II
It is necessary to discuss as briefly as may be the leitmotiv, because with Lohengrin Wagner first began to use it with serious purpose. In the Dutchman two themes may be rightly described as leitmotivs; in Tannhäuser not one theme may be rightly so described. While in Lohengrin Wagner showed himself as much as ever the inspired musician, he made for the first time use of the leitmotiv for dramatic as well as musical ends. There we find three leitmotivs: one intended by the power of association of ideas to evoke on the instant the vision of Montsalvat and the Grail; a second to recall the thought and emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her. The first ([a], p. [191]) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner invented; the third ([d])—not second—is a thing any one might have concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use as Wagner uses it; the second ([c]) is by way of being a study for the best of the Parsifal themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state of decrepitude.
The leitmotiv ([a]) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a little bit ([b]) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than anything else, which gives Lohengrin the vividness of reality combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but the land of ever-enduring dawn—a land that other poets have dreamed of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly as a needle drawn by a magnet.
The prelude opens with a series of chords, ascending, all on A. Handel might have done this: none of the Viennese composers could, or perhaps I should rather say, would, have done it. Beethoven got as near to the naked truth as ever composer did in dealing with the emotions of humanity; Mozart, too, worked his miracles; Weber, non-Viennese though he was, gave us weird, fantastic pictures of fairy adventures in the darkness of grim woods, but nothing more. It was left for Wagner to give us in a few bars a picture, such as no painter could have painted, of the blue heavens on an almost unimaginably fine day. The blue sky, the thin, clear air, the sunlight, are all given us in the first few bars. It is far from my wish to intrude my personal history into these pages, but I wish to give a convincing example of an episode of a sort familiar to all those who have experimented with Wagner's music. A relative of mine, who had spent many of his earlier years in travelling the southern Atlantic and the Pacific in sailing vessels, heard me play on the piano, as an illustration of some argument I was foolish enough to advance, these opening bars of the Lohengrin prelude. He immediately said, "That takes me back into the Trades"—the sweet days of perfect peace in southern climes, where the sky was blue for day after day and week after week, where the wind sang cheerfully without change for weeks on end, where a delicious sun made all men (no matter what the feeling was on those foul old ships) feel good-natured and good-hearted. That is to say, my relative at once felt the magical truthfulness of Wagner's touch: the sweet, clear air, the sunlight; and that is the atmosphere Wagner wanted to establish at the beginning of this most magical of operas. Out of the blue sky comes the Montsalvat (not necessarily the Grail) motive; it descends with ever-gathering fulness, through key after key, until at last it culminates in a tremendous climax for the brass: then comes a wondrous cadence, falling slowly, as a mountain stream falls over slabs of smooth-worn mountain rock, until we get back to the original atmosphere. The Montsalvat vision has faded away into the blue whence it came. Wagner afterwards achieved some marvellous things, but none more marvellous than this.
The curtain rises: there is a rum-tum-tum by the orchestra. We are at once in the discord of a turbulent armed camp: the fury of Telramund against those who are not convinced of his evidently prejudiced view that Elsa holds the lands he wishes to hold, is made to resound in the orchestra as not the most expert Italian composer could make it resound by the voices. When Elsa enters to defend herself the music changes its character utterly; it is the embodiment of the sweetness of young feminine kindly nature; and it is odd that Wagner, when writing this music, which he fancied was the most German ever written, should have gone so far as, in some of its finest parts, to steal bits of the Austrian hymn, composed, as we may remember, by not even an Austrian, but a Croatian, pure Slav, composer. Elsa's account of her dream is not dramatic as Wagner, by the time he wrote his next work, would have understood the term—in shape it is an Italian aria, and everything is at a standstill until it is finished—yet it occurs fittingly, and prepares us by ethereal music for the music of a gentleman who is very unethereal. In form the whole scene is as near as may be a regular Italian opera scene. King Henry the Fowler and his nobles show mighty patience in sitting or standing it out to the end. The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all done with Wagner's consummate skill in writing purely theatrical music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the Lohengrin, "as hero," theme in its full splendour. Then comes the fighting music, which, like all fighting music, is mediocre stuff, and the gorgeous set piece, the finale. This last is quite old-fashioned opera, but it is not forced in: it happens inevitably. The themes are mainly new, but the Lohengrin heroic theme is worked in triumphantly. Technically there is no advance or change in Lohengrin: the counterpoint and interweaving of themes of Tristan and the Mastersingers were to come a few years later. Indeed, there is less of Wagner the contrapuntal virtuoso in Lohengrin than in Tannhäuser.