Wagner Part 1

Wagner.

by John F. Runciman.

LIFE OF WAGNER

HIS YOUTH 1813-1834.

The old world is very remote from us now, but it is worth while making a small attempt to realize how it stood to Wagner. When he was born, in 1813, Bach had been dead only a little over sixty years; Mozart had been dead about twenty years, and Haydn about ten; Beethoven was in the full splendour of his tremendous powers; Weber and Schubert had still their finest work to do. To grasp all that this means, let us consider our relation to Mendelssohn. He died nearly sixty years ago; yet, whatever we may think of him as a composer, we can scarcely call him old-fas.h.i.+oned: he remains indisputably one of the moderns. Now, Wagner can never have looked upon Bach as a modern. He spoke of him and his old periwig almost as one might allude to an extinct race of animals. The history of an art cannot be measured off in years: in some periods it moves slowly, in others with startling rapidity. Since Mendelssohn's day composers have sought rather to develop old resources and forms than to find and create new ones, whereas in the sixty years that lie between Bach's death and Wagner's birth the whole form and content, the very stuff, of music was changed. In 1750 he would have been a daring and extraordinarily sapient being who prophesied that within forty years Mozart's G minor Symphony would be written. Between Bach and Wagner is a great gulf set, a gulf bridged by Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; between ourselves and Mendelssohn there is no such chasm and certainly no such list of mighty names. It was in the period of swift transition from Bach's fugues to Beethoven's Choral Symphony that Wagner was born, a period when musical Germany was in a state of tumultuous ebullition. Later we shall see for how much this counted in the growth of Wagner's genius. In the meantime it may be observed that in externals the world of 1813 was not so far removed from the world of 1750. All the men on whose work Wagner was fed and brought up had their roots in a past that is now dead and buried. Had he been born a few years earlier he might have worn a wig; the stock was not to depart for many a year to come. A man might still, without causing remark, wear coats, waistcoats and trousers of many hues. The old world was going fast, but it had not gone. The fires of the French Revolution had cast strange lights amongst the peoples and struck a deadly chill into the hearts of kings and governors. Napoleon had shown what the will, brain and energy of a man could do, and all the forces of reaction were gathering together to crush him at Waterloo; the heads of men were seething with new ideas, destined to bring about the strangest results a few years afterwards; but the old order still prevailed, had not yet yielded to the new. Let us remember how short a time had pa.s.sed since Haydn retired, after a life spent at a pig-tail German Court in the service of a princeling whose position was about as lofty as that of an English country squire, though it must be admitted that his tastes were a little more elevated.

Railways had not defiled the landscapes of Europe, nor gas robbed her cities of all romance by night. The watchman blew his horn and called the hour, and told all those abed that it rained or snowed. Most of the blessings of civilization, which were to do so much for humanity and have done so little, had yet to come. Fair fields and forests, fresh, unpolluted rivers, cities of great-gabled houses, old-world narrow streets and beautiful gardens, and, excepting in England, few noisy smoking factories and foul chemical works--this was the Europe into which Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813.

He was born in Leipzig. His father, a police official of some vague sort, died when he was a few months old, and his mother went to Dresden and married Ludwig Geyer, an actor. Richard, however, had no great luck in the matter of fathers, for six years later Geyer also died. Dresden was, as things were in those days--ninety years ago--a fairly musical city; it had Weber at the opera and musicians of various degrees of celebrity, deserved or undeserved. This, however, cannot have much affected Wagner as a child. Rather, it is worth while glancing for a moment at the artistic life which went on at his home. Whatever else it may have been, it was not specially musical. Geyer was an actor, Wagner's sister became an actress, and the atmosphere of the theatre must have pervaded the family circle. This accounts somewhat for Wagner's earlier artistic attempts. He showed none of the preternatural musical precocity of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, who in their very cradles were steeped in music. While his musical powers lay a long time latent, his thoughts and energies were from babyhood directed to the theatre. At the age of ten he probably knew a great deal more about the drama of the day than he did of its music; probably he knew better when a play was well represented than when a symphony was well played. Yet, while his theatrical tendencies were encouraged, he must have been far from being indifferent to music. He realized that Weber was a very great man, and used to watch him pa.s.sing in the street. This is significant, for Weber remained to him throughout his life as a demiG.o.d; from _Die Feen_, his boyish opera, until after _Lohengrin_ he used freely the Weber phraseology and melodic contours, and when Weber's remains were transported from London to be reinterred in Germany it was Wagner who p.r.o.nounced the inevitable discourse.

