Wagner and His Music-Dramas

by Robert C. Bagar

Foreword

This volume, concerned with Wagnerian excerpts most frequently performed in the concert hall, has been prepared primarily for the audience of the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York. Its object is to supply information in as concise and complete a manner as space will permit. It makes no boast about originality, particularly since the bulk of the material involved stems from any number of treatises on the subject of Wagner and his music.

Wagner
AND HIS MUSIC-DRAMAS

No artist has known a fiercer urge to create than Richard Wagner. None has labored more mightily to indoctrinate mankind with his convictions. None has been more scathing in his contempt of reaction, of pretense, of outdated mannerisms. He wanted his works to be sagas of epic spiritual and moral power; and, whether or not he achieved his aims, he wrote music that is voluptuous and emotionally overwhelming.

In a way he glamorized human suffering or, at least, that side of human suffering expressed through the symbol of renunciation, which one encounters frequently in his operas. His librettos are filled with super-noble purpose, with superhuman aspiration. In Der Ring des Nibelungen he created a world of divinities who are imperfect and humans who unconsciously strive toward perfection. It is not a new world, nor is it a brave one, except through the promise of humanity’s elevation. With Tristan und Isolde he rises to metaphysical heights in his argument. The theme generally is again renunciation, the attaining of perfection and solace through it. One comes upon it again in Die Meistersinger, in The Flying Dutchman, in Parsifal, and so on.

Yet for an artist whose works so idealized all that is good and lofty and noble, Wagner did little in his own life that could possibly approach those superior motives. There is a distinction to be made, therefore, between Wagner the man and Wagner the artist.

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, on May 22, 1813, the son (allegedly) of Karl Friedrich and Johanna Wagner. The theory has been advanced that the composer’s real father was Ludwig Geyer, an intimate friend of the family, who married Frau Wagner about a year after her first husband’s death.

Madame Johanna Wagner, niece of the composer, who sang a leading role in the première performance of Tannhäuser.

Even as a young boy Richard was tremendously fond of the theater. His mother, not particularly interested in it, threatened to hurl a curse on his head if he attempted to make a career of the stage.

In any case, when Geyer died several years later, Richard was sent to Eisleben to become apprenticed to a goldsmith. After a year of puttering around as a tyro goldsmith he returned to Dresden where the family now was. In that city he found many opportunities to express his dramatic urge.

Soon the family moved back to Leipzig and Wagner began to study with Theodor Weinlig, who was one of the authorities on counterpoint.

His early essays in music (composition now being his aim) were nothing to become excited about. But the musical life of Dresden and his intercourse with leading figures of the day worked their influence on him nevertheless. He spent nights copying Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. He wrote an overture which Heinrich Dorn, director of the Leipzig Theater, liked well enough to perform, but it was poorly received. With characteristic suddenness he entered Leipzig University as a studiosus musicae, really a student with few privileges. But he plunged with great gusto into all sorts of student activity, which was, apparently, the real reason for his enrollment at the school.

One of his sisters, Rosalie, and his brother both followed the acting profession, and they gave him the benefit of their counsel, though no one knows how much of it he followed.

He wrote a symphony and then began work on an opera, Die Hochzeit, which he never completed. That was in 1832. In the same year he tried again, actually finishing a work entitled Die Feen. It was rejected, but Wagner, after one or two little pouts, regained his composure. He accepted an engagement as conductor at Magdeburg and in the course of his work he composed another opera, Das Liebesverbot, which, however, was given one performance.

At Magdeburg he met Minna Planer, a member of the operatic troupe, who later became his wife. When she left for Königsberg he followed her and obtained a conductor’s position at the theater in that city. Then came a succession of changes. The restless Wagner scurried about with the spontaneity of a gypsy. When things lagged in one place he quickly moved to another. So that we find him going to Riga, where he directed both opera and symphony, to London, to Paris. In the last named he thought he might finally awaken a musical public to his genius. But he suffered untold agonies. Poverty possessed him. He and his wife lived in constant economic turmoil. With all that he managed to compose two more operas, Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman. Both were produced at Dresden under the sponsorship of Meyerbeer, then a dominant figure in German music.

All this time, though, he wrote a host of compositions, besides penning many articles on music for various publications, and his fame spread. His rebellious temperament got him into difficulty often enough, but he managed, most of the time, to slip out of it. However, in Dresden, where he officiated as a conductor of the Royal Opera, he clashed with certain musical authorities who would not brook his bold opposition to standard ideas. Yet still another opera came to the light of performance when Tannhäuser was given its first hearing, again at Dresden, on October 19, 1845.

During the previous summer Wagner began work on the libretto of Die Meistersinger while vacationing at Marienbad. He soon abandoned it, taking on the libretto for Lohengrin instead. The following year saw the completion of the Lohengrin score. In 1848 he joined a revolutionary movement that spread through Europe, launched by the French Revolution. When the disturbance was quelled some months later, he fled to Switzerland, but remained there for a short time, heading soon for Paris.

His wife refused to join him there, remembering too well the poverty of the previous stay in the French capital. But he started on Siegfried’s Death, which was to grow into the gigantic Ring. He flitted about again, leaving Paris, returning a little later.

Wagner fell in love with Jessie Taylor Laussot, who proved a benefactress in a financial way. In the meantime, he decided to leave Minna forever. In Zurich, whither he repaired, he labored unceasingly on the libretto for The Young Siegfried. Then he created the subject of The Valkyrie and finally that of The Rheingold.

It is amusing to note that he wrote his Ring librettos in reverse order, that is, from what is now Götterdämmerung back to Das Rheingold. Having hit upon a huge theme, he found it increasingly necessary to broaden its scope, thus accounting for the four operas. Parenthetically, however, he wrote the music in the correct order.

The reaction of some of Wagner’s musically untutored contemporaries is amusingly depicted in this caricature from Figaro (1876).

Wagner as a young man, about the time Meyerbeer sponsored the first production of Rienzi in Dresden.

Richard Wagner at the peak of his powers when Der Ring des Nibelungen was nearing completion.

Now in Wagner’s life there appears a strange and beautiful influence, Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of a very wealthy silk merchant. It has been pointed out that under the spell of this beguiling woman his composing flourished as never before. At the home of the Wesendoncks he completed the poem for Tristan und Isolde. It is not known how friendly Richard and Mathilde were, but this is fact: Wagner left his friends’ abode because he would not bring grief upon Otto Wesendonck.

He went once more to Paris where some very ridiculous things happened having to do with a suggested ballet for the opera Tannhäuser. Wagner, adamant, would not change the order of his work merely to please influential gentlemen of the Jockey Club.

In 1864, when Wagner was fifty-one, he settled in Munich—he had been forgiven for his revolutionary surge—and in this musically flourishing city he came under the high patronage of King Ludwig of Bavaria. Here he renewed acquaintance with Liszt’s daughter Cosima, whom he had met some years before. She was now married to Hans von Bülow, a highly gifted conductor. The composer and Cosima were thrown together a lot and their mutual regard soon ripened into love. Poor little Minna, who had been ill for a long period, died in 1866, a piece of news which saddened Wagner greatly.

That same year, however, he and Cosima took a place at Triebschen on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Bülow, at first angered by his wife’s deed, soon came to realize the inevitability of it. Besides, he adored Wagner and his music. He acted sanely therefore, sacrificing his personal feelings for the sake of Wagner’s art. Cosima and Richard were married in 1870.

At Triebschen he completed Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, and the first two acts of Götterdämmerung, besides writing any number of treatises, articles, and the like. Here, too, the idea of a great festival theater was born in him, and the originality of the thing soon won many influential supporters to the cause. By 1871 a site was found for it at Bayreuth, Germany. The next year he put the finishing touches to the Ring and the Bayreuth project grew in proportion to his frantic efforts to raise money for it. In all, it took some four years to erect this shrine to Wagnerian music. And finally, the première of the Wagnerian Cycle, running from August 13 to 16, was a tremendous success, in spite of the heartaches, the headaches, and the discouragement.

Manuscript of a humorous song dedicated by Wagner to Louis Kraft, proprietor of the hotel in Leipzig where Wagner stopped during his first trip to Bayreuth.

With all that he had already accomplished, Wagner could have retired to the easy life he often so fervently spoke about. But the urge to compose never left him. He set to work on Parsifal, the poem he had completed some months before. When the opera was all finished he endeavored with his usual kinetic energy to raise money for its production. It was given its first performance on July 26, 1882. There were sixteen more performances.

Wagner, after all the excitement of Bayreuth, left for a vacation in Venice. In spite of repeated heart attacks, he considered seriously the writing of another symphony. But he had done his work. There was to be no second symphony. Wagner died of his heart illness on February 13, 1883. He was buried at Bayreuth.