DRESDEN, 1842-1849.
He was now thirty, and although he had written two long works, one of them a great one, they constituted the merest prelude to the gigantic achievements of the next forty years. He was busily engaged at the opera, but set to work at once on an endless number and variety of projects. Tannhäuser was finished by 1845, Lohengrin by 1847, and his brain was occupied with The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (Die Meistersinger) and The Nibelung's Ring, both to be completed long afterwards. During this period he also composed the Love-feast of the Apostles, and did a bit of mending to Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis. But, though scheming many things, he seemed by no means sure of his road at first. With Schröder-Devrient, the singer, and others, he discussed lengthily the question of whether he should attempt another Rienzi or go on from the Dutchman. If to realize his artistic dreams was dear to Wagner, so were immediate success, fame and money. Of the last he could never have enough, for he spent it faster than he gained it—spent it on himself, needy artists, on any object which suggested itself to him. However, the creative artist in him had the victory. The notion of a second Rienzi was abandoned and Tannhäuser commenced. He had come across the legend of an illicit passion and its punishment somewhere, and he set to work on the book of words. Of course he sentimentalized the story—it was a trick he was always given to, especially during these, his younger, years—and, of course, he made a woman sacrifice herself for a man. In the older form of the tale Tannhäuser lived goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a competition in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise of foul carnal lust and the joy of living with the Goddess of Love in the heart of the hills. Coming to himself, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and asked and was refused the Pope's forgiveness. Then he returned to Venus, and so the story ends with the eternal damnation of Tannhäuser, just as the ancient legend of the Flying Dutchman ends with the eternal damnation of Vanderdecken.
It need hardly be said that this did not satisfy Wagner. He did not like to see people eternally damned; drab, hopeless tragedy was not for him. In nearly every opera we find peace and hope at the close, or even ecstasy in death, as in the Dusk of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) and Tristan. So he promptly made use of Elisabeth in TANNHÄUSER, though, as we shall see, the redeeming act is not so sharply defined as in the Dutchman. In the first scene Tannhäuser is sleeping in the arms of Venus, while bacchanals indulge in riotous dances. Tannhäuser suddenly starts from sleep: he has dreamed of his home as it was before his fall—of the village chime, the birds, the flowers, the sweet air; and he asks permission to return from this hot, steaming cave of vice to the fair clean earth. Venus in vain plays upon him with all her arts and wiles; he sings his magnificent song in praise of her and her beauty, but insists that he must go, and ends with a frenzied appeal to the Virgin. In a moment the illusion is broken: Venus, her luxurious cavern, her nymphs and satyrs, all disappear. There is a minute's blackness, then the light returns, and Tannhäuser is lying in the roadside before a cross. The sky is blue and the trees and grass are green, and a shepherd-boy is carolling a fresh, merry spring song. Tannhäuser remains with his face to earth while a band of pilgrims passes on its way to Rome. Then his old companions come up, recognise him, tell him Elisabeth has patiently awaited his return, and so induce him to go with them.
The second act opens on the Hall of Song. Elisabeth thinks over her grief and longing during Tannhäuser's absence, and sings her delight now that he has come back to her. He comes in, and there follows a most beautiful and touching scene, Elisabeth expressing her love and joy and recounting her past sorrow, while in Tannhäuser's utterances are mingled joy, regret, gratitude, and a sense of rapturous repose on finding himself at peace once again, after being so long tossed on seas of stormy passion. The tournament of song commences. Various minstrels sing the pure pleasures of a love in which the flesh has no part; Tannhäuser, Elisabeth approving, praises an honest, natural love. The others oppose him, until, goaded to madness, he loses all self-control. He hears the voice of Venus and calls upon her; in confusion the women rush from the hall, the men draw their swords, and in a moment the hero would be stabbed did not Elisabeth dash between him and the infuriated knights. She pleads for him, and at last, the voice of pilgrims being heard in the distance, Tannhäuser's life is spared on condition that he joins them and goes to Rome to ask forgiveness. The curtain in the last act rises on the scene of the first, but where all was young and fresh, now the leaves are withered and the tints of autumn are everywhere. Elisabeth watches the pilgrims pass on their return from Rome—Tannhäuser is not amongst them. She sings her prayer to the Virgin and goes home, as it proves, to die. Wolfram, Tannhäuser's friend, who also loves Elisabeth, sings his song of resignation; and then Tannhäuser enters, to the sinister theme of the Pope's curse. He tells Wolfram how he has been to Rome, how he has suffered, how he asked the Pope's pardon, and how the Pope declared that he should never be forgiven until the staff in his hand blossomed. So now he is on his way back to Venus. Venus calls him; he struggles with Wolfram, and is about to break away when the body of Elisabeth is carried by. Tannhäuser falls by the side of the bier; the Pope's staff, which has burgeoned, is brought on; and so the opera ends, Tannhäuser being redeemed.
