ii||iiiiiiiiiPI!ij!!iiili!!ii!iiiiffltj!!.il!i =■1 iiMi ;i^-f THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES o —1 <-- MUSIC LIBRARY h nPDP., •im-AV k mv^ "' '-JO^ '^ 'r,;'v:\TDr/v . .in'TMTrT - . .opta!; 1 — u- 5^ ' A ""YQ^ ^^nIUBRARYQ^ ^^WE""'' ^ ^10^^"^""^% t 11V3-J0>' '^.5fOJnV3JO->' ^ ^lOSANCElfj^ ^ 2 # .^^ - ^ r^ o "" ;^ & — -73 -3 -\r.rAiiPr,' ..ir^ Awrrrrr. 69'?1 5 ^.^.„^ Muac Library TO ANTON SEIDL of whom Wagner wrote in his last letter, " Seidl delights me greatly," and who first made Americans acquainted with the greatest of Wagner's music-dramas — "Tristan and Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," and the Nibelung Tetralogy — this book is dedicated by the author as a slight return for the pleasure so often received from his poetic and inspired interpretations. PREFACE Although only half a century has elapsed since Rich- ard Wagner first became prominent as an operatic com- poser, it may be safely asserted that more has already been written and printed about him than about any other dramatic author excepting Shakespeare. To add to this collection two more volumes may seem a rash and super- fluous proceeding; but if the reader will take the trouble to compare these volumes Avith other works on the same subject, he will see at a glance that the biographic treasures had been very far from exhausted by my prede- cessors. There are many short AYagner biographies in the market, written by Tappert, Muncker, Pohl, ISTohl, Gasperini, Hueffer, Dannreuther, Kobbe, and others. Several of these are excellent in their way, but they all attempt to present, in from a hundred to two hundred pages, a subject which requires a thousand pages for adequate treatment. The only two elaborate biographies are Glasenapp's and JuUien's. Glasenapp, having been the first in the field, had to do some hard pioneer work, for which he deserves credit. But his treatise exists only in German, and it will probably never be translated, as it is too ver- bose, and contains too many dry details of merely local interest. Nor is it complete ; it ends with the Parsifal vii viii PREFACE year, and gives no account of Wagner's death. The operas, too, are not analyzed; it is simply a biography. JuUien's book is valuable for its numerous portraits, car- icatures, and other illustrations, as well as for the light it throws on the French episodes in Wagner's life, although in this respect Servieres's Wagner Juge en France is more complete and entertaining. For other tlian French read- ers Jullien presents his subject from too Gallic a point of view. Apparently he does not read German, since he gets his views of Wagner's literary and theoretical works at second hand, from Grove's Dictionary and other sources; but his greatest blemish is his total ina- bility to understand Wagner's character. This character, owing to peculiar circumstances, was, indeed, often as difficult to understand as the " Art-work of the Future " itself. But in the case of a man who has so many enemies as Wagner had, it is tlie duty of a biographer to carefully verify all statements, and not to accept as gospel truth stories manufactured by hostile newspapers. Wagner's personality, as presented by Jullien, is as much of a caricature as any of the pictures in his book. While Jullien misrepresents his character, the other biographers, including Glasenapp, have very little to say about it, devoting themselves chiefly to his writings, musical and literary. It is, indeed, only since the appearance of all the biographies here mentioned, that an opportunity has been given us to see the real Wagner. The three volumes of letters to Liszt, Uhlig, Fischer, and Heine have thrown a flood of light on his person- ality, and my cordial thanks are due to the publishers for permission to make use of this invaluable source of information regarding the most important creative period PREFACE IX in Wagner's life, the years of his exile. I also wish to thank Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co. for permission to quote from the interesting new material, including forty Wagner letters, contained in Praeger's Wagner as I Knew Him; and Mr. Theodore Thomas for kindly plac- ing at my disposal all the correspondence relating to the Centennial March. Of other new sources of information, I must mention the fifteen letters to Frau Wille, printed in the Deutsche Rundschau in 1887 — letters which bring the most romantic episode in Wagner's life — his friend- ship with King Ludwig — vividly before our eyes ; and Oesterlein's monumental Wagner Katalog in three vol- umes, containing references to about 30,000 letters and other documents bearing on Wagner and his friends and artists — a work which immensely facilitated my researches in German libraries. Personally I am in- debted to Herr Oesterlein for placing the treasures of his Museum, including some valuable manuscripts, at my disposal, at a considerable sacrifice of his time. I think I may safely say that I am indebted to previ- ous biographers for less than a twentieth part of the material contained in these two volumes; all the rest is based on my personal experiences, on Wagner's own autobiographic writings, and other original documents, including a collection of Wagner iana which I began seventeen years ago, and which I have found of great use, especially in the chapters relating to the critics. Some readers may tliink that too much space has been devoted to these hostile criticisms, and that some of the quotations are cruel, inasmuch as the writers have since become partial or complete converts. I have indeed mercilessly quoted their own ivords, but the cruelty is not X PREFACE mine. These critics are self-impaled; they helped to make Wagnerian history, and I, as veracious historian, am bound to chronicle the facts. Besides, these men had no end of fun in ridiculing Wagner and his admirers in former years ; now that the tide has turned, have we not a right to a little fun at their expense? The comicality of these criticisms will, like good wine, still further im- prove with age; and these opinions have also a serious value as contributions to the history of aesthetic taste. Schiller once suggested that the hundreds of similar criticisms on him and Goethe should be collected for such a purpose. As regards the plan of this book, I have endeavored to avoid what might be called the chronological-mosaic style of biography, which consists in presenting the facts in loose connection, in the year and month they occurred in. The arrangement here adopted of present- ing the various phases of Wagner's history, activity, and personality in pictures complete in themselves, without neglecting the main chronological divisions, will, I hope, commend itself to the reader. This method is facilitated by the roving life Wagner led — the constant changes of residence from Dresden to Paris, to London, Vienna, Venice, Zurich, Lucerne, etc., which add so much to the interest of his career. The frequent subdivisions into chapters and sub-chapters make it easy for readers who care only for the biography, to skip the other parts. But Wagner the man was so thoroughly identified with Wagner the artist, that a complete biography had to include a consideration of his works too. H. T. F. New York, March 1, 1893. CONTENTS OF VOL. I rASB PRELUDE — POETIC PROPHESIES 1 A THEATRICAL FAMILY 5 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD 10 A Versatile Stepfather 11 Weber in Dresden 13 First Musical Impressions 15 Richard not a Prodigy — and why 16 Boyhood Anecdotes 21 Richard turns to Music 24 Concert Pieces 28 Worship of Beethoven 31 A Second Symphony 34 THE FIRST OPERAS 35 The Wedding 35 The Fairies ST^ At Magdeburg — A Step Backward 41 The Novice of Palermo 43 First Critical Essay 48 KONIGSBERG and RIGA 51 An Imprudent Marriage 51 xi xil CONTENTS FAOE The Happy Bear Family 67 Two Acts of Kienzi 59 A EoMANTic Episode 26 FIRST VISIT TO PAEIS 65 A Stormy Sea- Voyage 65 A Series of Disappointments 68 Loss OF THE Columbus Overture 77 Musical Drudgery 79 Stories and Essays 81 "-Truth in Fiction — Personal Revelations 82 In the Workshop of Genius 86 The Lion shows his Claws 87 Composition of the Flying Dutchman 89 RIENZI IN DRESDEN 93 Preliminary Letters 93 First Performance of Rienzi ^99, The Story of Rienzi 105 Wagner's Opinion of Rienzi 108 An Undiplomatic Speech 112 Merits and Demerits of Rienzi 112 ^fJhrUB FLYING DUTCHMAN 116 / Story op the Flying Dutchman 119 Poetic and Musical Characteristics 125 Wagner's Opinion of this Opera 131 ^'Critical Philistines and Prophets 132 Berlioz, Cornelius, Liszt, and Spohr 138 What Beethoven would have said 141 CONTENTS Xlil PAGE WAGNER AS ROYAL CONDUCTOR 144 The Love Feast of the Apostles 146 Webek's Remains transferred to Dresden 147 A Surprising Beethoven Performance 151 Uhlig, Bach, Palestkina 155 What Wagner did for Gluck 157 U^wo Spontini Anecdotes 161 TANNHAUSER IN DRESDEN 163 The Story of Tannhauser 164 The Poem and the Music 173 • Is Tannhauser a Music-Drama? 176 The First Performances 181 Why the Ending was changed 186 \,;G^itical Philistines and Prophets 187 Liszt, Spohr, and Schumann 193 , REVOLUTION — ARTISTIC AND POLITICAL 199 Creation of Lohengrin 199 'Why Wagner became a Rebel 200 Reform or Revolution ? 205 Flight to Weimar , . . . . ' 220 Wanted by the Police 224 In Paris again 226 Minna Wagner joins her Husband 228 WiELAND THE SmITH , 232 LOHENGRIN AT WEIMAR 235 Doubt and Daring , 235 The Story of Lohengrin 240 Xiv CONTENTS PAOK (^J)The First Performance 247 ^»") Wagner's Opinion of Lohengrin 251 Liszt on Lohengrin 255 Robert Franz on Lohengrin 259 y^ Further Comments 263 ' Progress of Lohengrin 271 i/Critical Philistines and Prophets 277 (v LITERARY PERIOD 288 ( \ Six Years Lost to Music 288 Art and Revolution 291 The Art- Work of the Future 293 Opera and Drama 296 Evolution of the Opera 300 A Communication to my Friends 306 Wagner's Opinion of Other Composers 308 Judaism in Music 322 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING 348 How the Poem was written 348 Life in Zurich 369 A Modern Prometheus 365 The "Circus Hulsen" in Berlin 374 Money Troubles 382 Friends in Need 390 Hygiene and Gastronomy . , o 396 Love of Nature and Travel 404 Composition of Rheingold 409 A Faust Overture 412 CONTENTS XV PAGK WAS WAGNER A GREAT CONDUCTOR ? 420 A Thorough Drill-Master 421 Principles of Interpretation 424 Testimony of Experts 432 Concerts and Operas in Zurich 435 Four Months in London 443 PRELUDE. — POETIC PROPHEC IES "Hitherto Apollo has always distributecl ine poetic gift with his right hand, the musical with his left, to two persons so widely apart that up to this hour we are still waiting for the man who will create a genuine opera by writing both its text and its music." Perhaps there is not, in the whole history of the fine arts, a more curious coincidence than is contained in the fact that the foregoing sentence was penned by the emi- nent German novelist Jean Paul, not only in the same year that Richard Wagner was born, but in the same quiet town of Bayreuth, where, sixty-three years later, the ideal of a musico-dramatic art in which poem and music are of equal value, was first revealed in the Wag- ^ ner Theatre, specially built for the purpose. ^ Jean Paul was by no means the only German author, » nor the first one, who longed for and predicted the ♦^ appearance of a poet-composer who would destroy the ' crude mosaic of various arts, known as Italian opera, ^ iuid create in its place a genuine music-drama in which poetry, action, scene-painting, and music would all be treated with equal artistic care, and combined into a harmonious whole. Almost all the great German poets expressed similar longings. Lessing, who died thirty- two years before Wagner was born, wrote that *'the affinity between poetry and music is so great that Nature herself seems to have destined them, not so much for a 1 2 PRELUDE combination as for one and the same art. There was indeed a time when the two were united as one art. I do not care to assert that the process of their separation was not a natural one, still less to censure the special cultivation of one or the other separate art; but I may be permitted to express my regrets that, in consequence of this separation, a»,unioi;i of the ^wo arts is hardly ever thought of; or, if thought of, one of them is made a mere handmaid of the other, so that we have no such thing as a simultaneous effect produced by the two arts in equal proportions." Herder, who died ten years before Wagner was born, expressed his belief in the advent of a composer who would annihilate the old operatic kling-klang and " erect an Odeon, a coherent lyric structure in which poetry, music, action, and scenery Avould be one and united." Wieland, in 1775, hailed Gluck as a reformer of the opera, but added that others like him would be needed before the sirens could be banished from the stage and the muses restored. " Enough that he has shown us what music could do if, in these days, there were, somewhere in Europe, an Athens, and in this Athens there appeared a Pericles who would do for the opera (Singspiel) what that statesman did for the tragedy of Sophocles and Euripides." Substitute for " Athens " Bayreuth, and for " Pericles " King Ludwig II. of Bavaria, and we have here another historic anticipation as striking as Jean Paul's. To cite only one more poet, Schiller, who died eight years before Wagner was born, wrote : " I always had a certain faith in the opera, believing that from it, as formerly from the choruses of the ancient Bacchus festivals, the tragedy POETIC PROPHECIES 3 might be evolved in a nobler form." Could Schiller have lived to hear tlie Gotterdammerung, the most power- ful tragedy since Hamlet and Kixy Lear were written, he would have undoubtedly confessed that his confidence in the opera had not been misplaced. It is certainly a most signiftcant fact that five of the most eminent literary men of Germany, — Schiller, Less- ing, Herder, Wieland, and Jean Paul, — two of whom are Germany's greatest dramatic poets, should have indorsed A-- Wagner's ideal of a music-drama by anticipation. And^" if it was the literary geniuses wlio first broached the plan \ of a perfect music-drama, in which poetry should no I >♦ longer be the handmaid of music but its equal, it was the I *~*'^ rmisical geniuses among Wagner's contemporaries — / Spohr, Liszt, Biilow, Eaff, Cornelius, Tausig, Koberty Franz — who first saw that he had realized that ideal i^^ his operas: a fresh confirmation of the dictum that it takes genius to appreciate genius — at least on its first appearance. The professional musicians and critics, on the other hand, fought tooth and nail against Wagner's attempt to expel the sirens from the stage and to restore the muses. He was attacked, lied about, vilified, with a fury and persistence that seem almost incredible to-day, even to those of us who have lived through part of this Forty Years' War. Ignorance, love of routine, fanat- icism, chauvinism, race hatred, pedantry, and philistin- ism united in waging a war against one man such as no other man outside of politics and religion has ever been confronted with. The books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles that served as ammunition on both sides would fill the largest building in the land; and how bitter the feeling has been, future generations will be able to "> 4 PRELUDE understand when they read that in German society, for many years, it was considered bad form to speak of Wagner, because of the violent conversational collisions sure to follow; and that a club in New York gave a semi- humorous point to the matter by posting a placard announcing as forbidden topics of discussion, " Religion, Politics, and Wagner." It is this Forty Years' War of Genius against Philistinism that will form the plot of the romantic story of Wagner's life. A THEATRICAL FAMILY That very prevalent form of liuman vanity which bases a family's claim to aristocratic distinction on the fact that its ancestors can be traced back several genera- tions, ought to receive a rude shock from the discovery that in the case of the greatest men of genius — who form the only true aristocracy — the pedigree is almost always unknown. Richard Wagner forms no exception to this rule. His industrious German biographers have not yet succeeded in tracing his genealogy farther back than to X his grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, who was only a humble custom-house official in Leipzig, where he had to see that nothing was smuggled through the city gates. His son Friedrich (Richard Wagner's father, who was born in the same year as Beethoven — 1770) rose some- what higher in the social scale. He began as clerk in the city courts, but on account of his superior intelligence and knowledge of French he was, during the French occu- pation of Leipzig, entrusted with the task of reorganizing the police system, and appointed chief of police by Mar- shal Davoust. It is possible that Richard Wagner may have inherited some of his pugnacious disposition from his father's occupation. One thing he certainly did inherit from him, and that is his love of the theatre — a trait which characterized almost all the members of the Wagner 6 6 A THEATRICAL FAMILY family (both in the ascending and the descending scale) of whom any record has been preserved. Nor was it merely a fondness for tlieatrical performances, but a special talent for taking part in them. To cite a few instances : Richard's father had the privilege of being one of those who witnessed the first performance in Leip- zig of Schiller's Jungfrau von Oiieayis, in the poet's pres- ence; and he also appeared occasionally as an amateur actor before an audience including royal spectators. Then there was Richard's uncle, Adolf Wagner, who does not appear to have acted, but who manifested his interest in the theatre in the higher sphere of playwright and other- wiser His first printed essay was on the Alcestis of Eurip- ides, which was followed by a satiric comedy of his own, numerous translations, a contribution to the history of the theatre, an essay on the theory of the comic, etc. ; and what is of special interest with reference to his nephew's later aspirations, is the fact, exhumed by Herr Glasenapp, that in 1806 he arranged a careful perform- ance, on the amateur stage, of Apel's Polyidos after the manner of the antique tragedy, superintending all the details personally.-^ Of Ricliard's three brothers and four sisters, several distinguished themselves in connection with the stage. Albert, who was born fourteen years before Richard, acquired fame as vocalist, actor, and stage-manager. When he was leading tenor at Breslau, a critic wrote: " His method is good, his trill beautiful, his voice power- ful, although somewhat affected by the climate." Rich- 1 Lists of Adolf Wagner's writings and translations may be found in Oesterlein's Wagner Katalog, III. 438-9, and in Glasenapp's biographic sketch of Richard's uncle, in the Bayreuther Blatter, 1885, pp. 197-223. A THEATRICAL FAMILY t ard's oldest sister, Kosalie, was specially educated for the stage; she became a leading actress at the Leipzig theatre, and in some roles was preferred even to the famous Schroeder-Devrient, to whom Richard owed so much of his inspiration, as we shall see later on. The eminent critic, H. Laube, wrote that he had never seen Goethe's Gretchen enacted with such deep feeling as by Kosalie Wagner : — " For the first time the expression of Gretchen's madness thrilled me to the marrow, and I soon discovered the reason. Most actresses exaggerate the madness into unnatural pathos ; they declaim in a hollow ghostly voice. Demoiselle Wagner used the same voice with which she had shortly before uttered her thoughts of love ; this gruesome contrast produced the greatest effect." The critic who wrote these lines was also one of the earliest to discover the dramatic genius of Wagner in his first creative period. The two parted company when Wagner produced those later music-dramas on which his claims to immortality chiefly rest; yet the world will always be indebted to Heinrich Laube for the existence of the charmingly simple and partly ironic autobiography which takes up the first twenty pages of the first volume of Wagner's Collected Writings. It covers the first twenty-nine years of his life, and the circumstances under which it was written are of interest. Laube, who was about to assume editorial control of the Zeitung fiir die Elegante Welt, wrote to Wagner for a sketch of his life which miglit be elaborated into a biographic article. Wagner complied, but when Laube received his manu- script, he decided to print it as it was, remarking, in a prefatory notice, that he had expected a sketch only: "but the Paris experiences have made of the musician 8 A THEATRICAL FAMILY an author too : I should only spoil the biographic sketch, were I to make any alterations." He was right, and this sketch ^ remains to the present day one of the few reliable sources of information regarding Wagner's childhood. Besides Rosalie, Richard's sister Luise appeared as an actress, and Klara was educated to appear in Italian opera, but subsequently married a member of the Brock- haus family, of encyclopsedia fame. To this list of theatrical sisters, brother, uncle, and father, must be added two nieces, Albert's daughters, Johanna and Fran- zisca, the former of whom was one of the most famous dramatic singers of her time. She was the first to sing the part of Elizabeth in Tannhduser, and at the end of her brilliant career was offered the Professorship of Dramatic Singing in the Royal School of Music at Mu- nich, which she accepted, " in the hope of training young artists in the spirit and traditions of her uncle, to be worthy interpreters of his works." ^ Not content with thus diffusing a theatrical spirit throughout the Wagner family, the Fates ordained that Richard should, before he reached his third birthday, receive a stepfather who was a noted professional actor — Ludwig Geyer. After appearing with success in vari- ous German cities, Geyer received an appointment at the Dresden theatre, with a salary of 1040 thaler, and the obligation to appear only once or twice a week; which left him plenty of time for his other occupations, of which more will be said presently. The critics especially 1 An English translation of it will be found in Burlingame's Wag- ner's Art Life and Theories, and a French version in Benoit's R. Wag- ner Souvenirs. 2 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, IV. 346. A THEATRICAL FAMILY 9 emphasized his versatility as an actor; and the attitude of the audiences is slioAvn by the fact that once, on his return to the Leipzig tlieatre, he was applauded so rap- turously that he dropped his role for a moment and made a speech of thanks — an inartistic proceeding which gave rise to sarcastic comment, and which lie himself deeply regretted afterwards. RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD The house in which Rich arc! Wagner was born, in Leipzig, does not exist any more. It was located in the Briihl, Number 88, but was found unsafe, in 1885, and torn down. The buikling which has been erected in its place bears a tablet (visible from the courtyard) with the information that Richard Wagner was born there on May 22, 1813. The time of his birth was one of great importance in the military history of Germany, and lovers of coincidence will find satisfaction in the circum- stance that the composer who was destined to free German music from foreign influences and establish a national art, was born at the same time and in the same city of Leipzig, where the great battles were fought which at last freed Germany from the French invaders. But the Wagner family had to pay dearly for this victory. The consequence of the great carnage in the battle-field of Leipzig was an epidemic fever which carried off many victims, among them Friedrich Wagner, on the very day when his little son Richard completed the first half-year of his life. In the following month his brother Albert also had an attack of typhoid fever, and even Richard appears to have had symptoms ; his health was so poor as to worry his mother, and remained in an unsatisfactory condition until he reached his fourth birthday. 10 A VERSATILE STEPFATHER 11 A VERSATILE STEPFATHER Poor widow Wagner was left in a sorry predicament, with a numerous progeny and nothing to support them but a small pension from the government. Under these circumstances she can hardly be blamed for not observing the customary year of mourning. Men who are willing to marry a widow with seven children, the oldest of whom is only fourteen, are not over-abundant; and the impecunious widow, solicitous for the welfare of her chil- dren, therefore acted wisely in marrying, though only about nine months had elapsed since her husband's death, an old friend of the family who was willing to take upon himself such a burden for the love he bore the widow. ^ This act in itself affords the best possible tes- timony regarding the character and the attractiveness of Richard's mother, concerning whom otherwise little is known. Her brightness and amiability appear to have made her especially congenial to artists, and among those who occasionally dropped in for a friendly chat with her was not less a personage than Weber, the creator of the opera (Der Freischiitz) which first aroused young Rich- ard's musical instincts. Throughout his life Richard Wagner referred to his mother as mein liebes Miitterchen (my dear little mother), and at the age of forty -three he told his friend Praeger ^ I Glasenapp, in his biography of Wagner (1882, I. p. 12), states that Geyer married the widow Wagner two years after lier husliand's death ; but in the Waijner Jahrbuch (188(i, p. 4.5) lie gives more precise data, which lead to the conclusion here adopted. Nine months after Frau Wagner's second marriage, Ciicilie Geyer was born, who subsequently married Eduard Avenarius, to whose son we are indebted for some reminiscences of Richard's childhood. =* Wagner as I Knew Him, London, 1892, p. 12. 12 RICUARB WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD that he could not then see a lighted Christmas tree with- out thinking ol the kind woman, nor prevent the tears starting to his eyes when he thought of the unceasing activity of that little creature for the comfort and welfare of her children. Praeger is doubtless riglit in suggesting that the exquisitely tender strains in Siegfried with which the orchestra accompanies the references to Siegfried's mother, symbolize Wagner's love for his own mother. "I verily believe," he says, "that Richard "Wagner never loved any one so deeply as his liebes Miitterchen. All his references to her of his childhood period were of affection, amounting almost to Idolatry. With that instinctive power of unreasoned yet unerring perception possessed by women, she from his childhood felt the gigantic brain power of the boy, and his love for her was not un- mixed with gratitude for her tacit acknowledgment of his genius." Ludwig Geyer, who married this widow with seven children, was, as already stated, a distinguished actor. But acting was by no means his only accomplishment; indeed, his gifts appear to have been almost as varied as those of his talented stepson Eichard. He wrote a number of comedies, the best of which, Der Bethlehemi- tische Kindermord, exists in four editions and was often played.^ Geyer's third gift, which seems to have almost amounted to genius, was his skill as a portrait-painter. He was indeed a painter before he became an actor, and retained the pencil even after he had gone on the stage. The critics noted the influence of the actor on the painter in teaching him to seize on those peculiarities of facial expression of the emotions which, through constant 1 In 1873 a performance of it was given at Bayreuth, on the sixtieth birthday of Wagner, who was greatly pleased by this opportunity to renew the impressions of his youth. WEBER IN DRESDEN 13 repetition, become fixed, and thus constitute physiog- nomic individuality. He had the honor of being asked to paint the portraits of the King and Queen of Saxony, and on one of his theatrical visits to Munich he painted many members of the highest aristocratic and military circles. WEBER IN DRESDEN But it is the fourth accomplishment of the_.y.ej?satile- Geyei. that chiefly interests the admirers of Wagner, because it is connected with the real beginnings of Ger- m"a&>opei;a in Germany. Besides being an actor, a play- wright, and portrait -painter, Geyer was also a tenor, and he had the honor of appearing as such in Joseph in Egypt, the first performance given under Webe r's direction after his^ appointment as conductor at the Dresden Opei:a. Previous to Weber's advent in Dresden the opera there had been exclusively Italian, and even when a German opera was given, it had to be first translated into Italian. In 1815 Count Vitzthum induced the King to found a German opera as a sister institution to the Italian, and Weber was chosen to superintend it. The Italians, who had previously monopolized affairs, became jealous at this, and a series of ignoble intrigues commenced, in which the court and the press were not on the side of the honest German composer, but of the insolent, proud foreigners. Weber was attacked with very much the same weapons which Avere used subsequently to harass and torture Wagner all his life. Fortvmately Weber, without being as pugnacious, as Wagner, possessed the same iron will and conscientious devotion to what he considered his duties towards his art and his ideals. When 14 RICHARD WAGNEIVS CHILDHOOD an attempt was made to give him merely the title of Musikdirector instead oi CajieUmeiste^', which would have ranked him lower than Morlacchi, the conductor of the Italian opera, he replied: — " I do not demand any more than what was offered me, and what T accepted ; but I cannot allow any deviations, and least of all allow myself to be placed under Morlacchi. German and Italian art must have equal rights, for I do not desire, either, to be placed above him. The world will doubtless decide which of us is the first." The Italian company, however, had the best singers, and Weber, to complete his casts, was obliged to call upon the local actors and actresses. It was thus that Geyer, the actor, came to be a member of the lirst Ger- man Opera in Dresden; and the fact is suggestive and prophetic, as it were; for it was Richard Wagner's car- dinal maxim that operas should be above all things dramas, and operatic singers, actors. One more utterance of Weber's may be appropriately quoted here, because it shows how similar his views were to Wagner's, and confirms the truthfulness of Cornelius's fine saying that " Weber was a genius who died of the longing to become Wagner. " Wagner is rooted in Weber, in his music as in his ideals (a point which will be dwelt on at length in a future chapter), and the following words, written by Weber when he first tried to establish German opera in Dresden, are strikingly similar to those which Wagner uttered more than half a century later, at Bayreuth : — "The Italians and the French have fashioned for themselves a distinct form of opera, with a framework which allows them to move with ease and freedom. Not so the Germans. Eager in the pursuit of knowledge, and constantly yearning after progress, FIRST MUSWAL IMPRESSIONS 15 they endeavor to appropriate anything which they see to be good in others. But they take it all so much more seriously. With the rest of the world the gratification of the senses is the main object ; the German wants a work of art complete in itself, with each part rounded off and compacted into a perfect whole. For him, there- fore, a fine ensemble is the prime necessity." FIRST MUSICAL IMPRESSIONS There can be no doubt that Weber's opportune arrival in Dresden to found a German Opera had much influence in moulding the musical taste and inclinations of young Eichard Wagner. His mother's marriage to Geyer, who was at that time a member of the Court Theatre, of course caused the family to remove to that citj", where Richard had frequent opportunity to see Weber and hear his music. As he himself tells us in his autobiographic sketch : — V " Nothing gave me so much pleasure as the Freischiltz ; I often saw Weber pass by our house when he came from rehearsals ; I always looked upon him with a holy awe. A family tutor, who explained Cornelius Nepos to me, also gave me lessons on the piano ; hardly had I got beyond the first five-finger exercises when I secretly learned, all by myself, and at first without a score, the Freischiltz overture; my teacher surprised me at it one day and said that I would never amount to anything. He was right : I never did learn to play the piano." "At this period," he adds, "I only played for myself; over- tures were my favorites, and I played them with the most atro- cious fingering. I could not play a scale correctly, and I conceived a great aversion to all rapid passages. Of Mozart I liked only the overture to the Mcujic Flute ; Don Juan I disliked because it was composed to an Italian text, which seemed to me so silly." ^ Another straw that showed which way the wind was blowing. 16 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD In the meantime Geyer also had died, when Kichard was only eight ^ years old. "Shortly before his death," Wagner writes, "I had learned to play on the piano ' Ueb' iinmer Treu' und Redlichkeit ' and the ' Jungf ern-Kranz ' [from the Fi'eischutz'\, then quite new. The day before his death I had to play these two pieces for him in the adjoining room, and I heard him say to my mother, in a faint voice, ' Could he perhaps have talent for music ? ' The following morning, after his death, mother came into the room where her children were assembled, and spoke a few words to each of us ; and to me she said : ' Of you he wanted to make something.' I remember," Wagner adds, "that for a long time I imagined that I would become somebody." The mother, too, appears to have been of that opinion, for Laube relates in his Reminiscences that he used to visit her, and that she repeatedly asked him, " Do you think that Richard will make his mark?" EICHARD NOT A PRODIGY — AND WHY Most of the great composers have manifested their special talent at so early an age that they may be classed as musical prodigies. Wagner, by his own confession, was not a prodigy ; and when his operas began to make their way in the world, in spite of the unprecedented opposition of critics and other philistines, his opponents frequently brought forward this fact to prove that he could not be considered a genius. They forgot that most prodigies are doomed to early oblivion; that Beethoven found his first music lessons as irksome as Wagner did, and even shed tears over them ; and that Weber, in his 1 Wagner, in his autobiographic sketch, says seven ; but that is a slip of memory, as Geyer died on Sept. 30, 1821. RICRAED NOT A PRODIGY — AND WHY 17 eighth year, was accosted by his teacher in almost the same words that Wagner's teacher used : " Karl, you may become anything else in the world, but a musician you will never be." But it is hardly worth while to take the argument of Wagner's opponents seriously. Modern science has shown that the higher an organism, the longer it requires to reach maturity, as we see, for example, by comparing man with lower animals. The fact that Wagner's genius matured slowly might therefore be looked on as a presumption in his favor, rather than otherwise. The principal reason why Wagner did not astonish the natives by his feats as a wonder child is that his mental powers were not focused into one gift or talent, as is the case of most musicians, but that he was, in childhood as in manhood, many-gifted, like his stepfather. Geyer evidently felt that there was something in Eichard, as the deathbed anecdote just related shows; but he could not quite make up his mind as to what it was. He first intended to make a painter of him; "but I was very awkward in drawing," Wagner writes in his autobio- graphic sketch; and to Herr Glasenapp^ he remarked, in 1876 : " I wanted to paint big pictures, like the life- size portrait of the King of Saxony in my stepfather's atelier; instead of that, I was always made to draw eyes only, which I did not like." It is more than probable, liowever, that if Geyer had lived and Wagner had over- come his aversion to technical drudgery and persevered in this art, he would have distinguished himself in it ultimately, to judge by the wonderful pictorial imagina- tiveness shown in the scenery of his operas, wliich com- 1 Wagner Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 61. 18 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD pelled even his fiercest opponent, Dr. Hanslick, to remark that "It is especially the pictorial sense of Wagner that is at work incessantly in the Mbelung's Ring; it appears to have furnished the first impulse for many of the scenes. In looking at the photo- graphs of Joseph Hoffmann's poetically conceived decorations, the thought involuntarily occurs that such pictures may have arisen first in Wagner's imagination and brought forth corresponding music." The first scene in Rheiiigold, where we see the three Rhine daughters swimming about under the water, a section of which occupies the whole stage to the top, and appears to flow on steadily ; the wild mounted maidens in the WalMire, riding among the clouds, and alighting on precipitous rocks, filling the air with their Aveird song; the forest scene in Siegfried, where the hero lies under a large tree with spreading branches, and listens to the song of the birds and the rustling of the leaves, so beautifully imitated by the orchestra ; the final scene of the Gotter- ddmmerung, where the river begins to rise and inundate the ruins of the hall, bearing on its swelling waves the Rhine daughters once more, and accompanied by the surg- ing sounds of the symphonic flood; the magnificent eccle- siastic scenes in Parsifal, which are like pictures of the old Italian masters brought to life, — these and other scenic conceptions bear witness to Wagner's pictorial genius; for all of them are described in detail in his poems, and still more minutely in the orchestral score, leaving the scene-painter no further task than the exe- cution of his minute directions. Another branch of mental activity in which Rich- ard Wagner might have won distinction had he devoted BICHABD NOT A PRODIGY — AND WHY 19 himself to it, js classical philology. At the age of nine he was placed in the Kreuzschule at Dresden, where he remained till he was fourteen. Latin did not interest him very much, but for Greek literature, history, and mythology he had an ardent enthusiasm which culmi- nated in the translation, at the age of thirteen, of tiie first twelve books of Homer's Odyssey — a self-im- posed task which naturally pleased his instructors very much. At, the age of fifteen the Wagner-Geyer family moved back to Leipzig, and Richard was placed in the Xikolaischule, the teachers in which appear to have been of inferior calibre to those in Dresden, since they did not succeed in fanning his ardor for classical study as his former teachers had done. Eichard was, moreover, sub- jected to the indignity of being placed in a lower class than the one he had been in at Dresden ; and this hurt his feelings so much that he became careless and neglected his studies. It is an odd circumstance that for the first fifteen years of his life Richard Wagner did not exist — officially at least, for he was entered at the Dresden Kreuzschule as Richard Geyer, and it is not likely that this name was changed till he left that school, in 1827. Richard's poetic talent manifested itself at the early age of eleven. "One of our classmates had died," he writes, "and the teachers imposed on us the task of writ- ing a poem on his death; the best was to be printed; it was my own, but only after I had pruned it of its exces- sive verbiage." This success appears to have inspired him with the ambition to become a poet. He attempted some dramas after tlie Greek type, and also began to study English, for the sole purpose of being able to read Shakespeare in the original : — 20 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD "I made a metric translation of Romeo's monologue," he says. "The study of English was also soon abandoned ; but Shakespeare remained my model ; I projected a grand drama, a sort of compound of Hamlet and King Lear ; the plan was extremely grandiose : forty- two persons died in course of the piece, and in developing the plot I found myself compelled to make most of them reappear as ghosts, because otherwise there would have been no personages left for the last acts." This drama occupied him two years (14-16) ; and he adds that at the time when he lost his interest in classical philology it was the only thing that he was devoted to. A few years ago Wagner's nephew Ferdinand Avena- rius published in the Allgemeine Zeitung of Munich a few new details regarding this wonderful tragedy, which he obtained from his mother (Wagner's youngest sister, Ciicilie Geyer). It seems that Ciicilie was initiated into the secret of the tragedy before the others, who were to be surprised by its grandeur on its completion. Work on the tragedy was frequently interrupted, and pros- pered most when Richard's mother was ill in bed, on which occasions Richard used to shirk school and lock himself up in his room, where he was heard declaiming wildly. "One demoniac passage," writes Avenarius, "my mother remembers distinctly. A living person walks up to a ghost, who warns him back with the words, ' Touch me not, for my nose will crumble to dust on contact.' My mother says that this passage did not produce the intended effect on her even at her age, and it seems that Richard himself soon began to doubt the tragic value of his drama, although he long continued his work on it. A friend of my uncle told me that one day when she asked Richard how far he had got with his tragedy, he replied : ' Well, I've got them all dead but one ' (Nu, bis auf einen hab' ich sie alle todt)." BOYHOOD ANECDOTES 21 BOYHOOD ANECDOTES The articles of Ferdinand Avenarius contain several other anecdotes of Richard's childhood which invite cita- tion, as they add to our rather scant knowledge of that part of his life. When Weber passed by Richard's win- dow, after a rehearsal at the opera, the boy would call his sister to the window and exclaim, "Look here; that is the greatest man in the world — Jioiv great he is, you cannot understand." And although Cacilie could not at first see anything " great " in the crooked-legged little man, with his large spectacles on his large nose, with the gray coat and the vacillating gait, she soon followed her brother's example of looking on him with " religious awe." Richard was very fond of going to the theatre, especially to hear the Freischiitz: and when permission to go was withheld he found a way to have his will. He stood in a corner and kept count of the passing minutes : " Now they are giving this . . . now that . . . now that ..." and so on, accompanying this recital with tears and sobs as if his throat were bursting. Finally his mother lost patience — "Away with you, you sniveller," and away he was in a second. Among his early reminis- cences is a day when he begged his mother for a penny to buy music paper for copying a piece by Weber. Never was little Richard more delighted tlian when his mother took him out for a walk; his love of nature and fresh air showed itself in his earliest years, and his little hand-sled was one of his favorite companions. His first recorded joke is connected with this sleigh. His mother had made a " new " dress for one of his sisters, evidently 22 BICHARD WAGNERS CHILDHOOD out of one of her own old ones. The result was too shiny to suit the girl, bvit Richard consoled her with the remark : " Never mind, we can go sleighing on that, without getting off." One day Cacilie accompanied her brother and mother to the river, where they had to wait for the boat. Cacilie was very fond of going about with bare feet, but on this occasion she missed her shoes and stockings, as the weather turned very cold. "Wait a moment," exclaimed Richard, "I'll give you one of my boots, and the other feet we can keep warm by putting one on the other." This anecdote was subsequently related by Wagner in Paris to the artist Kietz, who made a sketch of this scene, and of others suggested by Wagner's early reminiscences. The reminiscences of early life always remained re- markably vivid in Wagner's mind, as we are told by Ferdinand Praeger, the first chapters of whose Wagner as I Knew Him (1892) are interlarded with several in- teresting stories of Wagner's boyhood told by himself and previously not placed on record. Richard was nine years old when he slej)t away from his mother's home for the first time. He was sent on a long visit to his uncle Geyer at Eisleben, the birthplace of Luther, one of the heroes of Wagner's youth. "My family," he re- marked to Praeger in 1856, " had been among the staunch- est of Lutherans for generations. What attracted me most in the great reformer's character was his dauntless energy and fearlessness. Since then I have often rumi- nated on the true instinct of children, for I, had I not also to preach a new Gospel of Art? Had I not also to bear every insult in its defence, and had I not too said, ' Here I stand ; God help me ; I cannot be otherwise ' '? " BOYHOOD ANECDOTES 23 This first journey made a deep impression on the boy, "who was born with an instinct for travel : — " Can one ever forget a first impression? And my first journey was such an event ! Why, I seem even to remember the physi- ognomy of the poor lean horses that drew the jolting ' postkarre.' They were being changed at some intermediate station, the name of which I have now forgotten, when all the passengers had to alight. I stood outside the inn eating the ' butterbrod ' with which my dear little mother had provided me, and as the horses were ^bout to be led away I caressed them affectionately for having brought me so far. How every cloud seemed to me different from those of the Dresden sky ! How I scrutinized every tree to find some new characteristic ! How I looked around in all directions to discover something I had not seen in my short life ! How grand I felt when the heavy car rolled into the town of Eisleben ! " The love of animals, and sympathy with their trials, thus evinced at this early age, subsequently became one of Wagner's most marked traits, which he sliared with most men of genius. Anotlier trait was that he preferred rambling about the country to. learning the rules of grammar, and used to beguile his uncle to tell him stories that he might escape work. During his school days he was frail and small of stature, which served him as an advantage, for the teachers wondered at the unusual energy and intelligence displayed by one of his pigmy frame. With liis schoolmates his violent temper brought him into frequent collisions", which, however, rarely degenerated into blows. He was fond of practical jokes, and his superabundant animal spirits gave rise to various escapades. He used to frighten his mother by jumping down stairs and sliding down the banisters, but as he always turned up fresh and smiling, he was allowed to have his way, and was even asked to entertain visitors 24 BICHAEB WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD with his pranks. The following anecdote, related by Praeger, shows how on one occasion he barely escaped with his life. A holiday had been unexpectedly an- nounced at the Kreuzschule, to the great delight of the boys : — " Caps were thrown in the air, when Wagner, seizing that of one of his companions, threw it with an unusual effort on to the roof of the school-house, a feat loudly applauded by the rest of the scholars. But there was one dissentient, — the unlucky boy whose cap had been thus ruthlessly snatched. He burst into tears. Wagner could never bear to see any one ciy, and with that prompt decision so characteristic of him at all periods of his life, decided at once to mount the roof for the cap. He re-entered the school- house, rushed up the stairs to the cock-loft, climbed out on the roof through a ventilator, and gazed down on the applauding boys. He then set himself to crawl along the steep incline towards the cap. The boys ceased cheering at the sight, and drew back in fear and terror. Some hurriedly ran to the ' custodes.' A ladder was brought and carried up stairs to the loft, the boys eagerly crowding behind. Meanwhile Wagner had secured the cap, safely returned to the opening, and slid back into the dark loft just in time to hear excited talking on the stairs. He hid himself in a corner behind some boxes, waiting for the placing of the ladder, and ' custodes ' ascending it, when he came from his hiding-place, and in an inno- cent tone inquired what they were looking for, — a bird, perhaps? ' Yes, a gallows bird,' was the angry answer of the infuriated ' cus- todes,' who, after all, were glad to see the boy safe, their general favorite." We must now return to our narrative, interrupted at the moment when the young poet had killed off all but one of the forty characters in his drama. RICHAKD TURNS TO MUSIC A very important result followed the writing of this sanguinary and ghostly drama. While he was at work RICHARD TURNS TO MUSIC 25 on it, Richard for the first time became acquainted with the music of Beethoven, at a Gewandhaus concert in Leipzig. It made a deep impression on him, especially the music to Goethe's Egmont, which filled him with such great enthusiasm that he made up his mind to embellish his own drama with music of the same style. It did not enter the head of this ambitious youth of sixteen that there would be any special difficulty in carrying out such a project. To familiarize himself with the laws of har- mony and counterpoint he borrowed Logier's treatise for a iceek and studied it diligently : " but this study did not bear fruit as fast as I had fancied; its difficulties stimu- lated and attracted me; 1 resolved to become a musician." Thus, although he had had piano lessons previously, and had been deeply impressed by Weber's music in his childhood, it was not till his sixteenth year that Wagner discovered his true vocation. Moreover, he was at first obliged to keep his new resolution to himself, for his family had by this time discovered that he had been neglecting his studies and giving most of his time to his tragedy. To confess the existence of his new hobby would have poured oil on the discontent provoked by this discovery ; and Eichard therefore composed, in the strict- est secrecy, a sonata, a quartet, and an aria. When he had made a little more progress in his new art, he had the courage to tell his family about it; but they only looked on it as a fresh caprice, all the more so as it had not been preceded by careful study or justified by the acquisition of skill in performing on some musical instru- ment. However, the family humored his whim in so far as to engage a music-teacher, to see whether it had any substantial foundation. The experiment proved unsuc- 26 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD cessful. Just as, in his childhood, he had preferred playing overtures to five-finger exercises, so now, in his youth, he disgusted his teacher by neglecting his elemen- tary studies in counterpoint and composing overtures for grand orchestra. Obviously there was a certain American trait in the make-up of young Eichard Wagner's character: Inothing but the biggest of its kind would satisfy him. We have seen how, at the age of five, instead of learning to draw eyes, he wanted to begin by painting life-size portraits of kings; how, at thirteen, he took upon himself, vol- untarily, the Herculean task of translating Homer's Odyssey, and accomplished half of it; how, at four- teen, he began a tragedy which was to combine the grand- eur of two of Shakespeare's dramas. And now, at sixteen, we find him again, trying his new-fledged musical wings by soaring at once to the highest peaks of orchestral achievement, without wasting any time on the humble foothills. Nor was it enough to write overtures : others had done that; consequently Richard's must be a "new departure." As he himself remarks : " Beethoven's ninth symphony appeared like a simple Pleyel sonata by the side of this marvellously complicated overture " — refer- ring to one of his compositions which was played during an entr'acte at the Leipzig theatre. To facilitate the reading of this astounding score he had conceived the novel idea of writing it in three kinds of ink, red for the strings, green for the wood-wind, and black for the brass instruments. "This overture was the climax of my absurdities," Wagner writes, and he goes on to tell how, at its performance, the public was at first astonished at the perseverance of the drum -player, who had to tap RICHARD TURNS TO MUSIC 27 his instrument fortissimo every fourth bar, throughout the piece; how this astonishment gradually changed to open disgust, and ended in an explosion of general hilarity, to the young composer's great discomfiture. Nevertheless, Wagner adds that this first performance of a piece of his own made a deep impression on him ; and Heinrich Dorn, who conducted this overture (and who subsequently assisted Wagner in getting a position at Riga), related in his Ergebnisse aus Erlebnissen that "young Richard, at that time a very modest youth, thanked me on the following day, visibly surprised, for having done him this service. I could only assure him that I had easily divined his talent, and that I had been especially pleased on finding that I had to make no cor- rections at all in the orchestration (as is very apt to be necessary in the case of beginners), and that I expected the best of his future." Dorn also says that at the rehearsal the musicians were convulsed with laughter at this extraordinary piece. This fiasco taught Wagner a useful lesson, and brought him back to his senses. He matriculated at the Univer- sity of Leipzig, less with the intention of devoting him- self to a profession than from a desire to attend lectures on aesthetics and philosophy. The dissipations peculiar to German student life attracted him for a while, and made him neglect all his favorite studies, including music, to the distress of his relatives, who began to feel pretty certain that he was a good-for-nothing, and would never amount to anything. The reaction came soon. The unfettered freedom and gross indulgences of student life filled him with disgust, and at last he made up his mind to devote himself to a careful and systematic study of 28 EICHARD WAGNERS CHILDHOOD music. Previous attempts with a pedantic teacher named Gottlieb Miiller had led to no useful results; but tliis time, as good luck would have it, he fell into the hands of one of Bach's successors as Cantor at the Thomasschule, — Theodor Weinlig, — who possessed the rare gift of making the study of counterpoint as attractive as play. Before the end of six months, Weinlig himself brought these lessons to a close, having found that Wagner could solve the most difficult problems in counterpoint; and he told his pupil in conclusion : " Probably you will never be called upon to write a fugue ; but the fact that you can write one will give you technical independence, and make everything else easy." CONCEKT PIECES About this time Wagner learned to admire Mozart, and he composed a sonata in which he took great pains to be natural and simple. This sonata was published by Breitkopf und Hartel, and although it does not show any traces of Wagner's peculiar style, it is notable as being the first piece of his that ever got into print. -^ To reward the young composer for the fetters placed on him in these pieces Weinlig permitted him to compose something to suit his own taste. The result was a fan- tasia in F sharp minor for piano, which has never been printed, but which is, according to W. Tappert,^ much more interesting and individual than the sonata and the '^t> 1 The best movement, the menuet, is obtainable to-day as No. 84 of the Perles Musicales. A facsimile of the original title-page is printed in the Wagner Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 366. No. 24 of the Perles Musicales is a polonaise of Wagner's, composed, like this sonata, at the age of eighteen. 