Still, the theatre was his first love, a love rather intensified than otherwise when his mother removed back again to Leipzig and Richard was sent to Nicolai Lyceum. How the family lived at this time is hard to say, but probably it was done through the help of his sister and other relatives. Anyhow, it was not till later that Wagner learnt the meaning of the word poverty, and then it entered like iron into his soul; and in the meantime he got a good general education. Leipzig was then hardly more musical than Dresden. Bach had worked and died there; Mozart, not so long before Wagner's birth, had visited it and got to know some of Bach's motets by the astounding process of memorizing the separate parts and putting them together mentally. It was far from being the busy, if somewhat philistine, musical centre we know to-day. It had its Gewandhaus concerts, but their state may be inferred from a report written by Mendelssohn long afterwards, in which he spoke of dismissing the incompetents of the band, who went away as men who had lost their bread. It had its opera, which was doubtless as good as the average German opera of the time. But without a conservatoire, without musicians of the first rank, with its middling orchestra, it cannot be compared with, say, Vienna, where the very air breathed music and great musical traditions and memories abounded. Bach, the poor organist and schoolmaster, was little more than a name to all save his pupils and their pupils. His _Matthew_ Pa.s.sion lay there untouched, with the dust thick on it, and there it remained until Mendelssohn had it sung a century after its first and only previous performance.

Here Wagner took lessons on the pianoforte from Gottlieb Muller, and never learnt to play. Later he worked at counterpoint with Weinlig. But at first the drama and not music continued to hold his attention. He studied Greek plays and Shakespeare, and his highest ambition was to achieve a stupendous drama which in the matter of sensations and murders should eclipse anything yet done. But it dawned upon him that without music his play could not make its full and proper effect, so into music he went, and was at once caught in the impetuous torrent of the time. He could not play, but he could read scores, and soon all Beethoven was as well known to him as his mother's face. Accounts, more or less trustworthy, are given of his singing and whistling the chamber works; and it is an undoubted fact that he made a pianoforte transcription--one would much like to see it--of the Choral Symphony. He tried his hand at composition, and wrote some things that are without value; he sketched one opera which came to nothing, and in 1833 completed another, _The Fairies (_Die Feen_), which was not produced till more than fifty years afterwards. The following year he was appointed conductor of the Magdeburg Theatre, and with this appointment may be said to end his apprentices.h.i.+p to the trade he was to follow for some years.

MAGDEBURG, RIGA, PARIS, 1834-1842.

The trade he had chosen was that of operatic conductor. It was not until eight years later that he made a serious debut as an operatic composer.

_The Forbidden Love (Das Liebesverbot)_ is entirely unknown to me; but it may be doubted whether Wagner, with his head full of confused ideas, and as yet no definite and distinctive plan or method, could at this time produce a great work of art. He had to pa.s.s through his _Rienzi_ period first. But two points may be remarked. Already he had determined to make his own librettos; and his early a.s.sociation with the theatre enabled him to judge much better than any of the libretto-makers of that or any other time as to what would prove effective on the stage. In the second place, in the music of _The Fairies_, we see to what an extent he had a.s.similated Weber; the themes are Weberesque in outline, and the whole colour--colour of harmony and orchestration--is also Weberesque.

He went on planning and writing operas, but his daily bread-earning work was rehearsing his company and conducting. The experience must have been invaluable to him; but there is nothing especially remarkable to record of the period. He himself left an account of the failure of _The Forbidden Love_, which was produced in 1836. The company went to pieces immediately after, and he was glad to find a position at Konigsberg.

This, however, came to nothing, or next to nothing, owing to the director's failure, and again Wagner had to remove, this time to Riga.

The Riga period is one of the most important of his life. He had married Minna Planer, who is said to have been a very pretty woman and quite incapable of understanding her husband and his artistic aspirations; and he began, slowly and tentatively, to shape a course through life for himself. He continued to gain experience in the production of other composers' operas; he studied incessantly, and at last he hit upon the idea of writing a grand opera in the Meyerbeer style, and going to Paris with it, in the hope of getting it produced at the opera there. He was hara.s.sed by creditors; and with the daring and energy characteristic of the man whom Fate had destined to build Bayreuth, he determined to try by one bold stroke to retrieve his fortunes. He was still a young man when he went to Riga in 1837, but he was in such a feverish hurry for fame and glory, not to say money, that no obstacle was allowed to stand in his way. During the last few years he had composed a number of occasional things--which we need not stop to consider--but nothing on the sumptuous scale of _Rienzi_. Heroic personages, dramatic or melodramatic situations, opportunities for huge gaily-dressed crowds and scenic display--these were what the young man was after; and in the story of Rienzi he found plenty to fire an imagination always p.r.o.ne to flame and flare at the slightest suggestion. The libretto was written; the music was partly written; and in 1839 Wagner took one of the most momentous steps in all his stormy career--he sailed from Riga, accompanied by his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching Paris by way of London.

