“It was my first love-sorrow, and I thought I should never forget it, but after all,” said Wagner, with his wonted audacity, “I think I cared more for the dog than for the Jewess. Whilst under the love-spell I had paid little heed to much that soon after, in pondering over the episode, revolted me. The strange characteristics of the Jews were unpleasant to me. Then it was that I first perceived that impassable barrier which must always rise up between Jews and Christians in their dealings with the world. One cannot help an instinctive feeling of repulsion against this strange element, which has been gradually creeping into our midst, growing like mistletoe upon the oak tree, a parasite taking root wherever it can fasten but the smallest fibre, and clinging with a tenacity entirely its own, drawing in all nutriment within reach, and yet remaining, notwithstanding, a parasite. Such is the Jew in the midst of Christian civilization.”
AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.
His entrance to the St. Nicolas school in 1827, where he remained three years, was as the passing through a dark cloud. The whole training here differed vitally from that at the Kreuzschule. The masters and their mode of tuition was unsympathetic to him. I did not wonder at this when he told me. I had been at the school, too, and experienced similar feelings of resentment. The Martinet system of discipline was irksome to high-spirited boys. No attempt was made to develop individuality of character. This was unfortunate for Wagner. He was just then at an age when personal interest and sympathetic guidance would have been invaluable. Filled with wild dreams of a glorious future that was to follow his self-dedication to the drama, he threw himself with ardour into the completion of a play he had begun to work at. Ambition had prompted him to base it on the model of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The plot was as wild and impossible as the unrestricted exuberance of so extravagant a fancy might suggest. It occupied him for upwards of two years, and greatly interfered with his legitimate school work. When in later life he surveyed this period he describes himself as “wild, negligent, and idle,” absorbed with one thought, his great drama.
HIS ARTISTIC CRISIS.
From the St. Nicolas school he passed to St. Thomas’s school, where he stayed but a few months, leaving it for the University. At the University he attended occasional lectures only, showing none of that assiduity which distinguished him at the Kreuzschule. His University days were marked by a profligacy to which he afterwards referred with regret and even disgust. He was young and wild, and had determined with his insatiable nature to drain to the dregs the cup of dissoluted frivolity. I should not be performing the duty of an honest biographer were I to omit an incident which occurred at this period, regrettable as it might seem. His mother still received her modest pension. On one occasion Richard was commissioned to receive it for her. Returning home with the money in his pocket he chanced to pass a public gambling house. There was one sensation he had not yet experienced. At that moment he felt that in the throw of the fascinating dice lay the fateful omen of his future. The money was not his, yet he entered and risked the hazard of the dice. He was unfortunate; lost all but a small sum he had kept back. Yet he could not resist the alluring excitement. He staked this too. Fortune, happily for the wide world of art, befriended him, and he left the debasing den with more than he had entered, “But,” inquired I, “what would you have done had you lost all?” “Lord!” he replied, “before going into the house I had firmly resolved that should I lose I would accept the omen and seek my end in the river.” A man in years calmly telling me this so long after the incident had occurred urged me again to ask, “Would you really have done that?” “I would,” was the short determined answer. He was unable to keep the story back from his mother, and at once on his return told her all. “Instead of upbraiding me,” Wagner said, “she fell with passionate love around my neck, exclaiming, ‘You are saved. Your free confession tells me that never again will you commit so wicked a wrong.’” This Wagner related to me when I was staying with him at Zurich in 1856. This hazardous throw of the dice was not the only occasion on which he had boldly defied fate. He was ever buoyed up with an implicit faith in his destiny, which sustained him through many trials, though at the same time it urged him to act in a manner where more thoughtful minds would have hesitated.
I now come to what was undoubtedly the crisis of Wagner’s artistic career. It was the practice at German theatres, between the acts, for the orchestra to play movements of Haydn’s symphonies or similar excerpts by other masters. The rule was to hurry through them in the most indifferent manner. Not the slightest attention was paid to expression, and if it happened that the manager’s bell rang while the “playing” was going on, the performance would terminate with a jerk, each artist seemingly anxious not to play a note more, and heedless of finishing the “phrase” together.