2 Richard Wagner : Sein Leben u. Seine Werke, 1883, p. 5. CONCERT PIECES 29 polonaise. Other pieces of this period are a concert overture in D-minor, an overture to Raupach's Koniy Enzio, and a concert overture with fugue, in C-major, none of which have been printed. Of the last named Wagner says that " it was composed after the model of Beethoven, whom I now understood somewhat better, and was produced at a Gewandhaus concert, Avith encour- aging success." The AUgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (1832, p. 296) says of the same piece : — ' ' Much pleasure was given us by a new overture by a still very young composer, Herr Richard Wagner. The piece was thoroughly appreciated, and, indeed, the young man promises much : the com- position not only sounds well, but it has ideas and is written with care and skill, with an evident and successful striving for the noblest. We saw the score." A performance of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony also led Wagner to Avrite a pastoral play dramatically sug- gested by Goethe's Laune der Verli'ebten. Of more importance than these shorter compositions was a symphony in C-minor, which had a most interest- ing history. After completing it Wagner placed it in his trunk and made a trip to Vienna, "for no other pur- pose," as he relates, '''than to get a glimpse of this famed musical centre. What I heard and saw there was not to my edification; wherever I went I heard Zampa or Strauss's potpourris on Zampa — two things that were an abomination to me especially at that time. On my return I remained some time in Prague, where I made the acquaintance of Dionys Weber and Tomaschek; the former had some of my compositions played at the Con- servatory, among them my sympliony." So much Wagner relates in his Autobiographic Sketch 30 RICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD (1843). In a letter to the editor of the Musikalisches Wochenblatt,^ written at Venice forty years later and six weeks before his death, he gives further details. Hav- ing returned to Leipzig, he naturally desired to have the symphony played at the Gewandhaus. Hofrath Rochlitz, who was at that time the presiding chief, carefully ex- amined the score, and Avhen Wagner called on him per- sonally, he put on his spectacles and exclaimed : " What do 1 see? Why, you are a very young man indeed; I had expected to see a much older and more experienced com- poser." This was encouraging, and not long thereafter the symphony was played at the Gewandhaus, and favorably received, all the movements, too, with the exception of the second, being loudly applauded by a large audience. A few years later Mendelssohn became director of the Gewandhaus concerts. " Astonished at the excellent achievements of this still so young master," Wagner writes, " I sought his acquaintance, during a later sojourn in Leipzig (1834 or '35), and on this occasion yielded to a strangely inward (innerliche) necessity by giving him — or rather forcing on him — the manuscript of my symphony with the request not at all to examine it, but only to take it under his care. Probably I fancied that perhaps he would take a look at it after all and say something to me about it. But this never happened. In the course of years, my paths often brought me near Mendelssohn again ; we met, we dined, we even played together once in Leipzig ; he attended the first performance of my Flying Dutchman in Berlin, and found that, inasmuch as the opera had after all not proved quite a failure, I ought to be satisfied with my success ; on the occasion of a performance of Tannhduser in Dresden he also remarked that a canon in the adagio of the second finale had pleased 1 Reprinted in Vol. X. of the Gesammelte Schri/ten, pp. 400-406. WORSHIP OF BEETHOVEN 31 him. Only of my symphony, and the manuscript of it, he never said a word, which was reason enough why I never inquired after it." For almost half a century nothing was known of this manuscript, and Wagner had given it up as lost, when it was discovered in an old trunk in Dresden. The circum- stances of this discovery, and of the performance of the symphony in Venice, a few weeks before Wagner's death, may, however, be more fitly and dramatically related in a later chapter.^ Here we need only add that, according to Wagner's own testimony, clearness and virility were his aim in writing this work, and that, besides Beethoven, Mozart was his prototype. In regard to length, the symphony suggests the former rather than the latter of these composers, for it has been noted that it contains 1836 bars, while Mozart's longest symphony has only half that number. Beethoven's influence is also shown in the structure and in not a few " allusions " of the sym- phony; for Beethoven was at that time, as during the remainder of his life, his special idol. WORSHIP OF BEETHOVEN It was the announcement of the great symphonist's death that had first drawn Wagner's attention to his music. The Egmont music inspired him, as we have just seen, with the plan to set his own great ghost trag- edy to music; and in the opinion of the composer, Heinrich Dorn (who at that time was a friend of Wag- ner's, but subsequently became a bitter enemy and rival), " there was perhaps never at any time a young composer who was more familiar with Beethoven's works than the eighteen-year-old Wagner of that time. He possessed most of the master's over- 1 See Index, under " Symphony I." 32 BICHARD WAGNER'S CHILDHOOD tures in scores copied by his own hand ; with the sonatas he went to sleep, with the quartets he got up ; the songs he sang, the (juar- tets he whistled (for in his playing there was no progress) ; in short, it was a true furor teutonicus, which, in its union with an intellect of scientific cultivation and unusual activity, promised to yield vigorous shoots." This was at the age of eighteen, and many years later Wagner proved his unaltered affection for Beethoven by writing his well-known analytical programmes of some of his idol's symphonies or overtures ; the special twenty- seven-page article on the performance of the ninth sym- phony; and that monument of artistic enthusiasm, the essay on Beethoven, which takes up seventy-four pages of the ninth volume of his collected works, and was writ- ten at the age of tifty-seven ; not to speak of the countless references to Beethoven and his works scattered through his various essays.^ In Paris, about the time when Rienzi was completed, he conceived the plan of writing a Bee- thoven biography, and it was one of Heine's jokes that Wagner always had the words ami de BeetJioven printed on his visiting-cards. Two of the earliest extant letters of Wagner's should be alluded to in connection with this topic. The first, dated Oct. 6 (1830), is addressed to the well-known music publishers, B. Schott's Sohne in Mayence, and contains an offer to arrange Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for two hands. '« For a long time," he writes, " I have made Beethoven's mag- nificent last symphony the object of my profoundest study, and 1 These, like Wagner's allusions to all other composers, and to his own works, will be found conveniently grouped together in the two volumes of Glasenapp's Wagner Encyclopddie (Leipzig, E. W. Fritzsch, 1391). WORSHIP OF BEETHOVEN 33 the more I came to realize the great vahie of this work, the more it grieved me to know that it is still so imperfectly understood, or nltogether ignored, by the greater part of the musical public. To make this work more familiar, the best method seemed to me a serviceable arrangement for the piano, such as, to my great regret, I have never succeeded in finding — for that four-hand arrangement of Czerny's surely can no longer be considered sufficient. My great enthusiasm has thus led me to make an attempt to arrange this symphony for two ha)ids, and I have so far succeeded in arranging the first and perhaps most diiiicult movement in the most accurate and complete manner possible. I therefore venture to approach your respected firm with the question whether you would be in- clined to publish such an arrangement (for of course I should not like to continue this difficult work, at present, without this cer- tainty). As soon as I am assured of this, I shall at once go to work and complete what I have begiin. Therefore I humbly beg for a speedy answer, and as far as I am concerned you may be assured of the greatest zeal. " Your Honors' " My Address : Humble Servant, Leipzig, im Pichhof vor'm Richakd Wagner. ■» Halli'schen Thor 1 Treppe." This offer was evidently not accepted. Beetlioven's last symphony was not appreciated then as it now is (largely owing to Wagner's efforts and influence), nor of course was Wagner's name of any commercial value at that time.^ Apparently humbled by his failure, the eighteen-year- old musician wrote another letter on Aug. 6, 1831, to 1 War/ner Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 470. 2 What fabulous sums publishers would pay to-day for the manu- script of Beethoven's sympliony arraiif^ed by Warner may he inferred from the fact tliat a concert manager in Berlin a few years ago paid Wagner's heirs .W.CXK) marks for tlie privilege of owning, /or one year only, the exclusive right of permitting performances of Wagner's newly discovered symphony in C ! 34 BICHAlil) WAGNERS CHILDHOOD the Bureau de Musique in Leipzig, in which he offered to make arrangements for the piano at lens than the usual rates, after convincing the Bureau of his fitness by some trial tasks for which he woukl ask no compensation : " I am prompted to this request by a lack of occupation, and the wish to find employment in work of this sort." A SECOND SYMPHONY It is commonly supposed that Wagner wrote but one symphony; but in 1886 W. Tappert, one of his most intimate friends, who had been given free access to all his papers and music manuscripts, discovered a sketch of a second symphony which was made in August, 1834. The allegro is complete ; of the adagio there are twenty- nine bars, ending abruptly. Wagner himself never men- tioned this symphony, and seemed to have forgotten it entirely. In this second symphony Herr Tappert dis- covered traces of Weber's influence, besides Beethoven's; and he adds significantly : — " We did not even need the wondrously polyphonic stage-festi- val-play Parsifal to justify the assertion that Wagner was the greatest contrapuntist of his time. Only half a year his lessons with Cantor Weinlig continued ; what astounding results they had is proved also by the unfinished sketch of the E-major symphony. Ask in our conservatories whether the young men there, after sev- eral years' study, can accomplish in free composition what Richard Wagner accomplished at the age of eighteen to twenty-one. And this chosen one was stigmatized by the academic critics and the ignorant laity at their beer-tables as an amateur! " '■ ^ Tappert's article on the E-major symphony, with musical illustra- t:ons, will be found in the Musikalisches Wocfienblatt for Sept. 30 and Oct. 7, 1886, THE FIRST OPERAS I HAVE dwelt somewhat longer on what may be called cl:e concert period of Wagner's life than other biog- raphers, because the facts thus brought together show that, as he had already mastered the technique of sym- \/ phonic composition before his twentieth year, he might have lived to equal or surpass his greatest predecessors in this field had not fate and his theatrical instincts fortunately urged him into what he felt to be the higher domain of the music-drama. That was his true sphere; he needed a poetic or pictorial idea to evoke a deeply original motive from his creative imagination ; and it is for this reason that none of his concert compositions — neither these early ones nor those of a later period — quite equal the best parts of his music dramas, with the exception of the "Siegfried Idyl," in which, however, the chief themes are borrowed from the Siegfried drama. In turning, therefore, to the operatic period of his life, we reach at last the real Richard Wagner. THE WEDDING In speaking of his visit (in 1832) to Prague, where his symphony in C had its first performance, Wagner adds : — " I also wrote there a tragic opera-text, The Wedding. I do not remember where I found the mediseval subject. An insane lover climbs through the window into the bedroom of lii.^ friend's be- Wo 36 THE FIRST OPERAS trnthed, who is awaiting her bridegroom ; the bride struggles fvith the madman and throws him down into the courtyard, where he gives up the ghost. At tlie fu' ^ral rites the bride utters a cry and falls dead on the corpse. Ha/'ug returned to Leipzig, I immedi- ately composed the first number of this opera, which contained a grand sextet ^ that gave Weinlig much satisfaction. My sister did not like the libretto, and I destroyed it entirely." The principal interest attaching to this performance lies in the evidence it affords that Wagner, from the very beginning of his operatic career, was led by his poetic instinct to write his own dramatic texts. His literary friend, Lanbe, had, abont this period, offered him a libretto entitled Kosziusko ; but Wagner refused it, on the grounds that he was at that time solely engaged with purely instrumental music. The secret reason, probably, was that he felt just as anxious to exercise his poetic as his musical faculties; and that, even at that early period, he had a vague presentiment that dramatic music, to be perfect, must not be a mere lining, so to speak, to the poetic costume, but both the poem and the music must be conceived at the same time, and subtly interwoven — that, in short, the poem must be "dyed in the wool " with the musical colors. This may be a homely simile; but if the reader will reflect on it for a few min- utes, it will perhaps make Wagner's theory of the music- drama clearer to him than pages of abstract aesthetic disquisition.^ 1 When Wagner wrote "sextet" his memory betrayed him. The manuscript shows this piece to be a septet. Besides this septet the in- troduction and a chorus are still existent in manuscript. In 1879 the owner of the manuscript of the septet offered it for sale. Wagner brought suit to prevent this sale, but the courts twice decided against him. — (Tappert, in Musikalisches Wochenblatt, Aug. 30, 1887). 2 Throughout his whole career Wagner remained faithful to his principle of writing his own dramatic poems, although, especially in THE FAIRIES 37 THE FAIEIES Of Wagner's earliest operas the first three had a curi- ous fate. Of The Wedding, as we have just seen, three numbers only were set to music, whereupon the libretto was destroyed by the composer himself. The Fairies, the second of his operas, though completed, was never performed during his lifetime. The third opera. The Novice of Palermo, was given once, under Wagner's own direction, under extraordinary circumstances presently to be related, and never again repeated. The Fairies was composed at Wiirzburg, whither Wagner had gone at the age of twenty to visit his elder brother Albert, who was engaged in the theatre there as singer, actor, and stage-manager, and who, Richard hoped, would be able to give him useful advice, and per- haps help him to find employment. The best that Albert could do for him, however, was to get him appointed chorus master, at a salary of ten florins a month. In return for this favor, Richard composed for Albert an the last two decades of his life, when his operas began to be by far the best paying works given at the German opera houses, any literary man who was also " in the libretto business " would have been only too glad to ally hinis(!lf with such a successful con)poser. In 1882 Wagner wrote to a young author in Vienna, declining an opera libretto which the latter had forwarded him: "Why? Because I have, indeed, read your libretto; I have, indeed, tested it; and I have, indeed, found it good — but not so good that, for its sake, 1 should suddenly prove false to a principle to which I have been true for nearly a wliole generation ; the principle, namely, of writing my own dramatic texts. At any rate, I save money by this — for you must know I am a great miser ! If you come to Venice you will be able to convince yourself that your some- what voluminous manuscript is in good company — it has, in my library of librettos sent to me, the number of 2985. A respectable figure, is it not, my young friend ? " l«l^4 38 THE FIRST OPERAS aria of 142 bars, to replace a shorter one of fifty-eight bars in Marschner's Vampire.^ In his autobiographic sketch, Wagner relates : — "In this year [1833] I composed a three-act romantic opera, 77te Fairies, for wliich I liad arranged the text myself from Gozzi's .^ The Serpent- Woman. Beetlioven and Weber were my prototypes: in the ensembles many things were successful ; the finale of the second act in particular promised to be very effective. Extracts from this opera given at concerts in Wurzburg were received favorably." Early in 1834 he took his score under his arm, went back to Leipzig, and offered it to the director of the ''' theatre. At that time, however, as we have already seen, Italian and French operas had a monopoly of the German theatres, and native composers had to beg for perform- ances of their works as a special favor. A foreign opera of the same calibre as The Fairies might have found favor with the director, but for a product of native talent there was no demand, and so the fairy opera was put aside, and nothing more was done for it during its author's lifetime. In his Eine Mittheilung an meiy\e Freunde (written in 1857 and reprinted in Vol. IV. of the Collected Works, p. 313), Wagner gives some further interesting details regarding The Fairies : — " It was written in imitation of the ' romantic ' opera of Weber and also of Marschner, whose works were at that time just coming into notice at Leipzig. . . . What attracted me to Gozzi's fairy- tale was not only its adaptability for operatic purposes, but the 1 The manuscript of this aria is in possession of W. Tappert of Berlin. A phototype facsimile is appended to his R. Wagner: Sein Leben und Seine Werke, and is of interest to those who wish to compare Wagner's earliest musical handwriting with that of his later periods. THE FAIRIES 39 subject itself interested me. A fairy who renounces immortality for the possession of a beloved mortal can win the gift of mortality only through certain severe conditions, the non-fulfilment of which on the part of her lover threatens her with dire calamity ; the lover succumbs to the trial, which consists in his being called upon not to repel the fairy in whatever (compulsory) cruel form she may appear to him. In Gozzi's tale the fairy is hereupon changed to a snake ; the repentant lover restores her to her proper form by kissing the snake : thus winning her as his wife. I altered this plot by having the fairy changed to a stone, from which she is brought back to life by the lover's passionate song, whereupon instead of the fairy being dismissed with him to the land of mor- tals, both are welcomed by the Fairy King into the happy world of the immortals." The Fairies was finished on Dec. 7, 1833, and had its first performance on June 29, 1888, at Munich — fifty- five years after its completion, five years after Wagner's death ! The truth is that Wagner was not proud of this opera in later years, and intended that it should never be performed. But when his last music-drama, Parsifal, was being prepared for performance at Bayreuth, the necessity of raising funds induced liim, in return for the pecuniary and artistic support he received from the King of Bavaria, to grant the Munich Court Theatre the right of performing Parsifal, although this ran counter to his pet idea of reserving Parsifal exclusively for the festivals at Bayreuth. He found it possible, however, to make an arrangement with the Munich authorities by which tliey waived their right to deprive Bayreuth of its Parsifal monopoly, in return for the permission to produce The Fairies at Munich exclusively.^ The director of the 1 King Liulwig, liowever, reserved the right to have Parsifal pro- duf-ed in Munich at thoso not infrequent ijerl'ornianees wliieh, at liis conunand, were given witli himself as sole spectator. For this purpose 40 THE FIRST OPERAS Royal Opera, seeing that The Fairies could hardly be expected to attract audiences by the beauty of its music and its poetry, like its author's later operas, wisely con- chided to bring it out in a most gorgeous but thoroughly artistic scenic attire. This, combined with the curiosity to hear the first effort of the most popular operatic com- poser of the century, made The Fairies a quite unexpected success. It had a "run" almost like an operetta during the first season, and is now still played quite frequently, especially during the tourist season, when many of the Bayreiith pilgrims visit INIunich. The text-book of The Fairies has few of those poetic lines which abound in its author's later dramas, although there are some passages and situations quite worthy of the author of Lohengrin and Siegfried. The scenic arrangements already bear witness to Wagner's pictorial fancy, and the choice of a mythical subject is significant of a composer who based ten of his thirteen operas on legendary and supernatural stories. Musically, the most striking trait of this opera is, as the composer him- self intimates, its imitation of Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner ; he might have added Mozart, for there are as distinct "allusions" to Do7i Juan and the Magic Flute, as there are to Fidelio, Euryanthe, and Oberon. There are also a few germs of ideas which he developed in his a new mise-en-scene was provided, as sumptuous as that in Bayreuth. The eminent Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Vogl, who took part in all tliese private Parsifal performances, told nie that eight of them were given altogether, the King's appetite for Wagner's music being insa- tiable up to the end of his life. To the King's subjects it must have been a consideration as tantalizing as it was romantic and unique, that Wagner's last, and in some respects grandest, work was being given over and over again in their Court Theatre, and no one permitted to hear it but their monarch. AT MAGDEBURG. — A STEP BACKWARD 41 later operas (especially Rlenzi and the Flying Dutchman) and in the Faust overture. There is also that peculiar bombastic striving for exaggerated expression which characterizes much of thef?fE?izt music; but of the melo- dic beauty, harmonic originality, and varied orchestral coloring of his later works there are but few traces, while on the other hand the management of the orchestra, alone or in combination with the chorus, already shows much of that ingenuity which enabled him subsequently to Avrite those magnificent ensembles in Lohengrin and the Meister singer ^ AT MAGDEBURG. — A STEP BACKWARD Not only was Wagner's creative genius slow in devel- oping, but in the period we have now arrived at he actually made a step backward^ gave up the serious musical ideals which Weber and Beethoven had taught before him, and began to flirt with the coquettish, seduc- tive operatic muse of the period, who promised him success and luxury if he would throw himself into her arms. He had accepted an appointment, in 1834, as musical director of the opera at Magdeburg, where he had an opportunity to become thoroughly familiar with all the trivial operatic melodies of the time. "The 1 More detailed accounts of the performance of The Fairies in Muiiicli may be found in the Musikalisches Wochenblatt, July 19 and Auj^. 1, 1888, and in Mr. L. C. Elson's European Reminisceiices (Chi- cago, 1891, pp. 99-102). Mr. Elson found it strange to hear "the con- ventional aria, scena, cavatina, prayer, and mad scene in a Wagnerian work. The opera throughout," he says, " crushes the critics who have maintained tliat Wagner was hy nature incapabh; of composing tunes. ... It is one of the ' ifs ' of musical history whether Wagner could not have composed comic opera, in the French sense, had he practised more in this vein. Thank Heaven, he did not 1 " 42 THE FIRST OPERAS rehearsing and conducting of these light-jointed fash- ionable French operas, the cleverness and brilliancy of their orchestral effects," he writes (IV. 316), "often gave me a childish sort of pleasure when I could let these things loose, right and left, from my conductor's desk." His artistic conscience was demoralized by see- ing what enthiisiasm this trivial sort of music produced. Why not write similar things and become the man of the hour? His score of The Fairies became a matter of indifference to him, and he no longer thought of getting it performed. It was too serious, and of too elevated a character to suit his new mood; and he now began to meditate on a very different sort of opera, concerning which he says : — "A strange demoralization of my taste had resulted from my connection (during two winters at Magdeburg) witli German operatic affairs, and this demoralization was manifested in the whole conception and execution of my new opera in such a way that surely no one could have recognized from this score the youth- ful Beethoven-and- Weber enthusiast." This " demoralization " affected not only his artistic conscience, but his general views of life. He had, through books and personal intercourse, come under the influence of a class of revolutionary writers, who attacked social hypocrisy and preached doctrines that smacked of anarchy and free love. It was in this mood that he wrote his new opera. The Novice of Palermo, of which he has him- self -^ given a most interesting and amusing account. 1 Das Liebesverbot ; Gessaynmelte Schriften, Vol. I. pp. 27-40. Eng- lish version iu BurUngame's Art Life and Theories of Wagner, pp. 27- 40. TEE NOVICE OF PALERMO 43 THE NOVICE OF PALERMO " One fine morning I stole away from my surroundings, to take a solitary breakfast on the Schlackenburg, and at the same time to sketch a new opera-poem in my notebook. I had chosen for this the subject of Shakespeare's Measure for Measr(re, which I now, in harmony with my present mood, transformed in a very free manner into an opera-book to which I gave the title Das Liebesverbot [the . Love-Veto] . The ideas of ' Young Europe ' that were in the air at that time, combined with the reading of [Heinse's] Ardinghello, and intensified by the peculiar mood which my operatic experiences had put me into, supplied the keynote for my production, which was especially aimed against Puritan hypocrisy, and thus led to the bold glorification of ' unchecked sensuality.' I took great pains to look at the serious Shakespearian subject only from this point of view ; I saw only the sinister, severe governor, himself burning with a violent passion for the young novice, who, while imploring him for the pardon of her brother who is condemned to death for an amorous intrigue, has through the contagiousness of her warm human feelings aroused in the stern Puritan a consuming flame. That these powerful motives are in Shakespeare's piece so richly developed merely in order to be found the more weighty at last in the scales of justice, I did not at all care to notice ; what I was concerned about, was to expose the sinfulness of hypocrisy and the unnaluralness of moral prudery. Consequently I dropped the Measure for Measure entirely, and made avenging love alone inflict l)unishment on the hypocrite. I transferred the scene from the fabulous Vienna to the capital of glowing Sicily, in which a German governor, disgusted with the incredibly easy morals of the population, attempts to carry out a Puritan reform, in which he lui.serably fails." To this brief sketch Wagner adds a long and detailed analysis of the plot, which it is hardly worth while t( follow here, as the opera will in all ])robal)ility never bt revived. Its single performance at Magdeburg, how- 44 THE FIRST OPERAS ever, took place under circumstances so extraordinary that they must be briefly related. The city of Magdeburg, where Wagner composed his Novice of Palermo and conducted the Opera two winter seasons, is to-day one of the most flourishing commercial cities in Germany, with a fortress of the first rank and a population of 160,000. In 1836, however, it had only 40,000, and the business men and soldiers who made up its population do not appear to have cared much for opera. Tliis we learn from a correspondent of the Neue ZeUschrift fur Musik, who exclaims : " What more do you want than the assurance that we have had a better opera this winter than ever before? What do you say if I add that everybody admitted this, and yet no one went to the opera, and that the house had to be closed before the winter season was over? " He then goes on to describe the singers, and continues : — "If you add to all this that a young, clever artist, like Musik- director Richard Wagner, succeeded with ardor and skill in creating an excellent ensemble, it was inevitable that we should have had some great artistic treats." Yet the philistines neglected the opera, and "I can see in the case of Wagner and persons like him and myself, what a torture it is to have to live in such a commercial and military city while all one's nerves and fibres ci'ave for activity." It was under such discouraging circumstances that Wagner was doomed to bring out for the first time in his life an opera of his own composition. In return for some travelling expenses incurred by him in an official capacity he was entitled to a benefit performance. He naturally seized on this opportunity to produce his new opera. This involved a considerable outlay for scenery and rehearsals, and as he did not wish to load this on the THE NOVICE OF PALERMO 46 management, which was already on the point of bank- ruptcy, he agreed to give two performances, and to reserve for himself the profits of the second only. It was near the end of the season, but this did not seem a disadvan- tage, as the last performances of the season were usually better attended than the preceding ones. Unfortunately, some of the singers, whose salary was in arrears, handed in their resignation, and it was only owing to Wagner's personal popularity with them that he succeeded in retaining them a little longer. Ten days only were avail- able for rehearsing an opera of great dimensions and with many difficult ensemble numbers. To continue in Wag- ner's own words: — "I relied, however, on the success of special efforts to which, for my sake, the singers willingly submitted, studying their parts day and night ; and as, in spite of this, it was simply impossible to establish any certainty of execution and memory on the part of the hard-worked artists, I finally counted on a mii-acle to be worked through the skill in conducting which I had already ac- quired. What a peculiar faculty I did possess for helping the singers, and for keeping up a certain apparent smoothness of move- ment notwithstanding their uncertainty, was actually shown at the few rehearsals with orchestra, where I succeeded, by means of corLStant prompting, singing along loudly, and giving direc- tions concerning the acting, in keeping the whole so far in order that one was justified in hoping that the result might be quite tolerable." In making tliese calculations he forgot that a per- formance is a different matter from a rehearsal; for when tlie house was filled with spectators the conductor could not sing along and give loiul hints as before; the conse- quence being an utterly chaotic representation which must have bewildered the audience all the more as no 46 THE FIRST OPERAS librettos had been printed to explain the plot. No wonder that, at the second performance, fifteen minutes before the rising of the curtain, the comiDOser saw no one in the parquet but his housewife and her husband, and a Polish Jew in full costume. He hoped for a few more specta- tors, but the curtain was fated never to rise again on his opera. A quarrel, prompted by jealousy, broke out among the singers behind the scenes and reached such dimensions that the stage manager had to come before the curtain and announce that no performance would take place, on account of "unforeseen impediments." Thus ended the season, and Wagner's opera. Not that he gave it up at once in consequence of this mishap, which could hardly be called a fiasco, as the opera had really had " no show " at all. The correspon- dent above referred to concludes his notice of the new opera with these words : " This much I know, that the work will succeed if the composer can get it performed at a good theatre. There is much in it; everything sounds well; it has music and it has melody, which is pretty far to seek in our German operas of the period." Wagner, too, had faith enough in his opera to offer it to the man- agers in Leipzig and in Berlin, but without success. Three years later, when he was in Paris, he tried to bring it out at the Theatre de la Eenaissance; its frivolous subject seemed well suited for the French stage. Three numbers had already been translated, so successfully, as Wagner attests, " that my music sounded better to the French words than to the original German text; for it was music such as is most easily understood by the French, and everything promised well when the Theatre de la Renaissance became bankrupt! All trouble, all THE NOVICE OF PALERMO 47 hopes, liad therefore been in vain. I now gave up my Liebesverbot entirely; I felt that I could not respect myself any longer as its composer." This attitude regarding the Novice of Palermo was of course not altered but rather accentuated later in life. In 1866 he dedicated the score to King Ludwig 11.^ with the following lines in which he pronounces it a " sin of his youth," from which he begs the monarch to absolve him by accepting it : — "Ich irrte einst und mocht'es nun verbiissen: Wie mach' ich mich der Jugendsiinde frei ? Ihr Werk leg' ich demiithig Dir zu FUssen, Dass Deine Gnade ihm Erloser sei." 1 The score of this opera, the performance of which thus had the curious fate of being twice frustrated by the failure of an operatic institution, is preserved at the Munich opera-liouse. In July, 1891, I visited the eminent Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Yogi, who, when not employed at the Munich opera-house, lives with his family at a country seat near Tutzing on Lake Starnberg, where he has large grain-tields, tine scenery, including a small private lake, and, as guardian of his house, a large dog named Wotan, a direct descendant of one of Wag- ner's famous animals. Herr Vogl gave me much valuable information regarding Wagner's life at Munich and his relations with the King, which will be only made use of in its place. Regarding the Novice of Palermo he told me an interesting circumstance which, I believe, has never got into print. After the tremendous success of The Fairies the thought naturally occurred that Wagner's other juvenile opera might perhaps be revived opportunely. The artists were therefore selected and a rehearsal was held which lasted five hours, and which sealed the fate of The Novice of Palermo. "The arias and other numbers," said Herr Vogl, " were such ludicrous and undisguised imitations of Donizetti and other popular composers of that time, that we all burst out laugh- ing and kept up the merriment througliout the rehearsal. I was for giving the opera, in spite of this, as a curiosity, and because it could of course not injure Wagner's reputation ; nor was the Intendant quite averse to giving it. Ultimately, however, we all agreed that it would ])e better to leave it alone, less on account of the nuisii; than because of the licentious character of the libretto. So the manuscript was shelved again." 48 THE FIRST OPERAS Concerning the music of this opera Wagner himself says, in several places : — ' ' I had abandoned abstract mysticism and learned to love the material. An attractive subject, wit, and cleverness seemed to me delightful things : as regards my music I found both among the French and Italians. I gave up my prototype Beethoven. ... At a concert I produced the overture to my Fairies ; it was very well received. ... A good impression was made on the public by a New Year's cantata ^ which I had written hastily. Such easy suc- cesses confirmed me in the belief that, in order to please, one must not be too scrupulous regarding one's means. In this mood I continued the composition of my Novice of Palermo. I did not take the slightest pains to avoid imitating the French and the Italians " — all the less as he had noticed what tremendous effects a great artist like Joan Schroeder-Devrient was capable of pro- ducing even in so flimsy a work as Bellini's Romeo and Juliet. He mentions Au\)er, Verdi, and Bellini as among his new models, and concludes that ' ' if any one should compare this score with that of The Fairies he would find it difficult to understand how such a complete change in my tendencies could have been brought about in so short a time. A compromise between the two was to be the goal of my further artistic development." FIRST CTRITICAL ESSAY The sudden change in Wagner's ideals and methods will seem less enigmatic when we bear in mind that he was simply swimming with the musical current, and as a youth of only twenty-two could hardly be expected to have the strength to swim against it, as he did later, beginning with the Flying Dutchman. Not he alone but 1 In this cantata Wagner made use of the andante of his first sym- phony — one of the very few cases where he followed a device resorted to by Handel and other famous composers, of borrowing from his own earlier works. FIRST CRITICAL ESSAY 49 the whole German nation turned their backs on Beethoven and Weber, who had just composed their greatest works — Fidelio and Eun/anthe — and listened only to Rossini, Auber, and other Italian and French composers. Wagner himself voiced the opinion of the average opera-goer of that time in his first critical essay, which was printed in the Zeituvg fur die EleganteWelt (June 10, 1834), and which contains opinions regarding vocal music, the opera, and German composers diametrically opposed to his more mature opinions expressed in later years. The essay is too long to reprint here,^ but the following remarks on Weber's Euryanthe may be cited as an example : — " What petty calculation in its declamation, what timid employ- ment of this or that instrument to enforce the expressiveness of a word ! Instead of sketching a situation with a single bold and broad stroke, he breaks up the general impression by minute details and detailed minuteness. How difficult he finds it to give life to his ensembles ; how the second finale drags ! Here an instrument, there a voice, wants to-day something awfully wise, and ultimately none of them knows what it says. And as the hearers have to confess, at the end, that they did not understand anything, they console themselves with the fact that at any rate it must be regarded as very erudite, and therefore worthy of great respect. Oh, this unfortimate erudition — this source of all Ger- man evils ! " Compare with this the reference to Euryanthe in one of his last essays (X. 219), and the change in his critical opinions will be found no less pronounced than the growth in his musical and poetic style, from the Novice of Palermo to Siegfried. "This Euryanthe,'^ he exciaims 1 See the Wafjncr Jahrbuch, 188G, pp. 377-379. 50 THE FIRST OPERAS with an artist's exaggeration, "in wliich, notwithstand- ing its reputed tediousness, every single number is worth more than all the opera seria of Italy, France, and Judcea ! " Yet in spite of this extravagant statement, Wagner retained to the end of his life the conviction that — in their own way — the Italians and the French had a more perfect and harmonious operatic style than the Germans, whose opera was too much based on foreign models to be truly national and unique. It was the aim of his life to create a national German opera, as unique as were the Italian and the French styles ; and in this he succeeded. KONIGSBERG AND RIGA The failure of the Magdeburg opera company once more threw Wagner on his own resources, which were not great; in fact, they were of a 7ninns quantity. He had borrowed money right and left (a habit which he kept up from necessity for many years), in the hope and expectation of repaying it from the proceeds of the second performance of his opera at Magdeburg; b\it as that second performance was never given, he found himself in debt and out of employment at the same time. He made his first visit to Berlin to try to secure a perform- ance of his Novice of Palermo, but failed. Then, hearing that the Konigsberg Theatre needed a musical director, he went there to apply for the position; but as he could not get a definite answer at once, he wrote to his friend, Heinrich Dorn, to inquire whether he could not secure a place for him.^ Dorn was not able to do anything, for the time being, but meanwhile the Konigsberg position was assigned to Wagner, who took possession of it in January, 1837, after nine months of enforced inactivity. AN IMrRUDENT MARRIAGE Two months previously to this event Wagner had taken a step which was to affect his life most seriously for 1 Tliis letter is printed in Dorn's Ergebnisse aus Erlebnissen, 1877, p. 158. 51 62 KONIGSBEBG AND RIGA almost twenty-five years. At Magdebiirg he had become engaged to an actress named Wilhelmine (or Minna) Planer, and on Nov. 24, 1836, he married her in Konigs- berg. Now it is not necessary to agree with Bacon and Schopenhauer that men who wish to achieve greatness in literature or art should never marry at all; but this much is certain, that it is very foolish for an ambitious and struggling composer, without a position, and with plenty of debts, to marry at the age of twenty-three as Wagner did (Nov. 24, 1836).^ He had to suffer many years for this hasty step, and in a poem which he wrote into his diary on Aug. 4, 1840, in Paris, he gives us his own opinion on the matter, somewhat in the style of Heine, extolling the blessing of having a wife, to those who can afford one, but vowing, for his part, that, were he ten years younger, he would act more wisely.^ Richard Pohl says, in his short Wagner Biography,' of Minna Planer, ''the pretty young actress," that "she was a faithful, self-sacrificing wife who bore with him long and devotedly all cares and privations, in Paris even the bitterest poverty. But she was a prosaic, domestic woman who never understood her husband, and who might have been an impediment to his far-reaching ideas, his high-flying plans, if Richard Wagner could have been impeded in his course by anything. The 1 This recalls the case of Berlioz, who at thirty married Miss Smith- son, of whom he says : " On the day of our wedding she had nothing in the world but debts, and the fear of never again being able to appear to advantage on the stage because of her accident ; I, for my part, had three hundred francs [$60] that my friend Gounet had lent me, and had quarrelled again with my parents." 2 The poem may be found in Kurschner's TTafirncr Jahrbuch for 1886, p. 290. 8 Sammlung Musikalisher Vortrdge, Nos. 53, 54, p. 141. AN IMPRUDENT MARRIAGE 63 natural end was that they separated — many years later, it is true. Twenty-five years these two ill-mated per- sons lived together and sought to get along with each other." Another intimate friend of Wagner's, Wilhelm Tap- pert, remarks ^ that " the Meister himself held the mem- ory of his first wife in great honor; it annoyed him to read disparaging allusions to Minna. Though she did not understand his genius, she bore — especially in their first years — the trials of life without grumbling, and she was, especially during the first visit to Paris — according to the Meister's own assurance — an excellent housewife, who lovingly and faithfully shared much sorrow and little joy with him." The opinion of an eyewitness, the painter, Friedrich Pecht, who met the young couple at this period, may also be quoted : — " We all liked the very pretty Frau Wagner, especially since one could no longer recognize in her the former actress ; she was most amiable, and exemplary in her conduct ; yet, after all, hers was a sober, unimaginative soul, entirely devoted to her husband, fol- lowing him humbly wherever he went, but without a conception ot his greatness, and, with all her love and devotion, still presenting an irreconcilable contrast to him with her mind set on the strict and formal commonplace relations of society." The domestic privations began soon after their mar- riage. "The year which I spent in Konigsberg was entirely lost to my art, througli the pettiest cares. I wrote a single overture : Mule Britannia," ^ Wagner writes 1 Richard Wagner : Sein Leben und Seine Werke, p. 16. 2 This overture, like two others which he wrote at this period in MaK<1el)ur{r and Ri^a — Columbus and Polonia — have never been printed. The manuscript of the Columbus overture is lost, while that of the Polonia is in the possession of Wagner's heirs. 54 KONIGSBERG AND RIGA in his Autobiographic Sketch, and in another place he says : " I was in love, married in a fit of obstinate reck- lessness, tortured myself and others under the disagree- able influence of a home without the means to keep it up, and thus sank into the misery which ruins thousands upon thousands." In brief, he had married in very much the same spirit of obstinate recklessness that had led him to bring out his Novice of Palermo under the most dis- couraging circumstances. It was fortunate that this marriage was childless. Had the support and education of a large family been added to Wagner's burdens in his early manhood, the world would probably have never seen that series of gigantic music-dramas which have revolutionized modern taste. Domestic cares were not the only thing that troubled him at this time. He wanted to become a great com- poser. His operatic instinct did not leave him in peace, and led him to read novels, not as other people do, for amusement, but solely with a view to finding a subject for a libretto. Die Hohe Braut, a novel by Heinrich Konig, seemed to offer the material for a grand opera in five acts. He sketched the plot in full, but instead of working it up into a libretto for himself, he sent it to Scribe in Paris with a request to convert it into an opera- book and to let him compose the music. This step was, of course, not prompted by any distrust of his own poetic faculty, but by a desire to secure the famous Scribe as a collaborator. He had probably read that The Huguenots of Meyerbeer, the popular collaborator of Scribe, had in forty performances yielded three hundred thousand francs; and as Wagner never aimed at anything lower than the highest, he unhesitatingly applied at ''head- AN IMPRUDENT MARRIAGE 55 quarters." Scribe of course paid no attention to this letter from an unknown young musician, and in a subse- quent communication to Wagner said he did not remem- ber having ever received it (he probably received hundreds like it) ; and this Avas the first of a long series of disap- pointments which Wagner was to suffer from hopes based on Paris. His remarkable and positively obstinate persistence in this matter is strikingly brought out in a letter which he wrote to his friend Lewald,^ who had lived in Paris and was at that time an influential editor in Leipzig. (He was subsequently incarcerated in Berlin for nine months on account of his liberal opinions.) To him Wagner appealed, with the request to use his inflvience to secure the collaboration of Scribe in his operas. After explaining about the sketch he had made of the novel Die Hohe Braid for a libretto, he continues : — "This sketch, accompanied by a letter, I gave to my brother-in- law Friedrich Brockhaus with the request to forward it to Paris. After waiting six months in vain for an answer, I wrote agam to Scribe, and took the blame for his silence on myself, as I had to confess that he must be at a loss what to answer, since he had no knowledge whatever of me or of my faculty for composing. To remove this dithculty, I enclosed the score of my opera the Love Veto, or the Novice of Palermo, after Shakespeare's Pleasure for Measure. I begged him to get the opinion of Auber or Meyerbeer on tliis score, and to be guided thereby in the decision whether I was able to compose an opera good enough for Paris. In case this opera should meet with approval, I offered it to him also, with the 1 Printed in tlic Frankfurter Zeitumj (Jan. 3, 1888), where it is explained that Wai^iier had a liabit, from liis youth to liis last days, of writiiij; a first sketch of all his letters in note-books. The one contain- iiii; tliis letter and several others was offered at an auction sale of manuscripts, and thus found its way into the Frankfurter Zeitung. 66 KONIGSBERG AND RIGA explanation that he could easily have a rough French translation of it made by any one and convert this at his discretion into a Scribe libretto, to be offered to the Opera Comique. "To this letter I received in June, 1837, a detailed answer from Scribe, vsrhich completely exonerated him of the charge of previous negligence — for he had never received the letter forwarded by Brockhaus, and therefore did not know what I desired. He thanked me for the score I had sent, begged for further details regarding my desires, and promised to do for me anything that was in his power. " This was not so bad, and I hastened to .send him, from Dres- den, an old copy of the lost sketch for my five-act opera on the sub- ject of this Hohe Braut. This letter I put into the post — unstamped to insure safe delivery — and that is the end of the story." The question now was, had Scribe received this last letter? Would not Lewald try to find out and see what he could do about it? In case neither of those two pro- jects was approved, Wagner was ready with a third one — Rienzi, which he declares " much grander " than its prede- cessors. " I intend to compose it in the German language, to make an attempt whether there is a possibility of getting it performed in Berlin, in course of fifty years, if God grant me so long a life. Perhaps Scribe will like it, in which case Rienzi will learn to sing French in a moment; or else this might be a way to goad the Ber- liners to accept the opera, if they were told that Paris was ready to bring it out, but that preference was for once to be given to Berlin ; for a stage like that of Berlin or Paris is absolutely necessary to bring out such a work properly. There will be no lack of material or untiring effort on my part, for I feel convinced that I should have already done the Lord knows what if only the doors were once opened for me." THE HAPPY BEAR-FAMILY 67 Wagner evidently believed in himself at this period, and this consciousness of his powers, and faith in his future, can also be read between the lines when he closes his letter to Lewald Avith the offer of a share in the profits, and the humorous promise that if Lewald can help him by interesting Meyerbeer or others in his cause, he will be surely rewarded by the thanks of posterity: " In that case there can be no doubt that the Germans will place an extra statue of you in the Pantheon, which no doubt they will soon erect to their great men, and the Lord, in His surprise that a German author has assisted a poor German composer to honors in Paris, will be at a loss as to what blessing to bestow on you." THE HAPPY BEAR-FAMILY All this correspondence, as already intimated, led to no result. Before it was written the Konigsberg theatre had become bankrupt, and the unlucky Wagner was again thrown out of employment. Fortunately, his friend Dorn came to the rescue this time. He succeeded in getting for him the position of Musik-director, and for his wife aTplace^as an actress in a new theatrical com- pany organized by the poet Carl von Holtei in the Russian city^f Riga.^ In the aiitumn of 1837 he assumed his duties at Riga, concerning which he relates : — 1 A Konigsl)erg correspondent of the Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik (1837) notes Wagner's departure from that city, and adds: " He was liere too short a time to be able to show his varied talents. His com- positions, of which I heard one overture and saw the score of another, indicate the gift of individual creativeness. .Some people are clear in their characters and their works from the begiiming, otliers have to first work their way through a chaos of passions. The latter, it is true, reach a hiyher yoal." 58 KONIGSBEBG AND RIGA " I found good material for an opera company, and went to work with mucli zeal to make good use of it. During this period I com- posed several airs for interpolation in operas by the singers. I also wrote the text of a two-act comic opera, the Happy Bear-Family, the subject of which I had taken from a story in the Thousand and One Nights. Two numbers of it were already finished when I discovered, to my disgust, that I was again on the way to compose a la Adam ; my deepest feelings were lacerated by this discovery. I loathed the work, and left it unfinished. The daily rehearsing and conducting of the music of Auber, Adam, and Bellini soon helped to change my former delight in it to utter weariness." This was the beginning of his recovery from his tem- porary aberration of taste, and the recovery was acceler- ated by the fact that the daily contact with theatrical life and its petty vanities and intrigues began to inspire him with as much distaste as the trivial, clap-trap music he was usually called upon to conduct. He relates some- where that in his childhood, notwithstanding his love of the theatre and the opera, he had manifested an aversion to the thought of becoming an actor, even while he amused himself by attempts at acting in his room. The images with which his imagination had been filled on reading about the ancient Greek drama seemed to have inspired in him, as he believed, an aversion to tlie painted actors on the stage and their artificialities. This aver- sion reached a climax at Riga. " What we understand by theatrical life (Komodiantenwirth- schaft) soon revealed itself to me in its true light, and the opera which I had begun to compose for such a sphere suddenly began to disgust me so violently that I threw everything aside, confined my relations with the theatre more and more to the mere fulfilment of my duties as conductor, avoided all contact with the actors, and withdrew into that region of my inner self where the ardent longing to escape from my habitual surroundings was being nurtured." TWO ACTS OF BIENZI 59 In this desire for isolation he went so far as to choos(> his residence in a remote suburb. His aversion to stage- life did not, however, induce him to neglect his duties. On the contrary, it is on record that the singers were annoyed by the long and frequent rehearsals to which he subjected them and in which he never seemed to be satisfied, and finally they made a complaint to Director Holtei, who, though he doubtless knew that his Kapell- meister was only doing his duty, begged him " not to kill the singers " in his zeal.-^ TWO ACTS OF RIENZI The experiences which Wagner had so far made with his own early operas, and his observations regarding the fate of other composers, convinced him of the utter ina- bility of provincial audiences to form ^judgment con- cerning a new opera, unless it had already been approved *at^some royal institution. He therefore decided to plan his next opera on so large a scale that he would not be tempted to try it at a provincial theatre \ where even a success would not be likely to be more than local. In this determination he sketched the five acts of Rienzi, and found that the subject practically necessitated the colossal dimensions he had determined upon. The sketch was made in the summer of 1838, and in the autumn following he began to compose the music with the feel- ing, as he says, that he was now sufficiently advanced in his artistic development " to demand something valuable and to expect sometliiug invaluable. The thought of being consciously shallow or trivial, if only for a single 1 Glasenapp, I. pp. 74, 75. 