Wagner as I Knew Him

by Ferdinand Praeger

During the composition Tichatschek, who was to impersonate the hero, practised such portions as were already written. His enthusiasm was unbounded, and with Roeckel, he urged the Dresden management to provide special scenery. The appeal was responded to, and painters were even brought from Paris. On the 19th October, 1845, the opera was performed, Johanna Wagner, aged nineteen, the daughter of his brother Albert, singing the part of Elizabeth. As an illustration of Richard Wagner’s thoroughness and attention to detail, I would mention that for this performance he wrote a prefatory notice to the book of words, in which he explained the purport of the story, with the object of ensuring a better understanding of the drama by the public. The performance, alas, was only a partial success, nor was a second representation, given within a fortnight, any more successful. The music was unlike anything heard before. It was noised abroad that passages had been written for the first violins which were unplayable, and the audience listened expectantly for the “scramble.” No doubt there were violin passages as difficult as original, but the heart of the leader, Lipenski, was in his work, and he set himself so earnestly to teach individually each violinist difficult phrases, even carefully noting the fingering, that the performance was anything but a “scramble.” Then the critics ridiculed the hundred and forty-two bars of repetition in the overture for the violins. This confession of superficial intellect was not confined to Dresden critics; a dozen years later, that sound musician, Lindpaintner, expressed the opinion to me that the first eight bars of the overture were “sublime,” but that the remainder was all “erratic fiddling.” Such were the criticisms (?) passed upon the work. Wagner saw there was no hope of its acceptation elsewhere, and thinking to bring it prominently before Germany, wrote in the following year for permission to dedicate the work to the king of Prussia. The reply was to the effect that if he would arrange portions of it for military performance, it might in that manner be brought to the notice of the king, and perhaps his request complied with. It is needless to say Wagner did nothing of the kind, and “Tannhäuser” sank temporarily into oblivion.

As the part which Richard Wagner played in the Revolution of 1848-49 is of absorbing interest, the incidents which led up to it are of importance to be carefully noted. The first sign of the coming opposition to the government appeared in 1845. In itself it was slight, when we think of the terrible struggle that was shortly to be carried on with such desperation, but it shows the embers of revolt in Wagner, which were later fanned into a glowing flame by the patriot, August Roeckel. Wagner’s heart, as that of all men, revolted at the cause, but had it not been for the “companion of my solitude,” as Wagner calls Roeckel, he would never have taken so active a part in the struggle for liberty. Upon this part, I cannot lay too much stress.

Throughout Saxony, a feeling had been growing against the restraint of the Roman Catholic ritual. One Wronger, a Roman Catholic priest, proposed certain revisions and modifications. To this the Dresden court, steadfastly ultramontane, offered violent opposition, and Duke Johann, brother of the king, showed himself a prominent defender of the faith.

The struggle was precipitated by the following incident. In his capacity as general commandant of the Communal guard, the Duke entered Leipzic one day in August, to review the troops. He and his staff were received, on the parade ground, by a large concourse of spectators with such chilling silence that, losing command of himself, the Duke at once broke off the projected review. Later in the day, while at an hotel on the city boulevard, some street urchins marched up and down singing, “Long live Wronger.” In a moment a tumult arose, upon which the royal guard stationed outside the hotel, by whose order is not known, fired upon the citizens promenading in the town. “The street,” writes Roeckel, “was bathed in blood.” This caused a tremendous stir throughout Saxony. This wanton act of butchery was openly denounced by Roeckel and Wagner, in terms so emphatic that they were called upon to offer some sort of apology to the court. The two friends arranged a meeting with Reissiger, Fisher, and Semper, when the subject was discussed, with the result that it was deemed advisable, while holding service under the court, to express regret at the exuberance of the language, and the matter was allowed to drop. But it rankled in Wagner. His position of a servitor was irksome; he became restive in his royal harness, and vented his annoyance in anonymous letters to the papers. From this time his interest in the political situation increased; continually stimulated by Roeckel, his sympathies were always with the people, his pen ready to support his feelings. And so the time wore on till the outbreak of 1848.

BEETHOVEN’S “NINTH SYMPHONY.”

