He abused conductors for playing excerpts from his music in concert, and then conducted concerts devoted to his own works. He wrote pamphlets on every subject, and with the prerogative of genius contradicted them in other pamphlets. He was not always a Wagnerian, and at times he differed with himself in the interpretation of his compositions. He was a genius beset by volatile moods, a very busy man of affairs, and a much-suffering creature. Wandering about the world for a half-century did not improve his temper, and yet next to Nietzsche there is no one whose judgments on Wagner’s music I would regard with more suspicion than—Richard Wagner’s. He was a born satirist. He loved to play practical jokes, and it would not be surprising if some day we should learn that Parsifal was one of his jokes on an epical scale. Remember how he mocked Mozart and Beethoven and the symphonic form in his own C major symphony, as if to say, “I, too, can cover the symphonic canvas!” No, Wagner is a dangerous authority to quote upon Wagner.
Though Liszt was only two years older than Wagner, he was a musician of experience when Wagner was still a youth. While at the age of eighteen Wagner published his first sonata, opus 1, which was written under the direct influence of Haydn and Mozart, Liszt at the same age had already sketched a great revolutionary symphony, the slow movement of which, on Liszt’s own showing, has survived in his eighth symphonic poem, Héróïde Funèbre. By reference to these two early works, it is easy to determine which of these two masters was the first to open up new paths. Similarly we find that, during the Rienzi period, Liszt had already adopted new forms for his compositions of that date. In Wagner’s later works there often appear themes which note for note have been anticipated by Liszt. Compare, for their thematic formation, musical construction, and general coloring, Orpheus and Tristan and Isolde, the Faust symphony and Tristan, the Faust symphony and Die Walküre, Benediction de Dieu dans le Solitude and Isolde’s Liebestod, Die Ideale and the Ring,—Das Rheingold in particular,—Invocation and Parsifal, Hunnenschlacht and Kundry-Ritt, The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Parsifal, Christus and Parsifal, Excelsior and Parsifal, not to mention many others.
The principal theme of the Faust symphony is to be found in Die Walküre, and one of its most characteristic themes appears note for note as the Blick motive in Tristan and Isolde. The Gretchen motive in Wagner’s A Faust Overture is also derived from Liszt, and the opening theme of the Parsifal prelude closely follows the earlier written Excelsior of Liszt. It was during a rehearsal at Bayreuth in 1876 that Wagner suddenly seized Liszt by the arm and exclaimed, “Now, papa, here comes a theme which I got from you!” “All right,” replied the amiable Liszt, “one will then at least hear it.” The theme in question is the one in the fifth scene of the second act, which serves to introduce and accompany Sieglinde’s dream-words, “Kehrte der Vater nun heim?” This theme—see page 179 of Kleinmichael’s piano score—appears at the beginning of Liszt’s Faust symphony, which Wagner had heard at a festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein in 1861, and during which he burst forth with these words, “Music furnishes us with much that is beautiful and sublime; but this music is divinely beautiful.” Wagner owed much to Liszt besides money, sympathy, and a wife.
Even in the matter of the Niebelungenlied Wagner was anticipated by Friedrich Hebbel, whose somewhat prosaic dramatic version was first given at Weimar, in the Grand Ducal Theatre, May 16, 1861. The author’s wife, a well-known actress, essayed the principal rôle. A critic said of this Trilogy, “No one hitherto has collated the whole dramatic treasure of the Niebelung legends and made it playable upon the modern stage.” Yet, who to-day remembers Hebbel, and who does not know Wagner’s Trilogy?
But this indebtedness of one genius to another is often sadly misinterpreted. Handel helped himself, in his accustomed royal manner, to what he liked, and the tunes of many composers whose names are long since forgotten are preserved in his scenes like flies in amber. Shakespeare did not hesitate to appropriate from Plutarch and Montaigne, from Bandello and Holinshed,—yet he remains Shakespeare. Wagner, perhaps, was not cautious; and Liszt is too important a composer to have been thus treated, too important, and also too much of a contemporary. Why should we cavil? Wagner made good use of his borrowings, and it is in their individual handling and development that he still remains Richard Wagner.
Richard Strauss once said: “How necessary to every composer who writes for orchestra the contact with that body is, I will show you in one example. It is well known that when Wagner conducted for the first time Lohengrin, many years after its completion, he exclaimed, ‘Too much brass!’ In his exile he also wrote Tristan and Isolde, a tone-poem which makes over-great demands upon the orchestra and the singers. Parsifal, however, he wrote at Bayreuth. He had regained intimate feeling again with the orchestra and the stage. Hence I recognize in Parsifal a model of instrumental reserve.”
This quite bears out Arthur Symons’s contention that the best way to study a great artist is in the works of his decline, when his invention is on the wane. Another thing, and this should settle the controversy over that much discussed phrase, “Bühnenweihfestspiel,” Hanslick, Wagner’s heartiest opponent, wrote in 1882: “I must say at once that the ecclesiastic scenes in Parsifal did not at the performance produce nearly as offensive an effect as they do on one who merely reads the text-book. The actions we see are of a religious character, but with all their dignified solemnity they are nevertheless not in the style of the church, but entirely in the operatic style. Parsifal is and remains an opera, even though it be called a Bühnenweihfestspiel.”
Touching on the acrimonious controversy over Parsifal’s blasphemy, I may only say—to every one their belief. No one is forced to see the melodrama, for a mystic melodrama it is, with the original connotations of the phrase. The entire work is such a jumble of creeds that future Bauers, Harnacks, Delitzsches, and other ethical archæologists will have a terrible task if the work is taken for a relic of some tribal form of worship among the barbarians of the then remote nineteenth century. Here in America, the Land of the Almighty Hysteria, this artificial medley of faded music and grotesque forms is sufficiently eclectic in character to set tripping the feet of them that go forth upon the mountains in search of new, half-baked religions.
And now to a complete analysis of the work, an analysis, be it said, first made at Bayreuth in August, 1901. That it may prove unpleasant reading for some I do not doubt. I only hope that I shall not be accused of artistic irreverence. The personal equation counts for something in criticism. I cannot admire Parsifal, and I am giving my reasons for this dislike. There is no reason why the criticism that has so royally acclaimed the beauty of Wagner’s other music-dramas should be suspected in the case of Parsifal. Why should Parsifal be hedged as if of “sacred character”? If you tell a Parsifalite that the opera is blasphemous, he proves volubly, ingeniously, that it is pure symbolism, that Saracenic, Buddhistic, any but Christian, ceremonial is employed. But if you turn the tables, and assert that Parsifal is not sacred, that it should be enjoyed and criticised like Tristan and Isolde, the Parsifalite quickly jumps the track and exclaims, “Sir, there is sacred atmosphere in Parsifal, and not in Tristan!” Oh, this sacred atmosphere! It is worse than Nietzsche’s Holy Laughter! The question may be summed up thus: If Parsifal is blasphemous, it should not be tolerated; if it is not a representation of sacred matter, then we have the privilege of criticising it as we do a Verdi or a Meyerbeer opera; and Meyerbeer was an inveterate mocker of religious things—witness Les Huguenots, Robert le Diable, Le Prophète. How about Halévy’s La Juive? Parsifal, so it appears to me, is more morbid than blasphemous.