Chapter XI: Wagner and Wagnerism (1)

Periods of operatic reform; Wagner’s early life and works--Paris:
_Rienzi_, ‘The Flying Dutchman’--Dresden: _Tannhäuser_
and _Lohengrin_; Wagner and Liszt; the revolution of
1848--_Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_--Bayreuth; ‘The Nibelungen
Ring’--_Parsifal_--Wagner’s musico-dramatic reforms; his harmonic
revolution; the leit-motif system--The Wagnerian influence.

I

The student or reader of musical history will perceive that it is impossible to determine with any exactitude the dividing lines which mark the epochs of art evolution. Here and there may be fixed a sharper line of demarcation, but for the most part there is such a merging of phases and confusion of simultaneous movements that we are forced, in making any survey or general view of musical history, to measure approximately these boundaries. It may be, however, noted that, as in all other forms of human progress, the decisive and revolutionary advances have been made by those prophetic geniuses who, in single-handed struggle, have achieved the triumphs which a succeeding generation proclaimed. It is the names of these men that mark the real milestones of musical history and on that which marks the stretch of musical road we now travel stands large the name of Richard Wagner.

That we may the more readily appreciate Wagner’s place as the author of the ‘Music of the Future’ and the creator of the music drama, it is necessary to review briefly the course of musical history and particularly that of the opera as it led up to the time of Wagner’s birth at Leipzig, May 22, 1813. A glance at our chronological tables will show us that at the time Beethoven still lived and at the age of forty-three was creating those works so enigmatic to his contemporaries. Weber at the age of twenty-seven was, after the freedom of a gay youth, settling down to a serious career, seven years later to produce _Der Freischütz_. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Chopin were in their earliest infancy, while Schubert was but sixteen and Berlioz was ten. Thus may it be seen at a glance that Wagner’s life falls exactly into that epoch which we designate as ‘romantic,’ and to this same school we may correctly assign the works of Wagner’s earlier periods. But, as we of to-day view Wagner’s works as a whole, it is at once apparent that the label of ‘romanticist’ is entirely inadequate as descriptive of his place in musical history. We shall trace in this chapter the growth of his art and follow its development in some detail, but for the moment it will suffice us if we recognize the fact that Wagner arrested the stream of romantic thought at the point where it was in danger of running muddy with sentimentality, and turning into it the clearer waters of classic ideals, opening a stream of nobler breadth and depth than that which had been the channel of romanticism.

Wagner’s service to dramatic art was even larger, for the opera was certainly in greater danger of decay than absolute music. Twice had the opera been rescued from the degeneration that now again threatened it, and at the hands of Gluck and of Weber had been restored to artistic purity. Gluck, it will be remembered, after a period of imitation of the Italians, had grown discontent with the inadequacy of these forms and his genius had sought a more genuine dramatic utterance in returning to a chaster line of melody. He also adopted the recitative as it had been introduced into the earlier French operas, employed the chorus in a truly dramatic way, and, spurning the hitherto meaningless accompaniment, he had placed in the orchestra much of dramatic significance, thereby creating a musical background which was in many ways the real precursor of all that we know to-day as dramatic music.

Weber we have seen as the fountain head of the romantic school, and his supreme achievements, the operas, we find to be the embodiment of all that romanticism implies; a tenderness and intense imaginativeness coupled with a tragic element in which the supernatural abounds. Musically his contributions to dramatic art were a greater advance than that of any predecessor; melodically and harmonically his innovations were amazingly original and in his instrumentation we hear the first flashes of modern color and ‘realism’ in music.

It was on these two dramatic ideals--the classic purity and strength of Gluck and the glowing and mystic romanticism of Weber--that Wagner’s early genius fed. Wagner’s childhood was one which was well calculated to develop his genius. With an actor as stepfather, brothers and sisters all following stage careers, an uncle who fostered in him the love of poetry and letters, the early years of Richard were passed in an atmosphere well suited to his spiritual development. While evincing no early precocity in music, we find him, even in his earliest boyhood, possessed with the creative instinct. This first sought expression in poetry and tragic drama written in his school days, but following some superficial instruction in music and the hearing of many concerts and operas, he launched forth into musical composition, and throughout his youthful student days he persisted in these efforts at musical expression--composing overtures, symphonies, and sonatas, all of which were marked with an extravagance which sprang from a total lack of technical training. In the meantime, however, he was not disdaining the classic models, and he relates in his autobiography[107] his early enthusiasm for Weber’s _Freischütz_, for the symphonies of Beethoven, and certain of Mozart’s works. At the age of seventeen he succeeded in obtaining in Leipzig a performance of an orchestral overture and the disillusioning effect of this work must have had a sobering influence, for immediately after he began those studies which constituted his sole academic schooling. These consisted of several months’ training in counterpoint and composition under Theodor Weinlich, at that time musical director of the Thomaskirche. After these studies he proceeded with somewhat surer hand to produce shorter works for orchestra and a futile attempt at the text and music of an opera called _Die Hochzeit_. In 1833, however, Wagner, at twenty-one, completed his first stage work, _Die Feen_, and in the next year, while occupying his first conductor’s post at Magdeburg, he wrote a second opera, _Das Liebesverbot_. The first of these works did not obtain a hearing in Wagner’s lifetime, while the second one had one performance which proved a ‘fiasco’ and terminated Wagner’s career at Magdeburg. While these early works form an interesting historical document in showing the beginnings of Wagner’s art, there is in them nothing of sufficient individuality that can give them importance in musical history. The greatest interest they possess for us is the evidence which they bear of Wagner’s studies and models. Much of Weber, Mozart, and Beethoven, and--in the _Liebesverbot_, written at a time when routine opera conducting had somewhat lowered his ideal--much of Donizetti.

