the family soon emigrated, his progress in classics, and especially in German composition, was so remarkable that it was thought he would become a poet. And here it may be remarked that the literary abilities of Wagner are somewhat unjustly overshadowed by his more brilliant achievements as a musician. Yet these are so considerable that, had he elected literature as a calling, he would no doubt have made a mark. As it is, some of his extant writings show considerable merit.
There are the usual traces of immature, early work. A grand tragedy has been preserved from his fourteenth year ; it contains forty-two deaths, and, as he laughingly said, some of the dead had to come back as ghosts in the fifth act to keep it going. But a removal from Dresden to Leipzig, in consequence of the death of Geyer, led to an entire change in his vocation. The performance of Beethoven's symphonies at the Gewandhaus drove him irresistibly into the path of music. He had always been partial to Weber's compositions, but it had never before occurred to him that music should become the absolute mistress of his soul. He now borrowed a work on * thorough bass,' and commenced to study in order to write the music for his own tragedy. Luckily this remained in embryo ; another overture proved to him that he was anyhow not yet a Beethoven. The drum had to give a tap fortissimo every four bars, and the public grew fairly bewildered and considered it a joke. * This was the height of my absurdities,' Wagner remarks in his autobiography, and we can well believe it.
Soon, however, he received able tuition from Weinlig, whose methodical knowledge proved of the greatest value. He studied very hard and acquainted himself thoroughly with all the greater works of Beethoven, most of which he copied out in score. In 1832 he wrote a symphony framed on Beethoven and Mozart's music. With this work he hoped to take Vienna by storm, but he found that capital so absorbed by Herold's Zanipa and Strauss's waltzes that he returned immediately. It was afterwards submitted to Mendelssohn, but the matter quite escaped his memory, and the young composer was too proud to remind him. At Prague in 1832 he wrote his first libretto. Die Hochzeit^ but money was becoming scarce, and he was only too glad to obtain an appointment at Wiirzburg as chorus-master at the beggarly salary of 10 florins per month. Back in Leipzig in 1834, he saw for the first time the celebrated singer Wilhelmine SchroderDevrient, whose magnificent acting and singing had a commanding influence on him. For several years he was associated with her in Dresden in daily communication. When composing or writing she was in his mind's eye whenever he conceived a new character, and there is no doubt that her imposing talent induced in him that craving after the closest possible combination of acting and music which he carried to the greatest known extreme.
At Magdeburg, where his footsteps next led him, an attempt was made to produce his first opera. Das Liebersverbot, founded on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure ; but so little time was allotted to the rehearsals that the performance resulted in a perfect chaos.
Unsuccessful attempts to stage the opera in Leipzig and Berlin, and increasing pecuniarytroubles, drove the composer to take up a situation at Konigsberg, and thence, after the director had become bankrupt, at Riga, where he was enabled to make sufficient money to pay off his most pressing debts. At Konigsberg he married his first wife, Miss Planer, whom he had met at the theatre. But the Eldorado for operatic composers of that day was Paris. The enormous profits made by Meyerbeer could not fail to dazzle the eyes of musicians with whom life at the best was a kind of semi-starvation. Sketches of an opera. Die hohe Braut, were sent to the all-powerful Scribe, but of course an obscure composer writing from a provincial town on the Baltic was not deemed worthy of an answer. At Riga the novel Rienzi^ by Bulwer, suggested the opera of that name ; Wagner worked hard at the libretto, determined to try his luck with this opera personally in Paris.
At last he left in 1839 by ship via London, accompanied by his wife and a large Newfoundland dog. The voyage was memorable and full of dangerous incident. For three weeks the passengers were tossed about, and the angrywaves suggested ideas in him which afterwards took shape in the Flying Dutchman. At Boulogne he made the acquaintance of Meyerbeer, to whom he was recommended. Whether Wagner was indebted to Meyerbeer for introductions which came to nothing, or whether, as has been suggested, the latter designedly refrained from helping him in the right quarter, will probably never be known. Impartial judges, among whom Heine is best known, have expressed sarcastic doubts as to Meyerbeer's disinterestedness. On the other hand, Wagner has been profusely blamed for the very vigorous onslaught he made in the press on the maestro's music. That Wagner honestly disagreed with the tendency of the composer of the Huguenots cannot be doubted, and that a critic as such should not be swayed by reasons of personal gratitude, supposing them to exist, stands to reason.
