There are two other points, one legendary, one historical, which ought to be mentioned for the sake of those who like to know the sources of stories like that of Lohengrin. The ancient Angles had a saga which told of the arrival in their country of a boat, evidently sailless, oarless, and rudderless, containing only a child surrounded by arms and treasure. They brought him up and called him Skéaf (from which word our "sheaf"), because he lay upon a bundle of grain. He became king of the people, and, when he felt death upon him, commanded to be carried back to the shore where he had been found. There lay the boat in which he had come, and when his dead body was placed in it, it moved away of its own accord. From him descended a race of kings. Here, I am inclined to see a survival of the story of Danaë and her child Perseus found floating on the sea in a chest, as sung by Simonides. The historical element in "Lohengrin" is compassed by the figure of the king, who metes out justice melodiously in the opening and closing scenes. It is King Henry I of Germany, called the Fowler, who reigned from A.D. 918 to 936. He was a wise, brave, and righteous king, who fought the savage Huns, and for his sake the management of the festival performances at Bayreuth, in 1894, introduced costumes of the tenth century.
Footnotes:
{1} John P. Jackson's translation.
{2} In Mr. John P. Jackson's translation:—
Ne'er with thy fears shalt task me,
Nor questions idly ask me:
The land and from whence I came,
Nor yet my race and name.
CHAPTER XVII
"HÄNSEL UND GRETEL"
In many respects "Hänsel und Gretel" is the most interesting opera composed since "Parsifal," and, by being an exception, proves the rule to which I directed some remarks in the chapter on "Don Giovanni." For a quarter of a century the minds of musical critics and historians have been occupied at intervals with the question whether or not progress in operatic composition is possible on the lines laid down by Wagner. Of his influence upon all the works composed within a period twice as long there never was a doubt; but this influence manifested itself for the greater part in modifications of old methods rather than the invention of new. In Germany attempts have been made over and over again to follow Wagner's system, but though a few operas thus produced have had a temporary success, in the end it has been found that the experiments have all ended in failures. It was but natural that the fact should provoke discussion. If no one could write successfully in Wagner's manner, was there a future for the lyric drama outside of a return to the style which he had striven to overthrow? If there was no such future, was the fact not proof of the failure of the Wagnerian movement as a creative force? The question was frequently answered in a spirit antagonistic to Wagner; but many of the answers were overhasty and short-sighted. It needed only that one should come who had thoroughly assimilated Wagner's methods and had the genius to apply them in a spirit of individuality, to demonstrate that it was possible to continue the production of lyric dramas without returning to the hackneyed manner of the opposing school. The composer who did this was Engelbert Humperdinck, and it is particularly noteworthy that his demonstration acquired its most convincing force from the circumstance that instead of seeking his material in the myths of antiquity, as Wagner did, he found them in the nursery.
While emphasizing this fact, however, it is well not to forget that in turning to the literature of folklore for an operatic subject Humperdinck was only carrying out one of the principles for which Wagner contended. The Mährchen of a people are quite as much a reflex of their intellectual, moral, and emotional life as their heroic legends and myths. In fact, they are frequently only the fragments of stories which, when they were created, were embodiments of the most profound and impressive religious conceptions of which the people were capable. The degeneration of the sun god of our Teutonic forefathers into the Hans of Grimm's tale, who could not learn to shiver and shake, through the Sinfiotle of the "Volsunga Saga" and the Siegfried of the "Nibelungenlied," is so obvious that it needs no commentary. Neither should the translation of Brynhild into Dornröschen, the Sleeping Beauty of our children's tales. The progress illustrated in these examples is that from myth to Mährchen, and Humperdinck in writing his fairy opera, or nursery opera if you will, paid tribute to German nationality in the same coin that Wagner did when he created his "Ring of the Nibelung." Everything about "Hänsel und Gretel" is charming to those who can feel their hearts warm toward the family life and folklore of Germany, of which we are, or ought to be, inheritors. The opera originated, like Thackeray's delightful fireside pantomime for great and small children, "The Rose and the Ring." The composer has a sister, Frau Adelheid Wette, wife of a physician in Cologne. She, without any particular thought of literary activity, had been in the habit of writing little plays for production within the family circle. For these plays her brother provided the music. In this way grew the first dramatic version of the story of Hänsel and Gretel, which, everybody who has had a German nurse or has read Grimm's fairy tales knows, tells the adventures of two children, a brother and sister, who, driven into the woods, fell into the toils of the Crust Witch (Knusperhexe), who enticed little boys and girls into her house, built of gingerbread and sweetmeats, and there ate them up. The original performers of the principal characters in the play were the daughters of Frau Wette. Charmed with the effect of the fanciful little comedy, Herr Humperdinck suggested its expansion into a piece of theatrical dimensions; and the opera was the result. It was brought forward for the first time in public on December 23, 1893, in Weimar, and created so profound an impression that it speedily took possession of all the principal theatres of Germany, crossed the channel into England, made its way into Holland, Belgium, and Italy, and reached America within two years. Its first performance in New York was in an English version at Daly's Theatre on October 8, 1895. There were drawbacks in the representation which prevented a success, but after it had been incorporated in the German repertory of the Metropolitan Opera-house in the season of 1895-1896 it became as much of a permanency as any opera in the list.
Humperdinck has built up the musical structure of "Hänsel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear a strong family resemblance to two little songs which the children sing at the beginning of the first and second acts, and which are veritable nursery songs in Germany. These ditties and the principal melodies consorted with them contribute characteristic motifs out of which the orchestral part is constructed; and these motifs are developed in accordance with an interrelated scheme every bit as logical and consistent as the scheme at the bottom of "Tristan und Isolde." As in that stupendous musical tragedy, the orchestra takes the part played by the chorus in Greek tragedy, so in "Hänsel und Gretel" it unfolds the thoughts, motives, and purposes of the personages of the play and lays bare the simple mysteries of the plot and counterplot. The careless happiness of the children, the apprehension of the parents, promise and fulfilment, enchantment and disenchantment—all these things are expounded by the orchestra in a fine flood of music, highly ingenious in contrapuntal texture, rich in instrumental color, full of rhythmical life, on the surface of which the idyllic play floats buoyantly, like a water-lily which