I doubt whether Wagner had either the Greek drama or the declamatory recitative of the early Italian opera composers in mind when he originated the music-drama. My opinion is that he thought it out free from any extraneous suggestion, but afterward, anticipating the attacks which in the then state of music in Germany would be made upon his theories, sought for prototypes and found them in ancient Greece and renascent Italy.
His theory of dramatic music is that it should express with undeviating fidelity the words which underly it; not words in their mere outward aspect, but their deeper significance in their relation to the persons, controlling ideas, impulses and passions out of which grow the scenes, situations, climaxes and crises of the written play, the libretto, if so you choose to call it—so long as you don’t say “book of the opera.” For even from this brief characterization, it must be patent that a music-drama is not an opera, but what opera should be or would be had it not, through the Italian love of clearly defined melody and the Italian admiration for beautiful singing, become a string of solos, duets and other “numbers” written in set form to the detriment of the action.
Opera is the glorification of the voice and the deification 267 of the singer.—Do we not call the prima donna a diva? Music-drama, on the other hand, is the glorification of music in its broadest sense, instrumental and vocal combined, and the deification of dramatic truth on the musical stage. Opera, as handled by the Italian and the French, undoubtedly is a very attractive art-form, but music-drama is a higher art-form, because more serious and more searching and more elevated in its expression of emotion.
Wagner was German to the core—as national as Luther, says Mr. Krehbiel most aptly, in his “Studies in the Wagnerian Drama,” which, like everything this critic writes, is the work of a thinker. For the dramas which Wagner created as the bases for his scores, he went back to legends which, if not always Teutonic in their origin, had become steeped in Germanism. The profound impression made by Wagner’s art works may be indicated by saying that the whole folk-lore movement dates from his activity, and that so far as Germany itself is concerned, his argument for a national art work as well as his practical illustration of what he meant through his own music-dramas, gave immense impetus to the development of united Germany as manifested in the German empire. He as well as the men of blood and iron had a share in Sedan.
Wagner’s first successful work, “Rienzi,” was an out-and-out opera in Meyerbeerian style. The “Flying Dutchman” already is legendary and more serious, while “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin” show immense technical progress, besides giving a clue to his system of leading motives, which is fully developed in the scores of the “Ring of the Nibelung,” “Tristan und 268 Isolde,” “Die Meistersinger,” and “Parsifal.” That his theories met with a storm of opposition and that for many years the battle between Wagnerism and anti-Wagnerism raged with unabated vigor in the musical world, are matters of history. Whoever wishes to explore this phase of Wagner’s career will find it set forth in the most interesting Wagner biography in any language, Mr. Finck’s “Wagner and His Works.”
Wagner a Melodist.
It sometimes is contended that Wagner adopted his system of leading motives because he was not a melodist. This is refuted by the melodies that abound in his earlier works; and, even as I write, I can hear the pupils in a nearby public school singing the melody of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from “Tannhäuser.” Moreover, his leading motives themselves are descriptively or soulfully melodious as the requirement may be. They are brief phrases, it is true, but none the less they are melodies. And, in certain episodes in his music-dramas, when he deemed it permissible, he introduced beautiful melodies that are complete in themselves: Siegmund’s “Love Song” and Wotan’s “Farewell,” in “Die Walküre,” the Love Duet at the end of “Siegfried,” the love scene in “Tristan und Isolde,” the Prize Song in “Die Meistersinger.” The eloquence of the brief melodious phrases which we call leading motives, considered by themselves alone and without any reference to the dramatic situation, must be clear to any one who has heard the Funeral March in “Götterdämmerung,” which consists entirely of a series of leading motives 269 that have occurred earlier in the Cycle, yet give this passage an overpowering pathos without equal in absolute music and just as effective whether you know the story of the music-drama and the significance of the motives, or not. If you do know the story and the significance of these musical phrases, you will find that in this Funeral March the whole “Ring of the Nibelung” is being summed up for you, and coming as it does near the end of “Götterdämmerung,” but one scene intervening between it and the final curtain, it gives a wonderful sense of unity to the whole work.
Unity is, in fact, a distinguishing trait of music-drama; and the very term “unity” suggests that certain recurring salient points in the drama, whether they be personages, ideas or situations, should be treated musically with a certain similarity, and have certain recognizable characteristics. In fact, the adaptation of music to a drama would seem to suggest association of ideas through musical unity, and to presuppose the employment of something like leading motives. They had indeed been used tentatively by Berlioz in orchestral music, and by Weber in opera (“Euryanthe”), but it remained for Wagner to work up the suggestion into a complete and consistent system.
