Richard Wagner Part 4

leading into the second part (_k_) to the words--

"Ach! Wann wirst du, bleicher Seemann, sie finden?

Betet zum Himmel da.s.s bald Ein Weib Treue ihm halt'!"

The three themes are of very unequal power. The first is one of the landmarks in musical history; neither Wagner himself nor any of the other great masters ever hit upon a more gigantic theme, terrible in its direct force at its announcement, still more terrible as it is used in the overture and later in the drama. The second, Senta, is a piece of sloppy German sentimentality: this is not a heroine who will (rightly or wrongly) sacrifice herself for an idea, but a hausfrau who will always have her husband's supper ready and his slippers laid to warm on the stove shelf. It is significant that Senta herself in her moment of highest exaltation does not refer to it: Wagner often calculated wrong, but he never felt wrong. The third, the grief and anguish of the condemned sailor, and pity for him, is one of the most wonderful things in music; for blent with its pathos is the feeling of a remoter time, the feeling that it all happened in ages that are past, the feeling for "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago." This sense of the past, the historic sense--call it what you will--was thus strong in Wagner at this early period, and it grew even stronger later on, finding its most pa.s.sionate expression in _Tristan_ and its loveliest expression in the _Mastersingers_. The faculty to shape pregnant musical themes is the stamp of the great master. The early men are supposed to have "taken church melodies" and worked them up into ma.s.ses: what they did was to take meaningless strings of notes, bare suggestions, and give them form and meaning by means of rhythm (for only b.o.o.bies talk of the old church music not possessing rhythm). The later composers sometimes followed the same procedure--which is equivalent to a sculptor "taking" a block of marble and hewing out a statue; but more and more they trusted to their own imaginations. In either case the "mighty line" results; and there is not a great composition in the world which has not great themes; and, _vice versa_, when the themes are trivial the work evolved from them is invariably trivial. I see modern works full of cleverness and colour: I do not waste much time on them; there cannot be anything in them, and they will not survive. Along with some weak motives--or, to be more accurate, motives which are musically weak but dramatically a help--Wagner has a huge list of tremendous ones, each a landmark. However, this by way of digression.

Music evolved from this ballad forms, as I have said, the structural outline of the opera. The overture is almost entirely shaped out of it, being one of that sort which is supposed to foreshadow the opera, to tell the tale in music before we see it enacted on the stage. From the _Dutchman_ onward Wagner nearly always constructed his introductions--whether to whole operas or to single acts or even scenes--on this plan, largely discarding the purely architectural forms. Here, for example, we have at the outset the blind fury of the tempest, taken and developed from (_n_), with the Dutchman theme. The storm reaches its height, and there is a brief lull, and Vanderdecken seems to dream of a possible redeemer; the elements immediately rage again, with the wind screaming fiercely through sails and ropes, and waves cras.h.i.+ng against the s.h.i.+p's sides; he yearns for rest (_k_), seems to implore the Almighty to send the Day of Judgment; and at length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or ill.u.s.trated with tones; but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that counts: the roar of the billows, the "_hui!_" of the wind, the das.h.i.+ng and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's men, with their hoa.r.s.e "Yo-ho-ho," add even more colour. The motion of the sea is kept up, partly with fresh musical material, until at last it all but ceases; the watchman sings his song of the soft south wind and falls asleep. Then the sky darkens, the Flying Dutchman comes in, and the storm music rages once more. It is woven into Vanderdecken's magnificent scena (surely the greatest opera scena written up to the year 1842); and then disappears. In its place we get pages of (for Wagner) wearisome twaddle. The reason is obvious. For the purpose of explaining the subsequent movement of the drama there is a lot of conversation which Weber, in the Singspiel, would have left to be spoken, and Mozart would have set to dry recitative. Wagner was determined that his music should flow on; but the inspiration of the sea was gone, and he could only fill up with uninspired stuff. He had not yet mastered his new musico-dramatic art; indeed, I much doubt whether he realized its possibilities. In his _Tristan_ days he knew how to avoid explanations on the stage; nothing in _Tristan_ needs explanation; in the _Mastersingers_ and the _Ring_ his resources--his inventiveness and technical mastery of music--were unbounded, and an intractable incident he simply smothered in splendid music. Here, the bargaining of Daland and Vanderdecken is a very intractable incident, and in trying to make the best of it he made the worst. That is, he would have saved us an appalling _longueur_ had he given us two minutes of frank recitative in place of twenty minutes of make-believe music--music in the very finest kapellmeister style of the period.