_Enlarged from an instantaneous photograph (1883)_

II

The six years which followed were troublous ones for Wagner. In the winter of the following year (1837) he became conductor of the opera at Königsberg, and while there he married Minna Planer, a member of the Magdeburg opera company, whom he had met the previous year. After a few months’ occupancy of this post he became conductor at Riga. Here a season of unsatisfactory artistic conditions and personal hardships determined him to capture musical Europe by a bold march upon Paris, then the centre of opera. In the summer of 1839, accompanied by his wife and dog, the journey to Paris was made, by way of London and Boulogne. At the latter place Wagner met Meyerbeer, who furnished him with letters of introduction which promised him hopes of success in the French capital. Again, however, Wagner was fated to disappointment and chagrin, and the two years which formed the time of his first sojourn in Paris were filled with the most bitter failures. It was, in fact, at this period that his material affairs reached their lowest point, and, to keep himself from starvation, Wagner was obliged to accept the drudgery of ‘hack’ literary writing and the transcribing of popular opera scores. The only relief from these miseries was the intercourse with a few faithful and enthusiastic friends[108] and the occasional opportunity to hear the superior concerts which the orchestra of the Conservatoire furnished at that time.

But the hardships of these times did not lessen Wagner’s creative activities and from these years date his first important works: _Rienzi_, ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ and _Eine Faust Ouvertüre_.

Wagner, during his stay at Riga, had become fully convinced that in writing operas of smaller calibre for the lesser theatres of Germany he was giving himself a futile task which stood much in the way of the realization of those reforms which had already begun to assume shape in his mind. He resolved to seek larger fields in writing a work on a grander scale. ‘My great consolation now,’ we read in his autobiography, ‘was to prepare _Rienzi_ with such utter disregard of the means which were available there for its production that my desire to produce it would force me out of the narrow confines of this puny theatrical circle to seek a fresh connection with one of the larger theatres.’ Two acts of the opera had been written at Riga and the work was finished during his first months at Paris. Wagner sent the manuscript of the work back to Germany, where it created a friendly and favorable impression, and the prospects of an immediate hearing brought Wagner back to Germany in April, 1842. The work was produced in Dresden on the twentieth of the following October and was an immediate success.

It is _Rienzi_ which marks the real beginning of Wagner’s career as an operatic composer; the small and fragmentary works which preceded it serve only to record for us the experimental epoch of Wagner’s writing. It is this place as first in the list of Wagner’s work which gives _Rienzi_ its greatest interest, for neither the text nor the music are such as to make it of artistic value when placed by the side of his later productions.

The libretto was written by Wagner himself after the novel by Bulwer Lytton. The hand of the reformer of the opera is not visible in this libretto, which was calculated, as Wagner himself frankly confessed, to afford opportunities for the brilliant and theatrical exhibition which constituted the popular opera of that time. While the lines attain to a certain dignity and loftiness of poetic conception, there is no trace of the attempt at the realization of those dramatic ideals which Wagner was soon to experience. Everything is calculated to musical effectiveness of a pronounced theatrical quality and the work presents the usual order of arias, duets, and ensemble of the Italian opera. The music for the greater part is matched to the spirit and form of the libretto. Here again theatrical effectiveness is the aim of Wagner, and to obtain it he has employed the methods of Meyerbeer and Auber. Not that the deeper and more noble influences are entirely forgotten, for there are moments of intensity when the worshipper of Beethoven and Weber discloses the depths of musical and dramatic feeling that were his. But of that style which Wagner so quickly developed, of that marvellously individual note which was destined to dominate the expression of future generations there is but a trace. A few slightly characteristic traits of melodic treatment, certain figurations in the accompaniment and an individual quality of chorus writing is all that is recognizable. The orchestration shows the faults of the other features of the work--exaggeration. It is noisy and theatrical, and, excepting in the purely orchestral sections, such as the marches and dances, it performs the function of the operatic orchestra of the day, that of a mere accompaniment.

‘The Flying Dutchman’ was written in Paris and the inspiration for the work was furnished by the stormy voyage which Wagner had made in his journey to London. The account which he himself has given of its composition gives an interesting idea of his methods of working and a touching picture of the conditions under which it was written. He says in the autobiography: ‘I had already finished some of the words and music of the lyric parts and had had the libretto translated by Émile Deschamps, intending it for a trial performance, which, also, never took place. These parts were the ballad of Senta, the song of the Norwegian sailors, and the “Spectre Song” of “The Flying Dutchman.” Since that time I had been so violently torn away from the music that, when the piano arrived at my rustic retreat, I did not dare to touch it for a whole day. I was terribly afraid lest I should discover that my inspiration had left me--when suddenly I was seized with the idea that I had forgotten to write out the song of the helmsman in the first act, although, as a matter of fact, I could not remember having composed it at all, as I had in reality only just written the lyrics. I succeeded, and was pleased with the result. The same thing occurred with the “Spinning Song”; and when I had written out these two pieces, and on further reflection could not help admitting that they had really only taken shape in my mind at that moment, I was quite delirious with joy at the discovery. In seven weeks the whole of the music of “The Flying Dutchman,” except the orchestration, was finished.’