60 EONIGSBERG AND RIGA bar, was terrible to me. With great enthusiasm I con- tinued to compose during tlie winter, so that in the spring of 1839 the first two long acts were done. About this time my contract with the theatre-director came to an end, and special circumstances made it undesirable for me to stay any longer at Eiga." These " circumstances " were of a disagreeable nature, and they were partly his fault, partly his misfortune. It was his misfortune that the failure at Magdeburg of his Novice of Palermo, in which he had risked his own and borrowed money, had left him saddled with debts which he had been unable to liquidate with his small salary at Konigsberg. It was his fault, in part at least, that these debts continued to grow during his sojourn at Riga. The plain fact is that Wagner had more than the usual share of improvidence allotted to men of genius, and his aristocratic tastes and habits led him into many expenditures which he could have avoided. He lived, while at Riga, with his wife and one of her sisters, in an expensive suburb of the city, which com- pelled him to pay two or three times a day the cab-fare between his house and the theatre. His wife, still an actress, in which capacity she had shown considerable talent, had not yet developed the gift of economy which subsequently distinguished her; and that she did not bring her husband a penny of dowry may be inferred from the fact that she was the daughter of a poor spindle- maker who had eleven other children. An interesting draught of a letter of this period has been preserved ^ in which Wagner's desperate situation is vividly painted by himself. It seems that the manager 1 Frankfurter Zeitung, Jan. 5, 1888. TWO ACTS OF RIENZI 61 of the opera had discharged an assistant conductor, whose duty it was to rehearse and bring out minor operas and operettas. On hearing this, Wagner wrote to one of the regisseurs, offering to do this man's work for a slight advance in his salary. He recalled the circum- stance that Manager Holtei, on securing him as first conductor, had mentioned the previous engagement of an assistant conductor as a reason why he could not offer him the full salary of a thousand silver rubles, which his predecessor had obtained. The conclusion of this letter is one of those mixtures of pathos, irony, self- confidence, and humor so characteristic of Wagner : — "I offer to do everjthing I can ; I am willing to work for the theatre day and night, to undertake any responsibility I can carry out, willing to orchestrate whole operatic scores ; but in return for this I also wish to be rescued from my present predicament ; I owe that to myself and my position. ... " To sum up, briefly and concisely, my dear sir, I beg you to remit entirely the advance made me on my salary (excepting of course the thirty rubles which I last obtained of you, and five of which are to be deducted on every pay-day), and offer in return for this to undertake anything you may wish to charge me with, excepting boot-blacking and water-carrying, tohich latter my chest could not endure at present ; but I loould even copy music did I not fear from such a melancholy occupation a despondent turn of my temperament. "The opportunity to help me is present, and I am convinced you will seize on it joyfully, were it only in order that posterity might some day be able to say of you, ' He was the man who,' ^^^- ' ^^^' " Your most devoted "Richard Wagner." What result, if any, this letter may have had, is not known. Shortly thereafter Holtei gave up the director- 62 KONIGSBERG AND RIGA ship of the Eiga theatre, and his successor, a tenor named Hoffmann, apparently had no use for Wagner, whose pecuniary embarrassments had, moreover, reached a stage which made life in Riga unbearable. For two years he had been cherisliing a plan to go to Paris, which was then reputed the musical centre of the world, to seek his fortune there with his operas. This plan he was now ready to carry out. But when he tried to leave Riga he found that this was not so easy as he had fancied. His creditors had invoked the courts for assistance in collect- ing their dues, and when he applied for a pass he was informed that he could have one as soon as he brought proofs that his debts had been paid. A ROMANTIC EPISODE Wagner's trip from Riga to Pillau and thence by sail- ing-vessel to England has always been looked upon as one of the most interesting events in his life ; but there is more romance in it than previous biographers have revealed.^ When Wagner realized that he could not leave Riga openly, he resolved to do so secretly. To him it seemed as absurd then as it does to us now that he should be prevented from carrying out his grand operatic plans by a handful of debts. His wife was initiated into the secret plot, and one day she disguised herself as the wife of a lumberman and was taken by him as such across the Russian boundary into Germany. Wagner soon followed, assisted, it seems, by his theatrical friends, who advanced him a few months' salary to enable him to 1 The documents on which the following narrative is hased are the articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung, above referred to, and .Dorn's Ergehnisse aus Erlehnissen (1877, pp. 161-165). A ROMANTIC EPISODE 63 escape his importunate creditors. He disguised himself as well as he could, but at that time it was not easy to pass the Eussian boundary. "The boundary line," says Dorn, "was almost hermetically closed; every thousand yards there was a sentry box, in which a Cossack held guard, if he did not happen to be inspecting his territory ; besides this, there was a patrol of pickets to watch the giuirds themselves." A Konigsberg friend of Wagner's, Abraham Moller, had made careful prej^arations to facili- tate his flight. He had found means to secure one of the sentry boxes as a refuge for him while its owner was on his tour of inspection ; and a way was also found of keeping the pickets out of sight for the time being. Four days later Wagner was safely looking, from his window in the Arnau tavern, on Konigsberg, one mile away; but fear of meeting any of his creditors there kept him from entering that city. After a brief rest, his friend Moller saw him safely to the seaport of Pillau, where he met his wife and dog, and together they embarked on a small and frail vessel for Paris and the Grand Opera, via London. It was a bold, almost reckless, undertaking for an impecunious artist to leave his native country, where at least lie was sure of his daily bread, and plunge into the terrible wilderness of an unknown city. What others thought of Wagner's expedition may be inferred from this passage in Strodtmann's Life of the poet Heine : — " Laube, who had been introduced by Heine to all French authors of repute and talent, made him in turn acquainted with Kichard Wagner, who had carried out the bold plan of going, as an un- known musician, witli a wife, an opera and a half, a small purse, and a terribly large and terribly voracious Newfoundland dog, from 64 KONIGSBERG AND RIGA Eiga to London on a sailing-vessel, 'and from London to Paris, in the hope of winning there gold and fame : in Paris, where half Europe competes noisily for notoriety, where everything must be sold and certainly paid for, however meritorious it be, if it expects to get into the market and obtain recognition. Heine folded his hands devoutly at this confidence of a German artist. And Wag- ner was to find out soon enough how little chance he had, notwith- standing Meyerbeer's warm recommendations, to bring out one of his operas in Paris." FIRST VISIT TO PARIS A STORSIY SEA-VOYAGE Wagner himself was too sanguine to feel any doubts as to his expedition. He felt capable of producing great thinars and therefore believed that all he needed to do was to go to a city where great things were appreciated to be welcomed immediately. So he went on board the sailing-vessel Avith a light heart, " a wife, a small purse, and an enormous Newfoundland dog." This trip is inter- esting, not only as a biographic event, but because it proved of the greatest artistic value to Wagner by pro- viding him with the " local color " for both the poetry and the music of the Flying Dutchman. Before leaving Riga he had already become acquainted with this legend, through Heine's version of it, and many realistic details were added by the tales of the sailors and the rough experiences of the voyage, concerning which he wrote : — " This voyage will never fade from my memory ; it lasted three weeks and a half and was full of adventures. Three times we were overtaken by violent storms, and once the captain was com- pelled to seek safety in a Norwegian harbor. The passage through the Norwegian fjords i made a wondrous impression on my fancy ; 1 Praeger gives this further detail regarding this journey: "The three passengers, Richard Wagner, his wife, and dog, were miserably ill. On one occasion the bark was driven into a Norwegian fjord : tlie crew and its passengers — there were no otliers on board beside the Wagner trio — landed at a point where an old mill stood. The poor 65 66 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS the legend of the flying Dutchman, as I heard it confirmed by the sailors, acquired a definite, peculiar color, which only my adven- tures at sea could have given it. To recover from the extremely fatiguing trip, we remained a week in London, where nothing interested me so much as the city itself and the Houses of Parlia- ment, — of the theatres I did not visit one." Here he came near losing one of his few possessions. While living at a boarding-house in Great Compton Street, Soho, his beloved dog disappeared one day ; fortu- nately he turned up again two days later, " to his master's frantic joy."^ London was too expensive a place for one whose purse was as lean as Wagner's; so, after the expiration of a week, he took his wife and his dog across the Channel to Boulogne. Now, this French town was not a cheap place either, having been a famous seaside resort even in those days. But Wagner was not only willing to- deplete his purse here for another week, he actually remained four weeks, and the reason of this was that the wretches, snatched from the jaws of death, were hospitably received hy the owner, a poor man. He produced his only bottle of rum and struck joy into all their hearts by brewing a bowl of punch. It was evidently appreciated by the hapless ship's company, as Wagner was hilarious when he spoke of what he humorously called his ' Adventures at the Champagne Mill.' When tbe weather h.ad cleared sufficiently, the ship set sail for London and arrived without any further mishap." 1 Mr. Daunreuther, who relates this incident (Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musiciaiis, IV. p. 350), adds: "Wagner's accurate memory for localities was puzzled when he wandered about Soho with the writer in 1877 and failed to find the old house. Mr. J. Cyriax, who has zeal- ously traced every step of Wagner's in London, 18.3it, '55, and '77, states that the premises have been pulled down." Details regarding Wagner's first sojourn in London, the loss of his dog and his hardly less-beloved siiuff-'.iox (which fell out of his pocket when he was boarding a ship, — and lie almost fell in, too, in his attempt to rescue it), together with his impressions of London and opinions of the English, may be found in Praeger's book, Chap. VII. A STORMY SEA-VOYAGE 67 one man who could best help him along in Paris was spending the summer in Boulogne. This man was Meyer- beer, who received him in the most amiable manner, examined the manuscript of the two acts of Rienzi, and promised to do all he could for him in Paris. ^ He gave him letters of introduction to the publisher Schlesinger, who subsequently proved a useful friend, to the directors of tlie Op^ra and the Theatre de la Kenaissance, and to Habeneck, conductor of the Conservatory concerts. Pro- vided with these, and with an almost empty purse, but full of hope, he entered Paris, "the illimitable city of splendor and squalor," as he described it in one of his newspaper letters. It was a curious coincidence, and seemed a good omen, that he who was destined to become Germany's greatest dramatic composer found lodging in a house adorned with a bust indicating that Moliere was born under that roof. But if, as a writer on Moliere has remarked. Prance's own greatest dramatist had to complain of a "general conspiracy of all authors against himself," what right had Wagner, unknown and a foreigner, to expect better treatment at the hands of the Prench? For two years 1 Praeger (p. 80) writes: "Indeed, Meyerbeer expressed himself so strongly on the libretto as to request Scribe to write one for him in imitation of it. When talking over this incident with me, Wagner said that he believed Meyerbeer's lavish praise of the book was uttered partly with a view to its purchase, but that Wagner's enthusiasm for his own work prevented Meyerbeer from making a direct offer. . . . Wagner saiil he believed Meyerljeer's laudation of the music was per- fectly sincere ; ' for,' he cynically added, ' the first two acts are just the very part of the opera which please me least, and which I should like todisowii.' " The resultof Meyerbeer's encouraging criticisms was that Wagner took Minna to a restaurant and ordered his favorite beverage, champagne, althou.i;h he could afford only a pint bottle. "To Wag- ner," says Praeger, "champagne represented the perfection of ' terres- trial enjoyment,' as he often phrased it." 68 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS and a half — from September, 1839, to April, 1842 — he lived in Paris, and these three winters and two summers in the French capital may be described as a period of poverty, hopeless struggle for fame, and an almost unin- terrupted series of disappointments. Let us briefly con- sider these disappointments, numbering them so as to get their cumulative impression on their victim. A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS First Disappointment. — The letter of recommendation to Habeneck, which Meyerbeer had given Wagner, had the good result of giving him free access to all the rehear- sals of the famous Conservatoire orchestra. Here he heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony once more, and under the inspiration of it he wrote his Faust overture, of which more will be said in a later chapter. A further stimulus was given him by the efforts of Schlesinger to secure a performance of this overture at the Conservatory concerts and Habeneck' s apparent consent. An item actually appeared in Schlesinger 's paper, the Gazette Musicale, stating that " an overture by a remarkably talented young German composer, M. Wagner, has just been rehearsed by the Conservatory orchestra, and received with general applause. We hope soon to hear this work, and to give an account of it." The truth, however, was that the directors had declared the overture " a long enigma " and decided not to play it.^ It is true, the same impression had been made at first on Habeneck and his musicians by the very symphony of Beethoven's, the clear and fin- ished performance of which Wagner now admired so 1 A. Jullien, if. Wagner : Sa Vie et ses CEuvres, p. 28. A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS 69 much. But Habeneck had kept on rehearsing it during a second and a third winter, until every detail was intel- ligible. It did not occur to him that the same method might have the same results with Wagner's overture, for musicians never learn by experience. So Wagner had to suffer the pangs not only of a refusal after trial, but of disappointed hopes based on the possible consequences of a successful debut at a concert of the leading institu- tion in Paris. ^ The Second Disappointment was the failure of the Renaissance theatre, just on the eve of the performance of the Novice of Palermo, as related in a previous chapter. Wagner had already lost his artistic interest in this trivial work, but its performance would perhaps have paved his way to the Grand Opera, and it would also have flattered his vanity to have the news go across the Rhine that an opera of his which had failed at a German provincial theatre had proved a success in the musical centre of the world. But he was not fated to have his vanity flattered in any such way at Paris. Tliird Disapjyointment. — Another opportunity to appear before the public as a composer was apparently given by the performance of a play by Dumas, arranged as an opera by riotow in behalf of Polish fugitives in Paris. It occurred to Wagner that his overture Polonia might make 1 JuUien (I.e. pp. 27, 28) makes the curious error of stating that WaKuer intended to write an opera based on Goethe's Faust, and consequently holds the short-sit^hted Conservatory authorities responsi- ble for the loss of such an opera to the world by discouraging it at the beginning. The truth of the matter is made clear by Wagner in the fourth volume of his Ocsammelte Schriften (p. 322), where he speaks of "the rapid conception and equally rapid execution of an orchestral piece which I called an overture to Goethe's Faust, but which in reality was to form the first movement of a grand Faust symphony." 70 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS an acceptable and appropriate addition to the programme, so lie took his only copy of the score — he was very care- less about his manuscripts in those days — to the leader of the orchestra at the Kenaissance, M. Duvinage, who promised to examine it, but did not produce it. Wagner left Paris without calling for his score, and he never heard of it again until forty years later, when, after a series of romantic escapes from paper-baskets, it got into the hands of the conductor Pasdeloup, and thus back to Wagner, who had it performed in Palermo on his wife's birthday, two years before his death. ^ Hdbent sua fata Uhella! Fourth Disappointment. — Another way in which Wag- ner tried to get before the public and earn bread and butter for his family — reduced by the loss of the dog, who had been stolen, to his owner's great grief — was by composing romances to French words, in the hope that they would be sung in the salons, and there perhaps attract the attention of some manager, who might, in consequence, order an opera of their author. Flimsy castles in the air! That no one wanted his music to Heine's Tioo Grenadiers is not so surprising, for it is not one of his better efforts ; but that his charming settings of Victor Hugo's IJAttente, Ronsard's Mignonne, and the cradle song Dors, mon Enfant, should have found neither singer to introduce them, nor publisher to print them, is strange — or rather is not strange, considering Parisian taste of that tiine. As a last resort, Wagner offered them to the editor Lewald for his periodical Europa (in which the three last-named pieces subsequently appeared), 1 The interesting details of this story will be found in Jullien (pp. 28, 29). A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS 71 accompanying his offer with the following comments, which throw a lurid liglit on his situation : — "I take the liberty to send you three songs for Europa. You write that, on demand, you will pay from five to nine florins for a piece [§2.50 to $4]. As life in Paris is uncommonly expensive, I hope you will kindly consent to allow me the maximum, — per- haps you may even agree to add a florin in view of the extremely elegant copy." He goes on to beg that the pieces may be printed soon, as he needs the money : " Only a rogue would pretend to be what he is not : to such straits have they reduced me here." A still deeper and more pathetic insight into his unfortunate situation is given by some jottings made in his diary at this time.^ Thus he writes, under date of June 23, 1840 : — " In these dark days I'am beginning to feel more and more deeply the necessity of keeping a regular diary. I hope that the writing dovyn of my prevailing moods, and the reflections springing from them, will afford me relief, as tears do to a heart oppressed. Tears have come into my eyes unbidden this moment ; is it a proof of cowardice or of unhappiness to yield willingly to tears? A young German journeyman was here ; he was in poor health, and I bade him come again for his breakfast. Minna took the occasion to remind me that she was about to send away our last pennies for bread. You poor woman ! Right you are ; our situation is a sad one, and if I reflect on it, I can foresee with certainty that the great- est conceivable misery is in store for us ; an accident only can bring improvement ; for an accident I must almost consider the contingency of being helped by others voluntarily and without any personal interest ; this last hope would be humiliating if I were convinced that I could expect nothing but alms ; fortunately I am compelled to assume that men like Meyerbeer and Laube would not lielp me unless they believed that I deserved help. Weakness, caprice, and accident may, however, still intervene and estrange 1 Priiited iu IJer ZeiU/eist, Nus. 18-20, 188C. 72 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS these persons from me. That is a terrible thought ; and this doubt and the uncertainty regarding their good will is painful and sickens my heart." On June 29 we find this entry in the diary : — " How this is to come out next month I do not know ; my fears are turning to despair. I have now indeed an opportunity to earn a trifle by writing articles for the Gazette Musicale ; I shall also send articles to Lewald in Stuttgart for Europa, to see if I can make some money that way. Yet in the most favorable case I cannot avoid being crushed by what is impending at this moment. Twenty-five fi-ancs is all I have left. With this I am expected to pay on the first a bill of exchange for 150 francs, and on the fifteenth my quarterly rent is due. All fountains are dry. From my poor wife I am still concealing the pass at which we have arrived ; I constantly hoped Laube would send something ; I would then have told her how, without him, we could have had nothing to count upon, and how I had kept it secret from her, so as not to add to the cares which have already shaken her constitu- tion. But now I fear this will be impossible. On the first I shall have to reveal the secret. The Lord help us ! that will be a terrible day, unless assistance arrives." Praeger relates (85) that — ' ' after one more wretched day than the last, he suggested to Minna the raising of temporary loans upon her trinkets. Let the reader try and realize the proud Wagner's misery and anguish when Minna confessed that such as she had were already so dis- posed of. . . . It was then, in this hour of tribulation, that the golden qualities of Minna were proved. . . . The hitherto quiet and gentle housewife was transformed into a heroine. . . . Thoughts of what the self-denying devoted little woman did then have many a time brought tears to Wagner's eyes. The most menial house duties were performed by her with willing cheerful- ness. She cleaned the house, stood at the wash-tub, did the mending and the cooking. She hid from her husband as much of the discomforts attaching to their poor home as was possible. She A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS 73 never complained, and always strove to present a bright, cheerful face, consoling and upholding him at all times. In the evening she and his dog, the same that was temporarily lost in London, were his regular companions on the boulevards." Fijlh Disappointment. — Temporary assistance may have arrived, for Wagner writes elsewhere that he did not know till he came to Paris the full meaning of the word "friendship," but his efforts to help himself by keeping in his proper sphere as composer continued to be failures. Humbled by his ill luck, and urged on by the pressure of debts, he actually undertook the task of writing the music of an ordinary carnival vaudeville : " but in this, too, I was frustrated," he writes, "by the jealousy of a musical money-maker " ; and JuUien records that " at the first rehearsals the actors declared that his music could not be executed, so it had to be given up." Sixth Disajypointmeyit. — As a composer he could not descend any lower than this ; and as he had never acquired mechanical dexterity on an instrument, he could not apply for a place in an orchestra. But he had a voice, and the thought occurred to, him that he might perhaps get a place as chorus singer in a small Boulevard theatre. " I came out of this," he Avrites, "worse than Berlioz did when he found himself in a similar predicament. The leader of the orchestra, who had to examine me, discov- ered at once that I could not sing at all, and that he had no use for me." The fact of the future composer of the Nibelung Trilogy and Parsifal being found unfit to sing in the chorus of a second-rate Boulevard theatre is perhaps as comic as any incident in the whole history of music. But it has its pathetic side in showing to what extremities a series of 74 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS disap25ointments had reduced a man of geniiis at the time when he was already capable of writing such an inspired opera as the Flying Dutchman, and the no less remarkable literary sketches, essays, and criticisms, to which refer- ence will presently be made. Seventh Disojipointmeiit. — When Wagner left Riga for Paris with two acts of Rienzi in his trunk, he doubtless had sanguine visions of soon seeing this opera in the gorgeous scenic attire which the Paris Opera alone at that time could have afforded to give it, and sung by the fore- most European artists. Having arrived in Paris, — "I at first put my half-finished Rienzi aside," he writes (IV. 321), "and endeavored in every way to make acquaintances in the world-city. For this, however, I lacked the requisite personal qualities : of tlie French language, to which I felt an instinctive aversion, I had ac(juired only a superficial knowledge for every- day use. I felt not the least inclination to assimilate the traits of the French, hut I flattered myself with the hope of being able to approach them in my own way. I credited music, the world-lan- guage, with the power of bridging an abyss between me and the Parisians, as to the existence of which my feelings did not deceive me. — When I attended the brilliant performances at the Grand Opfira, which was not often [for good reasons], I was overcome by a voluptuous feeling which formed in my heated imagination the wish, the hope, yes, even the certainty, of being able to triumph here some day : this external splendor, applied to the uses of artis- tic inspiration, appeared to me the culminating point of art, and I did not feel at all incapable of reaching this point." The discovery that it would take years of skilful manoeuvring and intriguing to get Rienzi performed at the Grand Opera was, however, one of the first of his disappointing experiences in Paris. He did indeed com- plete the score during his residence in that city, but it A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS 75 was with a view to its performance in a German theatre. A change for the better seemed imminent, when IMeyer- beer, who unfortunately had been absent from Paris most of this time, returned. He was the only one of the great musicians in Paris that took an interest in Wagner, whose acquaintance with French composers and others ^ led to no tangible results, as they all seemed too miich taken up with their own affairs to look after struggling young composers. Not so Meyerbeer, who at once in- quired after the fate of his protege, and, finding him in such desperate straits, took him to Leon Pillet, tlie direc- tor of the Grand Opera, with a view of securing for him an order to compose a short opera in two or three acts. The subject was already at hand, namely, the story of the Flying Dutchman, which had haunted Wagner ever since his sea-voyage. He made an arrangement with Heine for the use of those features in the story which were added by him, and having made a sketch of the plot, he handed it to Leon Pillet with the request to have it worked up into a libretto in French verse. 1 Among Wagner's famous acquaintances in Paris were Berlioz, Hale'vy, Scribe, Vieuxtemps, and tlie Germans Kietz, Laul)e, and Heine. Auber he appears not to have met on this first visit, although he ad- mired his operas, and on one occasion came near losing his only source of income by writing an article for the Gazette ifiisiatle, extolling Auber and chiding the French for their partiality to Donizetti and Ros- sini. The editor refused to pul)lish tliis article against the idols of the day, and told Wagner to "leave i)olitics(!) alone." It would have been interesting to know Heine's opinion of Wagner, but he had no opportunity to hear his music. Theodore Hagen relates that Heine once said to him, "Do you know what I find suspicious about Wagner? Tlie fact tliat Meyerlieer recommends him." To Laubc, Heine once remarked: "I cannot help feeling a lively interest in Wagner. He is endowed with an inexhaustible, productive mind, kept in constant activity by a lively temperament. From an individuality so replete with modern culture we may expect the development of a solid and powerful modern music." 76 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS So far matters had progressed when Meyerbeer once more left Paris. Not long thereafter Wagner was as- tounded to hear from M. Pillet that he liked his sketch and wished him to let him have it for another composer to whom he had promised a libretto some time before ! The director added that Wagner would no doubt be the more willing to agree to this arrangement as he could give him no hope of bringing out his own opera before the expiration of four years, and in the meantime he could easily find another subject for it ! Wagner was naturally indignant at this offer and refused to accept it, hoping for the return of Meyerbeer to set matters right again. In the spring he left the city to live at Meudon, and there he heard one day that M. Pillet had actually gone so far, without his consent, as to give his Flying Dutch- man sketch into the hands of the poet Paul Pouch^, to be made into a libretto for that "other composer," wlio proved to be a man named Dietsch. Fearing that, under some pretext or other, he might lose his rights to his sketch altogether, Wagner at last agreed to sell it for five hundred francs. He had his revenge, however; for the Vaisseau Fantdme, in a version differing greatly from his own plan, and with music by Dietsch, proved a failure, and was shelved after eleven performances. M. Dietsch was doubtless convinced that the cause of his failure was Wagner's sketch; and he, too, had his "revenge" eigh- teen years later, when he was conductor at the Grand Opera, as we shall see when we come to the romantic story of Tannhmiser in Paris. Meyerbeer's efforts to help along Wagner were in every case so fruitless — and Meyerbeer was a very influential man at that time — that there is some justification for LOSS OF THE COLUMBUS OVERTURE 77 doubt as to whether he was really sincere in his at- tempts to assist him. Mr. Dannreuther remarks on this point :^ — "What did Meyerbeer do by way of patronage? He wrote a letter introducing Wagner to M. Fillet, fully aware that there was not a ghost of a chance for an unknown German at the OpSra. To foist Wagner, with his Liebesverbot, upon Antenor Joly and the Theatre de la Renaissance was, in the eyes of Parisians, little bet- ter than a practical joke ; twice or thrice in the year that rotten concern had failed and risen again : ' mon theatre est mort, vive mon theatre,' was M. Joly's motto. Meyerbeer introduced Wag- ner to his publisher, Schlesinger. And this is all that came to pass at Paris — unless the fact be taken into account that Scribe imi- tated an important scene from Bienzi in Le Frophete without acknowledgment. ' ' LOSS OF THE COLUMBUS OVERTURE The letter of introduction to Schlesinger, on the other hand, proved of the greatest utility to Wagner, wlio might have literally starved while composing his first two great operas — Rienzi and the Flying Ihitchman — had it not been for the employment given him by the publisher Schlesinger in the arrangement of music for various in- struments and in writing articles for his musical paper. Schlesinger was even the means of bringing about Wag- ner's one opportunity of appearing as a composer before a Parisian audience. At a concert given for the subscri- bers to his paper, the Gazette Musicale, he placed at the liead of the programme the Columbus overture, which Wagner had written at the age of twenty -two, — a piece of which Laube has remarked tliat it showed its composer undecided as to whether he should follow Beethoven oi- 1 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musiciant, Vol. IV. p. 358. 78 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS Bellini, and which accordingly made an impression some- what like a Hegelian essay written in the style of Heine. A French critic, Henri Blanchard, discussing its perfor- mance in Paris, put the question whether Wagner in- tended to represent the infinity of the ocean, the horizon that seemed endless to the companions of Columbus, by means of the tremolos on the high notes of the violins. He found that the brass was used too frequently, yet the overture seemed to be "the work of an artist having grand, definite ideas and well acquainted with the re- sources of modern instrumentation." This performance also was the occasion of Wagner's being once more, after a long interval, brought to the notice of his countrymen. The Leipzig Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, edited by Schumann, had this notice : — "At the ninth concert which Herr Schlesinger gave to his sub- scribers, on Feb. 4, there was performed, among other things, an overture by Richard Wagner, a Saxon, if we are not mistaken, who seemed to have disappeared from the musical world, but who, we are glad to see, is showing himself active again." In short, the reception of this overture was sufficiently favorable to prompt its author to send it to Jullien in London with a request to have it performed at a prome- nade concert. Jullien, however, returned the manuscript, and when it was brought back, Wagner had not money enough to pay the cost of transportation from London to Paris. The package consequently remained in the hands of the company, and was probably sold as waste-paper. At least, all the later efforts of Wagner's friends to trace it proved futile.^ 1 These details were given by Wagner himself to a friend of JuUien's who first recorded them. A few further details are given by Praeger, p. 03. MUSICAL DRUDGERY 79 Thus, even the one apparent exception to Wagner's Parisian disappointments proved a misfortune in the end; for although the Columbus overture, which represents the great navigator previously to the discovery of America and at the moment when land was first espied, was not one of his most valuable compositions, it would have been of extreme interest as a curiosity, especially during the Columbus Centennial celebrations. jrUSICAL DEUDGERY The employment which Schlesinger gave Wagner — proof-reading and arranging popular melodies and operas for the piano and other instruments, including even the vulgar cornet-a-piston. — was not at all to the taste of the ambitious young genius who longed to give all his time to creative work; but under the circumstances it was a godsend, without which he would have been crushed by his poverty, which gradually became so oppressive that, as he wrote to Liszt some years later, he was sometimes tempted by his em2:)ty stomach to commit a crime. Among the arrangements made at this time, one deserves to be mentioned in full, because it places in curious jux- taposition the creator of the music-drama with the chief perpetrator of the now almost obsolete prima-donna operas: "ia Favorite, opera in four acts by Scribe, German version by A. Wagner. Music by G. Donizetti. Complete pianoforte score with German and French text, by Kichard Wagner. Berlin: Schlesinger." A few years previously, the arrangement of this kind of music would have been less irksome to the future com- poser of Parsifal — in 1S;3.5, for instance, when he wrote 80 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS an article on Bellini entitled " A Word in Time " ^ in whicli lie lauded Bellini and vocal melodj'- at the expense of German opera-composers, and expressed sentiments directly opposed to those which his more mature judg- ment began to approve about this time. The final impulse which induced him to retrace his " Step Backward " from Beethoven to Bellini was his observation of the methods of famous Italian singers at the Grand Opera. Here he could see plainly that operas were popular in proportion as they gave the singers opportunities for brilliant dis- plays of technical skill, while singers were popular in proportion to their lack of conscience in tickling the public's ears with these meaningless feats of virtuosity, regardless of dramatic truth. The singer was everything: the composer and his work nothing. His Parisian cor- respondence to German papers is full of sarcastic refer- ences to this class of singers — and hearers ; and in one of the essays included in his Gesammelte Sdiriften (Vol. I. pp. 207-222) entitled '' the Virtuoso and the Artist " he gives a most amusing account of a performance at the Opera of Mozart's Don Juan, a work which obviously discommoded the singers and bored the audience. Yet the house was crowded, and every one seemed on the tip- toe of expectation: and why? Because on this evening Mubini sang his famous trill on A and B. " Rubini did not become truly divine until he got on to his B ; that he had to get onto if an evening at the Italian opera was to have any object. Now, just as a circus-tumbler balances himself on his board before he jumps, so Rubini stands on his F for three bars, swells it for two bars cautiously but irresistibly, but on the third 1 In the Rigaer Zuschauer. Reprinted in Kiirschner's Wagner Jahrbuch, 1886. p. 381. STOBIES AND ESSAYS 81 bar he seizes the trill of the violins on the A, sings it with increas- ing vehemence, jumps up, on the fourth, to the B, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, and then, before everybody's eyes, executes a brilliant roulade and plunges down into silence. That was the end ; anything else might happen now, no matter what. All the demons were unchained, not on the stage, as at the end of the opera, but in the auditorium. The riddle was solved : it was to hear this feat that the audience had assembled, had, for two hours, put up with the absence of all the accustomed operatic delicatessen, had pardoned Grisi and Lablache for taking this music seriously, and were now divinely rewarded by the success of this one wonderful moment when Rubini jumped up onto his B." STOKIES AND ESSAYS This essay, in which Wagner shows so vividly how the opera in Paris had sunk to the level of the circus, — appealing to the sense of astonishment at feats of mechan- ical skill instead of to the aesthetic and dramatic sense, — is by no means his only literary effort of this period which proves that Laube Avas quite right when he wrote in 1843, by way of prefacing the publication of Wagner's Aiitobiographic Sketch, that the Parisian experiences had also made of the musician an author whose *' copy " could not be improved by "editing." The literary products of these years which Wagner deemed good enough, in 1871, to reprint in his Collected Works, include two novelettes: A Pilgrimage to Beethoven, An End in Paris; a dialogue on the nature of music, entitled A Hajypy Evening; and essays on Music in Germany, The Virtuoso and the Artist, The Artist and Publicity, Rossini's Stab((f Mater, On the Overture; besides two essays on the ]icr- formauce of the Freischiitz, one being intended for French readers, tlie other for Germans, and an Account of a Neiv Parisian Opera, Halevy's Reine de Chypre. 82 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS Although these articles appeared in a French paper, The Gazette Musicale, Wagner wrote them in German, as he did not have the gift of his friends Heine and Liszt of writing equally well in these two languages. Of the first two on the above list the original German has been preserved; the others were re-translated by Wagner's second wife, Cosima, daughter of Liszt. The articles on musical life in Paris which he wrote for several German papers — the Dresdener Abendzeitung, Lewald's Europa, and Schumann's Neue Zeitsclirift (which printed the amusing article on Rossini's Stabat Mater), — were ex- cluded by him from the Gesammelte Schriften.^ TRUTH IN FICTION. — PERSONAL REVELATIONS If Goethe gave his autobiography the title of Truth and Fiction, Wagner conversely might have called his Paris sketches Autobiographic Novelettes and Essays ; for no one who is at all familiar with his adventures in Paris can fail constantly to read between the lines of these articles their author's own experiences and aspirations. The Pilgrimage to Beethoven begins with a sarcastic invocation to Poverty and Care, his constant companions, who have always kindly protected him from the oppres- sive sunlight of fortune. Then follows a genuine auto- biographic touch : — " A medium-sized town of Central Germany was my birthplace. I do not recall clearly what I was intended to become, but I remember that one evening I heard a Beethoven symphony for the first time, that I had an attack of fever thereafter, and that, when I had recovered, I had become a musician. This may explain 1 Some of these are reprinted, with notes, in Kiirschner's Wagner Jahrbuch, 1886, pp. 273-286. TRUTH IN FICTION 83 why, although in course of time I became familiar with other beautiful music, I still loved aud worshipped Beethoven above all. I ceased to know any other pleasure but that of immersing myself in the deeps of his genius until I came to imagine myself to be a part of him, and as this smallest part I began to respect myself, to adopt nobler views and ideals ; in short, I became what wise people commonly call a fool." This enthusiasm leads to the desire to go to Vienna, solely to have the supreme pleasure of seeing the great master. To earn the necessary money he writes sonatas, but gets laughed at for his pains, and finally he is obliged to degrade himself by writing galops and operatic arrange- ments, which at last leads to his goal. His adventures on the Avay with a band of strolling Bohemian musicians and with an eccentric Englishman cannot be related here for lack of space. But the following remarks on the opera, which he takes the liberty to put in the mouth of Beethoven, are very interesting as showing that the com- poser of Rienzi w\is at the age of twenty-seven already quite clear in his mind regarding some of the essential features of the modern music-drama : — " 'Annoying labor ! ' exclaimed Beethoven (with reference to the revision of his Fidelio to make it more palatable to opera-goers of his day) : ' I am not an opera-composer, at least know no theatre for which I would care to write another opera ! If I were to write an opera after my own mind, people would run away ; for they would find in it none of the ai'ias, duets, terzets, and all the stuff with which people at present make up an operatic patch-work ; and what I would write in their place no vocalist would want to sing, no auditor to hear. The only thing they know is glittering unreality, brilliant nonsense, and sugar-coated tediousness. Were any one to write a true nmsic-drama, he would be considered a fool, and would indeed be one if he did not make it for himself alone, but tried to bring it before the public' " 84 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS No artist has ever so strikingly foreseen and prophesied his whole career as Wagner did his own in these words, which were penned between the composition of Rienzi and the Flying Dutchman, in this first novelette, of which Jullien says that it struck its Parisian readers so much " by its mixture of poetry and raillery, of enthusiasm and bitterness, that Berlioz, a good critic in such matters, considered it worth while to insert a special notice of it in the Journal des Debats.'^ Indeed, it is not too much to say that Heine himself, in his letters from Paris, did not use a better literary style, or keener wit and irony — with the same sentimental undercurrent — than Wag- ner did in some of his sketches, notably in those entitled the Virtuoso and the Artist and Le Freischiitz, which are admirable samples of sarcasm, persiflage, and artistic insight.-^ In the second novelette, Ein Ende in Paris, the hero is the same poor young musician who had gone to Vienna to see Beethoven. He is now in Paris, with the determi- nation to succeed or perish: " Li one year from now,'' he tells his friend, *' you will he able to find out my residence from every boy in the streets, or else yoxi ivill receive a notice from me where you must go — to see me die."^ He goes 1 English versions of some of these novelettes and essays may be found in Burlingame's Wagner's Art Life mid Theories. 2 Great as was Wagner's confidence in his own genius, he would have been doubtless astounded could behave been foretold how very literally this semi-autobiographic prophecy would be fulfilled half a century later. The Paris Figaro of Sept. 17, 1891, gives an account of the preparations made by the police to meet the 20,000 persons who were expected to " demonstrate " on the occasion of the first performance of Lohengrin at the Grand Opera. In the crowd was an old woman, well known to all frequenters of the Boulevards, who was knocked down in the rush. When she was picked up, she exclaimed, " What in the world is going on here? " " Here was a person who did not know Wagner ! " PERSONAL REVELATIONS 85 through the same stages as Wagner — tries honest ope- ratic work; tries songs; degrades himself to the level of the public by writing trivial dance music; but the directors procrastinate their promises, artists have no ear for him, the newspapers are ruled by cliques ; his enemy even steals his dog, his only solace, for whom he has saved all his crusts till he himself is thrown on his death-bed by starvation. After the funeral, his friend writes : — " It was a sad affair. The keen wintry air choked the breath ; no one could speak, and the funeral address was omitted. And yet I must tell you that he whom we buried here was a good man, a brave German musician. He had a kind heart and often wept lohen he saw how the poor horses were tortured in the streets of Paris. He was of a gentle disposition and never lost his temper when the street urchins pushed him off the narrow sidewalks. Unfortunately he had a tender conscience, was ambitious, had no talent for' intrigue, and once had in his youth seen Beethoven, which turned his head so completely that he could not possibly get along in Paris." I have italicized two lines in the above extract, because they call attention to two of the most prominent traits in Wagner's character, — his love of animals and his inabil- ity to further his own cause except in the most straight- forward and stubbornly honest way, which made him so many enemies among ignorant operatic managers, incom- petent artists, and bloated critics. " I had not considered," writes the friend of the dead musician, "that I had to deal, not with one of those individuals whose per- suasions are easily acquired and altered, but with a man whose faith the Figaro writer concludes (" En voila une qui ne connait pas Wagner"). Lohengrin was given .sixty-one times between Sept. IG, 1891, and Sept. IG, 1892, the receipts being over a million francs. 86 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS in the divine and indisputable truth of liis art had reached such a degree of fanaticism that it imposed on a cliaracter that was natu- rally most peaceful and tender an inflexibly stubborn aspect." Another conspicuous trait, illustrated by Wagner himself. IN THE WORKSHOP OP GENIUS Into Wagner's inner life none of the essays of this period affords a deeper insight than the one on The Artist and Publicity. Especially remarkable, as showing the natural affinity between the greatest musician and the greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century, is the fol- lowing sentence written by Wagner many years before he became acquainted with Schopenhauer's writings, and touching on one of the great pessimist's favorite topics (see his chapter on "Genius," in the second volume of his Welt als Wille und Vorstellnng) . "Happy the genius on whom fortune has never smiled ! — Genius is so much unto itself! What more could fortune add?" This thought Wagner develops in another paragraph which takes us into the very workshop of creative genius : — " When I am alone, and the musical fibres within me vibrate, and heterogeneous sounds form themselves into chords whence at last springs the melody which reveals to me my inner self ; if then the heart in loud beats marks the impetuous rhythms, and rapture finds vent in divine tears through the mortal, no-longer- seeing eyes — then do I often say to myself : What a fool you are not to remain always by yourself, to live only for these unique delights, instead of struggling to get before that horrible multitude which is called the public, in order to get the absui-d permission to continue the exercise of your talent for composing ! What can this public, with its most brilliant reception, offer you to equal in value even the one-hundredth part of that holy rapture which comes from within ? " THE LION SHOWS HIS CLAWS 87 Why, nevertheless, genius struggles for publicity, is the question Wagner tries to answer in this essay, which is very suggestive reading. Here I have room for only one more passage, which, if I am not very much mis- taken, depicts Wagner's own state of mind and his actions when he was inspired with the plan of the Flying Dutch- rfYian — the first opera in which he is really himself : — " Happy the genius on whom fortune has never smiled. — Genius is so much unto itself ! What more could fortune add ? " That is what he says to himself, smiles, and laughs, and new strength comes over him ; it dawns and grows : something new resounds within him, morTfe clear and rapturous than ever, A work, such as he himself had never dreamed of, grows and flourishes in quiet solitude. This is it ! That is the right thing ! All the world will surely be enchanted : hear it once and then — ! See how the madman runs ! It is the old street, which now seems new and delightful to him ; the mud bespatters him ; here he runs against a lackey in full uniform, whom he mistakes for a general and gi-eets respectfully ; there he collides with a no less worthy bank messenger, with a well-filled money-bag on his shoulder, and comes off with a bleeding nose. All these are good signs ! He runs and stumbles, and finally arrives again in the sanctum of his miseiy I " THE LION SHOWS HIS CLAWS That a genius witli such a creative furor should not have been allowed, during almost three years, to appear more than once before the Parisian public — and even then only with one of his most immature overtures ; that he should have been kept from creative activity by the necessity of making " potboilers " (musically : potpourris) — in 1841, during nine months at a stretch, he had to giv(^ all his time to such "ignoble work," as he calls it — that he had to borrow of friends, borrow his furniture, lose 88 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS his Columbus overture because he could not pay the expressage on it; that, during all this time, his mind was harassed by anxiety regarding to-morrow's bread and the anguish of seeing his poor wife share all these sor- rows, — surely this was enough to turn the most amiable enthusiast into a sour misanthropist and a revolutionary. "I now entered on a new path — that of revolt against the present state of artistic life, with whose conditions I had endeavored to make friendship when I sought its most brilliant centre in Paris." It was this feeling of a nec- essary revolt that (besides the pangs of hunger) had made him seize the pen to write criticisms. When Schlesinger first invited his young protege to write articles for his paper (besides arranging scores and popular melodies), " it was all the same to him," says Wagner, "but not to me. While regarding that musical drudgery as my deepest humiliation, I seized the literary pen to avenge myself for that humiliation. ... In my novelettes I narrated in a fictitious form, and with considerable humor, my own experiences, especially in Paris, up to the death by star- vation which I fortunately escaped. What I wrote was in every line a cry of revolt against our modern art-life. I have been repeatedly assured tliatthis afforded consid- erable amusement." Wagner has been often censured for his brusque and polemic ways. But he was a peaceful and amiable man in his youth (to his friends all his life) — a sleeping lion, who might have remained gentle had he been gently treated ; but as his fur was almost incessantly rubbed the wrong way, is it a wonder that he began to put out his \claws before he was thirty, and to growl louder and louder '^t a world that would not believe he was a lion until it had felt his heavy paws? COMPOSITION OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 89 COIVIPOSITION OF THE FLYLNG DUTCHMAN The thirty months spent in Paris were, however, by no means wasted. They cured him of his love of the cheap operatic tricks of Donizetti, Herokl, and Adam, and made him return to his first love — Weber and Beethoven ; they cured him forever of the desire to win success by writing down to the popular taste — he never again stooped to conquer; ^vhile the vanity, insincerity, and trickiness of the famous Italian singers in Paris showed him how unjust he had been to the artists of his own country. The reason why the German singers had seemed bunglers was (as he points out in his Parisian essay on Music in Germany, Vol. I. p. 189) that they were asked to sing Italian colorature arias which were unsuited for German throats. Give them German vocal music to sing, and you will find that " these bunglers are the truest artists, and are imbued with a warmer glow in their hearts than was ever diffused over you by those who have hitherto delighted you in your elegant saloons." He was soon to discover the literal truth of this assertion, in the devotion of Tichatschek and Schroe- der-Devrient, and later in the noble art and conscientious endeavors of Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the Vogls, Nie- mann, Betz, Scaria, Materna, Malten, Sucher, Brandt, and many others, who have helped to create a new art of realistic dramatic song. But the most important result of his first visit to Paris was that, notwithstanding the endless petty interruptions and cares, he found time to finish Rienzi and compose the whole of the Flyitig Dutchman. Two acts of Rienzi were, as we have seen, 90 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS finished at Riga before the composer left for Paris, where the other three acts were completed in 1840. When he wrote these last acts he had already given up the hope of seeing this opera in Paris, and it was some German opera-house that he had in view — especially Dresden, which had at that time the best dramatic singers, and was about to have a new opera-house. As regards the Flying Dutchman, its history has been told up to the day when its author, fearing to lose his sketch altogether, had sold it for five hundred francs. Fortunately there was nothing in the contract to prevent his using the same sketch to make a libretto for him- self; and so, as the weird subject had already taken full possession of him, he set to work immediately. Not in Paris, however. The approach of spring (1841) had awakened his ardent longing for country life. Coun- try life near Paris was, however, a luxury not easily obtainable. " It is not possible," lie exclaims (in one of his letters to German newspapers entitled Pariser Amusements), "to retire into soli- tude, out of reach of the influence of Parisian life, without making a considerable journey. Happy the banker who can make such journeys ! Happy the born Parisian who needs no such journeys ! But woe to the German residing in Paris who is not a banker ! He will be surely swallowed up in this sea of unenjoyed enjoyments if he does not succeed in becoming a banker. Ye 30,000 Germans in Paris, may you succeed in this ! " At last he was fortunate in finding a quiet place, near a forest, at Meudon, two leagues from the city, where there was nothing to interfere with his creative activity. To compose the opera, he relates, he needed an instru- ment : — COMPOSITION OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 91 "For after nine months' interruption of all composition, I had to create a new musical atmosphere. So I hired a piano, and after it had arrived my mind was greatly disturbed ;IJe^red tajnake 4he discovery tliat I was aolonger a musician. With the sailors' chorus and the spinning song I began, and loudly did I give vent to my sincere joy on discovering that I was still a musician. In seven weeks the whole opera was completed. At the end of this time the pettiest cares began to oppress me again ; two entire months elapsed before I could get a chance to write the overture for the finished opera, although I carried it about in my head almost complete. ' ' Of course my most ardent desire was now to bring out the opera in Germany as soon as possible ; from Munich and Leipzig I received refusals ; the opera was not suited for Germany, I was told. Fool that I was, I had imagined it was suited specially for Germany, since it touches chords which can vibrate only in a German. At last I sent the score to Meyerbeer in Berlin, with the request to secure its acceptance at the Court Theatre there. With considerable promptness this was effected.^ As my Bienzi had in the meantime also been accepted at Dresden, I now looked forward to the performance of two of my operas at the leading German theatres, and involuntarily the conviction forced itself on me that, strange to say, Paris had proved to me of the greatest use as regards Germany. In Paris itself I had no prospects for some years to come, so I left it in the spring of 1842. For the first time I saw the Rhine; with tears^irL_my eyesj, the poor artist, swore eternal allegiance to my German fatherland .^^" ■ With these words Wagner closes his admirable Au- tobiograpldc Sketch, and as his Mittheilmuj an Meine Freunde also does not contain many personal details of a later date, we shall henceforth have to rely for anthentic information at first hand on other documents, chief among which are the letters to and from Liszt; to his 1 But between tlie promise and the performance several years elapsed. 