Life of Wagner

by Ludwig Nohl

CHAPTER III.

1842-1849.

REVOLUTION IN LIFE AND ART.

Success and Recognition—Hofkapellmeister to the Saxon Court—New Clouds—“Tannhaeuser” Misunderstood—The Myths of “The Flying Dutchman” and “Tannhaeuser”—Aversion to Meyerbeer—The Religious Element—“Lohengrin”—The Idea of “Lohengrin”—Wagner’s Revolutionary Sympathies—The Revolution of 1848—The Poetic Part of “Siegfried’s Death”—The Revolt in Dresden—Flight from Dresden—“Siegfried Words.”

“Give me a place to stand.”—Archimedes.

In an enthusiastic account of the first presentation of the “Flying Dutchman” in Riga, May, 1843, it is said: “The ‘Flying Dutchman’ is a signal of hope that we shall soon be rescued from this wild wandering in the strange seas of foreign music and shall find once more our blessed home.” In a similar strain, the Illustrierte Zeitung said: “It is the duty of all who really cherish native art to announce to the fatherland the appearance of a man of such promise as Wagner.” Indeed Wagner himself says that the success of the work was an important indication that we need but write “as our native sense suggests.” That he himself perceived a new era of the highest and purest outpouring of a new spirit is shown in the composition of this year (1843), the “Liebesmahl der Apostel,” wherein he quotes from the Bible: “Be of good cheer for I am near you and My spirit is with you.” A chorus of forty male voices exultingly proclaimed this promise from the high church choir loft in Dresden, on the occasion of the Maennergesangvereins-Fest.

“Rienzi” was performed in October 1842, and the “Flying Dutchman” January 2, 1843, both meeting with an enthusiastic reception. Wagner himself had conducted the rehearsals and secured the support of newly won friends and such eminent artists as Schroeder-Devrient and Tichatschek. His success gained for him the distinction of Hofkapellmeister to the Saxon Court. The position once held by Weber was now his. The objects which he had sought to accomplish seemed within reach and he heartily entered into the brilliant art life of the city, the more so as hitherto he had not enjoyed it though possessing the desire and knowledge to do so. Although “Rienzi” retained a certain degree of popularity, the “Flying Dutchman” however had not really been understood, and the more it was heard, the less was it appreciated. How could it be otherwise amid such a public as then existed in Germany? In the upper and middle classes French novels were the favorite literature, while the stage was controlled by French and Italian operas. With all their superficiality they combined perfection in the art of singing, but failed to awaken any sense of the intrinsic worth of our own nature. There were but few of sufficiently delicate feeling to perceive in this composition the continuation of the noble aims of Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber. Wagner himself while in Dresden was destined to continue the struggle against all that was foreign as these three masters had done before him. “Professional musicians admitted my poetic talent, poets conceded that I possessed musical capacity,” is the way he characterizes the prevailing misunderstanding of his endeavors and his works, which required a generation to overcome.

He constantly sought to direct public attention to the grander and nobler compositions, such as Gluck’s “Armide” and “Iphigenia in Aulis,” Weber’s “Euryanthe” and “Freischuetz,” Marschner’s “Hans Heiling,” Spohr’s “Jessonda,” and other grand works for concerts, like Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” and Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,” all of which were performed in a masterly manner, while such compositions as Spontini’s “Vestalin” he at least helped to display in the best light. He was also very active in having Weber’s remains brought from London. He not only composed a funeral march, for the obsequies, upon motives from “Euryanthe,” which was very powerful in effect, but he also has reminded posterity of what it possesses in this the youngest German master of the musical stage. “No musician, more thoroughly German than thou, has ever lived,” he said at the grave. “See, now the Briton does thee justice, the Frenchman admires thee, but the German alone can love thee. Thou art his, a beautiful day in his life, a warm drop of his blood, a part of his heart.” Thus at times he succeeded in arousing the public. But on the whole, his ideas were not accepted, and it retained its accustomed views and continued in the old pleasures. Wagner began again to feel more and more his isolated position. The complete misunderstanding of Tannhaeuser, which he began to write when he first arrived in Dresden, and the refusals of the work by other cities, Berlin among them, declaring it “too epic,” rendered this sense of isolation complete. The recurrence of such experiences as these showed him how far his art was still removed from its ideal and his contemporaries from the comprehension of their own resources. He realized the fact that his own improved circumstances had deceived him, and that in truth the same superficiality of life and degradation of the stage prevailed everywhere. The course of events during the next generation but proved the truth of this. Whatever of merit was produced met with hostility, as in the case of our artist. The growing perception of these facts led him gradually to revolt against the art-circumstances of his time, and as he became convinced that the condition of art was but the result of the social and political, indeed of the existing mental condition of the people, he at last broke out into open revolution against the entire system. This very agitation of soul, however, became the source of his artistic creations, wherein he attempted to disclose grander ideals and nobler art, and they form therefore, as in the case of every real artist, his own genuine biography. In tracing the origin of his works, we follow the inner current of his life.

Thus far we have availed ourselves of the biographical notes which Wagner, prior to the representation of the “Flying Dutchman,” gave to his friend Heinrich Laube for publication in the “Zeitung fuer die elegante Welt.” We are now guided further by one of the most stirring spiritual revelations in existence, his “Communication to my Friends,” in the year 1851, in that banishment to which his noblest endeavors had brought him, written with his heart’s blood, as a preface to the publication of the three opera poems, namely, “Flying Dutchman,” “Tannhaeuser” and “Lohengrin.” It is the consummation of his artistic as well as human development out of which grew his highest creations.