While one is prompted to group ‘Rienzi’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman’ as forming Wagner’s first period, in the latter work there is such an advance over the former in both spirit and style that we can hardly so classify them.

In ‘The Flying Dutchman’ we see Wagner making a decided break from the theatrical opera and turning to a subject that is more essentially dramatic. The mystic element which he here infuses and his manner of treatment are very decided steps toward that revolution of musical stage works which was to culminate in the ‘music drama.’ In its form the libretto presents less of a departure from the older style than in its subject and spiritual import; there is still the old operatic form of set aria and ‘scene,’ but so consistently does all hang upon the dramatic structure that the entire work is of convincing and moving force.

This same advance in spirit and dramatic earnestness rather than in actual methods is that which also distinguishes the score of ‘The Flying Dutchman’ from that of ‘Rienzi.’ The superficial brilliancy of the latter gives place in ‘The Flying Dutchman’ to a dramatic power which is entirely lacking in the earlier work. One important innovation in form must be remarked: the use of the ‘leading motive,’ which we find for the first time in ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ Wagner here begins to employ those characteristic phrases which so vividly characterize for us the figures and situation of the drama. In harmonic coloring the score shows but slight advance over ‘Rienzi.’ We can observe in the frequent use of the chromatic scale and the diminished seventh chord an inclination toward a richer harmonic scheme, but, taken in its entirety, the musical composition of the work belongs distinctly to what we may call Wagner’s ‘classic’ period and is still far from being the ‘music of the future.’

The success of ‘Rienzi’ brought to Wagner the appointment of court conductor to the king of Saxony, in which his principal duties consisted of conducting the opera at Dresden. Wagner occupied this position for seven years; he gained a practical experience of conducting in all its branches and a wide knowledge of a very varied musical repertoire which broadened his outlook and increased considerably his scope of expression. Besides the operatic performances, the direction of which he shared with Reissiger, Wagner organized for several seasons a series of symphony concerts at which he produced the classic symphonies, including a memorable performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony on Palm Sunday, 1846.[109] Wagner threw himself with great zeal into the preparation of this work, one of his first sources of inspiration.

The result was a performance which thoroughly roused the community, including the musical profession, which was well represented at the performance, to a sense of Wagner’s greatness as an interpretative artist. There were many other events of importance in Wagner’s external musical life at Dresden. Among these he tells us of the visits of Spontini and of Marschner to superintend the performances of their own works and of a festival planned to welcome the king of Saxony as he returned from England in August, 1844, on which occasion the march from _Tannhäuser_ had its first performance by the forces of the opera company in the royal grounds at Pillnitz. In the winter of the same year we find Wagner actively interested in the movement which resulted in the removal of Weber’s remains from London to their final resting place in his own Dresden. In the ceremony which took place when Weber’s remains were finally committed to German soil, Wagner made a brief but eloquent address and conducted the music for the occasion, consisting of arrangements from Weber’s works made by him. In the midst of a life thus busied Wagner found, however, time for study, and, in the summer months, for musical creation. His interest in the classic drama dates from this period and it is to his studies in mediæval lore pursued at this time that we may attribute his knowledge of the subjects which he later employed in his dramas.

Two musical works are the fruit of these Dresden years. _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_. These two works we suitably bracket as forming the second period of Wagner’s creative work; and, while his advance was so persistent and so marked that each new score presents to us an advance in spirit and form, these two are so similar in spirit and form that they may be named together as the next step in the development of his style.

_Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ are designated by Wagner as romantic operas, a title exactly descriptive of their place as musical stage settings. While infusing into the spirit and action a more poetical conception, their creator had not as yet renounced the more conventional forms of the operatic text. The most important feature of the opera to which he still adhered was the employment, both scenically and musically, of the chorus. This, together with the interest of the ‘ensemble’ and a treatment of the solo parts more nearly approaching the lyric aria than the free recitative of the later dramas are points which these works share with the older ‘opera.’ The advance in the musical substance of these operas over the earlier works is very great. In _Tannhäuser_ we find for the first time Wagner the innovator employing a melodic and harmonic scheme that bears his own stamp, the essence of what we know as ‘Wagnerism.’ From the first pages of _Tannhäuser_ there greets us for the first time that rich sensuousness of melody and harmony which had its apotheosis in the surging mysteries of _Tristan und Isolde_. Wagner here first divined those new principles of chromatic harmony and of key relations which constituted the greatest advance that had been made by a genius since Monteverdi’s bold innovations of over two centuries before.

In his treatment of the orchestra Wagner’s advance was also great and revealed the new paths which an intimate study of Berlioz’s scores had opened to him. In these two scores, and particularly in _Lohengrin_, we find the beginnings of the rich polyphonic style of _Tristan_ and the _Meistersinger_ and the marvellously expressive and original use of the wind instruments by which he attained, according to Richard Strauss, ‘a summit of æsthetic perfection hitherto unreached.’