92 FIRST VISIT TO PARIS Dresden friends Ulilig, Fischer, and Heine ;^ to Frau Wille, Praeger, and others. Fortunately, Wagner leaped into sudden fame on his return to Dresden, so that from this time on the news- papers and periodicals are full of information regarding him. This source of information can and will, however, only be used with the greatest caution, since there has never been a man, outside of politics, concerning whom so many malicious and stupid falsehoods have been printed as concerning Richard Wagner — for four decades, from the first performance of Rienzi, in 1842, to the first performance of Parsifal, in 1882, and even later. 1 These letters have been published in three volumes by Breitkopf & Hartel, in Leipzig. Excellent English versions were made soon after their appearance, of the Wagner-Liszt letters by the late Dr. F. Hueffer, and of the letters to Dresden friends by Mr. J. S. Shedlock. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. In regard to the Autobiographic Sketch it may be added here that the slight changes which Wagner made in it when the article was reprinted in his Collected Works are carefully noted in the Wagner Jahrbuch, 1886 (pp. 288-289). RIENZI IN DRESDEN PRELIMINARY LETTERS The biographer of the famous Wagnerian tenor Tich- atschek, relates that one day, towards the close of 1840, the Intendent of the Dresden Opera received from Paris the manuscript of a new opera, which was so enormously- bulky that its size and weight alone, apart from the fact that its author was unknown to fame, woiild have suf- ficed to make most managers decide, without opening it, that it was not suited for performance. It was the score of Eienzi, and was accompanied by two letters both dated Dec. 4, 1840, one addressed to the General-Director, Herr von Liittichau, the other to Friedrich August II., King of Saxony. From the letter to Liittichau two passages may be quoted here : ^ — " It has always been one of my most alluring hopes that one of my dramatic compositions might be performed at the Court Theatre in the capital of my native country, and latterly I have devoted most of my time to the completion of an opera, the principal roles in which I wrote especially witii a view to their interpretation by some talented artists who enjoy the good fortune of being con- nected with the Dresden Opera. This work, a five-act opera entitled Bienzi., I have just completed, and now hasten to send your Excellency the score and the text-book, together with the 1 These letters are printed complete in Robert Proelss's Geschichte des Ho/theaters in Dresden, p. 118 seq. 93 94 BIENZI IN DRESDEN request that you might permit the first performance to take place in the Court Theatre. . . . "When I made up my mind to write a grand opera with the intention of offering it to the Dresden Court Theatre for the first performance, I discovered that the plan of building a new and magnificent theatre was about to be realized ; the reports I received regarding the grand dimensions of this projected building led me to conceive the mise-en-scene of my opera in a sumptuous manner, corresponding to the character of such a theatre. Your Excellency will therefore see by a glance at my poem that the work might perhaps be specially adapted to be placed on the list of new works that have been chosen for the first performances in the new house. Perhaps I may even be pardoned the boldness of pointing out that it might not be at all improper to give an honorable place on this list to the work of a Saxon who has honestly endeavored to consecrate to his country his best and most mature artistic efforts." In the letter to the King, whom he addresses as "Al- lerdurchlauchtigster Herr, Allergnadigster Herr und Konig," Wagner recalls the fact that his stepfather Geyer had been honored by permission to paint the por- traits of the royal family; and in the concluding para- graph he begs his Majesty's permission to dedicate his opera to him. Nothing was apparently attained through these letters except the retention of the manuscript for future refer- ence. To accelerate matters, Wagner again applied to Meyerbeer, who addressed the following letter to Liitti- chau : — "Your Excellency will pardon me, I am sure, if I molest you with these lines, for I remember your constant good-will towards me so well that I could not refuse the request of an interesting young countryman, who perhaps has a too flattering confidence in my influence on your Excellency, to assist his project with these PRELIMINARY LETTERS 95 lines. Herr Richard Wagner of Leipzig is a young composer who has not only had a thorough musical education, but who possesses much imagination, as well as general literary culture, and whose predicament certainly merits in every way sympathy in his native country. His" most ardent wish is to produce his opera Bie7izi, of which he has written both the text and the music, in the new royal theatre in Dresden. Some selections from it which he played for me I found rich in conception [phantasiereich] and of great dramatic effect. May the young artist enjoy the protection of your Excellency, and find occasion to see his remarkable talent more widely appreciated. I once more implore your Excellency's pardon, and beg you. to preserve towards me your gracious good- will. Most respectfully " Your Excellency's most obedient servant, "Metekbeer." Not till three months later, however, did Wagner receive from the royal director the announcement that Rienzi had been accepted; and this decision was owing chiefly, it seems, to the efforts of Tichatschek, who saw at once wdiat a fine heroic role this opera offered liini, and of the Chorus-Director, Wilhelm Fischer, who subsequently became one of Wagner's most intimate friends. Half a year before he left Paris he began to correspond with Fischer regarding the projected per- formance of Rienzi in Dresden; while the letters to Ferdinand Heine, an old friend of the Wagner family, who was at tliat time designer of costumes at the Court Theatre, begin even six months sooner — which shows how long-deferred were Wagner's hopes, even after the acceptance of his opera. Indeed, between its formal acceptance and its performance on Oct. 20, 1842, no fewer than sixteen months elapsed. Of the tortures to which Wagner was subjected during this period of 96 RIENZI IN DRESDEN suspense his letters to Fischer and Heine give many striking illustrations.^ The first of the letters to Ferdinand Heine is interest- ing as showing that half a century ago some German theatre-goers appear to have had similar scruples regard- ing religious representations on the stage to those that still prevail in England. Religious objections had been made against the plot of RienzL To overcome these Wag- ner points out that Catholic costume was involved in this case rather than Catholic principles; that the Pope ap- pears not as a religious authority but in his capacity as a worldly ruler; and that precedents for his proceedings could be found in the operas La Juive and Les Hugue- nots. He concludes with these words : — "Priests and ecclesiastics have, I presume, marched in solemn procession across the Dresden stage before this ? I should be obliged if you would confirm this belief. Besides, no one is better qualified than you, my dear sir, to give the costume a certain mixed effect, which, e.g., will make it impossible for the Censor to definitely point out a cardinal, although every spectator can recognize him." (Sly dog !) These religious difficulties having been overcome, other obstacles arose to procrastinate matters. Before Rienzi could be thought of, AcRle de Foix, the seventh opera of the third-rate composer, Eeissiger, who was conductor of the Dresden Opera, had to be brought out. Reissiger pretended, at first, to be interested in Rienzi, and wrote Wagner a letter to that effect; but when the tantalizing procrastinations began, he refused to answer a single 1 They should be read by all who are interested in Rienzi, especially by those who take part in its performance, as they contain a great many valuable hints for its correct interpretation not recorded else- where. PRELIMINABY LETTERS 97 line to Wagner's numerous letters of inquiry. Nor did Tichatscliek deign to reply to his letters. Regarding Scliroeder-Devrient, who was to create the role of Adrian o, he wrote to Heine : — " I believe I have already written her a dozen letters : that she has not sent me a single word in reply does not surprise me very much, because I know how some people detest letter-writing ; but that she has never sent me indirectly a word or a hint disquiets me greatly. Great Heavens ! so very much depends on her ; it would be truly humane on her part if she would only send me this message — perhaps by her chambermaid — 'Calm yourself! I am interested in your cause ! ' " He even had gone so far as to flatter this prima donna's pride by begging her to name the person who should sing the part of Irene (imagine the later Wagner doing such a thing!) — without receiving a reply. Then he heard that another opera, Halevy's Guitarrero (of which he himself had had to make the pianoforte score before he could raise the funds to leave Paris) was to precedei2/en2;t. The final blow was given by the news that, owing to a caprice of Schroeder-Devrient's, Rienzi was to be post- poned once more for a revival of Gluck's Armida. It was getting on towards Easter, and it seemed probable that Rienzi would not be given at all that season. This probability caused him to pour out his heart in a most pathetic letter to Heine, imploring him to leave no stone unturned to accelerate matters : — "If you or any one else knew just exactly how my whole sit- uation, all my plans, all my resolutions, would be annihilated by such a procrastination, you would have pity on me. ... I am really quite exhausted ! Alas ! I have so few pleasant experiences, that it would have been a matter of indescribable significance to me if at least in Dresden my affairs had prospered." 98 RIENZI IN DRESDEN The uncertainty regarding the performance of his opera did not, however, prevent him from writing long letters to Fischer, giving hints, or Promemoria, as he calls them, as to the way in which the difficulties of the score are to be overcome. He suggests how the cast should be distributed; begs Fischer to increase the chorus in the church scene by adding the students of the Kreuzschule, if possible; and for the pantomimic scene he does not hesitate to make the bold suggestion that the principal parts must be played by the regular actors of the Dresden Theatre, if justice was to be done to them : all of which suggests the Wagner of later years. He sums up his position in these words : — "It is above all things of the most unspeakable importance to me that the first performance of my opera should be flawless and as complete in every respect as possible. I have too long de- ferred to do something for my reputation, and for the sole reason that I considered a poor first performance oi a new opera, such as alone could be given at a provincial theatre, as certain death to any work, however great its natural vitality ; knowing also that many a promising talent has come to early grief by being compelled to place his works before the world in a mutilated and unrecog- nizable condition. For eight years — that is, ever since the time when I considered myself prepared to come before the public — I have therefore remained quiet, and have constantly refused every opportunity to have my works brought forward in an incomplete manner ; all the more must I now be anxious that this, my first appearance, should be as successful as possible." The danger of indefinite procrastination, or worse, finally became so great, that he could no longer resist the impulse to return to Germany, to see if his personal presence might not have a beneficial effect. Apart from this he felt an unconquerable desire to see his native FIEST PERFORMANCE OF RIENZI 99 coiiiitry after five years spent in Russia and France- •■ Riga and Paris. His wife, also, needed the baths at Teplitz; so, after putting the necessary money in his })urse by doing some more musical drudgery for Schles- inger, he crossed the Rhine, as was told at the end of the last chapter, and swore his fatherland eternal allegiance. FIRST PERFORMANCE OF RIENZI On his return to Dresden, he was warmly welcomed by his friends, and found to his surprise that the preparations for Rienzi were going on satisfactorily. The new Opera House had been opened just a yea.v before he left Paris, and it "v/as a happy coincidence that this fine monument of the architect Semper's genius, which was to be the scene of the first performances of Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman^ and Tannhiiuser, had been inaugu- rated with Weber's Earyanthe, the true root of Wagner's nmsic-dramas. As the rehearsals of Rienzi were not to begin till July, Wagner found time to take his wife to the baths at Teplitz. This summer resort in the Bohe- mian forest always remained one of his favorite refuges. Here he had conceived some years before the plan of The Novice of Palermo, and here, on this occasion, he sketched the plot of Tannhauser, with the legend of which he had become acquainted before leaving Paris ; and his voyage to Dresden had opportmiely taken him through the Thuringian Valley, where he got a glimpse of the lofty Wartburg which forms the scenic background of this opera. This castle he was destined not to see again till seven years later, when his Tannhauser had been com- pleted and performed, and when he was on his way to Switzerland as a political exile, pursued by the police. 100 RIENZI IN DRESDEN It was fortunate for tlie prospects of Rienzi that its composer was at hand to superintend its production ; for, as he himself confessed, " the exceedingly elaborate com- position required many improvements and alterations" to adapt it to stage requirements. His spare moments he devoted to the versification of an operatic sketch which he had made some years before and which he now offered to Conductor Eeissiger, who wanted a new text, and who had a habit — like other unsuccessful operatic composers — of attributing his ill luck to his poor librettos. This sketch was the Hohe Braut, based on Konig's novel, which he had once sent to Scribe. Eeissiger, however (with perhaps some reasonable excuse), suspected that what Wagner did not care enough for to use himself, might not be good enough for him either, and so he re- fused the poem. Unwisely, as it turned out, for a composer of not much better calibre, named Kittl, sub- sequently set it to music and produced it at Prague under the title The French before Nice with considerable suc- cess, which the critics attributed largely to its excellent libretto. Apart from this rebuff by Eeissiger, however, Wagner's fortunes had turned completely on his arrival in Dres- den. Unlike the management of the Berlin and' Paris Operas (as we shall see later on), the Dresden authorities had common sense enough to know that a man who has the genius to compose a grand opera ought to know best how it should be performed. His advice was not repelled, but sought for, and in place of being an obscure, strug- gling musician, as he was in Paris, he now found himself respected and looked up to as a man of some importance. This change in his situation was accelerated by the fact FIRST PERFORMANCE OF RIENZI 101 that the singers and the players grew more and more enthusiastic over Rienzi as they became more familiar with the score. This enthusiasm, of course, soon became a matter of general gossip throughout Dresden, so that expectations regarding the new opera were raised to an unusuall)'' high pitch. Nor were they destined to be disappointed. On the contrary, the success of Rienzi was so pronounced, its reception by the audience so brilliant, that Wagner, with one stroke, became the hero of the hour. It is true, he had everything in his favor. The cast included the two best dramatic singers that Germany had at the time — Schroeder-Devrient and Tichatschek — and several others of merit. Eeissiger was a good enough conductor for this opera, and his orchestra excellent, while Fischer had seen to it that the chorus was at its best, and Heine had taken care that the numerous costumes, which the management had provided for the occasion with lavish generosity, should be worthy of the performance and the scenic outfit. Yet all this, combined with the enthu- siasm of the performers, could not have insured such a brilliant success, had not the opera been made of the right metal to suit the audience that heard its iirst per- formance. The impression made on this audience by the hitherto unknown Wagner may best be inferred from the fact tliat he was not only called before the curtain several times, but that the audience remained to the end oj the opera. This may seem a dubious compliment, but under the circumstances it was anything but dubious; for Rienzi, at its first performance, horribile dictu, lasted no less than six hours, from six in the evening till close upon midnight. The fourth act of tlie five did not begin 102 RIENZI IN DRESDEN till ten o'clock — a time when the old-fasliioned Germans uf that period were accustomed to seek their beds, even after seeing the longest opera ever placed before them; and here were two more acts of a new opera by a new composer to come after that hour ! Wagner himself, in spite of his triumph, was horrified at this unheard-of length of his opera. In reply to Fischer's preliminary objections to the extreme duration of Rienzi, which he had calculated at five hours, he had responded that this must be a mistake, as his own calcu- lations made it only about four hours, excluding inter- missions. The result showed that Fischer was nearer right than Wagner, who accordingly hastened to the theatre early the next morning to cut up his work mer- cilessly. " I did not believe the Intendant would ever repeat the opera," he relates.! 4t After two o'clock I returned to see whether the cuts had been made according to my directions ; before that had been done I felt that I could not look any one of the singers or players in the face. But I was accosted with ' Herr Wagner, we are not to make this cut, nor that one.' ' Why not ? ' I asked. ' Well, Herr Tichatschek was here and said we should not make the cuts.' I laughed. Has Tichatschek gone among my enemies ? In the evening I asked him about it. Tears came into his eyes as he replied, ' I shall not permit any cuts ; it was too heavenly ! ' " On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the first performance of Rienzi (Oct. 20, 1892) the German papers published a long letter written by Wagner (on Nov. 6, 1845) to friends in Paris, and containing some more details of interest : — 1 These words are cited by Glasenapp (I. p. 142) from a stenographic report made by Dr. Bierey in Dresden, of Wagner's own narrative in a circle of friends. FIRST PERFORMANCE OF RIENZI 103 " Children, it is true ; my opera has had an unprecedented suc- cess, and this is the more surprising since it was the Dresden public which gave expression to this success — a public which had never before been in the position to express a first opinion on an important dramatic work. . . . Well, you know about the result of the firet performance — therefore no more about it ; it has marked an epoch ill the annals of German operatic performances. The opera has since had its fourth performance, and what is more, — an unheard of event, — always at raised prices and with over-crowded house. . , . What seems most remarkable to me is the patience of the public ; I have shortened as much as possible, but still the opera lasts (from six) till half-past ten, and at no performance yet has any one been seen to leave his seat: with the greatest expecta- tion and attention everybody remains to the fall of the last curtain, and that means something in Dresden. When I went about to make cuts I had some curious experiences : the singers said, ' Yes, it is terribly fatiguing,' but no one wanted any cuts : Tichatschek I almost begged on my knees to permit a pruning of his terribly exhausting role : impossible ! Always his answer was, ' No ; for it is too heavenly ! It is too heavenly ! ' " This opinion seemed to be shared by the public, and the correspondent of the Leipzig Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik (Schumann's paper) wrote: "I express my inmost con- viction when I say : A pity for every bar that is taken out." To obviate the necessity of mutilating the score the opera was divided into two sections and given on two consecutive nights. Berlioz was among those who heard it (or rather the last three acts) in this form, and in his Voyage Musical en Allemagne, he commented favorably on it. Later on it was reduced to five and one-half hours and again given on one evening, always to full houses. Wagner's name was made, but how about his income? In the letter just quoted from, he tells of the rumors that he had received 2000 thaler for Rienzi. The truth, how- 104 BIENZI IN DRESDEN ever, was that, after the third performance the Intendaiit had sent him a flattering letter enclosing 300 thaler ($225), "although," as he said, "the usual honorarium for an opera was only twenty louis d'or " (107 thaler). This was much less than Wagner felt he had a right to expect after " such a fabulous success, " and he resolves hereafter not to leave such things to the " generosity " of Intendants, but to make his own terms. Under such cir- cumstances, he writes, his Paris creditors will have to wait, all the more as his older Magdeburg creditors are threatening legal prosecution, and he has some scores to settle at Dresden too. But he has the most sanguine hopes for the future. He longs to meet his Paris friends again: "for you must know, we are still orphaned: in the evenings we sit alone, alone, and no one comes as formerly. Ah! how strange that the most distressful periods of life should leave behind such sweet memories ! — Children, we must arrange to meet again ! Only wait till my operas bring me a handsome profit; when the creditors [Gldubiger] are disposed of, it will be the turn of the believers [Glauhige7i].'' Intendant Liittichau was so much pleased with the success of Rienzi that he was eager to follow it up at once with a second opera by the same composer. The Dutch- man score had long been at Berlin, but the performance had been postponed again and again in favor of operas by such men as Lachner. Wagner now asked for his score, but his request was not heeded, whereupon he peremp- torily demanded that it should be returned, else he would hold the possessors responsible for consequences. Upon this it was forwarded to Dresden and produced there. But before describing that event we must linger a moment over the plot and the music of Rienzi. THE STORY OF RIENZI 105 THE STORY OF RIENZI Act I. Scene: a Eoman street at night; the church of St. John Lateran in the background, to the right the liouse of the papal notary Rienzi. Th£.-patrician Orsini and his followers place a ladder against Rienzi's house and attempt to abduct his sister Irene, " the most beau- tiful girl in Rome." While Irene struggles against her captors, a rival patrician faction, the Colonnas, arrive, and fight for her possession. Among them is Colonna's son, Adriano, who is in love with Irene, and who, on recognizing her, immediately fights his way to her side and protects her. Amid the tumult, in which the popu- lace has taken part, Rienzi arrives. He reminds the people of their promise to him to wait for the proper moment to strike, and denounces the patricians for their nefarious conduct. The latter leave to settle their quar- rel outside the city gates, and Rienzi is asked by Cardi- nal Raimondo when he is going to begin the war against the nobles. In reply Rienzi informs him and the people that the moment for attack will be announced by a long- drawn trumpet sound. Rienzi then persuades Adriano to desert his faction and become a true Roman. The lovers are left alone to exchange vows, and apprehensions of evil, when suddenly the fatal sound of the trumpet is heard, first at a distance, then nearer. The day breaks; organ and chorus are heard in the church; the populace assembles and frantically proclaims Rienzi as King of Rome. Rienzi declines to accept any title but that of the people's Tribune; and the act closes with an oath to avenge the crimes of tlie nobles. 106 RIENZI IN DRESDEN Act II. Scene : a large hall in the Capitol. Messen- gers of peace arrive and proclaim the victory of the people and their new Tribune over the enemy. Rienzi ap- pears, and the proud patricians are obliged to do homage to him. Left alone, they plot against his life, and Orsini is chosen to assassinate him at the coming festivities. But Adriano has overheard the plot and warns Eienzi. The foreign ambassadors arrive in solemn procession to hand their papers to Rienzi, who astounds them by the bold announcement that henceforth Rome will choose its own King. They remain, however, to witness the fes- tivities, which include a pantomimic representation of the tragedy of Tarquinius and Lucretia, followed by a combat of knights in mediaeval costume with Roman warriors. The nobles gradually crowd around Rienzi, and Orsini stabs him, but he is saved by a concealed steel breastplate. For this ncAV outrage all the nobles are condemned to death. But Adriano, assisted by Irene, begs for his father's life, and Rienzi, despite the warning of his friends, pardons all the nobles on their oath of submission. Act III. Scene: a public square in Rome. Great tumult and ringing of alarm bells. The nobles, having broken their oath, are again offering battle, and the pop- ulace wildly clamors for its leader. Rienzi appears on horseback, with Irene and the senators. Adriano once more attempts to hold back Rienzi from exterminating the nobles, offering to effect a reconciliation, but Rienzi sternly refuses. Irene and Adriano are again left alone. When the plebeians return they proclaim Rienzi's fresh victory, and among the bodies brought back is that of Colonna. At sight of it Adriano swears vengeance on THE STORY OF RIENZI 107 Eienzi for his father's death. A triumphal procession ends the act. Act IV. Scene : street near the Lateran church. The senators Baroncelli and Cecco lament that the ambassa- dors, offended by Eienzi's remarks, have left Eome, and that trouble is in sight. Baroncelli accuses Eienzi of treason. His motive in pardoning the nobles, he says, was to become one of their number through the marriage of Irene and Adriano. This accusation is overheard by Adriano, who, seeing his opportunity for revenge, steps forward and asserts that it is true. In the midst of a festive procession, Eienzi now marches to the church. Adriano's intention to murder him is prevented by the presence of Irene, and the conspirators who bar his way are cowed by his manly words. Suddenly, just as Eienzi sets foot on the church steps, a chant of malediction is heard within, and Cardinal Eaimondo appears and places the ban of excommunication on him. The nobles have won their cause by an alliance with the all-powerful Church. Eienzi's followers disperse in dismay. Adriano entreats Irene to fly with him ; but she repels him and declares she will stay and perish with her brother. Act V. Scene : a hall in the Capitol. Eienzi's prayer, that his great work may not be thus undone. Irene appears, and he urges her to save herself by going with Adriano; but in vain. Eienzi determines to address the people once more, and leaves. Adriano, goaded to mad- ness by his love and grief, makes one more vain attempt to persuade Irene to go with him. The tumult grows outside, and the scene clianges to the open place in front of the capitol. The infuriated populace refuses to listen to Eienzi's words and sets lire to the Capitol. Adriano 108 RIENZI IN DRESDEN sees Irene and Rienzi arm in arm, surrounded by flames, and rushes into the fire the moment the Capitol crashes to the ground, burying him with the others. As the curtain falls, the nobles are seen cutting down the mis- guided people. WAGNER 'S OPINION OF RIENZI No creative artist has ever been less trusted by his contemporaries in his opinion of his own works at the time they were written than Richard Wagner; yet we can see to-day that no artist ever had a clearer perception of his strong and his weak points than he. Tliis is con- spicuously proved by the judgments he passed on Rienzi at various times. The most objective and disinterested critic of to-day could not more definitely point out what is most and what is least satisfactory in this opera than he has done himself. The reader therefore will doubtless be grateful if, instead of giving my own humble verdict on the opera, I bring to a focus Wagner's own remarks thereon, which are scattered through a dozen of his essays and letters; all the more as I see no reason for differing from any one of these judgments, except that I should place more emphasis than he himself did on the dramatic power and interest of his Rienzi poem, which Meyerbeer is said to have declared the best libretto he had ever seen, and which is certainly one of the best constructed and most exciting ones produced up to that time; entirely free from what must be called the versified rot of which most opera librettos are made up, ^nd which induced Voltaire to make his oft-quoted remark that " what is too silly to be spoken is sung." Wagner's whole career as a dramatic WAGNER'S OPINION OF EIENZI 109 poet may be summed up by saying that it was an attempt to remove this reproach from operatic poetry. And this process began with Bienzi, although by no means in the radical manner of his later dramatic poems. Kegarding Wagner's attitude toward his early operas, two opinions have long been current, thanks to persistent misrepresentations based partly on ignorance, partly on malice and dishonesty : one being that he overvalued all his own works, the other that he entirely " repudiated " his early operas, including Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman, and even Tannlidnser and Lohengrin. Both are equally erroneous. So far was he from overvaluing Rienzi, that in the preface to the first volume of his Collected Works he actually apologized for printing the Rienzi libretto side by side with his other poems. "If in writing this opera-book," lie continues, "I had in the least entertained the ambition of being a poet, I think the develop- ment of my mind at that time would have enabled me to write sufficiently correct verses, since I had succeeded in this even in an earlier attempt, The Novice of Palermo^ to such a degree as to win tlie approval of my quondam friend Laube." He then goes on to explain that what made him care- less in executing the Rienzi poem was his daily experience that the public of that time accepted the trashiest librettos in German, or translations from the French, so long as the subject was theatrically effective, or the music particularly good, as in Jessonda and Euryanthe. In another place (IV. p. 319) he says that in preparing the text for Rienzi he had " practically no other thought than that of writing an effective opera libretto. The ' Grand Opera,' with all its scenic and musical splendor, its accumulation of massive effects, musical and emotional, 110 RIENZI IN DRESDEN stood before my eyes ; and the aim of my artistic ambition was not only to imitate it, but to surpass all previous examples in reckless extravagance. Nevertheless, I would be unjust to myself were I to name this ambition as the sole motive that guided me in the con- ception and execution of my Bienzi. The subject really inspired me, and I added nothing to my concept that did not have direct reference to the source of this inspiration. i . . . "To the language and versification I gave no more care than seemed to me necessary for securing a good opera text, free from triviality. It was not my aim to write duos and trios ; but they seemed to present themselves in this and that place naturally, since I looked at my subject solely through operatic spectacles. So, again, I did not seek in this subject an excuse for a ballet, but with the eyes of an opera composer I espied in it a festival which Bienzi had to give to the populace) and in which he would have to place before them a dramatic spectacle from ancient history as a theat- rical exhibition ; this was the story of Lucretia and the expulsion of the Tarquins connected therewith. "That this pantomime," he adds in a footnote, "had to be omitted in the theatres where Bienzi was given was an annoying disadvantage to me ; for the ballet which took its place diverted criticism /rom my nobler intentions, and gave it nothing to see here except an ordinary operatic spectacle." It is most significant of Wagner's high dramatic mis- sion that even here in Bienzi, where he had no thought of reforming the opera, he not only avoided trashy and trivial verses, but sought to replace the ordinary vulgar ballet by a spectacle logically called for by the situation. In a footnote to the preface of Vol. I. he furthermore explains that the text of Bienzi is there printed in its original form " as a means of correcting the judgment of 1 It must be remembered that Rienzi was planned as early as the Riga days. Wagner dwells on the pleasure it gave him at that time to forget the worries and cares that were his daily experience in the artistic atmosphere of the grand historic subject which he had chosen for his opera. WAGNER'S OPINION OF EIENZI 111 those ^vho know the opera only in the mutilated form in which it is now given in the theatres; and who are there- fore astonished at the clumsy manner in which the grotesque effects are piled on one another." All these extracts show that Wagner, without being particularly proud of this early and noisy child of his, nevertheless had a good word for it on occasion. And although he liimself frankly pointed out that its music was inspired by, and modelled after, that of Auber, Meyer- beer, and Halevy, he also wrote these words : " However coldly I may look back on my early opera, I must admit this much, that it is pervaded by a youthful, heroic enthu- siasm." In the letters to Liszt (1849-1858) there are several references to Rienzi, in which he declares that he has no heart to reconstruct this opera, because he has got beyond it; that he values it chiefly as a possible source of income; and that he is willing to let the Paris- ians try it, even if they bungle it, since it is no longer " a heart-care " of his, and since, after all, it is better suited to Parisian taste than any of the later operas. These remarks show, indeed, that, as I have said, he was not particularly proud of Rienzi, but not that he disa- vowed it entirely, as his opponents always maintained, or that he considered it a "sin of his youth." This misconception — to use a mild epithet — dates from an incident that occurred when Wagner first brought out Rienzi in Berlin. It is so characteristic of the tactics of liis enemies, and reveals an important trait in his own character so strikingly, that it nuist be briefly told, jjartly in his own words. 112 BIENZI IN DRESDEN AN UNDIPLOMATIC SPEECH At that time (Oct. 26, 1847) Wagner had added the score of Tannhduser to that of the Flying Dutchman, and with these two works he had already created a style of his own, which naturally made him look with less favor on the imitative Rienzi, with its spectacular pomp, deaf- ening noise, and general operatic shallowness. Unfortu- nately he never was a good diplomatist. He could not feign the same interest in Rienzi that he now felt for the other two operas, and he forgot that, although Ids geniiis had outgrown his early opera, the same was not true of the general public. But he could not repress his own feelings. "I always was a bungler in lying," he says. "For example, nothing injured me more than the fact that, conscious of being able to do better things than Bienzi, I made a speech to the artists at the dress rehearsal in which I declared the exaggerated demands made on the artists by that opera as an ' artistic sin of my youth. ' The reporters immediately dished up this expression before the public and made it feel in regard to this work that, inasmuch as its composer himself had declared it to be a ' thorough failure,' its production before the art-cultivated Berlin public was an imperti- nence deserving of castigation. Thus my ill success in Berlin was in truth referable more to my badly played role as a diplomatist than to the opera itself, which, if I had approached it with full faith in its value and in my eagerness to make it appreciated, might have been as successful as other operas of much less attrac- tiveness that were produced in that city." MERITS AND DEMERITS OF RIENZI The reader will now thoroughly understand Wagner's attitude towards this work. His feeling toward it may MERITS AND DEMERITS OF EIENZI 113 have been comparable to that which Schiller must have had in regard, to his Rohhers as compared with his more mature dramas. But Die Riiuher is still frequently played in Germany, and so is Rienzi} Probably it would have disappeared ere this had it not been kept afloat by the grander works from the same pen which followed it; yet it is hardly correct to say that its value to-day is only historic. It has numerous passages which are interest- ing in themselves, and others because they foreshadow harmonic and orchestral peculiarities of the later AVag- ner; while the overture, wliicli was written after the whole opera had been completed, is an excellent piece for popular concerts, at which it is always warmly applauded. As ordinarily given, Rienzi is tedious, but with a dramatic conductor like Anton Seidl, and in its title-role, a Nie- mann or a Schott, who bring out the dramatic as well as the musical points, it is to this day an entertaining spec- tacle. Whereas many of its airs are as trivial and light as any admirer of barrel-organ tunes could desire, Rienzi's prayer and several of the finales have a wide melodic sweep and an originality which will for many years pre- serve their claim to an occasional hearing. There are not a few melodic and dramatic buds — traces of true Wagnerian melos, striking modulations, and telling bits of instrumentation — that were unfolded in his later works, including some distinct prophetic allusions to Tannhduser and. Lohengrin ; wliile the effectiveness of the libretto betrays the genuineTlramatist — the greatest, from a theatric point of view, tluit Germany has ever produced. 1 Iii(nziha.'6'>ni^i'& in Dresden, also wrote an admi- rable critical analysis of it in which occur these sen- tences : — " As the text of Tannhauser is written with deep poetic feeling, and constitutes in itseli an affecting drama, full of the most subtle 1 The manaf^ers were determined not to be outdone by the newspaper critics. Thus, while a Dresden critic (hic'larccl tliat tlie oi)era was too " firamatic," a Leipzif^ critic said it was too " lyric," and Manaj^er von Kiistuer of Berlin refused the score on the ground tliat it was "too epic" (Tappert in Musikal. Wochenblalt, Jnly 20, 1877). 194 TANNHAUSER IN DRESDEN shades of sentiment and passion ; as its plot is original and boldly- conceived, the verses beautiful, often very beautiful, full of sudden flashes of sublime and powerful emotion, — so the music likewise is new, and demands special consideration." ' ' However great as a poet he may be, it is nevertheless only in the music that he finds the means for the complete expression of his feelings, — so complete, in fact, that he alone can tell us whether he adapts his words to his melodies, or seeks melodies for his words." 1 Spohr, who had been the first to adopt the Dutchman for his theatre at Cassel, would have also anticipated Liszt with Tannhduser if he coiild have had his own way. He wanted to bring it out at the birthday of the Kurprinz, but could not get permission, which led him to write a letter to Wagner expressing his great disappoint- ment. Some time later he wrote again, proposing a rendezvous at Leipzig, which Wagner joyously accepted. The following letter, printed in Spohr' s Autobiography, is of special interest, as it gives us a glimpse of Wagner's personality, and social life at this time. It refers to a dinner at the house of Wagner's brother-in-law, the pub- lisher Brockhaus, at which Laube also was present : — " Best of all we liked Wagner, who appears to me more amiable every time I meet him, and whose liberal culture and universal knowledge compel us to admire him more and more. Among other things he gave us his views on political matters with a warm enthusiasm which truly surprised us, and pleased us all the more as his views were of a very liberal kind. The evening we passed most pleasantly at the Mendelssohns', who did everything they could to make themselves agreeable to Spohr, whose last quartet was played, Mendelssohn and Wagner following it in the score with an expression of delight." ^ As a matter of fact, he did neither, but generally conceived them simultaneously, as we shall see in a later chapter. LISZT, SPOHE, AND SCHUMANN 195 In 1853, Spohr at last succeeded in producing Taini hciuser at Cassel. He was then seventy-nine ^years of age, but not too old to be humble and learn to like what at first seemed eccentric (as works of genius that create a new epoch always do) : — '• The ojiera contains much that is new and beautiful," he wrote, "also several ugly attacks on one's ears." Concerning these, however, he adds : "A good deal that I disliked at first I have got accustomed to on repeated hearing ; only the absence of defi- nite rhythms and the frequent lack of rounded periods continue to disturb me." Among the great musicians whom Wagner knew per- sonally was Robert Schumann, equally famous as com- poser and as critic — a critic who made a sort of specialty of the "discovery" of new geniuses (Chopin, Berlioz, Brahms, Franz, etc.), and whose opinion of Wagner must therefore be of especial interest. This opinion, however, underwent such extraordinary fluctuations that it was obviously influenced somewhat by non-musical considera- tions. Thus in 1845 he wrote to Mendelssohn concern- ing Tannhiiuser : — " Wagner has just finished a new opera : no doubt a clever fel- low, full of eccentric notions, and bold beyond measure. The aristocracy is still in raptures over him on account of his Bienzi, but in reality he cannot conceive or write four consecutive bars of good or even correct music. What all these composers lack is the art of writing pure harmonies and four-part choruses. The music is not a straw better than that of liicnzi, — rather weaker, more artificial ! But if I wrote this I should be accused of envy ; hence I say it oidy to you, as I am aware that you have known all this a long time." Three weeks later, hoAvever, he writes again : — 196 TANNHAUSER IN DRESDEN "I must take back much of what I wrote regarding Tannhduser, after reading tlie score ; on the stage the effect is quite different. I was deeply moved by many parts." To another friend, Heinrich Dorn, he writes a few weeks later still : — ' " I wish you could see Wagner's Tannhduser. It contains pro- found and original ideas, and is a hundred times better than his previous operas, though some of the music is trivial. In a word, he may become of great importance to the stage, and, so far as I know him, he has the requisite courage. The technical part, the instrumentation, I find excellent, incomparably more masterly than formerly." So the same opera which, on imperfect acquaintance, strikes Schumann as being "not a straw better" than Rienzi, turns out, at the performance, to be " a hundred times better " ! Eight years later he once more returned to the subject and delivered this extraordinary criti- cism : — " Wagner is, if I may express myself briefly, not a good musi. cian ; he lacks the sense of form and euphony (!). But you must not judge him by piano-scores. There are many places in his operas which, if you could hear them on the stage, would certainly move you deeply. And though it be not the clear sunlight that emanates from genius, still it is a secret magic that takes possession of our senses. But, as I have said, the music, apart from the rep- resentation, is weak, often simply amateurish, empty and disagree- able ; and it is a sad proof of corrupt taste that in the face of the many dramatic masterworks which Germany has produced, some persons have the presumption to belittle these in favor of Wag- ner's. Yet enough of this. The future will pronounce judgment in this matter, too." It has pronounced judgment — as witness the thousand and more performances of Wagner's operas now given annually, four decades after Schumann's prophecy. The LISZT, SPOHR, AND SCHUMANN 197 most extraordinary thing in the above criticism is the charge that Wagner has no sense of euphony — Wagner, who has charmed into existence a whole tropical garden of gorgeous, fragrant flowers of undreamt-of beauty and colors ! But the cause of Schumann's aversion to Wagner lies deeper. It is the same old story of the lyric composer con- demning the dramatic, and vice versa, with which readers of the biographies of Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Handel, Gluck, etc., are familiar. In Schumann's case this attitude was aggravated by professional jealousy; for he too had written an opera, Genoveva, which, being un- dramatic, was an utter failure, while Wagner's operas became more and more popular year by year. On this sub- ject Wagner himself has given us some interesting reve- lations in one of his last essays (Vol. X. pp. 222, 223) : — " My successes at the Dresden Court Theatre attracted, among others, F. Hiller and R. Schumann into my neighborhood, prima- rily, perhaps, only to find out how it happened that a hitherto unknown German composer could persistently attract the public at one of the most important German opera-houses. That I was not much of a musician these two friends soon believed to have dis- covered ; hence they fancied that my success must be attributed to the text-books written by myself. I, too, was, indeed, of the opinion that they, since both were planning the composition of an opera, should be advised, above all things, to provide themselves with good poems. My assistance was asked for, but when it came to the decisive moment, it was declined, presumably from fear that. I might play mean tricks on them. Concerning my Lohengrin text Schumann declared that it was not suitable for operatic compo- sition, ^ wherein he differed from Conductor-in-chief Taubert, in 1 Schumann liiniself was meditatin}^ an opera on the same subject, and was tlierofore unpleasantly surprised when Wagner one day showed him his completed Lohnni/rin poem, — another source of critical " tears" (see letter to Meudelssolm, Nov. 18, 1845). 198 TANNHAUSER IN DRESDEN Berlin, who later on, when my music to this opera had also been completed and performed, declared that he felt like composing the text once more, for himself. When Schumann was arranging his own Genoveva text I found it impossible to persuade him to give up the unfortunate and silly third act as he had conceived it ; he became angry, and obviously believed that I intended by my inter- ference to spoil his most brilliant effects. For effects were what he was after," etc. Elsewhere Wagner speaks of Schumann's '"shallow bombast," his "obscurity," his "limited faculties"; and in a conversation ^ he once exclaimed : " Schumann was, after all, a dear good German fellow with a certain tendency to greatness ! " — whence we see that there was not much love lost — more's the pity ! — between these two composers. Yet, on the other side, Wagner (VIII. 317) admits Schumann to have been "the most gifted and poetic " musician of the period following Beethoven; and, finally, it must be remembered that here, as in the case of Mendelssohn, it was not Wagner ivho threw the first stone. 1 Reported by Wolzogen, Erinnerungen an Wagner, p. 34. REVOLUTION — ARTISTIC AND POLITICAL CREATION OF LOHENGRIN Genius has been defined as " an infinite capacity for taking pains." One of Wagner's most striking traits certainly was an extraordinary restlessness and love of work. Hardly had he completed Tannhauser when the sketches for Lohengrin and Die Meistersinyer were put on paper, within a few weeks, during an excursion to the mountains "/or rest." Hear his own story (IV. 349) : — "Immediately after the composition of Tannhauser I had an opportunity to make an excursion, for my recreation, to a Bohe- mian bathing-resort. Here, as always when I escaped the atmos- phere of the footlights and my official 'duties,' I soon felt relieved and happy ; for the first time a kind of humor [Heiterkeit, gayety] peculiar to my character assumed an artistic form. With almost arbitrary deliberateness I had been gradually making up my mind to choose a cumic subject for my next opera ; I remember that I was assisted in this intention by the well-meant advice of good friends, who wished me to compose an opera of a 'lighter genre,' which might help to introduce me in the German theatres, and thus lead up to a financial success, the need of which had begun to assume a threatening importance. As with the Athenians a merry satyr-play followed the tragedy, so, during that excursion, I sud- denly ccmceived the idea of a comic play which niiglit follow my Minstrels' Contest in the Wartburg as a significant satyr-play. 199 200 REVOLUTION — ARTISTIC AND POLITICAL This was the Mastersingers of Nuremberg, with Hans Sachs at their head. . . . "Scarcely had I finished the sketch of this plot when the plan of Lohengrin began to engage my attention, and left me no rest luitil I had worked it out in detail. This was done during the same short sunnner excursion, in disobedience to my physician's orders not to busy myself with such things." The subject of Lohengrin, being more in harmony with his mood, occupied him first, and it is one of the greatest marvels in the history of art that the music of this opera, so rich, so melodious, so novel in every way, was com- posed in less than a year. In the first sketch of the score Wagner has written the exact dates with his own hand. The third act was written first, between Sept. 9, 1846, and March 5, 1847. Then came the first act, May 12 to June 8 ; and, last of all, the second act, June 18 to Aug. 2, 1847. The instrumentation was completed the following winter and spring. WHY WAGNER BECAME A REBEL A masterwork had been created, but the world did not want it. Although Wagner remained royal conductor in Dresden for two years after the completion of Lohengrin, and although the Opera there had an almost ideal cast for it, — Schroeder-Devrient, Johanna Wagner, Tich- atschek, and Mitterwurzer, — he did not succeed in* get- ting it accepted for performance. Not till three years later did it have its first performance — at Weimar; while the Dresdeners did not hear it till 1859 — twelve years after its creation ; and Wagner himself had to wait two further years till he could hear Loliengrin for the first time — at Vienna. WHY WAGNER BECAME A REBEL 201 Yet he knew in 1847, as well as the whole world knows to-day, that he had coniposed an immortal music- drama. Evidently things were not going with him as they should, — there was something rotten in Den- mark, and time was out of joint. True, the new score appeared very difficult, and its author insisted on hav- ing for it increased orchestral forces; but had he not a right, after the evidence he had given of his genius in Tannhciuser, to ask for special consideration? Nor was the neglect of Lohengrin by any means the only cause of dissatisfaction. Once more, after a short period of prosperity, everything and everybody seemed to turn against him. Although Tannldiuser had been revived the year after its first production, with increased success, all efforts to get it accepted in other cities failed, and for four years Tannldiuser remained unknown outside Dres- den, till Liszt brought it out at Weimar. From Berlin the score had been returned with the verdict that the opera was "too epic," and when Wagner, relying on the King's love of music, tried to make a more direct appeal to him, the authorities advised him to make his music known to his Majesty by arranging portions of it for the military band. "More deeply I surely could not have been humiliated and forced to appreciate my real position." The Flying Dutchman, too, after a brief career in Dres- den, Cassel, Kiga, and Berlin, liad disappeared entirely, and for nine years was not again sung. Even the sensa- tional Rienzi failed at Berlin and at Hamburg.