Coming now to Wagner, we find him possessing, to a truly remarkable degree, the special powers of both. His wondrous inventive genius was controlled by a brain power as solid as rare. It enabled him to fuse in his own work the gifts of the idealist, Weber, and of the thinker, Beethoven. The latter’s mastery of workmanship, his reasoned sequence of ideas, are vastly surpassed in Wagner’s dialectic treatment. As an instrumental colourist Weber was superior to Beethoven. The deafness of the latter sometimes led him to mark the wrong instrument in his scores. He could not hear, and therefore was not fully able to comprehend the qualities of every instrument, like Weber. The greatness of his power as an orchestral writer is undeniable, yet many instances could be quoted where he has misapplied a particular instrument of whose character, through his deafness, he had lost the exact knowledge. Wagner based his instrumentation on that of Weber. In spite of an almost unlimited admiration of Beethoven, Wagner has not refrained from pointing to certain defects of scoring in him. He shows that whilst Beethoven modelled his orchestra after Haydn and Mozart, his conceptions went immeasurably beyond them and clashed with the somewhat inadequate means of their orchestra. Beethoven had neither the modern keyed brass instruments to support the wood-wind against the doubled and trebled strings, nor did he dare to venture beyond the then supposed range of the wood, brass, and string instruments. Often when reaching what was thought to be the topmost note on either, he suddenly jumps in an almost childishly anxious manner to an octave below, interrupting the melody and producing an irritating effect. Wagner has asserted that had Beethoven heard the tonal effect of portions of his marking, he would unquestionably have rewritten them or altered the instruments. But whilst deploring his great predecessor’s deafness as the cause of certain defective instrumentation he renders unstinted homage to the general orchestration of the symphonies. The enormous amplification of deeply reasoned detail in those nine grand works demands from each individual of the orchestra an attention and refinement of expression to be expected only from an orchestra composed of virtuosi.

It was shortly after his return to Leipzic that Wagner began to study instrumentation. The Gewandhaus concerts and Beethoven’s symphonies had stirred him. He thumped the piano, was conscious of his lack of skill, but nevertheless bought the scores of the symphonies and studied them with heart and soul. The magnificent colouring charmed him. To work the score at the piano, and see where the secret lay, was his careful study, and then, when he found it, he saw how necessary was individual excellence of performance. Even the Gewandhaus performances failed to completely satisfy him. The members of the orchestra were familiar with the works, yet was the performance far from conveying that lasting impression which the delineation of the intensely grand ideas were capable of, and which from his piano-reading he expected. The dissatisfaction he experienced induced him to seek further for the explanation, and after careful thought he fixed the blame on the shortcomings of the conductor. The head of an orchestra, he asserted, should study the work to be played under him until every phrase, its meaning, and bearing to the whole composition were thoroughly assimilated by him. He should, further, have a perfect acquaintance with the capabilities of every instrument, and an excellent memory. Works performed under conductors not possessing these qualifications never produce their legitimate effect. “It was only when I had conducted Mozart’s works myself,” says Wagner, “and had made the orchestra execute every detail as I felt it, that I took real pleasure in their performance.”

CHAPTER V.
1832-1836.

THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.

Had Wagner’s youthful enthusiasm been fired at the Dresden Kreuzschule with love for Germany and hatred of the French oppressor, a feeling which flew through the land like lightning, had the songs of Körner’s “Lyre and Sword,” set to vigorous music by Weber, inspired him, his patriotism was intensified tenfold when, returning to his native city, he came into the midst of a population that had suffered all the horrors and privations of actual war. His study of modern literature, assimilated with surprising facility in a brain where all was order and consecutiveness, gave him an insight into the deplorable state of his beloved country, whilst indicating the direction in which future efforts should be directed. He found that the revolutionary spasm of the end of the eighteenth century had shattered time-honoured traditions, roughly shaken the creeds of the past, and indeed had left nothing untouched, infiltrating itself into every great and small item of human existence. The impetus of the time was “revolution!” To throw down the trammels of moral and physical slavery, to free man and raise him to the throne of humanity, was the desire of all European peoples. All worked towards one common goal; there was not one movement of importance then that was not influenced by the revolution. In literature the tendency was to make letters a concrete part of the national mind, just as the great French revolution called into existence the first notion of national life by investing the people with the controlling power of their country’s interests. All the master-minds of the time of Louis the Fourteenth were an some measure connected with the king; but with the nineteenth century revolution a third state was developed, which enriched national life, and, acting upon literature, drove the hitherto secluded savants and their works into the vortex of popular life. Before this upheaval, literature had been the exclusive property of the professional savant and his high-born protector. The tendency of modern social life was to enthrone mind and genius. The third state was actually breaking down social barriers, the line of demarcation between them and so-called “good society,” the monarch and aristocracy. That such a violent change at the beginning of the century should have unsettled and bewildered some otherwise remarkably gifted men is not surprising. The turbulent state of society, and the confused investigation and awkward handling of important moral questions, led to doubt and despair. Men like the brothers Schlegel became Roman Catholics, hoping by so doing to cast the responsibility of their life on a religion which closes every aperture to the reasoning powers. Ludwig Tieck, another German savant, followed their example, whilst men like Zacharias Werner, after having given proofs of the highest capability, destroyed their mental being by pursuing a most dissolute and reprehensible course; or, like Hoffman, by an over-indulgence in wine, helped to create an unæsthetic phase in German literature which, alas, serves only to show how sadly distorted gifted brains can become. Kleist was driven to commit suicide. I could cite more unhappy victims of that troublous epoch, existences blighted by the powerful wave of romanticism and freedom that swept over the land. The only man who remained unaffected by the movement was Goethe. In his striving for plastic beauty and classicism, he never became enthusiastic for the romantic school. He even stood somewhat aloof from Shakespeare; nor would he, in his cold simplicity and placid grandeur, see in all the romantic movement aught but a remnant of revolution against his “legitimate” supremacy.