With the advent of these two music dramas there commenced that bitter opposition and antagonism to Wagner and his works from almost the entire musical fraternity and particularly from the professional critics, the records of which form one of the most amazing chapters of musical history. The gathering of these records and their presentation has been the pleasure of succeeding generations of critics who, in many cases, by their blindness to the advances of their own age, have but unconsciously become the objects for the similar ridicule of their followers. Great as may be our satisfaction in seeing history thus repeat itself, the real study of musical development is more concerned with those few appreciators who, with rare perceptive powers, saw the truth of this new gospel and by its power felt themselves drawn to the duty of spreading its influence.

Wagner once complained that musicians found in him only a poet with a mediocre talent for music, while the appreciators of his music were those outside of his own profession. This was in a large measure true and the explanation may be easily found in the fact that attention to the letter so absorbed the minds of his contemporaries that the spiritual significance of his art entirely escaped them in the consternation which they experienced in listening to a form of expression so radically new. It is interesting to note, in passing, the attitude toward Wagner’s art held by some of his contemporaries. That of Mendelssohn as well as that of Schumann and Berlioz was at first one of almost contemptuous tolerance, which in time, as Wagner’s fame increased and his art drew further away from their understanding, turned to animosity. It is somewhat strange to find in contrast to this feeling on the part of these ‘romanticists’ the sympathy for Wagner which was that of Louis Spohr, a classicist of an earlier generation. The noble old composer of _Jessonda_ was a ready champion of Wagner, and in producing his operas studied them faithfully and enthusiastically until that which he at first had called ‘a downright horrifying noise’ assumed a natural form. But he who was to champion most valiantly the cause of Wagner, and to extend to him the helping hand of sympathy as well as material support, was Franz Liszt.

Wagner’s acquaintance with Liszt dates from his first sojourn at Paris, but it was only after Wagner’s return to Germany and the production of _Rienzi_ that Liszt took any particular notice of the young and struggling composer. From that time on his zeal for Wagner’s cause knew no bounds. He busied himself in attracting the attention of musicians and people of rank to the performances at Dresden, and made every effort to bring Wagner a recognition worthy of his achievement. In 1849 Liszt produced _Tannhäuser_ at Weimar, where he was court conductor, and in August of the following year he gave the first performance of _Lohengrin_. During the many years of Wagner’s exile from Germany it was Liszt who was faithful to his interests in his native land and helped to obtain performances of his works. The correspondence of Wagner and Liszt contains much valuable information and throws a strong light on the reciprocal influences in their works. And so throughout Wagner’s entire life this devoted friend was continually fighting his battles, and extending to him his valuable aid, till, at the end, we see him sharing with Wagner at Bayreuth the consummation of that glorious life, finally to rest near him who had claimed so much of his life’s devotion.

Wagner’s term of office as court conductor at Dresden ended with the revolutionary disturbances of May, 1849. It is only since the publication of his autobiography that we have been able to gain any clear idea of Wagner’s participation in those stormy scenes. While the forty pages which he devotes to the narration of these events give us a very vivid picture of his personal actions, and settles for us the heretofore much discussed question as to whether or not Wagner bore arms, we can find no more adequate explanation of these actions than those which he could furnish himself when he describes his state of mind at that time as being one of ‘dreamy unreality.’ Wagner’s independent mind and revolutionary tendencies naturally drew him into intimate relations with the radical element in Dresden circles: August Röckel, Bakunin and other leaders of the revolutionary party. It was this coupled with Wagner’s growing feeling of discontent at the conditions of art life and his venturesome and combative spirit rather than any actual political sympathies which led him to take active part in the stormy scenes of the May revolutions. While his share in these seems to have been largely that of an agitator rather than of an actual bearer of arms, the accounts he gives of his part in the disturbance show us plainly that the revolution enlisted his entire sympathies. He made fiery speeches, published a call to arms in the _Volksblatt_, a paper he undertook to publish after the flight of its editor, Röckel, and was conspicuous in meetings of the radical leaders. With the fall of the provisional government Wagner found it necessary to join in their flight, and it was by the merest chance that he escaped arrest and gained in safety the shelter of Liszt’s protection at Weimar. Wagner’s share in these events resulted in his proscription and exile from Germany until 1861.

The following six years were again a period of wanderings. While maintaining a household at Zürich for the greater part of this time, his intervals of quiet settlement were few and he travelled restlessly to Paris, Vienna, and to Italy, besides continually making excursions in the mountains of Switzerland. While Wagner, during this period, enjoyed the companionship of a circle of interested and sympathetic friends, among whom were the Wesendoncks and Hans von Bülow, his severance from actual musical environment acted as a stay to the flow of his musical creative faculties. Aside from conducting a few local concerts in several Swiss cities, his life seems to have been quite empty of musical stimulus. But this lapse in musical productivity only furnished the opportunity for an otherwise diverted intellectual activity which greatly broadened Wagner’s outlook and engendered in him those new principles of art that mark his entrance into a new phase of musical creation. At the beginning of his exile Wagner’s impulse to expression found vent in several essays in which he expounds some of his new ‘philosophy’ of art. ‘Art and Revolution’ was written shortly after his first arrival in Zürich and was followed by ‘The Art Work of the Future,’[110] ‘Opera and Drama,’[111] and ‘Judaism in Music.’[112] He also was continuously occupied with the poems of his Nibelungen cycle, which he completed in 1853.