It is necessary to rehearse in this way the dramatic bases of Tannhäuser and Wagner's succeeding operas for two reasons. First, the drama, which played a big enough part in the Dutchman, now becomes more important, more essential, than ever. Many an old Italian opera may be heard without the hearer knowing in the least what it is about; indeed, in many cases the less one knows of the plot, the more one enjoys the music. But the reverse is true of Wagner. Certain portions of Tannhäuser, for example, can be listened to with pleasure simply as noble or beautiful music: the overture, Tannhäuser's Song to Venus, the Pilgrims' Marching Chorus, Wolfram's "O Star of Eve," Elisabeth's Prayer, and so on. On the other hand, without an acquaintance with the story, and each stage of the story as it progresses, much of Venus's music in the first act loses its significance; the duet of Elisabeth and Tannhäuser in the second act loses its pathos, and the huge finale is meaningless, even as music; and the greater portion of the third act is simply bewildering. When we know what is being sung or done, the music is as clear as the day. Wagner knew this better than anyone, and, as I pointed out in commenting on the Dutchman, he brought his whole theatrical experience and training to help him to make the drama as simple and comprehensible as possible. When the Wagner battle was raging in the seventies and eighties, the sages pointed to the necessity of understanding the drama for the purpose of understanding the music as a defect of the Wagner music-drama, and a proof of Wagner's inferiority as a composer. But one would like to ask the sages how many songs are there which do not afford a finer artistic enjoyment when the words are understood?
A second reason for thoroughly knowing the drama of the later Wagner operas is that without that knowledge the leit-motif, which now becomes a formidable element, is likely to be wholly misunderstood and its artistic value missed. Nine-tenths of the absurdities written and talked about the leit-motif are due to ignorance of the nature of the dramatic situations in which it is used, and in consequence the purposes for which it is used. The leit-motif (leading theme) had very humble beginnings. Who was the first to employ it I really don't know. It was simply a theme which made its first appearance with one of the personages of the opera, and afterwards was used whenever that personage came on again or was referred to. Or it was connected with some thought, someone's destiny, someone's plans, and either because it expressed truly the right emotion, or because it acted by association of ideas, whenever it sounded from the orchestra the thing desired was recalled to one's mind. So used it was a useful father than a highly artistic device. Wagner constantly used it so for matters which did not demand lengthy treatment, such as Lohengrin's warning to Elsa or the curse on the gold in the Ring. But while continuing to make this elementary application of it, rather for dramatic than for musical purposes, he at the same time developed it until it ceased to be merely a leading motive, but became the very stuff of the music itself. Much of the music of the later operas is spun out of what appear at first nothing more than the old leading motives. The process by which this is done will be discussed later; for the present let us see how far Wagner goes with it in Tannhäuser.
In the Dutchman there are two principal themes, the first—
standing for Vanderdecken, the curse laid on him, and the whole idea of the phantom ship; the second—
for Senta. They are short and clean-cut; they recur when wanted, and are subjected to little modification. There is not a single theme of this description in Tannhäuser. The first act is perfectly easy to follow. There are no leit-motifs. The Venus and bacchantic music will be heard again in the second and third acts; but the rest consists of numbers almost as completely detached as those that make up the Dutchman, though the joinings are not only more skilful, but are real music and not mere padding. Wagner had not by any means yet arrived at the continuous music of his later work; in spite of his desire to sweep on from the beginning to the end of each scene, he was still forced to take frequent breath and disguise the stoppage as cleverly as he could. The first scene contains many of Wagner's most inspired melodies, notably the despairing song of Venus towards the end, a tune that might have come from Schubert. The old Weber influence is to be seen in the contours of many of the themes, as well as their orchestral colour; and the steadfast four-bar rhythm reminds one, in spite of the difference of subject, irresistibly of Euryanthe. It was not until the Tristan period that Wagner got rid of this. In the second scene of the first act we find all the musical machinery of old-fashioned opera, but used with a mastery that leaves the Dutchman far behind. There is first the shepherd's delightfully fresh song, in wonderful contrast to the scents and stifling heat of the Venus cave music; then comes the Pilgrims' Chorus; then come Tannhäuser's friends with at least one number, Wolfram's appeal, which is distinct and separate from the rest of the music as a goldfish is from the water it swims in. The act ends with a regular set finale, altogether on the old models.
The second act opens with Elisabeth's scena; then follow her duet with Tannhäuser, the march and chorus as the company troop in to hear the contest of minstrels, the various songs, Tannhäuser's fatal mistake, Elisabeth's intercession for him, the voices of the pilgrims setting out for Rome, and Tannhäuser's rush to overtake them. No use is made of the leit-motif; only when Tannhäuser loses his wits and sings in praise of Venus do we get reminiscences of the Venusberg music. In the third act the structure is the same. Number flows into number, it is true, without full-closes—without full-stops, so to speak; but those who have never before heard a note of Wagner can follow as easily as they could a Gluck or Mozart opera. The Pilgrims' Chorus occurs again, and again we have the Venus music, when Tannhäuser, demented, sees her in the heart of the mountain and hears her calling him.
