Richard Wagner, Composer of Operas

by John F. Runciman

Wagner in 1877

It is worth insisting on this, partly because it is eminently characteristic of Wagner, partly because it enables us now to trace with some certainty the growth of the Nibelung's Ring, both drama and music, from its birth to its final execution. The history of the building-up of the drama, like the drama itself, is a mightily complicated and entangled matter. Some of it had to be related earlier in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us begin with a few dates—

1848. Had studied the Nibelungen saga and
sketched the plan of the whole gigantic
work much as it now stands.
1850-51. Discusses Siegfried's Death in letters
to Uhlig and Liszt. Begins the poem in
another form, which he abandons.
1852. Writes the poem for the work practically in
its final form; privately printed the
following year.
1853. Begins Rhinegold.
1854. Completes Rhinegold.
Begins the Valkyrie, and sketches Siegfried
at the same time.
1856. Completes Valkyrie.
Begins composition of Siegfried.
Completes first and begins second act of
Siegfried, and interrupts it to start work
on Tristan.
1859. Tristan completed.
1867. Mastersingers completed.
Composition of Siegfried resumed.
Siegfried completed.
Dusk of the Gods begun.
Dusk of the Gods completed.
1876. The Ring given at Bayreuth.

Wagner was thus occupied with the Ring for fully twenty-five years. The Rhinegold followed Lohengrin, but there was a gap of five years between them, mainly devoted to literary work (1848-53); and during that period his whole style in music underwent a vast change. In one respect the change is not so marked as that between the Rhinegold and the Valkyrie; in the first there is little of the passion, strength, grip and breadth of the others. While composing the Rhinegold his powers were developing at a prodigious rate, and had the Rhinegold been a better subject for the purpose they might have reached maturity while writing it. But there is no human element in it, and without that Wagner could not get on. We have already seen that he abandoned the idea of the Mastersingers for years—until, in fact, he had created a soul for Sachs: then he went ahead and gave us a series of magnificent pictures of old Nuremberg. In the same way, though he wrote some fine music in the Rhinegold, in richness, splendour of colouring, it does not compare with the Valkyrie, where he is chiefly concerned with two human beings and a being who must be called only a demi-goddess, half-goddess and half-human. He could not compose unless he had the double inspiration, the human soul and the pictorial environment. If I had to select three of Wagner's works to live with I should take the Valkyrie, Tristan and the Mastersingers. In them we find inspiration and craftmanship in absolute proportion; in the later dramas of the Ring we shall see how craftsmanship outran inspiration—sometimes with results that can only be called deplorable. This matter must be reserved for discussion until we deal with the operas separately.

The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it took to write—for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a single breath—but to the nature of the subject and the very German way in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that subject. In Chapter X, p. [193] and onward, the reader will recollect certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this gigantic opera. The letter on p. [227] is most characteristic of a German. Siegfried's Death did not explain enough, so an explanation had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the Rhinegold, was written—and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The poem—or, more properly, the four opera-books—must now be summarised, and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over the same ground twice, or more than twice.

II

The central figure of the Ring, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now, this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of how the dénouement came about, of the causes which brought it about, which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form the subject of three of the four dramas.

The power is symbolised by the gold of the Rhine; this gold, made into a Ring—the Nibelung's Ring—gives absolute power to its possessor. It is accursed; the curse being what I have just mentioned—that the power cannot be exercised without its possessor doing violence to his nature, thereby destroying that nature. Wotan thinks if an absolutely free agent, a hero owing nothing to any one, bound by no conditions, could gain this Ring, his power might be preserved: he might defy even Fate, since no conditions were attached to the possession of it. He makes the initial mistake when he determines to raise up such a hero: the hero's act is as much Wotan's as if Wotan had himself committed it.