^ Wagner ^ At Ilanibur}^ this opera had only been accepted at the urgent solic- itation of tenor Tichatscliek, who stipulated that the manager should give him an opportunity to sing six times in Rienzi, or forfeit 200 to a " Hebrew taste in art," and this leads to a discussion of the reasons why there exists among the people an inner aversion to the Jews. Tlie Jew can no longer complain of persecution (in Ger- many) : he has had his emancipation, religious and politi- cal, and now " itisj(^ej,_xather, who have to light the Jews for our emancipation. In the present condition of affairs the Jew is already more than emancipated : he rules, and will rule, as long as money remains the power before which all our doings and efforts must confess their impotence." Art as- well as life has passed under the control of the Jcavs, and this is what principally pro- vokes Wagner, and leads him to repeat the question why the Jews are disliked in life, and why we ought to dislike their art and jeek to become emancipated from it. In the first place, he asserts, the Hebrews are not great artists by nature. In none of the arts have they produced creators of the first rank. They have no national art : the fragments of old Hebrew music preserved in syna- gogues are a mere caricature, and they show by their noisy conduct during their presentation that they have no respect for them. They have not even a common toiigue, for Hebrew is even to them only a dead language. And here we come upon the weak point of tlie Semitic mind. The_ Jews liave no country, no language, no home. They are to be found everywhere, but always as stran- gers. They adopt the laiiguage of tlie country they live in, but never speak it as the natives do: their idiom remains as foreign as their physiognomy. Now it is well known that no one has ever been able to be a poet 324 LITERARY PERIOD in a language which is not his idiomatically. How then could we expect the Jews to be great artists? Having no country of their own, and no true sympathy with their adopted country, how could they help in the creation of a national art? How can we expect one who cannot even speak idiomaticall y to ex press passion correctly and touchingly? ■■/~~' And yet, he continues, "the Jew, who by himself is incapable of making an artistic impression on us, either by his appearance, or his language, or, least of all, by his song, has nevertheless s.ucceeded in becoming arbiter of public taste in music, the most widely cultivated of modern arts," and the very language of passion. How are we to account for this mystery? Will the theory of the music-drama explain this too? No doubt whatever. The music-drama, with Wagner, explains everything in this world, if not beyond. The Jews have been able to succeed in jnusic because music has become a degenerate art. That is the whole secret. And why is music a degenerated art ? Because, with Beethoven it reached the limit of what it could achieve as a separate art; thereafter further progre_ss_was_only possible in the music-drama. But the misgiiided composers persisted in writing music for music's sake alone, and this paved the way for the J^w§. After Beethoven, Wagner insists, with ludicrous exaggeration, music, as a separate art, is no longer a living organism, but only such multiple life as we see in a corpse devoured by worms. In such a condition of affairs anything is acceptable; accordingly Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer appear on the scene : — "Mendelssohn has shown us that a Jew can have the highest specific talent, possess the most refined and varied culture, the JUDAISM IN MUSIC 325 most exalted and delicate sense of honor, and yet be unable, with all those qualities, to make on us even once such soul-stirring impressions as we expect of art, knowing that it is capable of them, because we have often experienced such impressions, when- ever a true hero of our art merely opened his mouth, as it were, to address us." Mendelssohn's art, he continues, does not succeed in reproducing true passion ; it merely pleases our ears by its smooth, delicate figurations, as a kaleidoscope pleases our eyes. It lacks unity of style, is unidiomatic, like Jewish speech, borrows from heterogeneous sources, from Bach to Beethoven, who have no more in common than an Egyptian sphynx and a Greek statue ; hence it is not the highest art ; and least of all can it be regarded as a further evolution of music, beyond Beethoven, as some critics would have us believe. But Mendelssohn, he continues, has moments when he is really characte^istrie-arrd-^^ue in feeling; the outcome, perhaps, of an occasional constriDusness of the tragedy of his Semitic position. At such times he inspires sym- pathy, which no other Jewish composer does in a similar degree. Meyerbeer is a composer whose function was not so much to corrupt popular taste, as to take advan- tage of a taste already corrvipted for his benefit. His mission is to drive away ennui, and for his purpose he resorts to everything that is piquant and tickles an audi- ence, going from trivialities to volcanic outburst of feeling, and gathering his wares and styles from all parts of the Avorld. Such, in brief, is the substance of Wagner's notorious little essay. There is no doubt some truth in all his points, and about an equal amount of error: certainly y> everything is exaggerated, and the inevitable iutroduc- 326 LITERARY PERIOD tion (between the lines) of the monopolistic theory of bhe music-drama as the only salviition for music gives it a touch of the ludicrous. That the fanatical omni- presence of this idea should have led him implicitly to compare not only Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, but all composers since Beethoven, to worms infesting the corpse of absolute music, is as deplorable and farcical as his assertion that the Jews have produced no really great artists is absurd. True, they have given the world none of the very highest rank — no Shakespeare, Bach, Phidias, or Titian; but in the second rank they have contributed more than their share, in proportion to their numbers. To mention only the one to whom Wagner also alludes : Heine is not only the greatest lyric poet who has used the German language, but he writes both in prose and verse more artistically and idiomatically (except where idiomatic is equivalent to clumsy and inelegant, as it often is in German) than any other native writer except Goethe and Schopenhauer. That the prejudice against the Jews, of which Wagner speaks, existed, and still exists, is, of course, undeniable. Only a year or two ago, one of the leading Jewish peri- odicals of New York, the American Hebrew, devoted a special issue to a discussion of the reasons for this preju- dice, to which scores of well-known writers contributed, by editorial invitation. Mr. Carl Sc hurz p ert inently gave as one reason tliat whenever a Jew behaves vulgarly he is specially noted as "a Jew," whereas whenever a Christian misbehaves in public he is simply referred to as a vulgar person, and not as "a Christian." Where did Wagner first get his prejudice against Jews? In his childhood, at a time when impressions received JUDAISM IN MUSIC 327 are apt to make an indelible, life-long impression. Hes w as born at 88 Briilil, the Jewish quarter of Leipzig, to which he often referred as " Jerusalem " : — "The Polish Jews of that quarter," says Praeger, "traded principally iii furs, from the cheapest fur-liued SchJafrock to the finest and most costly furs used by royalty. Their strange appear- ance, with their all-covering gabardine, high boots, and large fur caps, worn over long curls, their enormous beards, struck Wagner, as it did every one, and does still, as something very unpleasant and disagreeable. Their peculiarly strange pronunciation of the German language, their extravagantly wild gesticulations when speaking, seemed to his aesthetic mind like the repulsive move- ments of a galvanized corpse ; . . . crying babes were speedily silenced by the threat ' The Polish Jew is coming ! ' . . . Strange to say, Wagner had imbibed some intuitive dislike to the Egyptian type of Hebrew, and never entirely overcame that feeling. No amount of reasoning could obliterate it at any period of his life, although he counted among his most devoted friends and admirers a great many of the oppressed race." The irony of fate ordained, moreover, that Wagner was to be indebted to the Jewish race for no less an experience than his first love. Although he has made love as much the ruling passion in his dramas as most poets, there are few love affairs to record in his life, the chief reason perhaps being that he married at the early age of twenty -three. Some years before tliis^ when he was still in Leipzig, he had met a lovely young Jewess, a friend of his sister Louisa, named Leah David, a black-eyed beauty of the true Oriental type. It was a case of love at first sight, and Kichard was happy to bo allowed to visit her at her house, fondle her dog, and play on her piano. One evening he Avas disgusted to find a cousin of his love, a young Dutchman, in the par- 328 LITERARY PERIOD lor. He proved to be a clever pianist, whose brilliant execution won him applause and flattery. This evoked the jealous anger of Wagner, who criticised his playing as being deficient in expression. Being challenged to do better, he seated himself at the piano; but as he had never mastered the technique of that instrument, the result was a failure, and was received with a titter. The rest of the story may be told in the words of Prae- ger, who had it from Richard himself: — " Wagner lost his temper. Stung in his tenderest feelings before the Hebrew maiden, with the headlong impetuosity of an unthink- ing youth, he replied in such violent, rude language, that a dead silence fell upon the guests. Then Wagner rushed out of the room, sought his cap, took leave of lago, and vowed vengeance. He waited two days, upon which, having received no communica- tion, he returned to the scene of the quarrel. To his indignation, he was refused admittance. The next morning he received a note in the handwriting of the young Jewess. He opened it feverishly. It was as a death blow. Fraulein Leah was shortly going to be married to the hated young Dutchman, Herr Meyers, and hence- forth she and Eichard were to be strangers. ' It was my first love- sorrow, and I thought I should never forget it, but after all,' said Wagner, with his wonted audacity, ' I think I cared more for the dog than for the Jewess.' " It would of course be absurd to suppose that this disappointment had anything to do with his later anti- Semitic sentiments. But the early impressions in " Jeru- salem," and the use of Polish Jews as bugaboos in his childhood, doubtless continued to color his thoughts and to account partly for the fact that uncomplimentary references to the Jews continue to appear in his writings up to the last years of his life. But^the motives^ which prompted the essay on Judaism in 1850 were purely JUDAISM IN MUSIC 329 musisaJ- It has been often asserted tliat they were per- sonal — that he was jealous of the success of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, and therefore abused them in the guise of a general attack on Hebrew art and character. But this is an unjust criticism. No doubt there was a per- sonal element in Wagner's wrath, — no artist could pos- sibly feel indifferent to the excessive popularity of his rivals, whom he knew, in his innermost consciousness, to be his inferiors, while his own works were ignored or abused, and his daily bread as well as his artistic ideals were involved in the question ; — but there were other and nobler motives whicli prompted his misguided action — patriotic and artistic motives. It made his heart bleed to see how two exotic Jewish composers, not of the first rank, were almost monopolizing concert-halls and opera- houses, to the exclusion of the German classical masters; and it caused his soul the deepest anguish to see how his own works, more inspired, written on a higher level, and purely German, were neglected by his countrymen. Can we blame him for having taken up the cudgel in behalf of German classical art and his own music-drama? We all know now that Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were esteemed beyond their merits at that time; that their unparalleled popularity was partly a fad, partly a delu- sion, partly the result of superficial taste. And shall we blame Wagner, and call him an egotist, because, with the superior insight and foresight of genius, he knew all this forty years ago, and had the courage to say it, regardless of consequences? What these consequences were, we must now consider. In the first place, Editor Brendel, wlio published tlie arti- cle on Judaism in his Neue Zeitschrift, came near having 330 LITERARY PERIOD his head chopped off for this bold act. He was professor of musical history in the conservatory of Leipzig, at that time Germany's leading music school, and entirely under the control of Mendelssohn's followers. Natu- rally an attack on the music of their chief created a great commotion among the professors of that institution, including Joachim, David, Becker, Bohme, Plaidy, Rietz, Klengel, Wenzel, Hauptmann, and Moscheles. A docu- ment drawn up by Rietz (the same who subsequently curtailed and maltreated the Lohengrin score so unmerci- fully) was signed by these professors, asking the imme- diate dismissal of Editor Brendel from his professorial chair. The conservatory directors refused to comply with this request, and Brendel retained his post. The secret of the authorship of the objectionable article also appears to have been maintained for some time ; rumor, however, connected Wagner's name with it, and six months later (April 9, 1851) Liszt writes to him : " Can you answer me, under the seal of absolute secrecy, the question : was the famous article on Judaism in Music in Brendel's paper written by you?" To which Wagner replies promptly : — " Why do you ask me in regard to Judaism? You must cer- tainly know tliat I wrote it : wliy this question ? I used a pseu- donym not from fear of consequences, but to avoid having the Jews make a purely personal matter of it. I had long harbored a repressed wrath against this Jew business, and this wrath is as necessary to my nature as gall is to blood. One occasion came on which their accursed scribbling provoked me excessively, and so at last I exploded : it appears to have struck in terribly, and I am glad of it, for such a shock was what I intended to give them. That they will remain masters of the situation all the same is as certain as the fact that not our princes but the bankers and Philis- tines are our rulers." JUDAISM IN MUSIC 331 I have already stated that Wagner kept up a running fire of comment on the Jews, and their relations to music and society, in his writings up to his last days. But it was in 1869, more than eighteen years after his first article on this topic, that matters were brought to a climax by the publication of Judaism in Music in pam- phlet form, together with a new and more elaborate essay entitled Elucidations regarding Judaism in Music. This interesting document is dated Lucern, New Year's, 1869, and appeared first in the form of an open letter to Madame Maria INIuehanoff, nee Countess Nesselrode, who had written to the composer for an explanation of the ex- traordinary circumstance that the press of that time, in France and England, as well as in Germany, was so savagely disposed towards all liis artistic enterprises and works. Wagner's reply is ingenious and seems at first sight plausible. He traces the whole trouble back to his essay on Judaisyn in Mtisic. He repeats that his reason for the adoption of a pseudonym was simply a desire to avoid having the article miss its intended effect by having it regarded merely as a personal attack on Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer by a jealous rival : — " For this reason I had signed tlie article with the words ' Free Thought,' an obvious pseudonym. To Brendel I had communicated my intentions in this regard ; lie was courageous enougli to let the storm descend on his own head instead of saving himself at once by letting it descend on mine. Soon thereafter there were signs and unmistakable evidence that I had been recognized as the au- thor: I never met a (juestion in regard to this with a denial. This was enough to cause a complete change in the tactics." Up to this time, he continues, only coarse artillery had been brought to bear against the article, but now tlie I i 332 LITERARY PERIOD educated Jews took hold of the matter and managed it with their peculiar, practical shrewdness. The edu- cated Jews dislike all discussions in which their nation- ality is involved and emphasized. Their object was, therefore, to get the offensive article out of the way as quickly as possible. But the insult to their race rankled fiercely in their breasts, and their vengeance took an indirect form: ignoring the real casus belli, — the essay, — they forthwith began to attack its author's other writings, especially his operas, systematically and per- sistently. The whole German press being practically in the hands of the Jews, the result was a formal conspiracy against a composer who was not only maliciously attacked, but actually found it impossible, on one occa- sion, to get his remarks on the Jew Offenbach into a newspaper. Even Liszt was made to suffer for his friendship with Wagner, who traces to the same essay on Judaism the reason why, up to 1869, it had been almost impossible to get a friendly notice of Liszt's compositions into a German paper. In Paris, the Meyer- beer faction saw to it that no favorable notice of Wagner or his friend could get into the press. Li London, the press demolished him because he would not worship the English idol, Mendelssohn. In Vienna, a jurist of (con- cealed) Jewish descent, Dr. Hanslick, elaborated a system of aesthetics in Avhich Mendelssohn is recognized as the heir of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven — the climax of the series, in fact, and a sort of corrector of the " aberra- tions " in the later Beethoven. This man, as critic of the leading Vienna paper, became the head of the oppo- sition, declared Wagner's works utterly worthless, and set the fashion in this direction for German newspapers JUDAISM IN MUSIC 333 in general. "Nothing more was talked about than my contempt for all great composers, my enmity to melody, and my horrible compositions — in short, the ' music of the future ' ; but that article on JudaLsm in Mxisic was never again mentioned." This " Elucidation " is, as I have said, ingenious, and some truth there is no doubt in it; yet I believe that Wagner was mistaken in attributing the opposition to his works entirely, or even largely, to the hostile feeling stirred up by his attacks on the Jews, especially by the first attack, which attracted but little attention at the time of its publication. The opposition to his works had various sources, prominent among which were the inabil- ity of conductors and singers to interpret them correctly, and the slowness of hearers (especially critics) in assim- ilating not only new music, but — what is much more difficult (and to some people impossible) — mudc in a new form. In regard to the virulence of the attacks on him, however, Wagner was partly right in liis argument. He was attacked by the critics because ne had criticised or attacked their favorites — especially Meyerbeer and Men- delssohn. But these composers were thus savagely defended and avenged because they were fashionable idols, and not because they were Jews ; for among their fanatic worshippers there were more Christians than Jews. That tliis explanation is the correct one is, I think, proved by the fact that so many of Wagner's most ardent friends and patrons were and are Jews. His attacks on their race are generally condoned as a freak of genius.^ But attacks on a favorite and fashionable 1 CatuUe Mendes tells an amusing story of a rich Jewish banker at Pesth who hated Wagner for his essay, but worshipped him as a com- 334 LITERARY PERIOD composer could not but be resented by Jews and Chris- tians alike. Next to religious comment nothing inflames the passions so much as musical discussion. Now that the Mendelssohn-Meyerbeer cult has died out (and, in fact, given place to almost as undeserved neglect, as far, at least, as the nobler of the two, Mendelssohn, is con- cerned), Jews and Christians both are flocking to the Wagner standard. It is an incontestable fact that New York could not have enjoyed seven such brilliant and successful seasons of German opera as it did from 1884- 1891, had it not been for the liberal patronage of the wealthy Jews of that city. In Berlin the leading Wag- ner organ has for many years been the Jewish Boer sen- Courier. The originator of the Patronatsverein for defraying the expenses of the flrst Bayreuth festival was the enthusiastic Jewish Wagnerite and pianist, Carl Tausig; and among AYagner's other personal friends there were many Jews — men and women who were intelligent enough to see that his tirades were directed against certain disagreeable general traits of their na- tion, and therefore not applicable to individuals who were free from those traits. And this is a point on which too much emphasis cannot be laid. Again and again Wagner dwells on the fact that nothing could have been farther from his intentions than a desire to hurt any one's feelings. His great enthusiasm for his idea (to use his own words, V, 3) caused him to " forget all regard for personal considerations'* — a characteristic of men of genius, by the way, which ordinary individuals, who are never guided by other than personal motives, poser. By way of expressing his mixed feelings he had a statue of him in his parlor, with a laurel wreath on his head and a rope around his neck. JUDAISM 7iV MUSIC 335 find it very difficult to comprehend. In a letter dated iSIarch 10, 1851, Wagner, apprehensive of the personal interpretation that might be given to his Opera and Drama, begs Uhlig to cancel certain sentences, adding: — " It would be terrible if the book should come to be looked upon simply as an attack on Meyerbeer. I wish I could withdraw still much of this kind. When I read it, the mockery never sounds venomous ; but if others read it, I may often seem to them an ill- tempered, sour-minded uidividual, and this I would not appear to be, even to my enemies." It was this treatise — the first part of Oj)er U7id Drama — that was, in my opinion, responsible for the flood of hostile newspaper criticism that overwhelmed Wagner from this time on, and which he erroneously attributed to the Judaism essay. In Oj^er iind Drama he " scored " not only Mej^erbeer, but another popular idol of the hour, Eossini, and pointed out weaknesses in others still, who had (since their death) been considered exalted above criti- cism: hinc iilai lacrymoi — that was the cause of the row. Meyerbeer. — Critics Avhose minds are too philistine to rise above personal considerations have accused Wagner innumerable times of " gross ingratitude " toward Meyer- beer, becatise, after receiving favors from him, he attacked his works. The charge is an old story in the record of human thought, and has been answered delight- fully for all times in the words ''Amicus Plato, Amicus Socrates, sed magis amica Veritas." Dr. Hanslick is one of the critics just referred to. In his book Musikalisches und Liter arisches, 1892, he puts the " ingratitude " objec- tion in this form : — " Hesitating, nervous individuals like Meyerbeer are usually very sensitive. The creator of the Huguenots felt every sting of 336 LITERARY PERIOD criticism acutely. Most of all was he hurt by the contemptuous verdict of Richard Wagner, whom he had protected and assisted in his days of need. The question of personal gratitude need not be, considered here at all, and we may even admit that one may receive benefits from a friend and yet consider his works bad. But I be- lieve that the consciousness of favors received should of its own accord impose resti-aint and measure in the public expression of censure on any not entirely hardened mind. All the more when it is not a question of defence, but an a,ttiiGk provoked by no necessity.''^ In spite of Dr. Hauslick's waiving the question of "personal gratitude," the personal aspect of this objec- tion has never been so nakedly exposed as here. The substance of his argument is : " Meyerbeer did not attack Wagner personally, therefore it was mean for Wagner to attack him ; there was no necessity for it." That there can be such a thing as an ideal, artistic necessity, springing from no personal grudge, but a desire to reform abuses, is a thing which a mind of Dr. Hanslick's calibre cannot grasp. If he could have grasped it, he would have seen that Wagner completely and most eloquently answered his objection more than forty years ago, in this passage from the preface to Opera and Drama : — " I do not deny that I struggled long with myself, before I made up my mind to what I did, and the way in which I did it. Every- thing contained in this attack [on Meyerbeer] I have read over again calmly, considering every phrase, and weighing carefully if I should give it to the public, until I finally convinced myself that, in consideration of my extremely decided and incisive opinions on this important matter, I would merely show cowardice and an unworthy regard for possible consequences to myself, if I did not express myself just as I have done in regard to that most dazzling phenomenon in the modern operatic world. What I say about it is a point on which most honest artists have long ceased to enter- tain any doubt ; but the thing that bears fruit is not concealed JUDAISM IN MUSIC 337 wrath, but an open declaration and definite motivation of hostility ; for that produces the necessary explosion which purifies the ele- ments, separates the pure from the impure, and sifts what there is to sift. It was not my intention to create this enmity for its own sake, but I was compelled to create it, because, after expressing my views abstractly, I felt the necessity of giving them a particular application to individual cases ; my aim is not merely to suggest truth, but also to make myself clearly understood. To make myself thus understood I was obliged to point a finger at the most illustra- tive phenomena in our art ; but this finger I could not withdraw and put with the fist in my pocket as soon as I came upon the par- ticular phenomenon which most clearly illustrates the error in art which we must combat, and which, the more brilliant it appears, dazzles all the more the eyes which mu,st see with perfect clearness, if they are not to become blind altogether. Consequently, if I had observed a reticent regard for this one person, I could either not at all have undertaken this work, to which my convictions impelled me, or I would have been obliged to weaken its effect intention- ally ; for I would have had to consciously conceal the most evident and most significant points." Wagner did not entirely condemn Meyerbeer. True, he says (V. 376): "Meyerbeer's music is characterized by such frightful hollowness, shallowness, and artistic emptiness, that we feel inclined to place his specific musical endowment — especially as compared with the majority of contemporary composers — on the zero line." But that this was not a sober criticism, but merely a momentary ebullition of artistic indignation, is shown on the very next page of Oper und Drama, where he pays this enthusiastic tribute to Meyerbeer's genius, pointing out how, in certain instances, "he can readily find the richest, noblest, and most soul-stirring musical expression. I recall here especially some passages in the well-known scene of love and anguish in the fourth act of the IIu- 338 LITERARY PERIOD guenots, and above all, the wonderfully touching melody in G flat major, which, sprouting like a flower from a dramatic situation that makes every tibre of the human heart vibrate with a voluptu- ous thrill, is a passage to which few things in music, and only the most perfect, are comparable. I emphasize this pomt with the sincerest joy, and genuine enthusiasm, ^ because it shows," etc. When Wagner says that "most honest artists have long ceased to entertain any donbt " regarding the vicious features of Meyerbeer's art which he exposes, he speaks the absolute truth: one of the most suggestive differ- ences between Meyerbeer and Wagner is that whereas Wagner^ s genius was recognized first by other men of genius, it was other men of genius ivho first condemned Meyer- beer. After Meyerbeer had returned from Italy, where he had learned to copy the cheap tricks of Rossini, Weber, after conducting his latest opera, the product of this new schooling, at Dresden, wrote : — "My heart bleeds when I see how a German artist, endowed with creative power of his own, degrades himself to the level of an imitator, merely for the sake of applause. Is it then so very diffi- cult, I will not say to despise the applause of the moment, but at least not to make it one's highest aim ? " Rossini himself, as well as Spontini, disliked Meyer- beer, the former perhaps because Meyerbeer surpassed him in his own line, by not only picking up in Italy what- ever was most likely to tickle audiences for a moment, but gathering his ear-ticklers also in German and French 1 It is characteristic of the tactics and the literary ethics of Wag- ner's enemies that Dr. Hanslick, in the essay just referred to, cites Wagner's words about Meyerbeer's endowment being equal to zero, but preserves absolute silence regarding the modifying passage just quoted, thus giving his readers, as usual, a totally distorted view of Wagner's real opinions. JUDAISM IN AIUSIC 339 markets — Italian florid song, instrumental solos, Ger- man counterpoint (occasionally, for eiiect), French dances, and scenic titbits, etc., — making a musical variety show, or what Wagner wittily called a musical " Mosaic." The amiable Schumann abused Meyerbeer more venomously than ever Wagner did, and even Mendelssohn, a Jew him- self, expressed his dislike of Meyerbeer's operas. Liszt, in speaking of some of Meyerbeer's cheap effects, uses the expression gold-dust, which admirably characterizes them. The public is gradually learning to distinguish between Meyerbeer's gilded wood and Wagner's solid gold, and statistics reveal the significant fact that every- where Meyerbeer's popularity wanes in the same propor- tion as Wagner's groAvs. The more we reflect on this whole question of Meyer- beer and Judaism, the more we become convinced that while Wagner cannot be acquitted of the charge of exaggeration, partial error, and imprudence, he only showed the true nobility of his artistic character by not allowing a feeling of " gratitude " to override his judg- ment and his love of art. Nor is this all: Wagner's indebtedness to Meyerbeer has been greatly overesti- mated. Although we have alluded to this matter in an earlier chapter, we must return to it here because it is of such great importance in forming a just estimate of Wagner's character. His own oi)inion was that Meyer- beer had not helped liim on in his artistic career. He failed to do anything for him in Paris, although he was the most influential musician there; he commended Rienzi to the Dresden intendant, but it was not accepted till long thereafter, and even then chiefly owing to the intercession of Chorus-conductor Fischer, and the 340 LITERARY PERIOD famous tenor Tichatscliek ; while Berlin, where Meyer- beer's influence was as great as in Paris, was one of the last cities in Germany to encourage Wagner as an opera- composer. There is a passage in one of Wagner's letters to Liszt (No. 59) in which he says that he does not hate Meyerbeer, but feels a boundless aversion to him, and speaks of "the time when he still made a pretence of protecting me," and of "the intentional impotence of his kindness to me " ; which letter I advise the reader to peruse here, as it is too long to quote. ^ One more important point remains to be considered — important because it involves the question of Wagner's honesty. Dr. Hanslick in the article referred to above, tries, with his usual "method," to convey to his readers the impression that Wagner was dishonestly inconsistent in his treatment of Meyerbeer. He bases this accusation on a recently discovered manuscript of Wagner's, dated 1842, in which Meyerbeer is lauded to the skies as a true German, a genuine successor of Handel, Gluck, and Mozart, an artist with immaculate conscience, who beat the Italians on their own ground, and whose style rises to real classical dignity. Upon this Dr. Hanslick com- 1 Compare with this what Wagner's friend Praeger says (p. 216) : " I frankly admit, ^\nth an intimate acquaintance of Wagner's feelings regarding Meyerbeer, that he despised the 'mountebank,' hating cor- dially the thousand commercial incidents Meyerbeer associated with the production of his works. Schlesinger told me indeed of well- authenticated instances where Meyerbeer had gone so far as to con- ciliate the mistresses of critics to secure a favorable verdict." It is also well known that he asked the advice of the chief of the clacque regarding the probable effectiveness of certain passages in his operas. With this compare the policy of Wagner, who was willing to wait flfteen years after Lohengrin before bringing out a new opera, rather than make the slightest concession to fashionable "taste " and " criti- cism " — and then judge for yourself whether he was not right in claim- ing that he was the " opposite " of Meyerbeer as an artist and a man. JUDAISM IN MUSIC 341 ments : " We stand here before a riddle, and not a pleas- ant one." "The possessor of this precious autograph, Herr Leo Lipmannssohn in Berlin, has wisely had it printed before its sale at public auction, lest it might be secretly bought by a friend and destroyed unnoticed." The change from these early sentiments on Meyerbeer to the later severe opinions, Hanslick intimates, was caused by the fact that " Wagner wished to be considered not only the greatest but the only tone-poet of the time." Now Dr. Hanslick is so thorough ly famili ar with the facls of Wagner's life that he even knows aiidTi-ecords the minute c hanges in his early essays when they were reprinted in later years. Iti§_noti likely therefore tha t he was ignor ant of the facts here to be p resented. Tt has been shown in preceding pages that Wagner's opin - ions on music — especially on operatic music — under- went a gradual change and evolution. In his first Paris period he still placed instrumental music above the opera (I. 193). I n 1834 lie wrote an article on Oerm an Opera, m which he denies that there is such a thing a s G^l'mu.li opera; a buses Weber ; says the Ger mans do not know how t o write for the vo ice, and that f or genuinely spontaneous operatic music we must go to Bellini! In 1837 he wrote an article on Bellini,^ in which he promul- gated similar views. In the same year he wrote a letter to Meyerbeer in which he says that he was induced to devote himself to music about the age of eighteen: — " A passionate adoration of Beethoven impelled me to this step — a devotion which gave my first productive efforts an extremely one- sided direction. In the meantime, and especially since I have entered practical life, my views on the present condition of music, 1 See these articles iu Kiirschuer's Wagner Jahrhuch, 1886, pp. 376-9, 3«l-2, 478. 34-2 LITERARY PERIOD csijecially dramatic music, have undergone a considerable change, and shall I deny that it was your works above all which indicated to me this new direction ? " That this statement was made in perfect sincerity (imi- tation is the sincerest form of flattery) is proved by the fact that in the following year (1838) he commenced the composition of Rienzi, which, by his own admission (VII. 159), is modelled after the grand opera of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Halevy. This opera was not completed till 1840, and its first performance was in 1842, the year in which was written (but not printed) the favorable notice on Meyerbeer concerning which Dr. Hanslick makes his contemptible insinuations. Wagner's articles against Meyerbeer were not written till seven years later; in 1842 he had some indirect reason to feel " grateful " to Meyerbeer, his model for Rienzi, his first success. In such a moment of grateful feeling he probably wrote that article ; but the fact that he did not print it speaks for itself. His mind was then growing in a new direc- tion with giant strides, and he soon, therefore, began to harbor doubts regarding the solidity of Meyerbeer's art, which in course of the next seven years grew into such a strong conviction in his mind. These are the simple facts of the case, fortified in each detail by documents and dates ; and with these facts before him, I leave it to the reader to decide whether it is Wagner or his venom- ous critic who is disgraced by this early laudatory manu- script on Meyerbeer.^ "We stand here before a riddle, and not a pleasant one." 1 What did Meyerbeer think of "Wagner? Dr. Hanslick (I.e.) states that in 184G he put the question to Meyerljeer, who replied simply, " His operas find much /«for," and immediately changed the subject. In a JUDAISM IN MUSIC 34S Mendelssohn. — In the same year when this essay on Meyerbeer was written, Wagner one day entered the house of JNIendelssohUj who was just trying over a new sonata with the distinguished violoncellist, Servais. Wagner stood in a corner for a while, and then departed without having said a word. " that's an Original — but he will make the world talk of him," exclaimed Mendelssohn.^ The world soon did talk about Wagner, more than Mendelssohn perhaps had expected. Mendels- sohn, the pet child of fashion, could not brook a rival. "Personally he was very amiable; at social gatherings, however, he demanded, with noticeable vanity, that everything should centre in him, and he was in a bad humor if any one else attracted attention" (JahrbucJi, 1886, p. 76). In a letter to Schubring (1835) he com- plains that "there are so few musicians whom I could and would like to call friends; this often makes me sad." This self -diagnosis was correct. He did not care for any one of his really great contemporaries; his friends were his imitators and worshippers — second and third rate musicians. He sneered at Chopin (Chopinetto), detested Liszt and Berlioz (whom he calls " a perfect caricature without one spark of talent"), never had a kind word even for Schumann, who often wrote about Jmn so appre- ciatively. Small Avonder that he did not like Wagner; that he refused to produce his early symphony ; that he footnote to Warjner Juf/^ en France (p. 33) we read: " M. Blaze de Bury relates that a sinr/le name had the privilege of exasperating Meyerbeer, that of R. Wur/ner : ' he could not hear it pronounced with- out immediately expto'icncing a disagreeable sensation, which, l)esidcs, he did not jiive liimscll tlic trouble to conceal, — he who was usually so discerning, so clever in discovering with a microscope any oue's quali- ties ' (Meyerbeer et son Temps)." 1 Kastner Wayner-Kutalog, p. 14. 344 LITERARY PERIOD conducted the Tannhduser overture as a " warning exam- ple, " and consoled Wagner ct projjos of the Dutchman in Dresden, with the remark that he ought to be satisfied, since, after all, it hadn't been a " complete fiasco ! " Time has shown that Mendelssohn was a poor judge of musical genius, while Wagner's verdict on other com- posers has been borne out in almost every detail. He said that Mendelssohn had been able to gain such great popularity largely because the masters preceding him had so thoroughly developed the materials of music that it had been made easy for any one to talk agreeably in that language. To-day we all know that most of Men- delssohn's works are musical "small-talk," and that it was his pleasant way of saying nothing that made peo- ple think these nothings so "beautiful in form," Wag- ner censured him for his wrong way of conducting Beethoven and other composers: to-day the greatest conductors — Dr. Hans von Biilow, Hans Richter, Anton Seidl, Arthur Nikisch, etc. — conduct Beethoven A la Wagner. And so on. On the other hand, it must be distinctly remembered that Wagner did not entirely condemn Mendelssohn. He admitted, as we have seen, that he had "a specific musical endowment equalled by few other musicians before him. " While condemning his Antigone music as undramatic and utterly incongruous to its subject ("c'est de la Bevliner Liedertafel,'' Spon- tini said of it), he calls the Hebrides overture "one of the most beautiful pieces we possess " (X. 197). To Mr. Dannreuther he remarked ^ concerning this overture : — " Wonderful imagination and delicate feeling are here presented with consummate art. Note the extraordinary beauty of the pas- 1 Grove's Dictionary, IV. 369. JUDAISM IN MUSIC 346 sage where the oboes rise above the other instruments with a plain- tive wail, like sea- winds over the seas. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage is also beautiful ; and I am very fond of the first move- ment of the Scotch symphony. No one can blame a composer for using national melodies when he treats them so artistically as Mendelssohn has done in the Scherzo of this symphony. His second themes, his slow movements generally, where the human element comes in, are weaker. As regards the overture to A Mid- summer XighVs Dream, it must be taken into account that he wrote it at seventeen ; and how finished the form is already ! " etc. Rubinstein. — There is another famous Jewish com- poser concerning whom it would have been interesting to have Wagner's opinion; but it is not on record, so far as I know, and it is doubtful if Wagner had opportunity to form a just estimate of Rubinstein's symphonies and operas. Rubinstein, on his part, has not failed to give the world his opinion of Wagner, which is contained in his little book Die Musik und ihre Meister (1891), pp. 95-104. He begins by stating that in 1845-6 he was at Mendelssohn's house one day and found the Tannhduser score open on the piano. To the question what he thought of that opera, Mendelssohn replied: "A man who writes both the text and the music of his operas is at any rate not an ordinary man." Upon which Rubin- stein comments, " Yes, not an ordinary man . . . highly interesting, very valuable, but beautiful or great, deep or high, in a specific musical sense, he is not." Where- upon lie proceeds to make mincemeat of all his works (except Lohengrin, Die Meistersincjer, and the Faust over- ture, which he likes) in very much the same style that the great Jahn brought to bear, half a century ago, on Lohengrin! All this time, according to Rubinstein, mankind has admitted Wagner's genius merely because 346 LITERARY PERIOD it has so often been reproached with having ignored con- temporary men of genius that it was afraid to make the same mistake again, and so it idolized Wagner!!! Poor Rubinstein! The world has treated him so badly as a composer, that he can hardly be expected to have pre- served his sense of humor if he ever had any. But the Eussian lion is at least bold. In spite of ^schylus and the other Greek dramatists, he asserts that a myth can be " an interesting and poetic theatre-piece, but never a drama " (96) ! Wagner's use of Leading Motives is " such a naive proceeding that it produces a comic effect and can claim no serious meaning " I The exclusion of arias is a mistake, he continues. Even the orchestra is all wrong, because it diminishes the interest in the vocal part! An invisible orchestra is "simply unendurable"! A darkened auditorium benefits only the manager, whose gas bill it reduces ! The persons in Wagner's dramas are never dramatic (p. 102). " His melody never characterizes the musical thought or person " ! His orchestration is "deficient in economy and variety of shading"! And besides, Wagner isn't nearly as interesting as Berlioz, anyhow, because the latter appeared at once as an innovator, and did not become one, like Wagner ! If Wagner had lived to read these unintentionally comic lucubrations of Rubinstein, he would have doubt- less smiled and pointed at them as an interesting and amusing confirmation of the views promulgated in his essay on Judaism in Music. And Rubinstein is as undramatic in his operas as in his opinions; which is the reason why all of his operas — full of delicious mel- ody though they are — have failed to win a permanent success. Had he had genuine dramatic instincts, he JUDAISM IN MUSIC 347 ■would have learned from Wagner, as Wagner learned from Weber and other great predecessors, and his fate would have been different. To have written as many operas as Wagner, to see all of Wagner's regularly on every repertory and none of his own on any (outside of Russia, where one or two have become popular), is enough to sour any man. But the public exhibition of this sour face, distorted by impotent, jealous rage, is a melancholy close to the career of a great artist; a musi- cian whose compositions deserve very much more atten- tion than his contemporaries have given them, and whose "Dramatic" and "Ocean" symphonies — like the works of Dvorak, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky — go far to disprove Wagner's absurd assertion that pure instrumental music had reached its highest possible development in Beetho- ven, and come to an end with him. Unfortunately for Rubinstein, his supremely silly " criticisms " on Wagner have injured himself a thousand times more than his intended victim; they have shown him to possess a petty, jealous character; and they have alienated from him the sympathy of many who had previously worked hard for the popularization of his music. WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING HOW THE POEM WAS WKITTEN The first three years following his flight from Dresden, Wagner devoted chiefly to the writing of the literary works considered in the preceding chapter, and a few minor essays, amid some interruptions which we shall narrate later on. Three more full years were to elapse before he began to compose again ; but these last literary years were at any rate largely devoted to creative art- work instead of art-criticism ; namely, to the conception and execution of the Nibelung poem, in its four parts. The curious circumstance has long been known that while the music of Rheingold, Walkiire, Siegfried, and Gotterddmmerung was composed in the proper order here given, the poems were written in inverse order. The last-named drama was written first, under the name of /Siegfried's Death and in a somewhat different shape; then came Siegfried (originally Young Siegfried, and dif- fering in details from the later drama), followed by the Walkiire and finally Rheingold. The details of this liter- ary performance were not known till the appearance of the Correspondence with Liszt, and with Uhlig, Fischer, and Heine, in 1887-1888; and even from that it is not easy to unravel the tangle, since we read, for instance, under date of June 18, 1851: "I commenced Young 348 HOW THE POEM WAS WRITTEN 349 Siegfried on the 3d June, and I shall have finished it in a week " ; and again in July : " I have just written the poem of Young Siegfried " ; while more than a year later (November, 1852) we come across this: "I am now work- ing at Young Siegfried; I shall soon have finished it. Then I attack Siegfried's Death — this will take me longer." The apparent inconsistency is explained by the fact that the last reference to Young Siegfried is to the revised and remodelled version of it. Concerning Sieg- fried's Death he adds : " I have two scenes in it to write afresh (the Norns and the scene of Briinnhilde with the Valkyries), and above all the close; besides these, every- thing needs most important revision. The whole will then be — out with it ! I am impudent enough to say it — the greatest poem ever written! " It is interesting to compare the changes he here refers to with the original Siegfried's Death, which, as the reader will remember, was written as early as 1848, immediately after Lohengrin.^ Leaving that task to the reader himself (with the hint just quoted from Wagner's letter), let us now examine the motives which led him to abandon his plan of composing Siegfried's Death, and to evolve from it instead a complete Tetralogy, or cycle of four dramas. Had it not been for the revolution in Dresden and Wagner's share in it, it is probable that Lohengrin would liave been given there in due course of time, and that, with sucli a fine cast as was available there, and tl e composer himself to conduct, it would have proved a success. Encouraged by this, he would have at once 1 The original Siec/fried's Tod is printed in Vol. II., the revised Gdtterdiimmerung in Vol VI., of the Gesammelte Schriften. 350 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING set to work and composed his Siegfried's Death. In that case we should have had no Tetralogy, and it is not likely that tliat drama would have compensated even for Gotterdammerung alone. After Lohengrin had been pro- duced at last in Weimar, its exiled composer for a time thought seriously of setting Siegfried's Death to music and sending it to Liszt for the Weimar stage. In June, 1849, he wrote to him : " I shall at last devote my time to composing my last German poem, Siegfried's Death; in half a year I shall send you the complete opera." In September, 1850, he wrote to Uhlig: — " Liszt informs me that there is some talk, should Lohengrin succeed, of commissioning me to compose ray Siegfried for Wei- mar ; for which purpose an honorarium would be paid to me in advance, sufficiently large to enable me to live undisturbed until the completion of the work. Thereupon I have answered that I would never have composed Siegfried as a castle in the air ; but if Lohengrin tm-ned out thoroughly satisfactory, I presumed that actors would thereby be trained for me at Weimar who, with proper zeal and earnestness, would be able to bring Siegfried to life in the best possible way. For the Weimar company I would therefore specially get the Siegfried music ready for performance. Already I have procured music-paper and a Dresden music-pen, but whether I can still compose, God only knows ! Perhaps I can get into the way again." A month before this he had written to Liszt that the Siegfried music was already haunting him in all his limbs {spukt mir bereits in alien Gliedern). About the same time he sent the poem to the publisher Wigand in Leip- zig, who, however, refused to print it, and Uhlig kept the manuscript. Thus matters stood before the first performance of Lohengrin at Weimar, which we have already described. HOW THE POEM WAS WRITTEN 351 That performance made Wagner change his mind. No doubt, considering all the circumstances, it was a credit- able performance ; but no one need be told that Lohen- (jrin cannot be put on the stage, as Wagner intended it, with an expenditure of only about f 1500 for scenery, and Avith artists who, had they been first-class, would not have sung for a pittance in so small a town as Wei- mar. Bear this in mind, and you will understand what he meant when he wrote to Uhlig (Sept. 20, 1850) : " I need not begin to assure you that I really abandoned Lo- hengrin when I permitted its production at Weimar." The situation made him think; and the result of his meditations is hinted at in two extraordinary epistolary l)assages which show that he had the germs of a so7't of Bayreuth-Festival plan in his mind twenty-six years be- fore it was realized. It seems that it was Heine who received the first inkling of this plan in these mysteri- ous lines, dated Sept. 14 : "I am now thinking of writ- ing the music to Siegfried. In order one day to be able to produce it properly, I am cherishing all sorts of bold and out-of-the-way plans, to the realization of which nothing further is necessary than that some old uncle or other should take it into his head to die." To Uhlig he wrote more seriously and explicitly, a week later : — " I need not give you my further reasons when I declare that I should like to send Siegfried into the world in different fashion from that which would be possible to the good people there. With regard to this, I am busy with wishes and plans which at first look seem chimerical ; yet these alone give me the heart to finish Sieg- fried. To realize the best, the most decisive, the most important work which, under the present circumstances, I can produce, — in short, the accomplishment of the conscious mission of my life, — needs a matter of perhaps 10,000 thalers. If I could ever command 352 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING such a sum, I would arrange thus : here, where I happen to be, — and where many a thing is far from bad, — I would erect, after my own plans, in a beautiful field near the town, a rough theatre of planks and beams, and merely furnish it with the decorations and machinery necessary for the production of Siegfried. Then I would select the best singers to be found anywhere, and invite them for six weeks to Zurich. I would try to form a chorus here consisting, for the most part, of amateurs ; there are splendid voices here, and strong, healthy people. I would invite in the same way my or- chestra. At the New Year, announcements and invitations to all the friends of the musical drama would appear in all the German newspapers, with a call to visit the proposed dramatic musical fes- tival. Any one giving notice, and travelling for this purpose to Ziirich, would receive a certain entree — naturally, like all the entrees^ gratis. Besides, I should invite to a performance the young people here, the university, the choral unions. When every- thing was in order, I should arrange, under these circumstances, for three performances of Siegfried in one week. After the third the theatre would be pulled down, and my score burnt. To those persons who had been pleased with the thing, I should then say, 'Now do likewise.' But if they wanted to hear something new from me, I should say, ' You get the money ! ' Well, do I seem quite mad to you ? It may be so, but I assure you to attain this end is the hope of my life, the prospect which alone can tempt me to take in hand a work of art. So — get me 10,000 thalers — that's all ! " It is quite remarkable to note how many features of the later Bayreuth Festivals are here foreshadowed. And so firm a hold did this plan at once take on his mind that he determined to give up the Weimar offer of 500 thalers, which were to be paid to him in the interim, in case he should deliver the Siegfried score by July 1, 1852. But besides the Festival idea there was another important consideration which induced him to modify his operatic plans. He had been haunted for some months HOW THE POEM WAS WRITTEN 353 by the thought of the youth who sets out "'in order to learn fear,' and who is so stupid that he is never able to learn it. Think of my alarm when I suddenly discover that this youth is no other than the young Siegfried, who wins the hoard and awakes Briiunhilde. The scheme is now ready" (May 10, 1851). In other words, his Nibelung scheme had now advanced to two dramas, Sieg- fried's Death preceded by Young Siegfried. Concerning these two Siegfried dramas his intention is that "each shall in itself be an independent piece. They are only to be presented to the public in succession for the first time; afterwards each, according to taste or means, can be given quite by itself." So Siegfried's Death was put aside for a moment, and Yoking Siegfried became the hero of the hour : " A thou- sand greetings to R's from me! Say to them that to-day my Young Siegfried came into the world ready and well- rhymed" (June 24, 1851). And what is of special inter- est, is to find that some of the Young Siegfried music also dates back as far as only four years after the com- pletion of Lohengrin : — " You perhaps cannot imagine it, but everything comes quite naturally. The musical phrases fit themselves on to the verses and periods without any trouble on my part ; everj'thing grows as if wild from the ground. I have already the beginning in my head ; also some plastic motives, like the Fafner one. I am de- lighted at the thought of giving myself up wholly to it." ■Wlien Liszt heard of the new project, he wrote : " So we are to liave a young Siegfried! You are really a perfectly incredible fellow, before whom one must take off hat and cap three times ! " In his reply Wagner states that he is only wishing for a fine day to begin 354 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING writing tlie poem, which, he says, is already completed in his head. Five weeks later comes the news that the poem is finished: "It has given me great pleasure, and at any rate it is such a thing as I was obliged to make now, and the best thing I have done so far." He is, in fact, so enthusiastic over his new project that he volun- tarily renounces Breitkopf and Hartel's generous offer to print the full score of Lohengrin on condition that, in place of that, they preserve their good will and intentions for the forthcoming Siegfried score. For it seemed to him " fabulous " that any firm should be willing to print an opera like Lohengrin, which was only being performed in one city! He feared that this score might be an unprofitable investment, and then the Leipzig publishers would be unwilling to undertake his beloved Siegfried. Great as was his confidence in his alter ego, Liszt, he was not going to have any more cuts and concessions, and performances lasting an hour too long. So, although Young Siegfried is now, in turn, intended for Weimar, he writes to Uhlig that he does not intend to have it produced there unless he can be there himself But very soon the Yoxmg Siegfried also became altogether prob- lematic for Weimar, and this was due to the maturing of the complete Nibelung plan — the Walkiire-Siegfried- Gotterddmmerung trilogy, with the introductory play of Rheingold. This complete scheme is first communicated to Uhlig under date of Nov. 12, 1851. A week later Liszt is informed of the Nibelung and the Festival plans at the same time. One of the most curious and suggestive things about this Nibelung scheme is that Wagner, guided by an unconscious dramatic instinct, sketched out the complete HOW THE POEM WAS WRITTEN 356 plot of the four dramas as early as 1848, before he wrote the poem of Sie(jfrle(.r.s Death. This sketch is printed in Vol. II. of the Collected AVurks, and although some of its details were altered or omitted when the dramas were written, it remains to this day the most lucid and logical synopsis that has ever been made of his great work. And now note the sequel. When the author of Sieg- frUtVs Death made his preparations for setting his poem to music, he found that the subject was too big for one drama. To one who had read his preliminary sketch of the whole Nibelung Myth there would have been no difficulty in understanding the full significance of Sieg- fried' s Death. But a stage drama should not need any preliminary essays and footnotes; it should present everything directly to the eyes and ears, should explain itself at every moment. A literary poet may address himself to the imagination, but a dramatist should appeal to the senses. It was this consideration that had induced him to alter the close of Tannhduser in such a way as to bring the apparition of Venus and the body of Elizabeth actually on the stage, instead of merely hinting at tliem. And it was this consideration that now made him give up Siegfried's Death and evolve the gigantic Tetralogy, in the separate dramas of which he could bring before the eyes events which had in that drama been presented merely in the shape of ejnc narrative : — " So, to make Siegfried'' s Death possible, I wrote Young Sieg- fried ; but the more the whole took shape, the more did I perceive, while developing the scenes and music of Young Siegfried, that I had only increasoil the necessity for a clearer presentation of the whole story to the senses. I now see that, in order to become intelligible on the stage, I must work out the whole myth in plastic style. It was not this consideration alone which inip( Ikd me to 356 WELDING TUE NIBELVNG'S RING my new plan, but especially the overpowering impressiveness of the subject-matter which I thus acquire for presentation, and which supplies me with a wealth of material for artistic fashioning which it would be a sin to leave unused." He then proceeds to give the first intimation of the Walkilre and Rheingold plans. So here we have the great work of his life laid out clearly and irrevocably. He also tells his friends that he feels the impossibility of producing such a work satis- factorily at any existing theatre, and that he is tired of doing things hy halves: "With this my new conception I withdraw entirely from all connection with our theatre and public of to-day; I break decisively and forever with the formal present." "The performance of the Nibelung dramas must take place at a gre at Festival, specially arranged for this purpose." The f our dramas mus t first be given m proper order, whereupon they may be repeated separately ad libitum. He adds that it will take hira at least three full years to comj)lete this work, — little dreaming that it would occupy him, with interruptions, for the next twenty-three years ! , One more short extract from a letter to Uhlig (No. 35) may be given here by way of mirroring his mind at this time. It precedes the one just quoted from, by a few weeks : — " I want a small house, with meadow and a little garden ! To work with zest and joy, — but not for the present generation. . , . If all German theatres tumble down, I will erect a new one on the banks of the Rhine, gather every one together, and produce the whole [Trilogy] in the course of a week. — Rest! rest! rest! Country ! country ! a cow, a goat, etc. Then — health — happi- ness — hope ! Else, everything lost. I care no more. You must come here ! " HOW THE POEM WAS WRITTEN 357 Wagner had reason to fear that his plan would, as he says, " on account of its almost bottomless mad audacity, be comprehended by no one"; and he was therefore greatly delighted to have Liszt — although it deprived that friend of the prospective pleasure of bringing out Siegfried at Weimar — approve of it cordially. Sieg- frietVs Death and Young Siegfried were already versified; the next poem which he undertook was the Walkwe. Of this there can be no doubt; for he says explicitly in a letter to Uhlig (Oct. 14, 1852) : " The introductory even- ing is really a complete drama, quite rich in action : I have finished fully half of it. The Walkilre,^ entirely. The two Siegfrieds, however, must still be thoroughly revised, especially Siegfried'' s Death. But then — it will he something ! " On July 2, 1852, he imparts the information that he expects to finish the whole Nibelung poem by September or October and that he rejoices greatly at the thought of the music. It was not till December, however, that he wrote to Heine : " I have just finished my great Nibelung poem, and I mean to make a clean copy of the stuff, so that my friends, too, may be able to taste as much as possible of it. This will take up a full month of my time, for at present I can at most spend three hours on such work." While he was still busy with the poem, the desire to communicate it to his friends, before he set to work on the nnisic, overcame him. He therefore pur- posed to have twentyrfive or thirty copies of the whole poem made in fac-simile reprint. But who was to pay for this ? He had no money, and it could be done only by means of a subscription among his friends. But as 1 It was finished on July 1, 1852. See Letters to Uhlig, No. G7. 