War Letters of a Public-School Boy

by Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

In the earliest plays the idea is at times hardly sufficient to fill out the language; in the middle plays there seems a perfect balance and equality between the thought and its expression; in the latest plays this balance is disturbed by the preponderance, or excess, of ideas over the means of giving them utterance.

After underlining this passage Paul made the comment: "An extraordinary coincidence occurs to me in that the same thing happens with Beethoven, the greatest of the absolute musicians. Anyone must see that in the last symphony (No. 9 in D minor) he seems often at a loss how to put his feelings into shape (or sound), as though musical style up to his time could not express the intensity of his ideas. Hence in this symphony there is a distinct lack of balance—a defect which is absent from the works of his middle period (e.g., Symphony No. 5 or No. 7)."

Another Beethoven work that he loved was the Third Symphony in E Flat, with its epic opening; the mournful beauty of its funeral march, now sad, calm, solemn like a moonless, starless night, now shining with gleams of hope and faith; its crisp and lively scherzo; and the triumphant finale, a veritable ecstasy of divine joy. My son as an historical scholar found a peculiar attraction in this symphony by reason of its association with Napoleon Buonaparte, for it was inspired by Beethoven's belief—formed in those days when the soldier of the Revolution was regarded as the liberator of peoples and the enemy only of the old feudal order—that Napoleon was marked out by destiny to realise Plato's ideal of government. One recalls how the act of Napoleon in proclaiming himself Emperor shattered this illusion; how Beethoven erased the fallen hero's name from the title-page of his score, withheld the "Eroica" for a time, and then gave it to the world in 1805 as "An Heroic Symphony composed in memory of a great man." When Beethoven heard of Napoleon's death at St. Helena, he said he had already composed his funeral ode 17 years before. Of this marche funèbre M. Ballaique wrote: "It owes its incomparable grandeur to the beauty of the melodic idea and also to a peculiarity of rhythm. At the first half of each bar there is a halt, a pause, which seems to punctuate each station, each painful slip or descent on the way to the illustrious tomb."

Of Wagner, Paul was a whole-hearted worshipper. He was familiar with the myths, legends and folk-poems from which Wagner drew his themes, and he exulted in the master's superb treatment of them. Never, he thought, had music and ideas been more felicitously blended than by Wagner, whatever the theme—the storm-tost soul of "the Flying Dutchman," to whom redemption came at last through loyalty and compassion; the conflict between sensuality and love fought out in the arena of Tannhäuser's mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. The occasional voluptuousness of the music was so transmuted in the alembic of his temperament that for him the sensual element was eliminated. An incident illustrative of his devotion to Wagner is worth recording. In the summer of 1913, during our holiday tour in Germany, we had for part of the time our headquarters at Assmannshausen, a smiling village sheltering snugly at the foot of vine-clad hills on the right bank of the Rhine. That great river is at its best at Assmannshausen; the broad current here flows swiftly over a stony bed. Day and night one's ears are filled with the music of the rushing waters hastening impetuously to the distant sea as though eager to lose themselves in its infinite embrace. One evening the guests at the hotel arranged a concert, and to our surprise—for we knew how diffident he was—Paul, evidently moved by the genius loci, volunteered to take part in it. When the time came he advanced to the piano through the crowded room and, with an elbow resting on the instrument, astonished the audience by a few explanatory words. He said he was going to play the "Ride of the Valkyries," and explained what Wagner meant to convey by that wild, stormy music. Then seating himself at the instrument, he proceeded to play the "Ride" from memory. His execution had a verve whose charm was irresistible. It was a lovely summer night. Through the open windows of the concert-room one caught glimpses of the moonlight quivering on the waters of the swift-flowing Rhine. Nothing could be heard save the river's melodious roar softened by distance, and this enchanting music interpreted by one who was saturated with its spirit, both sounds blending harmoniously like the double pipe of an ancient Greek flute player. All of us felt the spell of the scene and the occasion. Everyone listened tense and silent until the descending chromatic passage at the end when the "Valkyries" vanish into space, the echo of their laughter dies away, and the "Ride" ends in a sound like the fluttering of wings in the distance. When Paul rose from the piano the pent-up feelings of the audience found expression in enthusiastic applause.