Even the pa.s.sage quoted (_c_) is made nothing of. There are one or two fine dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his s.h.i.+p is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden,"

with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the composer's imagination. The sweet wind carries off the mariners to their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the point of, say, the quieter bits of Mendelssohn's _Hebrides_, but it runs delicately along, and it more than serves.

The figure (_l_), which has been so prominent in the overture and sailors' choruses, is equally noticeable in the next act. The spinning chorus, in fact, may be said to grow out of it. There is no break between the two acts (Wagner's first intention was to go straight on, making the _Dutchman_ an opera in one long act); the introduction to the second is a continuation of the conclusion of the first. The figure is repeated several times in a long diminuendo, changing the key from B flat to A major, so we never cease to feel the presence of the eternal sea. Inside the skipper's old-world house one is conscious that the waves are plas.h.i.+ng not far from the walls, and that the air is salt and fresh there. There is a pervading dreamy atmosphere: again we are carried away into far-off times; the scene has the unreality of a dream, a dream of the sea. Mlle. Senta quickly shatters that illusion with her pa.s.sion and living young blood; but in memory one always has this cottage, where women pa.s.s the days in singing, where there are no clocks, and time can only be measured by the waves as they break on the sh.o.r.e. The maiden's spinning song is small scale music; nothing ambitious is wanted, and nothing ambitious is attempted. As a bit of music it is infinitely superior to the clumsy wooden bridal chorus in _Lohengrin_; the touch is light, the melodies fresh and dainty, and the subdued hum of the wheels and the bustle are suggested throughout without becoming monotonous. Not for a musical, but for a purely theatrical, reason we get a s.n.a.t.c.h of (_k_); Senta is not spinning; she is engaged in staring at the picture. After much chattering she sings the ballad, and at the end declaims her intention of saving the Dutchman to the music which is employed when she actually accomplishes that feat. When Eric rushes in, the orchestra has the usual operatic storm-in-a-teacup sort of stuff; the chattering chorus of women getting ready for Daland's reception is neither here nor there; Eric's expostulations are insignificant, and the air he sings--with interruptions on the part of Senta--is by no means equal to the better parts of the opera. Here Wagner has again been faced by the difficulty he met in the first act: a prosaic scene had to be set to poetic music, and the task was beyond him. Eric is one of the most frightfully conventional personages in opera; he bores and exasperates one to madness. He warbles away in the approved Italian tenor fas.h.i.+on while one's enthusiasm is growing cold and one's interest waning. His dream, however, in which he sees Senta meet the Dutchman, embrace him and sail away with him, has a genuine ring. The atmosphere is strange, almost nightmareish, with the Dutchman theme sounding up at intervals, dreamlike. With the exception of the mere mention of this motive in the score, the music is new, is not evolved out of previous pa.s.sages; but when Eric has finished we hear the Senta theme, both sections.

The Dutchman and Daland enter, and we hear (_f_) three times in all; but there is no development of it. Daland's air is entirely fresh matter; as is the opening of the big duet between the Dutchman and Senta.

We are now approaching the supreme moment of the drama. The Dutchman's recitative-like beginning--declamation of the same type, and with the same accent, as some recitative in the song-tournament in _Tannhauser_--is n.o.ble in the highest degree; we have a recurrence of the dream-atmosphere at Senta's words, "Versank ich jetzt in wunderbares Traumen?"--for though her fanaticism is all too real, when her opportunity comes she is for the moment incredulous. It hardly does to consider the moral aspect of the play at this juncture.

Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of hairs can alter the plain fact--

"Wirst du des Vaters Wahl nicht schelten?

Was er versprach, wie?--durft' es gelten?"

However, he has the honesty to warn her of her probable fate. She rises to the occasion. She may be as mad as a hatter, but in the music she is given to "Der du auch sei'st," her lunacy becomes sublimity. Up to the moment of writing this white-hot glowing pa.s.sage Wagner had never reached the sublime: now for a few minutes he sustains it.

