German Opera to Mozart
Schütz and his version of "Dafne"—Hamburg and its opera—Works of Reinhard Keiser—The "Singspiel"—Mozart and his dramatic works—"Don Giovanni," Italian in form and German in tendency.
THE story of the introduction of opera into German is sufficiently amusing to form part of an operetta plot. There was no opera of native origin, but the fame of the Italian product having reached the ears of the Elector John George I., of Saxony, he determined to have one of these new lyric dramas performed as the festival play at the marriage of his daughter. Heinrich Schütz, whom we have already met as the composer of the "Seven Last Words of Christ," was the elector's court-director of music, and he was accordingly commissioned to procure from Florence a copy of "Daphne," the pastoral of Peri and Rinuccini. The copy having been obtained, Martin Opitz, a poet, was ordered to translate it into German. He did his work with poetic feeling, but without musical knowledge, and when his text was completed it could not be sung to the music of Peri. Consequently Schütz was directed to write new music, and thus the first German opera came into existence. It was performed on April 13, 1627. The work has been lost and there is no account of its reception. It is quite probable that its music imitated the Italian monodic style, with which Schütz had previously become acquainted while visiting Italy. After his second journey to Italy Schütz wrote an opera called "Orpheus," which was produced in Dresden, Nov. 20, 1638. This work is also lost, but it was probably an imitation of Monteverde's "Orfeo."
Meanwhile all attempts at establishing a national German opera were overthrown by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. When that had ended, Schütz, who had seemed likely to do something for the lyric drama in his country, devoted himself, except in the case of the work already mentioned, to sacred composition. Italian opera had made its way into Germany, where it became the fashionable amusement of the aristocracy of Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, and Munich. It had no connection with the art life of the German people, but maintained its purely exotic condition. Only in Hamburg was there anything that seemed to proceed from native impulse. It was a free city; it had grown enormously wealthy by its commerce; and it was far away from the centre of activity in the war.
Hamburg was a musical centre, and was especially famous for its organists and composers of sacred music. The latter were strong advocates of that kind of individuality of expression in sacred music which paved the way for the Passions of Bach. They did not feel that the intense intimacy of Protestant faith could be embodied in music of the Palestrina school. They introduced a semi-dramatic recitative into their works, and their church cantatas had a decidedly dramatic color. A public taste formed on such church music was ripe for the enjoyment of opera, and the first attempt by a native German composer, though it was hardly anything more than an oratorio given with scenery and action, aroused great interest. This work was "Adam and Eve," composed by Johann Theile (1646-1724). It was produced on Jan. 2, 1678.
It was not until 1693, however,—when Johann Sigismund Kusser (1657-1727) went to Hamburg and introduced his own works modelled after those of Steffani, and also the Italian method of singing,—that decided progress was made. In 1694 Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739) went from Leipsic to Hamburg, where he produced one hundred and sixteen operas, and was all his life the pet of the public. His works were full of facile melody and they had a sincere charm in that they strove to express character in their music. From 1703 to 1706 Handel wrote for the Hamburg opera, but as his works were strictly Italian in style he did not exert such an influence as might have been expected from a man of his genius. Gradually attempts at sustaining German opera became weaker and weaker, and in 1738 it was discontinued in Hamburg, which now, like other German cities gave itself up to the Italians.
Leipsic and Vienna made earnest attempts to support the German "singspiel" (song-play). It is hard to define singspiel, because it is exclusively German. It is a musical drama in which there is spoken dialogue and light music in the song style. Yet at times the Germans themselves have seemed to lose the distinction between singspiel and opera. In the latter we meet with music designed to develop the dramatic design of the work, while in the former no such attempt is made. Works of the singspiel class were produced in Leipsic and Vienna, and they had considerable influence upon the development of German opera. Their construction gave composers experience in writing for voices. Furthermore, the composers gradually adopted the forms and methods of opera and so gained facility in the use of operatic material. This process continued till the advent of the first German genius in the field of opera and his earliest works, though called song-plays, have been accepted outside of Germany as operas.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote many works for the stage, of which these were the principal: "Bastien et Bastienne," operetta, one act (1768), "La Finta semplice," opera buffa (1766), "Mitridate, Re di Ponto," opera (1770), "Lucio Silla," opera (1772), "Idomeneo," opera seria (1781), "Die Entführung aus dem Serail," comic opera (1782), "Le Nozze di Figaro," opera buffa (1786), "Don Giovanni," opera buffa (1787), and "Die Zauberflöte," opera seria (1791). Mozart's earliest works and, indeed, some of his later works, which I have not mentioned, were in the strictest Italian style. "Don Giovanni," too, is essentially Italian, and is seldom well performed by Germans. But in all Mozart's dramatic works there is a German spirit, manifested not so much in the style of the music, perhaps, as in the entire sincerity of its character. Mozart made no revolution in operatic forms, and because of that it is by no means easy to define the improvements which he made in the art of the German lyric stage. Yet it is indisputable that before Mozart there was no distinctive school of German opera, and that since his day there has always been one.