358 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING such a subscription was not forthcoming, he at last had the poems printed in the ordinary way at his own expense, — a few copies only for private distribution to his friends, and secretly, to avoid admonitions. ''Those who know my situation," he writes to Liszt (Feb. 11, 1853), on sending him a few copies (for himself, the Grand Duchess, and the Princess of Prussia), " will, in face of this considerable expense, again have occasion to consider me a spendthrift: be it so! I must confess the world at large behaves towards me in such a miserly way that I feel no desire whatever to imitate it." Liszt's enthusiasm over the Nibelung scheme is almost as great as Wagner's, and it leads him to hope that the work may be completed in less than three years. Should its author by that time still be debarred return to his country, Liszt offers to take upon himself the function of conductor, adding: "I hope, however, I shall have the pleasure of being able to enjoy your Nibelung Trilogy more quietly from parquet or balcony, and in that case, I invite you after each of the four performances to supper at the Hotel de Saxe [Dresden] or Hotel de Kussie [Ber- lin], provided you will still be able to eat and drink after your exertions." The Princess von Wittgenstein read the whole of the Tetralogy on the day of its receipt, as Liszt informs his friend; it aroused her enthusiasm, and there- after almost daily she quoted from it in conversing with Liszt. But of his other friends, only two (Franz Miiller and Karl Ritter) as much as replied to acknowledge receipt of the copy to the author who was so thirsty for a little sympathy and encouragement in his audacious and unprecedented undertaking. While waiting for such a sign of sympathy, he describes himself as living solely LIFE IN ZURICH 359 through the post: "With the most violent impatience I must await the postman every morning at 11 o'clock; if he brings me nothing at all, or nothing satisfactory, my whole day is one of resignation. That is my life ! Why do I continue to live?" LIFE IN ZURICH We must now cast a partly retrospective glance at Wagner's life in Zurich during these years of literary and poetic work. A careless perusal of the correspond- ence with Liszt might give the impression that Wagner was dissatisfied with his situation in Zurich : for utter- ances of despair like the one just quoted abound in it; but on closer examination it will be seen that these expressions of despair and suicidal anguish almost inva- riably have their origin in disappointed artistic hopes, operatic misrepresentations and failures in Germany, or attacks of erysipelas or dysj^epsia. With his life in Zurich as such, and with his friends there, he was highly pleased, as he points out over and over again. He informs Fischer on Nov. 9, 1850 : — " I shall now in any case remain in Ziirich, where I have found a circle of very dear friends ; when the time comes for you to retire from active life, you should by all means be so sensible as to come here. I can find no words to describe the agreeableness of life here ; in Paris I had the genuine Swiss homesickness ! The sturdy, honest folk here will be to your taste, and one can manage a house- hold cheaply." He playfully advises the royal chorus master of the Dresden opera to do his work badly so that he may the sooner be pensioned off, and then join him in Zurich. He appreciates the freedom with which he can give ex- 3G0 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING pression to his thoughts in Switzerland: "In Dresden I shoukl have soured as Kapellmeister loci, because always maliciously attacked, pulled to pieces, and therefore rendered powerless." In Zurich, "I live protected by the true and genuine love of men who know me as I am, and who would not have me a jot otherwise. I am only to be envied." Again, in 1850, to Uhlig: — "I feel very well again, back in Ziirich, and I would choose to live here rather than anywhere else in the whole wide world. We have a most delightful dwelling by the lake, with the most magnifi- cent views, garden, etc. In my house-coat I go down to the lake to bathe ; a boat is there which we row ourselves. Besides, an excellent race of men, and whichever way we turn, sympathy, politeness, and the most touching readiness to do service : yes, more, and more trusty, friends than I could ever find in beautiful, big Dresden. All are glad to see me ; of Philistines here I know only the Saxon exiles. Oh, how unfortunate and worthy of pity you seem to me in Dresden ! " In 1851, to Heine : — " Ah, if no one would pity me any more on account of my loss of my Dresden position ! How little they know me who look upon this loss as my misfortune ! Were I aiiniestied to-day, and were I again appointed chief Kapellmeister at Dresden, you would see how calmly I should remain in my Switzerland, and perhaps scarcely even put my feet on the blessed soil of the German con- federacy I Yes, that is how I feel." And once more, to Liszt (March 4, 1853) : — " Should you ever succeed, in the gigantic perseverance of your friendship, in again making Germany accessible to me, be assured that I would make no other use of this privilege than occasionally to visit Weimar, take part in your doings for a little while, and here and there attend some decisive fir.st performance of my operas. This I must have — this is a necessity of my life, and this is what I miss at present so dreadfully and so painfully ! " LIFE IN ZURICH 361 He felt instinctively tliat he conld work best in the Swiss solitude, where he could have plenty of tonic mountain air as brain food, without having to dissipate his energies in rehearsals and other practical work, which always exhausted him for the time being. Here, too, he is safe from all danger of political molestation. To the Swiss authorities he was no exile; his expulsion would have had to be specially demanded by the Holy Alliance, and in that case he could have saved himself by immediately becoming a citizen of the Swiss repub- lic. Hence he remains indifferent to the renewal, in 1853, of the warrant against him, in consequence of the rumor that he was about to visit Germany. All police authorities were again admonished to keep their eyes open, and, in case of his capture, to forward him at once to Dresden. There was also, at one time, a rumor that he had been pardoned. The postmaster of Hansen came running breathlessly to his house with the newspaper containing the (false) report; but, to his astonishment, the exiled composer remained " terribly indifferent " to this bit of news. To avoid police interference with his letters, he had them sent at first to the address of his sister-in-law, Natalie Planer, at Zurich. Swiss postal arrangements were rather primitive in those days, and his letters contain constant references, which now seem quaint, to expensive postage, to forwarding newspapers and scores by freight-wagon in order to save expense, and the like. Occasionally lie is short of stamps, and then he begs his correspondent to get even with him by not prepaying postage on Ids next letter, in turn. During his ten years' sojourn at Ziiri(!li, he repeatedly 362 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING changed his residence. His ideal of a home for a work- ing artist was a little villa overlooking the lake, with flower-garden, animals, and rooms for visiting friends. For a time he lived in Zurich; then (in 1850 and 1851) in a house by the lake, known to his friends as " Villa Rienzi." Among these Ziirich friends were Baumgartner and Alex. Miiller, musicians; Sulzer, Hagenbusch, can- tonal officials; Wille, a Hamburg journalist who had gone back to live in Switzerland, the home of his ancestors; Herwegh, the well-known poet; and Wesen- donck, a retired merchant of wealth, who was fond of music, and whose wife was one of the first and most ardent Wagner enthusiasts. The Willes, at their charm- ing villa at the neighboring Mariafeld, were often visited by Wagner in company of Herwegh or of Liszt, when the great pianist happened to be at Zurich; and for a time he lived with the Willes altogether as their guest. Frau Wille was a novelist of some note, and she has contributed valuable material to the personal side of Wagner's biography by publishing,^ with a running com- mentary, fifteen letters of his. Fran Wille had first met him at Dresden in 1843, and his appearance had made an indelible impression on her memory : — "the delicate mobile figure, the head witli the mighty forehead, the keen eyes, and the energetic traits about his small, firmly closed mouth. An artist who sat next to me, called my attention to the straight, projecting chin, which, as if cut from stone, gave the face a peculiar character. Wagner's wife was of pleasing appearance ; she was gay and talkative, and appeared to be especially happy in society. He himself was very animated, self- conscious, but amiable and free from affectation." 1 In the Deutsche Rundschau, May and June, 1887. LIFE IN ZURICH 363 Neither Wille nor Herwegli was musical, but that made no difference to Wagner, who, as his writings at- test, and unlike musicians of the old type, took a deep interest in many tilings not connected with his own art. To Wille he said one day: "You are not musical; you say that you create nothing! But what of that? You have life. When you are present, original ideas come into one's head." It was about this time that he was first introduced to the works of Schopenhauer, by Herwegh, who had brought them to Marienfeld : " Wagner, with incredible rapidity of conception, soon had sped through the phi- losopher's works. He and Herwegh Avere astounded at finding the world's riddle solved. Resignation and asceticism — that was to be the goal of mankind. " And now followed long discussions on this system of pessi- mism, which Wagner could lay as an unction on his many wounds. Herwegh was a great linguist, and an enthusiast for foreign poets, and it was probably the contagion of this enthusiasm that inspired such passages as the following in Wagner's letters to his friend Uhlig: — "To you and K. I recommend my new friend, the English poet Shelley. There i.s but one German version of him, that by Seybt, which you must get. He and his friend Byron together make a perfectly delightful man." "Get the poems of Hafis. . . . This Persian Hafis is the gbeatest poet that ever lived and wrote. — If you do not immediately buy him, I shall despise you beyond measure: charge the costs to the 2\innhduser account." Besides thus widening Wagner's literary horizon, Her- wegh was a friend who offered to translate Tarmhduser for him into French prose; who accompanied him on 364 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S BING excursions and to hydropathic establishments ; gave him hygienic advice (" for the present Herwegh is my physi- cian; his physical and physiological knowledge is great, and in every respect he is more sympathetic to me than any doctor ") ; and one of Herwegh' s most important achievements was that he helped in securing a good por- trait of Wagner of that period. As the latter relates to Uhlig (April 9, 1852) : — "I wrote to you about a painting animal who wanted to catch me : it is done. The first portrait was bad, because the idiot did not understand me. Then Herwegh came to the sittings, and under his minutest guidance — with his intellect and practised eye — a really good portrait has been obtained, which will soon appear here ; and yesterday I offered it to Breitkopf and Hartel for publication." While Herwegh and Wille were not interested in music, Frau Wille was, and thus it happened that Wagner occa- sionally showed himself in his element at her house. He would sit at her piano and play from Tannhduser and Lohengrin, from memory. "At the same time he explained the events on the stage, and hinted at the plot, singing the text softly. It was a remarkable and unique way of making us realize what we could not see with our eyes and hear interpreted by an orchestra. Of the work on which he was engaged Wagner did not speak, but he did dwell on the pleasures of idling. In his amiable mood he expressed sat- isfaction with the progress of his work." On another occasion, when Herwegh and Wille were discussing philology and natural science, Wagner came to the ladies with the remark, " the other two are digging roots again; that will take up some time." He laughed and opened the piano. A MODERN PROMETHEUS 365 "I shall never forget," continues Frau Wille, "how, before he began to play, he explained to us the character of the Ninth Symphony, and proved the necessity of the chorus and the Hymn to Joy for the completion of the great tone-poem. ... I have often since heard the Ninth Symphony, but this allegro vivace alia marcia I have heard only once. . . . Wagner looked serious, dig- nified, yet amiable. An old Zurich lady, our neighbor, usually most sedate and hard to move, was electrified when subsequently he played with great enthusiasm and in all its grandeur the chorus, ' Seid umschlungen, Millionen.' In the midst of it he stopped. ' I cannot play the piano, you know,' he exclaimed. 'You do not applaud. Now finish it yourselves ! ' " About Christmas, 1852, Wagner read his Nibelung Trilogy to his friends at Mariafeld, in three evenings. Subsequently he read them, with Rheingold, to a larger circle at the Hotel Bauer in Zurich. On the former occa- sion, "I spoiled Wagner's humor," Frau Wille relates, " by leaving the room on the last evening while he was still read- ing. My little boy had fever and wanted me. When I appeared the next morning, Wagner said that the boy was not dangerously ill ; that it was a disagreeable criticism on an author, to leave in that way ; and he called me 'Fricka.' That settled it ; I did not protest against the name." A MODERN PROMETHEUS The charming glimpses of Wagner's life during the first five or six years at Zurich thus given by Frau Wille, and corroborated by the composer's own letters, show that if he had been an ordinary man, such as nature produces by the dozen {Duzend-Waare der Natm; as Schoi)C'nhauer calls them), he Avould have had reason to be contented and happy, liut he was neither contented nor happy — excejjt when he was hard at work on his 366 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING Trilogy. There were indeed moments when he looked at the world in a cheerful spirit. In one of these — during a spell of unusually good health — he writes to Uhlig : — " I now take a childlike interest in things to which I had already become indifferent — e.g. about our new house, which is certainly- small, but cosy and quiet. With true childlike joy every day I bring in something to make our exile-home more complete and comfortable. So now I have had my ' complete works ' bound in red : there are already five volumes ; the three opera poems will make the sixth. These trifles exercise a beneficent and diverting effect on my over-excited mind, just as a hip-bath soothes the head ; and, like this, I intend those to form part of my regime. Besides, my artistic plans are spreading out before me, and ever becoming richer, more pleasurable, and more decided ; and it is with quite a thrill of delight that I think of soon working them out." (Nov. 28, 1851.) Similar moments of delight came to him when — as rarely happened — he received news of a good and suc- cessful performance of one of his operas, as for instance at Breslau, in October, 1852 ; an event which gave rise to this outpouring : — " The postman has just interrupted me by bringing me a letter from the Breslau Kapellmeister, about the extraordinary success of the first performance of Tannhauser : the man writes quite beside himself with joy and ecstasy, and I myself am so delighted with it, that I cannot continue my letter to-day, because my peace has been completely taken from me, and this time in such an agreeable manner ! ' ' But these moments of rapture the reader of the three volumes of Wagner's Correspondence will find quite exceptional. Usually the wind blows from the opposite quarter : — A MODERN PROMETHEUS 367 "I lead here entirely a dream-life: if I awake, it is to suffer," he ^vrites to Liszt. " How foolish it is in you to still make efforts to help me. . . . AVhat could help me? My nights are mostly sleepless — weary and miserable I leave my bed to see a day before me which is destined to bring me not one joy. Surroundings which only torture me and from which I withdraw only to torture myself in turn ! Whatever I touch I loathe. — This cannot continue thus ! I care no longer to live." Again, on Jan. 15, 1854 : — " Dear Franz ! None of the past years has gone by without having at least once driven me to the very verge of suicide. . . . I cannot live like a dog, cannot sleep on straw and drink fusel : I must have some kind of sympathy, if my mind is to succeed in the toilsome work of creating a new world." Many pages might be filled with such bitter outpour- ings into the hearts of Liszt and Uhlig. Wagner w^as not a cold-blooded military hero, or a stolid, soulless Philistine: he was a man of genius, an imaginative artist whose nature and mission was the expression of emotion. Ordinary people cannot conceive how intense must be real and 23e7'sonal emotions to a genius who can give such powerful expression to imagined woes as he has done in his tragedies. His feelings, his moods, were too vivid to be repressed: "I cry out when I feel pain," he exclaimed; and his moods and desires changed as suddenly and as violently as those of a child. One moment he rails at the idea of the "future," rails at fame, and at all his ideals; the next moment he curses the whole world because he hears that somewhere one of liis operas has been performed without regard to those ideals ! One day he avers that he is already completely indifferent to praise and recognition; the next day he 368 WELDING THE NIBELUN&S RING declares he can live no longer without some signs of appreciation; and coddles himself with the thought that women, at any rate, favor him. Let not Philistines judge such a man from their own unemotional point of view. Rather, let them read his Correspondence and learn therefrom how they would feel and act under his circumstances if they were men of genius. To one of the most heart-rending effusions received by him, Liszt replied: — " Your letters are sad — and your life sadder still. You want to go out into the wide world, live, enjoy, revel ! Ah ! how cordially I wish you could ! but do you not feel, after all, that the thorn and the wound which you have in your heart will leave you nowhere, and can never be healed ? — Your greatness constitutes also your misery — the two are inseparably united, and must ever annoy and torture you." Liszt here puts his finger on the wound : Wagner was a modern Prometheus, whose vital organs were daily gnawed at by critics and other Philistines because he had had the audacity to steal from heaven the fire of genius — a blaze which showed their own lights to be mere tallow candles. Wagner compares himself to his idol : — " Strange that my fate should be like Beethoven's ! he could not hear his music because he was deaf. ... I cannot hear mine be- cause I am more than deaf, because I do not live in my time at all, because I move among you as one who is dead, because the world is full of — fellows ! . . . Oh that I should not arise from my bed to-morrow, awake no more to this loathsome life ! " The chief torture lay not in his exile, not in his inabil- ity to return to Germany; it lay in the fact that, on considering the real state of affairs, he could not tvish to A MODERN PROMETHEUS 369 return to Germany: "I am glad that the royal Saxon police makes it impossible for me to attend the perform- ances of my operas, which, after all, would only annoy me." "I am glad not to hear all the wretched perform- ances of my operas in Germany, which would probably only break my heart." This is the key to his unhappi- ness in Zurich. He had composed three operas, with a pen dipped into his heart-blood, and these were now being mutilated by conductors, misinterpreted by singers, misrepresented by critics, misunderstood by the public; while he, the exiled father, had to witness from a dis- tance this prostitution of his noble offspring — a Prome- theus Bound, unable to help himself. Let us look at the situation fairly and squarely. He had composed the Flying Dutchman, Tannhiiuser, and Lohengrin, and knew that they were three of the best operas then in existence, while the world at large did not know this. You might say therefore that the musi- cal world was not to be blamed for not receiving these operas as we now think they ought to have been received — with open arms. True: we may absolve the public from blame, but we cannot absolve the musicians and the critics. It was their duty, on meeting with a new form of operatic art, to study, learn, investigate, before they misperformed and then condemned. But had they any opportunity to learn, when the composer was an exile, unable to come and teach them? Plenty of it. Wagner had confidence in Liszt as in his alter ego; Liszt was willing and glad to accede to his wishes that he should superintend the performances of liis operas in Berlin and Leipzig, in order to see that tliey were correctly inter- preted and their success made possible: but the foolish 370 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING managers and jealous condvietoi-s refused to accept Ids ser- vices, though offered free! The details of this extraor- dinary proceeding may be found in the Wagner-Liszt Correspondence, and they constitute one of the most astounding chapters in the history of music. More than that : they weened they knew better than Wagner himself. At least, they and their singers took no pains whatever to learn his intentions from his writ- ings. Take, for instance, the TannMiuser Guide, to which we referred in the chapter on that opera. That essay was at first intended as a contribution to Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik. But after he had finished it he concluded that it would accomplish its mission much more thoroughly if it were published as a pamphlet. Accordingly he had it so printed at his own expense, poor as he was. Then he sent copies to the leading opera- houses, and a large number also to Uhlig, with the request to give one gratis with every copy of the score that was sold. A few conductors, like Liszt at Weimar, and Schindelmeisser at Wiesbaden, paid attention to it; but these were exceptional cases. In Munich the six copies provided by Wagner were found, many years later, uncut, in the library of the opera-house ! In Leipzig the result was still more peculiar. On Oct. 1, 1852, Wagner wrote to Uhlig: "To-day I have received W.'s letter, containing the announcement that after taking cognizance of my guide to the performance of TannJiciuser, the Leip- zig theatre was obliged to give up this opera, and that the score was sent back to you." Please note that this was Leipzig, only forty years ago — Leipzig, which, as all the histories of music tell us, had been raised by the efforts of Mendelssohn to the rank A MODERN PROMETHEUS 371 of the musical centre of Germany ! Do you wonder that Wagner was subsequently so anxious not to have Lohen- grin produced in that city, when they wanted it there? He refused permission at first, but finally yielded, because he needed the honorarium for his bread and butter; but Liszt's aid had been refused, and the result, as the reader knows, was a failure as miserable as that of Tannhiiuser had been in the same city a year before. The fact is so extraordinary that it must be repeated, in order to impress it on the memory — Lohengrin, forty years ago, was at first considered *' impossible " at the musical centre of Germany, then "tried" and "exe- cuted" mercilessly! And Leipzig Avas far from being alone in this matter : it marked the rule to which there were few exceptions. The German theatres in general considered Lohengrin almost impossible of performance. To quote only one witness on this point — the most reliable of all — Hartel, Wagner's publisher, wrote to him " in great distress " (Letter to Uhlig, Nov. 10, 1852) that " the director, etc., declared that my operas contained insuperable difficulties, ''and from most of the theatres (so W. said) the same complaints come in.' — Nice fellows those!" Did Wagner, then, exaggerate in speaking to Liszt of " the wretched state of artistic affairs " in Ger- many? Or can we wonder that, instead of welcoming a performance of Lohengrin at Dresden in the same year, he protested against it ? Protest against the production of his own opera? The absurd man ! Should he not, in his poverty, have wel- comed any and every performance, under any conditions? Many will think so, and at that time everybody but Liszt seemed to take that view. Wagner was of a different 372 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING mind. "How few men," he exclaims in one of his first letters to Uhlig — " how few men like themselves better than their stomachs!" He liked his own stomach very much indeed; he was a born epicure, and no one ever craved comfort and luxury more than he did : but not an inch did this make him budge from what he considered his duty to his ideals. He would have received the same sum of money whether the opera was to be poorly performed or well; yet he preferred no performance at all to a poor one. It was not eccentricity, bvit the nobility of his artistic character, that made him write such sentences as these : " I will not allow Lohengrin to be given at Leipzig, even if I provoke public scandal over the matter. I am going to see if these people will be able to avoid knowing who I am ! " " I have withdrawn Lohengrin everywhere for this winter" (1852). Think of an artist being compelled by his conscience to take such measures against his own favorite work, five years after its completion, — a work which on the other side he was yearning with all his soul to send out into the world, — and you will comprehend the melancholy moods and mixed emotions expressed in his letters of this period. And when, in the following year, he nevertheless yielded to importunities and ceded his early operas to the theatres, you will understand why those emotions became still more mixed and painful. " And this torture, trouble, and care for a life which I hate, which I curse ! — and for this to make myself ridiculous in the eyes of my visitors, — and to enjoy at the same time the ecstasy of having given up the noblest work of my life to the foreknown bungling incompe- tence of our theatre-rabble and to the derision of the Philistine ! " He regrets bitterly having *' prostituted " Tannhdtiser A MODERN PEOMETIIEUS 373 and Lohengrin by giving them up to " the devil, that is, the theatres " : " Oh, how proud and free was I when I still reserved these works for you alone at Weimar! Now I am a slave and utterly helpless." But there is still one hope and consolation — the Nibelnng's Ming. That shall have a better fate, or perish! "If I die without having produced that work, I leave it to you; and if you die without having had opportunity to per- form it in a worthy manner, you — will burn it : — let that be agreed upon ! " What annoyed him beyond measure was that — apart from Liszt — most of his intimate friends, even, were too obtuse and too philistine to comprehend his attitude toward his own operas. It was bad enough to have his publishers complain that he was too fussy. " Hartel wrote to me (recently in answer to my offer of Iplii- genia and the Faust overture for publication) in a most caterwaul- ing and discouraged tone about my conduct, declaring that I made it so difficult, and almost impossible, to all the theatres to give my operas : that my treatment of Leipzig was too discouraging, my demands for mise-en-scene too reckless, etc." Wagner, of course, insisted on these conditions be- cause he knew that only if the operas were correctly performed, would a permanent success be possible. It was more discouraging still to have even his bosom friend Fischer consider the Tannhcmser Guide a rather foolish thing on the whole, he being of the opinion that the way for his operas should be made as smooth as possible. On this ])oint Wagner expresses himself to Heine (De- cember, 1852) in clear and forcible language : — "The small attention which G[enast at Weimar] paid to all my hints and directions, appears to have made your hair stand on end. 374 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S EING And yet Papa Fischer blames me so much for my Guide to Tann- hduser — he always imagines it to be my sole concern to see my operas performed, and that it is therefore ' unwise ' to make so many out-of-the-way demands ! I have indeed good ground for shame to have been misunderstood on the most important points even by you and him. I care absolittely nothing about my things BEING GIVEN ; I am only anxious that they should be so GIVEN as I intended ; he who will not and cannot do that, let him leave them alone. That is my whole meaning — and has Fischer not yet found that out ? O you hardened sinner ! Na, greet him heartily." It is not strange that, ever since the days of Plato, Philistines have regarded men of genius as madmen. Wagner surely was a madman ; for does he not confess that after the Loliei\grin fiasco at Leipzig he was on the point of risking his liberty by going to Germany to set things right? And did he not brood over the wrongs done to his operas, until they became the cause of a persistent nightmare? "For a long time," he writes to Fischer, "I have been con- stantly dreaming that I was back in Dresden, but secretly hidden in your house ; and just as secretly you brought me into the theatre, and there I heard one of my operas, but all wrong and out of time, so that I became wild, and wanted to shout out loud, from which you, in great alarm, were trying to stop me." THE "circus HULSEN"iN BERLIN How wise he was in insisting on correct performances of his works (as music-dra???as not as mere lyric operas), is shown by the simple fact that when TannJiduser, in 1890-91, was put on the stage anew at Dresden, Berlin, and Hamburg in exact accordance with his intentions, the number of performances of that opera was raised THE " CIRCUS HULSEN " IN BERLIN 376 from nine, thirteen, and six in the preceding season, to eighteen, twenty -nine, and eighteen respectively; that is, it was doubled in Dresden, more than doubled in Ber- lin, and trebled in Hamburg, although in this last case they did not even use the Paris version, with its scenic splendors. Yet it was at Berlin — which, in the season of 1890-91 led all Germany with eighty-one Wagner performances, and which, in the same season, celebrated its three hun- dredth performance of Tannhduser — that the most as- tounding farce was enacted over this opera — a farce so long drawn out that Tannhduser was not heard there till more than ten years after its premib'e at Dresden, and until after forty other cities had heard and applauded it. The story of this farce is such an interesting chapter in the history of musical Philistinism, and illustrates so vividly what practical difficulties and what kind of man- agers and conductors Wagner had to contend with all his life, that it may here be told in some detail.'' Although Tannhduser was first produced in Dresden in 1845, the Berlin authorities do not appear to have ever seriously meditated its performance till about seven years later. In August, 1852, Wagner writes : — "I do not yet know how matters stand with Berlin: I have demanded a honorarium of 1000 tlialers, assigning good reasons for my demand, and have given them clearly to understand that I will not prostitute myself again for Berlin at such a cheap rate." (His Rienzi and IlolUhulcr had been cruelly treated there.) " Probably they will decline : I must risk it. If I accomplish anything, it can bo only by terrorism." 1 The facts are gathered from about fifty of the letters that passed between Wagner and his correspondents. 876 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING To Liszt he wrote about the same time, begging him, if he could sacrifice the time, to go to Berlin and ensure a correct performance by supervising the rehearsals. Liszt replied that he approved of his " exceptionally high terms," under the circumstances, and that he was quite willing to go to Berlin, provided he received an invita- tion from the Intendant to assist at the preparations. But the Intendant, Botho von Hiilsen — mark his name ; it will often recur in the remaining pages of this biography — was more of a Tartar than Wagner and Liszt knew when they began dealing with him. In the first place, he put his foot down on the one thousand thaler honorarium. The composer yielded, in part, accepting, instead, a tantieme, or percentage, of the box office receipts. By this arrangement, he consoled him- self, he might "with luck, gain more than a thousand thalers." In the second place, the great Botho von Hiilsen was offended by the proposal that Liszt should attend the rehearsals of the opera. He seemed to look on this as a personal insult to his conductors. By September the outlook had become discouraging. It had been " discovered suddenly that Tannhliuser could not be produced on any one of the royal birthdays." The opera could not, according to Wagner's calculations, be given before January, and as his niece Johanna was to leave Berlin in February, he felt compelled to make the condition that ten performances for that winter be guaranteed him, "to avoid the risk of having this opera also put aside after the third or fourth performance, like the Dutchman and Bienzi, which had been declared fail- ures for that very reason." If this guarantee were refused, he was determined to take back the score. This TEE '' CIRCUS HULSEN'' IN BERLIN 377 time, von Hiilsen was more tractable. Johanna was to remain in Berlin longer, and Hiilsen assured him by letter that he hoped to give the opera more than ten times and would undertake to arrange for six perform- ances in the first month. "In short," thought Wagner, "the matter is in order." He even heard that they were thinking in Berlin of soon following up this opera with Lohengrin : " The Princess of Prussia has heard it again lately (October 2d) at Weimar, and has probably made things hot for Hiilsen.'' A few weeks later the tide had turned again, and the composer poured out his sorrows into Liszt's heart in a letter dated Nov. 9 : — "Hiilsen has declined [to accept your services]. I enclose his letter. He has no conception of what is in question here, and I shall never be able to make him understand. This Hiilsen is per- sonally an amiable man, but he has not the slightest knowledge of the business over which he is called to preside : about Tminhduser he treats with me as with Flotow about Martha. It is most disgust- ing ! . . . From all the reports by Hiilsen and my brother I had meanwhile seen clearly that these people are entirely without un- derstanding of what is essential and important to me in this affair ; tliat all their views are so hopelessly bounded by matters of rou- tine, as to make nie fear that they would not at all comprehend my wish to have you called to Berlin. I confess that for this reason I went about it with some feelings of apprehension 1 At last I wrote to Hiilsen himself, taking great pains to be as explanatory, thor- ough, cordial, and persuasive as possible : I called his attention in advance to the fact that the possible hostile feeling that might be aroused in the (most insignificant) Berlin conductors, was null and void compared with the favorable influence in my behalf which you would exert in every direction ; in short, I wrote in sucli a way that I considered an unfavorable reply quite Impossible. — Now read the enclosed answer and convince yourself that I have once more suffered my usual fate of crying out with my whole 80ul.' and striking against walls of leather." 378 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING Hiilsen had promised that after the Queen's birthday (Nov. 13, 1852) Tannhduser should be forthwith put into rehearsal. But he did not keep his promise. In the following January Wagner heard from his niece at Berlin that Flotow's Indra and Auber's Lac des Fees were to be given before his opera. This was too much for his irascible temper. He wrote to Berlin that he considered such treatment in the light of an insult, and demanded back his score. Liszt approved of this movement, adding: "But whether they will comply with your demand is a differ- ent question. " Wagner replies promptly : " You fancied they would not return the score I had demanded back from Berlin : this time you erred ! The score was sent back at once, and neither Hiilsen nor any one else wrote me a word about it." One thing was gained by this : all previous negotia- tions and concessions were now annulled, and could be renewed in a different form. Liszt, relying on his diplomatic skill, advises his friend to put the matter henceforth in his own hands, and Wagner wisely accepts his suggestion: "Twice I have produced an opera of mine in Berlin and on both occasions I was unfortunate ; this time I should therefore prefer to leave the undertak- ing entirely in your hands." This was written in March. In the following month the question entered into an entirely new phase. There was a project of giving Tannhduser at a non-royal theatre in Berlin, — Kroll's, — which both Wagner and Liszt approved of. Another offer was to take the Leipzig company over to give a performance at another subordinate Berlin theatre ; this Liszt declined; and as for the project at Kroll's, THE ''CIRCUS HiJLSEN'' IN BERLIN 379 that was frustrated by the sly machinations of Hiilsen, who secured an order forbidding the performance oi operas like Tannhduser at the smaller theatres! The next step was an attempt to give Tannhduser at Kroll's as an operatic concert (without scenery and action), in Avhich form it would not have clashed with the new law; but this scheme was wisely frustrated by Liszt; and when still another project appeared, — a desire on the part of the Konigsberg troupe to give the opera in Ber- lin, — Wagner himself sent in his veto. More than a year after the Tannhduser score had been returned to its author without an answer, the courteous Herr von Hiilsen endeavored to reopen negotiations by writing a short note to Liszt, asking under what condi- tions he would grant permission to produce Tannhdxiser in the following winter. In his reply Liszt dwelt on the facts that if Wagner imposed special conditions on Ber- lin, it was because he attached special importance to a successful performance in that city, and its consequences ; that these conditions were solely made in order to insure an effective performance, and therefore a popular success ; that the author's pecuniary demands Avould not be exces- sive ; and that he himself, though he would have to give up a month of his time, would not ask for any compen- sation. But Hiilsen did not approve of this letter. He declared he was " unwilling to agree to any conditions which would reflect on the dignity of the Institute and its capability, or affect the authority of its Intendant " ; adding, "I demand the composer's confidence in me and the royal stage." To which Liszt replies with a final eloquent effort to convince Hiilsen of the reasonableness of Wagner's conditions : Surely he must know, as an 380 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING expert, how greatly the success of dramatic works depended on the manner of their performance; must know, for instance, how largely the popularity and impressiveness of Spontini's and Meyerbeer's operas in Berlin were due to the co-operation of their composers at their production; to which Liszt adds his ultimatum that if Hiilsen does not agree to his co-operation in Wagner's place, matters must be left in statu quo. And what did Hiilsen reply to this? Here is the con- clusion of his letter : " That, after two vain attempts to secure this work for the royal theatre, the management can undertake no third, as long as I have the honor to stand at its head, is self-evident. I regret this." But it was not the last time; for in March, 1855, Wagner informed Liszt that Hiilsen had applied to him again through Fromman (for the last time, as he said!); he promised him all imaginable things ; the opera was to be given in the autumn. Tired of the whole business, and feeling greatly in need of money (he was in London at that time), he gave his consent — a proceeding which for a moment piqued Liszt, in whose hands the whole matter had been placed. But the great pianist adored his friend too much to bear any resentment against him for this slight business irregularity. On the contrary, in October he took extra pains with a performance of Tannhduser which was given at Weimar for the special edification of the Berliners, — Intendant Hiilsen, Conductor Dorn, Tenor Formes, tlie regisseur, etc. And when, on Jan. 7, 1856, Tannhduser was at last produced in Berlin, Liszt sent this telegram : " Yesterday Tannhduser. Excellent performance. Wonderful scenery. Decided popular suc- cess. Good luck to you." THE " CIECUS uilLSEN'' IN BERLIN 381 A letter followed, with details. The diplomatic Liszt had succeeded where his brusque, free-spoken friend had failed. It need hardly be said that the visit of the Ber- liners to "Weimar had been a ruse arranged by Liszt for dodging the difficulty of his giving any direct instruc- tions to Conductor Doru — which would have offended that dignitary's pride. Nay, the wily Liszt even suc- ceeded in making the Berliners — Hiilsen and Dorn — invite his co-operation at the preparations in their city, — not at the orchestral rehearsals; that would have hurt Dorn's feelings, — but at the preliminary piano-forte rehearsals. Of course there could be no objection to that, even on the part of the most conceited of conductors; for was not Liszt the greatest pianist in the world, and would not any opera-house be glad to accept his ser- vices at the piano rehearsals of an opera, especially when they were given free of charge? Dorn took great pains with the orchestra, Johanna Wagner and Formes were excellent, and so Liszt was able to write on the whole a favorable criticism of the performance (Correspondence, No. 209). There is reason to believe that the Princess of Prussia had, as Wagner suspected, " made things hot for Hiilsen " ; for the King himself had suddenly taken such an interest in the matter that he had ordered the scene of the second act to be a faithful copy of the restoration plan of the Wartburg, and for this purpose had specially sent Gropius to Eisenach. The result of these measures was that Liszt could write that he had "never and nowhere seen anything comparable to the splendor of this scenic outfit." Such, in brief, is tlie story of the ten years' struggle to force one of the most beautiful and popular operas ever 382 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING written, on the Intendant of the Berlin opera-house. And if this tale does not explain to the reader why- Hans von Biilow once referred to that institution as the "Circus Hulsen," the fact that the same Intendant repeated exactly the same farce, equally prolonged, with the Nibelung^s Ring, twenty years later, will make the matter clear, apart from Billow's personal provocation. Hiilsen's folly, moreover, was emphasized by the results. He had refused $750 for all the rights to Tannhduser, but this opera became at once so popular that he had to pay the composer over $1300 in tantiemes the first year. This we know from a letter^ addressed to Director J. Hoffmann of the Josefstadter Theatre in Vienna, a short extract from which will also show how recklessly Wagner sometimes bartered away the copyright of his works : — " Ziirich, March 14, 1857. Dear Friend ! Let us cut the matter short ! You pay me for every performance of Tannhduser §20, sending me $400, or the receipts for the first twenty performances, in advance. For the following thirty performances you will pay me the tantiemes every quarter ; after the fiftieth all my claims shall cease. My terms are based on my Berlin experiences ; there, where the performance is not at all according to my desires, every performance brings me an average of $60 or more. In course of the first year there were twenty- two repetitions.' n Subsequently, however, Hulsen deliberately neglected this opera, and the composer's income dwindled. MONEY TROUBLES Some of the most despondent pessimistic moods recorded in Wagner's Correspondence were brought on 1 Manuscript, in Oesterlein's Wagner-Museum in Vienna. MONEY TROUBLES 383 by the prolonged Berlin squabble, and his despair of ever gaining foothold in the Prussian capital. The mat- ter was a most serious one to him. When Tannhduser made its tardy entrance in Berlin, he had already fin- ished the composition of Rheingold and half of the Walk- lire, — works of his third style, — and Berlin was still a stranger to his second style ! Moreover, it would have been a great boon to him if he could have had an income in Berlin from his early operas, while he was composing his Trilogy in Switzerland. There was hardly a day when he was not harassed by petty money matters, which took up a good part of the little energy which his poor health usually left him for work. When his Cor- respondence with Liszt appeared, most of the German reviewers, with a malice equalled only by their obtuse- ness, derided him for his "impudence" and "shameless- ness " in constantly borrowing money and accepting presents from Liszt and other friends. But the melan- choly fact is that he had no choice whatever in the matter: either he had to do what he did, or else give up music altogether; which, for a man with his instincts, was as impossible as for a fish to stop swimming. His pecuniary embarrassments would have never assumed quite so serious an aspect had not a few indiscretions, at the beginning of his professional career, plunged him up to the ears in debts, which weighed him down for many years. These indiscretions were the outcome of his belief in his genius and its financial value — a belief which to-day we all share, but in which he was unluckily too far ahead of the world. I refer to the incidents related in the preceding pages of his bor- rowing money to bring out his Novice of Palermo (an 38-1 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S EING opera no worse than hundreds that have succeeded for a time, and which failed only from a curious combination of untoward circumstances) ; and more especially to his rash act in assuming the publication of his own Rienzi, Dutchvian, and Tannhduser, for which undertaking he borrowed several thousand dollars. As his Rienzi had been a sensational success in Dresden, and the other two works far from financial failures, what could have been more natural than the sanguine belief of the young com- poser that his operas would soon enable him to repay the borrowed sum, and enrich him besides? Publishers have since made hundreds of thousands out of those operas ; to the composer himself they were only a source of daily mortification. We have seen, too, how unsuccessful he was in all his efforts to make a living, even by the hum- blest sort of drudgery, such as he offered to do during his three years at Paris ; what wonder that he left debts everywhere, and that when for the time he had some humble employment, or a small salary, he almost always had to ask for part of it in advance? He had an advance of salary at Riga when he fled to Paris ; an advance at Dresden when he had to leave that city ; when he left Paris for Dresden, Sohlesinger had paid him in advance for some arrangements he was to make of the scores of Meyerbeer's Robert and Halevy's Reine de Chypre; and Weimar, thanks to Liszt, paid him in advance for the projected Young Siegfried to enable him to devote his time to its composition. He was anxious to pay off his debts, and for this purpose he had put aside all the income from his scores. But here, as in everything else, ill luck pursued him. When his early operas began to make their way, a brisk MONEY TROUBLES 385 demand soon sprang up for these scores, and if the busi- ness had been properly managed, it would soon have proved remunerative; but he himself, being an exile, could not look after it, and all his appeals to the pub- lisher Meser — and ultimately to the creditors themselves to take the matter in their hands for their own benefit — were futile. When one edition was exhausted, Meser had made no preparations for a new one; when an arrangement of Tannhduser for piano alone was in great demand, none was provided; managers, singers, and amateurs frequently had to write repeatedly, and wait weeks, before they got an answer to their demands for scores; and so things went on year after year, from bad to worse, and in the meantime the creditors worried the poor composer to death. Besides having these debts, he was handicapped by being called on to support not only himself and wife, but his wife's parents. Sometimes it would take the last penny in the house to make up the twenty or more thalers which Minna sent to pay the expenses of her parents in Dresden. Let the following, from a letter to Uhlig (Oct. 1, 1852), be an illustration of the sorry plight to which the household was often reduced. Money was greatly needed, but a small sum was soon expected from Leipzig, where Tannhduser was to be produced, when the news came that the project of giving the opera had been abandoned : — " Whereupon my wife suddenly begins her lamentation, that to- day was the first of October, and that she was disconsolate at not being able to pay the rent for her parents ! That is indeed the cruellest part of it ; 7 have momentarily no money at all, and if Frankfurt does not send some soon, I shall be in a sorry plight. 386 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING Now you spoke to me lately of the savings bank of your children, of a father-in-law who might help in a moment of need. Tell me, could you expend ten thalers for me till November (when you will again receive R.'s money for me) and give them in my ncme to my mother-in-law ?" Imagine the composer of Lohengrin having to rack his brain with such far-fetched, positively ludicrous plans to meet his self-assumed obligations! The author of operas whose mere interpreters often receive a thousand dollars for one evening^ s work! Who does not feel how pathetically Wagner was right when he exclaimed in reference to an offer to go to America, some years later : "Great Heavens! such sums as I could earn (??) in America people ought to give me for a present, without asking anything else in return than w^hat I am now doing, and which is the best I can do." And who does not realize the gross injustice in the world's relative treatment of creative men of genius and mere inter- preters which is brought out by the following passage in a letter from Liszt : " Dawison told me the other day that his recent series of performances in Berlin paid for the purchase of a villa near Dresden. — At this rate you ought to be able to buy with your scores all Zurich, besides the seven Churfursten and the lake ! " ^ Not only was he denied his liberty, and often the com- 1 The Vienna Neue Freie Presse of Oct. 28, 1892, contained the in- formation that " the Vienna Court Opera alone pays the annual sum of 7000 to 8000 florins in tantiemes for Wagner's operas." Now the num- ber of performances of these operas in Vienna is about fifty a year, and almost a thousand in the cities of Germany and Austria. The receipts in Berlin, Municli, Dresden, Hambur.i;, average at least as high as those in Vienna. Allowing for operas on which copyright has expired and for smaller receipts in smaller cities, the annual profits on Wagner's operas (Bayreuth included) must amount to ful.'y $50,000. A thousand MONEY TROUBLES 387 nion necessities of life, while lie was creating these profitable works ; his detractors continued even after his death to misrepresent his character and his actions. To take one example out of many. In the preposterous parody of Wagner's life perpetrated a few years ago by Mr. Joseph Bennett (London Musical Times) we read in regard to the period at which Ave have now arrived: " But of practical work, like that by which Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert honestly earned their bread, there is not a syllable, nor apparently a thought. To beg, AYagner was not ashamed." A short recapitulation of facts will enable the reader to judge INIr. Bennett's competence as a vera- cious biographer. During his conductorship at Madge- burg, Konigsberg, Riga, and Dresden, Wagner worked as few Kapellmeisters ever work. In Paris, during his first sojourn, he had tried almost everything but boot-black- ing or street-sweeping to make his living; he had been there again recently, trying to find an opening for work, or performances that would help him. He had within a few years written three immortal operas which to-day support thousands of musicians, and which he had reason to hope would support him. He had now in his mind no fewer than^ve projects for new operas, one of which he intended to work out for Paris immediately ; he had commenced his Nibelung Trilogy, to which he was soon to devote all his time; he tried to make a little money dollars a week for the heirs, and ten times that amount for the opera- houses and their employees, while the creator of all this wealth could not even scrape up enough to permit him to compose without being interrupted by the pettiest pecuniary cares. I may add here the signili- cant fact tliat not one of the malicious reviewers of Wagner's Corre- spondence, who dwelt so long on his obligations to Liszt, alluded to the fact tliat he was, on his part, supporting Minna's parents. A curious phenomenon, this hatred of genius by the Philistines ! 