Life of Wagner

by Ludwig Nohl

Another contingency temporarily interfered with the undertaking of the two friends, and that was the opposition of the Munich public, which resulted in Wagner’s permanent withdrawal from the city. To this public a person was indeed strange who made such unusual artistic demands, while the personal character and habits of Wagner at that time were probably nowhere more strange than in Bavaria, which had obtained its education at the hands of the Jesuit priests. It is true, the good qualities, such as simplicity of manners and habits of life, had remained, but the intellectual horizon had become a comparatively narrow one, and, what was worse, the clerical and aristocratic Bavarian party feared it would lose its power if a man like Wagner were to remain permanently about the king. George Herwegh has described comically enough the Witches-Sabbath, which that party, in 1865, with the aid of other hostile factions, enacted, and which forced Wagner once more into foreign lands.

Munich, accustomed to simplicity, took exception to the rich style in which Wagner furnished the villa presented by the king, and to the expansion of the civil-list for the construction of the theatre, which was to cost seven million marks, though it would have made Munich a festival-place for all Germany, and cultivated society the world over. The press from day to day printed some fresh calumny. It even assailed the private character of the artist after a fashion that provoked him to a very effective public defense. Even very sensible people became possessed, in an unaccountable manner, with the prevalent idea that Wagner was destroying Bavaria’s prosperity. A not unknown author of oriental poetry, said ignorantly enough, that it was well such a tramp was finally to be driven off the street; and a college professor, who, it is true, had a son, a self-composer in Beethoven’s meaning of the word, and who could therefore have performed all that Wagner did, added to this the brutal, insolent assertion, “the fellow deserves to be hanged.” At last they prevailed upon the king, to whom this had been foolsplay, to listen at least to what unprejudiced men would tell him of public opinion in Bavaria. To the minister and the police-superintendent were added an esteemed ultra montane government counselor, an arch bishop and others who were reputed to be unprejudiced. His reply, “I will show to my dear people that I value their confidence and love above everything,” proves that they finally succeeded in misleading even the greatest impartiality. The king himself requested the artist to leave Munich for some time and gave him an annuity of 15,000 marks. When this had been done, a public declaration of the principal party in Bavaria showed that the so-called “displeasure of the people” about political machinations and the like had been empty talk. Political, social, and artistic intrigues and base envy alone had given birth to this ghost.

This happened near the close of the year 1865. Wagner again turned to Switzerland. The king’s affection for him had only been increased by these occurrences. He even visited his friend in his voluntary exile, who in turn had no more ardent desire than to meet such love with deeds, and calmly prepared himself again for new work. His longing for Munich had forever vanished. It is true, some of the nobler citizens sought to wipe out the disgrace with which the city had covered itself, by sending a silver wreath to Wagner on his birthday in 1866. The rejection of Semper’s splendid design for the theatre by the civil-list led his thoughts anew to the wide German fatherland, and he at once returned to the Meistersingers, in the hope that by this more intelligible work the public would finally turn to him, and that then the great German people would assist in the erection of a festival-building for a national art-work and thus realize his grand ideal. We know to-day that he succeeded in uniting them in this great work.

The next important step in that direction was the representation of the “Meistersinger” in Munich in 1868. In the course of time Wagner dominated the stage in a manner which had not been witnessed since “Lohengrin.”

It has been truthfully said that there was something more surprising than the highly poetic “Tristan,” namely, the artist himself, who so shortly after could create a picture of such manifold coloring as the “Meistersinger.” But with equal truth the same observer of Wagner says that whoever is astounded at this achievement has but little understood the one essential point in the nature and life of all really great Germans. “He does not know on what soil alone that many-sided humor displayed by Luther, Beethoven, and Wagner can grow, which other nations do not at all comprehend, and which even the Germans of to-day seem to have lost; that mixture, pure as gold, of simplicity, deep, loving insight, mental reflection and rollicking humor which Wagner has poured out like a delightful draught for all those who have keenly suffered in life, and who turn to him, as it were, with the smile of the convalescent.” Another German, Sebastian Bach, might have been named whom Wagner resembles most in that universal dominating quality of mind which is even visible in the half-ironical, laughing eye of the simple Thuringian chorister, and brings home to us the truth of Faust’s words, “creating delights for the gods to enjoy.” He played at that time many of Bach’s compositions, such as the “Well Tempered Clavicord,” with his young assistant, Hans Richter, who had been recommended to him from Vienna as a copyist. What cared he for all this wild whirl of silly fancies and boorish conceit, so long as he, a genuine Prometheus, could create something new after the grandest models! In speaking of “Tannhaeuser” he tells us how supremely happy he was when occupied with the delightful work of real creation. “Before I undertake to write a verse or sketch a scene, I am already filled with the musical spirit of my creation,” he writes in the year 1864. “All the characteristic motives are in my brain, so that when the text is done and the scenes arranged, the opera itself is completed, and the detailed musical treatment becomes rather a thoughtful and quiet after-work which the moment of actual composition has already preceded.” The humor which at times prompted even the aged Beethoven to spring over tables and benches, frequently seized upon our master in such strange fashion that in the midst of company he would suddenly stand upon his head in a corner of the room for some time.

