By way of a footnote to this chapter I may be allowed to add a few words about the smaller characters. All that Wagner took from the old legends was the suggestion for the two lovers who sinned and perished for their sin. Crudely or coarsely, gentlemanly (as in Tennyson), refined and spiritualized, that idea is the central idea of every form of the tale. To these two people Wagner added Brangaena and Kurvenal, and, taking only the name of King Mark, he created a new personage, unlike any of the older versions of the man, necessary for the exposition of his idea. Brangaena is the most difficult part to sing and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress. She has not a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last recitative. Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable pathos. His phrase to Tristan, "The wounds from which you languish here all shall end their anguish," is as touching in its rough, uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master. That is all Kurvenal is—a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it requires a very great artist to interpret it. David Bispham's impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen. Mark's reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are also very hard to render. In fact, only fine opera singers can take any of these parts without coming to grief. The invisible sailor must be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with no little skill.
CHAPTER XII
'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'
I
The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing Tristan, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the reader, to consider the Mastersingers of Nuremberg immediately after Tristan. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the second opera in its true chronological order. The Nibelung's Ring was still in abeyance; Tristan finished, Wagner, in search of means of subsistence—the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast giving out—undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861 his last hopes of a Paris success with Tannhäuser were extinguished; his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." The Mastersingers had been sketched, as we know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an entirely different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of the Mastersingers his contentment should endure any length of time. No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862 that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say, will occupy us presently.
In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many another city, a guild of minstrels—at once poets and musicians. The name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing Tannhäuser, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the Mastersingers that hangs from Tannhäuser I beg the reader not to ask me. There is this similarity: the central scene of each is a minstrel-contest; there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he went ahead and wrote the poem.
All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number of entries—as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter. There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel and Matheson evidently thought the bitter outdid the sweet. In the Mastersingers, however, the lady is all that is attractive, and goodly sport is expected. Hans Sachs himself, though past middle-age, loves her, and might well hope to win; Beckmesser, another master of the guild, means to do his best; and a young knight, Walther von Stolzing, has just become infatuated with her and she with him. He cannot strive in the contest, however, not being a master; and when he submits to a trial the guild rejects him with scorn. Things have arrived at this point at the end of the first Act. In the next, Walther and Eva, desperate, resolve to fly under cover of darkness; Sachs overhears them planning and sings a curious sort of warning-song, letting them know that he is on the look-out and will prevent the elopement; Beckmesser comes to serenade Eva, and David, an apprentice, thinks he has come after his (David's) sweetheart and falls to fisticuffs with him; there is a street row, amidst which Eva escapes into her father's house, while Sachs pulls Walther into his. In the third Act Eva, who has already told Sachs quite plainly enough that if only a master may win her, and Walther cannot become a master, she prefers him to any other, practically repeats her hint. But Walther has composed another song and Sachs has devised a scheme: if Walther sings his song he is certain to be the victor, and Sachs has determined that by hook or by crook he must sing it. Beckmesser grabs the song, under the impression it is by Sachs; Sachs, without committing himself, tells him to make use of it at the contest if he can. The people gather to watch and hear and judge; Beckmesser makes a muddle of the song and is laughed off the scene; then Sachs pleads Walther's case, and he is allowed, though not a master, to sing. He triumphs, and by one stroke is admitted to the guild and wins the prize. Virtually the play ends here. Sachs' winding-up address can only be dealt with in connection with the music.
II
The personality, the soul, of Sachs, its conflict with itself, its victory over itself and renunciation—undoubtedly Wagner felt this to be the centre of the action of the play, and undoubtedly without it he could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of old Nuremberg—a vision as indissolubly blent with music as was the vision of the river and the swan with the music of Lohengrin. One may say truly that once the germ of the dramatic action was in Wagner's brain he needed the musico-pictorial inspiration of the scenic environment and atmosphere before the thing took final shape and he could compose the music. He says explicitly this was so in the case of the Dutchman; in Tannhäuser it is perhaps a little less obviously the case. But even in that second of the great operas we need only read his directions for the right performing of it to see of what importance to him were the different scenes—the hot, steaming cave of Venus, the fresh spring morning by the roadside, the great hall of song—about which he was very particular—the autumn woods in the last act. In his letters to Uhlig this comes out very plainly: for instance, he gives as his reason for cutting down the finale of the last act that it was impossible at Dresden to get a glorious sunrise, with which the work should end. I have already laid sufficient stress on the true source of Lohengrin; in Tristan adequate and appropriate scenery is absolutely demanded to sustain the atmosphere; and here, in the Mastersingers, music and a series of pictures go together, and the pictures seem to inspire the music—or rather, music and pictures are parts of the first inner vision.