NOTES ON WAGNER AT BAYREUTH
I. BAYREUTH AND MUNICH
Bayreuth is Wagner's creation in the world of action, as the music-dramas are his creation in the world of art; and it is a triumph not less decisive, in its transposition of dream into reality. Remember that every artist, in every art, has desired his own Bayreuth, and that only Wagner has attained it. Who would not rather remain at home, receiving the world, than go knocking, humbly or arrogantly, at many doors, offering an entertainment, perhaps unwelcome? The artist must always be at cautious enmity with his public, always somewhat at its mercy, even after he has conquered its attention. The crowd never really loves art, it resents art as a departure from its level of mediocrity; and fame comes to an artist only when there is a sufficient
[298]number of intelligent individuals in the crowd to force their opinion upon the resisting mass of the others, in the form of a fashion which it is supposed to be unintelligent not to adopt. Bayreuth exists because Wagner willed that it should exist, and because he succeeded in forcing his ideas upon a larger number of people of power and action than any other artist of our time. Wagner always got what he wanted, not always when he wanted it. He had a king on his side, he had Liszt on his side, the one musician of all others who could do most for him; he had the necessary enemies, besides the general resistance of the crowd; and at last he got his theatre, not in time to see the full extent of his own triumph in it, but enough, I think, to let him die perfectly satisfied. He had done what he wanted: there was the theatre, and there were his works, and the world had learnt where to come when it was called.
And there is now a new Bayreuth, where, almost as well as at Bayreuth itself, one can see and hear Wagner's music as Wagner
[299]wished it to be seen and heard. The square, plain, grey and green Prinz-Regenten Theatre at Munich is an improved copy of the theatre at Bayreuth, with exactly the same ampitheatrical arrangement of seats, the same invisible orchestra and vast stage. Everything is done as at Bayreuth: there are even the three "fanfaren" at the doors, with the same punctual and irrevocable closing of the doors at the beginning of each act. As at Bayreuth, the solemnity of the whole thing makes one almost nervous, for the first few minutes of each act; but, after that, how near one is, in this perfectly darkened, perfectly quiet theatre, in which the music surges up out of the "mystic gulf," and the picture exists in all the ecstasy of a picture on the other side of it, beyond reality, how near one is to being alone, in the passive state in which the flesh is able to endure the great burdening and uplifting of vision. There are thus now two theatres in the world in which music and drama can be absorbed, and not merely guessed at.
II. THE LESSON OF PARSIFAL
The performance of "Parsifal," as I saw it at Bayreuth, seemed to me the most really satisfying performance I had ever seen in a theatre; and I have often, since then, tried to realise for myself exactly what it was that one might learn from that incarnation of the ideas, the theoretical ideas, of Wagner. The music itself has the abstract quality of Coventry Patmore's odes. I cannot think of it except in terms of sight. Light surges up out of it, as out of unformed depths; light descends from it, as from the sky; it breaks into flashes and sparkles of light, it broadens out into a vast sea of light. It is almost metaphysical music; pure ideas take visible form, humanise themselves in a new kind of ecstasy. The ecstasy has still a certain fever in it; these shafts of light sometimes pierce the soul like a sword; it is not peace, the peace of Bach, to whom music can give all he wants; it is the unsatisfied desire of a kind of flesh of the spirit, and music is but a voice. "Parsifal" is religious music, but it is the music of a religion which had never