Fac-simile autograph musical manuscript written by Richard Wagner for lithographic reproduction. Opening bars of the “Song to the Evening Star,” from the full score of his “Tannhäuser” thus reproduced. The original is in the Bibliotheca Musica Regia in Dresden.
These words make it plain that Gluck distinctly perceived the fundamental principle of artistic truth in opera,—that the music must be considered as a means and not an end. He felt that the music should be devoted, not to the exploitation of musical possibilities, but to the faithful expression of the emotions of the characters on the stage. His reforms met with determined opposition, and some of his contemporaries complained bitterly that they were compelled to pay two florins “to be passionately excited and thrilled instead of amused.” But while Gluck made sweeping changes for the better, he failed to reach the root of all evil. He did not abolish from the operatic stage the set forms, which made the musician the superior officer of the poet, commanding the insertion of here a solo and there a duet. The continuance of these forms was conserved, too, by the splendid genius of Mozart, who breathed into them a verisimilitude which they had not before possessed. The glorious boy had no reformer’s blood in his veins, but with the instinct of spontaneous mastership he made the spirit of his music vital, even though its form was conventional. He founded no school, but he was an excuse for the continuance of old traditions by others less gifted than himself. So only twenty-six years after Gluck’s death all Europe went mad over “Ditanti palpiti,” and the name of Rossini became the watchword of the lyric stage. The opera was regarded as a parade ground for great singers, and its music was expected to be cast in the simplest melodic moulds, so that it could be hummed, strummed, whistled, or indifferently sung by the most poorly equipped amateurs. All conception of the opera as a drama employing music as a means of expression had been lost, and a man who asserted that its model had originally been and ought always to be the Greek play would have been stared at as one unsound of mind. That there were a few who were ready to raise from triviality so splendid an art form was proved by the gathering of warm and faithful adherents around the banner of reform raised by Wagner.
Like most young artists he began his career by imitating the work of the acknowledged masters of his time. As we have already seen, he had no novel ideas in the composition of “Die Feen.” He simply tried to imitate Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner. At this time the music of Beethoven was his ideal. Heinrich Dorn has testified that no young musician could possibly have known the works of the immortal symphonist more thoroughly. But Wagner soon saw very clearly that it was not in his power to adopt the Beethovenian style to the lyric drama. For models for his second work, therefore, he chose Auber and Bellini. The former’s “Massaniello” had opened his eyes to the value of action with brisk music to accompany it. The latter’s “Montecchi e Capuletti,” or rather Schroeder-Devrient’s inspiring performance of Romeo, had given him suggestions as to the dramatic possibilities of vocal melody. In his second work, “Das Liebesverbot,” he tried to effect a combination of the styles of these two masters. It must not be supposed that he was searching merely for popular applause. He was intensely in earnest even at that stage of his career, and his aim was to produce real art. He did not yet perceive the utter falsity of the prevailing system, though he was honest in his endeavor to make it tell the truth. In his autobiographical sketch he records thus the ideas raised in his mind by the Bellini performance:—
“I grew doubtful as to the choice of the proper means to bring about a great success; far though I was from attaching to Bellini a signal merit, yet the subject to which his music was set seemed to me to be more propitious and better calculated to spread the warm glow of life than the painstaking pedantry with which we Germans, as a rule, brought naught but laborious make-believe to market. The flabby lack of character of our modern Italians, equally with the frivolous levity of the latest Frenchmen, appeared to me to challenge the earnest, conscientious German to master the happily chosen and happily exploited means of his rivals, in order then to outstrip them in the production of genuine works of art.”
Artistic sincerity of purpose, then, was already the man’s moving force. The immediate impulse which led him to take the first step in the development of his own individuality was the conviction that the provincial public of the smaller German cities was incapable of forming a judgment as to the value of a new work. He, therefore, began “Rienzi” with a determination to write an opera which could be produced only at a grand opera house, and he decided not to trouble his mind as to what theatre of that rank would give him an entrance. He says:—
“I allowed naught to influence me except the single purpose to answer to my subject. I set myself no model, but gave myself entirely to the feeling which now consumed me, the feeling that I had already so far progressed that I might claim something significant from the development of my artistic powers, and expect some not insignificant result. The very notion of being consciously weak or trivial, even in a single bar, was appalling to me.”
Wagner never wrote words fraught with greater significance. To sit down with a determination to not be weak or trivial in a single bar, and to be always faithful to his subject, and yet to construct his opera on the prevailing models, was for a man of Wagner’s intellectual power and artistic temperament to discover the radical defects of the opera of his day. He could not follow his models without being consciously weak or trivial at times. An examination of the libretto of “Rienzi” shows that while there is carelessness in the poetry, the dramatic construction is excellent. No better opera libretto dates from the time of its production. But it was constructed, as Wagner confessed, to enable him “to display the principal forms of grand opera, such as introductions, finales, choruses, arias, duets, trios, etc., with all possible splendor.” Consequently, while there is much in the music that is noble, dignified, and characteristic of Wagner, there is more that is weak, trivial, and imitative. “Rienzi” is a very good opera of the old sort, and the dramatic force of its book, together with the excellence of much of its music, has kept it favorably before the public. But it lacks artistic coherency, because its fundamental principle is false; and Wagner knew it before he had completed the work. The writer of this article does not believe that this master, as some of his warmest admirers have asserted, began “Rienzi” with a deliberate intention of catering to a depraved public taste for the sake of success. Wagner earnestly craved success at that time; he needed money, and he yearned for public recognition; but his own words show that he was deluded into supposing that artistic work could be done on the lines of the popular opera of his day. It required the writing of “Rienzi” to bring to his mind the convictions, which were put to test in “The Flying Dutchman,” after he had abandoned the hope of pecuniary success. This is not the place for a discussion of the relative importance of objectivity and subjectivity in art; but it is certain that “The Flying Dutchman” is the result of an overwhelming desire for self-expression. Wagner at this period of his mental growth could have cried with Omar Khayyám:—
“I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me,