Those early years of Wagner were passed in a scene of unusual activity and excitement. His native city a great battle-field the year of his birth, people hardly recovered from the shock of the 1793 revolution, when again they are startled by its reverberation in July, 1830. Then Wagner was seventeen, of an age and thoughtful enough to be impressed by the struggle carried on around him, or, to quote his own words, “all that acted more and more on my mind, on my imagination and reason.” This was the spirit which he brought to bear on his study of orchestration,—ideality controlled by strong reasoning power. He had studied under the first professor of Leipzic, had had an overture performed in public, and now, in 1832, he essayed a grand symphony for orchestra, which ever remained a pleasing work to him, and to which he would refer with evident satisfaction. Its history is a curious one.

HIS ONLY SYMPHONY.

Though not twenty, he, with his usual self-reliance, boldly took the score and parts to Vienna. He wanted his work to be heard. His daring ambition was not satisfied with a lesser centre than the Austrian capital. Vienna was then, as it is now, the city of pleasure and light Italian music. As Beethoven himself could command but a small section of adherents among the pleasure-seeking Viennese, it is not surprising that the untried and unknown young composer was ignored. But undaunted, he took his treasure to Prague, where Dionys Weber, conductor of the Conservatorium, performed it to Wagner’s unbounded delight. Returning home, he had the proud satisfaction of hearing it played at the classical Gewandhaus concerts and also at its rival but lesser institution, the “Euterpe.” This was a promising augury, and to Wagner amply sufficient for assuming that later his work would be repeated. Therefore, when in 1834 Mendelssohn was appointed conductor at the Gewandhaus, Wagner unhesitatingly took the symphony to him. For a long time nothing was heard of it. Wagner became anxious, and applied to Mendelssohn, when to his indignation he was informed that the score had unfortunately been lost. Wagner never alluded to this incident without indulging in one of those bitter ironical attacks upon Mendelssohn in which he was such an adept. The incident rankled in the memory of the over-sensitive composer, and no amount of external amiability at a later period from Mendelssohn was ever able to efface it. This symphony was Wagner’s first acknowledged work and acknowledged, too, by men of weight, whose commendation had, not unnaturally, elated him. “My first symphony!” How often have I heard that phrase? and spoken with such satisfaction that on several occasions I tried to induce Wagner to play some reminiscences of it to me. He could not; he had lost all remembrance of it. Accident or fate willed it that shortly before his death the orchestral parts were discovered at Dresden. A score was arranged and the fifty-year-old work performed en famille in 1882, under the revered old man’s bâton at Venice.

DIRECTOR OF A CHORUS.

Though proud of his success as a musician, the poetic side of his nature was not repressed. He was a poet as well as musician. Suddenly the poesy within him leaped forth and impelled him to write words already wedded in his own heart to sounds. Its appearance was as a revelation disclosing an allied power which was to exalt him to a pinnacle to which no other composer in the whole history of art could possibly lay claim. He wrote a libretto to “The Wedding.” This was to be his first opera, and the same year, 1833, in which he wrote the words he also began the music. However, he composed but three numbers, still in existence, the introduction, a chorus, a sextet, and then was dissuaded by his sister from proceeding further with it. The story and its treatment were both pronounced ill-adapted for stage representation. The book was the veriest hyper-romantic scum, a mixture of the gloomy fatalist Werner and the wildly extravagant Hoffman. The opera was abandoned with regret, and a living was sought in any form of musical drudgery. He was willing to “arrange,” to “correct proofs,” or do anything but teaching, to which he always had the strongest antipathy. To my knowledge, he never gave a lesson in his life. When, therefore, the post of chorus master at the Würzburg theatre was offered to him, he readily accepted it. His eldest brother, Albert, was then engaged at Würzburg as singer, actor, and stage manager. It was the practice of Albert all through life to assume the rôle of mentor to his younger brother, but against this Richard strongly rebelled, though at the same time readily admitting his brother’s abilities as a manager and singer. Possessed of a remarkably high tenor voice, Albert was unfortunately subject to intermittent attacks of total loss of vocal power. But the singer’s loss was the actor’s gain, for to compensate for this defect he exerted himself and succeeded in shining as an actor.