388 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING with concerts and operatic performances in Zurich; he wrote articles for periodicals, and essays, which he sent from publisher to publisher, trying to get respectable terms for them; was it Ids fault that he received only $80 for an essay on which he had been hard at work for four months {i.e. at the rate of five dollars a week)? Could he be expected to accept the conductorship of the Zurich Opera for ten dollars a week "at hard labor"? Was he not right in exclaiming (Aug. 7, 1849): "Ali, children, if you only gave me the income of a middling mechanic, you would truly feel joy in the outcome of my undisturbed work, which should belong to you all"? Details regarding the efforts to support himself at this period are given in the letters to Liszt (Nos. 20, 23, 25, etc.) ; at the same time he confesses frankly that he is good for nothing except composing operas. If he had been less of an egotist, if he had thought of the greatest good of the greatest number, he would of course have given up music and become a farmer, a merchant, or a hod-carrier. The world would then have lost its greatest music-dramas ; but think how the Philistines would have been pleased! and are not the Philistines in the majority? Do not thousands of Philistines make their living by writing essays and articles for periodicals, by the col- umn, which Wagner considered "humiliating" in his own case, even though he got five dollars a week for it? What a contemptible character — to have done nothing but write the Dxdcliman, Tannliduser, and Lohengrin, and then to cry out like a child because he "cannot have everything his own way" (as Mr. Bennett says); i.e. because he cannot get money enough for his daily bread while he is anxious to write more operas like them ! MONEY TROUBLES 389 The only source of income on which, he could count during these years at Zurich was from the sale of the performing rights of his operas to the German theatres — usually a mere pittance. The large cities, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Stiittgart, where he might have asked larger sums, were, as we have seen, the last to accept his operas. He knew the reason for this very well: it was because those large cities employed opera-composing conductors, who were not pleased at the idea of encountering such a formidable rival on their own premises, and who, Avhen at last com- pelled by the popularity of these operas in smaller cities to accept them, often did their best to kill them off by means of wretched performances. Poor fellows ! They found each of these operas a hydra-headed monster, against whom all mutilations were unavailing. "What princely sums he obtained for the performing rights of his operas may be inferred from the fact that Berlin was scandalized at the very thought of $750 for Tannhiinser, and Munich would not listen to such a sum as $500. Hamburg refused to pay $250, while Leipzig found $140 "exorbitant"! Breslau paid about $80; Wiirzburg gave $37 ; Cologne could not, for a time, raise $50; and the smaller cities ranged from that sum down to about $25 ! These payments, of course, were made but once, and in many cases he found it so difficult to get even this one payment that he finally had to invent a scheme for compelling payment in advance by means of a postal arrangement which he called a Ztvangspass. Bremen tried to dodge all payment by bringing out one of the operas without notifying liim at all. Moreover, tlie operatic " gold-mine " was soon exhausted. In April, 390 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING 1852, he writes: "The receipts I can count upon are becoming fewer and fewer, — to judge by Leipzig, — and I must deem myself lucky if during this whole year I get something from Weimar for the Flying Dutchman.^' And in February, 1853, after Berlin had returned his score : — "Kassel, too, has now demanded the score of Tannhduser : that, I think, ends the matter, and I count on no further theatre. So that I now can overlook my profits from this glorious business : most meagre it is, and I must thank God that the family R. con- tinues to assist me, else I would — after procuring a few very necessary supplies for the house and for personal wear — again be reduced to absolute destitution — thanks to the noble assistance of glorious Germany." FRIENDS IN NEED The friend he referred to as R. was Frau Julie Ritter in Dresden, who supplied him every year with a small but regular sum, till the end of 1856, when he dispensed with it. Had it not been for the generosity of this woman and of Franz Liszt, it is quite probable that destitution would have driven him to suicide, which frequently suggested itself to him : at any rate, he would not have been able to write the poem and music of the Nibelung^s Ring ; perhaps he would have followed the plan, which repeatedly suggested itself to him, of going to America to make his fortune. Whether he would have succeeded is doubtful ; he certainly did not succeed when he tried, in 1855 and 1860, to make his way in London and Paris. His day had not yet come. When the contribution from Frau Ritter was ex- hausted, and nothing else in sight, he appealed to the FRIENDS IN NEED 391 large-hearted Liszt, and hardly ever in vain. Unfortu- nately Liszt had at this time given up his remunerative career as pianist, which had yielded him thousands in one evening, and commenced writing compositions for orchestra, which not only brought him no profit, but actually entailed on him the expense of printing them for the benefit of a world which did not want them. He had accepted the post of conductor at the Weimar Opera, with an annual salary of less than $1000, and was called upon to support his tliree children and his mother. Yet he usually managed to find something to help out his needy friend, either in his own pocket, or by appeal- ing to some one in Weimar, Vienna, or elsewhere. A few concerts, one might think, would have helped radi- cally; but Liszt was unwilling to play any more, appar- ently for social reasons connected with his relations to the Weimar Court and his intended marriage. *' The concert-career," he writes, "has been closed for me more than two years, and I cannot incautiously enter it again without seriously prejudicing my present position, and especially my future." Like Eubinstein and other great virtuosi, Liszt threw his money out of the window with both hands while he had plenty of it. During his first triumphal tour through Europe, his mother sent her friend Belloni especially to Paris to see that he did not squander all his earnings. He was the most prodigal of the prodigal race of artists, and at the same time the most generous. One of liis historic achievements was his doing the lion's share in earning a sum sufficient to support the deaf and hel[)- less song-comjioser, Kobert Franz, through life; another, the building of the Beethoven Monument at Bonn; and 392 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING everybody knows how lie devoted several hours almost daily during the last thirty years of his life to teaching pupils, talented and untalented, without ever asking a penny in payment. Yet when the Wagner-Liszt Corre- spondence appeared, the Philistines raised a tremendous outcry over the revelation that Wagner, when he had no other resource open to him, asked Liszt, a dozen times or so, to send him money. ^ As a matter of fact, it was the bitterest grief of Liszt's life that he could not send his friend v^ore than he did, and the deepest joy of his existence that Wagner had chosen him as his bosom friend and protector. " It is the task of my life to prove worthy of your friendship," he exclaims in one letter; and in another: "I have declared our maxim to be : that our iirst and principal duty at Weimar is to give Wagner's operas selon le ban plaisir de Vauteur.'''' Again: " My sympathy for you, and my admiration of your divine genius, are truly too serious and too sincere to allow me ever to take offence at any opinion you may express." " On reading your last letter I wept bitter tears over your tortures and wounds." "Of the close of the Preface to the three opera poems I do not speak. 1 There is nothing in the history of German journalism more revolt- ing than the tone of many of the criticisms that were written on the appearance of tlie Wagner-Liszt Correspondence. The same nation that had ignored its Bach, that had kept its Schubert in such poverty that his brother had to pay for his funeral, that had buried its Mozart with half-a-dozen other paupers, in one grave, without even marking it, — this same nation sat and quietly endured the spectacle of journalistic harpies defiling the memory of Richard Wagner with their scurrilous comments. Will the decent Germans ever rise in revolt at this inde- cent treatment of their men of genius ? I fear not. To realize how incredibly brutal German Philistinism is, we should recall the fact that when the government had voted a pension to the poor deaf Robert Franz for his masterly edition of Bach and Handel, a clique was formed against him, which succeeded in getting the pension revoked ! Fortu- nately, the two Hunf/arians, Liszt and Joachim, provided him with the means for keeping the wolf from the door. FRIENDS IN NEED 393 It touched me in my heart of hearts, and I wept a manly tear over it." "I cannot say anything else to you than that I am constantly thinking of you, and that I love you with my inmost heart." ^Vlaen affairs at Weimar began to take an nnfavorable turn for Liszt, owing to petty and vulgar intrigues, lie wrote that only his interest in Wagner kept him there; in short, he looked on the promotion of Wagner's cause as the chief mission of his life, to which he subordinated even his own creative activity. " How good, how wise, how tender, and patient he is, I know," says the Princess von Wittgenstein in one of the cordial letters to Wagner which are printed with those of her friend Liszt. Dr. Hanslick says of Wagner's letters: — "There is something positively unmanly, indecorous, in the voluptuous eagerness with which Wagner nurses his own dejection and despair ; still more in the way in which he thrusts every despondent mood, every momentary gi'ief, with a thousand thorns into his friend's heart." This is the Philistine view of the matter. What the genius, Liszt, thought of it, has been shown in the cita- tions just made, and is summed up by the Princess in these words to Wagner : " Your letters afford us such a joy as gold pieces would bring to sufferers accustomed only to blows or to common copper coin. We implore you to bestow this alms on us often, since it does not impoverish you." We may go a step farther and assert that Liszt's let- ters in this Correspondence are less interesting than his friend's, chiefly for the very reason that he is less egotistic, and but rarely pours out his griefs and joys into the other's heart. Egotism, in common mortals a 394 WELDING THE NIBELUNCVS RING vice, is ill the works and letters of luen of genius tlie supreme virtue. Psychology is enriched by every scrap of ejiistolary information imparted by genius in moments of confidence or excitement. Wagner repeatedly implored Liszt to be less reserved in his personal coimuunications, but Liszt seemed to prefer to make his letters little more than echoes — answers to his questions and commissions, encouragement to work, advice to be diplomatic, to avoid politics, to be courteous to Philistines, etc. ; and it is only in the later period that he has also some interesting com- munications regarding his own compositions. But in one respect Liszt's letters are unique and marvellous: they are a monument to his kindness of heart and self- obliteration in the interest of a friend, such as no other artist has ever reared for himself. Next to Liszt, Uhlig was the most useful and devoted friend of the exiled composer. We saw in a preceding chapter how this gifted musician had been converted from a scoffer into a friend, and had even given up his own career as composer in order to place himself com- pletely at the service of a man who could write such an opera as Tamilmuser and interpret a Beethoven sym- phony as he did. Uhlig was the first journalistic cham- pion of Wagner, the first Wagnerite. He wrote articles for the Neue Zeitsclirift fur Musik and other papers, of a decidedly radical and fearless nature, as may be inferred from his statement that he considered Liszt's Prome- theus to be worth more than all Mendelssohn! Wag- ner frequently suggests a topic to him; advises him on one occasion to drop polemics, on another to treat the enemy only from a humorous point of view. To him he sent advance copies or the manuscript of his essays, FRIENDS ly NEED 395 with a view to a discussion of their contents in the press. Uhlig not only attended to all this with the zeal of a convert and enthusiast, but he became Wagner's general commissioner or agent, tending to the sale of scores, to negotiations with theatres (so far as Liszt did not look after that), paying obligations due, raising loans, making alterations, copying, etc. He also made the excellent pianoforte score of Lohengrin. Of course, for some of these services, Uhlig, who was as poor as a church- mouse, was paid ; but no money could have paid for his patient work in behalf of his exiled friend. Wagner is constantly apologizing in his letters for his incessant calls on Uhlig's good nature; but Uhlig was not only glad but proud of his position, which he insisted on retaining even when his last illness had brought him to death's door. Wagner was persistently urging him to leave Dresden and come and live with him in Switzer- land to restore his health. Once Uhlig did scrape up enough money to visit Zurich; but sliortly after his return he began to succumb gradually to lung disease. The last letters to him are full of tender solicitude and hygienic advice; Wagner wants him to come and share his home; but on Jan. 3, 1853, he died, and the loss to the world was as great as Wagner's personal loss ; for had Uhlig lived ten years longer, we should doubtless have another volume of letters, full of valuable details regard- ing the most interesting period in Wagner's life — the.. later years of liis exile, during which lie wrote his great- est works — most of the Nibelung's Rivg besides Tristan and Isolde. Uhlig has had his reward for his sacrifice and devoted friendship. As a composer, he would have sunk into oblivion lung ago; as Wagner's first i)ress 396 WELDING THE NIBELVNG'S EING champion and principal correspondent (after Liszt), his name will live forever in musical literature. After Uhlig's death Fischer became chief commis- sioner, till he too died, in 1859, at the ripe age of sixty- nine, while Uhlig was, like Schubert, carried away at thirty-one. The personal relations between Wagner and Fischer were as cordial as those with his other friends ; but the old chorus-master was something of a Philistine who did not understand the great reformer's ideas fully, nor know how to make allowance for his eccentricities and moods, as Liszt and Uhlig did. Hence Fischer was constantly taking offence at something or other that Wagner said or did, — always ready, however, to for- give, to listen to his explanatory and apologetic pleas. It must be admitted that there are passages in Wagner's letters to most of his friends which it must have taxed their good nature to overlook. He knew this himself better than any one; and on one occasion he wrote to Uhlig: — "Truly, in our intercourse, if one of us two need to make an apology, it is I once and always. Pay no attention if, now and then, something in my letters vexes you. Unfortunately, I am often in such bitter humor, that it almost affords me a cruel relief to offend some one ; ^ this is a calamity which only makes me the more deserving of pity." HYGIENE AND GASTRONOlVrZ Surely the disappointments and annoyances, domestic and artistic, pecuniary and operatic, to which Wagner 1 The amiable Schumann, in one of his private letters, uses almost the same words that I have here italicized, in describing one of his own occasional moods. George Sand generalizes this trait in the remark that men of genius " are worse to their friends than to their enemies." HYGIENE AND GASTRONOMY 397 was subjected almost daily, are sufficient to account for all the moods discharged in his letters, even those in which his best friends had to serve as lightning rods. But there were other clouds to darken his life and occa- sion electric discharges of temper: the darkest of these was his ill health, which, as Liszt once suggested to him, was really the source of much of his misery and pessi- mism. "Wagner, in fact, is one more name added to the long list of men of genius who lived to a good old age and accomplished an enormous amount of Avork although they seldom enjoyed perfect health. We have seen that in his infancy he had a mild attack of the typhoid fever which ravaged Leipzig after the great and decisive battle with the French: this attack may have weakened his system permanently. He was delicate throughout his childhood, and erysip- elas, a disease which harassed him all his life, made its appearance during his schooldays. "Every change in the weather was a trouble to him," says Praeger: — "As regards the loss of his eyebrows, an affliction which ever caused him some regret, Wagner attributed it to a violent attack of St. Anthony's fire, as this painful malady is also called. An attack would be preceded by depression of spirits and irritability of temper. Conscious of his growing peevishness, he sought refuge in .solitude. As soon as the attack was subdued, his bright animal spirits returned, and none would recognize in the daring little fellow the previovus taciturn misanthrope. ' ' The annoyance and torture caused by this disease in later years was sometimes almost past bearing. For instance, in the winter of 1855-6 he had no fewer than twelve relapses. "I had foreseen tliis last attack," he writes to Liszt, 398 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING "and had therefore been subjected to constant anxiety and tor- ture during Tichatsclieli's twelve-day visit ; this abominable dis- ease has degraded me deeply : in May alone I had three relapses, and even now hardly an hour passes by in which I do not dread a new eruption. Hence I am not fit for any work, and it is evident that I must seek a radical cure. This calls for a painfully con- scientious regulation of my diet and habits of life ; the slightest irregularity in stomach or bowels immediately affects my malady. Absolute quiet is called for, avoidance of all excitement, all annoy- ances, etc., further Karlsbad water, certain warm baths, later cold ones, etc." What made this pertinacious disease especially unbear- able to him was the fact that exposure to the air often brought on a new attack. He was thus compelled to spend weeks at a time indoors, and this, to a man so devoted to fresh air and out-door exercise, was torture indescribable. Dyspepsia, insomnia, and rheumatic heart-trouble took turns with erysipelas in lowering his vitality. Both the insomnia and the heart -trouble were probably mere sequels of the dyspeptic trouble, which was partly a result of his starvation period in Paris, while partly he was himself to blame. Like so many brain- workers, he maltreated his stomach. He ate too fast, thus making the stomach do work that should have devolved on the teeth. Whenever he was in condition to write he worked too hard, too persistently, and neglected the precaution of leaving off some time before a meal. He probably did not know that this is a frequent cause of dyspepsia among authors; but in a general way he knew that he was misbehaving, physiologically speaking; for in a letter to Frau Eitter ^ he says : — 1 Langhans's Geschichte der Musik, p. 492. HYGIENE AND GASTRONOMY 399 " In composing, I usually work excessively, and also provoke the just indignation of my wife by being late at meals : so that I always begin the second half of the day in a most amiable mood." In a letter to F. Heine he thus sums up the whole matter : " As to my gloomy days, I can the rather keep silence, as they mostly come from overwork and nervous exhaustion ; for then I certainly look with an eye of despair on the wretchedness of the present order of things." Liszt — who had an excellent digestion — he apostro- phizes thus : " Provide yourselves, O ye unfortunate men, with good digestions, and suddenly life will present an entirely different aspect from what you, with your gastric trouble, have been able to see ! " And he proceeds, with humorous exaggeration, to trace all the evils of politics, diplomacy, vanity, and science to — disordered abdomens. Ill health devoured a great deal of valuable time and energy that otherwise might have been converted into immortal works of art. Sometimes he could only work two or three hours a day (in place of his former five or six), a few hours of sleep being necessary after this exer- tion, in order to rest his brain. In September, 1852, he found that even one short hour was all the work he could endure. Theoretical writing was especially fatiguing to him, and after such exertion, " a sharp knife often cuts into my cerebral nerves," he says. So carefully did he have to husband his strength that he rarely permitted himself to write — even letters — in the afternoon or evening. Matters were aggravated whenever that pecu- liarly disagreeable and depressing warm wind known as the Fohn blew, as it often does in Switzerland for weeks at a time. Indeed, Wagner was, like most men of gen- ius,^ peculiarly susceptible to climatic and atmospheric 1 See Lombroso's The Man of Genius. 400 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING influences. Winter was his abomination, and he usually postponed the beginning of a new composition till spring or summer. The suicidal thoughts which he says visited him fre- quently were no doubt inspired by a combination of these physiological disturbances with some depressing news relating to his operas. In his sober moments nothing was farther from his thoughts than the notion of ending his life voluntarily. When not urged into imprudent excess by the demon of unrest and the deli- cious craving for creative work, he formulated a set of hygienic rules which he carefully followed. Unfortu- nately he had no good medical advice, but tried to diag- nose his own malady by reading books. This led him repeatedly to submit to hydropathic treatment; and most heroically did he carry out for weeks at a time such an exacting regimen as this : — "This is how I spend my day: 1. Early, at half- past five, wrapping up in a wet sheet till seven o'clock ; then cold tub and a walk. Eight o'clock, breakfast : dry bread and milk, or water. 2. Again a short walk ; then a cold compress. 3. About twelve o'clock, rubbing down with damp towels ; a short walk ; another compress. Then dinner in my room, to avoid indigestion. An hour's idleness ; a stiff walk of two hours — alone. 4. About five o'clock; rubbing down with a wet cloth, and a short walk. 5. About six o'clock a hip-bath, lasting a quarter of an hour, followed by a walk to promote circulation ; another compress ; supper about seven o'clock ; dry bread and water. 6. Then a w^hist party until nine, after which another compress, and then about ten o'clock to bed. I bear this regime very well now ; perhaps I shall still increase it." He soon found that this treatment was altogether too much of a good thing for him, and concluded that — since HYGIENE AND GASTRONOMY 401 he could not afford to go to Paris and put himself iu charge of a specialist — careful and long-continued diet- ing was his best remedy. In July, 1853, he went to St. Moritz in the Engadine to see what the hot springs there, noted as a remedy for dyspepsia, would do for him, combined with an altitude of six thousand feet. The surroundings were grand, but he felt lonely and deserted; glacier expeditions did not, in his then physi- cal condition, agree with him, and the weather was unfavorable, so that he longed to leave, and seek sunny Italy. " Whether this cure has done me any good, the sequel must show, " he writes : " on the whole I have no desire to repeat it; I am too restless to give up all activity for so long a time; in short, I am not a man for 'cures' — I can see that now." He was right; had he better understood the art of loafing (mentally), his health would have suffered less, and he would have found it easier to follow Liszt's advice that he should ignore the critics, drink a bottle of good wine, and work his way up to life immortal. It is almost pathetic to note his childish joy on the occasional days Avhen he felt perfectly well. " My light- ness of head and general state of bodily well-being open up to me a new world," he exclaims on one occasion; and on another : — " For the last three days my bodily health has so improved, that I often feel in the highest spirits : it is the light healthy blood which is now filling my veins. Besides, fine weather has set in with the new moon. I often feel at times like these as if I were gently and pleasantly intoxicated. Oh ! what is all wine intoxication com- pared with this feeling of most joyful ease, which often has no moral foundation 1 " 402 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING It was one of the maxims of these water-cures that all stimulants — tea, coffee, wine, tobacco, etc. — must be given up. For a while he submitted to this patiently, drinking only water and milk. Before long, however, he found that milk did not agree with him, as it pro- duced acidity of stomach, whereupon he launchetl out into a terrific tirade against the lacteal fluid, declaring that warm milk is the proper nourishment of infants, but that no animal drinks cold milk, and that to put such milk into the stomach of an adult — especially one whose nerves are in a state of constant activity — simul- taneously with meat, is an absurdity. Then he gives this gastronomic formula, which is an excellent one for brain-workers : — "The right thing for us is — enjoy everything, but within the bounds of moderation, as taught by self-observation and experience. As coffee (generally) is hurtful to my nerves, I take roast meat — preferably game — early in the day, with a draught or two of good wine. Your oat meal gruel does not please me: so take game — hare ! Game, while providing a maximum of nourishment, requires a minimum of digestive power; and it is imperative for you to gain strength through nourishment." As regards the use of wine, he expresses strong disap- proval of those who are unable to be social without half intoxicating themselves. One time he relates how he has resorted to English cookery, — vegetables boiled in water, and meat roasted on a spit, which his wife had to procure specially, — and then he continues : — "Last Monday, in honor of our wedding anniversary, my Swiss confederates spent the evening at my house. They boozed, as is their wont ; and my disgust at this hard drinking, without which these unfortunate fellows have not a spark of mirth or wit, com- HYGIENE AND GASTRONOMY 403 pletely convinced me of my real cure. I can no longer conceive that anything could happen, or that I could fall into any misfortune, which would make me again have recourse to wine, beer, etc. So I revel in an enjoyment of health of which — as I now consciously feel it — I had no conception." Tliis was iu 1851, but his good health did not last, as we have seen; neither did his resolution to abjure vv'ine; and later on he returned to a sensible maxim expressed on an earlier occasion, that " although it is through water that we become healthy, we are not really healthy until we are also able to drink wine in moderation." Kor could he prevail upon himself to give up the dis- agreeable habit of taking snuff, to which he was a real slave. In August, 1853, various things had happened to inspire him with a tcedium vitce and suicidal thoughts : " To heal my diseased cerebral nerves, my physician has persuaded me to give up snuff once for all : I have now- abstained for six days, and what that implies, none but as passionate a snuff-taker as myself can imagine. I see now that snuff was really the only pleasure which I had 'on and off ' : now- I have to let that go too. My present sufferings are indescribable, but I shall persevere, that's certain. Therefore — no more snuff-boxes: hereafter 1 shall only accept orders." The playful turn with which this lamento is closed is almost as characteristic a trait of Wagner as of Heine. A few years later we find him again more devoted to snuff than ever. Praeger describes a scene in London (1855) when Wagner sat at the piano, playing from bis own scores and Weber's, when he "abruptly stopped singing, on finding his snuff-box empty, and got into a childish, petty fit of anger. He turned to us in deepest 404 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING concern with ' Kein Schnupftabak mehr, also Kein Gesang mehr' (no more snuff, so no more songs) ; and though we had reached the small houi's of early morn, would have some one sent in search of this necessary adjunct." Praeger says that Wagner did not really care for snuff, but this, as a preceding quotation shows, is absurd. It may be, however, that he " allowed the indelicacy of the habit " and knew that it aggravated his dyspepsia. He was, in a word, a slave to snuff. For smoking he cared less. LOVE OF NATURE AND TRAVEL Keaders of musical biographies are aware that most of the great composers were passionate lovers of Nature — of the beautiful scenes and the inspiring solitude it offers, far away from the haunts of men. Beethoven confessed that he often preferred the company of a tree to that of a man ; many of his best musical ideas came to him on his daily walks, listening to the sounds of Nature, or to the strains evoked spontaneously in his brain. Mozart composed (mentally) always and everywhere, in a stage- coach as easily as in his workroom; but his favorite abode was an open garden-house : here, he said, he could compose more in a day than in a closed room in several days. Weber, like these masters, composed preferably on his solitary walks, and so did Wagner.^ There were some exceptions to this rule, among whom Berlioz may be named, who confessed that he could not " sketch the moon except in looking at its image reflected in a well." To Wagner, he wrote, in 1855: "So you are about to melt the glaciers by composing your Nibelungen ! 1 Details on these habits of the great composers are collected in my Chopin, and Other Mvsical Essays ("How Composers Work")- LOVE OF NATURE AND TRAVEL 405 . . . That must be superb, to write thus in presence of a grand nature ! " So Wagner thought, and his great and constant desire while in Switzerland was to have a house of his own overlooking a lake, with the mountains beyond. This desire was not an outcome of mere love of luxury and elegance, but an instinctive craving for the scenic splen- dors and cool breezes which stimulate artistic creation. Not that he did not also have, like most artists, a great craving for luxury: he was, in fact, inclined to epicurism, even sybaritism, and the greatest marvel about him is that, with such a disposition, he should have chosen, in devotion to his art-ideal, a life of debt and privation, when he might have revelled in wealth and luxury if he liad only been willing to write more operas d. la Meyer- beer, like Rienzi. He speaks, in one of his letters to Liszt of the Verschwendungsteufel, or demon of extrava- gance, which took possession of him in furnishing a house beyond his means. In another, dated Nov. 16, 1853, he explains that the uncertainty of his operatic income and the sanguine habit of hoping for more than he actually gets leads him to spend more than he has ; and he con- fesses his " doubtless censurable habit of leading a some- what more comfortable life than in the last few years." liut these extravagances were confined to very narrow limits by the smallness of his income; and the only times when they reached a more considerable sum were on the occasions when he indulged his passion for travel, to see the natural beauties of Switzerland and Italy. Surely it would be most uncharitable to chide the poor, ill, hard- working composer, whose every fibre craved rest and recreation, for indulging his taste for domestic comfort 406 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING and once in a while tliat for travel, even if he had to do so at the expense of the willing Liszt. " Oh if I only conld for once make a pleasant journey this Slimmer!" he exclaims in April, 1852: "If I only knew how to go about it. . . . This yearning for travel is so intense in me that it has already inspired me Avith the thought of a burglarious and murderous attack on Eothschild & Co."^ On another occasion, two months before his fortieth birthday, when all his schemes seemed to fail, and he was tormented by sleepless nights, he wrote that he must have a change in his life : "I shall try to get money, m every conceivable way: I shall borrow and — steal — if necessary, in order to get the means to travel. The more beautiful part of Italy is closed to me (as long as I am not amnestied) ; hence I shall go to Spain, to Andalusia, shall seek companions — and try once more to live, as well as I may. I should like to make a trip around the world ! If I fail to get money — or — a this trip also fails to put fresh breath into my life — then — there is an end, and sooner will 1 commit suicide than continue to live in this way." From his home in Zurich he made frequent short excursions into the Alps and among the glaciers; the brief descrijitions of these trips he gives to his friends show that mountains were as much a passion to him as to Byron. In July, 1852, Liszt had sent him |80 as hono- rarium for the Dutchman at Weimar : " This I am now spending in travelling. Every day costs me a number of the oj^era." ^ This sentence and the following one, strange to say, have escaped the attention of Mr. Joseph Bennett, who might have easily proved from these self-confessions that Wagner was a potential thief and murderer, who only needed an opportunity to carry out the black designs of his villanous soul. LOVE OF NATURE AND TRAVEL 407 "I have now been travelling for six days: I can count each day by my treasury, for each one costs me regularly a twenty-franc piece. It is splendid here, and in thought I have travelled much with you. Yesterday I descended from the Faulhorn (8261 feet). There I had a grand and awe-inspiring view of the mountain, ice, snow, and glacier-world of the Bernese Oberland, which lies straight before one, as though one could touch it with one's hands." He adds that he walks well and is sound on his legs ; but his brain is too excited, and he never has true rest, but only lassitude. Yet "no cure in the world is of any avail where only one thing would help — viz. , if I were different from what I am. The real cause of my sorrow lies in my exceptional position towards the world and towards my surroundings, which can no longer give me any joy; everything for me is martyrdom and pain — and insufficiency." A touch of Schopenhauer follows this diagnosis of his discontent : — "Again, on this journey, amidst wonderful nature, have the human rabble annoyed me : I must continually draw back from them in disgust, and yet — I so long after human beings; — but this pack of lubbers ! Fie upon them ! There are magnificent women here in the Oberland, but only so to the eye ; they are all tainted with rabid vulgarity." One more short passage may here be quoted by way of illustrating Wagner's literary art whenever he is not hampered by motapliysical stilts: an account of a two days' trip over the Gries glacier from Wallis, through the Formazza valley, to Domodossola : — "The Gries is a magnificently wild glacier pass, a very danger- ous one, and traversed at rare intervals by people from the Hash Valley or Wallis, who bring southern goods (rice, etc.) from the Italian valleys. For the first time on my journey there was mist 408 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING on the glacier heights (over 8000 feet), so that my guide had diffi- culty in finding a path over the cold walls of snow and rock. But the descent ! leading down gradually from the most gruesome ice- regions, through many a sloping valley, through all the ranges of vegetation of northern Europe, into the rank luxuriance of Italy ! I was quite intoxicated, and laughed like a child, as I passed out of chestnut groves through meadows and even cornfields, com- pletely covered with vine trellises (for that is how the vine is generally cultivated in Italy), so that I often wandered under a covering of vine similar to our verandas, only extended over whole acres, on which, again, everything grows that the soil can produce. And then the ever-enchanting variety in the forms of mountains and valleys, with the most delightful cultivation, charm- ing stone houses, and — all through the valley — a fine race of men. Well, I cannot describe it all, but I promise you to go again over the Gries glacier with you. ... In the evening I drove in a retour-coach from Domodossola to Baveno on Lago Maggiore : this trip was the crowning glory ; I was in an ecstatic frame of mind when at last I passed from wild grandeur to picturesque loveliness. ' ' At this place he sent for his wife, and with her con- tinued his journey to Chamonix and Geneva. He had, for years, wished to see Italy, with the longing of a Goethe — especially Naples, which for political reasons was inaccessible to him as long as he was an outlaw. "If I lived in Naples or Andalusia, or on one of the Antilles," he wrote to Liszt, "I would write much more poetry and music than in our gray nebulous climate, which always disposes us only to abstract speculation." This, of course, was a winter mood; in spring and sum- mer he knew full well that the Swiss climate is an unequalled brain-tonic and thought-stimulator, and I am convinced that if Fate-had~ordered him to live elsewhere than among the bracing Swiss breezes, there would be less vigor, originality, and freshness in his Nibelung, Tristan, and Meistersinger scores. " ^ COMPOSITION OF EHEINGOLB 409 COMPOSITION OF RHEINGOLD In September, 1853, he made another much less pleas- ant trip to Xorthern Italy, the account of which he summed up to Liszt in half-a-dozen lines : — "In Geneva I became ill, felt with alarm my solitariness, endeavored, however, to force the Italian trip and went to Spezia ; the indisposition increased ; enjoyment was out of the question : so I returned (to Ziirich) — to die or — to compose — one or the other : nothing else was left for me to do. There you have my whole travel story — my ' Italian Trip. ' ' ' In a public letter to the Italian composer, Arrigo Boito, "written in 1871, when Lohengrin was being produced in Bologna, he again refers to this trip and its connection with Rheingold. " Be it a demon or a genius that oft rules us in decisive moments — enough: one night, when I was lying sleepless in a tavern at La Spezia, the inspiration to my Eheingold music came over me ; and forthwith I returned to my melancholy home to begin my over-long work, the fate of which now, more than anything else, chains me to Germany." By this we must not understand that the musical themes for the Rheingold poem now came to his mind for the first time ; for, as we shall see in a later chapter, he usually conceived his musical motives simultaneously with the writing of his poems. Tlie passage simply means that he settled in his mind that the composition of Rheingold was to be his next task. He had hoped that before com- mencing this score he might have the privilege of hear- ing his Lohengrin. "I must hear Lohengrin once: I cannot and will not write any more music before I have 410 WELDING THE NIBELUN&S RING heard that opera." This sentiment recurs again and again in his letters. Several times he was on the point of going to Germany in disguise to realize his wish ; had projects for settling in Paris in order to get a chance to hear at least some fragments; and at last succeeded in getting together an orchestra for a sort of Wagner fes- tival in Zurich for this special purpose. Bvit that was all he succeeded in doing in this direction. Had he kept to his original intention of not composing again before he had heard Lohengrin, Rheingold would have had to wait till 1859, when for the hrst time he heard that opera in Vienna. By that time, however, he had already completed Rheingold, Walkilre, half of Siegfried, and the whole of Tristan! In his "Epilogue on the Circum- stances and Events which Accompanied the Execution of the Stage-Festival-Play, The Ring of the Nihelung, up to the Date of the Publication of the Poem " (Vol. V. 377) he sums up this matter concisely : — " With great elation of spirit I began, after five years' interrup- tion of my musical productivity, to carry out the composition of Rheingold, toward the close of the year 1853. . . . The peculiar atmospheric freshness of my task, like bracing mountain air, carried me without fatigue through all the difficulties of my work, which in the spring of 1857 had got so far advanced as to include Rheingold, Walk'ure, and a great portion of Siegfried^ It is odd that here, as in his letters, Wagner should speak of a Jive years' interruption of his composition, when in fact more than six years elapsed between the two operas in question. Lohengrin was completed on Aug. 28, 1847,1 while it was not till October, 1853, that 1 The instrumentation, it is true, was not completed tiU the follow- ing spring. COMPOSITION OF EHEINGOLD 411 he wrote to Liszt: "To-day Bheingold coursed through my veins : if it must be, aud if it caimot be otherwise, you shall presently have a work of art which will give you — joy(?)!" Six months before, he had already expressed his confidence in the Nibelung music in these words : " Only let me once throw everything else aside in order to dive once more into the fountain of music, and there shall be created sounds that will make the people hear what they cannot see." On Dec. 17 he writes again : — " I am spinning myself in like a silk- worm ; but also from within myself am I spinning. Five years I have written no music. Now I am in the Nibelheim : to-day Mime tells his woes. Unluckily I had a bad cold last month, wliich made me interrupt my work for ten daj's, else I would have finished the sketch of the whole score before the end of the year. . . . However, it must be finished by the end of January." He kept his word; for on Jan. 15, 1854, he writes to Liszt: — "Well, Bheingold is done — more so than I expected. With what faith, with what joy, I began this music ! In a real frenzy of despair I have at last continued and completed it : alas, how I too was walled in by the need of gold ! Believe me, no one has ever composed like this ; I fancy my music is fearful ; it is a pit of ter- rors and grandeurs. Soon I shall make a clear copy, — black on white, — and that, in all probability, will be the end of it. Or shall I perhaps allow it also to be performed at Leipzig for twenty louis d'or ? . . . You are the only one whom I have told about this. No one else suspects it, least of all those who are about me." Shortly afterwards Heine was informed that Rheingold had been commenced early in November: "I got so en- thusiastic over it that until it was finished I had neither 412 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING ears nor eyes for anything else." In April he wrote to Liszt that he was at work on the instrumentation, and that by May everything would be finished — in pencil sketches, which would require copying. On May 27, to Fischer : " In these last days I have once more, after a long interval, finished a score {Rhelngold) : my fanatic interest in my work was towards the end so great that I postponed all letter-writing to its completion." Hardly was Rheingold completed when Die Walkure was begun. ^ In August, 1854, he was already hard at work on the sketch of the score. In October he sent the Rheingold score to Liszt, with the information that he had got into the second act of the Walkure ; in December the sketch was finished, and the following February, 1855, he had about completed the scoring of Act I., when his work siiffered a long and serious interruption by his four months' absence to conduct a season of Philhar- monic Concerts in London. We must therefore postpone further details regarding that drama till we have described that event, which forms one of the most inter- esting episodes in his life. Before passing on to it we must, however, speak of another important composition written, or rather rewritten, a few months before the journey to London, besides considering Wagner's merits as a conductor, by way of prelude to his London conduc- torship. A FAUST OVERTUEE It will be remembered that he wrote a concert piece, which he called an Overture to Goethe's Faust, in the winter of 1839-40, in Paris, in the midst of his struggles 1 He actually postponed the copying of his pencil-sketch of Rhein- gold in his eagerness to commence the new drama. A FAUST OVERTURE 413 to earn his bread and to win recognition as a composer. It had been really intended, as he explained some years later, to form the first movement of a grand Faust sym- phony. It was rehearsed for a Conservatoire concert, but not performed, because the directors concluded after the rehearsal that it was too enigmatic. In Dresden it was performed in July and Aiigust, 1844, but met with a very cold reception by the public and critics. Regard- ing this result Eoeckel wrote to Praeger : — " This is not to be wondered at ; for in the judgment of some here it compares favorably with the grandest efforts of Beethoven. Such a work ought to be heard several times before its beauties can be fully appreciated." In 1852, Liszt brought out this overture at Weimar, and Wagner wrote to thank him for it, adding: — "I cannot feel indifferent to this composition, even if there are many details in it which would not flow from my pen to-day : what especially suits me no longer is the somewhat too frequent use of brass. 1 If I knew that Ilartel would give me a handsome sum for it, I should almost feel inclined to publish the score with a ver- sion for the pianoforte, only I need to be urged ; for, of my own impulse, I do not like to luidertake such a thing." The plan seemed to take hold of his mind; for, not long after this, he begged Liszt to send him the score with a view to its revision and publication. Liszt immediately forwarded it, and, with apologies, made a few sugges- tions (Letters, No. 86) as to how it might be inaproved, especially by the addition of a tenchn- (Iretchen melody. Wagner replied that he was "truly delighted" with his friend's suggestion, and complimented him on his saga- 1 The overture was written about the time when the brassy Rienzi was completed. 414 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S BING city in having felt that there was something mendacious about a piece wliich pretended to be an overture to Goethe's Faust and in which woman is absent: — " But perhaps you would immediately comprehend my tone- poem if I named it Fanst in Solitude. When I composed it I intended to write a complete Faust symphony ; the first movement (actually written) was simply this Solitary Faust, in his longing, despair, and cursing ; the ' womanly ' only hovers over his fancy as a figment of his desire, but not in its divine reality : and this insufiicient image of his longing is precisely what he demolishes in despair. It was to be left for the second movement to bring for- ward Gretchen — the woman. I had the theme for it already, but it remained a mere theme — the matter was dropped. — I wrote my Flying Dutchman. — There you have the whole explana- tion. If now — from motives of vanity and weakness — I am unwilling to let this composition perish entirely, I must indeed work it over — but only as to the instrumentative Modulation ; the theme which you desire cannot possibly be introduced now ; that would make it an entirely new composition, which I have no desire to undertake. But if I publish it, I shall give it the correct title : Faust in Solitude, or Solitary Faust, a tone-poem for orchestra." In his reply Liszt said that Hartels would gladly undertake the publication of the overture, and once more suggested that in any case the original manuscript would gain by further elaboration. '' If you wish to give me a pleasure," he adds, "make me a present of the manu- script, when it is no longer needed by the printer. This overture has been so long with me, and I have become greatly attached to it ! " This was toward the end of the year 1852; and there the matter rested till Jan. 19, 1855, when Wagner again wrote, after hearing that Liszt had in the meantime written his Faust Symphony : " Absurdly enough, I have been seized just now by a vivid desire to work over my old Faust overture again: I have com- A FAUST OVERTURE 415 posed an entirely new score, have written the instrumen- tation anew throughout, made some radical changes, also given more elaboration and significance to the middle (second motive). In a few days I shall produce it at a local concert [Zurich] under the name of A Faust Over- ture. ' MOTTO. ' Der Gott der uiir im Busen wohnt, Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen ; Der iiber alien meinen Kraften thront Er kann nacli aussen niclits bewegen ; Und so ist mir das Dasein eine Last, Der Tod erwiiuscht, das Leben mir verhasst ! ' In no case shall I publish it." A few weeks later Liszt received a copy of the score, which Wagner was afraid would appear to him very insignificant by the side of his own Faust Symjihony ; and he explained once more that of Gretchen there could be no question, but always only of Faust. The intention not to publish the score was of course not kept. Liszt sent it to Hartel, who offered twenty louis d'or (f 80) for it, which Wagner accepted, as he happened to be in need of funds in London, and did not like to ask the directors of the Philharmonic Society to pay his salary in advance. His request that the pub- lishers should change their offer from twenty louis d'or to twenty pounds sterling was not granted. But Liszt delighted him with this assurance: "The changes which you have made in the Faust Overture are splendid, and have decidedly improved the work." The critics of course did not like the Faust Overture, which was beyond their comprehension. Some of them 416 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S RING condemned it as " programme music " d la Berlioz, after finding in it all sorts of Mephistophelean and Gretchen motives which the composer had never dreamt of. Dr. Hanslick, with his usual keen insight and vituperative vigor, found in it nothing but "an impotence which, in spite of its boastful extravagance, arouses genuine pity." Among men of genius, on the other hand, Liszt was not alone in discerning at once the beauty and grandeur of a piece which Moscheles praised, and for which in our day even the conservative and disappointed Kubinstein, with all his jealous hatred of triumphant Wagner, has con- fessed his admiration. In 1860, Dr. Hans von Biilow, who is universally admitted to be the greatest interpreter of Beethoven and, in general, the greatest living author- ity as to the intellectual interpretation of the classical composers, wrote a pamphlet of thirty-one pages ^ con- taining a poetic and technical analysis of this tone-poem, some of the most important points in which may here be noted. He points out that the composition in question is not a dramatic overture (like Beethoven's Coriolanus) nor a character-sketch, but an embodiment of a mood — ein Stimmungsgemdkle, — for which Liszt's happily in- vented term of "symphonic poem" might be used; and he proceeds to explain how a piece originally intended as the first movement of a symphony could be desig- nated an "overture." Then he notes the fact that "its subject (poetic content) is suffering, — not the j)ersonal suffering of a certain Faust, but sorrows of general human import. The hero therefore is not Goethe's Faust, but humanity itself." The reader knows that the 1 Ueber Richard Wagner's Faust-Overture. Eine erldnternde Mit- theilung an die Dirigenten, Spieler und Horer dieses Werkes. Leipzig: F. Kahnt, 1860. A FAUST OVERTURE 417 Faust Overture was written in Paris, vuuler the influence of a magnilicent performance at the Conservatoire of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Between this work and Wagner's overture, Biilow discovers an emotional resem- blance, and he adds this further detail : — "During his residence in Paris, at the time when the Fatist Overture originated, Wagner copied for himself the score of the Ninth Sympliony, which, note for note, remained so indelibly im- pressed in his memory that he was able, in 1846, when, after a long pause, the Ninth Symphony was, thanks to his efforts, brought again before the Dresden public as practically a novelty, to conduct all the rehearsals from memory.'''' Wlien we consider that in his Nibelung dramas Wagner opened up to us a new world of orchestral coloring, com- pared with which even the beauties of Lohengrin lose some of their lustre; and when we consider that the Faust Overture was written at the same time as the second of these dramas, — Die Walkiire, — we find it perfectly natural that Biilow should have exclaimed that this overture constitutes "a complete practical course in instrumentation " ; what we marvel at, and what future generations will marvel at more and more, is that the professional critics and other "experts" did not at once recognize the exquisite orchestral and harmonic novelties in the Faust Overture, and that its reception at first almost everywhere amounted to a fiasco. Doubtless the most ludicrous of all the charges ever brouglit against Wagner — and it has been brought time and again — is that he wrote music-dramas because he was unable to master the symphonic form sufficiently to write satisfactory concert pieces. Apart from the fact that in liis early youtli he wrote a symphony of per- 418 WELDING THE NIBELUNG'S EING fectly correct form, tlie woful ridiculousness of this charge is brought out by the fact that any talented con- servatory pupil can be taught to write a " correct " sym- phony. Third-rate composers like Lachner, Pleyel, Macfarren, wrote "correct" symphonies by the dozen. It is interesting to hear what Billow, the great authority on classical form, has to say on this topic : — " It is not possible to compose with more perfect organic unity of form tlian Wagner has done in the Faust Overture. Place any ' classical ' overture with an ' Introduction ' by its side, and see if Wagner's tone-poem does not throw it into the shade even for- mally." And as for the content, he exclaims that " not only tonal, but general emotional life courses through every vein of its form. Every note is written with a poet's blood." Finally I will quote a passage from Billow's pamphlet which cannot be too much commended to critics and amateurs : — "The new musical forms of Wagner escaped notice for the reason that they were new and, as it were, too colossal. We allude here not so much to the iinished art of the second finale of Tann- hduser, to which even Professor Bischoff did justice, i as rather, for example, to the first act of Lohengrin. Is not that a dramatic symphony cast in one mould, perfect in form? The poet here imposed upon the composer the necessity of erecting a tonal struc- ture, to which, IN REGARD TO BROADNESS OF DEVELOPMENT AND IMMENSITY OF CLIMAX, NO PROTOTYPE EXISTED. If yOU will COn- scientiously study this part in its main features, you will be unable to deny that Wagner has created here, specifically in regard to form, something absolutely new, an artistic whole, built up with- out any leaning on predecessors." 1 What generous condescension on the part of so great a man ! " Who wns Professor Bischoff," did you say? Why, he was — well, he is now known as the man who invented the term "music of the future" in derision of Wagner's Art-Work of the Future. In his day he was a rouch-feared musical critic. A FAUST OVEllTURE 419 When Biilow wrote this, Lohengnu was the latest and most mature of Wagner's oi)eras. But if the above is true of Lohengrin, — and to-day no one would be so fool- ish as to deny it, — what shall we say to the amazing formal mastery shown in the last act of the Gotterddm- mrniig? With that in mind, I, for my part, do not hesitate to say that this overwhelming climax, in which all the motives of the whole Tetralogy are woven into a web of wondrous complexity yet perfect perspicuity, makes Beethoven's form seem mere child's play in comparison, and surpasses even the polyphonic ingenuity of Bach's genius.^ 1 It takes some courage to make such an assertion to-day ; but I have no fear. The history of music has shown, during the last half- century, that those were always nearest the truth who were most dar- ing in their admiration of Wagner's genius. WAS WAGNER A GREAT CONDUCTOR? The Faust Overture, like the Siegfried Idyl and various operatic overtures and preludes, shows what Wagner might have accomplished as a composer for the concert- hall had not his poetic endowment craved as intensely for expression as his musical genius, thus urging him with every fibre into the music-drama. More wisely than some other composers, he recognized his true sphere at an early period, and limited his efforts almost exclu- sively to that. He knew that he was primarily a great dramatic composer, and it was only when creating music- dramas that he was thoroughly happy and contented; here his revolutionary mind could have everything its own way, and all his mental powers were called into healthful and pleasurable activity; whereas in writing concert pieces his poetic faculty would lie dormant; and if he tried any practical work, — such as conducting, — the doings of many of the executing artists, and the gen- eral inadequacy of means, fell so far short of his ideals that he suffered indescribable tortures — tortures which were increased if the baton was wielded by another, less competent conductor, in his presence. Hence, in course of time, he conceived a great aversion to all practical connection with the stage, while yet feeling that his pres- ence was imperatively called for if correct interpretations were to be obtained. 