The voyage itself bore noteworthy artistic fruit; for within three years the roar and scream of the tempest, the smas.h.i.+ng of heavy seas upon the s.h.i.+p's sides and deck, and (I dare say) the captain's curses, were to be translated into tone and take artistic shape in _The Flying Dutchman_.

London reached in safety, Wagner stayed first near the Tower and then in Soho. He lost his dog, found it, and crossed the Channel to Boulogne.

Here he met Meyerbeer, who gave him an introduction to a bankrupt theatre, the Renaissance, in Paris. In Paris he met many well-known people, amongst them Heine, who clasped his hands and looked heavenwards when he heard of a penniless German coming to such a city to seek his fortune, with nothing save an unfinished opera and an introduction from Meyerbeer. The late Sir Charles Halle met him at this time, and left some amusing reminiscences in his Autobiography. Heine's view of the situation was speedily justified. Not by any efforts could _Rienzi_ be unloaded upon an opera director, and Wagner began to experience the bitterness of poverty. To earn a bare living, he thought himself lucky to be entrusted with the making of transcriptions of popular airs and the writing of articles for the press.

The three years' stay in Paris did Wagner no particular harm that I have been able to trace beyond implanting in him that deadly fear of being hard up which haunted him all his life thenceforward, and is an offensive and yet pathetic feature of his letters to all his friends. On the other hand, he heard opera performances on a scale outside and beyond his past experience; he heard Habenek direct the Choral Symphony at the Conservatoire, and learnt much, not only about that mighty work--which he must already have known by heart--but also of the art of conducting; he finished _Rienzi_ and sent it off to Dresden, where it was accepted; and he planned and completed _The Flying Dutchman_, which was accepted for production at Berlin. He had also written the _Faust_ Overture in its first form. And probably also he had acquired that almost fatal fluency of the pen which was to make so many enemies for him afterwards, and yet to lead to the realization of his life's dream in Bayreuth. A bare list of the names of the friends and opponents he gained at this time would take up more s.p.a.ce than is available in so brief a study as this, and I must pa.s.s over many interesting incidents.

The most important is that connected with _The Flying Dutchman_ libretto. Wagner submitted his sketches to the opera, where they were placed at the disposal of another composer, and he was offered (I think) 20 or nothing for them. He took the 20, and then, his artistic conscience happily triumphing over his commercial conscience, he used the money to live upon until he had completed his own opera on the same subject. The French _Dutchman_ (music by Dietsch) was produced. It failed and is forgotten. How Wagner's fared all the world knows.

_Rienzi_ was now getting ready at Dresden, and thither Wagner went in April, 1842. The opera was produced in October, with enormous success, and the name of Wagner became famous throughout Germany. Nowadays so much of the music appears so very cheap and tawdry that it is only after a severe mental struggle one can understand the enthusiasm the work aroused. We must put away all thought of the later Wagner; we must forget that when _Rienzi_ was produced the _Dutchman_ had already been some time finished. We must remember the sort of music the Dresden public had suffered under: dull, workmanlike operas, without an original touch, without the breath of life in them--in a word, kapellmeister music. The pomp and outward show of that remarkable heavy-weight Spontini must have come as a relief after the Dresden opera-goer's ordinary fare; but Spontini, though he lays on his colours with a barbarian regal hand, never sparkles; he is altogether lacking in vivacity, elasticity; he had no gift for gracious or piquant melody. Of the operas of Marschner much the same must be said; in them we find the tricks of the Romantics without the best Romantics' sense of beauty, all the horrors of Weber without Weber's pa.s.sion. Black woods, supernatural fireworks by night, enchantments, vampires, guns that went off by themselves--all this jugglery was fast being done to death, and what at first had been a nerve-shaking novelty was becoming a mere tedium. In opera _The Castle of Otranto_ was played out. Into this region of insp.i.s.sated gloom Richard burst with _Rienzi_, the brilliant, the fearless, the tragic hero; all was blazing light and colour; it sparkled; if the champagne of it was of an inferior quality--often, indeed, poor goose-berry--yet it bubbled and frothed gaily. Besides, there were great sweeping tunes--such as the hackneyed prayer--and plenty of really dainty, if very Weberesque, melodies. All that Meyerbeer had to teach was there, and the stolid Dresdener gazed with delight on the brilliance of the latest Parisian musical fas.h.i.+ons. So Wagner gained his first success, and deserved it. It was not the Paris success he had dreamed of a few years before, when fame, money and all worldly things desirable were to be his. But it meant bread-and-b.u.t.ter without drudging for the publishers or the press; it meant the means of living while he wrote masterpieces which were to set half the world against him and eventually make him immeasurably the greatest musical figure of his time. He was appointed Court kapellmeister, and there he remained until 1849. Before proceeding to this next period of seven years we must consider _The Flying Dutchman_.