In 1845 Tannhäuser was produced. When the score was published—those quaint lithographed scores: I believe some of them still exist in the British Museum—Schumann got it, and seemed to like it, since he showed it as a treasure to Hanslick, a musical critic of Vienna. Mendelssohn also liked a canon in the second act—Mendelssohn, who ought to have understood and loved the picturesque in it better than anyone. All fantastic dreams of another Rienzi and a huge popular success had long since melted away: the creative instinct in Wagner was master of the situation; never again did he plan anything to please the public, save, comical to relate, when he began on the story of Tristan.
In The Flying Dutchman Wagner had exploited the uncanny, the terror and mystery of gray winter seas; in Tannhäuser he turned to the conflict between the gross, lurid passions of man and the sane, pure side of his nature; and now, in Lohengrin, he was to give us an opera which for sheer sustained loveliness has only one parallel in his works—the Mastersingers. It is the most delicately beautiful thing he wrote; its freshness is the freshness that seems unlikely to fade with the passage of time. Curiously, too, while full of the spirit of Weber—it is the most Weberesque of all his operas—of Weber who loved darksome woods, haunted ruins and all the machinery of the romantics, it is full of sweet sunlight and cool morning winds: the atmosphere of Montsalvat, the land where it is always dawn, pervades it. As a painter in music of landscape, seascape, of storm, rain amongst the leaves, spring mornings, and calm sunny woodland scenes, Wagner has no equal. There is nothing theatrical on this side of his art: the footlights and back-cloths disappear, and the very thing itself is before us.
In or about 1847 Lohengrin was finished. The tale is of the simplest. Elsa is in distress. She is the daughter of the late Duke, and her brother, the heir to the title and lands, has been changed into a swan by the enchantments of Ortruda, wife of Frederick, who says that Elsa has murdered him. Ortruda's tale is believed and Elsa is charged with the crime before the King, Henry the Fowler. Frederick brings the charge and claims the possessions and everything as the rightful heir. Henry asks whether she is willing that some champion should fight on her behalf. She consents. The herald calls for the champion; no one appears, and the case is about to be decided against her when a knight is seen in a magic boat on the river drawn by a swan. He offers to fight for her on one condition: that she will never ask his name or whence he comes. She promises, and in a few minutes Frederick is overcome and, with his wife, disgraced, and the act ends with a regular opera finale. Next, Ortruda comes as a suppliant in the night to Elsa, gains admittance, and poisons her mind with doubts about Lohengrin. However, the wedding arrangements go forward, and at the very church door Frederick interrupts the procession, and accuses Lohengrin of witchcraft and what not. He is put aside; but in the next act we see the poison at work in Elsa's mind. She and her unknown husband are left alone, and, as Nietzsche observed, they sit up too late. Elsa, with all the exasperating pertinacity of an illogical, curious woman, persists in questioning Lohengrin, getting nearer and nearer to the vital matter, until at last she can restrain herself no longer. In fancy she sees the swan returning to carry off her lover; and, wholly terrified, she asks, "Who are you and where do you come from?" At the moment Frederick rushes in with some confederates, only to be slain by Lohengrin. Sadly Lohengrin says that all now is ended; his hopes are shattered because his bride could not subdue her inquisitiveness for a year. In the next act he appears before the King and nobles; he relates what has happened, says that he comes from Montsalvat, where his father, Parcival, is King, and now he must return. Ortruda breaks through the crowd, and in malicious triumph confesses her crime. Lohengrin prays to Heaven; the swan is changed back to Elsa's brother, a dove descends and is attached to the boat, and Lohengrin sails away up the shining river, while all give a cry of distress.
We have here a simple fairy story. It is the only opera in which character, a personal idiosyncrasy as distinct from an overwhelming passion, produces the dramatic action. It has been urged that Lohengrin's stipulation is monstrous; but seeing that he is bound—we do not know how—and that if Elsa had not agreed her fate had been quickly settled, it seems to me that (accepting the magical and supernatural elements on which the whole thing rests) it was perfectly reasonable. I fancy that Wagner, after some years with his very stupid wife, Minna, was getting thoroughly angry with the irrational curiosity of women and the idiotic demands which they make on their life-mates. Anyhow, though he gives Elsa some very beautiful music to sing, he does not spare her in drawing her character. It is one of the few characters he did attempt to draw, and by far the most important of them. In the Mastersingers Walther and Eva are sketched, and Hans Sachs is worked out in some detail; but nothing in their nature especially affects the drama. In Lohengrin the tragedy is directly produced by Elsa's weakness and curiosity. The characterization is by no means profound or microscopic. It is, indeed, a question whether music is capable of anything of the sort, whether it can render anything save bold, simple outlines. In Figaro and Don Giovanni Mozart was content with this, and yet his characterization appears subtle in comparison with that of every other composer, with the exception of Wagner with his Elsa. Music can express things that lie outside the range of literature; and perhaps fine and delicate portrait and character painting are things that lie outside the range of music.
