The result was a performance which thoroughly roused the community, including the musical profession, which was well represented at the performance, to a sense of Wagner’s greatness as an interpretative artist. There were many other events of importance in Wagner’s external musical life at Dresden. Among these he tells us of the visits of Spontini and of Marschner to superintend the performances of their own works and of a festival planned to welcome the king of Saxony as he returned from England in August, 1844, on which occasion the march from Tannhäuser had its first performance by the forces of the opera company in the royal grounds at Pillnitz. In the winter of the same year we find Wagner actively interested in the movement which resulted in the removal of Weber’s remains from London to their final resting place in his own Dresden. In the ceremony which took place when Weber’s remains were finally committed to German soil, Wagner made a brief but eloquent address and conducted the music for the occasion, consisting of arrangements from Weber’s works made by him. In the midst of a life thus busied Wagner found, however, time for study, and, in the summer months, for musical creation. His interest in the classic drama dates from this period and it is to his studies in mediæval lore pursued at this time that we may attribute his knowledge of the subjects which he later employed in his dramas.
Two musical works are the fruit of these Dresden years. Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. These two works we suitably bracket as forming the second period of Wagner’s creative work; and, while his advance was so persistent and so marked that each new score presents to us an advance in spirit and form, these two are so similar in spirit and form that they may be named together as the next step in the development of his style.
Tannhäuser and Lohengrin are designated by Wagner as romantic operas, a title exactly descriptive of their place as musical stage settings. While infusing into the spirit and action a more poetical conception, their creator had not as yet renounced the more conventional forms of the operatic text. The most important feature of the opera to which he still adhered was the employment, both scenically and musically, of the chorus. This, together with the interest of the ‘ensemble’ and a treatment of the solo parts more nearly approaching the lyric aria than the free recitative of the later dramas are points which these works share with the older ‘opera.’ The advance in the musical substance of these operas over the earlier works is very great. In Tannhäuser we find for the first time Wagner the innovator employing a melodic and harmonic scheme that bears his own stamp, the essence of what we know as ‘Wagnerism.’ From the first pages of Tannhäuser there greets us for the first time that rich sensuousness of melody and harmony which had its apotheosis in the surging mysteries of Tristan und Isolde. Wagner here first divined those new principles of chromatic harmony and of key relations which constituted the greatest advance that had been made by a genius since Monteverdi’s bold innovations of over two centuries before.
In his treatment of the orchestra Wagner’s advance was also great and revealed the new paths which an intimate study of Berlioz’s scores had opened to him. In these two scores, and particularly in Lohengrin, we find the beginnings of the rich polyphonic style of Tristan and the Meistersinger and the marvellously expressive and original use of the wind instruments by which he attained, according to Richard Strauss, ‘a summit of æsthetic perfection hitherto unreached.’
With the advent of these two music dramas there commenced that bitter opposition and antagonism to Wagner and his works from almost the entire musical fraternity and particularly from the professional critics, the records of which form one of the most amazing chapters of musical history. The gathering of these records and their presentation has been the pleasure of succeeding generations of critics who, in many cases, by their blindness to the advances of their own age, have but unconsciously become the objects for the similar ridicule of their followers. Great as may be our satisfaction in seeing history thus repeat itself, the real study of musical development is more concerned with those few appreciators who, with rare perceptive powers, saw the truth of this new gospel and by its power felt themselves drawn to the duty of spreading its influence.
Wagner once complained that musicians found in him only a poet with a mediocre talent for music, while the appreciators of his music were those outside of his own profession. This was in a large measure true and the explanation may be easily found in the fact that attention to the letter so absorbed the minds of his contemporaries that the spiritual significance of his art entirely escaped them in the consternation which they experienced in listening to a form of expression so radically new. It is interesting to note, in passing, the attitude toward Wagner’s art held by some of his contemporaries. That of Mendelssohn as well as that of Schumann and Berlioz was at first one of almost contemptuous tolerance, which in time, as Wagner’s fame increased and his art drew further away from their understanding, turned to animosity. It is somewhat strange to find in contrast to this feeling on the part of these ‘romanticists’ the sympathy for Wagner which was that of Louis Spohr, a classicist of an earlier generation. The noble old composer of Jessonda was a ready champion of Wagner, and in producing his operas studied them faithfully and enthusiastically until that which he at first had called ‘a downright horrifying noise’ assumed a natural form. But he who was to champion most valiantly the cause of Wagner, and to extend to him the helping hand of sympathy as well as material support, was Franz Liszt.