In the same year Wagner began work on the musical composition of the first of the Nibelungen cycle, _Rheingold_, and at the same time he conceived the poem for _Tristan und Isolde_, the spirit of which he says was prompted by his study of Schopenhauer, whose writings most earnestly attracted him at that time. Composition on the Ring cycle meanwhile proceeded uninterruptedly, and 1854 saw the completion of the second opera, _Walküre_.

In 1855 he passed four months in London as conductor of the Philharmonic, an episode in his life which he recalls with seemingly little pleasure. In the following year (1856) he had completed the second act of _Siegfried_, when the impulse seized him to commence work on the music of _Tristan und Isolde_, the text of which he had originally planned in response to an order for an opera from the emperor of Brazil. During the next two years Wagner was feverishly immersed in the composition of this work. The first act was written in Zürich, the second act during a stay in Venice in the winter of 1858, and the summer of 1859 saw the work completed in Zürich.

While the earlier operas of the Ring, _Rheingold_, _Walküre_, and a part of _Siegfried_, were composed before _Tristan und Isolde_, it is the latter opera which definitely marks the next step in the development of Wagner’s art. It is impossible to allot to any one period of Wagner’s growth the entire Nibelungen cycle. The conception and composition of the great tetralogy covered such a space of time as to embrace several phases of his development. Between the composition of _Lohengrin_ and that of _Rheingold_, however, stands the widest breach in the theories and practices of Wagner’s art, for there does he break irrevocably with all that is common to the older operatic forms and adopts those methods by which he revolutionizes the operatic art in the creation of the music drama. In first putting these theories into practice we find, however, that Wagner passed again through an experimental stage where his spontaneous expression was somewhat under the bondage of conscious effort. The score of the _Rheingold_, while possessing the essential dramatic features of the other Ring operas and many pages of musical beauty and strength, is, it must be confessed, the least interesting of Wagner’s works. It is only when we come to _Tristan und Isolde_ that we find Wagner employing his new methods with a freedom of inspiration which precludes self-consciousness and through which he becomes completely the instrument of his inspiration.

III

The drama of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ Wagner drew from the Celtic legend with which he made acquaintance as he pursued his studies in the Nibelungen myths. As has been noted before, Wagner attributed the mood that inspired the conception of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ to his studies of Schopenhauer, and commentators have made much of this influence in attempting to read into portions of ‘Tristan’ and the other dramas a more or less complete presentation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. But Wagner’s own writings have proved him to belong to that rather vague class of ‘artist-philosophers’ whose philosophy is more largely a matter of moods than of a dispassionate seeing of truths. The key to the situation is found in Wagner’s own remark: ‘I felt the longing to express myself in poetry. This must have been partly due to the serious mood created by Schopenhauer which was trying to find an ecstatic expression.’ Wagner’s studies had developed in him a new sense of the drama in which the unrealities of his early romanticism entirely disappeared. A classic simplicity of action, laying bare the intensity of the emotional sweep, and a pervading sense of fatalistic tragedy--this was the new aspiration of Wagner’s art.

The score of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ is one of the highest peaks of musical achievement. It is a modern classic which in spirit and form is the prototype of almost all that has followed in modern dramatic music. Wagner has in this music drama developed his ‘leit-motif’ system more fully than heretofore and the entire score is one closely woven fabric of these eloquent phrases combined with such art that Bülow, who was the first to see the score, pronounced it a marvel of logic and lucidity. In his employment of chromatic harmony Wagner here surpassed all his previous mastery. A wealth of chromatic passing notes, suspensions and appoggiaturas gives to the harmony a richness of sensuous color all its own; while the orchestral scoring attains to that freedom of polyphonic beauty, to which alone, according to Richard Strauss, modern ‘color’ owes its existence.

Wagner, on the completion of _Tristan und Isolde_, began to long for its performance, a longing which he was compelled to bear for eight years. During these he experienced the repetition of his past sorrows and disappointments. Again he resumed his wanderings and for the next five years we find him in many places. In September, 1859, he settled in Paris, where he spent two entire seasons. After a series of concerts in which he gave fragments of his various works, Wagner, through the mediation of Princess Metternich, obtained the promise of a hearing of _Tannhäuser_ at the Opéra. The first performance was given on March 13th after an interminable array of difficulties had been overcome. Wagner was forced to submit to many indignities and to provide his opera with a ballet in compliance with the regulations of the Opéra. At the second performance, given on the 18th of March, occurred the memorable and shameful interruption of the performance by the members of the Jockey Club, who, prompted by a foolish and vindictive chauvinism, hooted and whistled down the singers and orchestra. The ensuing disturbance fell little short of a riot.

It was during this last residence of Wagner in Paris that he was surrounded by the circle through which his doctrines and ideas were to be infused into the spirit of French art. This circle, constituting the brilliant _salon_ meeting weekly at Wagner’s house in the rue Newton, included Baudelaire, Champfleury, Tolstoi, Ollivier and Saint-Saëns among its regular attendants.