This is his first music drama. He called it a romantic opera; but here for the first time the drama grows out of an idea and the music out of the drama. The thing suggested itself to him during that stormy trip to London: the roaring waves, the whistling of the salt winds, the loneliness of the bitter North Sea--these set his imagination aworking on the old legend of the mariner doomed to sail the ocean until the Day of Judgment. In this there was colour and atmosphere enough, but no drama. The dramatic idea he took from Heine's sentimental version. In this the Dutchman's lot is softened and mitigated by a possibility of salvation. He can go ash.o.r.e once in seven years, and if he can find a maiden who will love him and be faithful unto death he will be released from the necessity to wander. That is to say, his chances of redemption depend upon constancy of some unknown young lady. All the Dutchman has to do is to find her, make himself agreeable, and trust to luck. A more childish notion never occurred to an intellectual man, nor a more selfish one. The lady might have done nothing wrong; she was to be punished for loving not wisely but too well; and there is nothing in the old legend or in the Wagner-Heine form of it to show the Dutchman to have been a deserving person. Yet, on the other hand, Wagner, with still vivid memories of the agonies he had endured during his voyage, may have thought the punishment excessive for a momentary loss of temper in trying circ.u.mstances and a pa.s.sing swear-word; and the girl was to find the fullest joy her nature was capable of in sacrificing herself. But there is no fundamental verity inherent in the idea: the Dutchman's salvation might as well depend on a throw of dice; and all this early nineteenth-century romantic sentimentalism, with one of its main notions--that a woman cannot be better occupied than in "saving" a man--this, grafted on to the stern, relentless old story, makes a compound that is always unreal and sometimes ludicrous. But it gave Wagner three opportunities: of painting the stormy sea, of depicting the hopeless misery of the Dutchman Vanderdecken, and of expressing in music woman's most pa.s.sionate and unselfish love.

No one need be afraid of "not understanding" the _Dutchman_. The story is simplicity itself. Wagner knew the theatre and every stagey device by heart, and in none of his dramas is there anything half so hard to follow as the plots, say, of _Rigoletto_ and _Ada_ and most Italian operas. Nor, again, does the music present any difficulty. In spite of the use of the _leit-motif_ which I shall discuss presently, the separate numbers are as clean cut as those of any Mozart opera. He joins his different items, it is true, but it is impossible to avoid knowing where one leaves off and the next begins. The play opens with the raging tempest on a rocky coast; the s.h.i.+p of one Daland is driven there, and Daland goes ash.o.r.e to see if there is any likelihood of the storm ceasing--a proceeding at which any land-lubber, not to mention experienced tars, might well laugh. Finding himself far from his port and no probability of the wind and sea falling immediately, he goes on board again to take a little rest, and descends to his cabin, leaving a sailor as watchman, to see, I suppose, that the vessel does not batter itself to pieces on the cliffs. The watchman sings himself to sleep with a most beautiful ballad. The sky darkens, the sea boils more furiously than ever, and the phantom s.h.i.+p arrives. With a prodigious uproar her anchor takes ground--another evidence of Wagner's seamans.h.i.+p--and Vanderdecken comes ash.o.r.e in his turn. His seven years are up; now he has another chance of finding the faithful maiden. The opening of this scene is as fine as anything Wagner ever wrote; the later portions are fine, too, but quite old-fas.h.i.+oned. The storm ceases, and Vanderdecken having expressed his hopes and fears, Daland comes on deck, enters into conversation with the stranger, and in a few minutes it is arranged that the two shall go together, and if the Dutchman can win Senta's heart, she shall be his.

Now, it will be noted here that the whole thing is ridiculously stagey and artificial. In spite of the new ideas fermenting in Wagner's brain, he had not yet got away from the stage-trickiness of Scribe. Unreality and artificiality face you at every step. The music is a different matter. No one, not even Mendelssohn in his _Hebrides_ overture, has ever given us the sea, the noise and colour of it, its violence and ruthlessness, as Wagner has here. It is the sea that pervades the whole of the act; but imposed on its ceaseless sound there are very splendid things--some worn a little threadbare by now, but many still fresh. In the next act the prima donna has her opportunity. Senta, the heroine, sits at her spinning-wheel amidst a number of maidens. After a conventional spinning chorus, Senta sings the ballad of the Flying Dutchman, whose picture hangs on the wall, and ends up with an ecstatic appeal to Heaven, Fate--everyone in general and no one in particular--to give her the chance of saving him. Daland and Vanderdecken enter, and the drama begins to approach its climax. The spinning chorus is pretty; but nothing in the act--nor, in fact, in the whole opera--matches the glorious pa.s.sage where Senta takes her fate in both hands and avows her resolution to follow the Dutchman to death or whatever else may befall.