"Die Entführung aus dem Serail," often called by its Italian title "Il Seraglio," was Mozart's first attempt at a German work, but the general plan and style follow the Italian opera of the time. What Mozart achieved was the introduction of a more definite and sincere expressiveness in the arias. In "Le Nozze di Figaro" Mozart's music is marvellous in its adaptation to the comic action of the play, and in its suitability to the characters of the various persons. There is absolutely nothing new in the forms or the general plan. The outline is all Italian; the coloring is all Mozart's. And it has that peculiar German solidity which comes from the tendency of the people to get to the bottom of things. Superficiality is opposed to the German nature. It was the fatal weakness of Italian opera. Mozart went below the surface in his "Figaro." A musical feature of this work and of "Don Giovanni," noted by Dr. Parry, is the way in which the composer "often knits together a number of movements into a continuous series, especially at the end of the act. This was the way in which complete assimilation of the musical factors into a composite whole was gradually approached." In "Die Zauberflöte" Mozart again followed Italian forms, but there is a profundity of thought in some parts of the work wholly foreign to all Italian conceptions of beauty. I am unable, however, to find ground for preferring this work to "Don Giovanni," as many writers do. To my mind "Don Giovanni," is not only the greatest of Mozart's works, but of all works in the old form. It was written in the prime of the classical period, before Weber had revolutionized with "Der Freischütz" the German conception of opera, and before Beethoven had become at once the culmination of the classic and the prophet of the romantic school. It has lived through all the changes of a century, and today stands forth in its clear, calm beauty, a thing of joy forever, beside the pulsating creations of the romantic school, even in the presence of Wagner's mighty creations.
"Don Juan" possesses the universality of a work of true genius. Its characters are recognizable as types, and its human nature belongs to no period, but to all time. It is uncommon in ideas and unconventional in treatment. Even Lorenzo da Ponte (born at Ceneda, Italy, March 10, 1749, died at New York, August 17, 1838) did something original when he wrote the book, for he gave us an opera without a hero. Don Juan is anything but a hero, and one hardly feels inclined to accept the imposing ghost of the Commendator as one. Don Octavio is a very estimable person, and is ever ready with his good advice, but it is not of such stuff as he that heroes are made; and as for Leporello, he is the prince of cowards. Indeed, so strong is the comedy element in "Don Juan," so fine and faithful the character painting, so significant the exposition of human weakness and folly, that despite the fatal ending of the work, it would require no great ingenuity of argument to establish it as one of the purest and loftiest specimens of true comic opera.
The nobility of its music does not make this classification absurd, for let us remember that in the greatest of all comic music dramas, "Die Meistersinger," the music is second to none in loftiness of character, beauty of melody, dignity of color, and splendor of instrumental treatment. Mozart's biographer, Jahn, recognizes the presence of the true comedy spirit in Da Ponte's book when he says: "He has endowed his characters with the easy, pleasure-loving spirit of the time; and the sensual frivolity of life at Venice or Vienna is mirrored in every page of his 'Don Giovanni.'" He says further that the librettist furnished the composer with "a number of musically effective situations, in which the elements of tragedy and comedy, of horror and merriment, meet and mingle together. This curious intermixture of ground tones, which seldom allows expression to any one pure and unalloyed mood, is the special characteristic of the opera. Mozart grasped the unity of these contrasts lying deep in human nature and expressed them so harmoniously as to open a new province to his art, for the development of which its mightiest forces were henceforward to be concentrated."
Tempting, however, as the comic aspect of Mozart's opera is, we must not lose sight of the fact that the work has a serious purpose. Don Juan, bold and unscrupulous as he is, fails in every attempt, and finally meets with utter discomfiture and destruction. There is something here of the spirit of the old Greek tragedy, which always voiced a deep moral truth. After all, there is a term which fits "Don Juan" and roundly describes it. One of the names given to the lyric drama of Italy, when it was brought forth by Jacopo Peri and his associates, was Tragicomedia. Where is there today a nobler specimen of Tragicomedia than the "Don Juan" of Mozart?
As for the music of the opera, nothing better has ever been said about it than what Schink wrote in the Dramaturgische Monate in 1790. He says: "How can this music, so full of force, majesty, and grandeur, be expected to please the lovers of ordinary opera, who bring their ears to the theatre with them, but leave their hearts at home?... His music has been profoundly felt and thought out in its relation to the characters, situations, and sentiments of his personages. It is a study in language, treated musically.
"He never decks out his songs with unnecessary and meaningless passages. That is the way in which expression is banished from music; expression consisting not in particular words, but in the skilful and natural combination of sounds as a medium of real emotion. Of this method of expression Mozart is a consummate master. Each sound which he produces has its origin in emotion and overflows with it."
This last sentence of Schink's is charged with import. One who studies the music of "Don Juan" carefully must be convinced of the truth of the critic's view. If it is true, however, it proclaims the presence of the essential elements of musical romanticism in this truly classic opera. To some extent what we call romanticism has always been present in art music, while it was and is the vital principle of folk tunes. It was when Weber united to the science and culture of musical art the folk lore and folk melody in which were voiced the poetic imaginations of a people that romanticism threw aside the shackles of tradition and became the ruling element in the tone art.
Mozart was not an iconoclast. He made no new forms; he destroyed no old ones. But proceeding on the principle subsequently enunciated by Schumann, that "mastery of form leads talent to ever increasing freedom," he absorbed all extant forms. There is a saying that if you wish to become an astronomer you must make mathematics your slave. Mozart seemed to feel that if he wished to become a composer he must make form his slave. As a mere child he made himself a consummate contrapuntal scholar. In a word, he became literally a master of form.
When, therefore, he came to the composition of his wonderful operas, he saw no necessity for the creation of new forms, because he did not feel the shackles of the old ones. To him they were chains of roses, and the impulse had not come which set all composers thundering against the restrictive barriers of mere formalism. With Mozart there was no such thing as mere formalism; and if there is any lesson which every repetition of "Don Juan" forces home upon us with vital force, it is that fashion is no restraint on genius. Mozart accepted the material of Italian opera as he found it. But he filled the old forms with a new spirit. In the process of the years the spirit waxed too mighty for the old body and took its flight into the infinite regions of free, untrammelled expression. Mozart stood upon the boundary of the promised land; Beethoven and Weber strode boldly across the border; Wagner feasted upon the milk and the honey.