His friends observed with pleasure his rapturous happiness in the certainty of reaching the goal, even though it should bring him to the grave during this period of the “Meistersinger” composition. He lived in the most quiet retirement upon a small and beautiful estate in Triebscheu, near Lucerne, where Frau von Buelow, with her children, provided for his domestic comfort. His own wife had unexpectedly died a short time before. During her last years she had lived separately from the “fiery wheel” whose mad flight she could no longer grasp nor endure, but by no means in that poverty which the abominably slanderous press of Munich and elsewhere had accused him of inflicting upon her. On the contrary, she lived in circumstances fully corresponding to her husband’s means.

In October, 1867, after the lapse of 22 years, the “Meistersinger” was at last completed. He now strove to secure as far as possible a model representation. It was of course to take place in Munich, where “Tristan” had already given the orchestra at least a sure tradition of style. The event was destined to win for him the very heart of the nation. If the general culture of the last generation by its shallow optimism and stale humanitarianism blunted the feeling for the tragic, as Wagner for the first time had deeply expressed it, yet of one quality we were never deprived, it ever remained undisturbed, and that was our German good-nature, from the depths of which humor springs. At a casual meeting in Kuxhasen, during a friendly contest in the expression of emotions by gestures of the face, even the great Kean could not rival the greater Devrient in one thing, and had to yield to him the victory, and that was the tearful smile which springs from real compassion with the sorrows of humanity. It was with this “German good-nature” that Wagner this time conquered the nations. It was Beethoven who had again quickened the flow from this deepest source of blessing in life which Shakespeare had been the first to fully open. By it, Wagner’s soul has ever kept its warmth and spirit. Who that was present does not think with joyous emotion of those Munich May-days of 1868?

His pamphlet, “German Art and German Politics,” had directed the attention of the narrower circle of Wagner’s friends at least to the great fact that the artificial French civilization which had prevailed during the last generation could be banished by a real intellectual culture, and that in this work the highest form of art, the stage-festival-play, would take a prominent and important part. A masterly performance of Lohengrin in the spring of 1868, in honor of the Crown-Prince of Prussia, was a striking illustration of this, especially to Munich circles. It may also have influenced the mood of the performers in whose hands the ultimate realization of an object after all rests. “Even in after years Wagner confessed he had never felt greater satisfaction in his experiences with an opera company than at the first representation of the ‘Meistersinger.’” The performers also speak of the persuasive grace and the fresh, animating cheerfulness with which the master, an example for all in his restless activity, moved among them and gave to each individual his constant directions. This remark of his biographer tells everything.

The rehearsals were this time even more artistically satisfactory to all the participants than those of “Tristan.” This art-work was easier of comprehension owing to its more familiar subject and natural tone. At the director’s desk stood Buelow—“a fine head with clear cut features, bold arched forehead and large eyes.” Opposite to him on the stage stood Wagner, likewise a very active form of medium height. “All his features bear the impress of an unsubdued will which underlies his whole nature,” says a Frenchman. “It shows itself everywhere—in the broad and prominent forehead, in the excessive curve of the strong chin, in the thin and compressed lips, up to the strong eyebrows, which disclose the long excitements of a life of suffering; it is the man of battle, whom we know by his life, the man of thought, who, never content with the past, looks constantly to the future.” Closely attending, he accompanied every tone with a fitting gesture for the performer. Only when Mallinger sang the role of the goldsmith’s little daughter, Eva, he paused and listened approvingly with a smiling face. It was clear that, like Prometheus among his lifeless forms, he animated them with the breath of the soul and roused them into life. Beckmesser, the Marker, by his drastic presentation alone expressed the full measure of furious wrath over the shoemaker’s mockery of his beautiful singing. Such a display of art was new to all. The Court-Kapellmeister Esser of Vienna, admitted that for the first time he knew what dramatic, as compared with Kapellmeister-music, was; and the excellent clarinet-player Baermann, who had personally known Weber, felt himself in a new world, of which he said that one who did not know how to appreciate it was not worthy of it and that those who did not understand it were served rightly in being debarred from this enjoyment.

At the close of the rehearsals, Wagner expressed his great pleasure to all the performers; only the artist could again elevate art, and in contrast with the foreign style, hitherto cultivated, they would create our own distinctive art. The performance itself was intended to show to what height and dignity the drama could be elevated when earnest zeal and true loyalty are enlisted in its service. It was a touching proof of enthusiastic gratitude for the noble results to which he had led them, when they all gathered around him to press his hand or kiss his arms and shoulders. It was the first time that poet and artist were reunited and in harmony. A hopeful moment for our art! The enthusiasm lasted fully half of that fragrant summer night.