Wagner as I Knew Him

by Ferdinand Praeger

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT.

I should not omit to refer to certain observations Wagner made upon the military and police element in these early Paris years. He was a keen scrutinizer of men and manners, and failed not to observe the power wielded by the army. The French were a pageant-loving people, but were heavily burdened to maintain their large military force. Poverty was a natural result, and bitter feelings were engendered towards a government which employed the army as an awe-inspiring power towards peaceful citizens. Though the soldier was drawn from the people, yet as the unit of an army he came to be regarded as an enemy of his class. Nor was Wagner more satisfied with the police. He said he never could be brought to regard them as custodians of the peace and protectors of the rights of citizens. Instead of being well-disposed, they assumed a hostile attitude towards civilians. Perhaps these may seem items of no great importance, but to me the shrewd, perceptive Wagner of 1840-41, with his revolt against an overbearing military and police is the father of the revolutionist of 1848. It is but a short space of seven years.

With all its attendant suffering and weariness Wagner was accustomed to regard his first sojourn in Paris as the most eventful period of his life in the cause of art. There he burnt the ships of the youthful aspirant for public renown. Worldly tribulation tried and proved him, and the art genius emerged from the conflict purified and strengthened. As he says in his short autobiographical sketch, “The spirit of revolution took possession of me once forever.” As it is not an uncommon fact in history that great events have often been brought about by most trifling incidents, so now did the first step in this wondrous development arise out of an apparently unimportant conversation to which I shall shortly refer. He had come to Paris sustained by an over-sanguine conviction of compelling French admiration by a rich display of its own art proclivities. Omitting for the moment his “Faust” overture, he first completed “Rienzi,” in the all-spectacular spirit suited to the grand opera house. Then, as far as actual production went, ensued nearly a year of sterility, only to be followed by the advent of the poetic ideal which, when once cherished, was never afterwards cast aside. It was the poet who was now asserting his power. Poesy was claiming its birthright with the tonal art, and as the holy union of the twin arts manifested itself before his seer-like vision, so the artist, Wagner, the creator of a music whose every phase glows with the blood of life, so the poet-musician clearly perceiving his ideal, strove towards its attainment and never abated his efforts to realize his object, nor turned aside from its pursuit.

It is a matter of vast interest to learn how he was led in this direction. Some months after he had been in Paris, with little prospect of obtaining a hearing at the grand opera house, and suffering the keenest pangs of poverty, he heard the “Ninth Symphony” at the Conservatoire. He had heard it years ago, but now its story, its “programme,” was clear before him. He too would write a symphony. He would speak the feelings within him, and music should be a “reality” and not the language of mysticism.

“EINE FAUST” OVERTURE.

Overburdened with such feelings as these, a few days later he entered the music shop of Schlesinger. There was news for him. The publisher had a proposition which he thought promised well for Wagner. Deeply interested in his penniless, enthusiastic compatriot, he had almost brought to a successful conclusion an arrangement by which Wagner was to write a piece for a boulevard theatre. The conditions were that the trifle should be light and showy, nothing serious, but attractive. Such an offer at any other period prior to this, Wagner said he would have gladly welcomed. The time, however, was inopportune. Unfortunately for him, but to the incalculable gain of the art, just now he was under the magnetic influence of the “Ninth Symphony.” He seems to have burst into an uncontrollable onslaught upon the trivialities that ruled the French stage. He would have none of them. Music now for him was a “blessed reality,” and the hollow fictions of the boulevard theatres were unworthy of a true artist. Schlesinger reasoned with him, urged the wisdom of accepting the offer, though at the same time uncompromising in his demand that the proposed piece must not be serious, and must be written to suit the tastes of the uneducated public. But Wagner was not to be won over, quoting the dictum of Schiller, a great favourite with him, that “the artist should not be the bantling of his period, but its teacher.” No arrangement come to, Wagner went home. It was raining heavily. Excited and wet through, he talked wildly to Minna, the result being that he was put to bed with a severe attack of erysipelas. Brooding over his position, angered with the world and himself, caring not for life, his thoughts reverted to the “Ninth Symphony,” and he, with the energy of a sick, strong-willed man, resolved to write forthwith that which should be the expression of his pent-up rage with the world, and, as by magic, he fell upon the story of Faust. To Wagner, then, as to the aged student, “Life was a burden, and death a desired consummation.” And so he plunged with his woes thick upon him into the composition, superscribing his work with the words of Faust:—

Thou God, who reigns within my heart,
Alone can touch my soul.

HEINE’S “FLYING DUTCHMAN.”

While writing this, Wagner told me, that then for the first time did music speak to him in plain language. The subjects poured hot out of his heart as molten metal from a furnace. It was not music he wrote, but the sorrows of his soul that transformed themselves into sounds. His illness lasted for about a week, the erysipelas attacking his face and head. The forced reflection upon the past that his confinement induced was bitter, but his floating ideas about the poetic drama were cemented. That sick-chamber was the hothouse of the “romantic” Wagner. There the revolutionary views first gathered strength and the germs of the “art of the future” consolidated themselves. All his thoughts and feelings upon the future he communicated to his gentle nurse, Minna, who was always a ready listener to his seemingly random talk. This quality of “a good listener,” of always lending a sympathetic ear, was perhaps more soothing and valuable than a criticising, discerning companion might have been to him, especially during his days of sickness. He had also another ever-ready and attentive auditor, his dog, the companion of his voyage from Riga to London and thence to Paris. How fond he was of that dumb brute! The innumerable times he addressed it as if it were a human being! And Wagner was not forgetful of its memory. During the worst hours of want he wrote for a newspaper a short story entitled, “The end of a German Musician in Paris”; in that one sees with what affection he regarded his devoted friend. The principal character in this realistic romance is himself, whom he causes to die through starvation. In that the sorrow and suffering endured by Wagner are set forth in a manner that touches one to the quick. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he did not, as the majority of natures would have done, rest from all active mental work, but at once vigorously attacked his unfinished “Rienzi,” the remaining acts of which were completed by the end of the year 1840. A curious fate Wagner’s. He had embarked upon a hazardous voyage to the French capital with the view of producing “Rienzi” there, and yet no sooner was the work quite finished than he despatched it to Germany, hoping to get it performed at Dresden. A glance at the music reveals the gulf that separates the Wagner of the first two acts—composed before he came to Paris—from the writer of the remaining three. Yet another composition, a complete opera, was given to the world in Paris in the end of 1841. It has the unique distinction of being the work of Wagner that occupied the shortest time in writing. From the time of its inception—I am now speaking only of the music—to its completion, about seven weeks sufficed for the work. The poem had been completed some months earlier. He had submitted “Rienzi” to the director of the grand opera, who gave him no tangible hope of its being accepted, but promised to do his best in producing a shorter opera by him. This engagement on the part of the director, though not couched in unequivocal terms, was not to be allowed to drop. Wagner went to Heine and discussed the situation. Among the subjects proposed for an opera was Heine’s own treatment of the romantic legend of “The Flying Dutchman” and his spectral crew. The story was not new to Wagner. He had heard it for the first time from the lips of the sailors on his voyage to London. Then it had impressed him. Now it took hold of him.