In the Dutchman, I have said, we have the North Sea for a background, in Tannhäuser the sultry, scented cave of Venus. In Lohengrin it is the broad, shining river, flowing ceaselessly from far-away lands to the distant sea, and on it the swan floats—the swan which throughout is used as the symbol of the river. In the first act it gives the pervading atmosphere and colour; in the third it recurs with amazing effect in the midst of one of Elsa's paroxysms. Here is the simple phrase by which such magic is wrought:
No changes are made in this theme. It occurs again and again, without wearying the ear; it keeps the atmosphere charged with mystery and suggestions of that far-away land where it is always dawn. It is the calm, refreshing, gently-rippling river; the cool, placid water sliding through many countries, with the swan as symbol and token of all that is strange and beautiful where it has its source. It is less a theme capable of purely musical development to form pattern after pattern of entrancing beauty, like the Grail or Montsalvat theme, than the equivalent in music of tender colour. It never sings out from the orchestra without carrying the imagination for a moment from the scene before one's eyes to the fernem Land. It blends the actual with the dream, and imbues all the drama with a delicious romantic mysticism. I dwell on it because without this prevailing colour and atmosphere the story of Lohengrin is a plain prosaic fairy-tale to amuse children. Further, in the most important musical theme in the opera it is there also—the Montsalvat theme:
The characteristic chords in the second bar cannot escape notice. This motive, one of the sweetest Wagner invented, is long, and less of the nature of a leit-motif—as I have explained the leit-motif—than a passage like the Venus music in Tannhäuser. Just as Senta's ballad of the Flying Dutchman is the germ of that opera, so this is the germ of Lohengrin. It is worked out at great length when Lohengrin's narrative arrives, and he declares his name, parentage, and country. The Swan or River theme can scarcely be called a leit-motif in the elementary meaning of the phrase. For a fair example of this we must go to the passage used by Lohengrin when he warns Elsa that she must ask no questions:
This is never developed at all. It recurs only when Elsa's pertinacious inquisitiveness threatens to rupture their somewhat hastily arranged alliance. Then it sounds out sinister, menacing, and the effect, both dramatic and musical, is overwhelming. Another example is the phrase representing Lohengrin simply as a heroic knight. Save in the finale of the first act, no great use is made of it.
It is unnecessary for me to describe in further detail an opera which is so well known, and can be followed at a first hearing very much more easily than Tannhäuser. While there is a great deal of recitative, there are also many numbers merely joined together in the Tannhäuser manner. Such numbers as the Prayer and Finale of the first act, Elsa's Song and the Processional March in the second, the Wedding Chorus in the last, are simply placed there; they do not grow out of themes, as they would have grown had the opera been written when Wagner was ten years older. The love duet which takes place after the marriage is a series of his most generously inspired melodies. There are enough beautiful and passionate tunes there to make the fortune of half a dozen Italian operas.
After Lohengrin the composer wrote nothing more for some years, though we may be sure he was eternally planning. He was intensely interested in politics. Revolution was in the air, and Wagner had to have his say on that as on every other topic. He made speeches and published pamphlets; and just as his musical schemes seemed wild to such contemporaries as the late Charles Hallé, so his ideas of social regeneration must have seemed Utopian to the point of sheer lunacy to the very comrades with whom he was acting. The explosion came; barricades were thrown up in the Dresden streets, and Wagner sought to bring about a quiet ending to the crisis by appealing to the Imperial soldiers to join with, and not to fight against, their own countrymen. Whether he actually shouldered a musket or not it is hard to say. This much is certain, however: that Wagner did take part in the rising, and that a warrant was issued for his arrest. The fiasco resulted in a great gain to music, and, as far as Wagner was concerned, there was no political loss. Had the insurgents by some unthinkable chance succeeded, he would soon have been on worse terms with them than ever he was with Kings and Imperial personages. They tried revolt because they wished to alter all the conditions under which men lived. Wagner, too, wanted to alter the conditions of life, but mainly with a view of carrying out his operatic reforms. Look where we will in his writings, we see that to be the secret of all his incursions into practical politics. Passionate—a bursting volcano of elemental energy—he was always a man of one idea at a time, and that idea always involved Richard Wagner playing an important rôle, for he was one of the most splendid egoists to be met in history.