420 A THOROUGH DRILL-MASTER 421 This sensitiveness in regard to inadequate perform- ances was of course not a unique trait of Wagner's, but is characteristic of all great artists. Berlioz, for ex- ample, wrote: — " It is excessively painful for me to hear the greater part of my compositions played under any direction other than my own. I almost had a fit while listening to my overture to King Lear in Prague, conducted by a Kapellmeister whose talent is yet un- doubted. It is conceivable what I suffered from even the involun- tary blunders of Habeneck during the long assassination i of my opera Benvenuto Cellini at rehearsals." Similarly, Beethoven wrote, when they were rehears- ing his Fidelio in Vienna: — " Pray try to persuade Sey fried to conduct my opera to-day, as I wish to see and hear it from a distance ; in this way my patience will at least not be so severely tried by the rehearsal as when I am close enough to hear my music so bungled. I really believe it is done on purpose. Of the wind I will say nothing, but — . AW pp., cresc, all deer esc, and all /.,//., may as well be struck out of my music, since not one of them is attended to. I lose all desire to write anything more if my music is to be so played." Judge from such confessions whether Wagner exagger- ated when he exclaimed that he often suffered " all the tortures of Dante's inferno " with reference to the per- formances of his operas. A THOROUGH DRILL-MASTER It does not follow by any means that because a com- poser suffers from poor performances of his works, and knows exactly how they ought to be interpreted, he will 'But Berlioz had no pity for Wagner at the "assassination" of Tannhduser by Dietsch at the Opera in 1861. 422 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR for that reason make a first-rate conductor even of his own works, any more than it follows that a great poet must necessarily be a good reader of his verses or those of others. Some of the greatest composers were but indifferent conductors, nervousness, preoccupation, or diffidence making them poor commanders of a large force of obstreperous singers and players. As a rule it will be found that operatic or dramatic composers are better conductors than the writers of concert music, probably because dramatic composition is more directly allied to action. We should therefore naturally expect Wagner to have been one of the greatest conductors of all times, and this supposition is borne out by all the documents. Just as there are two classes of pianists, one of which is perfect in technical execution, but on the side of inter- pretation and expression is subject to the charge of monotony, coldness, or arbitrariness, while the other class is less perfect technically, but appeals more forcibly to the emotions ; so there are two kinds of conductors, perfect drill-masters on one side, who appeal primarily to the intellect by their precision and accuracy, while on the other hand we have those whose mission is to sway the emotions. To which of these two classes did Wagner belong? The accounts given in earlier chapters of his conducting at Magdeburg, Riga, and Dresden, both in the opera-house and concert -hall, show that he united the merits of both classes. As we are now approaching the period when, for the first and only time in his life, he accepted a special post as conductor of concerts (in Lon- don), this is the proper place for considering his fitnees for such a position more closely. A THOROUGH LRILL-MASTER 423 That he was a wonderful drill-master, his most rabid opponents never denied. The great Moritz Hauptmann, for example, who immortalized himself by the prediction that "not one note of Wagner's music will survive him," calls attention to his talent as a regisseur : " He arranges everything on the stage, down to the smallest details, and all with tact and ingenuity. — He seems to me rather an artist of a thousand faculties ( TausendJciinstler) than of one." In accomplishing such results in concert-hall or opera- houses as have been described in the preceding chapters, he spared neither singers nor players. But he him- self worked hardest of all, so hard that whenever, later in life, he had brought a work on the stage to his satis- faction, he always suffered from nervous prostration for weeks. No trouble was considered too great; he would even take individual members of an orchestra and drill them till they could play their part with proper expres- sion. Thus, writing to Ulilig (Xo. 5G) about a concert in Zurich, he says: "'The Egmont entr^acte I had prac- tised with the oboist in my own room, as if he were a singer : the fellow could not contain himself for joy at what he at last produced." With the singers he was of course always ready to go through such a performance. After assigning the parts of a new opera, the first thing Wagner did — and it seems strange that no one before him should have thought of such a seemingly essential thing — was to have all the singers meet for a "reading rehearsal," each artist reading his or her role, while he himself (or the stage-manager), score in hand, pointed out the relation of the verses to the music and the scenic situation. Then, in rehearsing their roles at 424 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR home, the singers had the initial advantage of seeing every song in its proper dramatic and scenic relation. As regards the orchestra, he worked hard not only to secure mechanical precision, but also to attain proper acoustic effects by a new arrangement of the players. Roeckel alludes to this point in one of his Dresden let- ters to Praeger : — " He deemed it advisable to rearrange the seating of his band ; but oh ! the hubbub it has produced is dreadful. ' What ! change that which has satislied Morlacchi and Reissiger ? ' They charge Wagner with want of reverence for tradition and with taking delight in upsetting the established order of things." That is apt to be a trait of reformers — fortunately for the cause of progress. PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION In one of his letters to Liszt from London, Wagner exclaims : " Odd was the confession made to me by Men- delssohnites, that they had never heard such a good per- formance of the Hebrides overture, or understood it so well, as when it was given under my direction." This, however, was rather exceptional. While acknowledging that he was a good drill-master, and that he had endeav- ored to bring out the good points of even the flimsiest Italian or French operas, the pedantic critics insisted that in his interpretation of the classics he violated the traditions. To expose the hollowness and hypocritical offensiveness of this pretence, we need only consider for a moment the treatment accorded to these great masters by their contemporaries, who are supposed to have handed down these "traditions." The contemporaries of Bach PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 425 (born 1685) so far from collecting "traditions," had not a shadow of an idea as to what a giant Avas living among them. Very few of his pieces were printed during his lifetime (some by his own hand) ; the greatest of them were practically unknown till half a century ago, and the others have been printed for the first time within the last few years. ''Traditions," indeed! With Mozart, of course, it was otherwise. So anxious were the Viennese musicians to preserve all the " traditions " they could pos- sibly get hold of, that they allowed a coterie of jealous Italians to maltreat his Figaro so badly that when he had written his next opera, Don Juan, he took it to Prague for the first performance, in order to save it from a similar fate in Vienna. Schubert, the divinest dispenser of melody the world has ever seen, wrote two symphonies which have never been excelled in all the essentials of music — original melody, harmony, rhythm, and instru- mentation. One of these symphonies the Viennese musi- cians allowed to lie in a heap of manuscripts for ten years after Schubert's death, till Schumann came down from Leipzig and gave it to an astonished world as an absolute novelty. "Traditions," indeed! Even Beethoven, who had some recognition Avhile he lived, usually had to put up with the most shamefully inadequate means for bring- ing out his great symphonies; and as he was deaf during the last twenty-five years of his life, he could not prop- erly interpret his works and thus establish "traditions." When he still did conduct, — e.g. when he brought out his Eroica Symphony, — there was no wild demand for "traditions," as may be inferred from the criticisms quoted in Thayer's Beethoven biography (II. 275), one of which concludes with the information that — 426 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR " To the public the symphony seemed too difficult, too long, and Beethoven himself too impolite, since he did not nod even to those who did applaud. Beethoven, himself, on the contrary, found that the applause was insufficient." Some time after Beethoven's death, when Wagner returned from his trip to Vienna, he found that so emi- nent a conductor as Dionys Weber in Prague still re- garded the Third Symphony as a monstrosity (Unding), and we have seen how dissatisfied the youthful Richard was with the German performance of the Ninth Sym- phony, how he had to actually force it on the Dresdeners, half a century ago, and how he worked constantly with pen and baton to elucidate the works of Mozart and Bee- thoven, Gluck and Weber. But he violated tlie " tra- ditions " ! The fact that his musical instinct had led him to scent an error in the current interpretation of Gluck's IpJnghiia in Ardis overture, which had escaped even Mozart's genivis,^ alone ought to have opened the eyes of the critics. An anecdote related by Wagner himself, in his essay On Conducting, shows how he " violated the traditions " in regard to another great master, Weber : — "Eighteen years after Weber's death, when I conducted his Freisch'utz for the first time in Dresden, and on this occasion, regardless of the usage observed by my colleague Reissiger, also took the tempo of the opening bars of the overture according to my notions, a veteran of Weber's time, the old violoncellist Dotzauer, turned to me with a serious mien, and said : ' Yes, that is the way Weber took it ; I now hear it correctly again, for the first time.' On the part of Weber's widow, who was still living in Dresden, this proof of my correct feeling for the music of her long- 1 See the essay on this overture in Vol. V. of the Gesammelte SchriJ'ten. PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 427 deceased husband, gave rise to truly cordial wishes for my pros- perous continuance in the post of Dresden conductor, because, as she said, she could now take up again the hope, so long given up, to her gi'ief, that his music would once more be correctly per- formed in Dresden. I produce this eloquent and agreeable testi- mony on this occasion, because in opposition to diverse other ways of judging my artistic activity as conductor, it affords me a pleasant reminiscence." On a later occasion he taught the Viennese orchestra how to play the Freischiitz overture in his (that is, Weber's) way; the effect was startling: many declared they had now for the first time heard this piece which constant repetition had long ago rendered threadbare. And altliough such a result was not specially compli- mentary to tlie conductors who had so long misinterpreted this piece, Kapellmeister Dessoff had the good sense, when the opera was given again, to turn to his musicians and say, with a smile: "Well, gentlemen, let us then take the overture d, la Wagner." Upon which Wagner comments: "Yes, yes, d Za Wagner! I believe, gentle- men, that many other things might be taken d, la Wagner without harm."^ He held the average operatic and concert-conductor of his day in supreme contempt, and for very good reasons. Most of them were simply orchestral players who had advanced to their important position without having any other conception of their duty than that of time-beaters. That a conductor should understand every orchestral instrument, be well versed in musical history, and in all styles of music; that he should have travelled, so as to 1 For Wagner's views as to tlie proper reading of tlie Frcisrhiitz over- ture, the Mtistersinyer prelude, and the Fifth and Eighth syniphouies, Bee the essay On Conducting. 428 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR be able to put national spirit into liis readings; that, besides, he should be a man of general culture, — these were conditions rarely met with at that time. Outside of their narrow specialty, musicians were mostly ignorant fellows, and their social position was a low one. In Aus- tria, Haydn and Mozart were treated little better than lackeys; in England, when Weber visited London, the artists were separated from the guests by a cord stretched across the room. Beethoven was a boor in conduct, yet this was pardoned in society, as nothing more was ex- pected of a musician. When the composer Marschner found Wagner exerting himself in Dresden to give his musicians a more intellectual interest in their art, he dissuaded him, remarking that the musicians were abso- lutely incapable of understanding him (VIII. 383). But Marschner was mistaken ; for Wagner constantly showed how the minds of these players could be aroused by his words ; and we know what marvellous results followed. The first and most important qualification for a con- ductor is, according to Wagner, that he should have a correct sense of tempo : his choice of that shows us at once whether he has understood the composer or not. How lamentably his own operas were bungled by incom- petent time-beaters, may be inferred from two instances referred to by himself: on one occasion 7^/iem^oZd, which should last two hours and a half, was dragged out to three hours; on another, the Tannhdnser overture, which, under the composer's direction in Dresden, took twelve minutes, was made to last twenty! Other com- posers fared no better at the hands of these mechanical time-beaters. His impatience with them is illustrated by two anecdotes related by Lesimple. One evening at PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 429 Cologne Wagner attended a performance of the Magic Flute, one of his favorite operas. After the first act he hastily left the theatre, exclaiming angrily: "Such a miserable wretch of a conductor I have never come across in all my life!" On another occasion he related this incident to Lesimple: "On the Dresden bridge I met Eeissiger one evening at nine o'clock. Astonished, I asked him, 'But, my dear colleague, have you no opera to con- duct to-night? ' ^Have conducted it,' was his reply — 'Masaniello already ended.'" He had, like a barrel- organ man, ground out the opera as quickly as possible, the sooner to get to his beer. When conductors of national reputation behaved in such a way, what use was there in putting tempo marks on compositions? Bach was wise, he exclaims, in leaving his compositions mostly unprovided with such marks: he probably reasoned that a musician who could not divine their tempo would not be likely to play them cor- rectly anyway. In regard to his own operas, Wagner tells us that he supplied the earlier ones very carefully and minutely with tempo marks and metronomic figures ; but this did not prevent them from being bungled, for the conductors had no conception of what is the very essence of his music — a constant modification of tempo. This constant modification of tempo is, in his opinion, the essence not only of his own music, but of Beethoven's ; it is, in fact, the " vital principle of our music in gen- eral"; neglect of it is as fatal as playing the wrong notes. How much the efficacy of his music depends on it may be inferred from the fact related by him that when he himself conducted the Meistersinger overture in Leipzig, it was redemanded, while at its rep^ition, some 430 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR time later, by the same orchestra, but with a metronomic conductor, it was hissed.^ Wagner intimates that the metronomic conductors would have long since killed off Beethoven's symphonies, if these works were capable of being killed; they con- tinued to live because amateurs of taste could play them at home on the piano. That he was right in insisting that a free modification of tempo is almost as essential in Beethoven's works as in his own we know, because this was Beethoven's own way of conducting or playing. Schindler says : — "Almost everything that I heard Beethoven interpret was free from all (metronomic) rigidity of tempo ; it was a tempo rubato in the properest sense of the words, as conditioned by content and situation. . . . It was the most distinct and vivid declamation. " To-day the leading orchestral conductors — such men as Hans Eichter, Anton Seidl, Felix Mottl, Richard Strauss, Arthur Nikisch, etc. — follow Wagner's ideas regarding the frequent modification of tempo. What these ideas are may be indicated in a few words. The two typical movements in music are the slow adagio and the fast allegro. In a certain sense it may be said that the pure adagio cannot be taken too slowly; emotional languor is here the source of delight; the slightest harmonic change is a surprise and gratification. Opposed to this pure adagio is the pure allegro, as we see it especially in Mozart's overtures, such as those to Figaro and Don Juan : — 1 Mr. Seidl related to me that when Ferdinand Hiller, the conserva- tive opponent of Wagner, heard him (Seidl) conduct the Tannhattser overture with the correct tempi, he exclaimed, " Ja, so gefallt sie mir auch! " — " Ah! that way I like it, tool " PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 431 "Of these it is known that tliey could not he taken fast enough to suit Mozart ; after he had succeeded in whipping his musicians into the desperate frenzy which to their own surprise at last enabled them to attain the presto he insisted upon, he exclaimed : ' Very good ! but this evening a trifle faster.' Correct ! Just as I said of the pure adagio that in an ideal sense it cannot be iaken too slowly, so this unmixed, pure allegro properly cannot oe taken fast enough." This, however, is true only of the old-fashioned Mozartean allegro, which he calls the "naive" type. The modern type, foreshadowed in Mozart's symphonies, is fully revealed in Beethoven's Eroica and the sym- phonies following. This is the "sentimental" allegro, that is, an allegro in which more than the rhythmic excitement of a dance-movement is aimed at, and which is in fact a mixture of the adagio and the old allegro, corresponding to the complexity of modern emotions. This is the great and fundamental truth regarding the Beethoven symphonies, which Wagner's predecessors had failed to grasp. They conducted them like dance- music with metronomic regularity; while he treated them as tone-poems, modifying the tempo according to the momentary character of the melody. Here lies the essence of his method: in the search for the melos, the MELODY, amid all the rhythmic figurations and compli- cations : whenever that melody has a plaintive or senti- mental character, if only for two or three bars, then give those two or three bars a tempo appropriate to a plain- tive melody, before proceeding with the regular faster pace. This is the way to teach an orchestra to sing an allegro as well as an adagio; for in Beethoven there is ''melody in every bar, even in the rests." 432 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR Such, in brief, is the fundamental idea of the superb essay On Conducting, in which the art of instrumental expression, of orchestral singing, is for the first time for- mulated in scientific terms. And this is the essay which an eminent German critic, Heinrich Ehrlich, called a Narrenmanifest — a "fools' manifesto." Readers of the letters to Liszt (especially during the Lohengrin period) will find many further suggestive hints, such as this, that the same theme must be played faster or slower accord- ing to the dramatic situation; the whole aim being to make operatic music less like dance-music, and more like the varied emotional flow of the spoken drama. Read also Letters 55 and 56 to Uhlig, with instructive remarks on Mendelssohn's way of conducting, culminating in these two sentences which throw a good deal of light on the conductors of the old school in general : — " Mendelssohn's performance of Beethoven's works was always based only upon their purely musical side, and never upon their poetic contents. . . . He always held on to the letter with the finest of musical cleverness, and thus was like our philologists who, in their exposition of Greek poets, must always point out the literal characters, the particles, the various readings, etc., but never the real contents." ^ TESTIMONY OF EXPERTS The magic of Wagner's poetic method of interpreta- tion, combined with his almost military drill, was so great that even some of the leaders of the hostile camp 1 Further useful hints to conductors may be found in the accounts of the Bayreuth rehearsals given by H. Forges in the Bayreiither Blat- ter. Also in U Art de Diriger V Orchestra, by M. Kufferath, who noted the peculiarities and method of Hans Richter, Wagner's pupil and chosen conductor for the first Bayreuth Festival. TESTIMONY OF EXPERTS 433 could not withhold their tribute of admiration. Ber- lioz's testimony that he conducted "with rare precision and energy " was quoted in an earlier chapter. H. Dorn testified that "as conductor, Wagner achieved a notable success as early as in his Riga days; his drill ensured great precision — as I could attest best in regard to my own opera, Der Schoffe von Paris — and when he stood at his desk, his fiery temperament carried away even the oldest of the orchestral players irresistibly. ' Always fresh, always lively, always a little fresh ' — these were his favorite exhortations, wliich never failed of their proper effect." Orpheus moved stones with his song, but Wagner, with his conducting, moved Archphilistine Hanslick to ex- claim almost rapturously : — "And an excellent conductor is this man, a conductor with esprit and fire, who at the rehearsals, witli voice, hands, and feet, carries along his company like a valiant officer and is sure to take his fort. ... It was a real gratification to hear this Freischutz overture, which is usually played off at a monotonous, slovenly pace, for once with a new swing and exceedingly delicate nuances. The gradual crescendo and decrescendo of the horn passage in the introduction ; the somewhat retarded pace of the melodious pas- sage in the allegro ; the broad sustaining of the two fermatas be- fore the last movement . . . produced a beautiful effect." This was in 1861. In 1872 Hanslick wrote : ^ — "Wagner is acknowledged to be a brilliant conductor; he has poetic intentions, and his great authority over the players enables him to carry them into execution. Ilis energetic reproduction of the Eroica symphony, with its fine and peculiar nuances, also gave us on the whole a genuine pleasure." Among the prominent German critics who at first opposed Wagner but gradually succumbed before the 1 Concerte, Componisten und Virtuosen, p. 48. 434 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR might of liis genius, was Louis Ehlert, who delivered himself of this opinion : ^ — "But when he wrote his destructive pamphlet On Conducting, he placed himself, in face of all the world, at the head of the orchestra, and proved that he was a better conductor than all the others. The astounding certainty of feeling which he had for the fundamental tempo of the compositions of other masters, was excelled only by the freedom with which he understood how to modify it in the proper place." By way of still further illustrating Wagner's personal- ity as a conductor, two more extracts may here find a place. Praeger (235) writes: — " Wagner does not beat in the old-fashioned, automato-metro- nomic manner. He leaves off beating at times — then resumes again — to lead the orchestra up to a climax, or to let them soften down to a pianissimo, as if a thousand invisible threads tied them to his baton. . . . Let it be well understood that Wagner takes no liberties with the works of the great masters ; but his poetico- musical genius gives him, as it were, a second sight into their hidden treasures ; his worship for them, and his intense study, are amply proved by his conducting them all v?ithout the score." Dr. Francis Hueffer (of the London Times) whose early death was so great a loss to the cause of enlightened musical criticism in England, wrote, in 1872, from Bay- reuth : — " One can agree with the good old Emperor William, who, him- self entirely innocent of musical knowledge, said, after Wagner's late performance of Beethoven's C minor symphony in Berlin, in his homely way : ' You see now what a great general can do with his army ! ' . . . "Each individual member, from the first violinist to the last drummer, is equally under the influence of a great personal fas- 1 Aus der Tonwelt, II. 207. CONCERTS AND OPEBAS IN ZURICH 435 cination, which seems to have much in common witli the effects of animal magnetism. Every eye is turned towards tlie master, and it appears as if the musicians derived the notes they play, not from the books on the desks, but from Wagner's glances and movements. I remember reading in Heine a description of Paganini's playing the violin, and how every one in the audience felt as if the virtuoso was looking at and performing for him or her individually. A gun aimed in the direction of many different persons is said to produce a similar illusory effect ; and several artists in Wagner's orchestra and chorus assured me that they felt the fascinating spell of the conductor's eye looking at them during the whole performance. Wagner, in common life, is of a rather reserved and extremely gen- tlemanly deportment ; but as soon as he faces his band, a kind of demon seems to take possession of him. He storms, hisses, stamps his foot on the ground, and performs the most wonderful gyratory movements with his arms ; and woe to the wretch who wounds his keen ear with a false note ! At other times, when the musical waves run smoothly, Wagner ceases almost entirely to beat the time, and a most winning smile is the doubly appreciated reward of his musicians for a particularly well executed passage." CONCERTS AND OPERAS IN ZURICH I shall now present two pictures of Wagner's activity as conductor during the years 1850 to 1855 — in Zurich and in London. I shall ask my readers to look first on one picture, then on the other: they will then realize what an energetic man of genius can accomplish, with the most inadequate means, on virgin soil, where there is a good will and no organized opposition; and what, on the other hand, must be the result of his efforts if he is placed in a field overgrown with the weeds of so called "tradi- tion " and is hampered by a lot of Philistines and ignor- ant nobodies in his attempts to pull up the weeds and sow fresh and fragrant flowers in their place. 436 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR Although Wagner arrived in Zurich before Lohengrin had been performed, he found that the fame of the royal Saxon conductor and composer of Rienzi, the Dutchman, and Tannhduser had preceded him; for in the very lirst of his letters to Uhlig, dated August 9, 1849, he writes : ** To my great astonishment I have found myself a celeb- rity here, thanks to the piano-scores of my operas, whole acts of which have been performed repeatedly at concerts and at choral unions." He had not been in Zurich many weeks before these local societies made efforts to secure his services. He consented to conduct Beethoven's A major symphony for them, and concluded he would do something to shame the rich merchants of that city into opening their purses for the establishment of a regular orchestra, over which he would call Uhlig to preside. In the following year he rehearsed a few more sympho- nies, with an orchestra of mixed professionals and ama- teurs, and the project was agitated of establishing such an orchestra as he had in mind. In the winter of 1852 he brought out the Fifth Symphony, quite to his satis- faction; indeed, he intimates to Uhlig that it went better than it used to go in Dresden; adding in his playful way, by way of explanation, that in Dresden he always had been compelled by his respectful awe of the royal musicians to suppress half the things he wanted to say at rehearsals. Among other pieces conducted by him in Zurich was the Coriolanus overture, which he sup- plied with a poetic analysis that was printed on the programme. To the orchestra he had, as was his wont, explained the poetic side of this overture at the rehearsals; the sequel was that when he began to rehearse the Tannhduser CONCERTS AND OPERAS IN ZURICH 437 overture with the players, they, of their own accord, asked for a similar explanation, because then they could " play better." The result was most gratifying. As Wagner himself says — and he was a very severe judge : — " Most striking in every case was tlie effect of my method upon the executants themselves. I have here in ZUrich coached even the most ordinary dance- musicians up to performances of which neither the public nor themselves had previously the slightest an- ticipation. ... I must here note that my chief explanations are given at the rehearsals by word of mouth, and at the appropriate passages." Of the production of his overture he gives this re- markable account : — "The performance of the Tannhiiuser overture has now taken place ; it surpassed all my expectations, for it really went admira- bly. You can judge of this by its effect, which was terrific. I do not speak of the burst of applause which immediately followed it, but of the symptoms of that effect, which only came gradually to my knowledge. The women, in particular, were turned inside out ; the impression made on them was so strong that they had to take refuge in sobs and weeping. Even the rehearsals were crowded, and marvellous were the accounts given to me of the first effect, which expressed itself chiefly as profound sorrowfulness ; only after this had found relief in tears, came the agreeable feeling of the highest exuberant joy. Certainly this effect was only made possible by the explanation of the subject-matter of the overture ; but — though my own work again made a most powerful impres- sion on me — I was quite astounded at this unusually drastic operation." He adds that after this experience he began to set some store by this piece of music, and that he really could not think of any other tone-poem capable of exer- cising a like powerful influence on sensitive, intelligent 438 WAGNEB AS CONDUCTOR natures: in which he was right; for to-day this overture is the most popular of all concert pieces ; and in view of this fact, his further remarks are of special interest : — "But the concert-hall is its place, and not the theatre, where it is a mere prelude to the opera. There I should propose to give only the first tempo of the overture ; the rest — in the fortunate event of its being understood — is too much in front of the drama ; in the opposite event, too little." ^ The grandest concerts of the Zurich period took place a year later (May, 1853). Extraordinary preparations were made, prompted by Wagner's great and growing desire to hear at last a few selections from Lohengrin adequately performed. The orchestra numbered seventy- two men, many of whom had come on special invitation from various German cities, and the majority of whom were concert-masters and musical directors. They all brought their best instruments. Wagner had had a special acoustic reflector arranged for the occasion, and the effect was most brilliant. The expenses amounted to nine thousand francs.^ With such an orchestra, he at last had the satisfac- tion of hearing parts of Lohengrin given to perfection, and he states that their effect on him was so deep that it 1 The Ziirich concerts were in one respect productive of permanent good, for the " programmatic explanations " made for them have been reprinted in Vol. V. of Wagner's works. 2 It is worth relating that of tlie Kapelhneisters who were requested to let some of their men go to Ziirich, the old-fogy Lachiier of Munich alone refused permission, on the ground that " no passes were given to artisans." But inasmuch as musicians were, about tlie same time, wanted at the Ziirich theatre, at SH a mouth, Lachuer nnist have been mistaken in intimating that orchestral players are not artists. Artisans would not work for such a sum. Wagner himself, as we have seen, was offered $40 a month if he would become conductor of the Ziirich opera. A brick-layer or grave-digger would have felt justly indignant at such an offer. CONCERTS AND OPERAS IN ZURICH 439 required great effort to retain his self-control. For the bridal chorus he had written a new concert ending, and had himself rehearsed the choral selections with his amateurs till they "sang as if possessed by the devil." ^ The applause was deafening, and at the close of the con- cert the composer-conductor was almost buried amid the flowers that were thrown at him. Twice the concert was repeated, and it might have been given several times more, — for the house was crowded each time, — but the players had to return to their several cities. This concert 2 had an interesting sequel. The third performance coincided with his fortieth birthday, and the Ziu-ichers took this occasion to express their admiration of the great man whom exile had thrown among them, by presenting to him a golden cup, through the liands of a young lady dressed in white. Afterwards there was a grand torchlight procession, of which he himself gives this amusing account : — "It was really pretty and festive, and such a thing had never happened before. A stand for the orchestra had been erected before my house (in the Zeltweg) ; I thought at first they were building a scaffold for me. There was playing and singing — speeches were exchanged, and hurrahs were given me by a count- less multitude. I almost wish you could have heard the festal address ; it was extremely naive and cordial ; I was celebrated as a genuine Messiah." Operatic matters ^ naturally interested him more even than these occasional concerts, but the resources of such 1 Read letter 111 to Liszt. 2 A specimen Watcin-r ])r(>f,'ramme, as arranged by the composer him- self, may be found in No. 48 of the Ulilig letters. 3 Read his suf^gestive essay, A Theatre in Zurich (Vol. V.), in whicli he flLscusses the best way of interesting educated people in the theatre, and the kind of works suitable for a small city. 440 WAG NEE AS CONDUCTOR a subordinate opera-house as that in Zurich did not afford any playground for his own difficult works; and so it was only indirectly, in the interest of his pupils, that he came at first into contact with the opera-house, Praeger states repeatedly that Wagner never gave any lessons in his life. This is incorrect; of course he never gave any piano lessons, for the simple reason that he could not play that instrument well enough to do so. But he con- stantly gave free singing lessons to the vocalists who were learning his roles — and very valuable lessons they were; what is more important still, he gave personal instruction to three of the greatest conductors of our time — Hans von Biilow, Hans Eichter, and Anton Seidl. At the time now under consideration he had assumed charge of two pupils, — Carl Eitter and Biilow. In Eitter, to whom there are numerous references in the letters, he had not only a pupil but a sympathetic friend, who, among other things, spurred him on to Siegfried even before Liszt had done so, and who knew how to take his teacher's part, sometimes to the astonishment of the natives. Biilow had first learnt to admire Wagner at the age of sixteen, at the memorable performance of the Ninth Symphony in Dresden. He also heard his operas in that city, and had the pleasure of meeting the composer, who wrote into his album prophetically : — "K the genuine, pure enthusiasm for art glows within your breast, it will some day surely burst out as a beautiful flame. But knowledge is what fans these glowing embers into vigorous flames." A few years later Biilow was one of those who were attracted to Weimar by Liszt's operatic performances, and finally his growing enthusiasm led him directly to CONCERTS AND OPERAS IN ZURICH 441 Ziiricli, with the intention of placing his future in Wag- ner's hands. For the benefit of these two pujjils, Wagner allowed himself to be persuaded to take a hand in the operatic enterprises at Zurich. He began with operas by Weber and Mozart, and by the composers of the older French school, whom he especially admired, — Boieldieu, Mehul, Cherubini, etc., — and whose works he considered partic- ularly well suited for smaller opera-houses, as being cal- culated to develop the dramatic as well as the musical faculties of the singers. He carefully attended to the daily rehearsals, and finally concluded, as there were some good singers in the cast, not to leave matters in the hands of his inexperienced pupil Biilow, but to preside over the first performances himself. He even conducted other operas, including Norma, which the critics declared "faultless," but which naturally aroused less entluisiasm than his productions -of Dame Blanche, Freischiitz, and Don Juan,^ w\\\c\\ were more to his taste. The great success of his Tannhdnser overture in the concert-hall led his admirers to urge him to bring out one of his own operas, which he finally consented to do, his choice falling on the Flying Dutchman. The directors did all they could to make it a success, and he himself, in his anxiety to have a correct performance, not only worked at the rehearsals like a beaver, — so that he was afterwards completely prostrated, and vowed he would never again engage in practical work of that sort, — but he even paid, with his own money, for several orchestral 1 On this occasion he used his own edition of Don Jiinn, as revised by him for Dresden. Tlie principal changes made in this version are described in a letter to Uhlig dated Feb. 2(j, 1852. 442 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR players, who had to be engaged in other cities.-' The opera — as an opera — was a brilliant success j so much so that it was repeated four times in the course of a week, at specially increased prices, and many more perfor- mances might have been given had not an engagement at Geneva called away the company. And yet (as the Philistines will read to their astonish- ment in No. 62 of the Uhlig letters), he was not satisfied, — for the reason already intimated: that is, the singers interpreted the work simply as a musical score, — an opera, — its dramatic features being beyond their powers. But the composer was consoled for this inevitable dis- appointment by the sympathy of the women. I have already cited his remarks regarding the impression made on the women who heard the Tannhduser overture. So again, in speaking of the Diitchmayi, he says : " The women were, of course, again in the lead : after the third performance, they crowned me with laurel, and smoth- ered me in flowers." Similar references to women are numerous in his correspondence of this period : — " Yesterday," lie writes on March 25, 1852, " I received a letter from a lady of aristocratic birth, who thanks me for my writings ; ' they have been her salvation ' ; she declares herself a thorough- paced revolutionary. So it is always women who, with regard to me, have their hearts in the right place, whilst I must almost entirely give up men." Again he says: "With women's hearts it has always gone well with my art ; and probably because, amid the prevailing vulgarity, it is always most difficult for women to let their souls become as thoroughly hardened as has been so com- pletely the case with our political men-folk. Women are indeed 1 Read Letter 62 to Uhlig, and see how the Dresden Philistines inter- preted even this self-sacrifice in behalf of an artistic ideal as " vanity," and as a blemish in his character ! FOUR MONTHS IN LONDON 443 the music of life ; they receive everything in a more open and unlimited manner, that they may enrich it with their sympathy." In another letter we read, concerning women, that they alone " now and then help rae to an illusion, for concern- ing men I can no longer cherish any. " In still another : — "Again it is always the 'ever-womanly' which fills me with sweet illusions and warm thrills of life's delight. The moist, shin- uig eye of a woman often saturates me with fresh hope." And once more: "Believe me, this maiden is far ahead of you, and why ? By birth, because she is a woman. She was born human ; you and every man nowadays are born Philistines, and slowly and painfully do we, poorest of creatures, succeed in becoming human. Only women, who have retained what they were at their birth, can instruct us ; and if they did not exist, we men, in our paper swath- ings, would go to the ground past praying for." FOUR MONTHS IN LONDON Just before the close of the year 1854, he was surprised by a letter from London asking him if he would assume the function of conductor of the Philharmonic Society for the i>ext season. This position had been held by Mendels- sohn, Sterndale Bennett, Costa, and other noted musi- cians, and was much coveted. Before answering Yes or Ko, Wagner, Yankee-like, asked two questions in turn: (1) Would they have a second conductor for the trivial pieces? (2) Would he be able to have as many rehearsals as he considered necessary to secure good performances? In the meantime he asked the advice of Liszt, wlio urged him to accept. What had liappened in London that the directors of the most conservative musical society in that city sliould seek the as^'iistance of the most radical and revolutionary musi- 444 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR cian the world has ever seen? It came about in this way. The conductor, Costa, had resigned, and a new man of at least equal note was to be found. Praeger claims that he was the first to suggest Wagner. Dr. Hueffer relates ^ that " at a meeting of the directors many names were mentioned ; some suggested Lindpainter, others Berhoz ; others insisted upon appointing a musician of English birth, or at least one residing in England. At last Mr. Sainton . . . [leader of the orchestra and one of the directors] rose to his feet and named Wagner. He himself had no personal cognizance of his capacity, but, as Mr. Sainton remarked, a man who had been so much abused must have something in him. This sentiment was received with accla- mation, and it was unanimously resolved that a leap in the dark should be made." Up to this time Wagner had been practically unknown in England — a country which does not move with start- ling velocity in musical matters. "Only half a year ago," wrote Liszt (Jan. 25, 1855), "people still shook their heads, yes, some hissed, at the performance of the Tannhiiuser overture (conducted by Costa) ; Klindworth and Kemeny were almost the only ones who had the courage to ap- plaud loudly, and to brave the old-established philistinism of the Philharmonic ! Well, now the tone will be changed, and you will infuse new life into Old England and the Old Philharmonic." A rash prophecy ! The directors followed up the matter promptly, and actually went so far as to send Mr. Anderson, their treas- urer, to Zurich, to make the preliminary arrangements. With the promise of a thousand dollars for four months' service he succeeded in getting the acceptance of the 1 Half a Century of Music in England, p. 42. FOUR ilOXTHS IN LONDON 446 unwilling composer — unwilling, because, as he wrote tt) Liszt, " it is not my mission to go to London to conduct Philharmonic concerts even if — as is desired — I produce at them compositions of my own, — for I have written no concert pieces." The paltry sum offered ("I have sold myself at a very low price, " he wrote) would have hardly tempted him to interrupt the composition of the Walkilre for a task so much less congenial ; what finally persuaded him to go was the hope of making this undertaking the entering wedge for a series of performances in German of his early operas, especially Lohengrin, Avhich he himself was so anxious to hear. He little dreamt that almost forty years would have to elapse before English musical taste would outgrow its absurdly exclusive Handel and j\Iendelssohn worship sufficiently to make possible a financially successful series of Wagner performances in the original language (1892). Mr. Anderson immediately telegraphed the news of the successful engagement to London, where it created a great commotion. The new Philharmonic Society had already engaged Berlioz for their concerts ; now the Old Philhar- monic tried to overtrump their rivals in the choice of a revolutionary musician, — a man, too, who had expressed his disapproval of Mendelssohn, the English god of music ! This was not to be tolerated. The Philistines immedi- ately sharpened their quills, preparing to dip them into gall even before Wagner's arrival. Mr. James Davison, who enjoyed great influence on account of his vigorous style and his dual position as the musical editor of the leading political paper {Times) and the leading musical paper (Musical World), opened his batteries with an article in which he made such statements as these : — 446 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR "It is well known that Richard "Wagner has little respect for any music but his own ; that he holds Beethoven to have been a child until he wrote the posthumous quartets and the Mass in D, which he (Wagner) regards as his own starting-points (!)... and that, finally he is earnestly bent upon upsetting all the accepted forms and canons of art ... in order the more surely to establish his doctrine that rhythm is superfluous, counterpoint a useless bore, and every musician, ancient and modern, himself excepted, either an impostor or a useless blockhead." These statements — and they are but samples of what most of the '' critical " articles of the London papers con- tained — were, of course, malicious and ridiculous false- hoods ; but truthfulness is a virtue with which Wagner's opponents were never on very friendly terms. As for the public, what else could it do but believe the musical " experts " ? Wagner was given a bad name even before he appeared on the scene to plead his own cause : in con- sequence, the next four months became a period of misery and constant annoyance conspicuous even in his wretched life of disappointments. The most complete and interesting account of this visit to London was written by the late F. Praeger, who devotes about fifty pages of his Wagner as I Kneio Him to this episode. Special value attaches to this account be- cause Praeger was Wagner's informal agent in arranging details with the Society, and because several letters from him to Praeger are printed in these chapters. In one of these letters, Wagner, still in Zurich, remarks : — "That the directors of the Philharmonic have no idea whom they liave engaged, I am perfectly sure ; but they will soon dis- cover. They might have been more generous, for if these gentle- men intentionally go abroad to find a celebrity, they ought to have been inclined to spend a little extra." FOUR MONTHS IN LONDON 447 He also asks Praeger to sound the directors regarding his plan of giving a complete Wagner concert, either as one of the Philharmonic series, or as an extra, on his own account. Praeger saw the directors and found that they " feared hazarding the reputation of their concerts by the devotion of a whole evening to Wagner's works," but were willing to place some of his pieces on the regular programmes. To Praeger's invitation to make his home his own, the composer replied: — " As you open your hospitable doors to me, I shall avail myself of your kindness, and if you will let me stay until I have found a suitable apartment, I shall be grateful to you, and shall heartily beg pardon of your amiable wife for my intrusion. I shall be in London in the first days of March. I sincerely repeat to you that I have no great expectations, for really I do not count any more upon anything in this world. But I shall be delighted to gain your closer friendship. The English language I do not know, and I am totally without gift for modern languages, and at present am averse to learning any, on account of the strain on my memory. I must help myself througli with French." In his next letter he says, in regard to his residence in Praeger's house, that " As a number of strangers are likely to call, I hope to escape them in solitude of unknown regions. You must not think this strange, as I isolate myself at home the whole morning, and do not permit a soul to come near me when at work, unless it be Peps [his dog]. You will remember, too, when I did something similar to this in Dresden, and left the world, to go into retireuient with August Roeckel." He had promised to be in London a week before the first concert, and kept his promise to the hour by arriving on March 5. He stayed some time at Praeger's (31 Milton St., Dorset Square) and afterwards took rooms i48 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR at 22 Portland Terrace, Regent's Park. On the morning after his arrival, Praeger had some difficulty in persuad- ing him to lay aside his " revolutionary " slouched hat, and wear such headgear as became the leader of London's most conservative musical society. Then they drove to tlie residence of Mr. Anderson, where all went well until a " prize-symphony " by Lachner was mentioned as one of the pieces selected for performance at the concerts. At this " Wagner sprang from his seat, as if shot from a gun, exclaiming loudly and angrily, ' Have I therefore left my quiet seclusion in Switzerland to cross the sea to conduct a prize-symphony by Lachner ? no ; never ! If that be a condition of the bargain, I at once reject it and return. What brought me away was the eagerness to hear a far-failied orchestra and to perform worthily the works of the great masters, but no Kapellmeister music ; and that of a Lachner — bah ! ' Mr. Anderson sat aghast in his chair, looking with bewildered surprise on this unexpected outbreak of passion, delivered with extraordinary volubility, partly in French and partly in German." Praeger gave a more tranquillizing translation of it to Anderson, and peace was restored by the promise that the offensive symphony would be given up. It must not be supposed that Wagner's opposition to this piece was instigated by the remembrance of Lach- ner' s refusal to let his musicians attend that Zurich concert referred to in the last chapter. His mind was entirely above such petty revenge. He honestly and heartily detested the artificial, shallow, empty, but correct symphonies which fourth-rate musicians like Lachner could write by the yard; and, as Hueffer has well re- marked, " the mere invention of the incomparable term Kapellmeistermusik for this kind of production would FOUR MONTHS IN LONDON 449 secure Wagner a place amongst satirical writers." It was to avoid conducting such trash that he had been anxious to have an assistant — a point which he had been obliged to waive. The eight programmes which he had to conduct are given in full in Praeger's volume; and a perusal of them shows that his fears regarding their prob- ably mixed and partly trivial character were realized. " A Beethoven symphony certainly gives me great pleasure," he wrote to Fischer, a few weeks later, "but a whole concert of this kind, with everything which it includes, deeply disgusts me ; and with great inner vexation, I see myself compelled to conduct stuff which I thought I should never have to perform again." Next to the miscellaneous character of the programmes, which were utterly inartistic in their arrangement, what annoyed him was their interminable length. This, com- bined with the expensiveness of London players, made it impossible to have more than one rehearsal for eacli piece. " Perfectly satisfactory performances, which alone could reward me," he wrote to Liszt, "I cannot give anyAvay; we have too few rehearsals ^ for that, and everything proceeds too mechanically." For the second concert alone, at which the Ninth^Symphony was given, he suc- ceeded, with mucTT difficulty, in getting two rehearsals — of the same work of which he had had dozens in Dres- den, while Habeneck of the Paris Conservatoire had kept at it for several years ! No wonder that he had to write to Fischer that " the choruses were miserable. If I only 1 The extraordinarily conservative and immutable character of the London Philharmonic Society is reveahid in the curious fact tliat Mr. C'owcii should have resigned from its comluctdrship in lHi)2, l)ecanso he lio longer tolerate tlie same absurd policy complained of by Wag- ner in 1855 ! That such a society should have invited Wagner to be its leader, was more than a miracle — it was a huge joke 450 WAGNER AS CONDUCTOR had your Dresden Palm-Sunday choir!" With such scant rehearsals it was impossible to give performances of any classical masterworks except in Mendelssohn's way of passing over everything hurriedly and mechani- cally, concealing defects as well as possible. With this the Philharmonic audiences had apparently been con- tented hitherto, and Wagner's attempts to introduce more poetic readings, could not possibly be carried out with such few rehearsals. To add insult to injury, the directors, intimidated by the critics, and ignorant of the fact that Wagner was an infinitely greater genius than Mendelssohn, constantly irritated him by holding up their Jewish idol as a model to him; if he chose a faster or slower tempo than the orchestra had previously taken, or introduced a poetic miance, he was remonstrated with and requested to take things in the regular way, since Mendelssohn himself had taken them so : as he complains to Liszt : — " ' Sir, we are not used to this ' ; tliat is the eternal echo I hear. Neither can the orchestra recompense me : it consists almost exclu- sively of Englishmen, i. e. clever machines which can never be got into the right swing: handicraft and business kill everything. Then there is the public, which, I am assured, is very favorably inclined towards me, but can never be got out of itself, which accepts the most emotional like the most tedious things, without ever showing that it has received a real impression. And, in addi- tion to this, the ridiculous Mendelssohn worship." He was found fault with for other things. "We have been informed on the best authority, " writes Dr. Hueffer, ^ " that Wagner, when he had to conduct a work by Mendels- sohn, deliberately and slowly put on a pair of white kid 1 Half a Century of Music in England, p. 51. FOUR MONTHS IN LONDON 451 gloves to indicate the formal, or, one might say fasliion- able, character of the music." This amusing and harm- less bit of irony on the part of the Mendelssohn-tormented genius, of course aroused the ire of the press anew. Then, again, he was found fault with for his "presump- tion" in conducting Beethoven's scores by heart — a feat which " even Mendelssohn " had been unable to accom- plish. He was given to understand that this was consid- ered a slight on the classical composers; and after a rehearsal of one of Beethoven's symphonies, he yielded in so far to the pressure brought to bear on him as to promise to bring along a score at the public performance. He did so. After the performance the parties who had urged him to use a score crowded around him with con- gratulations on the excellent result of their advice — until one of them happened to glance at the score on his desk, which proved to be — Rossini's Barher of Seville ! ^ The Philharmonic orchestra was not a bad one as orchestras went in that day ; but how far it was from the modern standard — which alone could have satisfied Wag- ner — may be inferred from such a fact as this that Concert-master Sainton had to finger certain passages in the Tannhduser overture for each one of the first violinists ! Furthermore, the orchestra had been allowed to fall into slovenly habits by its previous conductors, Mendelssohn included. On this topic the reader will find some very instructive remarks in Wagner's essay On Conducting, from which I will quote a few lines. Referring to the 1 This anec