Again the breath of the sea is brought in when the Dutchman a second time warns her, and the sea music roars as a sinister accompaniment.

Senta only becomes the more exalted. "Wohl kenn' ich Weibes heil'ge Pflichten," she sings to music which is absolutely the finest page in the opera. The pure white flame of a deathless devotion is here. I doubt whether Wagner ever again in his life had such an ethereal moment: it is sheer fervour and sweetness, unmixed with the hot human pa.s.sion of _Tristan_ or the smoky philosophies of the _Ring_. To wish Senta had a reasonable cause for her ecstasy of self-immolation is, of course, to wish the _Dutchman_ were not the _Dutchman_. In truth, we must take the scenes as they come without inquiring too curiously; the storm music which goes with the wanderer, and the moments of glorious splendour that come to the redeeming woman, are things worth living to have written and worth living to hear.

The music of the last act I shall pa.s.s quickly over. The seamen's and women's choruses are not particularly striking; the spectral choruses certainly are. The sea music is here turned into something unearthly, frightful; these d.a.m.ned souls have no hope of being saved, and in their misery they scoff and mock and laugh hideously. More new musical matter, some of it of a very fine quality, is introduced when Eric again appeals to Senta; and the figure (_a_) is developed with stupendous effect. In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off, Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the second--nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely confined her to recitative.

The _Flying Dutchman_, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a manufacture, not, like _Tristan_, a growth. Much of the music does not rise above the level of Spontini or Marschner; there are wearisome pages, there are heavy chords repeated again and again with violin figurations on top, there are lines of the verse repeated to fit in with the conventional melodies in four-bar lengths. It was only a few years before that Wagner, at Riga, had written enthusiastically about Bellini and his melody, a type of melody he felt to be fresh and expressive compared with the dry-as-dust mixture of Viennese melody (_i.e._ the Haydn and Mozart type) and stodgy German counterpoint which formed the bulk of Marschner's and Spontini's music; and here we see him in the very deed of trying his hand at it. Very often the result, it must be admitted, is lamentable. There was no Italian suppleness and grace in Wagner's nature: when he was in deadly earnest, and striving to express himself without thinking of models, he wrote gorgeous stuff; when the inspiration waned, or when he deluded himself with the belief that what he supposed to be Bellini-like tunes really expressed the feeling of the moment, then he gave us pages as dry and dreary as Spontini and Marschner at their worst. Besides those I have already mentioned there are in the love duet--if it can be called a love duet--mere figurations over bar on bar on leaden-footed, heavy chords; and these figurations are not true melody. These tunes in regular four-bar lengths are melody of an amorphous sort; only when they were tightened up, made truer, more pregnant--in a word, when they were so shaped as to stand really and truly for the thought and feeling in the composer--did they become the beautiful things we find in _Lohengrin_, foretelling the sublime things we find in _Tristan_. Eric's tunes are as colourless as Donizetti's. All this we may joyfully admit, knowing how much there is to be said on the other side, and seeing in the _Dutchman_ only a foretaste of Wagner's greatest work. A really great work it a.s.suredly is. We have the magnificent sea-music, and, in spite of outer incoherences, the smell and atmosphere of the sea maintained to the last bar of the opera. In his music at least Vanderdecken is a deeply tragic figure. There is the ballad, by very far the finest in music; there is Senta's declaration of faith. Whenever it was possible for the composer to be inspired he instantly responded. Had he not lived to write another note his memory would live by the _Dutchman_. It is an enormous leap from _Rienzi_. There brilliancy is attained by huge choruses and vigorous orchestration and rhythms that continually verge on the vulgar. In the _Dutchman_ it is the stuff and texture of the music that make the effect. Play _Rienzi_ on a piano, and you have nothing; play the _Dutchman_, and you have immediately the roar of the sea, the Dutchman's loneliness and sadness, Senta's exaltation. I have spoken of Wagner having finished his apprentices.h.i.+p when he went to Magdeburg, and in a sense he had; but perhaps in the fuller sense he finished it only with the _Dutchman_. He made mistakes, and thanks largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared to take another and a vaster leap--from the _Dutchman_ to _Tannhauser_. He cast the slough of the old Italian opera form.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Some characteristics of his harmony and instrumentation will most conveniently be considered later. For the present I wish to draw my reader's attention rather to Wagner the musico-dramatist than to Wagner the technical musician.