The essence of the last act may be given in a few words. It begins as if Wagner had felt that he had not made sufficient use of the uncanny effects to be got out of the phantom s.h.i.+p, and we get a long string of choruses not necessary to the drama. At the last Vanderdecken, he, too, rises to the full height of his character, and, determining that he will not sacrifice Senta, renounces her and goes on board his boat to sail off. But Senta throws herself into the water after him; the phantom vessel falls to pieces, and the glorified forms of the two are seen mounting towards the sky. But Vanderdecken's sudden resolve has the air of an afterthought, and counts for little beside the fact that throughout the drama the sacrifice of Senta has been insisted on as the price of his redemption. It is the Senta theme, also, that is played as the pair mount.

The _Dutchman_ must stand amongst Wagner's great works. More beautiful music for the theatre had been written, but never had such energy been put into it as we find in the Dutchman's d.a.m.nation theme or the tumult of the bitter, angry sea. Any lazy man can, in time, fill up a score with sufficient notes for the trumpets, trombones and drums to produce a deafening uproar, but it took all the native force of a Wagner to fill, to inform, the thought itself with such energy that, looking at the score, the pa.s.sages seem almost to leap out from the page, and, played on even a small piano, their effect is still overwhelming. When the opera was produced the effect on the audience was certainly overwhelming, almost stupefying. The _Dutchman_ had been accepted at Berlin on Meyerbeer's recommendation, but that recommendation Wagner probably thought of no great value, and after the success of _Rienzi_ he determined to have it also played at Dresden, and the first performance took place at the beginning of 1843. The noise of the storm rolled far outside the theatre, and from that time forward Wagner and his music were subjects of discussion throughout Europe. His originality was not doubted; the din of his orchestra was no louder than that of Spontini's or Marschner's, but the harmony seemed bold to those who had never known Bach and had already forgotten Beethoven, and people were puzzled by the lack of full-stops at the end of each number. Things that seem old-fas.h.i.+oned to us now were then new, while Wagner's own genuine inventions could at first hardly be grasped. However, Wagner had no reason to be dissatisfied. He had already his admirers, he was secure in an important post, and he could cheerfully set forth in search of fresh woods and pastures new, or, to use a more appropriate figure, fresh seas to cross in search of new continents.

DRESDEN, 1842-1849.

He was now thirty, and although he had written two long works, one of them a great one, they const.i.tuted the merest prelude to the gigantic achievements of the next forty years. He was busily engaged at the opera, but set to work at once on an endless number and variety of projects. _Tannhauser_ was finished by 1845, _Lohengrin_ by 1847, and his brain was occupied with _The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (Die Meistersinger)_ and _The Nibelung's Ring_, both to be completed long afterwards. During this period he also composed the _Love-feast of the Apostles_, and did a bit of mending to Gluck's _Iphigenia in Aulis_.

But, though scheming many things, he seemed by no means sure of his road at first. With Schroder-Devrient, the singer, and others, he discussed lengthily the question of whether he should attempt another _Rienzi_ or go on from the _Dutchman_. If to realize his artistic dreams was dear to Wagner, so were immediate success, fame and money. Of the last he could never have enough, for he spent it faster than he gained it--spent it on himself, needy artists, on any object which suggested itself to him.

However, the creative artist in him had the victory. The notion of a second _Rienzi_ was abandoned and _Tannhauser_ commenced. He had come across the legend of an illicit pa.s.sion and its punishment somewhere, and he set to work on the book of words. Of course he sentimentalized the story--it was a trick he was always given to, especially during these, his younger, years--and, of course, he made a woman sacrifice herself for a man. In the older form of the tale Tannhauser lived goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a compet.i.tion in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise of foul carnal l.u.s.t and the joy of living with the G.o.ddess of Love in the heart of the hills. Coming to himself, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and asked and was refused the Pope's forgiveness. Then he returned to Venus, and so the story ends with the eternal d.a.m.nation of Tannhauser, just as the ancient legend of the Flying Dutchman ends with the eternal d.a.m.nation of Vanderdecken.

It need hardly be said that this did not satisfy Wagner. He did not like to see people eternally d.a.m.ned; drab, hopeless tragedy was not for him.

