Wagner’s service to dramatic art was even larger, for the opera was certainly in greater danger of decay than absolute music. Twice had the opera been rescued from the degeneration that now again threatened it, and at the hands of Gluck and of Weber had been restored to artistic purity. Gluck, it will be remembered, after a period of imitation of the Italians, had grown discontent with the inadequacy of these forms and his genius had sought a more genuine dramatic utterance in returning to a chaster line of melody. He also adopted the recitative as it had been introduced into the earlier French operas, employed the chorus in a truly dramatic way, and, spurning the hitherto meaningless accompaniment, he had placed in the orchestra much of dramatic significance, thereby creating a musical background which was in many ways the real precursor of all that we know to-day as dramatic music.
Weber we have seen as the fountain head of the romantic school, and his supreme achievements, the operas, we find to be the embodiment of all that romanticism implies; a tenderness and intense imaginativeness coupled with a tragic element in which the supernatural abounds. Musically his contributions to dramatic art were a greater advance than that of any predecessor; melodically and harmonically his innovations were amazingly original and in his instrumentation we hear the first flashes of modern color and ‘realism’ in music.
It was on these two dramatic ideals—the classic purity and strength of Gluck and the glowing and mystic romanticism of Weber—that Wagner’s early genius fed. Wagner’s childhood was one which was well calculated to develop his genius. With an actor as stepfather, brothers and sisters all following stage careers, an uncle who fostered in him the love of poetry and letters, the early years of Richard were passed in an atmosphere well suited to his spiritual development. While evincing no early precocity in music, we find him, even in his earliest boyhood, possessed with the creative instinct. This first sought expression in poetry and tragic drama written in his school days, but following some superficial instruction in music and the hearing of many concerts and operas, he launched forth into musical composition, and throughout his youthful student days he persisted in these efforts at musical expression—composing overtures, symphonies, and sonatas, all of which were marked with an extravagance which sprang from a total lack of technical training. In the meantime, however, he was not disdaining the classic models, and he relates in his autobiography[107] his early enthusiasm for Weber’s Freischütz, for the symphonies of Beethoven, and certain of Mozart’s works. At the age of seventeen he succeeded in obtaining in Leipzig a performance of an orchestral overture and the disillusioning effect of this work must have had a sobering influence, for immediately after he began those studies which constituted his sole academic schooling. These consisted of several months’ training in counterpoint and composition under Theodor Weinlich, at that time musical director of the Thomaskirche. After these studies he proceeded with somewhat surer hand to produce shorter works for orchestra and a futile attempt at the text and music of an opera called Die Hochzeit. In 1833, however, Wagner, at twenty-one, completed his first stage work, Die Feen, and in the next year, while occupying his first conductor’s post at Magdeburg, he wrote a second opera, Das Liebesverbot. The first of these works did not obtain a hearing in Wagner’s lifetime, while the second one had one performance which proved a ‘fiasco’ and terminated Wagner’s career at Magdeburg. While these early works form an interesting historical document in showing the beginnings of Wagner’s art, there is in them nothing of sufficient individuality that can give them importance in musical history. The greatest interest they possess for us is the evidence which they bear of Wagner’s studies and models. Much of Weber, Mozart, and Beethoven, and—in the Liebesverbot, written at a time when routine opera conducting had somewhat lowered his ideal—much of Donizetti.
Richard Wagner’s last portrait
Enlarged from an instantaneous photograph (1883)
II
The six years which followed were troublous ones for Wagner. In the winter of the following year (1837) he became conductor of the opera at Königsberg, and while there he married Minna Planer, a member of the Magdeburg opera company, whom he had met the previous year. After a few months’ occupancy of this post he became conductor at Riga. Here a season of unsatisfactory artistic conditions and personal hardships determined him to capture musical Europe by a bold march upon Paris, then the centre of opera. In the summer of 1839, accompanied by his wife and dog, the journey to Paris was made, by way of London and Boulogne. At the latter place Wagner met Meyerbeer, who furnished him with letters of introduction which promised him hopes of success in the French capital. Again, however, Wagner was fated to disappointment and chagrin, and the two years which formed the time of his first sojourn in Paris were filled with the most bitter failures. It was, in fact, at this period that his material affairs reached their lowest point, and, to keep himself from starvation, Wagner was obliged to accept the drudgery of ‘hack’ literary writing and the transcribing of popular opera scores. The only relief from these miseries was the intercourse with a few faithful and enthusiastic friends[108] and the occasional opportunity to hear the superior concerts which the orchestra of the Conservatoire furnished at that time.
But the hardships of these times did not lessen Wagner’s creative activities and from these years date his first important works: Rienzi, ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ and Eine Faust Ouvertüre.