CHAPTER VII

DRESDEN

I

When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north, learning of the success of _Rienzi_, and little dreaming his profits to be 45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the conductors.h.i.+p of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any, better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from the modern opera.

That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang around a Court.

Wagner did not wish to be kapellmeister--on the contrary, wished most vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, how he hoped to earn bread--he who had had only one opera produced, and gained 45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his operas--scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and writing--he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr.

Micawber, whose contemporary, of course, he was. He flirted with von Luttichau, the intendant of the theatre, a fine specimen of a court barbarian. Wagner neither would nor wouldn't; and it was only when the theatre found it could not well do without him, and asked him to say definitely if he would, that he accepted the offer. We can imagine how poor, stupid, unimaginative Minna would rejoice at the news. She ought to have married a pork butcher, or would have behaved admirably as the mistress of a beerhouse or cafe; but as the wife of a man of genius--!

To be the wife of the kapellmeister of one of Germany's princ.i.p.al opera-houses--a court opera-house--that was almost, if not quite, as good; and for the time she rested content with her lot. And we may believe that Richard, too, felt a double gratification, even against his deepest and truest instincts. The salary lifted a burden off his shoulders for a while; and was he not appointed to the very post his idol Weber had occupied? Nevertheless, things soon came to pa.s.s which show how the Richard who set off from Pillau to Paris with his bare travelling expenses, and the Richard who was to do yet madder things hereafter, was the Richard of this middle period. This von Luttichau said it was the rule of the court that a new conductor should serve a year on trial. Wagner was quite brutally reminded that the mighty Weber had been compelled to do so; and he was told _he_ must do so. He point-blank refused; sent the Luttichau man a long explanation--which, I dare say, was never read--of why he couldn't accept such terms; spoke of the necessity of getting some sort of order and discipline into an orchestra which Reissiger had allowed to go to pieces, etc., etc. But he had to his credit, as we have seen, the triumphs of _Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_; and it shows how much he was wanted that Luttichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without murmuring--a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official, a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for life. This was the least of his troubles.

Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz--known as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last waltz"--must have been the fruit of a lucky accident--or perhaps he did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned, because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked Wagner--possibly in a fit of consternation, thinking it might be _his_ night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing, smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who regard their posts as more or less sinecures, wanted to go on in the old slovenly fas.h.i.+on, rehearsing carelessly, hastily, or not at all, and quite satisfied so long as they got through. During the first weeks of the new regime the princ.i.p.al first violin declined to follow Wagner's directions, and, moreover, had the impudence to tell our arrogant Richard he was wrong, and, above all, to tell him in von Luttichau's presence. Wagner, having the pen of a too-ready writer--like old Sebastian Bach before him--sent in one of his long letters; and with that the trouble ceased for the moment. But similar episodes seem to have been of frequent occurrence during his six years of conductors.h.i.+p. Still, he introduced discipline into the band, and, on the whole, got on well with his men. With genuine artists, even of the humblest sort, he was always on good terms. He had a fine fund of good humour and sanguine cheerfulness, a ready wit and a kind heart; he won the respect due to a man who really knew his work, knew what he wanted, and how it could best be attained. What he wanted was performances worthy of the house to which he had come as conductor.

Tricks were played on him, so that he had to direct operas which had been insufficiently rehea.r.s.ed or not at all rehea.r.s.ed; and the press made the most of shortcomings which he realized better than the critics.

He had compensations. August Roeckel became his a.s.sistant at the theatre and a close personal friend; he had Heine, Fischer, Uhlig and others amongst his intimates; and by what was undoubtedly the most artistic section of the community he was made much of. The Liedertafel chose him as its first Liedermeister. For the unveiling of a statue to Friedrich August I he organized a gigantic musical festival, writing for the occasion a hymn. Mendelssohn had composed something for the event; and the whole affair made the Dresden folk open their mouths as well as their ears. For the Liedertafel he wrote the _Love-feast of the Apostles_, which was performed on July 6 of this year (1843) with, so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a Mendelssohnian psalm--and they would have grumbled even had they got it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a crime not to imitate him.