Wagner’s acquaintance with Liszt dates from his first sojourn at Paris, but it was only after Wagner’s return to Germany and the production of Rienzi that Liszt took any particular notice of the young and struggling composer. From that time on his zeal for Wagner’s cause knew no bounds. He busied himself in attracting the attention of musicians and people of rank to the performances at Dresden, and made every effort to bring Wagner a recognition worthy of his achievement. In 1849 Liszt produced Tannhäuser at Weimar, where he was court conductor, and in August of the following year he gave the first performance of Lohengrin. During the many years of Wagner’s exile from Germany it was Liszt who was faithful to his interests in his native land and helped to obtain performances of his works. The correspondence of Wagner and Liszt contains much valuable information and throws a strong light on the reciprocal influences in their works. And so throughout Wagner’s entire life this devoted friend was continually fighting his battles, and extending to him his valuable aid, till, at the end, we see him sharing with Wagner at Bayreuth the consummation of that glorious life, finally to rest near him who had claimed so much of his life’s devotion.
Wagner’s term of office as court conductor at Dresden ended with the revolutionary disturbances of May, 1849. It is only since the publication of his autobiography that we have been able to gain any clear idea of Wagner’s participation in those stormy scenes. While the forty pages which he devotes to the narration of these events give us a very vivid picture of his personal actions, and settles for us the heretofore much discussed question as to whether or not Wagner bore arms, we can find no more adequate explanation of these actions than those which he could furnish himself when he describes his state of mind at that time as being one of ‘dreamy unreality.’ Wagner’s independent mind and revolutionary tendencies naturally drew him into intimate relations with the radical element in Dresden circles: August Röckel, Bakunin and other leaders of the revolutionary party. It was this coupled with Wagner’s growing feeling of discontent at the conditions of art life and his venturesome and combative spirit rather than any actual political sympathies which led him to take active part in the stormy scenes of the May revolutions. While his share in these seems to have been largely that of an agitator rather than of an actual bearer of arms, the accounts he gives of his part in the disturbance show us plainly that the revolution enlisted his entire sympathies. He made fiery speeches, published a call to arms in the Volksblatt, a paper he undertook to publish after the flight of its editor, Röckel, and was conspicuous in meetings of the radical leaders. With the fall of the provisional government Wagner found it necessary to join in their flight, and it was by the merest chance that he escaped arrest and gained in safety the shelter of Liszt’s protection at Weimar. Wagner’s share in these events resulted in his proscription and exile from Germany until 1861.
The following six years were again a period of wanderings. While maintaining a household at Zürich for the greater part of this time, his intervals of quiet settlement were few and he travelled restlessly to Paris, Vienna, and to Italy, besides continually making excursions in the mountains of Switzerland. While Wagner, during this period, enjoyed the companionship of a circle of interested and sympathetic friends, among whom were the Wesendoncks and Hans von Bülow, his severance from actual musical environment acted as a stay to the flow of his musical creative faculties. Aside from conducting a few local concerts in several Swiss cities, his life seems to have been quite empty of musical stimulus. But this lapse in musical productivity only furnished the opportunity for an otherwise diverted intellectual activity which greatly broadened Wagner’s outlook and engendered in him those new principles of art that mark his entrance into a new phase of musical creation. At the beginning of his exile Wagner’s impulse to expression found vent in several essays in which he expounds some of his new ‘philosophy’ of art. ‘Art and Revolution’ was written shortly after his first arrival in Zürich and was followed by ‘The Art Work of the Future,’[110] ‘Opera and Drama,’[111] and ‘Judaism in Music.’[112] He also was continuously occupied with the poems of his Nibelungen cycle, which he completed in 1853.