In 1861 Wagner, through the influence of his royal patrons in Paris, was able to return unmolested to Germany. While the success of the earlier works was now assured and they had taken a permanent place in the repertoire of nearly every opera house, the way to a fulfillment of his present aim, the production of ‘Tristan,’ seemed as remote as ever. Vain hopes were held out by Karlsruhe and Vienna, but naught came of them and Wagner was again obliged to obtain such meagre and fragmentary hearings for his works as he could obtain through the medium of the concert stage. In 1863 he made concert tours to Russia and Hungary besides conducting programs of his works in Vienna and in several German cities. These performances, while they spread Wagner’s fame, did little to assist him toward a more hopeful prospect of material welfare and thus in 1864 Wagner at the age of 51 found himself again fleeing from debts and forced to seek an asylum in the home of a friend, Dr. Wille at Mariafeld. But this season of hardship proved to be only the deepest darkness before the dawning of what was indeed a new day in Wagner’s life. While spending a few days at Stuttgart in April of that year he received a message from the king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, announcing the intention of the youthful monarch to become the protector of Wagner and summoning him to Munich. Wagner, in the closing words of his autobiography, says, ‘Thus the dangerous road along which Fate beckoned me to such great ends was not destined to be clear of troubles and anxieties of a kind unknown to me heretofore, but I was never again to feel the weight of the everyday hardship of existence under the protection of my exalted friend.’

Wagner, settled in Munich under the affectionate patronage of the king, found himself in a position which seemed to him the attainment of all his desires. He was to be absolutely free to create as his own will dictated, and, having completed his works, was to superintend their production under ideal conditions. During the first summer spent with the king at Lake Starnberg he wrote the _Huldigungsmarsch_ and an essay entitled ‘State and Religion,’ and on his return to Munich in the autumn he summoned Bülow, Cornelius, and others of his lieutenants to assist him in preparing the performances of ‘Tristan.’ These were given in the following June and July with Bülow conducting and Ludwig Schnorr as Tristan. Many of Wagner’s friends drew together at Munich for these performances and the event took on an aspect which forecasted the spirit of the Wagner festivals of a later day. Shortly after these first performances of ‘Tristan’ there arose in Munich a wave of popular suspicion against Wagner, which, fed by political and clerical intrigue, soon reached a point where the king was obliged to implore Wagner for his own safety’s sake to leave Bavaria. Wagner again sought the refuge of his years of exile, and, thanks to the king’s bountiful patronage, he was able to install himself comfortably in the house at Triebschen on the shores of Lake Lucerne, which was to be his home for the six years that were to elapse before he took up his final residence at Bayreuth. It was here that Wagner found again ample leisure to finish a work the conception of which dates from his early days at Dresden when he had found the material for the libretto in Gervinus’ ‘History of German Literature’ and at the composition of which he had been occupied since 1861. This was his comic opera _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_.

While the musical material of _Die Meistersinger_ is such as to place it easily in a class with ‘Tristan’ as a stage work, it offers certain unique features which place it in a class by itself. The work is usually designated as Wagner’s only ‘comic’ opera, but the designation comic here implies the absence of the tragic more than an all-pervading spirit of humor. The comic element in this opera is contrasted with a strong vein of romantic tenderness and the earnest beauty of its allegorical significance. In _Die Meistersinger_ Wagner restores to the action some of the more popular features of the opera; the chorus and ensemble are again introduced with musical and pictorial effectiveness, but these externals of stage interest are made only incidental in a drama which is as admirably well-knit and as subtly conceived as are any of Wagner’s later works, and it is with rare art that Wagner has combined these differing elements. The most convincing feature of the work as a drama lies in the marvellously conceived allegory and the satirical force with which it is drawn. So naturally do the story and scene lend themselves to this treatment that, with no disagreeable sense of self-obtrusion, Wagner here convincingly presents his plea for a true and natural art as opposed to that of a conventional pedantry. The shaft of good-humored derision that he thrusts against the critics is the most effective retort to their jibes, while the words of art philosophy which he puts into the mouth of Hans Sachs are indeed the best index he has furnished us of his artistic creed.

In the music, no less than in the libretto, of _Die Meistersinger_ Wagner has successfully welded into a cohesive unit several diffusive elements. The glowing intensity of his ‘Tristan’ style is beautifully blended with a rich and varied fund of musical characterization, which includes imitations of the archaic, literally reproduced, as in the chorales, or parodied, as in Köthner’s exposition of the mastersingers’ musical requirements. The harmonic treatment is less persistently chromatic than that of ‘Tristan’ owing to the bolder diatonic nature of much of its thematic material, a difference which, however, cannot be said to lessen in any degree the wonderful glow of color which Wagner had first employed in _Tristan und Isolde_. Polyphonically considered, _Die Meistersinger_ stands as the first work in which Wagner brought to an ultimate point his system of theme and motive combinations. The two earlier operas of the Ring contained the experiments of this system and in ‘Tristan’ the polyphony is one more of extraneous ornamentation and variation of figure than of the thematic combination by which Wagner is enabled so marvellously to suggest simultaneous dramatic and psychological aspects.

_Die Meistersinger_ had its first performance at Munich on June 21, 1868, and the excellence of this first performance was due to the zealous labors of those who at that time constituted Wagner’s able body of helpers, Hans von Bülow, Hans Richter, and Karl Tausig. In the following year, at the instigation of the king, _Rheingold_ and _Walküre_ were produced at Munich, but failed to make an impression because of the inadequacy of their preparation.

