Some psychological interest also attaches to the remark with which Weber's son prefaces this story—namely that Weber was constantly transmuting forms and colors into sounds; and that lines and forms seemed to stimulate his melodic inventiveness pre-eminently, whereas sounds affected his harmonic sense.
My subject is by no means exhausted, but for fear of fatiguing the reader with an excess of details I will close with a few facts regarding Richard Wagner's method of composing. I am indebted for these facts to the kindness of Herr Seidl, of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, who was Wagner's secretary for several years, and helped him prepare "Götterdämmerung" and "Parsifal" for the press.
Like his famous predecessors, Wagner always carried some sheets of music paper in his pocket, on which he jotted down with a pencil such ideas as came to him on solitary walks, or at other times. These he gave to his wife, who inked them over and arranged them in piles. In these sketches the vocal part was always written out in full, while the orchestral part was roughly indicated in two or more additional staves. Frau Cosima has preserved most of these sketches, and they will doubtless some day be reproduced in fac-simile, like some of Beethoven's.
Whenever Wagner was in the mood for composing he would say to Herr Seidl, "Bring me my sketches." Then he would retire to his composing room, to which no one was ever admitted, not even his wife and children. At lunch-time, the servant would bring something to the ante-room, without being allowed to see the master in his sanctum. How Wagner conducted himself there is not known, except that strange vocal sounds, and a few passionate chords on the piano would occasionally reach the ears of neighbors. Wagner appears to have used his piano just as Beethoven did his, even after he had become deaf:—as a sort of lightning-rod for his fervent emotions.
Much nonsense has been written concerning the fact that Wagner used to wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of Bavaria, and some went so far as to declare him insane. But in truth, Wagner was simply endeavoring to put himself into an atmosphere most favorable for dramatic creation. We all know how much clothes help to make a man, in more than one sense; and any one who has ever taken part in private theatricals will remember how much the costume helped him to get into the proper frame of mind for interpreting his rôle. This was all that Wagner aimed at in wearing his mediæval costumes; and the wonderful realism and vividness of his dramatic conceptions certainly more than justify the unusual methods he pursued to attain them.
After elaborating the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic details of his scores, Wagner considered his main task done, and the orchestration was completed down-stairs in his music room. In his earliest operas Wagner did not write his scenes in their regular order, but took those first which specially proffered themselves. Of the "Flying Dutchman," for instance, he wrote the spinning chorus first, and he was delighted to find on this occasion, as he himself says, that he could still compose after a long interruption. He used a piano but rather to stimulate and correct than to invent. In his later works the piano is absolutely out of the question. He wrote the music, scene after scene, following the text; and the conception of the whole score is so absolutely orchestral that the piano cannot even give as faint a notion of it as a photograph can give of the splendors of a Titian. Wagner, as he himself tells us, was unable to play his scores on the piano, but always tried to get Liszt to do that for him.
It is possible that some of my readers have never seen a full orchestral score of "Siegfried" or "Tristan." If so, I advise them to go to a music store and look at one as a matter of curiosity. They will find a large quarto volume, every page of which represents only one line of music. There are separate staves for the violins, violas, cellos, double basses, flutes, bassoons, clarinets, horns, tubas, trombones, kettle-drums, etc., each family forming a quartette in itself, and each having its own peculiar emotional quality. In conducting an opera the Kapellmeister has to keep his eye and ear at the same time on each of these groups, as well as on the vocal parts and scenic effects. If this requires a talent rarely found among musicians, how very much greater must be the mind which created this complicated operatic score! No one who tries to realize what this implies, and remembers that Wagner wrote several of his best music dramas among the mountains of Switzerland, years before he could dream of ever hearing the countless new harmonies and orchestral tone-colors which he had discovered, can deny, I think, that I was right in maintaining that the composing of an opera is the most wonderful achievement of human genius.