The three years, 1839-42, passed in Paris are among the most miserable of his life. Everything seemed to go wrong with the irritable man, whose idiosyncrasies were diametrically opposed to the French world he was living in. Even Liszt, his most devoted apostle of later years, came in for the biting satire of his pen.
His only friends were among the crowd of warmhearted but poor German artists and Bohemians who swarmed in Paris. ' Were it not for many friends,' he wrote, *I and my little wife would starve.' It is worth noting that some literary trifles, favourably commented on, served to add a meagre trifle towards his very meagre income. The Flying Dutchman, written in the days of his greatest adversity, pleased Fillet, the director of the Varietes so much that he proposed to buy the libretto and entrust it to another composer. We need hardly mention that Wagner rejected this proposal with great scorn. Before leaving Paris he commenced the libretto of TannhduseVy which struck him at once as a suitable legend whereon to construct a popular opera. He did not however undertake this task without a preliminary course of severe historical study, which also led to the elaboration of the plot of his later opera, Lohengrin. In the midst of this work the unwelcome news arrived from Leipzig and Munich that the Dutchman had been rejected as unsuitable for the German stage. * I had hoped it would touch chords that respond quickest with Germans ! ' were his sad words on receipt of this news.
When matters were at the lowest ebb a stroke of fortune came to the composer which bade fair to place him beyond want for the remainder of his days. Not only was he appointed Kapellmeister at Dresden, but the complete success of his opera Rienzi placed his name on a pinnacle which only a short time before had seemed quite beyond his reach. The excitement in the musical world must have been remarkable. Wagner was spoken of as the new musical Messiah ; so great was the enthusiasm that Tichatschek, the celebrated tenor, refused point blank to have a trifling excision made from his part. The Flying Dutchman was now vociferously demanded, but to the general surprise of the public it fell flat. The composer, greatly mortified, was consoled by a letter from Spohr, who alone of his great contemporaries wrote of the opera in terms of unstinted praise. It was well for Wagner's pecuniary prospects that the success of Rienzi outbalanced this comparative failure; had it been otherwise, the confirmation of his post as Kapellmeister might have been withheld. As it is, he seems to have accepted the post with some misgivings. His republican nature chafed at royal protection ; art, he rightly argued, ought to be independent ; in the end, however, more sage counsels prevailed, and the seven years of comparative quietude which now followed must have compared to advantage with the Kilnstlers Erdenwallen of Konigsberg and Paris.
Tannhduser soon absorbed him so entirely that not only was the failure of the Dutchman for the time forgotten, but also his resolution to seek the approval of the few and not appeal again to the fickle favours of the hydra-headed crowd. Tannhduser he thought would do what the previous opera had failed in : it would electrify the masses and be a repetition on a larger scale of the success of Rienzi. But, strange to say, the first performances bewildered not only the audience but the singers. 'You are a man of genius,' said his friend, Madame Schroder-Devrient, 'but you write such eccentric stuff it is hardly possible to sing it.' The critics took up the refrain, and for a time the vain and self-opinionated master was the best abused man in the musical world. * No melody,' * distressing, harassing music,' * nerve killing,' are some of the judgments scattered broadcast by writers who thus took revenge for many personal slights they may have experienced in their personal intercourse. The master, much chagrined, responded in a characteristic way by commencing forthwith on Lohengrin. Not for a moment did he doubt the public was at fault ; theirs was the blame and theirs the misfortune if they could not appreciate his music. Mendelssohn is so faint in his praise that it amounts to censure, Spohr qualifies his approval, but Schumann is more appreciative. Liszt was the first to reproduce the opera at Weimar, and other cities followed at long intervals. Berlin refused for a long time to place the opera on the boards, and the King, who was approached on the subject, made the characteristic proposal that some of the music should be set to military instruments so that he might form an idea of its value. It is needless to describe Wagner's feelings on receiving this proposal.