Wagner in the meantime was living in quiet retirement at Triebschen working at the completion of the ‘Nibelungen Ring.’ From this date commences Wagner’s friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche, a friendship which unfortunately turned to indifference on the part of Wagner, and to distrust and animosity on the part of Nietzsche.

On August 25, 1870, Wagner married Cosima von Bülow, in which union he found the happiness which had been denied to him through the long years of his unhappy first marriage. A son, Siegfried, was born in the following year, an event which Wagner celebrated by the composition of the ‘Siegfried Idyl.’

IV

We now approach the apotheosis of Wagner’s career, Bayreuth and the Festival Theatre, a fulfillment of a dream of many years. A dance through Wagner’s correspondence and writings shows us that the idea of a theatre where his own works could be especially and ideally presented was long cherished by him. This idea seemed near its realization when Wagner came under the protection of King Ludwig, but many more years passed before the composer attained this ambition. In 1871 he determined upon the establishment of such a theatre in Bayreuth. Several circumstances contributed to this choice of location; his love of the town and its situation, the generous offers of land made to him by the town officials and the determining fact of its being within the Bavarian kingdom, where it could fittingly claim the patronage of Wagner’s royal protector. Plans for the building were made by Wagner’s old friend, Semper, and then began the weary campaign for necessary funds. Public apathy and the animosity of the press, which, expressing itself anew at this last self-assertiveness of Wagner, delayed the good cause, but May 22, 1872, Wagner’s fifty-ninth birthday, saw the laying of the cornerstone. Four more years elapsed before sufficient funds could be found to complete the theatre. Wagner in the meantime had taken up his residence at Bayreuth, where he had built a house, Villa Wahnfried. On August 13, 1876, the Festival Theatre was opened. The audience which attended this performance was indeed a flattering tribute to Wagner’s genius, for, besides those good friends and artists who now gathered to be present at the triumph of their master, the German emperor, the king of Bavaria, the emperor of Brazil, and many other royal and noble personages were there as representatives of a world at last ready to pay homage to genius. The entire four operas of the ‘Ring of the Nibelungen’ were performed in the following week and the cycle was twice repeated in August of the same season.

As has been noted, the several dramas of the ‘Ring’ belong to widely separated periods of his creative activity, and, musically considered, have independent points of regard. The poems, however, conceived as they were, beginning with _Götterdämmerung_, which originally bore the title of ‘Siegfried’s Death’ and led up to by the three other poems of the cycle, are united in dramatic form and feeling. The adoption of the Nibelungen mythology, as a basis for a dramatic work, dated from about the time that _Lohengrin_ was finished. Wagner, in searching material for a historical opera, ‘Barbarossa,’ lost interest in carrying out his original scheme upon discovering the resemblance of this subject to the Nibelungen and Siegfried mythology. He says: ‘In direct connection with this I began to sketch a clear summary of the form which the old original Nibelungen myth had assumed in my mind in its immediate association with the mythological legend of the gods; a form which, though full of detail, was yet much condensed in its leading features. Thanks to this work, I was able to convert the chief part of the material itself into a musical drama. It was only by degrees, however, and after long hesitation, that I dared to enter more deeply into my plans for this work; for the thought of the practical realization of such a work on our stage literally appalled me.’

While the Ring poems constitute a drama colossal and imposing in its significance, far outreaching in conception anything that had been before created as a musical stage work, it is in many of its phases an experimental work toward the development of the ideal music drama which ‘Tristan and Isolde’ represents. Written at a time when Wagner was in the throes of a strong revolutionary upheaval and when his philosophy of art and life was seeking literary expression, we find the real dramatic essence of these poems somewhat obscured by the mass of metaphysical speculation which accompanies their development. In Siegfried alone has Wagner more closely approached his new ideal and created a work which, despite the interruption in its composition, is dramatically and musically the most coherent and most spontaneously poetic of the Ring dramas. It has been already noted that the break between the musical style of _Lohengrin_ and that of _Rheingold_ is even greater than that between the dramatic forms of the two works. In the six years which separated the composition of these two operas Wagner’s exuberant spontaneity of expression became tempered with reflective inventiveness, and there pervades the entire score of _Rheingold_ a classic solidity of feeling which by the side of the lyric suavity of _Lohengrin_ is one of almost austere ruggedness. We find from the start Wagner’s new sense of dramatic form well established and the metrical regularity of _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_ is now replaced with the free dramatic recitative and ‘leit-motif’ development. Of harmonic color and polyphonic richness _Rheingold_ has less interest than have the other parts of the cycle, and one cannot but feel that after the six years of non-productiveness Wagner’s inventive powers had become somewhat enfeebled. With the opening scenes of _Walküre_, however, we find again a decided advance, a melodic line more graceful in its curve and the harmonic color enriched with chromatic subtleties again lends sensuous warmth to the style to which is added the classic solidity which _Rheingold_ inaugurates. In polyphonic development _Walküre_ marks the point where Wagner commences to employ that marvellously skillful and beautiful system of combining motives, which reached its full development in the richly woven fabric of _Tristan_, _Die Meistersinger_, and _Parsifal_.