In nearly every opera we find peace and hope at the close, or even ecstasy in death, as in the _Dusk of the G.o.ds (Gotterdammerung)_ and _Tristan_. So he promptly made use of Elisabeth in _TANNHaUSER_, though, as we shall see, the redeeming act is not so sharply defined as in the _Dutchman_. In the first scene Tannhauser is sleeping in the arms of Venus, while baccha.n.a.ls indulge in riotous dances. Tannhauser suddenly starts from sleep: he has dreamed of his home as it was before his fall--of the village chime, the birds, the flowers, the sweet air; and he asks permission to return from this hot, steaming cave of vice to the fair clean earth. Venus in vain plays upon him with all her arts and wiles; he sings his magnificent song in praise of her and her beauty, but insists that he must go, and ends with a frenzied appeal to the Virgin. In a moment the illusion is broken: Venus, her luxurious cavern, her nymphs and satyrs, all disappear. There is a minute's blackness, then the light returns, and Tannhauser is lying in the roadside before a cross. The sky is blue and the trees and gra.s.s are green, and a shepherd-boy is carolling a fresh, merry spring song. Tannhauser remains with his face to earth while a band of pilgrims pa.s.ses on its way to Rome. Then his old companions come up, recognise him, tell him Elisabeth has patiently awaited his return, and so induce him to go with them.

The second act opens on the Hall of Song. Elisabeth thinks over her grief and longing during Tannhauser's absence, and sings her delight now that he has come back to her. He comes in, and there follows a most beautiful and touching scene, Elisabeth expressing her love and joy and recounting her past sorrow, while in Tannhauser's utterances are mingled joy, regret, grat.i.tude, and a sense of rapturous repose on finding himself at peace once again, after being so long tossed on seas of stormy pa.s.sion. The tournament of song commences. Various minstrels sing the pure pleasures of a love in which the flesh has no part; Tannhauser, Elisabeth approving, praises an honest, natural love. The others oppose him, until, goaded to madness, he loses all self-control.

He hears the voice of Venus and calls upon her; in confusion the women rush from the hall, the men draw their swords, and in a moment the hero would be stabbed did not Elisabeth dash between him and the infuriated knights. She pleads for him, and at last, the voice of pilgrims being heard in the distance, Tannhauser's life is spared on condition that he joins them and goes to Rome to ask forgiveness. The curtain in the last act rises on the scene of the first, but where all was young and fresh, now the leaves are withered and the tints of autumn are everywhere.

Elisabeth watches the pilgrims pa.s.s on their return from Rome--Tannhauser is not amongst them. She sings her prayer to the Virgin and goes home, as it proves, to die. Wolfram, Tannhauser's friend, who also loves Elisabeth, sings his song of resignation; and then Tannhauser enters, to the sinister theme of the Pope's curse. He tells Wolfram how he has been to Rome, how he has suffered, how he asked the Pope's pardon, and how the Pope declared that he should never be forgiven until the staff in his hand blossomed. So now he is on his way back to Venus.

Venus calls him; he struggles with Wolfram, and is about to break away when the body of Elisabeth is carried by. Tannhauser falls by the side of the bier; the Pope's staff, which has burgeoned, is brought on; and so the opera ends, Tannhauser being redeemed.

It is necessary to rehea.r.s.e in this way the dramatic bases of _Tannhauser_ and Wagner's succeeding operas for two reasons. First, the drama, which played a big enough part in the _Dutchman_, now becomes more important, more essential, than ever. Many an old Italian opera may be heard without the hearer knowing in the least what it is about; indeed, in many cases the less one knows of the plot, the more one enjoys the music. But the reverse is true of Wagner. Certain portions of _Tannhauser_, for example, can be listened to with pleasure simply as n.o.ble or beautiful music: the overture, Tannhauser's Song to Venus, the Pilgrims' Marching Chorus, Wolfram's "O Star of Eve," Elisabeth's Prayer, and so on. On the other hand, without an acquaintance with the story, and each stage of the story as it progresses, much of Venus's music in the first act loses its significance; the duet of Elisabeth and Tannhauser in the second act loses its pathos, and the huge finale is meaningless, even as music; and the greater portion of the third act is simply bewildering. When we know what is being sung or done, the music is as clear as the day. Wagner knew this better than anyone, and, as I pointed out in commenting on the _Dutchman_, he brought his whole theatrical experience and training to help him to make the drama as simple and comprehensible as possible. When the Wagner battle was raging in the seventies and eighties, the sages pointed to the necessity of understanding the drama for the purpose of understanding the music as a defect of the Wagner music-drama, and a proof of Wagner's inferiority as a composer. But one would like to ask the sages how many songs are there which do not afford a finer artistic enjoyment when the words are understood?