At Leipzic, the entire music was particularly slovenly, played under the cynical Matthey. And yet the very men who played so reprehensibly in the stage orchestra, when performing at the famous Gewandhaus concerts seemed to be moved by feelings of reverence for their work, unknown to them in the theatre. It would be an interesting investigation to discover why this was. The symphonies of Beethoven in the concert-room compelled their whole worship; the symphonies of Haydn in the theatre were treated like “dinner” music. Perhaps the explanation is, that the symphonic movements played in the theatre bore no relation to the drama enacted, whereas music played for itself went with a verve and spirit, and attention to its meaning quite unknown to the stop-gap-music-scrambling of the theatre.
RESOLVE TO BECOME A MUSICIAN.
From the unsatisfying scrambling performances of the theatre, Wagner, fifteen years old, went to the Gewandhaus concerts. There he heard Beethoven’s symphonies. What a revelation were they to him, played with the artistic perfection for which that orchestra was so justly celebrated, although there was room for improvement. They forced open in him the floodgates of a torrent of emotion. A new world dawned upon him. Music that had hitherto lain dormant, suddenly awakened into a vigorous existence truly electrifying. His future career was decided. Henceforth he, too, would be a musician. And what was there in Beethoven that should so startle him into new life? He had heard Haydn, Mozart, and earlier masters without being so completely awed and fascinated. What was there in these symphonies that should exercise such a determining influence over him? It was the overpowering earnestness of the unhappy composer. Beethoven dealt with life problems according to the spirit of his age—the demand for freedom of thought and liberty of the person. Beethoven had been baptized in that mighty wave, the struggle for freedom, which rolled over Germany at the beginning of this century. He could not help being eloquently earnest. He was the creature of his time, and when called upon to declare himself, was not found wanting in rugged, bold earnestness. Yet although Haydn and Mozart, I too, were earnest, their utterances were of a subjective character. The world to them presented none of the doubts and philosophic speculations which convulsed Beethoven’s period. Their view of life was pure optimism. A vein of bright joyousness runs through all their works, aye, even their most serious. But Beethoven was a pessimist, and his works betray him. When he has a sunshiny moment it serves only to show how deep is his prevailing gloom. Wagner at fifteen was a poet, and the energetic, suggestive music of Beethoven was mentally transformed into living personalities. He has said that he felt as if Beethoven addressed him “personally.” Every movement formed itself into a story, glowed with life, and assumed a clear, distinct shape. I do not forget the earlier influence of Weber over him, but then that was more due to emotion than to reason. The novelty of “Der Freischütz,” the freshness of its melodic stream, and the wild imaginative treatment of the romantic story captivated his first affection and enchained it to the last. The whole of his impressions of Beethoven (whom, by the way, Wagner never saw) were embodied by him in a sketch written for a periodical and entitled, “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven.” Although the incidents painted there are not to be taken as having happened to the pilgrim, Wagner, yet the story is clear on one point—the unbounded spell Beethoven exercised over him.
As he was now determined to become a musician, and seeing the necessity of acquiring some theoretical knowledge of his new art, with his usual perseverance he began studying alone. His progress was so disappointing that he made arrangements with a local organist, with whom, too, he advanced but little. However, he was resolved. Music he wanted for his own play; without music he felt it was incomplete, and although he worked assiduously, theory seemed a long, dreary road which, instead of helping him to the goal he yearned to reach, presented innumerable obstacles in the path. He wanted to compose, yet all the grammarian’s rules were so many caution-boards, warning him against doing this or that, impediments that prevented him accomplishing what he strove to perform. It was always what should not be done instead of what should be done. With youthful impetuosity he then revolted against all grammarianism, and to the end of his life maintained an attitude of derisive defiance towards all who fought behind the shield inscribed fugue, canon and counterpoint.