At this time he appears to have been happy with Minna; the good lady had all she wanted; and the rift within the lute did not show until Wagner later on began to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks. Perhaps the greatest pleasure that he had at this time--perhaps the greatest he had had in his life--came through old Spohr the violinist, then conductor (and king) of the Ca.s.sel opera. Spohr had heard _Rienzi_ at Dresden, and, antiquated stick though he was--as any one might guess who knows his _Last Judgment_ or _Calvary_--he yet recognized in Wagner an original and deeply sincere musician. He wrote, after seeing the _Flying Dutchman_, "I believe I know my mind sufficiently to say that among the dramatic composers of our day I consider Wagner the most gifted."

He produced the _Dutchman_ at Ca.s.sel, directing the representation himself, and sent Wagner a letter which lifted that young man into the seventh heaven of delight. Wagner always cherished the recollection of this, the first genuine praise he had received from an older musician, and one famous throughout Europe; and on Spohr's death, long afterwards, he wrote one of the most beautiful obituary articles in all literature. His answer to Spohr shows that at this time there were no serious differences in the household; he speaks in terms of the greatest affection of his wife, and regrets that she is not there to share his joy. The Ca.s.sel performance took place June 5, 1843. It was unsolicited: Spohr himself had asked for the score; and this had a double or triple value to Wagner. Spohr's authority was immense throughout Germany; and the mere fact that he had asked for the _Dutchman_, and, later, performed it, was a recommendation to every other opera-house. And, as a matter of fact, it was done elsewhere, though in many towns the thing was found incomprehensible, and the score returned to Wagner unused, sometimes the parcel containing it unopened. By the way, Berlioz was in Dresden at the time, doing mountebank tricks with the orchestra, and after hearing, the _Dutchman_ he went so far as to speak well of it. Liszt was enthusiastic over _Rienzi_.

When Spohr's letter arrived Minna was at Teplitz, ill; Wagner joined her there immediately his holiday began, but not before writing to Lehrs (July 7) that the book of _Tannhauser_ was finished. Whether Lehrs received the letter I do not know, for he died on July 13. It will be remembered that it was Lehrs who gave Wagner the _Sangerkrieg_ from which he drew both _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_. Before dealing with these operas, Wagner's first very great ones, we must pa.s.s in review the remainder of the Dresden days, ending with the insurrection of May 1849 and the flight to Switzerland.

II

Nothing in Wagner's life has been less perfectly understood, or more completely and wilfully misunderstood, than his share in this May insurrection of 1849. He was never at any time a politician; of politics he knew nothing, and he held the trade in profound, undisguised contempt. He wrote much about the State, and in every paragraph contrived to show the astounding breadth of his ignorance--an ignorance of that kind which Dr. Johnson might have described as not natural but acquired. Everlastingly he prattles about the State until he throws us into a condition of imbecile confusion. Then we resolutely sit down to his prose writings and track his meaning or meanings. And at last we perceive this: the State in his mind, the State he talked and wrote about, was something purely ideal, such a State as has never existed, and at the present day, nearly seventy years after Wagner's solitary plunge into practical politics, seems as unlikely as ever to come into existence. He wanted (1) an all-wise absolute monarch who should work the will of all his subjects, no matter how conflicting their interests might be; (2) some millions of these subjects to think alike on every conceivable question--to think, that is, as Wagner thought; these millions to make sublime sacrifice of themselves that Wagner's art-schemes might prosper. All this, be it noted, was to be the barest basis and beginning of the perfect State. How this point could be reached by our imperfect human race was a question he scorned to discuss: he simply a.s.sumed that it could be reached, and proceeded to further argument.

The point had to be attained in the first place; then humanity--by which he meant German humanity--was to move upward, working out the beast, talking German philosophy, reading what is called German poetry (though Shakespeare might be tolerated), looking at what is called German painting, listening to German music, dreaming thin, mystical German dreams and munching thick German sausages. Thus should the inhabitants of a small subsidiary State, whose kings could be, and had been, made and unmade by other kings, create for themselves a new heaven on earth and become the wonder of the world.