Wagner has told us that his studies in musical lore were made, so to speak, backward, beginning with his contemporaries and working back through the classics. The influences, as they show themselves in his works, would seem to bear out this statement, for, after the rugged strength of Beethoven’s style which _Rheingold_ suggests, the advancing polyphonic interest, which next appears in _Walküre_, reaches back to an older source for its inspiration, the polyphony of Johann Sebastian Bach. While, as has been remarked, _Siegfried_ in its entirety forms a coherent whole, the treatment of the last act clearly displays the added mastery which Wagner had gained in the writing of _Tristan_ and of _Die Meistersinger_. There is a larger sweep of melody and a harmonic freedom which belongs distinctly to Wagner’s ultimate style. In _Götterdämmerung_ we find the first manifestation of this latest phase of Wagner’s art. A harmonic scheme that is at once bolder in its use of daring dissonances and subtler in its mysterious chromatic transitions gives added color to a fabric woven almost entirely of leit-motifs in astounding variety of sequence and combination.

The inauguration of the Bayreuth Festival Theatre and the first performances there of the Nibelungen Ring certainly marked the moment of Wagner’s greatest external triumph, but it was a victory which by no means brought him peace. A heavy debt was incurred by this first season’s Bayreuth festival and it was six years later before the funds necessary to meet this deficit and to provide for a second season could be obtained. The second Bayreuth season was devoted entirely to the initial performances of _Parsifal_, with the composition of which Wagner had been occupied since 1877. The intervening six years had brought many adherents to the Wagner cause and financial aid to the support of the festival was more generously extended. After a series of sixteen performances it was found that the season had proved a monetary success and its repetition was planned for the following year, 1883. The history of the Festival Theatre since that date is so well known that its recitation here is unnecessary. Bayreuth and the Wagner festival stand to-day a unique fact in the history of art. As a shrine visited not only by the confessed admirers and followers of Wagner, but by a large public as well, it represents the embodiment of Wagner’s life and art, constituting a sacred temple of an art which, by virtue of its power, has forced the attention of the entire world. Bayreuth, moreover, preserving the traditions of the master himself, has served as an authentic training school to those hosts of artists whose duty it has become to carry these traditions to the various opera stages of the world.

Wagner was fated not to see the repetition of the _Parsifal_ performances. In September, 1882, being in delicate health and feeling much the need of repose, he again journeyed to Italy. Settling in Venice, where he hired a part of the Palazzo Vendramin, he passed there the last seven months of his life in the seclusion of his family circle. On February 1, 1883, Wagner was seized with an attack of heart failure and died after a few moments’ illness. Three days later the body was borne back to Bayreuth where, after funeral ceremonies, in which a mourning world paid a belated tribute to his genius, Richard Wagner was laid to his final rest in the garden of Villa Wahnfried.

V

The first conception of an opera on the theme and incidents of which _Parsifal_ is the expression dates from an early period in Wagner’s life. The figure of Christ had long presented to him a dramatic possibility, and it is from the fusion of the poetical import of his life and character with the philosophical ideas he had gleaned from his studies in Buddhism and Schopenhauer that Wagner evolved his last and most profound drama.

It is the religious color and element in _Parsifal_ that calls forth from Wagner the latest expression of his musical genius. We find in those portions of the _Parsifal_ score devoted to the depiction of this element a serenity and sublimity of ethereal beauty hitherto unattained by him. As we listen to the diatonic progression of the ‘Faith’ and ‘Grail’ motives, we are aware that Wagner’s genius continually sent its roots deeper into the soil of musical tradition and lore and that in seeking the truly profound and religious feeling he had sounded the depths of the art that was Palestrina’s.

The _Parsifal_ controversy has now become a matter of history. Wagner’s idea and wish was to reserve the rights of performance of this work solely for the Bayreuth stage. This plan was undoubtedly the outcome of a sincere desire to have this last work always performed in an ideal manner and under such conditions as would not always accompany its production should it become the common property of the operatic world at large. This wish of Wagner was disrespected in 1904 by Heinrich Conried, then director of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York, who announced a series of performances of _Parsifal_ at that house during the season of 1903. The Wagner family made both legal and sentimental appeals in an attempt to prevent these performances, but they were unheeded and the work was first heard outside of Bayreuth on December 24, 1903. It must be said that the performance was a worthy one, as have been subsequent performances of this work on the same stage, and, apart from the sentimental regret that one must feel at this disregard of Wagner’s will, the incident was not so deplorable as it was then deemed by the more bigoted Wagnerites. By the expiration of copyright, the work became released to the repertoire of European opera houses on January 1, 1914, and simultaneous performances in every part of Europe attested the eagerness with which the general public awaited this work.

With Wagner’s musical works before us, the voluminous library of discussion and annotation which Wagner himself and writers on music have furnished us seems superfluous. Wagner’s theories of art reform need little further explanation or support than those furnished by the operas themselves; it is in the earnest study of these that we learn truly to appreciate his ‘philosophy’ of art, it is in the universal imitation of these models that we find the best evidence of their dominating influence on modern art. The Wagnerian pervasion of almost all subsequent music forms the most important chapter of modern musical history, but before we turn to the consideration of this phenomenon let us briefly summarize the achievements of Wagner in this potent reform which Walter Niemann[113] says extends not only to music, the stage, and poetry, but to modern culture in its entirety; a sweeping statement, the proving of which would lead us into divers and interesting channels of thought and discussion, but which we must here renounce as not appertaining directly to the history of music in its limited sense.