In 1848 the instrumentation of Lohengrin was finished, and the master was already sketching out the plan of the trilogy which was destined to become his most important work. Revolutionary troubles soon absorbed the mind of the public. Though Wagner's sympathies were undoubtedly on the popular side, the position he took up does not appear to have been otherwise than moderate, and certainly not sufficiently aggressive to warrant the severe measures of which he was soon to be made the subject. His principal sin seems to have been the expression of a hope that political reforms would lead to a better state of things in musical and theatrical matters. The premature plan of a ' national theatre ' was ample reason to stamp him a dangerous character, and he was none too soon in putting the French boundary between himself and the Saxon police.
There commenced now a period of twelve years, 1 849-1861, during which Wagner was expatriated from the country of his birth. After a short stay in Paris he settled down in Zurich, the favourite dwelling-place of many German refugees. With no immediate prospect of earning a living by his art, he launched into a feverish literary activity. His works principally touched on the state of music ; they contain a complete expose of his artistic aims, and form a commentary on his compositions which is of the greatest value to the student of their history and meaning. From this time dates the pamphlet, Hebraism in its Relation to Music, which has made much noise, and cannot perhaps be defended from all points of view, though it was not intended as an indictment against the Jewish race, but rather as a protest against those composers and critics who, at that time, were most antagonistic to him, and who, headed by Meyerbeer, happened to belong to the Jewish faith. No doubt Wagner, never quite just, and at that moment smarting under the most cruel reverses, chiefly undeserved, was less than ever disposed to bridle his tongue when contrasting his position as an exile with the princely honours rendered to Meyerbeer.
But though absent from Germany, his final recognition in that country as a master of music was soon to come. On 28th August 1850, Liszt produced Lohengrin at Weimar. The success was enormous. A large concourse of musical and literary authorities had been gathered together, and the sacred date of Goethe's birth gave additional lustre to a phenomenal performance. From this date, though the income of the composer remained problematical, his fame among a large section of German musical opinion was firmly established.
The next years passed without much incident. A trip to London, and a memorable connection with the Philharmonic Society, is still green in the memory of English contemporaries. But in the intervals Wagner was hard at work. Siegfried^ Rheingold^ Walkilre take shape in his active brain, and already the plans for Tristan and Isolde^ and Parsifal^ are nearly matured. In 1857 he resolved to devote all his energies to Tristan. For one brief moment a fit of discouragement seized him. Whycontinue this hopeless work on the Nibelungen ? Would it ever be performed, and, anyhow, could he ever live to see it? In 1859 Tristan was finished, but to get it performed was one of the greatest difficulties Wagner ever had to contend with. The King of Saxony was inexorable ; even the personal intercession of several German princes could not procure his permission to return to Dresden, and negotiations to produce the opera elsewhere led to nothing.
Heartbroken, the composer went to Paris, bent on the apparently hopeless task of getting Tannhduser performed. The difficulties seemed so insurmountable that he had already made up his mind to return to Switzerland, when the influence of the Countess Metternich with the Emperor broke down all barriers. The greatest preparations were made, celebrated singers engaged, and no expense spared, but the cabal of Wagner's enemies was too powerful, and the performance resulted in the most serious defeat he had ever experienced. After three performances, to an audience turbulent in their discontent, the attempt to force Tannhduser on the Paris public had to be abandoned, the Opera Company having spent over to no purpose.
Now at last the interdict banishing Wagner from Germany was removed ; he re-entered that country in 1861, and was everywhere well received, the bad treatment he had experienced in Paris being a point in his favour. Everywhere his operas were performed to enthusiastic houses, but it was due to the peculiar copyright laws of Germany that he reaped next to nothing from this success, and his pecuniary position had seldom been worse than during the three years now ensuing.