It is very like sheer lunacy. But this account is no exaggeration of Wagner's doctrine and plans. The one truth which emerges and speaks unequivocally is that Richard, deeply dissatisfied with the theatre of the day, and tracing its sad degeneracy to the corrupt state of society, wished to see society upraised, not that men and women might live more happily, but that a finer, n.o.bler theatre might flourish.

The most magnificent egotist of the century, it seemed to him the prime concern of mankind that Richard Wagner's works should be understood and loved. Being an egotist also, if I may say so, on a national scale, he thought humanity could only be redeemed by German art. Disregarding the fact that Germany has had no painters, no poet of the first rank, no genuine dramatist, and that before "our art," as he persistently calls music, had got a root in Germany, three great schools had flourished, the English, the Flemish and the Italian--disregarding all this, he looked for the regeneration of the human species by means of the efforts of German artists alone. It is comical, and, I say, very like lunacy. Mr. Ernest Newman will have it that Wagner's was only a very mediocre intellect. The cold truth is that only a mighty intellect, gone wrong on one point, could have evolved the idea of such a new social system. For, mark you, Wagner propounded no scheme for the regeneration of humanity: he a.s.sumed that it could regenerate itself by wis.h.i.+ng, or willing, and that then the thousand years of peace would commence, with Richard as conductor-in-chief. He could not see that humanity cannot jump out of its shadow and regenerate itself, any more than gentlemen of intelligence gone wrong on one point can see that Bacon could not have written Shakespeare's plays, or that perpetual motion is a crazy impossibility.

It is curious to picture the share Richard took in the Dresden ferment of 1848-49. Of course, all Europe was in a condition of excitement; and the powers that were got their guns ready, and their men.

Political liberty was the thing aimed at: the "outs" wanted to be in.

Every right-thinking man must be in sympathy with the "outs." The governments of Europe were in the hands of shameless place-seekers; the working men, the merchants, all other cla.s.ses were supposed to labour and pay taxes for the benefit of these gentry. Money was squandered on useless court-flummery while men were toiling sixteen hours a day for bread. The aristocracy were resolved that this state of affairs should continue; the average citizens were resolved that it should not. What did Wagner propose?--obedience to the puppet king and a reformed opera! It is small wonder that he was considered a visionary. He made at least one speech, talking about the State, meaning thereby something very different from the meaning his audience attached to the word; he heard speeches, and undoubtedly in all sincerity read his own thoughts into them. He thought the millennium was at hand. When the fighting began he joined the revolutionists; though I can nowhere find proof that he shouldered a musket. Had he done so it is extremely probable he would have shot the man behind him. It is hard to get at the truth about these days of May. Perhaps he did help to escort supplies; but with his excitable brain we must remember that what he thought he saw and what he actually did see may be two very different things. A good many other people who were in Dresden at the time have let their pretty fancies run away with them; for their accounts of Wagner's doings contradict one another to such an extent that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. I must confess to a boundless distrust of "recollections" set down or spoken at any length of time after the event. Ask, reader, ask any of your friends to give an account of some striking occurrence of a year ago. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will not tally with yours. You may be wrong or your friend may be wrong: in either case some one's memory has played a trick. In this book I have omitted many a dozen picturesque touches, simply because there is no proof of their truth and every probability that they are false. It is perhaps enough to remember that the hopes of liberty were crushed, that Roeckel, Wagner's a.s.sistant and friend, was taken and afterwards sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, and that Wagner had to run for safety. From every point of view it was as well he got away from Dresden. If he had not got away he would have shared Roeckel's martyrdom. Had the revolution succeeded, a terrible disillusionment would have been his share of the spoils: the revolutionists thought a fine opera of no more importance than did their enemies, and had Richard asked to be set up in his kingdom he would have quickly found the defenders of liberty as adroit in evading him and his claims as any court flunkeys could be. It was well he got away from Dresden also because, as he afterwards said, the court livery had grown too tight for him. He had had a comfortable income, and had he not been Richard Wagner he might have vegetated happily, in the Reissiger way, for life. Minna would have been content. Being Richard Wagner, he felt his soul strangled; and that Minna had for some time been worrying about what he might do next is shown by his remark to a friend--that other people had their enemies outside their houses: _his_ enemy sat at his own table.