A second reason for thoroughly knowing the drama of the later Wagner operas is that without that knowledge the _leit-motif_, which now becomes a formidable element, is likely to be wholly misunderstood and its artistic value missed. Nine-tenths of the absurdities written and talked about the _leit-motif_ are due to ignorance of the nature of the dramatic situations in which it is used, and in consequence the purposes for which it is used. The _leit-motif_ (leading theme) had very humble beginnings. Who was the first to employ it I really don't know. It was simply a theme which made its first appearance with one of the personages of the opera, and afterwards was used whenever that personage came on again or was referred to. Or it was connected with some thought, someone's destiny, someone's plans, and either because it expressed truly the right emotion, or because it acted by a.s.sociation of ideas, whenever it sounded from the orchestra the thing desired was recalled to one's mind. So used it was a useful father than a highly artistic device. Wagner constantly used it so for matters which did not demand lengthy treatment, such as Lohengrin's warning to Elsa or the curse on the gold in the _Ring_. But while continuing to make this elementary application of it, rather for dramatic than for musical purposes, he at the same time developed it until it ceased to be merely a leading motive, but became the very stuff of the music itself. Much of the music of the later operas is spun out of what appear at first nothing more than the old leading motives. The process by which this is done will be discussed later; for the present let us see how far Wagner goes with it in _Tannhauser_.

In the _Dutchman_ there are two princ.i.p.al themes, the first--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Some bars of music]

standing for Vanderdecken, the curse laid on him, and the whole idea of the phantom s.h.i.+p; the second--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Some bars of music]

for Senta. They are short and clean-cut; they recur when wanted, and are subjected to little modification. There is not a single theme of this description in _Tannhauser_. The first act is perfectly easy to follow.

There are no _leit-motifs_. The Venus and bacchantic music will be heard again in the second and third acts; but the rest consists of numbers almost as completely detached as those that make up the _Dutchman_, though the joinings are not only more skilful, but are real music and not mere padding. Wagner had not by any means yet arrived at the continuous music of his later work; in spite of his desire to sweep on from the beginning to the end of each scene, he was still forced to take frequent breath and disguise the stoppage as cleverly as he could. The first scene contains many of Wagner's most inspired melodies, notably the despairing song of Venus towards the end, a tune that might have come from Schubert. The old Weber influence is to be seen in the contours of many of the themes, as well as their orchestral colour; and the steadfast four-bar rhythm reminds one, in spite of the difference of subject, irresistibly of _Euryanthe_. It was not until the _Tristan_ period that Wagner got rid of this. In the second scene of the first act we find all the musical machinery of old-fas.h.i.+oned opera, but used with a mastery that leaves the _Dutchman_ far behind. There is first the shepherd's delightfully fresh song, in wonderful contrast to the scents and stifling heat of the Venus cave music; then comes the Pilgrims'

Chorus; then come Tannhauser's friends with at least one number, Wolfram's appeal, which is distinct and separate from the rest of the music as a goldfish is from the water it swims in. The act ends with a regular set finale, altogether on the old models.

The second act opens with Elisabeth's _scena;_ then follow her duet with Tannhauser, the march and chorus as the company troop in to hear the contest of minstrels, the various songs, Tannhauser's fatal mistake, Elisabeth's intercession for him, the voices of the pilgrims setting out for Rome, and Tannhauser's rush to overtake them. No use is made of the _leit-motif;_ only when Tannhauser loses his wits and sings in praise of Venus do we get reminiscences of the Venusberg music. In the third act the structure is the same. Number flows into number, it is true, without full-closes--without full-stops, so to speak; but those who have never before heard a note of Wagner can follow as easily as they could a Gluck or Mozart opera. The Pilgrims' Chorus occurs again, and again we have the Venus music, when Tannhauser, demented, sees her in the heart of the mountain and hears her calling him.

In 1845 _Tannhauser_ was produced. When the score was published--those quaint lithographed scores: I believe some of them still exist in the British Museum--Schumann got it, and seemed to like it, since he showed it as a treasure to Hanslick, a musical critic of Vienna. Mendelssohn also liked a canon in the second act--Mendelssohn, who ought to have understood and loved the picturesque in it better than anyone. All fantastic dreams of another _Rienzi_ and a huge popular success had long since melted away: the creative instinct in Wagner was master of the situation; never again did he plan anything to please the public, save, comical to relate, when he began on the story of _Tristan_.