Then at last came the turning-point in his life. The young King Ludwig il. of Bavaria, who had just succeeded to his father's throne, sent for Wagner and offered him a stipend out of his private purse. From this time onward life passed for the composer as a beautiful dream, hard to realise after the ample share of hardships and misfortunes that had fallen to his lot. Enemies still emptied the vials of their wrath over him ; even at Munich the cabal was so strong that he had to give up his residence there, but the favour of the King triumphed over all difficulties, and to the end his gracious patronage was never withdrawn from his most celebrated subject. The Meister singer, commenced 1846, was rapidly completed and performed at Munich in 1868. Now that care no longer dictated his movements, the Nibelungen were rapidly drawing towards their completion. In 1870 the score was in the printer's hands, and in August of that year, while Germany was in the midst of her victorious career in France, he married his second wife, Cosima von Biilow, the daughter of his tried friend Liszt.
Wagner societies were now formed all over Germany. Money flowed in from all sides. Even from abroad considerable sums found their way to the central office. Places so widely distant from one another, both as regards space and sympathies, as St. Petersburg, Paris, Warsaw, New York, Amsterdam, Cairo, Stockholm, London, vied with the composer's own country in finding the funds towards that architectural dream which soon became reality in the little town of Bayreuth. Unable in the prime of his life to obtain a hearing on any condition, the master ended by imposing his own ideas on followers only too glad to obey blindly the most unusual dictates of his fancy.
With regard to his later music, which in and after 1876 has drawn thousands to the quiet Franconian town, opinions vary pro and contra. * No melody ' is the war-cry of opponents, but then the same had been the original verdict of people who now wax enthusiastic over Tamthduser. The advent of Wagner is too recent to admit of a calm judgment. In later years, when the smoke of the battle has cleared away, the verdict will be more valuable, because more impartial. It will then probably be found that supporters have been too fulsome and detractors too acrid, and that the true position of the composer must be sought between the extremes. Nevertheless, we think it will be then admitted on all hands that he deserves to rank among those who shine as bright particular stars in the musical world.
The last years of his life were passed in full contentment at Bayreuth, and when he died quite suddenly on 13th February 1883 at Venice, the progress of his coffin through Austria and Germany was a triumphal procession. In an ivy-covered vault constructed by himself near his villa, Wahnfried^ the remains of the master still are a shrine of pilgrimage to the increasing thousands that gather yearly at Bayreuth to listen to his music. No greater triumph could be vouchsafed to Wagner's manes than the applause which is tardily bestowed on his works in inimical Paris.
A man of strong affinities and prejudices, he more than any other gloried over the disasters that overtook the French nation, he more than any other incurred their hatred and prejudice. That the creations have overcome the repugnance inspired by the man is a homage which his detractors cannot easily explain away.
Though vain (if the consciousness of merit can be called vanity) and hot tempered, Wagner was adored by those people who knew him best. At Bayreuth not a labourer can be found who will not tell of some proof of his good-nature, and when his coffin was lowered into its resting-place the population of a town shared in the grief of those more nearly affected.
The traits of features are well known : the keen eye, the Roman nose, and the thin compressed lips give token of great intelligence ; the long flowing hair reminds one of the artistic era of Paolo Veronese and Titian, even if this impression were not heightened by the velvet cap which in one of his best-known pictures crowns his head. His figure was of middle height and strong build, his movements of that rapid activity which is in keeping with his abnormal energy. An indefatigable reader, and a shrewd observer and keen thinker, his literary efforts are of no ordinary merit. In literature, or in fact in any of the walks of life that he might have chosen to take up, it is probable that his vigorous intellect and striking personality would have made its mark.
And now that we have dipped not too deeply into the history, the lives, and struggles of those sons of Music who have emblazoned their names on the scroll of Fame, what more fitting than the final words should be a tribute to the nation whose rugged simplicity, profound philosophy, and poetic ideality have given to the world a Bach, a Beethoven, a Handel, a Mozart, and a Wagner — the grand old Fatherland— Germany, out of whose bosom have arisen the glorious pillars supporting the sacred Temple of Music !