UNFINISHED BUST OF RICHARD WAGNER.
Last work of Lorenz Gedon, in possession of Friedrich Schön, of Worms.
The association with the text is, of course, the key-note of Wagner’s leit motif system. There can be no successful refutation of the assertion that a few of the leading themes of the Bayreuth music-dramas are arbitrary in their formation. There are themes which are intended to represent purely intellectual processes, and this is something that music cannot do. But we need never be at a loss as to Wagner’s intent. No lecturer nor handbook is necessary as a guide through the music of these works when the hearer has once grasped the idea that every leit motif is associated with the words or the acts which explain its design, and this, too, almost invariably on its first appearance. All that the hearer needs to know is the text. It was not a part of Wagner’s theory that his listeners should commit to memory a string of titles of motives, such as the “Love Renunciation Motive,” the “Hero Idea,” the “Love Thrills,” the “Decree of Fate.” Many of these titles have been invented by the handbook makers, who, in their eagerness to explain Wagner to the world, have done much to persuade the world that he is incomprehensible. The student of Wagner needs no translation of the music, except the text. Wagner did not believe, as many have asserted, that music was capable of definite expression as words are. On the contrary, in his prose works, he again and again declared that music was incapable of telling a story, that it demanded the assistance of text, and that the two must be joined in such close wedlock that they would operate upon the mind and emotions of the hearer as a single indivisible force. Therefore the student of these works needs only to make himself master of the poems, and then to note carefully the music that accompanies every sentiment or deed. In the Nibelung tetralogy, the music of “Rheingold” is the foundation of all that follows, and it must be known first. As each new motive appears in that work, it is explained. Two or three illustrations will suffice. In the first scene, the three Rhine-maidens sing this:—
Rhinegold, Rhinegold, lustrous delight,
Thou laughest in radiance rare.
When Siegfried, having slain the dragon, comes out of the cave, that music is heard in the orchestra. Does any one need a handbook to tell him that it refers to the hero’s being now the master of the Rhine gold? Again, after telling Alberich that he who can make a ring out of the Rhine gold will have unlimited power, one of the girls sings this:—
But he who passion’s power forswears,
And from delights of love forbears,
But he the magic commandeth the prize to mould to a ring.
Here the text fully identifies the music as the motive of renunciation, and as such we recognize this melody when Wotan in the last scene of “Die Walküre” parts from his best beloved daughter, Brünnhilde. This first identification of a theme enables the composer to attain some of his finest effects, for he makes some motives have an air of prophecy. For instance, two motives are especially connected with Siegfried, and one of them refers to his being a great hero. This motive is first heard in the last scene of “Die Walküre” before Siegfried is born, and before Brünnhilde knows that he is to be her lover. Yet it is Brünnhilde who voices it in foretelling his birth to Sieglinde:—