In the spring of 1846 an event occurred which had a great deal to do with my subsequent introduction of Wagner to the London public. It was his conducting of the “Ninth Symphony.” A custom existed in Dresden, of giving annual performances on Palm Sunday for the benefit of the pension fund of the musicians of the royal opera. Two works were usually produced, one a symphony, the two conductors dividing the office of conductor. This year the symphony fell to Wagner, and he elected to perform the “Choral.” When a youth he had copied it entirely at Leipzic, knew it almost by heart, and regarded it as the greatest of Beethoven’s works, the one in which the great master had felt the inadequacy of instrumental music to express what he wished to convey, and that the accents of the human voice were imperatively necessary for its full and complete realization. When it became known what symphony had been selected the orchestra revolted. They implored Wagner to produce another. The ninth had been done under Reissiger and proved a failure, in which verdict Reissiger had agreed, himself going so far as to describe that sublime work as “pure nonsense.” But Wagner was inexorable. The band, fearing poor receipts, sought the aid of Intendant Luttichorn: to no purpose, however. Wagner’s mind was made up, and he set to work with his usual thoroughness and earnestness. To avoid expense he borrowed the orchestral parts from Leipzic, learned the symphony by heart, and went through all the band parts himself, marking the nuances and tempi. As to rehearsals, he was unrelenting. For the double basses he had special meetings, would sing and scream the parts at them. He increased the chorus by choir-boys from neighbouring churches, and worked for the success of the performance with an energy hitherto unknown. To Roeckel he detailed the practice of the best portion of the band, whilst he persisted with the less skilful. The result was a performance as successful financially as artistically. More money was taken than at any previous concert, and the fame of Richard Wagner increased mightily. This performance brings out prominently certain features in Wagner’s character which enable us to see how, through subsequent reverses, he was able to achieve success. First, witness his courage and indomitable will in overcoming the obstacles of Luttichorn’s opposition and the ill-will of the orchestra, the want of funds; then his earnestness and care in committing the score to memory, his energy at rehearsals, his forethought and wondrous grasp of detail evident in the programme he wrote explaining the symphony, and his untiring efforts to succeed. Such points of character show of what material the man was made, how in all he did he was thorough, and how firmly impressed with the conviction that he must succeed.

THE FASHIONABLE OPERA.

The analytical remarks he appended to the symphony were not those that the musical world now know as Richard Wagner’s programme, but a shorter and more discursive exposition. The year was 1846, but two from the revolution. The spirit of the brotherhood of nations was in the air, and the references of Schiller to this world’s bond of union were seized by Wagner as presenting the means of contemplating Beethoven’s work from a more exalted elevation than that of an ordinary symphony. It was currently known that the poet had originally addressed his “Ode to Liberty! the beautiful spark of heaven,” but that the censor of the press had struck out “Freiheit” (liberty), and Schiller had substituted “Freude” (joy). The sentiment, then, was one shared by all, and there can be no question that the success of the final chorus was as much owing to the inspiriting language as to the tonal interpretation.

Of recent years much has been said of Wagner’s attitude towards the opinions upon Italian opera. The years he served at the conductor’s desk at Dresden, at the period when the sap of his art ambition was rising rapidly, truly brought him into intimate acquaintance enough with the fashionable works of French and Italian masters, but his resentment, I can vouch, was not directed against the composer. He often and often pointed out to me what, in his opinion, were passages which seemed to betoken the presence of real gift. What he did regret was that their faithful adherence to an illogical structure should have crippled their natural spontaneity. That the talent of the orchestra, too, should be thrown away on puerile productions annoyed him. But Wagner was nothing if not practical, and after a season of light opera, the conducting of which was shared by Reissiger and Roeckel, he writes, “After all, the management are wise in providing just that commodity for which there is demand.” When his own “Tannhäuser” was produced with its new ending, he was charged in the press with being governed too much by reflection, that his work lacked natural flow, that he was domineered by reasoning at the expense of feeling. To this Wagner replied in very weighty words, significant of the thought which always governed the earnest artist, “The period of an unconscious productivity has long passed: an art work to endure the process of time, and to satisfy the high culture which is around us, must be solidly rooted in reason and reflection.” Such utterances are clearly traceable to his elevated appreciation of poetry and keen reasoning faculties.

“Lohengrin,” beyond contradiction the most popular of all Wagner’s operas, or music-dramas, for it should be well remembered that Wagner in all his literary works up to the last persistently applies the term “opera” to “Lohengrin,” and its two immediate predecessors, whilst music-drama was not employed until 1851, and then only for compositions subsequent to that period. The popularity of “Lohengrin” is not confined to its native soil, Germany, but all Europe, England, Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark (shameful to add, France alone excepted), and America and Australia, have received it with acclamations. And why? The secret of it? For learned musicians too, anti-Wagnerians though they be, accepted it. From notes in my possession, I think the explanation becomes clear. Wagner writes at that time, “Music is love, and in my projected opera melody shall stream from one end to the other.” The form, too, does not break from traditions. It is the border between the old and new. When “Lohengrin” was composed, not one of his theoretical works had been penned. He was untrammelled then. The principles upon which his subsequent works were based can only be applied, he says, to the first three operas “with very extensive limitations.” Hence he satisfies the orthodox in their two fundamental principles, “form and melody.” “Lohengrin” is a love-poem; to Wagner, then, music was love, and he was intent on writing melody as then understood throughout the new work.