III

Things had not gone well at the theatre. In spite of performances never before equalled in the town--nay, probably because of them--he had enemies all around, especially in the Jew-controlled press. His carefulness about rehearsals was called fussiness; his determination that the singers should not at their own sweet pleasure mar fine operas with interpolations, alterations and "liberties" generally, was called interference with their rights. Even when he played Beethoven's Pastoral and Ninth Symphonies, as they had never been given before, he was impertinently taken to task by press scribblers for departing from the Mendelssohn tradition. I have already expressed the opinion that _Judaism in Music_ was a huge mistake; yet one must own that when one considers how the Jews consistently attacked him for venturing to challenge inferior Jew composers and conductors on their own ground, the thing seems almost excusable. At any rate, it is surprising that he dealt so tenderly with Mendelssohn. There is one point always to be borne in mind. Wagner was a.s.sailed at this time not so much _qua_ composer as _qua_ conductor. Now we of the generation of to-day--the younger members, anyhow--are so accustomed to really able conductors, that it is somewhat difficult to realize what things were like throughout Europe in 1843-49. Perhaps the nearest approach to a true idea may be formed by those who heard our own precious Philharmonic Society under the late Cusins. As in London in the 'eighties, so in Dresden in the 'forties. Callous indifference to the beauty of fine music and complete slovenliness in every detail of the rendering of it went hand in hand. If Europe to-day is stocked with competent conductors, that is a debt we owe to Wagner. Himself one of the greatest conductors who has lived, he almost created a new art, and by his immediate and direct example and through his pupils Bulow, Richter, Levi and Seidl, not to mention his influence on Liszt, he certainly created the school which has now ousted the older inartistic men. It was precisely this fact that maddened the older men and their friends.

Another discomforting circ.u.mstance was Wagner's intense Germanism. It was through his efforts that Weber's remains were brought from the Roman Church in Moorfields and re-interred in Dresden (December, 1844); for the ceremony he compiled some funeral music and delivered an oration. He was not content to claim Germany for the Germans: he claimed all Europe, or at least all European art, for the Germans. The Germans themselves were contentedly jogging on with the hybrid music of Spontini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; and Wagner never tired of telling them to create an art of their own, or really he would have to do it for them. He did as well as talked and wrote; he produced the nearest thing he could find to pure German opera--for instance, Marschner's _Adolph von Na.s.sau_ in 1845. Of course, he ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon his nerves and hastened the catastrophe--that of his taking active part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor should--no wonder he gave a sigh of relief at quitting Dresden.

He had no option. The Prussian troops were ruthless; the judges were paid to "punish" those whose crime was fighting for their ordinary rights; and as the judges' billets would not have been worth twenty minutes' purchase if they had not obeyed orders, they cheerfully obeyed them. It is a fine thing to accept a handsome salary to do dirty work and to call the doing of it doing your "duty": duty is a fine word that has covered a million crimes since it was invented.

Bakunin, who said Richard Wagner was "a visionary"--obviously meaning a harmless fool--and many others got long terms of imprisonment.

Wagner had left the town without leave, and for that offence he was dismissed from his post at the opera. Next, the police issued a warrant for his arrest.

He had gone quietly to visit Liszt at Weimar, meaning to "lie low"

till the storm had blown by. He was apparently quite unconscious of having broken any laws. Liszt was not so easy in his mind. He made inquiries: found that Wagner must bolt at once: it is supposed he somehow "squared" the local police official to defer executing the warrant; he got a pa.s.sport in a false name, and six days after his arrival Richard set out again on his travels. What need be recorded about the journey to Zurich and the getting of Minna there, will best be described when I come to tell of his settling down in his new abode and the years he spent there.

CHAPTER VIII

'TANNHaUSER'

I

Wagner alternated between what we may call the worldly--the sensual or animal, or love of outward show--and the magical, mystical or religious. After _Die Feen_, a story of magic, he went to _Das Liebesverbot_, a story of l.u.s.t; then he went on to a drama of warring ambitions, with the outer brilliant show of armed men, gorgeous processions, conflagrations and what not in the way of spectacle.