In _The Flying Dutchman_ Wagner had exploited the uncanny, the terror and mystery of gray winter seas; in _Tannhauser_ he turned to the conflict between the gross, lurid pa.s.sions of man and the sane, pure side of his nature; and now, in _Lohengrin_, he was to give us an opera which for sheer sustained loveliness has only one parallel in his works--the _Mastersingers_. It is the most delicately beautiful thing he wrote; its freshness is the freshness that seems unlikely to fade with the pa.s.sage of time. Curiously, too, while full of the spirit of Weber--it is the most Weberesque of all his operas--of Weber who loved darksome woods, haunted ruins and all the machinery of the romantics, it is full of sweet sunlight and cool morning winds: the atmosphere of Montsalvat, the land where it is always dawn, pervades it. As a painter in music of landscape, seascape, of storm, rain amongst the leaves, spring mornings, and calm sunny woodland scenes, Wagner has no equal.

There is nothing theatrical on this side of his art: the footlights and back-cloths disappear, and the very thing itself is before us.

In or about 1847 _Lohengrin_ was finished. The tale is of the simplest.

Elsa is in distress. She is the daughter of the late Duke, and her brother, the heir to the t.i.tle and lands, has been changed into a swan by the enchantments of Ortruda, wife of Frederick, who says that Elsa has murdered him. Ortruda's tale is believed and Elsa is charged with the crime before the King, Henry the Fowler. Frederick brings the charge and claims the possessions and everything as the rightful heir. Henry asks whether she is willing that some champion should fight on her behalf. She consents. The herald calls for the champion; no one appears, and the case is about to be decided against her when a knight is seen in a magic boat on the river drawn by a swan. He offers to fight for her on one condition: that she will never ask his name or whence he comes. She promises, and in a few minutes Frederick is overcome and, with his wife, disgraced, and the act ends with a regular opera finale. Next, Ortruda comes as a suppliant in the night to Elsa, gains admittance, and poisons her mind with doubts about Lohengrin. However, the wedding arrangements go forward, and at the very church door Frederick interrupts the procession, and accuses Lohengrin of witchcraft and what not. He is put aside; but in the next act we see the poison at work in Elsa's mind. She and her unknown husband are left alone, and, as Nietzsche observed, they sit up too late. Elsa, with all the exasperating pertinacity of an illogical, curious woman, persists in questioning Lohengrin, getting nearer and nearer to the vital matter, until at last she can restrain herself no longer. In fancy she sees the swan returning to carry off her lover; and, wholly terrified, she asks, "Who are you and where do you come from?" At the moment Frederick rushes in with some confederates, only to be slain by Lohengrin. Sadly Lohengrin says that all now is ended; his hopes are shattered because his bride could not subdue her inquisitiveness for a year. In the next act he appears before the King and n.o.bles; he relates what has happened, says that he comes from Montsalvat, where his father, Parcival, is King, and now he must return.

Ortruda breaks through the crowd, and in malicious triumph confesses her crime. Lohengrin prays to Heaven; the swan is changed back to Elsa's brother, a dove descends and is attached to the boat, and Lohengrin sails away up the s.h.i.+ning river, while all give a cry of distress.

We have here a simple fairy story. It is the only opera in which character, a personal idiosyncrasy as distinct from an overwhelming pa.s.sion, produces the dramatic action. It has been urged that Lohengrin's stipulation is monstrous; but seeing that he is bound--we do not know how--and that if Elsa had not agreed her fate had been quickly settled, it seems to me that (accepting the magical and supernatural elements on which the whole thing rests) it was perfectly reasonable. I fancy that Wagner, after some years with his very stupid wife, Minna, was getting thoroughly angry with the irrational curiosity of women and the idiotic demands which they make on their life-mates. Anyhow, though he gives Elsa some very beautiful music to sing, he does not spare her in drawing her character. It is one of the few characters he did attempt to draw, and by far the most important of them. In the _Mastersingers_ Walther and Eva are sketched, and Hans Sachs is worked out in some detail; but nothing in their nature especially affects the drama. In _Lohengrin_ the tragedy is directly produced by Elsa's weakness and curiosity. The characterization is by no means profound or microscopic.

It is, indeed, a question whether music is capable of anything of the sort, whether it can render anything save bold, simple outlines. In _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ Mozart was content with this, and yet his characterization appears subtle in comparison with that of every other composer, with the exception of Wagner with his Elsa. Music can express things that lie outside the range of literature; and perhaps fine and delicate portrait and character painting are things that lie outside the range of music.

In the _Dutchman_, I have said, we have the North Sea for a background, in _Tannhauser_ the sultry, scented cave of Venus. In _Lohengrin_ it is the broad, s.h.i.+ning river, flowing ceaselessly from far-away lands to the distant sea, and on it the swan floats--the swan which throughout is used as the symbol of the river. In the first act it gives the pervading atmosphere and colour; in the third it recurs with amazing effect in the midst of one of Elsa's paroxysms. Here is the simple phrase by which such magic is wrought: