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.
Richard Wagner’s last portrait
Enlarged from an instantaneous photograph (1883)