In the spring of 1913, just after he had turned 17, he wrote the following appreciation of Wagner for the Llanelly Star:

The 22nd of May, 1913, marks the centenary of an event of supreme importance in the annals of music. To-day just one hundred years ago was born at Leipzig Richard Wagner, king of the music-drama, who towers above all other operatic composers like some lofty mountain rising from the midst of a dull and featureless plain. Such a colossal revolution as was effected by Wagner in Art can hardly find a parallel in any walk of life. What, in brief, was the scope of Wagner's reforms? To answer this question it is necessary to glance at the state in which the opera stood in pre-Wagner days. From the days of Scarlatti the opera had consisted of a number of semi-detached solos, duets or choruses to which tunes were set. These pieces were joined up by any jumble of notes sung by the characters on the stage, usually with no artistic meaning whatsoever, known as the recitative. In a word, the opera was a mere ballad concert. The recitative was so utterly foolish and meaningless, as a rule, that men like Beethoven and Weber, when they composed music-dramas, abolished it altogether, and composed what is known as "Singspiel"—that is, a number of ballads connected simply by spoken words. (The well-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are really Singspiels in a lesser form.) Thus it is obvious that the meaning of the opera—that is, a drama whose significance is made more clear by the aid of music suitable to the situation in hand—had been entirely lost sight of.

In the average French or Italian opera, or in the singspiels, all that matters is a number of songs, ballads or arias—call them what you will—entirely disconnected and quite destructive to the continuity that must be the essence of every drama. This continuity is an absolute necessity to every spoken play; imagine the effect if Shakespeare or Ibsen had written little pieces of rhyming verse joined up by any jumble of nonsensical prose! Neglect of this fact led every opera composer before Wagner astray. We can imagine a pre-Wagner composer telling his librettist, "Now, mind you arrange that in certain parts the words will allow me to put in arias or choruses." In short, the situation was summed up in Wagner's famous phrase, "The means of expression (music) has been made the end, while the end of expression (the drama) has been made the means." Now this state of affairs is clearly wrong. If there is no dramatic idea kept as end to work to, then what is the use of writing opera at all? Why not be content with song-cycles or ballads, or lieder like Brahms's and Schumann's?

There are no divisions into aria and recitative in Wagner's operas, but dramatic continuity is retained by the voices of the characters singing music the succession of whose notes is determined by the emotional requirements of the moment. Meanwhile, the orchestra forms a sort of musical background by giving forth music which exactly suits the dramatic situation. The orchestra, in a word, as Wagner himself said of Tristan und Isolde, forms an emotional tide on which the voice floats like a boat on the waters. The essential relevance of the music to the dramatic situation is obtained, as a rule, by means of what are known as "leading motives." These form the basis of all Wagner's reforms. A leading motive is simply a musical phrase suggestive of a dramatic idea. Wagner's motives are marvellous in their descriptive and soul-stirring power. They seem to indicate not only the pith, but the utmost depths of the heart of the ideas which they represent. It is this that makes Wagner so very like Shakespeare. All can appreciate him, yet he is above all criticism, universal in his appeal.

Who but Wagner could make us feel the awful tragedy of Siegfried's death, the calm of the primeval elements, the pompous yet somewhat venerable character of the Mastersingers, the agony of Tristan's delirium, the superb majesty of Valhalla, or the free, noble nature of Parsifal? Even when Wagner uses motives comparatively little, writing rather "freely," as in Tristan und Isolde, he always has the power of imprinting an idea with the utmost clearness upon our souls. He will sometimes make a slight change in a motive, or make a development of it, that gives us an entirely different psychological impression of the idea represented by the motive, as indicating some new aspect of it in which the motives are all dovetailed together into a compact whole that is simply marvellous. If one considers the "Ring," that gigantic web of motives, and at the same time, in the words of that able critic, Mr. Ernest Newman, "beyond all comparison the biggest thing ever conceived by the mind of a musician," colossal yet logical, gigantic yet compact, the power of the Bayreuth master will become even still more evident.

Wagner's first work, Rienci, composed frankly in the blatant Meyerbeerian style, has no artistic significance. The Flying Dutchman marks a great advance. Tannhäuser and Lohengrin are milestones of progress, but in all these works Wagner's full ideal is, generally speaking, but little perceptible. The really great Wagner operas are his later works, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and, above all, that gigantic tetralogy (a complete musico-dramatic rendering of the Icelandic Saga put into English verse under the title of Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris) which consists of four stupendous operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Gotterdämmerung. These marvellous works, the consummation of the Bayreuth master's principles, undoubtedly stand with Beethoven's symphonies as the greatest achievements in music.