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STUDIES
IN THE
WAGNERIAN DRAMA

BY

HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1904

Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.

TO
JOSEPH S. TUNISON

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA: ITS PROTOTYPES AND ELEMENTS.
Wagner a Regenerator of the Lyric Drama.—Greek Tragedy.—Solemn
Speech and Music.—The Poet-composers
of Hellas.—The Florentine Reformers and their Invention
of the Lyric Drama.—Peri and Caccini.—Their
Declamation.—Monteverde's Orchestra.—How Wagner
Touches Hands with his Predecessors.—Poet and
Composer.—Music a Means, not an Aim in the Drama.—A
Typical Teuton, but also a Cosmopolite.—Teutonic
and Roman Ideals.—Absolute Beauty and Characteristic
Beauty.—The Ethical Idea in Wagner's Dramas.—Fundamental
Principle of his Constructive Scheme.
The Typical Phrases.—Symbols, not Labels.—Music as
a Language.—Characteristics of Some Typical Phrases.—Wotan
in Two Aspects.—Form the First Manifestation
of Law in Music and Essential to Repose.—Tonality
and the Effect of its Loss.—Phrases Delineative
and Imitative of External Characteristics.—The
Giants, the Dwarfs, the Rhine; Loge, the God of
Fire.—Prophetic Use of the Phrases.—Their Dramatic
Development.—Wagner's Orchestra and the Greek
Chorus.—Alliteration and Rhyme.—The Ethical Idea
Again.		Pages [1]-36
CHAPTER II.
"TRISTAN UND ISOLDE."
The Legend in Outline.—A Subject that has Fascinated
Poets for over Six Centuries in Spite of Changes in
Moral Feeling.—Wagner's Variations from the Versions
of Gottfried von Strassburg, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson,
and Swinburne.—The Prelude.—Absence of Scenic
Music.—Fundamental Musical Thought of the Drama.—Its
Duality in Unity.—Longing and Suffering.—Wagner's
Exposition.—Use of the Sailor's Song and the
Sea Music.—Suffering and Chromatic Descent.—The
Love Glance and its Symbol.—Fatality and the Interval
of the Seventh.—The Heroic Phrase of Tristan.—The
Death Phrase.—Music as an Expounder of Hidden
Meanings.—The Horn Music.—The Signal.—The Love
Duet.—Dramatic Feeling Supplied by Music.—King
Marke.—Philosophy of the Drama.—Musical Mood
Pictures.—A Dying Man: an Empty Sea.—Tristan's
Longing and Death.—Swan Song of Isolde.—Passions
Purified by Music.—Mediæval Love.—Effect of Wagner's
Variations on the Morals of the Poem.—Excision
of the Second Iseult.—The Philter not a Love-potion.—Wagner's
Pure Humanity Freed from the Bonds of
Conventionality		Pages [37] -71
CHAPTER III.
"DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG."
Story of the Drama.—A Comedy Faithful to Classical
Conceptions.—Ridendo Castigat Mores.—Its Specific Purpose
is to Celebrate the Triumph of Natural Poetic
Impulse, Stimulated by Communion with Nature, over
Pedantic Formalism.—Romanticism versus Classicism.—A
Contest which Stimulates Growth.—Walther as
the Representative of Romantic Utterance.—Pedantry
Pictured in the Master-singers and Caricatured in
Beckmesser.—Sachs, the Real Hero of the Play.—An Intermediary
and Champion of Both Parties.—Form must
Adapt Itself to Spirit.—The Proposition Proved by the
Music of Sachs' First Monologue.—The Symbolism of
a Phrase Investigated.—Corrective Purpose of the Play
as it is Disclosed by the Prelude.—Sachs as a Philosopher.—The
Introduction to Act III. Expounded.—Photographic
Pictures of Nuremberg Life.—Relics of
the Master-singers.—A Master-song by the Veritable
Sachs 		Pages [72]-111
CHAPTER IV.
"DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN."
Beautiful and Enduring Legends are Universal Property.—Parallels
Between the Elements and Apparatus of
Mythological Tales.—The Grotto of Venus, the Garden
of Delight, Avalon, Ogygia, the Delightful Island.—Pope
Urban's Staff, the Lances of Charlemagne, Joseph's
Staff, and Aaron's Rod.—The Tarnhelm, the
Mask of Arthur, Helmet of Pluto.—The Holy Grail, the
Horn of Bran; Huon's Goblet, the Horn of Amalthea.—Invulnerability
of Achilles, Jason, and Siegfried.—The
Sword of Wotan, Arthur's Sword, Ulysses's Bow.—Siegfried's
Prototypes in Egypt, Greece, and Scandinavia.—Von
Hahn's Arische Aussetzung und Rückkehr Formel.—The
Celestial Plot in the Tragedy.—Wotan its Hero.—A
Contest Between Greed of Gain and Temporal
Power and Love.—Effect of the Curse.—Wotan's Vain
Plot.—The Force of Law.—Brünnhilde becomes the
Agent of Redemption by Becoming Simple, Loving
Woman.—The Progress of the Plot is from a State of
Sinlessness through Sin and its Awful Consequences to
Expiation.—Symbols for These Steps in "Das Rheingold."—The
Golden Age and the Instrumental Introduction.—Elemental
Music.—Erda and the Götterdämmerung.—Greek
and Teuton.—The Tragic Nature of the
Northern Mythological System.—Wotan's Effort to
Escape the Penalty of Violated Law.—A Plan Doomed
to Failure from the Start.—Wagner's Mood Pictures.—How
Nature Reflects the Discord Created by the God's
Wrong Doing.—Contrasted Pictures in Two Preludes
and First Scenes: the Peacefulness of the Golden Age,
the Storm which Buffets Siegmund.—Entrance of the
Sinister Element with Alberich and Hunding.—Agents
Created to Carry on the Contest: the Beloved Progeny
of the God, the Loveless Offspring of the Niblung.—Wotan's
Tragic Grandeur in the Moment of Despair.—Brünnhilde
the Embodiment of Wotan's Will.—The
God Destroys his Agents, but Unconscious Love Carries
on the Plot.—Siegfried.—The Forest Lad Achieves
Heroic Stature.—He Discloses that he is a Free Agent
by Shattering the Visible Symbol of the God's Power.—Wotan
Disappears for the Action and Awaits the End of
his Race.—The Miraculous in Wagner's Musical System.—The
Drink of Forgetfulness.—Brünnhilde Prizes Love
More than the Welfare of the Gods.—Outraged Love
Avenged.—The Catastrophe.—The Death March a
Hymn of Praise.—The Musical Symbol of the Ethical
Principle of the Tragedy		Pages [112] -161
CHAPTER V.
"PARSIFAL."
Wagner's Last Drama.—Paradoxical in its Appeals to the
Spectator and Student.—A Religious Play.—Blending
of Buddhistic and Christian Plots.—Socialistic Philosophy
and Asceticism.—Identification of Parsifal and
Christ.—Monkish Relic Worship.—Ethical Idea of the
Drama.—The Apparatus, the Hero, the Trial.—Mission
of the Music.—It must Reconcile Modern Thought and
Feeling and Mediæval Religion.—Imagination and
Fancy.—Suffering and Aspiration.—Original Elements
of the Grail Story.—Parsifal an Aryan Hero.—His Name
as an Index of Moral Character.—"The Great Fool
Tales."—The Holy Grail not Originally a Christian
Symbol.—Percival and Peredur.—Parsifal in Wagner's
Drama.—His Musical Symbols.—Properties of the Talisman:
Physical, it Provides Sustenance; Spiritual, it
is a Touchstone and Oracle.—Its Prototypes in Many
Lands.—The Golden Cup of Jamshid and the Joseph
of Arimathea Legend.—The Grail and Coral.—Dr. Oppert's
Theory.—Blood the Essential Element.—The
Prelude.—Amfortas.—Question and Lance.—Herzeleide.—Musical
Symbols of Suffering and Aspiration.—Wagner's
Interpretation.—Tried by Temptation.—Klingsor.—Kundry.—The
Loathly Damsel and Herodias.—Wolfram's
Married Parzival 		Pages [162]-198

THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA.

CHAPTER I.
THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA: ITS PROTOTYPES AND ELEMENTS.

To understand the real position which Richard Wagner occupies in the world of art, and to appreciate the significance of the achievements which have kept that world in a turmoil for two generations, it is necessary to guard against a very prevalent misconception touching him and his activities. The world knows him as an agitator and reformer, but it does not know as clearly as it ought that the object for which he labored as controversialist and composer was a reform of the opera, not a reform of music in general. Outside the theatre, it is true, he exerted a tremendous influence on the development of the musical art, but that influence he exerted only because he was a gifted musician who stood in the line of succession with the great ones who had widened the boundaries of music and struck out new paths for it—let me say Bach, Haydn, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann. As a legitimate successor of these Kings by the grace of Genius, he advanced the musical art indeed, but as a reformer his activities went, not to music in its absolute forms, but to an entirely distinct and complex art-form: the modern opera. The term which Wagner invented to describe what he wished to see as the outcome of his strivings—the term which his enemies parodied so successfully that the parody has clung to the popular tongue and lingered in the popular ear, in spite of all explanation—is "The Art-work of the Future." By this "Art-work" he meant a form of theatrical entertainment in which poetry, music, pantomime, painting, and the plastic arts were to co-operate on a basis of mutual dependence—or better, perhaps, interdependence—and common aim, the inspiring purpose of all being dramatic expression. In the history of music and the drama certain strongly-marked phases are found, in which the interdependence of the elements which Wagner consorts in his Art-work can be traced; and if we look at these phases a little thoughtfully, they may help us to understand the present phase, and we may learn not only how to appreciate what Wagner has done, but also how to avoid the misconceptions which so frequently stand in the way of appreciation.