Mr. Dannreuther, who knew him well, testifies that he was most amiable among his friends, with whom he was a very different person from “the aggressive critic and reformer who addressed himself to the public.” There is no doubt that Wagner was fully convinced of the tremendous importance of his own work, and that he developed to its fullest extent the exasperating egotism of a man whose whole soul is absorbed in his aims. He was intolerant of opposition, and ungenerous in his views of other musicians. He was dogmatic in style, even when most logical in thought; and like many another genius, he had some very small weaknesses, such as a sybaritic love for silk and satin clothing, and a belief that the world ought to gratefully pay the expenses of his support while he completed his great works. With all his peculiarities, which were largely the outcome of his fierce struggle for recognition, he possessed “a simple kindness of heart, an extreme sensibility.” As to his manner of work, Dr. Praeger has given testimony:—
“Wagner composed at the piano, in an elegantly well-arranged studio. With him composing was a work of excitement and much labor.... He labored excessively. Not to find or make up a phrase; no, he did not seek his ideas at the piano. He went to the piano with his idea already composed, and made the piano his sketch book wherein he worked and reworked his subject, steadily modelling his matter until it assumed the shape he had in his mind.”
The names, dates of production, and principal singers of his music-dramas have already been given, together with some mention of his minor compositions. An overture (“Faust”), three marches, the “Siegfried Idyll,” built on themes from the drama, a chorus, a male quartet, a funeral march for Weber, five piano pieces, a few lovely songs (two of them studies for “Tristan” music), and nearly a dozen arrangements (among them piano scores of “La Favorita,” and “L’Elisir d’Amore,” pathetic mementoes of his starving days in Paris), are the musical remains of this genius, outside of his operatic works. The lyric stage was the theatre of his career, and in the works prepared for it he expended the force of his intellect, and developed the ideas that proclaim him an epoch-maker. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to the Wagner theories, and their practical exposition in the so-called “music of the future,” which has become so intensely that of the present. What is the Wagnerian theory of the opera? How does it differ from that which preceded it? From what germs did Wagner develop it? How has he embodied it? These are questions which naturally arise, and which demand answers.
It may well be questioned whether Wagner had a wholly comprehensive view of the essence and results of his own artistic theories. There can be no doubt that much of his work was the fruit of what were in his own mind vaguer inspirations, which he himself was unable to reduce to theoretical formulæ. Therefore, while we may appeal to his prose writings for evidence as to the sincerity and direction of his intentions, we may readily agree with the assertion of Mr. Hadow that “the arguments which have established the Wagnerian theory of opera are to be found not in ‘Opera and Drama,’ but in the pages of ‘Tristan’ and ‘Parsifal.’”[[8]] It behooves us, therefore, to endeavor to trace the development of the Wagnerian theory in the mind of its inventor, and in order to do that we must follow the plan of Mr. Krehbiel,[[9]] and make some inquiry into “the origin and nature of the lyric drama.”
Of the origin of the drama it is not the province of this article to speak, but we may note that the introduction of music into plays was a natural movement. In Italy, where the opera was born, choruses had been sung in plays as far back as 1350, but up to 1597 the ecclesiastical contrapuntal style prevailed, and in that year the speeches of a single personage, in a comedy of Orazzi Beechi’s, were sung in five-part choruses of sombre canonic form. The younger and more progressive minds in Florence began to perceive the unsuitability of this kind of music to the drama. In their search after a new form they were guided by the revival of interest in classic antiquity, known as the Renaissance; and they set about reconstructing the musical declamation of the Greeks. Their work began with the production of “monodies,” or what we should call to-day dramatic scenes for one voice. Encouraged by their success in this direction, two of these enthusiasts, Ottavio Rinuccini, poet, and Jacopo Peri, musician, wrote a pastoral called “Daphne.” This had all the elements of modern opera, and its favorable reception at a private performance led the two men to try again. This time they wrote “Eurydice,” performed in public in 1600, and recognized as the first opera. The pregnant achievement of Peri in these works was the foundation of dramatic recitation. It was nothing like the recitation of the Greeks, but it was a new and noble art form, in which music strove to imitate the nuances of speech without ceasing to be music. “Soft and gentle speech he interpreted by half-spoken, half-sung tones [modern parlando], on a sustained instrumental bass; feelings of a deeper emotional kind, by a melody with greater intervals, and a lively tempo, the accompanying instrumental harmonies changing more frequently.”[[10]] Peri’s theory, in short, was that recitative should copy speech, and that his new art form, which was christened drama per musica, should follow the Greek tragedies as its models. Claudio Monteverde advanced along the path indicated by Peri, and furthermore began to make the orchestra a potent factor in the musical exposition. But instrumental music now exercised a baneful effect on the opera, and in Cavalli’s “Giasone,” produced in 1649, we find the germs of the operatic aria, modelled on the simple cyclical forms used by the fathers of the sonata. Cavalli was opposed to recitative, and furthered the cause of simple rhythmical tune in opera. This new style was easy of comprehension and popular. Alessandro Scarlatti took it up and developed the aria so that it became the central sun of the operatic system. The result was inevitable. The person who could most beautifully sing an aria captured the public heart; the singer became the dominating power in opera, and the composer was relegated to a secondary place. From that time onward, the history of the artistic development of opera is a series of contests between the singer and the composer, with the supremacy mostly on the side of the former. The result of this was the imposition upon the opera of a number of meaningless, artificial forms, in which a musical purpose was manifest, but a dramatic design wholly undiscernible. In Handel’s time this artificiality had reached an absurd stage. The different kinds of arias were labelled with extreme minuteness in the matter of distinctions, and the composer was required to produce just so many in each opera and in each act. No vocalist might have two consecutive arias, nor might two arias of the same kind be sung in succession. But in the second and third act the hero and the heroine each had a claim to one grand scena followed by an aria di bravura, the latter being designed simply to display agility in ornamental passages. These laws were afterwards modified, but down to the time of Wagner’s supremacy an opera librettist was expected to construct his book so that arias, duets, trios, quartets, and ensemble numbers should be found at places suitable to the composer. In short, the nature and purpose of the opera had been lost sight of; it was no longer drama per musica, but drama pro musica,—a vastly different thing.
The first resolute opposition to this style of thing was made by Gluck, who had the same high regard for the classics of antiquity as Peri and his confreres had. Gluck’s theories and purposes are succinctly expressed in his preface to “Alceste.” He says:—
“I endeavored to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of the situations without interrupting the action or weakening it by superfluous ornament. My idea was that the relation of music to poetry was much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well-disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing, which animates the figure without altering the outlines.... My idea was that the overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are about to see; that the instruments ought to be introduced in proportion to the degree of interest and passion in the words; and that it was necessary above all to avoid making too great a disparity between the recitative and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the movement and animation of a scene. I also thought that my chief endeavor should be to attain a grand simplicity; and consequently I have avoided making a parade of difficulties at the cost of clearness.”
Fac-simile autograph letter from Richard Wagner, written in Zurich, May 30, 1853, addressed to some musical director, and advising him to give “Tannhäuser” before producing “Lohengrin.”
